Veneration

There are people we look up to in life—perhaps our parents or grandparents, perhaps an older sibling or a successful friend, perhaps our favorite athletes, artists, or authors, perhaps a pastor or a priest, perhaps a venerated guru or sage.

We go to them for direction when lost, for solace when distraught, for motivation when unmotivated, for inspiration when uninspired, for love when unloved. 

We so desperately want them to give us something, 

we so desperately want them to make us feel better, 

we so desperately want them to be right, 

so much so, that we forget that they are human. 

Especially with the advent of the internet and social media that allows us to be exposed to a virtually endless marketplace of personalities, there is a very strong tendency among us to idolize and excessively revere these people we look up to. When we subscribe to a specific political ideology or religion, we predispose ourselves to blindly accepting the preordained, established truths because we’ve already declared membership of that particular group. It is this thought process by which individuals form preconceptions of the world not in any way based on rational, intentional thought and critical thinking, but merely based on group identity. If I declare myself a Christian, I must also not believe in gay marriage. If I declare myself a conservative, I must also be against abortion. 

In much the same way, many of us are led to believe that we have to subscribe to a particular person and their ideology. We convince ourselves that they must be infallible, that their wisdom and knowledge has the capacity to stretch to any possible facet of life even beyond their expertise and experience. And when they are criticized or attacked for being wrong about something, we personally feel attacked and feel the need to retaliate ourselves to defend the truth that we have worked so hard to establish. And when we feel as though we can’t defend that truth, we feel inclined to lose faith and stop believing in the merit of that person entirely. 

But lest we forget that all the people that we venerate are human. Very few of them claim to be perfect. Very few of them claim to be completely infallible. As we might exhort all the rest of us, we should hold them to the same standard. We can make mistakes. We can be wrong. We can talk about things even though we have no qualification or expertise in the relevant fields, and not be chastised or lambasted for even the slightest misstep or misunderstanding. And faltering in that way does not directly translate to a diminishment of one’s value as a human being and the rest of their contributions to the world we live in. I wrote about this more extensively in my Internet Drama reflection: just because someone is wrong about one thing or several things does not devalue or invalidate the rest of their work. Just because someone did something dishonorable, e.g. spreading misinformation or displaying insensitivity to another person or a group, does not mean they are a terrible human being unworthy of our attention. 

I am a huge fan of Jordan Peterson’s work. But I am extremely appalled at the extent to which some individuals have taken this unwavering ideological loyalty, whether as a means of defending him or criticizing him. Recently, made the mistake of wandering into the comments sections of some rather polemical videos breaking down some of his arguments, a very familiar wasteland widespread across the internet, predictably infested with ignorance, myopia, prejudice, self-righteousness, ad hominem, and dishonesty. The truth is, we can all play the same game. For anyone participating in these vile, toxic hubs of ignorance, whether on Facebook, YouTube, Twitch, Twitter, or any discussion board or forum, I would like to ask some questions: where is your work? Where is your generosity to the world? Where are the blog posts, essays, or books that you’ve written? Where are the lectures, speeches, or debates that you’ve participated in? What have you shared that is contributing to the discussion in any meaningful way? How have you positively affected and influenced the people around you? Can you openly and publicly tell me about all your personal mistakes in the past? Can you tell me about your perfect streak of never being wrong in any difficult life event or a problem that confounded you in the past? If we so have the temerity to ridicule or spurn individuals on a whim, let us at least do so not as blatant hypocrites.

But we don’t have to play this game in the first place. Instead of making it a futile battle of righteousness, qualification, or apparent merit, or a senseless, inane cyclical contest of humiliation, justification, and redemption, we can make it about truth. We can realize that, in the end, past all of our pretensions and superficial identities, we all just want to understand. We want to understand the truth because it is the only means by which we can act in a way that helps us all get to where we actually want to go. And the only truth-seeking process I know of is one of patience and intent, one of listening, thinking, and discussing. Nothing else.