US Citizens are experiencing declining life expectancy. Yes, it’s partly covid. But other countries are doing better than us, and some are doing a lot better. Why? It’s our political beliefs. Writer Doug Muder crunches the numbers for us.
Back to Civics!
This article from The View in Time Magazine’s current issue makes a case for a return to teaching basic civics. Democracy depends upon people being free to have differing opinions and learning to arrive at a compromise.
Our children (to say nothing of most adults) are ignorant of how our systems of governance actually work. Predatory opportunists now exploit that ignorance. Isn’t it curious how so many of our biggest national problems could be resolved if people had the goodwill toward each other to listen and seek equitable solutions?
We must learn to wage peace at home and abroad.
Perspective on US Debt
Doug Muder’s essay on the national debt is a fact-filled and masterful analysis. It is refreshing to read clear critical thinking in the face of the political theater and media hype surrounding the debt ceiling controversy.
Pondering What Ails US
There are two recent articles that I’m pondering because they point to something more of us need to attend to: the erosion of our core values.
The first article appeared in the New York Times under the headline “Money’s up, religion and patriotism are down.” It presents the statistics and makes the case that most of us are more interested in personal prosperity than we are in service to “goodness.” While religion can be practiced in solitude, most people identify with a religious community and would regard their observance as a social activity. We invest time and money and we bond with the people who are members of our faith community. So it’s noteworthy when fewer people are moved to be observant and practice their religion with others.
Patriotism is not just flags and Independence Day fireworks. It requires a commitment to a cause larger than one’s self. Military service, altruistic public service, working for good government, voting, not cheating on taxes–all of the civic activities we invest sweat and treasure in–that’s patriotism one can see and measure.
Opinion | Money Is Up. Patriotism and Religion Are Down.
A new survey revealed a striking decline in traditional American values. What should we make of it?
The second article comments on why so many Protestant churches are in decline. The author, a progressive minister, thinks the traditions and practices of many churches no longer call people to be deeply committed to one another or to the core values of their faith.
As I look at the many existential problems America faces (climate change, pollution, political stagnation, extremism, nuclear brinksmanship), all of them are sourced by individual and collective failure to honor core values.
How do I contribute to the unsettling trends these writers perceive?
And you?
Called?
Here’s my Sunday 3/12/23 column for the From a Faith Perspective feature of the Bucks Courier Times. I believe that we all have some calling to engage and serve the community. It’s a matter of individual discernment to discover what it is.
Countering Disinformation
I’m not an engineer, but I think like one. I’ve disciplined myself to be analytical and logical and to distinguish between assumptions and known facts.
Humans are not naturally rational. We must train ourselves to consciously construct a theory about the nature of reality, and then test our theory by experimenting and observing. Absent such scientific practices, we instinctively invent stories to explain patterns we observe. These stories need not be accurate representations of reality to serve as an organizational tool or a memory device. We may call these stories “hunches” or “intuition” about what’s beyond our certain knowledge.
Our stories may influence our behavior more readily than our reason. But stories are inherently fluid, and unlike the laws of physics or chemistry, they can be manipulated. People can lock on to a narrative (story) and act upon it without deliberation. Bad actors exploit this human tendency to their advantage and gain, often to the detriment of individual wellbeing and the common good. We get played and duped by persuasive narratives designed to harm–disinformation.
The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) has come to understand how disinformation and misinformation can overpower factual contrary evidence. People will continue to trust and rely on stories that have been thoroughly debunked by rigorous scientific research to establish a true perception of reality. We need only look at the anti-vaccination movement, the false narratives asserting that global warming is a hoax, or the denial of the risks of smoking tobacco to verify the power of disinformation and misinformation.
Science Rising and UCS have produced training materials that are intended to help science advocates push back more effectively. On Sunday October 16th at 9:45 am, I spoke on the topic using UCS materials as the core of my presentation. The bibliography of all my sources is below.
Video of October 16th Presentation
Here is a video recording of the presentation done on 10/16/22 at Newtown Friends Meeting Adult Firstday School.
Rumors
Some of us think of rumors as the idle speculation of a social gossip–just superficial trash talk, not to be taken seriously. If someone characterizes our conversation as gossip, we are offended.
Rumors are a serious and lucrative business these days. They have been weaponized and are tools for social and political manipulation. Rumors are a favorite ploy of those who manipulate because they are cheap and effective. Once seeded, they take on a life of their own, traveling with dazzling speed and persisting for months or years. They bypass most people’s skepticism because they often come from a friend or relative–a person we trust.
Frequently the seed is a photo, a video, or a fake news item that is cleverly crafted to look authentic and launched in a context that lends credibility. It’s easy to be fooled.
We can train ourselves to recognize the seeds of disinformation so that we don’t contribute to the spread. None of us wants to be dismissed as one who gossips. To learn more, check out RumorGuard.
Benefits of Community
Today I received a remarkable fundraising letter. It came from Holy Cross Monastery, a community of Episcopal Benedictine monks that Marguerite and I have been close to for more than 40 years.
The letter is remarkable for its intimacy and for the splendid way it captures the essence of the enlightenment members of the community have found together. Guests get it when they visit by experiencing the energy of those who live there in community with one another.
Read it for yourself here:
Organized religion and the practice of communal faith are on the wane in the United States. Spirituality in the form of individual practices like meditation is very popular. Still, individual spirituality doesn’t confer the benefits of a community of seekers with a lively mutual interest in spiritual and personal growth.
Covid-19 forced us into isolation. Many of the ordinary ways we experienced community were put on hold. Brother Robert alludes to this in his opening paragraph and shares how the monks gathered for their annual meeting spent time in small groups to recapture what was lost for three years. As in a marriage, living in an intimate community is work. He observes, “The soul proceeds by expansion and inclusion.” One’s spirit is diminished by isolation.
There is much wisdom packed into these seven paragraphs. I’m prompted to ask, “How do the communities that I participate in feed my soul and nurture my well-being?” And how do I reciprocate?
Blackout Averted
Imagine! People act in service of one another to avert a disastrous problem. Californians did just that.
Blackout
California deftly avoided rolling blackouts this week amid an energy surge through a novel innovation in the green energy space that researchers are calling “text everyone in the state and ask them to cool it.” It worked phenomenally well. At 3:20 p.m. on Tuesday, power demand hit a new record of 50.6K megawatts, and at 5:50 p.m. the state sent a text message alert mentioning that heat is straining the energy grid, and that there might be outages unless people turn off nonessential power until 9 p.m., please. It worked pretty much instantly. Power demand dropped 1.2 gigawatts within five minutes, immediately mitigating the issues, and by around 8 p.m. the emergency level was cancelled without a blackout. Wow, it’s almost as if slight collective action can have a meaningful impact addressing the ramifications of climate change if a state is willing to intervene; who could have possibly seen this coming.
One of the advantages of digital networking is the possibility of instant notification. Since the 1950s, the US has had a nationally coordinated system for sending emergency communications to radio, TV, cable, and other FCC-regulated public media. It started as Conelrad during the cold war and morphed into the Federal Communications Commission’s EAS (Emergency Alert System). That raucous buzz you hear on your radio, TV, and cellphone just before a weather warning is the digital data burst that allows such messages to propagate from a single source to virtually all electronic public media in mere seconds.
Now, with mass text messaging to mobile phones, written alerts can be communicated to private and public networks with even greater speed.
It’s heartening to see California’s example of large numbers of people taking the trouble to cut their energy use so that there would be enough for all with nobody left out. Perhaps there is a moral lesson here.
Servant Leaders
Lately, I have been thinking about being a follower. It’s a natural human trait to both follow and lead, depending on circumstances. And it says a lot about my personal spiritual growth when I examine how I do both. In family matters, business, and politics we reveal who we are by how we lead or who follow.
Here is my column as published today in the Bucks Courier Times.
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