Factfulness -- One Swede's Mission for a Larger Perspective-Practice That Might Help Us

I can’t remember when I last read a book by a strict empiricist, but I’m smiling with this one: Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World--and Why Things are Better Than You Think by Hans Rosling (with his son Ola and daughter Anna). The gist of his gift to us here, if you are willing to receive it? He describes ten (over)dramatic habits of mind quite prevalent across the globe today (especially in the level of society most of us reading/writing here live in). He counters these with practical tips on how to catch ourselves in dramatic instincts, or ingrained ways of thinking/feeling that had helped to protect us for centuries of our lineages but now are creating huge difficulties for being in the world as it is. With factfulness, he suggests, these instincts--realized and countered--could become stepping stones to better ways of being human, together. In his own words: 

Factfulness was written “to change people’s ways of thinking, calm their irrational fears, and redirect their energies into constructive activities.” In other words, he says, “This is data as you have never known it: it is data as therapy. It is understanding as a source of mental peace. Because the world is not as dramatic as it seems.”

OR

“Factfulness, like a healthy diet and regular exercise, can and should become part of your daily life. Start to practice it, and you will be able to replace your overdramatic worldview with a worldview based on facts. You will be able to get the world right without learning it by heart. You will make better decisions, stay alert to real dangers and possibilities, and avoid being constantly stressed about the wrong things. … You will learn to recognize overdramatic stories with thinking tools to control your dramatic instincts. You will then be able to shift your misconceptions, develop a fact-based worldview...”

Some of this strikes me as a human need to grasp and control through science, reliant on data more than on artistry, creativity or inarticulate wisdom. But “to calm irrational fears?” To “redirect our energies into constructive activities”? “The world is not as dramatic as it seems?” Those caught my heart in this political season for better ways of being human together…These brought me to the book, eventually to the gift he’s offering me. You can decide whether you can receive such a gift for yourself.

To whet your appetite, he offers a list of these instincts into drama, though I am only going to muse on the first two below…

The Gap Instinct

The Negativity Instinct

The Straight Line Instinct

The Fear Instinct

The Size Instinct

The Generalization Instinct

The Destiny Instinct

The Single Perspective Instinct

The Blame Instinct

The Urgency Instinct

Background to Factfulness:

The primary author of Factfulness, Hans Rosling, was a Swedish physician and academic, the Professor of International Health at the Karolinska Institute, and he co-founded the Gapminder Foundation. It is his final book, published after his death, well-stewarded by his son and daughter, Ola Rosling and Anna Rosling Rönnlund. A strict empiricist, as he seems to me, is someone who is focused primarily on ‘the data’, someone therefore well-steeped in statistically-oriented habits of interpretation. My vocational life in higher theological education means I do not interact much with strict empiricists. I appreciate the precision of those well-versed in statistical analyses AND I know enough to be quite suspicious about such analyses too. In my ‘biz,’ we encourage a hermeneutics of suspicion through which we bring a skeptical, critical, “you convince me” kind of listening stance to any text inviting a new perspective. I’ve often strived to counter this with a hermeneutics of charity, looking upon intellectual projects with love and presumption of goodwill. This book seems to fall in between these two mind-heart pillars of “how to interpret” something. 

I have been quite struck by the common sense and compelling invitation into a global perspective which may be worth considering in this tense, political season. There is so much at stake in these next weeks AND the work ahead of us beyond the Election beckons me more. I think this Work with We the People could benefit from a dip into factfulness. Come with me for a little bit here, and see if you agree…

A Fact-Based Worldview within (historically) Drama-Drenched Population(s)

Rosling worked tirelessly for decades trying to teach a fact-based worldview, all the while listening to how people misinterpret the facts, even when they are right there in front of them. He got curious why and how both highly educated ‘experts’ and less-educated people consistently scored worse than if they had simply answered survey questions randomly (like a chimpanzee might, he would say). The text actually begins with a survey in which you name (or guess) the state of the world today in terms of poverty, geographic locations suited to human life, life expectancy, age-range/children, death-rates, vaccination-rates, gender-differences/challenges, climate and more… Each time, survey participants would consistently perform ‘worse than randomly completed.’ In his language, ‘worse than chimpanzees’ simply hitting keys to answer the questions.

Rosling’s conclusion for this persistent misinterpretation in face of the data is that we have dramatic instincts and an overdramatic worldview. He is (was) convinced that this situation or tendency is not the fault of an evil-minded media, propaganda, fake news, or wrong facts. The overdramatic worldview is so difficult to shift because it comes from the very way our brains work. “Our brains often jump to swift conclusions without much thinking, which used to help us to avoid immediate dangers. We are interested in gossip and dramatic stories, which used to be the only source of news and useful information. We crave sugar and fat, which used to be life-saving sources of energy when food was scarce. We have many instincts that used to be useful thousands of years ago, but we live in a very different world now.” In contrast to the exclamations of Fake News! or the regular condemnations of the media, our worldview comes from thousands/millions of years of evolution and energies for survival. We need not attempt to alter this in any dramatic way, but simply learn to control our drama intake. “Uncontrolled, our appetite for the dramatic goes too far, prevents us from seeing the world as it is, and leads us terribly astray.”

The Gap Instinct

One of the most obvious ‘dramatic instincts’ here is what he calls the gap instinct. The chapter is a compelling read, with a hopeful tone. He begins his “lifelong fight against global misconceptions” by looking at child mortality rates across the globe. His argument is that this measure “takes the temperature of a whole society, because children are very fragile. ... When only 14 children die out of 1,000 in Malaysia, this means that the other 986 survive. … This number 14 tells us that most families in Malaysia have enough food, their sewage systems don’t leak into their drinking water, they have good access to primary health care, and mothers can read and write. It doesn’t just tell us about the health of children. It measures the quality of the whole society.” He then brings his listeners to his global point: “you won’t find any countries where child mortality has increased. Because the world in general is getting better.” 

If that strikes you as dissonant with your view of the world, do a random Google-search on child mortality rates. I did, here. “All countries in the world have made very rapid progress against child mortality…” This is just one statistic that he offers, in this chapter. The survey and the text as a whole offer this global perspective and shifting to “better than I expected” again and again on various statistics in measuring international health. Curious…! Where does my expectation come from?

The gap instinct is the “irresistible temptation we have to divide all kinds of things into two distinct and often conflicting groups, with an imagined gap--a huge chasm of injustice--in between.” Sound familiar? Too familiar, perhaps? Rosling is interested in how this gap instinct creates a picture in people’s heads of a world split into two kinds of countries or two kinds of people. 

He takes a look at the perception of rich versus poor...in global perspective...with the becoming-outdated terminology around developing countries and developed countries. When rich/poor is viewed in this lens, which originated well over half a century ago, there are two kinds of countries with a wide gap in between them. This (to the right) was the world in these terms in 1965. 

Using the same measures, the world today no longer has this gap. It makes no sense to view the world in terms of developing and developed! (see below). There is no gap, and the majority of human population--contrary to our worldview--now lives in developed countries with smaller families where fewer children die.

To counter our mental habits, Rosling suggests viewing societies' 'level' in four levels instead of two. He spends time delineating what each level means, in practical terms of water, transportation, cooking and food. While of course there are human beings across the globe in the lowest level, the majority of human population lives in Levels 2 & 3, with a less-than-majority living in the highest level, 4. 

Factfulness here is “recognizing when a story talks about a gap, and remembering that this paints a picture of two separate groups, with a gap in between. The reality is often not polarized at all. Usually the majority is right there in the middle, where the gap is supposed to be. To control the gap instinct, look for the majority. The thinking tools to assist in this reorientation...

Beware of comparison of averages. If you could check the spreads you would probably find they overlap. There is probably no gap at all.

Beware of comparison of extremes. In all groups, of countries or people, there are some at the top and some at the bottom. The difference is sometimes extremely unfair. But even then the majority is usually somewhere in between, right where the gap is supposed to be.

And remember the distortion in any view from up here. Everything else looks equally short, but it’s not. 

The Negativity Instinct

Rosling then moves into the next chapter, the next instinct: the negativity instinct, our tendency to notice the bad more than the good. To the survey question--is the world getting better, worse, or neither better nor worse?--all countries across the globe showed a majority thinking that the world is getting worse. “No wonder we all feel so stressed,” Rosling quips. And he alludes to another maxim: if 100% of us think in a particular way, do not trust it. Reality is rarely represented in 100% thinking.

The chapter courses through the basics for human survival, looking at trends for extreme poverty (which has actually halved since 1800), life expectancy (from 31 years in 1800 to 72 years in 2017), and then 32 other trends he simply shows in graphs: 16 bad things decreasing and 16 good things increasing. (see pix).

Culture and artistry are hard to measure, he admits, but playfully, he identifies the number of “playable guitars per million people” in the world: 200 in 1962 up to 11000 in 2014. “With beautiful statistics like these, how can anyone say the world is getting worse?”

We have a negativity instinct, which is probably even more apparent than the gap instinct! To gently counter this one, Rosling writes: Factfulness is recognizing when we get negative news, and remember that information about bad events is much more likely to reach us. When things are getting better we often don’t hear about them. This gives us a systematically too-negative impression of the world around us, which is stressful. To control the negativity instinct, expect bad news. 

Hold better and bad together. Practice distinguishing between a level (e.g. bad) and a direction fo change (e.g. better). Convince yourself that things can be both better and bad.

Good news is not news. Good news is almost never reported. So news is almost always bad. When you hear bad news, ask whether equally positive news would have reached you.

Gradual improvement is not news. When a trend is gradually improving, with periodic dips, you are more likely to notice the dips than the overall improvement.

More news does not equal more suffering… More bad news is sometimes due to better surveillance of suffering, not a worsening world. (I'm reminded here of a weary Will Smith, observing racism is not getting worse, it's just getting filmed...)

Beware of rosy pasts. People often glorify their early experiences, and nations often glorify their histories.

Conclusions...for now...

How does this all this factor in the increasing gap between rich and poor in our country? I found myself wondering. How does this measure up in my experience of my local community, ensconced in a season of national reckoning?  I am feeling an invitation…

The other instincts beckon, some more than others: the fear instinct, the generalization instinct, the blame instinct, the urgency instinct… Each chapter of Rosling’s book follows a similarly compelling shape--looking at a global health measure and discovering it’s not as bad globally as I am predisposed to believe. Each chapter concludes with a one-page summary on what factfulness is in contrast to the instinct under review. Thinking tools are given to practice, to explore… Chapter Eleven reflects on factfulness in practice, which I’ll probably read next. 

At the very least, I’m more and more curious about my Level 4--highest level of global resourcing-living--tendencies to see scarcity where there is abundance, fear where there could be hope, irreconcilable difference where there could be community-in-transformation.

I’m in for now...wanting to see how the practice might inform my citizenship right here.

Taking Time with "What Is" -- Knowing Peace in Visceral Fear?

 Welcome...welcome...welcome...

I learned more about fear today. COVID-19 has drawn closer into my already-small pod, with symptoms beginning in a dear friend’s husband, who is also a dear friend. The mindful part of me knows that it’s just a matter of time before COVID draws closer to each and all of us. Six degrees of separation is an even shorter distance in a pandemic than it is in so-called ‘normal’ seasons. I’m writing in the hopes I can name some new awarenesses about fear in the human body--at least in my own body--but also because I’ve landed in a remarkably simple yet difficult breath-practice that I’m finding a powerful complement or container for this pre-election season. The practice is called the welcoming prayer, a contemplative practice from Christian wisdom streams, though it certainly has equivalents in other traditions as well (esp Buddhist wisdom, I’m thinking…). Today, it dawns on me that this experience and this practice may well be a powerful tool in the journeying toward healing our We the People.

First, the fear. When I received word from my friend that her husband had COVID like symptoms, my first response was for him, for her, for what was the plan and any needs to be tended. My body was having a visceral reaction, but I was not paying attention to it yet. When I hung up the phone--an odd phrase for smart-phones these days, I now realize for some reason--a whoosh of sensation and awareness overwhelmed me. I literally got ‘the shakes’ and realized I needed to slow down my breathing in order to steady myself. I’m famous for hyperventilating. [Well, at least I am in the bout of food-poisoning I had on a trip to London with my mom after college graduation, and in the aftermath of a ‘space-flight-simulation’ at the Epcott Center. Tip for that one: avoid orange, go green. People are known to throw-up more on Orange. The barf-bag in the seat pocket should have been a clue for me there. 😏]. Anyway, I’m known to hyperventilate in uncertain situations, so I brought my conscious attention to slowing my breathing, breathing through my nose only, bringing my heart-rate down from its potentially panic-level.

Realizing that I had been vulnerable to COVID exposure, once-even-twice-removed, I next began a serious body-scan of anything I might be feeling in my body, physically. Did I have a sore throat or was that the allergies drainage that always plagues me in October? Take one little red sudafed pill and see what I notice in the next hours. Was this heaviness in my chest significant for my physical health? What did my breathing feel like? I should measure it. Did I have an appetite? Could I taste my food?

The questions came at me inside like a rapid-fire baseball pitching-batting machine.

Each one I could hit with a sense of lessening concern, though not complete eradication of concern. The sudafed took away the drainage feel and the hydration eased my throat and stomach. The weight on my chest began to decline, and I realized visceral body fear for me constricts my chest, my breathing. My chest growing tight is a natural response in panic, in fear. As I brought my conscious attention to these things, as I began to reach out for more information from those more knowledgeable than I, the constriction began to wane. My breathing returned to its normal pace and percentage. Yes, I did check with the oximeter that my husband purchased at the end of January, anticipating a lot of this by reading the news about the pandemic beginning in China.

I also know that a portion of the panic arose because instead of driving up to Troy for a socially-distanced, participant-masked, church-teaching-gig, I was all of a sudden hosting-teaching-implementing a Facebook Live ‘program’ for this church by myself. I’ve never done FB Live!  This required becoming an administrator on the church page, learning how to find the right combination of things to open the Live portal into the right spot on the FB page itself. Even given my relative technological adolescence in these things, it was fairly easy in the end, blessedly. But my body bore the full brunt of the fear and uncertainty, like she usually does. I think my mind is still catching up…

Welcome...welcome...welcome…

Knowing this time would be particularly anxious for me, I had (providentially?) signed up for an e-course with Spirituality & Practice. For the month of October, they were offering an e-course on The Welcoming Prayer. I was familiar with this practice because of a spiritual-direction peer-group member, but I’ve only ever learned about it, really. It’s never become an integrated part of my daily life. But three days this week, each week this month, I receive an e-mail with some teachings on the Welcoming Prayer, with an invitation to practice. 

The gist of the practice is simple, three steps total. First, pause to listen for anything in your body that draws your attention. You can do a body-scan, from top of your head to the soles of your feet, listening for any sensation, itch, pain, feeling. When one arises, sink into the feeling like you would into a jacuzzi bath. Feel it. Be present to it, without naming it (if you can). 

Second, welcome the feeling with the words welcome...welcome...welcome… Befriend the feelings-sensation and simply draw close in welcome. 

Third, after some time of feeling-sensing, say quietly in your mind, “I let go of my desire for security, affection, and control. I embrace this moment precisely as it is.” This sentence may become its own mantra or repeated intention, prayer. Then you can repeat the steps, tending to any other arisings in your body. 

The wisdom of this practice is a gradual receptivity to what is already present within you, an awakening to energies in your own body. It is a receptivity to the Present, which naturally opens you to an indwelling Presence. Presence always present, by the way, which we only know fully-deeply when we are attuned to notice or welcome. This practice is simply a welcome of what-is, which wisdom traditions call opening the door to the indwelling Presence of God. Another name for this practice is consent-on-the-go, consenting to Sacred Presence indwelling each of us. The gift of this practice, then, is its acknowledgment that God doesn’t take away what is most challenging or even terrifying. A popularized sentiment about God is that we know God is present when we are in no pain or difficulty. The more authentic wisdom teaching is that we know the Sacred most fully in what is most challenging. 

The gist of this paradox--and what convinces me of its vitality for today--is that we have no control of That Which is Greater Than We Are. The pathway to true knowing of Presence is therefore receptivity, surrender. I’ve often told my students that any “practice” of surrender has to be a paradox, because we cannot will to surrender in any spiritual sense. The ego--a necessary psychological force for health and wellbeing in human society--cannot actually surrender itself through will or choice. That is antithetical to the ego. So surrender is more an act of increasing receptivity or allowing that eventually happens within you, when you’re no longer trying to surrender. Of course, politics is today's means of attempting control for security and/or affection, even fame. Incongruities abound...

Welcome...welcome...welcome… This three-step invitation to practice is one of increasing receptivity to what-already-is. It is a pathway to seeing the world as it already is, as communicated to you through your body, allowing us to truly be in the world, not our minds or our fears or our resistances, etc. Ironically, then, we become grounded in a Presence that is Greater Than We Are. We become open to an indwelling Presence allowing us to be held and to hold ourselves and those around us in hope, com-passion, together. 

I’ve learned since writing these words that my friend’s husband has tested positive for COVID. I have steadied in my own practices, keeping my rhythms of health through exercise, healthy eating, immuno-and-hormonal supplements and lots of rest. The visceral fear in my body has waned and I have deepened in my ability to welcome What-Is, just as it is. If I am to join the more than 8 million in our country today who have contracted the virus, then I’ll know in the next day or two...at most, in the next six days (which would be 14 days from last possible trace with him). It seems unlikely symptoms will develop, blessedly, as they have not yet, over five days past. But I have been given a way to consent-on-the-go, listening to my body’s wisdom messages and being-with in some new ways.

Paradoxical to know peace in this journey, but that is the gift I am receiving. So it made me wonder if it could assist more of us in our healing journey toward We the People. How can more of us learn to be in the world as it is, not in our ingrained stories of how we have perceived ourselves and the others with such disdain, disregard, and anger? How can we become more receptive to the suffering of others, honoring always the experience of the other, just as it is…?

Welcome...welcome...welcome… I let go of my desire for security, affection, and control. I embrace the moment as it is. Here, We become open and receptive… Could We the People learn more gently, slowly, determinedly how to be a part of the healing more than the wounding…? Could We regain our We if we took time with What Is, slowly, gently, holding our reactions/responses except for those that arise from fullness, contributions to healing, Wholeness? I wonder...

Part Three: “Fake News!”...”Fake News?”...”Well Damn...Here We Are..."

For those who have not and do not want to travel the process-journey of Parts One-Two I’ve been on these last couple days, this much briefer entry aims for a distillation of what I am hearing, what I hope to say.

The confusion, de-valuing, and even condemnation of the News are overwhelming us on multiple levels. The news media coverage has evolved from largely three white men in the 1960’s--major TV Stations, anchors--to the innumerable voices with nearly infinite and varying perspectives-desires-agendas. (Some might say de-volved, but no judgment with what-is, simply, before us). How is one supposed to make sense of it all, to know what is true, right, good? It has become common place to withdraw from the news, to limit one’s intake of social-and-other media, to even give up any semblance of connection to a consensual reality amongst us (conspiracy theories, for instance). We have to find a different way to stay connected to our worlds and live in many worlds at once, productively.

My pathway toward this end (middle?) is to confront the quest for certainty that is driving so much for so many of us. Certainty, which will supposedly provide security, safety, belonging, etc. but which so dissociates us from ourselves, always looking outwardly for what we need, who we are, what we are to know so to [fill in the blank]. Certainty is illusory, perhaps always was, which is not to say truth is, or that everything is relative. Not at all. But our quest for certainty is wounding us from within and beyond.

If we come at our overwhelm from a different angle, from an inherent quest for assurance, asking different questions and tending to our own experience as the questions lead, I suggest we will find ourselves at the very least on a new plateau if not a completely new playing-field. When you breathe into the quest for assurance, when you set the intention to love-first, to reduce reciprocity around you (i.e. your expectations of ‘return’ for your virtue), to smile into love’s insufficient reason yet gift of pure assurance--the certainty/uncertainty of current events, news stories, media headlines does not matter in the same way. The triggers to get hyped up begin to dissolve and you have more and more energy for the things our democracy DOES need right now, to heal, to deepen, to strengthen. Moving to a quest for assurance has consequence and implications that seem attractive and necessary right now--each of us as we may, as many of us as are willing:

One, attention no longer needs to be drawn to some vanishing ‘center’ in grief, but instead can be devoted to the concrete intentions and practices of loving-first, to be experimented by each of us as we are willing. No one is good at it, but that’s okay--practice, practice, practice. Metta, say the Buddhists. This intention requires concerted attention, which will be challenging as the tech-companies have invested billions in buying our attention(s). Track on social media, and listen for how to love-first the person behind each post, visceral level of awareness. Send each goodwill. As you read the paper, electronically or hardcopy, exercise gratitude to each journalist-author who has labored for each article you read. Extend your awareness and heart-energy for the goodwill within him/her/them. It need not change them to change you, your sensate-awareness, your contribution to breathing love into the world. Assurance will arise out of you in ways you cannot predict or imagine.

Second, be gentle with yourself in this new intention. Start small, in ways around your home or in your immediate context, learning to love and accept yourself just as you are. For so many of us, that is a fulltime job right there, immersed as we have been in self-condemning religious traditions or families of origin that could not see our original worth, our innate beauty and giftedness. As you practice loving-first, then extend that circle to just a few other people close to you--a sister who irritates you, a co-worker who never seems to listen to you, a spouse struggling to know his/her worth. Let love ground you and trust them to enter into this loving-first as they are, for themselves. 

Third, don’t expect amazing fruit of this intention right away. Our habits of mind are so predictable and so swamped every day with certainty/consumerist currents it can be hard to chart a new eddy for ourselves. But set yourself reminders as you need, in calendars or on your phone, with friends or a circle that can hold your intention to practice. Craft the intention to last for several weeks, even months.

I've been intentional about it as these words have been pouring out of me (two-three weeks). Even in this brief time of processing the diagnosis of COVID in our White House, of watching the prayers-jeers-reflections-and-uncertainties unfold in formal and social media alike, I have found a remarkable steadying, a sensate assurance that relies little on certainty or knowing who is “telling the truth” or not. I find I am receptive to all things, wondering what grain of truth will be found in the remarkable creativity of the human being swamped with fear, anger, rage. I don't need to know about each one 'to be sure'. I also don't need to be seen to be knowledgeable about [fill in the blank]. Freedom within and from without.

I am finding it easier to be grateful for the journalists who are doing the best they can while being just as swept up into the carnage of their business as we are. Yes, it's a dog-eat-dog world, 'what bleeds, leads,' but I don't have to participate in that, hardly at all. I see every piece I do read as an offering and don’t put much weight on any of them at all. Instead, I’m honing my intuition and sense of contribution from within a deep love coming from elsewhere, rooted solidly in my own bodysoul, its sensations and current of feelings, images, and more. How do I move at the pace of guidance this day? How do I love the ones in front of me? 

This election is ultimately not about Donald Trump, after all, who is mortal and won’t last forever. Trump’s narcissism and love of chaos are continually fed by our addictions to certainty and order. He’s a wounded little boy in an old white man’s body with incredible power to wound us all, yes, but he has no power over Love. Love loves even him. We do need to tend to our democracy, though, if we want loving-first to blossom within more of us, if we want those we love and those with whom we disagree to know the assurance that comes from deep within. 

So...shift the field inside of you. Do not give him any more energy than is necessary to deepen your citizenship.  Divert all energies you can to community organizing, healing relationships, working with small business owners to survive the economic shifts that are coming no matter who is in office...to the specific activities and contributions that you can make, with your own gifts and passions. Love the folks in front of you.

Clearly, I’m a writer. I make sense of things by working them out on the page, learning what I feel and sense, think and feel some more. 

When you don’t know what to do, do nothing, a friend reminded me.

Respond, don’t react. Pause often. Said another.

Be still and know that I am God, croons the Psalmist of my (and others’) scriptures.

Be yourself...be fully yourself, my writing sisters invite and mirror...

This entire blog journey so far has been honoring these maxims, but also moving slowly into the urgency I feel every day to breathe gently. It's easy to think in terms of 'who I am,' and 'doing what I can do,' but underneath those certainty-habits is a freedom to breathe. Lean into the next right thing. Allow that I will assuredly err and that pure assurance comes from this letting go deep within. Here I remember to maintain peace of mind, to move at the pace of guidance, to practice certainty of purpose, to love the folks in front of me...all so I may respond to what I can wisely, with a healthy reticence, borne of a conscious feminine wisdom to slow down, to listen more deeply, to ask for what I need and offer only what I can. (The Seven Whispers, again)

I’ve been energized to remember my earlier journeys with Jean-Luc Marion, French philosopher and Catholic theologian. I devoured nearly his entire authorship about ten years ago, achingly hungry for something I did find--or was given--in his words/pages. I’ve never had to engage his work in any formal-disciplinary way, however. Blessedly. Not my style or interest. These dense texts--God Without Being and The Erotic Phenomenon--fed my spiritual life at the time, becoming intimate resourcing for me, in prayer and in my own ache for belonging in faith communities in which I do not feel I belong easily. To be clear, he would probably be troubled by the popularist distillation I’m giving it...but it’s my blog, after all.

The visceral experience of reading our media exclamations can be exhausting, daunting, even fear-mongering at its worst. “Fake News!” (always with an exclamation point, for some reason)... It needn’t be so, I’m learning.

Love first. 

Reduce reciprocity in your life. 

Create instances of insufficient reason, unreasonable acts of loving-first. 

Pure assurance awaits you.

Part Two: What if a Quest for Assurance Offered Another Way? "Fake News?"

My stewing and brewing about this spate of COVID diagnoses and our decrying of the News--and now the various attempts to downplay the diagnoses--have led me down some unexpected paths I’ve not considered afresh for probably ten years: the work of a Catholic theologian and philosopher who was really my mentor-in-thought in about 2008-09. No one is more surprised than I that Jean-Luc Marion appears to have something to offer me, us, once again. 

[That said, I don’t recommend picking up either of the books that really opened these avenues for me--God Without Being or The Erotic Phenomenon. They are densely written to a specifically professional-disciplinary audience and they aren’t nearly as racey or provocative as they sound. Marion (pronounced MAHR-ion) is a staunchly theological man of the Catholic faith, and his philosophy has less titillation, more terminology, than social-media readers might desire. But, knock yourself out if you’re curious… You can get God Without Being in the original French, for a doorstop, if you like. We did.]

Marion opens a window into a world not defined by identity politics or increasing uncertainty and vanity. He points toward a deeper rationality of love/caritas, in its own horizon, whose insufficient reason and pure assurance rise like incense in a time like this. What do those terms mean, you ask? Things you already know at some intuitive and inarticulate level, underneath the current shaping of your habits of mind. This knowing is the birthright of every human being, regardless of mind, body, or will. He has a lot more words for them than that, of course.

Marion opens this window by first confronting the technological rationality at the heart of Westernized society(ies) we live in today. The phrase points to a reason or logic primarily in the service of function and purpose, cause and effect, and most crassly, marketing and product. This is the kind of ‘reason’ that gets things done, that identifies rationales for scientists and politicians alike (at least if either want funding for their work), that persuades us to buy certain products or legislate the powers of government or choose certain schools or businesses. Certainty is at the heart of this logic, and it IS powerful. We are well conditioned to seek certainty for what we think it can offer us: knowledge, identity, even power. 

Marion asks different questions for a quest for assurance than are operative in certainty’s “What do I want to know?” and “Who am I?” He points us to something elsewhere we already know deep within: Love often makes no sense to us, even as it draws us close in yearnings. Love has its own logic or truth that confounds our sense of commerce and tit-for-tat. Its reason subverts and transforms technological reason focused on the what or the who. Love’s Heart nourishes something more in us…something we can’t quite get our hands or minds around entirely. Jean-Luc Marion’s quest for assurance is rooted in the questions Does anyone love me? Can I love first? These serve as the doorway to an increasing and seemingly counter-intuitive freedom from vanity and uncertainty’s pall in our lives. 

In all this to follow, I’m not saying uncertainty goes away or our usual “reason” is unnecessary. Both are necessary for our survival, to a point. I’m also not saying I’m no longer anxious and have no fear. Of course I do. But Marion’s work has given me years of a different way of breathing in my life, with regular moments of deep calm and trust, a dependable assurance in my willingness to live in this place, this time, right now, rooted from elsewhere yet loving right where I am. When I am in this space, I see all others--even ‘them’--with a hue of curiosity, wonder, even compassion. I am aware of a yearning to know the stories that got them to where they are. After all, it is really hard to hate someone whose stories you know, told by them, from the inside.

To invite us there, I want to start with Marion’s questions, and some of his own words (buckle your seatbelts). When Can I love first? is answered with a “yes”, the lover has “the unmatched privilege of losing nothing, even if s/he happens to find him/herself unloved, because a love scorned remains a love perfectly accomplished, just as a gift refused remains a perfectly given gift … There is only one single proof of love -- to give without return or chance of recovery, and thus to be able to lose, and eventually to be lost in love.” (all citations from The Erotic Phenomenon). What he describes is a love without being, loving without being loved, which is the purest expression of Love, caritas. Our usual ‘religious approach’ to this is to know we are supposed to love like this, then fail at it regularly, then shame ourselves for being failures. Hear the ‘know’, the ‘uncertainty’ and the anxiety and disconnection in 'shame'?

In contrast, Marion encourages us to enter into a different quest for assurance, to see and feel for ourselves in this quest--which is never fully completed--and practice--which is a regularly intentional behavior with a horizon of ultimate meaning, desire--also never fully, permanently complete. “The quest for assurance finds that assurance comes regularly to the willing lover. Assurance still comes to me,” he writes, “but no longer from an...elsewhere that would conserve [who I think I am]; rather it comes from an elsewhere that is more inward to me than I am to myself.” Here he is getting at the deeper rationality within which Love flows, is born, is borne. Not ‘love’ in reciprocity--you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours. Not ‘love’ that can be rationalized within our common-sense today, ‘sufficiently reasonable.’ No, this willingness to love first plants the seeds of assurance deeply within, which begin to grow in ways we cannot understand. Love comes from a H/heart within, no matter how often we aim to grasp it from those around us, or outside of ourselves. 

Think back to the days when we didn’t have to wear masks and you could smile at strangers, knowing they were seeing you smile. The surprise in the eyes or an unexpected smile in return…? It is an implicit, beautifully human visceral response to smile when smiled at. Of course, some strangers might be in such inner focus and not notice that you smiled. But my best days were those I would just set my intention: smile at strangers in the grocery store, various spaces throughout my day. It rarely failed to bring a smile in return. The gift of it began with my intention to smile, no matter what. Not to get the smile. Not to create some obligation or encounter that would feed anything in me. The intention to smile, no matter what, because my belly and bodysoul wanted to be a smiling presence inside, regardless of reciprocity. This is not an essential idealism, assuming good at the root of human beings; nor is it an essential pessimism, assuming what theologians would call a fallen nature or a propensity to do harm unless hemmed in by the religious morals of the day. This is something visceral and available to each one of us, now, today--an open intention to enter into loving-first.

Which is no different than the intention to smile at strangers, just deeper. Harder to sustain as a consistent intention to love-first amidst the onslaught of toxic currents in our society today, with our focus on certainties outside of us and beyond our ken. It’s also easy at this point, in our current habits of mind around certainty, to think assurance and certainty must be the same thing. They most assuredly 😉are not.

Assurance grounds the lover from within, requiring less and less reciprocity to refine and strengthen the assurance. The practice Marion describes--knowing us humans the way he does--is always one of reducing reciprocity. When we suspend reciprocity more and more--our need for someone to do or be something for us, in order for us to ‘love’ them--we no longer economize the relational currents or desires. We no longer promise to spend ‘this much’ of our affection, if our partner or fellow citizen promises to spend ‘that much’. Feel the transaction?

The quest for assurance avoids all of that…“The lover appears when one of the actors in the exchange no longer poses prior conditions, and loves without requiring to be loved, and thus, in the figure of the gift, abolishes economy. 

In so doing, the lover also contradicts technological reason’s characteristics of what requires ‘sufficient reason.’ Marion would say we are immersed today in a failure of reason itself to give reasons for the initiative to love… “Love does not reject reason, but reason refuses to go where the lover goes. … When loving is at issue, reason is not sufficient: reason appears from this point forward as a principle of insufficient reason.” In the end, “from the lover’s point of view (and his/hers alone), love becomes its own sufficient reason. … which is also the basis of pure assurance.”

Let’s return to the quest for certainty now, to see what it feels like alongside the quest for assurance. The quest for assurance begins with questions rooted in love, in love’s horizon, at its most pure when it is embodied without reciprocity or certainty’s ‘reason.’ Does anyone love me? and Can I love first? The quest for certainty asks its questions, rooted in Descartes’ ego cogito and the necessary engagement of doubt into confirmed, consensual knowledge. Feel what you feel in these questions toward certainty: What do I want to know? Who am I? These questions lead us as a thinker down paths of knowledge and understanding so to know who I am, who we are. ‘Love’ here is to certify the thinker, to confirm him/her in what s/he knows, what and who s/he is. It’s then we feel the familiar (un)truism: if I simply know more about the ‘other’--a Muslim, let’s say, or a Trump supporter, or a Bernie supporter, or…--then I will be able to ‘love them better.’ 

Except that if/then structure is not Love’s rationality nor its horizon. Love embodies Itself especially when one cannot understand. If you’re focused on a quest for assurance, it matters less and less what you know, even who the other professes to be. You focus on loving first, with less and less need for reciprocity or certainty, and your body begins to smile with the seeds of assurance, pure assurance, in a love without being. 

Which then leads us to the second question, Does anyone love me? [We’re feeling our way into this question second because it’s too hard to distinguish unless you have the felt sense of Love’s horizon, insufficient rationality, pure assurance.] This question goads us in our most tender moments to ‘use love’ to certify ourselves, to provide us a certainty of being in this life not alone, not left behind, not unseen or unheard. Immersed in certainty’s habits of mind, dressed in consumerist desires and utilitarian needs, we try to use our quest for certainty in our love lives all the time. Will this person complete me, confirming that I am lovable from the outside? Will I be seen and heard just as I am, or do I need to become what that person will be attracted do, desire? Those are questions rooted in identity and knowledge from the outside.

When one sets the intention to love first, to answer Can I love first? in the affirmative, the ironic or paradoxical sensation that eventually arrives is an affirmative to the second question. Yes, I am lovable. Yes, I am able to love...and be loved. Then others are drawn to you, in Love.

Which again: this quest is not an act of sheer will or a pretense of the human spirit to feign love so to gain some other end, by utilitarian or functional means. The pure assurance that Marion describes comes from an elsewhere paradoxically rooted deeper within than any one of us can imagine. This assurance blessedly mirrors YES, we can love first; YES I am lovable.  In Marion’s words again: “Assurance comes to me...from an elsewhere that is more inward to me than myself: the elsewhere that comes upon me in the very gesture in which I give up what I have (my gift) and what I am, in order to assure myself only of what I truly make in this instant--love.” This is the Love that is at the heart of everything: Love in its own horizon, a love without being that reduces reciprocity (offering freedom or ‘get to’), that introduces a chosen surrender at the heart of all revelatory knowledge (where certainty can offer its gift without binding anyone in uncertainty or vanity).”

What if we had a way to live in a pure assurance that would cause our addiction to certainty to pale in comparison? What if everything you need to find your way to the deepest sense of Love from elsewhere you’ve ever known is always within reach, such that you know how to breathe in utter uncertainty while grounded in pure assurance? Because this assurance from elsewhere can rise in each of us, as gift and gifted, loving-first and no longer reliant upon reciprocity, reason, or strength as our world defines it.

This is the quest for a deeper pathway into healing, relinquishing judgment of self or other while knowing viscerally, at some deep level, that each of us can bring love into the world from deep within...mysteriously...dependably… It is not an act of will. It cannot be pretended. But it can rise with yearning, with a willingness to experiment with intention to love first those we least understand, even those whom we fear. There is no predictable certainty in this assurance, of course, but its fruit is undeniable: calm, courage, curiosity, wonder, welcome, and more. Stay at it long enough, and a deep belly holy laughter can come too, even in the face of unspeakable harm or evil. This assurance from elsewhere, rooted deeply within and yet out of reach of anyone, means no one can take it away.

Some of us have called this blessed assurance for a very long time. It is waiting for each of us, right here, right now. Don't give it away to certainty's illusions... Simply begin with an intention. Practice it as much as you can. Honor its counter-cultural, counter-intuitive simplicity, which looks harder than anything but which is actually an inner sense of letting go. Try it, set the intention, add a ritual gesture to make it concrete, then let go...

...Perhaps some of us will meet you there.