Week In Review

Another Week Ends

Humility, Freedom Through Truth-Telling, Screen Time, and the Mystic Nobel Prize Winner

Meaghan Ritchey / 10.6.23

1. The Norwegian novelist, poet and playwright Jon Fosse, whose novels grapple with themes of morality, love, religion, and art, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature on Thursday, “for his innovative plays and prose which give voice to the unsayable.” His massive collection of fiction “A New Name: Septology VI-VII” was a finalist for a National Book Award last year, and two of his novels have been nominated for the International Booker Prize. Stretching on for an eternity, Septology‘s form is notorious — one long sentence strung out over 700 pages. In a 2022 interview with the LARB, Fosse spoke of his affection for Meister Eckhart and Martin Heidegger, sharing that it was through the process of writing that he began to question whether God might be the source of his inspiration, and his written word a form of prayer.

Fosse: There was something I couldn’t quite understand, some mystery: where does it come from? It doesn’t come from here [points to his heart]. No, it’s from out there. In the mid-1980s, I went to mass in a Catholic church in Bjørgvin, and I liked it, to the point that I even started to attend a course to become a Catholic — yes, like Asle, more or less. Only many years later, I decided to convert to the Catholic Church. I couldn’t have done it if it wasn’t for Meister Eckhart and his way of being both a Catholic and a mystic.

He goes on to say that, however personal his writing may be, his characters are not him. Whatever overlap his biography has with the characters he writes, his practice is a form of renunciation.

But to me, it’s completely impossible to use my own experiences in such a way, because writing is all about transformation. I listen to a universe that is different from mine, and writing is a way to escape into this universe. That’s the great thing about it. I want to get away from myself, not to express myself.

2. Since we can’t all practice self-effacement through prize-winning fiction, Arthur Brooks suggests we continually dose the red pill of humility in our relationships, our work, and our prospects, ingesting the truths about ourselves that we might prefer not to confront.

With the blue pill, we are perfect the way we are: We are lovable; our opinions are right; we never sin. The red pill shows us our imperfect selves: flawed, maybe hard to love, blameworthy, ignorant, arrogant. That red pill that allows us to see ourselves as we truly are has an extant, nonmetaphorical form: It’s called humility. It isn’t always easy medicine, and it comes in more than one dose. But if we are willing to take that pill again and again, amazing rewards await us.

Humility — modesty about one’s own importance or expertise — can refer to an act (for example, giving up a good seat for another), a condition (living in an unflashy way), or a trait (avoiding the assumption that you are always right). It can be practiced intellectually — a concept called “epistemic humility,” in discussions of, for example, religion or politics — and socially, in our relationships with others, which can involve refraining from behaviors such as boasting, for instance.

Brooks goes on to stress that humility isn’t about being stuck in the mire of your own total depravity; rather we ought to embrace the fact that, left to our own devices, we tend to esteem ourselves too greatly, ignoring how dependent we are on one another and on the grandiose generosity of a God who has made our existence possible. Our innate arrogance isn’t all to blame. Even Donald Miller moved from the neediness in Blue Like Jazz to Coach Builder, his guide to “making a lot of money doing something you love every single day.”

In a recent interview on the Grey Area, David (not Arthur) Brooks suggests that a psychology of distrust, a capitalist culture of individualism, and lack of moral formation are bringing out the most corrosive (and arrogant) parts of us.

When I say moral formation, it sounds super pompous and pretentious, but I mean it in three simple ways. Moral formation is helping us find a way to restrain our natural selfishness. The second thing is moral formation is helping us find a goal in life, an ideal to pursue that gives us meaning and purpose. Then the third part of moral formation is giving us the skills, social skills, to know how to end a conversation with grace, know how to have a hard conversation across difference. So teaching those basic, elemental social skills that help us be decent to one another.

Humility, from the Latin humilis, meaning “from the earth,” or grounded, is painful. Whether a conscientious choice or incidental, humiliation will bring us low before it raises us up. Suffering our smallness can feel like torture, but that is exactly when we become keenly aware that there are some situations we can’t strongman our way out of.

While the contours of Jesus’ personality were sometimes elusive, his humility was on full display. He taught that “the meek shall inherit the earth, and that the kingdom of heaven awaits the poor in spirit.” He left heaven for earth. He washed the disciples feet. He embraced lepers and outcasts. And ultimately, after being scorned — making a mockery of him with a coronation of thorns — he died a humiliating death on a cross, among criminals, for us.

3. What is more humiliating than an awareness of our mortality? The imminence of death led Tolstoy to become a devout Christian because Christianity alone promised that the end is not the end. For the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, death ought to teach us earnestness.

Distinct from the cult of sincerity and the tendency to overshare on social media, a trait that Ysabel Gerrard, a senior researcher in digital communication, says is reinforced by the “likability” of photo dumps and ugly tears, earnestness is not false intimacy rewarded with virality (yes, this is a new web word). Earnestness, as Kierkegaard describes it, has the veneer of a momento mori.

The message in the bottle is this: when we understand that at any moment a semi-trailer might run a stop sign and take us out of the loop when we grasp the fact of that certain uncertainty, such an understanding will create something akin to a market shortage of time so that we won’t waste time and will be less inclined to be morally and spiritual careless. Those aware of that thief in the night will not recklessly allow a spat with a loved one to fester into a prolonged and icy silence.

4. While we’re on this earth, may the truth set us (and our loved ones) free. Two different stories reminded me of the power of truth-telling this week. The first came from Emmy-winning actor Kerry Washington, whose new book Thicker Than Water reveals the transformative power of uncovering a long held family secret: that she was conceived through sperm donation. In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Washington says, “The culture of secrecy, rejecting the truth or even resisting it, has really dissolved in our family dynamic, which is a beautiful thing.” Though she has said that she wishes she had known the truth sooner, her family’s “shared truth has allowed them to cultivate more freedom and a deeper love with each other.”

The same is true for Khalid Abdulqaadir, a man whose secret-keeping started at a young age after his father was accused of being the 20th highjacker in the September 11 attacks. For years he withheld this information from friends and colleagues until it finally came out via a polygraph test while he was interviewing for a job that required top secret clearance. And the bad habit continued.

In this week’s Modern Love column, Abdulqaadir says telling his wife the truth about his affair saved their marriage.

Terrified to tell her the truth, when he finally did her reaction was not what he expected:

NYT: But after this moment where you shared the truth with one another, you were able to access that deeper level and become friends.

Khalid Abdulqaadir: Oh, yeah. That is when I believe I actually started to experience love for the first time.

5. Changing keys, up next: a conversation about technology, parenting, and privilege. We know that too much tech is bad for kids, but might it be true that only the rich can afford to limit their kids’ screen time? Bonnie Kristian seems to think so.

I’m thankful for the work of people like social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, his colleague Jean Twenge, and Christian authors, including Alan Noble and Andy Crouch, who helped burst our naive optimism about networks like Facebook and our digital attention habits more broadly.

I’m glad it’s increasingly understood that our tech and media habits have formative effects, even competing with Scripture and trusted pastors as discipling influences in our lives. I’m thrilled that it’s ever more conventional wisdom to recommend, as I’ve done at length, putting limits on our tech use and that of our children and building good digital habits so intellectual virtues have room to grow.

But on the other hand, I’ve “been entrusted with much,” so it’s right that “much more will be asked” of me here (Luke 12:48). What about families with less — who can’t get through the toddler years without screens?

Kristian, who was raised by a single mom, is asking this question from personal experience — and so am I, having spent many hours alone as child in front of the tv. It was I Dream of Jeannie and Little House on the Prairie in the morning and Saved by the Bell and Full House in the afternoon, latchkey drawn, waiting for my parents to get home from work. I still had plenty of time outside, and my parents regularly read to me, but they both had to work a lot and the companionship of an after school tv special was more affordable than a tutor or nanny.

Consider the role of a single mother who is afforded a little breathing room when her son picks up his gaming console, what sort of discipleship can be offered to someone whose circumstances require the helpful distraction of a screen?

When journalists and social scientists are giving advice that doesn’t land well, Kristian encourages the church to step in because they can be more acquainted with the specific needs of their congregants. “They can disciple not “teens with smartphones” in general, but this teenager with these habits and that home life. They can take care to heed Jesus’s warning, in Matthew 18:6, not to cause ‘one of these little ones’ to stumble.”

6. Tik Tok has accelerated the trend toward cheesiness and wit, says Spencer Kornhaber for the Atlantic. Cue “Sitting,” by TJ Mack, an alter ego of the comedian Brian Jordan Alvarez.