© 2024
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
An update has been released for the Android version of the WAMC App that addresses performance issues. Please check the Google Play Store to download and update to the latest version.

On comfort, humility and the power of what we don't know

If you look skyward from the soft earth at the base of a giant red cedar to its canopy of branches, perhaps 200 feet overhead, you are apt to be struck by your own insignificance. At least I was, a few weeks ago, as I stood in a temperate rainforest in southeastern Alaska, and looked up at a scar on the trunk several stories above me -- probably a spot where, long before my Puritan ancestors arrived on this continent, a member of the Tlingit tribe harvested bark to be woven into a basket, or perhaps a hat.

I wondered: What worried those people, and what comforted them? How did they measure progress? Did they ever imagine who might follow them here, as I did at that moment?

Thinking all of that in the company of those trees, and in the context of our fleeting time on this earth, it’s hard not to be humbled. And that’s got to be good for us. The word “humility,” after all, like “human,” derives from the Latin humus, which comes from the ancient words for earth. Our DNA molecules, you know, are the same as you find in the soil that supports these great plants. We are quite literally one with the trees above us and the soil below.

Unlike the forest and its inhabitants, though, we’re blessed with the intelligence to sustain the life cycle of this planet. It ought to humble us, then, to consider our poor record in the face of that opportunity.

November’s international climate summit in Egypt has underscored how hard it is to make progress to save the planet -- even in the face of a growing energy crisis, and record greenhouse gas concentrations, and increasing extreme weather events. It’s hard to convince people that the status quo is unsustainable: Congress is unlikely to do much, because only 15 percent of Republicans like the Biden administration’s push to reduce reliance on fossil fuels, which is the key tactic we must embrace to stop global warming.

But you don’t need to travel to a wilderness to develop some hearty anger about our political choices. And it’s not only in relation to our changing climate that we’re victims of a devastating sort of cultural cockiness – that is, the opposite of the humility that our behavior ought to engender.

In fact, a lot of our contemporary problems arise from a narrow-mindedness that gives more weight to our presuppositions than to what science and experience could teach us. The late Israeli social psychologist Ziva Kunda wrote about what she called “motivated reasoning,” and she concluded: “There is considerable evidence that people are more likely to arrive at conclusions that they want to arrive at.”

It’s no surprise that after my four decades in journalism, I’d say that an antidote to this mental myopia is honest storytelling, which may be found in great novels and in powerful journalism alike. Ancient humans had only personal experience and the myths and legends of their ancestors to draw from; we have the benefit of channels of communication unimaginable in prior generations, and science that explains much of the natural world. Those, together, can offer us a view far beyond our own experience.

But a lot of political discourse nowadays, and plenty of the propaganda that purports to be journalism, doesn’t expand our view, but instead plays to our preference for what’s known – or what we think we know, or what we just like.

One of the realities underlying this fact is revealed in neuroscientific research that tracks brain activity. And it suggests, by the way, differences between the brains of political conservatives and liberals. Neuroimaging confirms that liberals are more comfortable with ambiguity and more welcoming of new ideas, while conservatives are hostile to uncertainty.

That may help explain the popularity of the reality-resistant programming on Fox News, but the fact is that we’re all – those of us on the left and on the right – mostly happy in the comfort of our status quo brains. It goes beyond politics. This closed-mindedness is a sort of cultural arrogance, and it blocks the humility that’s essential to learning. The Buddhist nun Pema Chodron has written, “The truth you believe in and cling to makes you unavailable to hear anything new.”

Which is why we may find it so useful retreat to a place where we may be humbled – that is, reminded of our relative insignificance, and encouraged to admit what we don’t know. It doesn’t need to be in the quiet of a deep rainforest – though I was grateful to stand in that ancient place, with the damp earth underfoot and the redolent scent of plant life inspiring my imagination, with the strong cedars reaching far into the sky. There, I was reminded that there’s a great deal I have yet to learn. If we pay attention — if we look and listen and breathe deeply — we may be rewarded with humility, wonder and gratitude.

Rex Smith, the co-host of The Media Project on WAMC, is the former editor of the Times Union of Albany and The Record in Troy. His weekly digital report, The Upstate American, is published by Substack."

The views expressed by commentators are solely those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views of this station or its management.

Rex Smith, the co-host of The Media Project on WAMC, is the former editor of the Times Union of Albany and The Record in Troy. His weekly digital report, The Upstate American, is published by Substack."
Related Content