Trust, tribalism, and the Church

Recent trends in America point toward either tribalism or social disintegration. There is no neat solution to the problem. Still, the Church will be in a position to help mitigate it—not directly, through social engagement of some sort, but simply by being emphatically herself so she can once again be an object of strong and socially functional loyalties that transcend tribal boundaries.

I’ve commented before on how electronics now dissolve everything into images, video clips, and sound bites that can be reassembled into anything. That situation enables people to tailor their online world—which now forms much of their understanding of the world in general—to their own predilections.

The result is that we increasingly live in different worlds. Was the 2016 or the 2020 election stolen? Were the factual beliefs that motivated Black Lives Matter or the response to COVID well-founded? Is the big threat America faces Russia, China, fascism, or globalism?

No one agrees. Worse, fewer and fewer see any reason to view those who disagree with them as rational and well-intentioned. After all, isn’t it all just obvious if you look online?

A recent essay by music critic and historian Ted Gioia argues that this situation will soon become much worse because of rapid developments in AI that, he argues, will make it not merely difficult but impossible to determine whether photographs, videos, and other media productions are genuine or fake.

He mentions, as an example, people who deny that the Apollo moon landings were real. What happens, he asks, when all historical events become legitimately deniable, because evidence can easily be faked, so that everybody becomes that way about everything?

He notes there may be social or technological fixes for this—extended use of chain of custody procedures, for example. But who knows how effective any of these will be, especially now that no one trusts anybody to begin with?

It’s worth noting that, on the face of it, an end to reliable electronic sources of information would only put us back where we were for almost all human history. Since that is the case, why does the prospect of a reversion now seem such a disaster?

The reason is that our form of society has come to depend on such things. In the 1920s, technical advances in photography led to the great age of photojournalism. The combination of text, photos, newsreels, and video footage made possible a very persuasive mass presentation of a shared public reality. Through the ’70s, people watched Walter Cronkite, “the most trusted man in America,” so they could see the world “the way it is”—as he assured them every evening—right there on their TV screens.

That seemed to open the door to a mass democracy of equal citizens, who would be able to discuss and resolve public issues reasonably because they would have a well-informed understanding of the world in common.

But then cable TV and talk radio multiplied journalistic outlets and spread dissenting interpretations that also seemed supported by videos, images, and soundbites. That tendency was then radicalized by ubiquitous photos and videos from smartphones and security cameras that could be posted online instantly.

These developments made it possible for anyone to check presumed authorities for accuracy, completeness, and bias. Many failed the test. To make matters worse, increased competition among established outlets put a premium on speed and pleasing partisan readers, while reducing the resources that could be devoted to any one story. Worst of all, the modern tendency to view reality as socially constructed—that is to say, constructible through the effective use of power—undermined commitment to objective truth in favor of political goals even among experts.

So, authorities lost authority. Attempts to undo that situation and to restore public trust in institutionally certified truth have so far failed. And now, Gioia says, the sole remaining anchor for shared public truth—the possibility of reliable public verification—is being yanked.

The remedies he suggests seem dubious because they have to do with buttressing the credibility of institutions based on abstract universal principles such as scientific rationality. In the absence of shared standards of personal integrity and respect for objective truth—which are hard to sustain in a liberal society that places ever more emphasis on success, power, money, and individual fulfillment—it becomes difficult to rely on such things.

But where can such standards come from? Conceivably, necessity could call forth supply. People would realize the problem, and social demands would shift in response. But the need for integrity cannot bring it into being unless underlying social cohesion makes that possible.

The postwar liberal demand for absolute universality no longer supports that cohesion. It would require grounded trust in large-scale formal institutions such as journalism, academia, and government bureaucracies. That trust has severely weakened and, Gioia implies, seems likely to collapse altogether.

The far more common basis for social cohesion is not formal institutions but stable and largely informal relationships in which honesty and loyalty can be evaluated and rewarded, in the usual course that promotes a society based on a stable local community. If that is lacking, society becomes tribal. It seems that we—like all previous societies—will have to accept some degree of localism and tribalism, along with the exclusion of outsiders these things imply, for the sake of social functioning.

That tendency can go to extremes in regions—like the Balkans, Caucasus, and Middle East, where very different peoples meet and mix—since extensive networks of trust are hard to sustain under such conditions. People there do not trust anyone except the people with whom they have particular personal ties. Since the West has rejected demographic stability in favor of mobility and radical diversity, we have grounds for fearing something similar.

The obvious possibilities for mitigating extremes under such conditions are a dictatorship that substitutes coercive social micromanagement for trust, which seems unlikely to work well, or widespread devotion to common goods tied to a shared sense of what is fundamentally real—in other words, through a religion widely understood as true and authoritative.

With that in mind, it seems that the potential role of the Church in promoting social trust will become more important in the coming years as the liberal order falls apart—as indeed it did during the Middle Ages, when it was central to the growing ability of European society to emulate the universal aspects of Rome but with less reliance on slavery and centralized military tyranny, fewer high-stakes civil wars, and more widespread political participation.

There is much standing in the way of making that role once again a reality. To start, we need to act as if the Faith is real and important. It will not order society unless it orders us. To that end, we all need to look in the mirror.

Also, the Church is hierarchical, so solid improvement requires good leaders. As it is, she often gives the impression of being led by peacetime generals in time of war. At a minimum, they need to be honest and reliable. Recent scandals involving lying and corruption, even at the highest levels, have been a real stumbling block. The Church cannot build social trust if her members have good reason to distrust their pastors.

More basically, our leaders must believe, and must be seen to believe, that the Church has something fundamental to offer that everyone needs and is not available anywhere else. Otherwise, she will seem just another tribe. If they try to maintain the Church’s relevance by enlisting her in secular causes rather than emphasizing her specific nature and mission, people will have no reason to pay attention to her. That will especially be true if the causes are hard to square with historic Catholic teaching.

At bottom, our leaders must view the Church as the homeland and family of believers, and not as a bureaucracy, NGO, or component of a larger social reality—for example, of a multi-faith global society oriented toward worldly well-being. She can unify a fractured society only when people make her a primary loyalty and not an add-on.

And that cannot happen unless she insists on her fundamental orientation toward something higher than any worldly good. She can perform her irreplaceable social role only if she views that role as subordinate.