Living with Integrity in a “Post-Truth” World
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There’s a reason why we as a religious people covenant to affirm and promote a free and responsible search for truth and meaning. It’s because we believe that our spiritual wholeness depends on confronting the real facts of our lives and the world we live in. We believe we can live free, awakened, and aware; we can be loving, compassionate, and kind; we can live into who we are and use our gifts to help save the world only in the presence of the truth. And from that truth we derive meaning.
And there is no question that we are living in a precarious time for the truth. We find ourselves in a world of “alternative facts” that amount to a torrent of lies from those in the highest offices in the land. How are we to respond in a way that is centered in integrity, in a way of living that is grounded in what is true and what is right? Several years ago I heard a presentation at a minister’s conference that stuck with me. The speaker argued that over the last century different memes embodying cultural ideas or practices have tended to prevail.
For example, she said, in the 1960s the predominant mode of thinking centered on the notion of rights—who had them and how they would be protected. It was a powerful driver of all kinds of things, she said, but in time its importance faded, to be replaced in the 1980s by a different idea, the rising notion that people shouldn’t look to others to make their way in the world, that we are responsible for our own destiny. She identified this with an acronym she gave as “YOYO” or “you’re on your own.”
She argued, however, that in this new century the old notion is beginning to fade and a new meme is rising that acknowledges more directly our interdependence on each other. It’s the recognition that while we are responsible for our individual lives, we can’t get by on our own. She described this with the acronym, “WITT” or “we’re in this together.”
I think that, Donald Trump notwithstanding, WITT is the acronym of our age. It embodies the recognition that we are fundamentally bound to each other and the Earth across races, ethnicities, gender identities, economic status and nationality. Every person matters.
Our work, then, involves building ties to know each other better, and exploring how to empower all people to live with purpose and meaning. It means widening our circles of concern to embrace all people, including those who today are marginalized. It is a powerful center of meaning, grounded in the truth of the unity of humankind.
But it is challenging, too. It requires adapting ourselves to difference, stepping outside the echo chambers of the narrow silos of our lives. We do this through the choices we make in how we conduct our lives, about how we spend our time, who we associate with. Let’s be honest, giving ourselves to this work is not easy.
Easy is living our quiet lives in our quiet circles. Hard is putting ourselves in places we’ve never been, in the company of people different from us. It isn’t comfortable, and yet it puts us in touch with something so remarkable and compelling that it can astonish us when we first experience it. Annie Dillard describes it as the substrate that underlies everything else in our lives: “our complex and inexplicable caring for each other, and for our life together here.” The simplest word for it is love: an elemental truth so basic, so vital that it eludes our conscious minds, as Rumi puts it, like the water that fish swim in. Choosing to love is speaking out when we see others demeaned, reaching out to neighbors when they are threatened, listening when another is in pain.
Let us say a blessing for the complexities of this world, all the imponderables that unhorse our prejudices and preconceptions, that force us to shake our heads and look again. Our human brains evolved to locate patterns and construct scenarios that distill complicated circumstances down to a few simple elements. It’s a great boon to us, but it also gets us into trouble time and again when the messy world with all of its inconvenient truths trips us up.
Thankfully, complexity forces us amid all our hubris to admit to a little humility. Ah, humility, that not-so-gentle reminder that to be human is to be fallible, requiring us to be open to correction, to learn tolerance and forbearance, and so to be open to grace. Through the power of humility and grace we find our way to love, which is the core of integrity.
The work that Unitarian Universalists around the country and the world are doing in the election process, the work we do in our local communities, all of this is part of the same work of creating the beloved community. And whomever we elect, this work will continue.
Friends, vote for the most intelligent, experienced, and compassionate candidates. And then go love the hell out of the world, each of us in our unique ways. The world cries out for our efforts, and no election alone will end that.
- Living with Integrity in a “Post-Truth” World - May 1, 2020
- Beginning Again - September 1, 2016
