Last week Pope Francis made news with comments he made about libertarianism. As someone who uses that label my hackles rose immediately and I found myself defensive and questioning why someone with as much education and experience as Francis could so misunderstand my beloved philosophy.
I prepared my rebuttal in my head, eager to educate the Pope and set the record straight. This would be easy; he just didn’t understand and as a blogger from the middle of Missouri I just knew that I was the perfect guy to address Francis and let him know just exactly what he had wrong.
And then I stopped myself. None of those things made any sense. Francis was not ignorant; quite the contrary. Perhaps, I told myself, I should take just a moment and do a little research. Maybe instead of firing off the same 3-page statement of libertarian ideas that every reader of mine was already familiar with, I should take a little more time and see if there wasn’t something more to this.
I started doing some homework. I already knew quite a bit about Francis, but I dug a little deeper. I knew plenty about libertarian philosophy, but found a few new angles to explore. My homework on Francis led me on a tangent, which led to another tangent, and soon I found myself with pages of notes about religion, history, economics and philosophy.
There was a lot that I had already known, a lot I had forgotten, and a fair number of things I learned for the first time. Some of it was very eye-opening, and through the process I found some parallels that seemed to me to be striking. As the days passed following the Pope’s remarks I kept watching the news, which was filled with conflict of all kinds, both foreign and domestic. We do indeed live in interesting (and dangerous) times.
The world is also, I observed, filled with idiots. We are polarized, and everyone is quite certain of the rightness of their position and the wrongness of the other side. At some point I realized I was one of those idiots, as evidenced by my reaction to Pope Francis. In my mind I had labelled Francis and written off his ideas without giving them serious consideration. There was no need; I knew I was “right” and he was “wrong”.
In retrospect, that was a very shallow and superficial thing to do, and I am glad I did not fire off my 3-page rebuttal/defense. Instead, I decided that if I was going to throw stones and labels at the leader of the Catholic Church for his biases then perhaps I should examine my own. So I did. I learned a lot, and although I did not have any religious or philosophical conversions I now understand myself a lot better than I did before.
And now, Dear Reader, I have a problem. I have pages and pages of observations and notes in a world that wants their summary in 140 characters or less. I have come to understand that most people are not willing to read more than a page or two, and that much only if it is riveting. Discussions of history and philosophy and religion and economics are not likely to keep people awake for more than a few paragraphs.
As a writer, and someone who wants to change hearts and minds I realize that for my writing to have meaning it will need to be read. And yet, there is no way to compress this story.
Over the past couple of weeks it has become abundantly clear that too many of us did not pay close enough attention in history class. We are woefully deficient in understanding history or how we got to where we are. I hear people throwing around terms that they do not understand and assigning labels to themselves and others without knowing the meaning of those labels or their place in the currents of history.
Some of you, of course, understand these things better than I do, and will consider my revelations naive. I can accept that. The things I have learned are things I should have known, and so I will be exposing my ignorance. That’s ok, because it is true. I can admit to ignorance as long as I am working on correcting it, which I am.
I am still left with the fact that educating people is boring, and I have too much information to cover to make it brief. What to do?
And this is where you come in. I need to ask you for a favor. You see, I want you to go on this journey with me, but I need to think of a way to make it worthwhile so that you will get value from the experience. You see, if you don’t read this and consider what I have to say, my words will have no impact. Part of this is about me and my journey, but if that is as far as it goes there won’t be much value in that.
Since I am not charging for my wisdom I can’t lower the price. The only value I have to offer are some words on a page. All I would like in return is for someone to read and consider those words. It is a voluntary exchange.
I should point out that I am not Catholic. I was raised in the Methodist Church. I don’t have a degree in history or economics. I am not a politician or religious leader. I am not an authority on anything. But if you will bear with me I will try to make it interesting and maybe together we can change the rhetoric, if just a little.
This will be a bit of a middle finger to the shallow non-readers among us. I know writers are advised to keep their writing as brief as possible, and I will try hard to do so. I will do my best to keep it interesting. But I am going to write all of the words I need to in order to complete this story, whether anyone reads it or not.
After all this discussion is about individualism; and let’s face it, this is for me...and Francis (but he will never see this so it is really just about me). On the other hand, the effort of individuals to enrich themselves is often of great value to others, whether intended or not.
I have decided to write this as a series of installments, partly to break it up and partly because that is how this all presents itself. I will try to post each in a timely manner.
Thank you in advance for your indulgence.
This was The Preface. Next up: The Introduction.
For reference, here is a link to the remarks in question. http://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/en/bollettino/pubblico/2017/04/28/170428h.html
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