One of the most cynical truths of our existence is that there are seldom ‘good guys’ in our struggles. This past week a video (which I have yet to see) has gone viral for the “Stop Kony” campaign, in which a group of would-be idealistic documentary filmmakers seek to promote a stop to one of Africa’s numerous unpleasant warlords, from Uganda [1], a place with a troubled and tumultuous history. Of course, these people have gotten a fair amount of money from Oprah and have been blowing up my Facebook and Twitter feeds with well-meaning and idealistic people wanting to do their part to raise awareness around one of the world’s more unpleasant people.
The problem is that there are no good guys when it comes to Uganda. Just about everyone in power is corrupt or wicked in some fashion. Yes, Kony is immensely evil, but one cannot be fooled about others. The people who would fight against him, arrest him, or disperse and defeat his cronies would be pretty evil themselves. This is the sort of situation that makes Westerners very quickly very cynical. After all, we like to think of ourselves as the good side and of our enemies, whomever those may be, as the bad side. But that’s not necessarily the case.
The same problem is what discourages a lot of people about politics. Most of the time in American politics there are two sides, both of them pretty corrupt and offensive, and yet often one side very clearly less corrupt and morally wicked than the other, even if by less of a margin than one would like. To support the lesser of the evils does not mean that there is no evil. Given the fact that all of us are a mixture of good and evil (hopefully much more good than evil, but we ought not to deceive ourselves at any rate), we cannot demand that life present us with pure good alternatives since we are not purely good ourselves (regardless of what we think).
All too often cynicism about the fact that there are no perfect options prevents people from being motivated to choose the best alternatives among them. We must remember that those who have self-interest on the line have no qualms about voting for or supporting those whom they believe will serve their own selfish interests, regardless of how wicked they are. It is rather those who are good, or at least who think themselves good, that tend to be more troubled by the absence of white hats in the public arena.
To be sure, it would be nice if there were more (or any) white hats around. But all of us have flaws. Any weakness or mistake of ours can be spun into a narrative of evil by our enemies (and most of us, myself included, have no shortage of either weaknesses or enemies). The result is that anyone can be portrayed as being evil or incompetent by their enemies. There has always been spin, and the Bible has seen it necessary to provide apologetics for more than one biblical figure (Lot and David spring to mind quickly). We ought not to assume that simply because there are apologetics that the worst case scenario is always true.
As human beings we tend to judge ourselves by our intentions and judge others by the consequence of those actions on us. We know, or at least think, that we have good intentions, but in general our society (wherever we happen to live) is a low trust one, and so we have little faith in the good intentions of others. This lack of faith leads to a lot of skepticism, a lot of cynicism, and a great deal of difficulty in working together or in providing legitimacy to any authorities. Every time that someone behaves corruptly it just adds one more nail in the coffin of our institutions and our governments, making it that much more difficult for anyone to be respected or trusted.
Since our societies (and that includes me) spend so much of our time commenting on, promoting, and defending our own perspectives, that leaves precious little time and energy for understanding or appreciating the perspectives of others except insofar as they are nearly identical to our own. So we form our own interest groups, create our own echo chambers where only those who share our perspectives are welcomed and appreciated. As a result we lose touch of how others see the world, and leave ourselves unable to respect how other sane and intelligent people can come to different conclusions based on different experiences, personalities, and perspectives, even if they share the same basic worldview as we do.
Because of our own point of view, each of us tends to have a two-dimensional view of the world. In order to understand the depth of the world, we need to take advantage of other point of views that provide different perspectives, where we can each help cover each other’s blind spots and take advantage of triangulation and multiple points of view to better understand our world. Sadly, few of us seem to be able to respect people with other points of view, and this is regardless of what point of view we happen to have. This makes it difficult, if not impossible, for us to gain insight from situations that require a more complete view than that which we or those who see things exactly as we have can see on our own.
Until we become the good guys, and we all (myself included) have a lot of work to do on that count, we cannot expect to find good guys. After all, those heroes of business or culture or politics that we want to save us from our division must come from among us. Then they must rise to positions of authority based on their popularity with us. We have the leaders we deserve because our own pettiness and lack of respect for others prevents us from developing those qualities we need in order to bridge the divides in our families, our churches, our communities, and our societies. If we want unity, we have to be people of respect and love and graciousness, quick to forgive and slow to take offense. I must admit that despite my own wishes I am often far from these things myself–and I am far from alone in that as well. But the responsibility lies with us; there are no good guys in this world right now, and there will not be until we become them. Let’s get to work on that.
Edge Induced Cohesion 