Walking in the Woods

Yesterday, on a sunny, bright, and cool morning my brother, my friend, and I headed into the woods. I put it like that because when so phrased it appears less banal than saying “I went hiking,” and has an almost mystical ring to it. Any experience in nature should maximize the unformulated, mystical, and transcendent. Too often, we formulate our experiences in nature (as elsewhere) in highly rigid, structured, and sterilized ways. We stay on a narrow path, we make sure we have more than enough water, and we measure time and distance in miles and hours.

Looking beyond these tired tropes and paradigms with which we tend to see our experiences, even in the outdoors, it quickly becomes apparent, however, that there is an inherent rebelliousness to any decision of ours to venture off the beaten path and immerse ourselves in the still forest, the morning sunshine, the earthy musk of the earth as it was created. We decide that, for a little while at least, we have had enough of civilization. Even though we are well aware of our almost imminent return to it, we at least temporarily reject the strictures, the asphalt, the concrete, our own inhibitions, and we seek something more.

In this vein, my brother and I drove up Provo Canyon, on a fleeting pilgrimage to a canyon, a path toward nothing and everything all at once. We arrived at the trail head a few minutes after nine, the morning air slightly chilled in foreshadowing of the coming fall. We see evidences of fall’s approach all around us, but sufficiently hidden that you must search and scan for them (the changing leaves towards the tops of the mountains, etc.). After getting our bearings and slinging our backpacks on, we take to the trail immediately off to the side of the parking lot, cross a wooden bridge fording a small stream, and ascend the trail as it meanders up a small mountain valley towards the saddle of the looming mountains.

Our conversation meanders from the superficial and mundane towards topics that have seemingly greater weight. After a mile our two into our hike the inherent rebelliousness of our “sauntering” (which has a folk etymology linking it to Middle Age Christian pilgrims to the Holy Land “a la Sainte Terre”, giving it a spiritual meaning) seems to sink in and we discuss our frustrations with society, our church, our community. In these musings surrounded by something resembling Locke’s state of nature, we deconstruct and reconstruct the social contract. We each become utopians, for walking in an idyllic scene sets our inner idealist free.

The trail gradually steepens but we don’t seem to notice as we clamber over the ideas we freely set down for the others to challenge. The trail alternates through aspens, alpine meadow, pine forest, and shrubs and low brush, and we pass by chattering chickadees, flighty nuthatches, and suspicious squirrels. We finally stop in a shady and cool pine glade, where we rest briefly while continuing with our amateur social analysis before turning around to return to civilization.

Imbuing Life with Meaning

As a Christian, specifically a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I often feel constrained to see how the pieces of my life should fit together coherently. Likewise I strain to see how world history can be condensed into a single epic narrative, and I search, many times fruitlessly, to understand our current political situation as a logical step or rational progression in a history arcing toward equal justice. However, lately, this tidy vision through which I tend to see my life, and the events swirling around it, has become more clouded, and the inherent meaninglessness of certain tasks, or irrationality of certain phenomenons has led me to question this more optimistic narrative.

The immediate cause of this paradigm shift has been my new job as a paralegal at a debt collection law practice. The coldly amoral yet supposedly perfect economic market justice so extolled by neoliberals and libertarians loses its shiny quality when applied to the cases of the impoverished saddled with debt at steep interest rates that doom them to wage garnishments, abysmal credit scores, and a life spent paying off the debt at rates barely even with the per diem interest increase. The fact that the debt collection industry has become an industry worth billions of dollars is a sad reflection on the economic condition of our working class. In my job I find myself in almost perpetual internal conflict. The utter disregard our law firm has for the day-to-day condition of the debtors we are obliged to collect from is nothing short of depressing.

For context, the situation of one debtor I will call Anna. She called me one morning, intermittently crying about her $20,000 car debt, her abusive ex-husband, her now deceased fiancee who committed suicide months ago, and the emotional trauma she still deals with from her tumultuous life. She is only the co-signer to the car loan she now owes on–and alleges her ex-husband virtually forced her to do so–but is nonetheless being garnished at rates that forced her to call us. It was a call she made out of desperation, not believing that there was anything to be done. Fortunately, we were able to work out a partial release of the garnishment, such that she would only be required to pay $100 each pay-check (a $200 reduction). However, around a week later we came to find out that the release of garnishment was late in being applied and we received a $350 garnishment for her. I talked to the attorney in charge about what could be done (could we send back the money? etc.). He replied that our firm “does its best” to work with debtors and that our policy is to never give back money once given. In my opinion, a cynical approach, although, no doubt, a monetarily profitable one. Entering that garnishment from Anna into our financial accounting system was painful, but a sort of dull pain borne out of a sense of moral exhaustion.

In “high church” tradition, now the lesson. What sort of coherent and uplifting moral can be drawn from these experiences? What can be learned from witnessing such devastation? Especially as a witness actively involved in abetting such devastation? My mind was never before drawn to the existentialists, but these past few weeks have rosied their philosophical worldview. Yet, I still hesitate to reject any sense of meaning, any order in this world of ours. My faith gives me a different perspective, and perhaps one that still holds out understanding for those bleak moments in which life, beyond simply appearing unfair, starts to shed all its meaning. Through my hope in Jesus Christ, I have already acknowledged a central character in a universal narrative that lends meaning to life. Through my understanding of his sacrifice, I acknowledge an ends, a goal that gives eternal significance to our time here. Nonetheless, I believe that this grand purpose to life, should not be conflated to mean that every single moment on earth has a similar grand design. Maybe it does, but I tend to doubt that every single moment has an inherent moral valence, that each second is imbued with a grander purpose. I am moving in the direction of believing that some moments may be purposeless, inchoate, or senseless. In these times, I believe, it is up to us to imbue them with a grander meaning. To wrestle with what it means to exist in a complex world. Cognizant of a grander (macro) design, but mindful of the fact that we may have a much more integral role in imbuing the seemingly trivial and mundane (micro) events around us with purpose and meaning than we tend to suppose.

Highway Meditations

Highway thoughts are among life’s most precious gifts. They are free and unencumbered by the worn and weary ruts our mind travels through our daily chores, accompanying the stale rhythm of our nearly automated existence. But on the road, on the open road, aiming for some open and deserted landscape, our thoughts seem to reach farther–paralleling the expansive landscape rushing around us.

Yesterday I had another episode of these “highway thoughts,” these vagabond notions that seem just out of reach most days, but in reality seem to wait just around the first bend in the first two-lane we reach. My fiancee, my cousin, and I decided to set out for the San Rafael Swell and a certain slot canyon found within. The very first part of the journey, as we made our way south to Spanish Fork Canyon, stood in perfect contrast to everything we hope to see the rest of the way.

The Wasatch Front is teeming with gracious people who seem determined, doggedly so, to pursue a life quite beneath them. A two-story house in a quiet suburban neighborhood, a nice quarter-acre of manicured grass, a job at a “start-up.” The consumption they deem necessary for their lifestyle is a pyrrhic victory of comfort, not worth the few dollars they have purchased it for. The I-15 through Spanish Fork is the antithesis of what every amenable highway should be, with billboards that make a mockery of intelligent thought and visual decorum, constructed with the apparent intention to widen it as many lanes across as it is miles long. The concrete, steel, plastic, and asphalt surround our car and stand almost in sacrilege, sacrificing the solitude and independence of the journey for the cheap comfort of convenience, speed, and efficiency.

We reach the mouth of Spanish Fork Canyon and our forward motion finally becomes worthy to be called a genuine journey. For any journey is much more than the mechanical movement from point A to B. Any forward motion toward any one place is only a veritable journey if the miles between the starting and ending points are not viewed as an unnecessary burden, but rather as the essential ingredient to the consummate experience.

Although briefly detained for a speeding citation by a friendly police officer outside of the quiet mining town of Helper, we make good time across the beautifully expansive and empty vistas we encounter. Barely listening to the music playing on the radio, but imitating it’s transcending melody and lyrics with my thoughts, we glide down US Route 191 with the Book Cliffs to our west and a hopeful ribbon of highway out in front. This part of the journey is almost uniformly brown, yet, paradoxically, this inhospitability imbues the area with an austere beauty. The area is beautiful in its barrenness, its expansiveness, its otherworldly allure. Conversations on these road trips come easily, and end easily. The views out the window relax and calm, and invite me to stare, many times silently, out in quiet wonder.

As we turn onto the I-70, before turning again onto a smaller road that leads us toward the San Rafael Swell, the scenery becomes even more otherworldy and mystical. The folds in the rocks become even more pronounced, and I try to remember the bits and pieces of geological knowledge that remains from one semester of introductory geology. As we get closer and closer to the Swell, its “reef” looms up like a rocky wave before a flat and unremarkable beach. The spires of Temple Mountain loom up as we make our way to the intended canyon.

Even before our feet touch the trail to make our way to the hike, the catharsis of the weekend journey has already mostly come. To witness the solitude of the open road, the majestic form of a towering cumulonimbus, the fantastically strange contortions of rock, even from afar (even from a car), have given me a quiet peace. My life, if only for a short while, comes into perspective.

Defining Work Up

This past week I had to confront a rather painful reality of adult life–the 40 hour work week. I recently started (and then quit to take different job) a paralegal position in Midvale, Utah. I was again reminded of the banality of modern life. We have diminished the day so much into its bland constituent parts that we no longer recognize the substance of the time that is given to us. I have few complaints about the company I worked for, or even the majority of what they did. Yet, there was an irrepressible sinking feeling within me as I commuted to work and sat in my shared work space, not even wanting to fathom the possibility of having to work at the job longer than a few months. It was a panicked, suffocating feeling that I have not felt too many times before.

However, there was at least one other time I felt exactly the same. I was 14 years old and there was absolutely nothing I loved more than the thought of an idyllic summer spent out in the open; a summer full of games with my siblings, walks through the woods, lazy afternoons spent watching thunder clouds gather overhead, and an extended twilight made to slowly watch the fireflies light up the backyard. Suddenly, the idea of this idyllic summer that I had treasured, which was as much a reality as an ideal to be striven for, seemed to vanish before me. This happened as my parents urged me to take a job window-washing with a middle-aged man from my congregation. I detested the idea and the thought of not being able to choose the shape and pattern of my ideal summer. Nonetheless, through some (retrospectively) wise cajoling I relented and decided to try it out. I can’t recall exactly how many days I worked window-washing, but I vividly remember the day I quit. We had been working, according to my memory at least, much of the day, and as evening approached I was eager to return home and salvage what little remained of my summer evening. Unfortunately, the man I worked for had other ideas and decided to pursue one last job. As we completed this last job my mind and eyes flitted anxiously. I repeatedly looked at my watch, 10 or 15 seconds after having last checked it, and tried my best to hurry through the mundane, even frivolous, task ahead of me. By the time we were driving home I was nearly beside myself with panicked frustration coupled with the irritation most searingly felt as an adolescent. On the car ride home I bluntly informed my boss that today would be the last day I would work for him. He chuckled and tried to reassure me, suggested that I cool off, relax, and continue to work for him another day. He told me that I would be able to earn money. But to my adolescent mind, nothing was more sacred to me than a free and unscheduled summer, and the thought of money making up for a lack of that seemed sacrilegious. That was the last day I washed windows for him.

These same feelings, these thoughts, these notions I believed I had buried years before came flooding back. I thought that having graduated from college, having seen friends get full-time jobs or attain prestigious internships, all these things, would be enough to compel me to seek the same at any cost. But after an hour commute to Midvale (with all the attendant micro-irritations of driving past countless McDonald’s, gas stations, and cookie-cutter office parks), and an hour sitting at my desk, I was already burdened by the banality of it all.

Now, at this point, I don’t disbelieve in the necessity of a career, and I begrudge the importance of holding a job, but I utterly reject that work has an intrinsically salvific power. At least work as it is commonly referred to as the ability to compel oneself to stay behind a desk for 8 hours, to strive ceaselessly for “productivity” and “efficiency” to produce a “deliverable.” This all seem to be Orwellian double-speak seemingly designed to devolve man into machine. What if truly proper work is to stare thoughtfully into the sky while walking through a forest of quaking aspens?

I believe the easiest way to tease out the meaning around us is to ensure our terms are properly defined. What if we describe work beyond its dictionary entry (activity involving mental or physical effort done in order to achieve a purpose or result) and ascribe to it any activity that is sympathetic or cultivating to the human condition. In that way it paradoxically becomes more expansive and more selective. What makes us more human will not (necessarily) be one’s ability to scoop coal out of the ground but one’s ability to think clearly about our place in this world and universe. This form of work could be a quiet stroll in nature, or poring over a thought-provoking essay–in fact it is essentially limitless in its variety according to personal preference. The point is that it helps us avoid a lazy, and disheartening, definition of work and may point us to more enlightened, feeling, and human lives. I don’t mean to discredit the menial tasks, or chores (or whatever you want to call them), that make our modern society function, but I wouldn’t want to confuse these with assignments and projects that elevate and ennoble the human mind and spirit. Perhaps a complete life is mixed with these menial tasks and what I have tried to define as a nobler, more expansive view of work. Yet, I would submit, it is never happily lived without a significant amount of passionate striving toward a goal that, whatever its end result, along the way makes one more capable of acting, feeling, and thinking in creative, compassionate, and profound ways. In other words, work, but work defined up. A work elevated and ennobled, distinct– semantically, symbolically, and literally–from simply the ability to make commutes, complete shifts, and fulfill rote tasks.

An Eschatology of Hope

Growing up as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints I have been intrigued to see how world-views can vary so much by congregant. For ease of analysis I would break down these distinctive paradigms into two camps. One is the perspective that the world is quickly becoming more and more evil and that whatever good still in the world is under near-constant siege. In this vision, any political good enacted by those with good and righteous intentions is mostly a pyrrhic victory. This is a mostly “black and white” perspective. There may be some nuance in this vision, but not enough to really matter. The second perspective is defined in nuance. In accordance with church orthodoxy it is still understood that there is, or will be, a certain culture, or sub-culture, arcing towards immorality and permissiveness. But, at the same time, this belief coexists with the understanding that our world is quickly becoming safer, more tolerant, and, generally, a better place to live. Nonetheless, there is obviously an amount of cognitive dissonance in holding these two sometimes conflicting ideas as true.

I believe that the reason that these two camps have formed is due to fundamentally distinct interpretations of our eschatology (the theology of death, judgment, and the destiny of the soul). There is some interesting reading to be done on the differences between postmillenialism, premillenialism, and amillenialism but it is quite clear that, doctrinally, we believe in premillenialism, in that we believe Christ will come before the thousand years of peace alluded to in the book of Revelations.

Disregarding the semantic arguments encircling the distinct views of the millenium, there is a common apocalyptic world-view that can take root as a result of premillenial eschatology. I find this hopeless and gloomy view illogical, and wholly uncharacteristic of Christian understanding. Nevertheless, I would identify a certain type of premillenialism as a cause of this. It is a premillenialism that has evolved into a siege-like mentality. Everything and anything is reduced to a cosmic and Manicheaen duel between good and evil. In this way we reduce Satan, or any ultimate evil, to an easily studied caricature. In an assumption that any of his malign purposes can be easily discerned, we paint with broad strokes and ascribe his cunning to any movement or happening not easily understood.

There are many unfortunate consequences of such a paradigm. Foremost, any belief in the forward progress of mankind is discarded. This is a crippling loss, and it permits a politics of cynicism and obstruction to flourish. Cynicism, because any social or political innovation that purports to progress our civilization will be met with skepticism of some ulterior motive, or perhaps simple disbelief. And obstruction, because this doomsday vision enables only this tool for doing good. Because (according to this view) the world is becoming ever worse, one must jam up the levers of political power and procrastinate the apocalypse (while converting ready souls).

I find this theology of apocalypse to be completely wretched. It promotes hopelessness, anxiety, and helplessness. It is utterly contrary to the empowering message of Jesus Christ, a message that preaches love, tolerance, action, faith, and hope. Instead, we need to wrest a message of hope from the premillenial eschatology. I don’t know exactly how that will be best be done, but I believe the task to be urgent.

Perhaps members of the restored Church of Jesus Christ, and all Christians as well, don’t take enough ownership of our theology. Sure, we have some variable level of knowledge of specific points of doctrine, but too often we don’t systematically develop these, and consequently our theology is threadbare and undeveloped. As I see it, our understood doctrine is as points of starry light in the night sky, but a true theology works as an organizing tool, a way to map and connect these points of light. I believe that each Christian should have their own theology, a way to make sense of the often confusing array of doctrine, a method to bring order to the chaos. For this is a truly Christian task, an emulation of God’s work. I don’t mean to say that each believer can pick and choose their own doctrine, but, just as each Gospel writer inserted their personality, their soul, into the narrative, so must we develop a theology that reflects Christ, his doctrine, and our personality. In so doing we will create a theology, and eschatology, not of despair and destruction, but of vibrant hope and renewal.

Evening Walk

Tonight I had nothing to do after 8. At that point, it is usually easy for me to slip into the worn-out ruts that automatically contour my life. However, this evening, I made the decision to leave the cool of my melancholically lit apartment and take a walk through the San Joaquin neighborhood of Provo. Today was hot, frightfully so, yet the the twilight hours offered a fresh respite. As I walk down 700 N and turn onto 500 E, I observe my community’s crepuscular habits. Many a denizen of a dreary apartment wakes from their partially conscious existence to venture out into hospitable evening. In that moment I seem connected with them. The men working to install a sink in what looks to be a pop-up camper, the young woman testing out a tire swing in her front yard, the man sitting in his car’s passenger seat with his legs stretched out sideways to rest his feet on the sidewalk. The imagined community becomes so much more. In that moment each person’s fragile humanity seems so poignant. So effortlessly recognizable. I know this moment of clarity to be fleeting, passing as rapidly as the shadows lengthen and shades of color fade out into subtler, darker hues.

I decided to take my book “Settled in the Wild” by Susan Hand Shetterly with me. Quite in the same vein as Edward Abbey or Henry Thoreau, the book is a perfect companion even to verge on cliche. As I walk south down 500 E, I let my thoughts take the foreground in my mind. During the day, at work or in mundane tasks, my thoughts sometimes become a burden, a distraction. I push any unrelated thoughts to subterranean levels. However, in this ephemeral twilight, my thoughts aren’t a burden and I let them wander as far as they can go. Perhaps it is in movement that my thoughts are truly at home. A sense of exploring, of feeling around new notions and ideas, that is paralleled and complemented by physical motion.

When I get closer to Center Street I call my brother Josh. Any time of solitude for me is always uneasily balanced between transcendent calmness and loneliness. I almost unconsciously feel the need to call him. He picks up and we talk for ten minutes about his work, my job search. Actually, mostly my job search. He asks caring and thoughtful questions. The conversation reaches its conclusion in the grass of Memorial Park. After I hang up, I lie in the grass looking up at the sky and the soaring evergreen above me. There is utter calm in that moment.

I read a few pages from the book I brought along and I’m struck by Shetterly’s ability to capture the natural world with a simple yet elegant diction. A perfect example is this. “One of the best things I could think to give my child was this: the woods first, then to emerge from their whisper and shadow onto the smooth clean sweep of Ida’s field in winter just before dark.” Her turns of phrase are so clear and vivid without any pretense at all. After a ten or fifteen minutes I sit up, and then stand, and then begin to walk, slowly, back to my apartment. I try to slow my mind down. To inhale deeply of this moment.

I slowly remember that I needed to make a stop at the small grocery store on the south-eastern edge of BYU campus to pick up cereal, and take my route straight down 800 N. When I arrive at the small store I am immediately jolted back into a more frenetic environment, not unhappily though. I buy my cereal (and a bag of cheap tortilla chips) and return home.

Utilitarian Dystopia

We have constructed our brave new world, but at what cost? Some less over-wrought variation of this theme usually plays on loops in my head as I look across the suburban landscape I call home. More specifically, while riding the train from Provo to Salt Lake City, or when driving on the freeway in that same stretch of development–which apparently exemplifies the triumph of modern day society after 4,000 years of civilized progress, scientific architecture, and urban planning. Any time-traveling ancient would be surprised, even shocked, to see how we have “perfected” the art of physical human development. Of course, this shock would presumably be negative, an awful wonder at how the speeding up the physical construction and creation process in no way indicates a parallel advancement in design or beauty.

Just today I rode the train from Provo to Salt Lake. It is a stretch of land that is, or was, exquisitely beautiful. The mountains loom up magnificently over the valley. Even today, summer solstice, there remains plenty of snow up on the highest peaks–Timpanogos, Lone Peak, etc. The lower slopes are green and vibrant, and the bright blue sky contrasts tremendously with the greens, browns, and grays adorning the mountains. But the scenery lower down in the valley isn’t quite breath-taking. The valley appears a motley and discordant collection of cookie-cutter houses with no imagination and little community planning, office buildings with tacky glass walls (variously tinted blue or black), and a general overabundance of cement. We seem to live in an age of cement and plastic–a fitting coat of arms for a society apparently unable to differentiate the artificial from the genuine.

Maddeningly, we weren’t satiated by our domination of the valley. As the train moved toward the Point of the Mountain and Salt Lake County, it was impossible to miss two glaring examples of landscape vandalism. The Point of the Mountain is gradually ceasing to exist, giving way slowly to the mountain-side removal process as practiced by Geneva Rock. Proudly, Geneva Rock proclaims that at least half of the roads from Brigham City to Santaquin were built with Geneva Rock material. But am I alone in preferring that rock in place on the mountain, instead of pulverized slowly into oblivion by hordes of harried drivers, zooming thoughtlessly on by? Across the valley to the west lies the massive Rio Tinto Kennecott Copper Mine. The tailings are piled high and deep across the mountain range and appear otherworldly and utterly barren. Rio Tinto’s website trumpets it as the single largest economic contributor in Utah history, but I just can’t help wonder if we really needed all that copper. I try to picture the mountains as they would have looked before they were objectified and leveled in pursuit of profit–but I find it nearly impossible.

We speak of progress, but at what price? Is progress to be measured by how many Provo residents can speed up to Salt Lake City in less than an hour to shop and eat? We talk about the need for infrastructure, and it most assuredly has a place, but when is it enough? We build and build and build because that is the easiest part; far harder is assessing what the use was. What actual necessity was provided for. Why another prefabricated “Silicon Slope”-style “tech” building was deemed necessary. Why another over-sized road needed to be carved through the mountain foothills. Why we need another sprawling office park. In all our getting, where is our understanding?

Too often we invent tasks for ourselves. We over-complicate and over-think our lives, perhaps to compensate for our own lack of satisfaction, or perhaps a vestige of the so-called ‘Protestant work ethic.’ Whatever the root, this sort of frenzied production (too often unaccompanied by real thought) leaves scars and work for future generations. In hundreds of years what use will our posterity have for buildings that only a few years after their construction are veritable eyesores (the UCCU building in Lehi comes to mind as a ready example). Our development seems insistent on scarring and marring the landscape, on obliterating any natural refuge, on using up every square foot of ground. In diametrical opposition is the notion exquisitely expressed by Teddy Roosevelt, “Leave it as it is. The ages have been at work on it and man can only mar it.” He was speaking expressly of the Grand Canyon, but I find it universally applicable.

The Chaos of Certainty

What seems to define our current era is a tendency toward chaos, a collective feeling that the center will not hold. Edward Luce brilliantly lays out this thesis in his short book, “The Retreat of Western Liberalism.” He maintains that our modern world is defined by chaos and underlain by great uncertainty.

As I look towards the future, I sometimes find myself thinking about how long this mass hysteria will last. Will it define my generation? What is it that triggers such fear and collective self-doubt? The responses to these questions will define my generation (and beyond), and these queries necessitate thoughtful and reasoned research and discussion. Beyond any single specific policy proposal, I think that the manner we view our proposed solutions to be an integral part of the answer.

Any policy or program designed to lead to a more enlightened, peaceful, and prosperous community is based on a specific way of knowing and explaining the world. The paradigms through which we evaluate, analyze, and sort through these competing, and often conflicting, societal blueprints are so personal to our ideology, experience, education, and religion. And they are susceptible to innumerable biases, errors, and incomplete information. As the Apostle Paul wrote, we “see through a glass, darkly.” This seems to be one of the defining characteristics of human existence. Consequently, what political views we hold may be less important than how we hold them.

This lesson has been gradually unfolded to me since 2016. That summer I returned home from a two year mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Buenos Aires, Argentina. I saw a sort of visible and shocking poverty that I had never fathomed growing up in an affluent northern Virginia town. I had known wealth and comfort and peace and plenty for all my life. At home we left our doors unlocked and our bikes and sports equipment strewn across the lawn day after day. Yet, I came home almost precisely at the moment that Donald Trump secured the Republican nomination for president, a man who had run on the idea of a sick, enfeebled, impoverished, insecure America. I sat staring at the TV, completely shocked, when Trump spoke of “American carnage” at his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention. The picture he painted reminded me not at all of the community that was America for me. Not surprisingly, he did not win my community, or state, in the election.

Yet, there were many communities that cast their vote for him because, symbolically or literally (or both), they were devastated. And not a ‘developing world’-type devastation. For in many measurable ways they were doing much better, but in another less-measurable sense, much worse. The coffee farm laborer in Nicaragua may be desperately poor, yet tragically this poverty is mirrored all around them and, excepting an escape from the county, this fate may seem unavoidable. On the other hand, a steel worker in Pennsylvania was born with the “American Dream” of self-advancement and material prosperity almost preternaturally, and after seeing other Americans achieve prosperity and fortune, was eventually laid off after 30 years of work with only meager savings. This steel worker is likely to feel a visceral sense of relative deprivation, especially when compared with the idealized wealth of the “coastal elites.”

In one sense the “correct” evaluation of America’s economic and political condition is incredibly relative and subjective. The truth for an unemployed former steel worker in the Rust Belt may be that America is in real and undeniable decline, that any national economic growth hasn’t delivered for them, and that the government only works for the privileged and wealthy. However, the truth for me in 2016 was that America was in a much better political and economic state than most other nations, and that ours was truly a government for the people, by the people.

These diametrically opposed paradigms (neither completely right nor wrong) collided on November 6, 2016. The result was an incredibly uncomfortable awakening to the reality that since the 1970’s our nation was becoming more and more unequal, that there was one America in which advancement and socio-economic progression were realistic, and another in which it was increasingly unlikely. Among many things, some of these symptoms and not necessarily causes, the meritocracy broke down, over-arching macroeconomic policy shifted from full employment to low inflation, capital controls eased, and (as Wolfgang Streeck notes) capitalists employed ‘investment strikes.’

In a sense, then, I was incorrect in my evaluation of the U.S. economy and consequently our democracy, for it was not working for all Americans. Although I still believe Donald Trump was, and is, wrong to blame this on immigrants and trade deals while not acknowledging the deeper roots, he (or his advisers) was right that there is something nagging many in Middle America, something that pushes towards frustration, resignation, resentment, and anger.

Now, nearly three years into Trump’s presidency, the political certainty on either ideological side is irrational and untenable. We hold onto partially true, or even completely flawed tropes to steady ourselves, not realizing that this grasping doesn’t connect us with reality, but rather to a sort of tribal mythology. To combat this, I believe, to paraphrase a college classmate, each of us has a sacred moral obligation to doubt. And not in some sort of fatalistically depressed way, but rather in a honest and searching manner. With the intellectual humility necessary to admit when you are wrong, when your logic is flawed, when your ideas don’t bear fruit. I don’t wish to say that the truth is unknowable or unattainable. I happen to believe in certain unchanging truths, nonetheless, the unchanging beliefs I hold onto happen to be relatively few in number (compared to what I don’t know or yet understand). For any given political question this uncertainty leads to sincere questioning, honest searching, and a gradual shift in perspective. Ultimately, our political models are only as useful as they approximate the world around us. So, if we perversely intend to twist and coax the world down to the comfortable ideological model we built for ourselves, then we should not be surprised to live in a rather twisted up, knotty, and chaotic world that bulges and contorts in all the wrong directions.

We must find ways to work within our ideological frame without being consumed by it. It is for the 21st century citizen to doubt while they believe. Not to cast away these frames, beliefs, or foundations, but to understand that the world is infinitely more complex than our finite vision. To understand that at certain times we must re-order, re-examine, or re-work our paradigms, no matter how long-held or cherished. I am convinced that any re-weaving of the social fabric–the one being torn apart by culture wars, rhetorical battles, and self-interested politicking–must begin with the intellectual humility of doubt, a doubt that enables one to see past ideology and begin to understand another’s arguments. This will combat the chaos of certainty, the delirium of the echo chamber. Meanwhile, as Pastor Jeffers tells Revered Toller in “First Reformed”, “Jihadism is everywhere–even here.”

Suburbia and Authenticity

I have lived in Provo, Utah for the past four years. In that time I have seen remarkable growth and development in this college town and in the surrounding areas. Although I have seen the changes in only the past few years, it is apparent to long-time residents that this growth is anything but new. It has been a long steady crawl towards suburbia. I see an uncomfortable parallel here with the incessant development occurring in my hometown and throughout northern Virginia.

Confronting the same patterns throughout my adolescent and young adult life has led me to accept society’s trudge toward suburbia with a grim resignation. The sort of uneasy burden that can only be thrown off with a quick drive-thru run, a mindless comedy, or a memorable YouTube clip. However, recently, I have tried to be more cognizant of my long-suppressed frustration with the status quo. In a way I have tried to consciously channel my irritability, not for its own sake (no matter how cathartic in its own way), to put words to these often nameless emotions. Heavy and ancient they may be– the vestigial yearning for the peace and quiet of a meadow, a forest edge, or craggy mountainside. The very naming of these emotions and frustrations may be as extinct as the passenger pigeon.

How do we maintain our collective sanity in the plastic and concrete lives we have constructed for ourselves? Or are are we in fact losing our sanity? Can we trace a portion of the global crisis of confidence, and rejection of the status quo, to a growing detachment from ourselves, from nature? Claiming such a connection may sound fanciful, although many political scientists would be hard-pressed to name any cause for this global political meltdown. I don’t mean to say that it all stems from a lack of connection with nature, but it could very well be a symptom of what David Brooks asserts is a lack of connection in community. And what more vital part of community than the backdrop in which it is situated, the plants and animals that share the space with our so-called “advanced” society.

Can we truly have a connection with each other entombed in our climate-controlled catacombs, messaging each other virtually, all the while binging on Netflix? No, I don’t believe it is possible. We need to be uncomfortably present in each other lives, just as we need nature to be uncomfortably present in our own. The authenticity that is present in these experiences is glaringly absent in many modern lives. The genuineness of the pleasant discomfort of a cold evening in the frigid desert with only your sleeping bag around you, the reality of talking with someone whose opinions and views are so opposed to your own that it forces you to scrape for the slightest phrase to hang a conversation on. Why are we so intent on destroying authenticity for the sake of comfort? How do we convince ourselves that this was the way it was meant to be?

Introduction: Purposeful Musing

I intend to post some loosely associated thoughts once or twice a month. I hope to detail at least a portion of my experience as a Mormon Millennial and amateur naturalist. I will mix the themes of nature, politics, and religion to examine my lived experiences, evaluate current events, and sketch out the questions I have. I want to keep in these musings a sense of wonder, to find times to just dwell in moments of simple exhilaration, but to never shy away from the emotions and questions we don’t seek out but seem to eventually find us. Essentially, I want to revel in my humanity, even–or especially–my simpleness.