My Quest for an Anchor - Part 3
- Jeffrey Hausman
- 7 hours ago
- 6 min read
Remember the WWJD craze in the ‘90s? Millions of young people wore WWJD bracelets as a reminder to properly orient their decision-making in the conduct of their day by considering “What would Jesus do?”. That was nice. Simple. Effective? I doubt there were any longitudinal studies about the movement to validate or disprove the efficacy in aiding bracelet wearers in their quest to lead upstanding lives. Still, minimally the bracelet would have encouraged rudimentary reflective practice which, in my book, was probably a win. Anecdotally, the younger people I know who grew up in that era who wore bracelets have all turned out pretty well.
Apparently, WWJD bracelets have been making a bit of a resurgence. Unfortunately, I’m not sure the movement can produce similar results in today’s world. For one thing, the cynic in me wonders if the innocence of the initial movement has been stripped away and replaced with agendas and identity politics to where now wearing a bracelet means something. Second, the type of reflective practice needed today demands a higher level of nuance and sophistication because there aren’t too many things in modern culture that a person couldn't be coaxed into thinking that “Jesus would do”.
Like it or not, we have all been influenced by new media and the laser-targeted, personalized advertising and propaganda flooding the marketplace telling us to believe one thing or another. What is “right” or “good” largely depends on your leanings and that is easily confirmed by posts fed to us by the algorithms created to make us feel seen and heard. This shouldn't be news to anyone. At some level, we all know this is a part of the game, but instead of waking up and doing something about it, it’s far easier to hit the snooze button; and so we do. Perhaps even more worrisome is the proliferation of media creation and consumption, thanks in part to artificial intelligence. According to companies like Cloudflare and Imperva between a third and half of all internet traffic are AI chatbots designed to suck up information, repackage it, and feed it back to us, often with malicious intent.
This is why in my previous posts (here and here) I made the case for a different type of truth-seeking, recognizing that those things that have permanence and meaning do so because they exist both outside and within each one of us. The permanence of truth exists outside while meaning is shaped from the internalization of our experiences as we negotiate a world that is in a continual state of creative destruction and renewal. To describe it in math terms, truth is both a constant and a variable. This has always been the case, but as the world gets smaller and influences magnify, the sheer volume of things we are expected to negotiate requires a much higher threshold of reasoning.
I started out two posts ago writing about AI. One of the promises of generative AI is that everyone will have a pocket-sized personal AI assistant to offboard many of their decisions. For me, this is also the existential danger of AI. As we gain comfort in abdicating more and more of our routine decisions, we begin to rely on AI to provide input into our truth-seeking as well, even though AI has no capacity to grasp the internal struggles between heart and mind. These are hard struggles of doubt and uncertainty that we confront in multiple ways, most often over extended periods of time. Using AI as a shortcut provides false security and direction to a process that, when done well, often requires a person to travel through frustration and desolation - things that, if given a choice, people will avoid.
This, then, is the ultimate challenge of education: to not only provide young people with core knowledge, but also a discernment framework for understanding that leaves room for doubt. This encourages critical thinking, growth, perseverance, and, most importantly, hope over a lifetime of change and uncertainty. In my last post, I used the image of an anchor to describe this framework, writing, “An anchor you carry with you and drop when needed. Its weight can be burdensome, but it ensures deliberateness. It serves as resistance when we go too fast, and it provides stability in stormy weather.” I then proposed the tenets of Catholic Social Teaching as the fortifying material in which to cast the anchor, as considering any experience through the lens of CST requires struggle. While all of the tenets are important, in my view, focusing on Human Dignity and Solidarity leads you to consider all of the others.
Care for the person is foundational to the work of all schools which in many settings includes a listing of student rights, social and emotional learning programs, and similar well-intentioned items. Human dignity within the Catholic/Christian context goes further as it assumes that the source of all life - particularly that of a human being - is the loving grace of our Divine Creator. This acknowledges the inherent, inviolable, sacred worth of each person, and it’s the orientation I witness from the teachers in our Catholic schools when dealing with the students in their care. We do this part really well and the results are students who feel validated and valued.
Solidarity is harder. I’ve always thought of solidarity as a social principle, but in The Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, Pope John Paul II challenged us to see solidarity “above all in its value as a moral virtue that determines the order of institutions.” Fr. Thomas Massaro, S.J., further explains, “Solidarity begins as an inner attitude and, when it has fully taken root within a person, expresses itself through numerous external activities that demonstrate a person’s commitment to the well-being of others” This approach moves beyond vague compassion and demands a firm, persevering determination to see every person as a neighbor for whom we are responsible. Massaro continues, “Developing the virtue of solidarity is thus the perfect antidote to any modern temptations toward an egoistic individualism that neglects social obligations or subordinates the needs of others to self-serving agendas.”
Therein lies the rub; because this is the pathway, solidarity as a social principle is a nonstarter for those who have not first accepted it as a virtue. And because solidarity as a virtue is an internal struggle against self-interest that requires us to confront numerous inconveniences around rights and responsibilities, the needs of those on the margin, even the care for our common home, many choose to walk a different path. Even for those committed to solidarity as a social principle, acknowledging our differences can be overwhelming and frustrating. When do/should some people’s rights take precedence over others? Are knowingly temporary and imperfect compromises worth the effort for people with vastly different experiences and priorities? Is solidarity worthy of our pursuit?
I often hear leaders in Catholic schools asserting the need to be counter cultural, but is that what we are really after? That almost feels like a call to operate above the secular mess rather than diving into it. In preparation for a conference this past summer, I was introduced to the work of Dr. Paul Starkey and the paper Forming a Resilient Faith which suggests something different in stating, “The challenge in a Catholic school is not to deny or resent modernity; it is to nurture religious faith from within it.” And it’s only from within that a rich understanding of human dignity can be developed, and a wide-eyed pursuit of solidarity and the common good can begin. In this way, solidarity takes the form of an ideal not an endgame. Little wins find value here, and hope persists even in setbacks.
A word of warning regarding this model of reflective practice. The stated promise of most modern forms of meditation include things like balance, happiness, or contentment. No such guarantees can be made of this practice. Unrest should be expected. By referencing the work of Didier Pollefeyt in the following extract, Starkey advocates for the discomfort.
Pollefeyt argues that we should continue to provide students with a warm, harmonious and welcoming environment but he cautions against an overly positive psychology that pampers students and encourages them to believe that they are capable of everything – a vision of life that is an illusion…[Polleteyt suggests a formation that] ‘includes challenging experiences, such as: not-knowing, doubt, silence, mystery, struggle, resistance, estrangement, loss of meaning, tragedy, and brokenness – eminent places where people discover traces of God’. He calls for a shift from a belief based only on answers and certainty to a belief that can also deal with questions and the search for truth. He calls for this expanded range, not only because it provides students with a more viable basis for their faith but also because it is more faithful to the breadth of our tradition and our experience of God who is always more than we can imagine.
In a much less significant way, isn’t our current understanding of artificial intelligence more than we can imagine? Add in the many other tensions and challenges of our world and it’s all pretty overwhelming. That’s why the intentional efforts our schools are placing on incorporating discernment practices into student learning are spot on. Here students find meaning in the struggle, and they are more adept at living in the not-knowing. That’s the anchor. Forging the anchor from the tenets of Catholic Social Teaching prepares students to engage the world with hope, and to walk with greater resilience toward truth, whatever direction that may be.
CONTRIBUTOR: Jeff Hausman, AVLI President
vol 7 issue 6