Friendship vs. The Culture of Contempt

In the beginning of this month, the New York Times published the OpEd of Arthur C. Brooks, Our Culture of Contempt, which highlighted an insightful phenomenon that is very lively in the world today. We do indeed live in a divided society; divided in politics, metaphysics/worldview, and even basic anthropology. But the most troubling characteristic of the today’s discontent and division is that increasingly we are being encouraged, especially by elites among the intelligentsia and the media, not only to see the thoughts of our opponents as wrong, but to view their existence as contemptible.

When reflecting on this dichotomy, I recall the famous friendship between Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Justice Anton Scalia. If the media were to tell the story, the daily workings of the Supreme Court of the United States would simply be warfare by other means. Yet what emerges, when we get a closer look at these outstanding institutions, is that the relationships and bonds formed in those corridors have a ripple effect into our common life. If the same talk that dominates the airwaves controls the corridors of power, we are one step closer to anarchy.

To balance this beautiful example with an opposite one in American History, we can see how breakdowns of relationships inside and outside institutions can presage anything from the horror of war to the coming of societal revolution. I refer to the assault of Representative Preston Brooks (D-S.C.) on Senator Charles Sumner (R-Mass.) on the Senate floor in May of 1856. The aspersions cast between public figures at that time sound an awful lot like the ugly talk floating around the public forum today.

From the beginning of modern travel, made possible by the steam engine, and modern communications, made possible by the telegram, it seemed for generations as if our world was getting closer. It was conceivable for a person to travel across the world and to encounter a far greater number of diverse people. As our technologies progressed, so too, it seemed, did the possibilities for contact between different individuals and peoples.

At the same time, the relative limitations of “content” ensured that on some level, anyone who wanted to participate in a medium would have a lot in common with other people who watched, listened to, or read the same media. For instance, in America, one can readily think about the “Big Three” in television news: CBS, ABC, and NBC. Almost every American family with a television watched these. Then there were the major metropolitan newspapers, like the New York Times or the Washington Post. These largely ‘conditioned’, in the neutral sense of the term, the worldviews of the people who watched them.

Because of the immense costs involved with producing content for radio, print press, and television, this necessarily limited their number. But with the advent of the internet, and inexpensive recording devices, one could have a home studio in one’s closet, all the while never changing out of one’s pajamas.

Now, anyone who wants to share their ideas can have a platform. Personally, I believe this is a net positive. Yet what happened concomitantly with the rise of digital communications was the near-evisceration of the ancient idea of auctoritas, that is to say, the authority of those who, based upon their expertise and integrity, always possessed center stage when discussions of certain themes took place. From the 1960s on, it was in fashion to question every authority. Now, as a result, there are virtually no universally respected authorities. While usually I would praise this as being fertile ground for the rise of the autodidacts, who tend to be ignored by the ‘system’, I believe this too is a problem, because to me it is self-evident that not every opinion is equally valid.

What does all this have to do with friendship? Well, I think that if we want to discuss where the discussion of a lack of authority and contempt meet, I think it would be in a surfeit of trusting, loving relationships, which we used to call friendships. Friendships create the personal ‘clear ground’ through which ideas and love may pass with minimal friction.

Every Thanksgiving and Christmas, especially since the 2016 American Election, it seems as if the mostly liberal, and mostly millennial digital news outlets routinely release guides on how to ‘survive’ the holidays with relatives, especially that most infamous of bogeymen, the conservative uncle or grandfather. As a person who sat at table most of my life during holidays with both liberals and conservatives in my family, I find this whole approach puzzling. Sure, I may not agree with my relative, but at the end of the day, I really do believe that that person loves me, and is there for me. It really is unthinkable to me to cut ties with these people on account of their ideas alone, unless that person has done, or has shown willingness to do, personal harm to me or the people I love.

This admits entrance to another angle of the current problem: the transference of violence or harm from the realm of action to the realm of words. There is a certain logic to this I do not want to discount. We may have said as children that “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me.” Anyone who has been verbally or emotionally abused knows that this is patently false. Words can do immense harm. I think it is correct to say that it is even a type of violence. Yet after this, the analogy begins to limp. The power of a ‘violent’ word is whether it is heeded by its recipient. Unlike a physical blow, which inevitably does harm if it strikes its intended target, a verbal blow is easier to deflect, by developing skills aimed at increasing one’s sense of self-worth, and living in the truth of the beauty and goodness of life. Verbal violence is best defended by the equivalent of verbal marital arts: reason, truth, right belief, love, and where appropriate, principled argumentation.

Yet the logic behind this transference can lend itself to the illiberal approach we see today behind increasing censorship of ‘unapproved’ or ‘unacceptable’ beliefs, words and ideas. Forced silence, however, is also a form of compulsion, a violence against one’s own freedom of expression. Should one always be free to express what they feel or think? Is that in the common good? I think not. However, I believe an individual must be free more often than not, in order to develop his or her potential. That involves also the possibility of error, and conversely, the need for informal channels of correction. This too demands friendships, because only these are the men and women who will tend to have the courage to give us ‘the straight dope’.

The cultivation of strong friendships is one of the discounted bulwarks of the current ‘liberal’ world order, and most certainly the bulwark of harmony between social groups. The prerequisite of friendship is a willingness to accept the gift of another person’s existence: to see in someone else not a machine, or a vessel for our own wish fulfillment, but a person with an immortal soul and an inviolable dignity.

This approach is all the more necessary in churches, as it is frequently reported in polls in churches across the world that one of the primary binding ties, and the most powerful of evangelistic tools, is the power of the lay faithful especially to draw others into loving communion. As the ancient Romans used to say of Christians, “See how they love one another!” I often ask myself whether modern secularists could say the same of us.

True charity, the flowering of which is friendship, carries with it its own auctoritas. Aristotle probably would have called it ethos, or the moral authority which he ascribed to successful orators. If a person in your eyes does not possess moral or personal credibility, why should you even begin to hear them out? It is far easier to the average person, in my estimation, to avoid rigorous argumentation (logos) or emotional appeal (pathos) when it is absolutely clear that they possess ill intent or are personally vicious, both of which destroy a sense of ethos or auctoritas.

In the Catholic world, we are experiencing precisely this lack of ethos or ethical credibility which is creating a whole host of disorders. I believe the route back to this is through the rediscovery of the power of personal relationships. Next time you lay people talk to a Priest, try to address him first as a human being, not as an ecclesiastical automaton. The next time you Priests talk to a lay person, try your best not see them as another obligation or a potential source of complaints, but as an opportunity to touch a heart. I admit that this can be hard, especially when we live in a toxic environment. Yet I do believe that we can choose to be, with God’s grace, emotional and relational ‘disinfectants’. We will not always succeed, but it is definitely worth the time and the effort.

May the lay reader excuse me at this juncture as I make an impassioned plea for Priests, especially diocesan Priests, to seek a renaissance in spiritual friendship. We must lead the way. We are loved by Christ with a love of predilection, and he is our inheritance, the one who gathers us around him in friendship, as he did his first disciples. The gift of his friendship is just that, a gift, which can be refused or accepted. We must resist the pull toward isolation and cynicism which is one of the great temptations of our age and the current climate. I understand that a great many Priests have been scarred by horrendous experiences of personal and professional betrayal, all too often from brother Priests. I know my own share. Priests in particular have this bizarre tendency, because of our somewhat closed world, to perpetuate patterns of isolation and yes, emotional abuse which have characterized the climate of yesteryear, and which has made so many Priests mentally and physically ill. Bishops in particular have an obligation to take the ‘relational temperature’ of the presbyterate. We must not be afraid to lovingly speak the truth to each other. I especially applaud Bishops who take the time to invite their clergy to their homes for informal meals and common Vespers. Removing barriers to communion, and tearing down the increasing bureaucratization of the relationships between Priests, and Priests and their Bishop, is a top priority.

Relationships are not an ornament to life. They are life itself. To allude to the profound theological reflection on the Trinity given by the once Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the Trinity reveals to us that in the Godhead, relationship is not accidental, as Aristotle once taught, but it is essential. It is in the nature of God to be in relation with himself. By extension, due to our creation in the image of God, we on some level are also essentially oriented toward relationship: with God, with other humans, with the self, and with nature. We are only fully ourselves, individually or corporately, when we are in loving communion with others.

We all may not have individually the key to world peace or the healing of the Church and other pieces of our society, but we definitely have pieces of the puzzle, by extending the hand of friendship to those around us, and by abandoning the ways of contempt, duplicity, and envy.