In the shadow of your wings

"in the shadow of your wings will I take refuge until this time of trouble has gone by".(Ps 57)

so the main cause is probably screen time. And not just any screen time. Actively initiating a search for information on the web may not weaken your reasoning skills. But passively scrolling TikTok or X weakens everything from your ability to process verbal information to your working memory to your ability to focus. You might as well take a sledgehammer to your skull. My biggest worry is that behavioral change is leading to cultural change. As we spend time on our screens, we’re abandoning a value that used to be pretty central to our culture — the idea that you should work hard to improve your capacity for wisdom and judgment all the days of your life. -That’s David Brooks exploring a decline in the world’s ability to reason “Producing Something This Stupid Is the Achievement of a Lifetime.” in the New York Times.

The comment section of the Times appears to prove his point, as the top five comments resort to their favorite political and social narratives to explain the decline — it’s Trump and MAGA, no it was Ronald Reagan, it’s an American thing. Finally, when we get to the sixth top comment the political fever breaks and another David writes, “When my kids were three, five, and seven, I canceled cable TV - for seven years - bought about 100 books to start with, and put a giant stuffed tiger on the floor of the new library room.” A number of others then weigh in with stories of parents taking responsibility and taking similar action. One parent affirms David’s approach but says, “Wish I had had the guts to do the same.”

The comments section of the Times often reveals the illusions of the political left — it’s all about Trump, even though the Brooks article notes it’s a worldwide phenomenon that began well before Trump. To balance that you can read the Free Press (a publication with writers from left, right and center) with a comment section dominated by a very conservative set of readers who complain that the FP isn’t fully aligned with the far right.

All evidence that our ability to reason is having a hard time.

Maybe “guts” is part of what we need. The virtues of courage and persistence.

For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Do not let the prophets and the diviners who are among you deceive you, and do not listen to the dreams that they dream, for it is a lie that they are prophesying to you in my name; I did not send them, says the Lord. (Jeremiah 29)

Of course there is more. The “more” certainly includes replacing the mental models of secular political ideologies with mental models of faith. We need both to develop the capacity to see clearly along with those who do not share our faith and to see through the mind of Christ. Once we have done that, we may be able to return to our political views and critique and view them with more humility and wisdom.

Scripture - Tradition - Reason

David Brooks is a relatively new Episcopalian, but we might hope that someplace along the way he's come across our three legged stool. For us, the pathway to sound reason and judgment involves these three elements.

“We are called to the transformation of our minds, to have in us the mind of Christ, to see our lives and our world through the eyes of Christ. Concrete ways for this transformation to occur are offered by Our Lord, within and through the Church, in the Scriptures, in the Catholic and apostolic tradition, and in the holy reason of the People of God. As Anglicans we give authority to those teachings that we can recognize in the Scriptures, that have come to be generally accepted in the Church through many centuries, and that can withstand the test of human reason in each age. …‘The only reason for being an Anglican is that this balance seems to you to be healthy for the Church Catholic, and that it helps people grow in discernment and holiness.’ Living and thinking in relationship to this paradoxical web is, as the Archbishop (Rowan Williams) says, to live with “a habit of cultural sensitivity and intellectual flexibility that does not seek to close down unexpected questions too quickly” and therefore with “certain tensions.” (Robert A. Gallagher, Fill All Things: The Dynamics of Spirituality in the Parish Church)

Worship - Doctrine - Action

David Brooks’ broader concern has been about the development of virtue. I do wonder if that lifelong concern of his was somehow related to his decision to become a Christian in the Anglican tradition. In a discussion about the development of dense institutional cultures [1] he noted the significance of his experience at an Episcopal summer camp program. Was that a beginning?

I'd suggest that our tradition assumes that the development of virtue is in part related to our three legged stool of scripture, tradition, and reason. But then we acknowledge that it sits within a broader framework. To enter into the mind of Christ is not simply a matter of right doctrine, but also of worship and action.

“The starting place for this model is what the Anglican bishops at Lambeth in 1978 spoke of as pattern of life: "This inextricable fusion of worship, of doctrine, and of action constitutes the distinctive contribution the churches of the Anglican Communion desire to make to the Universal Church of God in Jesus Christ." Martin Thornton points to it in The Rock and the River and in his description offers a process and systems perspective: ‘Moral action only flows from doctrinal truth by grace and faith, that is through prayer’" (Robert A. Gallagher, Fill All Things: The Dynamics of Spirituality in the Parish Church)

Remember that it is not you that support the root, but the root that supports you. (Romans 11:18)

The development of holiness, and within that of the virtues, involves a decision to live in the pathways of grace.

Brooks doesn’t let President Trump off the hook

Brooks uses a recent set of the President’s decision making to illustrate the consequence of living in a world lacking in curiosity. As Archbishop Williams put it here is a negative result when we don’t live within “a habit of cultural sensitivity and intellectual flexibility that does not seek to close down unexpected questions too quickly.”

Here’s David Brooks on the President’s tariff policy, “What happens when people lose the ability to reason or render good judgments? … I have never seen a policy as stupid as this one. It is based on false assumptions. It rests on no coherent argument in its favor. It relies on no empirical evidence. It has almost no experts on its side — from left, right or center….Producing something this stupid is not the work of a day; it is the achievement of a lifetime — relying on decades of incuriosity, decades of not cracking a book, decades of being impervious to evidence.” (David Brooks “Producing Something This Stupid Is the Achievement of a Lifetime.” in the New York Times.)

This abides,

Brother Robert, OA

[1] See “Cultural Density”, chapter 4 in A Wonderful and Sacred Mystery, Michelle Heyne & Robert Gallagher. “David Brooks wrote this about cultural density: ‘Some organizations are thick, and some are thin. Some leave a mark on you, and some you pass through with scarcely a memory.’ He goes on to write, ‘A thick institution is not one that people use instrumentally, to get a degree or to earn a salary. A thick organization becomes part of a person’s identity and engages the whole person: head, hands, heart and soul.’ “

The Feast of George Augustus Selwyn, Bishop, 1878