House of Mirrors

We ought to test and keep testing our ideas. Doing so is hard.

I don’t know whether Tuesday’s TBL was the bonus edition or if this one is, but there are two this week. I hope you think that’s good news.

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House of Mirrors

My church recites the Nicene Creed as part of its liturgy. Churches throughout the world have done so, in slightly different forms, since the 4th Century. When we get to that part of the service each week, when I say, “proceeds from the Father and the Son…,” I can’t help but think of the controversy of the Filioque, which has divided Eastern and Western churches for centuries.

The word “divided” is doing a lot of work in the previous sentence because the Filioque, a seemingly minor thing, has been the driving force behind the rise and fall of empires, of crusades launched and repelled, of holy men willing to die for their understanding of it and its importance, and of not-so-holy men willing to use it for their own political ends.

I also can’t help but think about disputants, armies even, chanting their favored versions of the Creed at each other across rivers and between battle lines. Such fighting words communicate some things, but they aren’t communication in the best sense. A modern, secular iteration is below, but be careful, it’s NSFW, due to language and violence.

We’re no better at communication today. Maybe worse.

I’ve written before about my asking the late Daniel Kahneman, who was the world’s leading authority on human error, how we might mitigate our biases and errors. He suggested, only partly in jest, asking one’s smartest and least empathetic friends to tear our ideas apart. In today’s world, that’s much easier said than done.

Due to our affinity for the like-minded, we tend to seek out people like ourselves to complete the echo chambers and epidemic bubbles that make us comfortable. All conspire to keep regurgitating our own ideas back to us, ideas that perpetuate themselves every time we hear them reverberated back to us.

The Americans, the critically-acclaimed, 1980s Cold War spy drama from FX about two Soviet KGB agents living as Americans in suburban Washington, DC, remains the best television show I’ve ever seen. It was a terrific spy show, but its transcendence came from a deeper place. What it was really about was life, family, love, and the intersection of role-play and reality to each.

During one season three episode, Stan Beeman, an FBI agent, played by Noah Emmerich, is asked about his backstory — three years undercover with white supremacists — by another agent.

“What did it take to fool them?”
“Telling them what they wanted to hear over and over and over again.”
“That’s it?”
“People love hearing how right they are.”

To add insult to injury, our favored media outlets and information providers exist to confirm our priors. It has become a wildly successful business model. Fox News proved that confirming its customers’ priors is very profitable business. Today, it’s the way the news business is done pretty much across-the-board. And very successfully, too.

There’s more.

We are besotted by the screaming voices of a sympathetic algorithm telling us precisely what we want to hear. We think the internet is a fun house. Instead, it’s a house of mirrors, reflecting back to us our pre-existing preferences, beliefs, and commitments. When I see everything through the filter of my own opinions, the fake looks real and the false looks true. Nonsense is custom-delivered to our various devices, most often in narrative form, to assure us that we were right about everything all along.

What we now call “content” is often false witness disguised as something benign. But there is nothing benign about misinformation, disinformation, spin, slant, fabrication, and propaganda. At its best, narrative content takes messy data and information, simplifies, summarizes, and distills it, and then presents something linear and clear. At its worst, narrative content is still linear and clear but deceptive, dishonest, and dangerous.

Andrew Walker is a seminary professor focusing on public theology. He is a conservative, theologically and politically (as am I). In the tweet above, he describes a book he is writing. He describes one chapter as illuminating “the dangers of ideology (think socialism, postmodernism, Critical Theory) and using [the New Testament book of] Colossians as the foil for why Christ is supreme over all rival ideologies.”

I expect that I will agree with his conclusions and his analysis. Notice, however, that Professor Walker only mentions ideologies of the political left as subjects of his opposition. That said, no serious Christian would disagree that there are ideologies on the political right that “cannot deliver on their promises,” either. I would offer nationalism as a ready example. He mentions none.

I don’t know what the professor’s chapter will ultimately look like, obviously. I hope he will attack dangerous ideologies on the left and the right. But it’s in his interest to minimize, downplay, or even ignore those on the right because the folks who will buy his book, not to mention those who are his bosses, are conservative. They want to be told how right they are rather than where they might be wrong. It would be a better book if he does more than preach to the choir (and I hope he writes that book), but there are powerful incentives that militate against his doing so.

You aren’t likely see Fox News criticizing President Trump, any more than you’re likely to see MSNBC or The New York Times leaning right.

To be sure, nobody is truly objective. But we can all aspire to be fair (for example, would an opponent see your description of his position as fair and accurate?). I judge media outlets and figures by whether they are fair and by whether they are willing honestly to report things that their core constituencies find wrong or distasteful.

It doesn’t happen very often. But we should aggressively seek them out. Like unempathetic friends who are willing to tell us how wrong we are.

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Totally Worth It

Below: If The Beatles were a Motown group (crazy good).

I wrote about the NCAA Tournament earlier this week and the virtual impossibility of a perfect bracket. My bracket was busted by the very first tournament game today. I had Louisville, an eight seed, over Creighton, a nine. Creighton jumped to a big lead early and coasted to victory. Of course.

Feel free to contact me via rpseawright [at] gmail [dot] com or on Twitter (@rpseawright) and let me know what you like, what you don’t like, what you’d like to see changed, and what you’d add. Praise, condemnation, and feedback are always welcome.

To paraphrase a key piece of this interview with the great Robert Duvall, religious conservatives understand the process of sin, repentance and redemption, but they are often not comfortable with gritty, realistic stories about the sin stuff. Hollywood, on the other hand, majors in all that sin stuff, but has trouble with repentance and redemption.

Cans of air from Italy’s Lake Como can be purchased for €9.90 (about $11) each, but they are not available online. They are only being sold locally because, as the company asking you to buy canned air says, without irony, “Memories are not bought but lived.”

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This is the best thing I’ve read recently. The saddest. The most disconcerting. The most interesting. Jaguars. Airport Theory. 100. Slugging. RIP, John Feinstein.

Please send me your nominations for this space to rpseawright [at] gmail [dot] com or via Twitter (@rpseawright).

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Benediction

Today’s benediction features a Mennonite choir that is spectacular singing a lovely arrangement of an 1880 hymn.

We live on “a hurtling planet,” the poet Rod Jellema informed us, “swung from a thread of light and saved by nothing but grace.” To those of us prone to wander, to those who are broken, to those who flee and fight in fear – which is every last lost one of us – there is a faith that offers love and hope. And may grace have the last word. Now and forever. Amen.

As always, thanks for reading.

Issue 186 (March 20, 2025)