Cynicism and Skepticism

I realized at a conversation about politics the other night that one dominant characteristic of my generation is cynicism.

This cynicism is born out of skepticism: whatever we read or hear from anyone, it's probably biased, and we'll never know the full truth. Everyone has an agenda, and no one is out for your best interest.

Wisdom demands a certain amount of skepticism, right? Even well-intentioned people get things wrong, and it's both your right and your duty to question the information they feed you.

But cynicism is not healthy skepticism. While a person who is skeptical by nature might be inclined to seek out answers, a cynical person is not so inclined, because the answers just don't ever seem to be there.

I think this has everything to do with the form of media we consume, namely mass media. Mass media is only there to be consumed. It cannot be reasoned with. You cannot strike up a conversation with it. Even talk radio is hardly conversational.

Listening to both sides does not help. It only adds confusion to cynicism, resulting in despair. Is anyone telling the truth? I hear two people from opposite sides of an issue who both seem equally trustworthy (or equally dishonest). Some of the disagreement isn't even over grand theories of how the world works--it's over basic facts.

I suppose there are many who can watch the news and consume mass media without having these feelings of despair, but if you listen to the voice of the broader culture, it most certainly has an air of cynicism. And with cynicism often comes apathy.

This is all modernism's fault. The old idea of what it means to be "informed" is simply unfeasible, and perhaps on a very fundamental level, it's sheer nonsense.

The modernist view of what it means to be informed is this: you learn all the "facts," get both sides of an issue, and formulate opinions that somehow make sense of this data.

Never mind all the philosophical issues I have with drawing a hard and fast line between "facts" and other ideas. Suffice it to say I think "facts" are in part human constructions, and this is part of why everyone seems to have a bias in the media.

The real issue here is approach. The modernist basically says you have to back up in order to see the world through objective eyes. What I think is that we have to engage fully in order to gain knowledge.

In the old view, objectivity is basically observation that is untainted by outside influences. Our generation says, cynically, that a person is always tainted by outside influences. What I think we need is to happily be influenced by what's outside of us.

That's not to say don't be careful. The problems come when we isolate ourselves from certain influences that may give balance to our opinions. When we engage more fully with information presented to us, we diminish these problems.

When two people converse, they each bring their own personal biases to the conversation. The assumption of our culture is sometimes that this means we're hopelessly lost in the search for truth. On the contrary, I would say two people can learn a lot from each other, precisely because they have preconceived notions about life. If I ever tried talking to someone with no presuppositions, there would be nothing to learn from that person.

Somehow, we have to learn to be happy in our genuine make-up as human beings. We are not meant to have a view of the world that is detached from the world, making our view as close to "God's eye" as possible. I am beginning to think that "God's eye" doesn't see the world this way at all, and in fact our use of this metaphor may be yet another example of human misunderstanding of the divine.

So what forms of media would help us engage more, rather than simply consuming information and wallowing in our cynicism? I've noticed every web site now has comment pages. People know that there is a cultural need to be engaged in conversation.

But somehow anywhere you find mass media, there is definitely some level of detachment. A comment page with 200 comments has essentially lost its use as a place for conversation. A talk radio show where callers get a couple of minutes to ask a question does not constitute a conversation. A CNN poll is hardly engaging. One needs more than merely expressing opinions.

My church is currently having a Sunday school class on "Thinking Critically about Faith and Culture." Each week a relevant topic is brought up and discussed among small groups. It occurs to me that something like this could actually be a means by which current events and other forms of information are made known and processed by people in the culture.

There is a place for mass media, but given the way mass media sells information as a thing to be consumed, I think it's necessary to push back against it and limit its sphere of influence. We are all relational beings, and ultimately to process knowledge requires relationship of some kind. No one can simply "give" you knowledge.

Anyway, it's late, I'm rambling, and the ultimate irony is that I might just be spewing out information--unless someone wants to leave a comment, and we can start a conversation. :)