#17 WORD SERIES: DOUBT

I’m thinking about my home state of Arizona, the near waterless, desert part where I was born, where rattlesnakes and roadrunners duke it out in hellish heat.

The fight is on

Roadrunners and Rattlers do fight, and nearly always the bird wins; and why not, with a name like this: Geococcyx Californianus. (Why not Arizonianus?) Let’s be honest. How predictable is it when on the one side you have a three-to-six-pound footless heavyweight with low cardio strength, and only one weapon—Venom. On the other side stands a ten-ounce bird (no heavier than a crow) with fabulous eyesight, fleet feet, feathers to fan as distraction, a multi-use tail half the bird’s total length that facilitates sudden stops (even midair), swift turns, and nearly instantaneous vertical lifts, and there’s that dagger beak with its hook for catching prey; or in this case, for seizing the snake’s neck before bashing its head on a rock.

“Where the hell is it,” thinks snake. It’s pretty much a bully’s battle. Bird teases snake into repeated strikes until snake is exhausted and dazed. Then, with its powerful beak, bird slams snake against the ground to break bones, and hammers snake’s skull with its beak to guarantee death. It’s not entirely unlike some politicians, some TV preachers, political conspiracists, product influencers, AI, and nearly all advertising that, like the bird, thrust deadly blows to people’s blarney-battered brains. We are nearly dead to questioning anything, so much is pounding our skulls. We don’t even laugh anymore at the recent phrase, “alternative facts.” We are exhausted by repeated blows. We are ready to believe anything. I’m getting serious. Can you tell?

If you know me, you know my field is Christian theology. And if you know Christians, you know we have strongly held beliefs. Most of us were handed those beliefs during childhood. They are as precious (and unexamined) as the stuffed toys we carried as toddlers. Like radically politicized MAGA people, we work to protect those beliefs. So much for the Apostle Paul who challenges us to “test all things.” Test is not a synonym for protect. You know how hard it is to test cherished beliefs. We are into protecting.

I enlisted two thinking friends, asking them to help me find the one word they thought rightly tests unexamined beliefs. Not only religious beliefs, but those offered by the sellers of beliefs I mentioned above. My friends did it. They gave me the word, “Doubt.” I nearly did cartwheels, so happy was I. Doubt is the greatest ever good weapon.

Leo Koretz, an American lawyer, didn’t out-Madoff Bernie Madoff, but in the 1920s, he scammed what today would be around $500 million in the most fantastic, unbelievable, Bayano oil scheme. Well, that, and his non-existent rice farms in Arkansas. What a skillful fraud he created. No one doubted this kind and generous man who brought stupendous benefits; until he no longer did. Almost too good to be true. Exactly. Someone should have doubted. Someone should have questioned. No one did.

This is completely different, but John Ossoff, MAGA’s major opponent running for re-election to the U.S. Georgia Senate seat, and nearly as we can know a genuinely honest man, needs more money. I’m in favor of his election. He’s done good bipartisanship work in the Senate. But when an interviewer asked poignant questions, Ossoff shifted again and again to an appeal for more financial support. Just how desperate was his need?

By the time of my writing this blog post, John Ossoff had raised at least $81 million toward his re-election, His opponent had about $2 million on hand. I believe Ossoff is a worthy candidate; I doubt he needs my $25 donation more than does my local representative running for re-election to Congress. But wait! It’s not that easy. A whole lot of money is coming in from the outside for Ossoff’s opponent. Maybe he does need a lot more. Knowing things for sure isn’t easy.

When I was a child, my grandmother thought Charles DeGalle was going to be the antichrist. Now Peter Theil is running around the world gathering believers to a new apocalyptic antichrist fear. Neither my grandmother nor Theil seemed to have a good grip on a biblical concept. Doubting their messages might be the right step here.

in the early 2000s, the Influencer, Belle Gibson, gathered hundreds of thousands of believers by encouraging them to ditch standard medical treatments in favor of her nutritional wisdom. After all, she healed herself of cancer Oh, what? She never had cancer? Oh. Who knew. And she didn’t donate her massive income to charity? Wow. Who’da thought to doubt her? She made belief so easy.

And then there’s the environmental lawyer, Robert F Kennedy, Secretary of Health & Human Services who loves herd immunity. Let everyone get sick. The survivors will be so darned healthy! Any reason to doubt his suggested medical beliefs? Don’t get me started.

In the epilogue of my book, “Life with a Capital ‘L,’ I wrote,

Can it be that in traveling faster and lighter, in having discarded most of the past’s culturally-packed baggage, that our liberated personalities are not moving to better things?

Should we tap our population on the shoulder and point out that we are more neurotic, more violent, more conformed, less creative, less moral, less intellectually curious, more isolated or fragmented, less fulfilled, more anxious, less happy or less noble than ever before? Is it possible that we tolerate nearly anything because we treasure virtually nothing?

I’m all in favor of holding on to beliefs. I carry around a bucketful of them as probably you do. It’s just that, unlike ancient days when beliefs belonged to tribes of people isolated by cultural unity, intellectual darkness, and geographical distances; now, technology, greed, and global reach have bonded together like hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon did to create glucose, that amazing sugar that powers almost all life on earth, to create a new power front: fake information, gullibility, and fantastical beliefs.

I want to tell you that rarely, but sometimes, the snake wins. It takes a good, solid hit of venom, but sometimes, it happens. Sometimes, we benefit by a straight shot of doubt to our beliefs.

RARELY, BUT SOMETIMES, RATTLERS WIN