The Burden of Knowing Everything
Image by Grae Dickason from Pixabay
8 minutes
I recently read an article that really disturbed me, until it didn’t. It claimed that a group of powerful, wealthy, and well-connected men at the World Economic Forum were planning to use their influence in matters of international law to create a system of digital registration whereby members of the world population, in order to participate in communal life, would have to vetted and monitored by an international political class. There were leaked documents. I could have driven myself crazy.
It’s just the sort of nightmare scenario that haunts the dreams of freedom-loving guys like me. It’s just the sort of scenario that life under Bush, Obama, and now, internationally, under Covid-19, has rendered more plausible. And, for a moment, it launched me into the kind of paranoid fury that has so often deprived me of joy. The mere idea that there are people in the world who even WANT to control the lives of others! I just can’t–
But then I had two realizations – one natural, and one more supernatural – that calmed me down, and gave me some peace.
The first of these concerned something I’m inclined to call the Democratic Error. You can find it wherever ideas are sold. It’s the cause of much mental suffering in the modern world, and of the rancorous online debates that leave their participants disillusioned and divided. The Democratic Error is the fallacy of thinking that the knowledge and opinions one holds have a significant effect on the wider world. Let me break this down a bit.
In a representative democracy, we like to imagine that things work in the following way: 1) There’s an issue that impacts the whole community, 2) Responsible people read about the issue, and form (hopefully) correct opinions through careful reasoning and research, 3) These people then inform their fellow citizens of the correct view on said issue through various conversations “around the watercooler”, 4) The people inform political representatives of the correct view of the matter, perhaps reminding them also of their status as elected officials who can also become un-elected, and by doing so, 5) The people push public policy in one direction or another.
According to the Legend of Liberalism, that’s how the system works. Yet one could make a children’s alphabet book of policies that do not have majority support, but which were pushed through anyway. A: Atomic Bombs, B: Bailouts, C: Cops don’t have to follow traffic laws…N: NAFTA Agreements or NSA Spies on Own Citizens…P: Patriot Act. It would be a long and depressing list. Most of us who pass through childhood realize that the system, as it’s supposed to work, doesn’t really exist. It is neither representative, nor democratic. The modern state is Leviathan. Whatever the powerful want, the powerful usually get, even over the loud and forceful objections of the majorities of both major constituencies. And fundamental policies remain largely unaltered over time despite the Wiley Coyote vs. Roadrunner spectacle of the election cycle. But I am not here talking about that.
What I mean by the Democratic Error is much stranger, and even less plausible, than the “Informed Citizenry Forms Policy” model above. It is the belief that our thoughts change reality.
There is a persistent superstition, fed by politics, the news, and social media, that our knowing “what is going on” (always somewhere else) will alter the course of things. We all fall victim to this, even when we know it can’t be true. A new war, disaster, or issue presents itself to the public mind, and we all feel a compulsion to learn as much about it as we can, as fast as we can, so we can form an opinion.
Is there war in Ukraine? A controversy in the Tennessee public school system? A scandal over what a celebrity tweeted? You’ve got to know! You’ve got to find out or…or nothing.
Nothing will happen if you know. Nothing will happen if you don’t know. Unless you live in those places, or know those people, or are willing and able to go there to help out, your knowledge avails you but little. Unless you are an interested party, your interest is almost irrelevant.
Sure, if there’s a natural disaster, you might send money, volunteer, or pray for the people involved. If it’s a more local matter, then voting, informing your neighbors, and being present yourself can have a real (albeit limited) impact. In those cases, your knowledge might be helpful. But thinking, obsessing, and opining about these matters beyond your practical ability to change them is not helpful. It does not affect the people, or the policies, that you’re worried about. It does not change in the slightest the circumstances “on the ground.” Your thoughts, which are hardly considered by far away “representatives,” have even less effect on reality as a whole. By less, I mean essentially zero. There is one, and only one person who is affected by your constant worrying, obsessing, arguing, and information-consuming: you. You have the power to make yourself absolutely miserable over all of the terrible things that have happened, or that might happen.
Consider a thought experiment from life before modern media: In 79 A.D. a Native American chief in what today is called North Carolina faces a difficult moral quandary. His beloved daughter is betrothed to a popular young warrior, but the chief has learned, through a private observation, that the man is abusive and cruel. On the one hand, he has a responsibility toward his daughter. On the other, this political marriage will end the strife that has torn at their community for two generations. To make matters worse, the daughter believes she is in love with the warrior, and does not comprehend what sort of man he is. Yet the chief knows, and his conscience screams at him that the marriage must not be allowed to take place. But if he acts on his convictions, even his own family will look askance at him. What should he do?
Please don’t tell me that it would benefit him, or his daughter, or his tribe, to spend any time thinking about the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius and the destruction of Pompeii, which is happening at the same time. Whatever sufferings those Romans endured, they have no relevance to the chief, to his life, or to his responsibilities. Since he is a good man, he might be grieved to hear of such things, but he might simply find them incomprehensible, because they are so far away, so outside of his own, terrible responsibilities. Yet, vexing as his problems are, this chief has one great advantage over us moderns: he doesn’t have to know what’s happening in Pompeii.
Because we do know, we feel responsible. The human person is meant for community, and in a community, one is responsible for what one knows. The chief cannot simply disregard what he knows about his prospective son-in-law; that would be inhuman. We moderns, because of communications technology, almost cannot not know all sorts of facts and events that we cannot act on. Because we know them, we feel as if we’re responsible for them, but are we? Does it really make sense for you to read and obsess about what’s going on on the other side of the world, when, behold, a real battle lies before you in the day-to-day?
My answer, which you may find callous, is that a person should not give much thought to these great things beyond his control. True, we can’t avoid knowing what we know, or feeling how we feel. In some cases, the strange knowledge of tragedies over there, or injustices on the horizon, distresses us enough that we will have no peace until we pray for those involved, and give aid in whatever practical form we can. St. Therese of Lisieux compared prayer to Archimedes’ Lever, able to move the whole world. I believe this. But I do not believe in taking on responsibilities that are outside of my vocation. More controversially, I do not believe I have a moral obligation to feel peculiar mental distress over distant events that I cannot change. On the contrary, it has become increasingly obvious to me that in order to be a good man in the here and now, I have an obligation to shut out those voices of constant trouble.
This is not despair. This is not callousness. It’s false guilt that makes you fear that shutting off the noise, and backing away, is the same thing as giving up on people. One imagines that if he doesn’t know what’s happening, it’ll all come down faster. You won’t be doing your duty, unless you stay abreast of this or that developing situation. Depending on one’s unique vocation, that might be true, at least with regards to some things on the news, but mostly it isn’t.
And surely you must have realized by now that you simply can’t know everything. You don’t have enough time, for one. You don’t have the nerves, for another. And anyway, the news only shows you what they want you to see. Heard of the war going on in Yemen? I didn’t think so.
It isn’t despair to recognize that something that can’t be done is something that you shouldn’t try to do. By all means, pray for the people in that natural disaster, or to stop that war or that terrible piece of legislation. If it’s a matter of conscience for you, and won’t detract from your immediate duties, drive down there and help. But don’t think you’re helping anyone, or doing anything good, just by knowing, pining, and opining. Quite the opposite, actually. You have a job, and that’s not it.
Going back to the WEF, and its latest nefarious plan: the truth is that knowing what it’s up to, reading leaked documents, researching its past victories and machinations and so on, does not help me very much in the here and now. I am not one of the handful of people who have the power to put a stop to its latest dastardly doings. I can pray for God to intervene. I can implore my representative to vote No on issue X, or Yes on issue Y. I can, if it becomes necessary, take my family and head for the hills. But I cannot change anything in objective reality by filling my head with all of the terrible things that are going on. All I can do is make myself miserable through worry and outrage. Thoughts don’t change reality. But I said that I had two realizations about this matter; the second one more supernatural.
Supernaturally speaking it is good to be living in such times. Human life, viewed from a Divine perspective, is a great and moving drama. As a storyteller, I’m particularly attuned to this narrative dimension of reality. We are in a story, full of wonder and horror, honor and intrigue, symbolism and foreshadowing. If the machinations of the wicked seem greater and more far reaching today, then so much greater becomes the drama of the good.
Is the modern technological state a neon dystopia? Hooray! Just like Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep! Are the enemies of life, liberty, and personal virtue about to implement their most nefarious plans yet? Praise the Lord! Are there wars and rumors of war? So it was in Frodo’s time, and still goodness triumphed. Will lovers of God and liberty be forced to form networks of underground resistance while a cold-hearted, bureaucratic structure of sin reveals its true devilish face, haunting and hunting them through some modern version of the catacombs? Hallelujah! What a time to be living! What a story!
“An inconvenience is only an adventure, wrongly considered,” says Chesterton. High danger makes for high drama, and the thing that makes us love the heroes and the martyrs of old is the exact same thing that glues us to a good novel: danger. We admire the martyrs because they were lights in the darkness, and darkness couldn’t overcome them. As in a good novel, somehow the enemies of light (in, say, Ancient Rome,) were bigger and stronger than the handful of heroes, but the heroes inherited the earth anyway. Though these little lights drew down upon themselves all the fury of evil, it was the evil that was conquered, and in strange, unexpected (but, in hindsight, inevitable) ways. In history, as in stories, evil eats itself, and its shadow casts goodness in bold relief.
I don’t mean to make light of all of the evil in the world, or of the terrible sufferings people must endure. Yet we are wrong on two levels to think we have an obligation to fill our minds with bad news, and to obsess about it. There will always be bad news. There will always be wars, rumors of wars, and evil in high places. We cannot change any of it by reading and watching endless coverage of the bad. And doing so warps our perspective, because it makes us feel responsible in the wrong way. The things we are most able to help with are right in front of us. The battles to be a good father, mother, husband, wife, friend, or professional are the battles you and I must win, or at least die in the attempt of. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t make reasonable efforts to help. I’m saying that we are all addicted to hearing about bad things we cannot change, and that we need the serenity to accept those things as facts, and the wisdom to know the difference between them, and our real tasks.
Finally, to return to the example of the Native American chief, I think we need to consider whether the god’s eye point-of-view provided by modern media is really to our benefit. After all, human society and the human person did not evolve or develop for constant, remote contact. Many people would not wish to be burdened with Charles Xavier’s powers of telepathy, or with a crystal ball. The possibility of knowing everyone’s business would presumably be too much for anyone to bear without some special vocational grace — which is why only Strider had the right to look in the Palantir.
But in a very real way, we are all mutants now. We’ve evolved this power that gives us remote sight of events all over the world, and because of that, we think we’re callous or irresponsible unless we do something, or feel something, or think something about all of it. But if the chief in my example would do better to attend to his own considerable problems then to Vesuvius, then I think the same holds true for most of us. (Publicly or internationally oriented vocations (only partially) excepted.)
The peoples of the world may, in some vague sense, constitute a “community,” but, stretched that far, the word loses the very intimacy that makes it meaningful. Indeed, the very idea of a global community does some violence to real communities everywhere, inasmuch as it implies assuming burdens and duties that no mere mortal can even comprehend, and neglecting those he can. Yes, you heard me right. The term “global community” is partly nonsense. “But that,” to paraphrase The Neverending Story, “is another [subject,] and shall be told another day.”
© 2022 Joseph Breslin All Rights Reserved