... the scholar has lived in many times and is therefore in some degree immune from the great cataract of nonsense that pours from the press and the microphone of his own age. (C. S. Lewis)
First of all, let's be clear: there is a great 'cataract of nonsense' out there, a 'jungle of filth and imbecility'; the media, social media, whole swathes of academia, politicised organisations and institutions, and many other fora are beset with the errors and excesses of presentism (the belief that present ideas are superior by virtue of them being ours), shrill and self-righteous extremism, the illusion that change is necessarily progress, the demonisation of opponents, the conflation of challenge or plain disagreement with fear or hatred, the pursuit of objectives not by argument but by assertion, bullying, threat, sloganeering, appeal to emotion, ad hominem attack, and sheer bullheadedness or violence, deconstruction, relativism, subjectivism, petitio principii, a plethora of cognitive distortions and cognitive biases, the imposition of beliefs by mandatory indoctrination, in fact an overwhelming array of discourse types and instantiations that blow the circuits of anyone who attempts to apprehend critically, calmly, coolly, and rationally the incoming stream of information, views, and imperious demands.
And that's on the discourse level. Shit's also going down, both at human hand and by operation of natural processes. It's a lot to handle. If you're finding it a lot to handle, that's fine, a lot of other people find it a lot to handle, too.
Stop-gap
As a stop-gap, take a break. Stay away from the media. Stay away from social media. Avoid people with strong views. This works very well, and one needn't re-enter the fray, ever, if one doesn't want to.
A bigger solution
C. S. Lewis hits the nail on the head. A knowledge of other languages, other cultures, literature, particularly literature by those long dead, ancient civilisations, philosophy, logic (both formal and informal), theology, politics, ethics, and other domains will provide one not only with the objective distance necessary to view today's world merely as one of many worlds that have existed, today's ideas as a drop in the ocean of ideas which have been offered, and most of which have been forgotten, today's arguments as mirroring many other arguments that have taken place, in predictably recurrent cycles.
These materials will also provide one with the critical faculties to think through what is coming down the tubes, in the same way one thinks through the facts and options of one's own life in Step Eleven.
Step Eleven does not discourage thinking. It actually rather encourages it. But it encourages thinking divorced from self-pity, self-seeking, and dishonest motives. It encourages rational thinking within a larger context of the three transcendentals of absolute truth, absolute good, and absolute beauty, presided over by the God who the preeminent exemplar of all three, being their source.
One thinks then not adrift, loose, untethered, without foundation, like the castle of Pride built on sand in Spenser's Faerie Queene:
It was a goodly heape for to behould,And spake the praises of the workmans wit;But full great pittie, that so faire a mouldDid on so weake foundation euer sit:For on a sandie hill, that still did flit,And fall away, it mounted was full hie,That euery breath of heauen shaked it:And all the hinder parts, that few could spie,Were ruinous and old, but painted cunningly.
... but guided lovingly by God.
The fundamental feature of this vehicle for thought is trust.
One trusts God. This means that all is in His hands. I need not be angry with folly or sin (for both are inherent in the human condition and go back to Adam), nor be fearful for my own fate, for the world can have my body but it cannot have my mind, and, for those of us who believe in a Beyond, there is an Eternity in which this brief dash is encapsulated.
Heine deplored the bourgeois sensibilities of his audiences, who did not, he thought, appreciate him, the tote Held, the dead hero:
Der Vorhang fällt, das Stück ist aus,Und gähnend wandelt jetzt nach HausMein liebes deutsches Publikum,The curtain falls, the play is overAnd, yawning, now strolls back homeMy beloved German public
Thirty-five years after first reading that, I now side with audience. The play will, one day, be over, and we will stroll home. It's fine. We're fine. There's a plan, not a plot, and God will look after our spirits, our souls, our minds. Let's leave the drama on the stage, rather than taking it home with us to occupy Heine's 'mattress grave', his 'Matrazengruft' of misery and self-absorption. Heine's querulous unhappiness is not the ground of reality but the fold in the fabric. The fabric will one day be smoothed out and the darkness of the folds will be gone forever. The greater reality is the Home to which his public stroll, where we're all headed when the masks fall and the masque is over.
The job, therefore, is to look at the world from the position of utter security in God, charged with our own particular and vital missions in the world, which cannot be confounded, and to view the examination of the world as an interesting recreation: What really is going on here? What has actually happened? What is the evidence? What is the argument? What are the inferences? Are the inferences sound? Is the argument cogent? What is the principle behind the proposed judgement or course of action? Is that principle moral? Where does it come from? How does it interact with other principles? What would be for the good of all? What does the other side say? What do the others sides say? What merit is there even in my diehard opponent's view? Who has the better argument, setting aside my own predilections, preferences, insecurities, and objectives?
To ask these questions with the patience, tolerance, kindness, and love to which we are enjoined by the book Alcoholics Anonymous.
To stand back from the fray, in the stalls of the amphitheatre, with logic in one pocket and goodness in the other, without a scintilla of anger, fear, mockery, cynicism, contempt, rebellion, with no desire to punish, retaliate, or usurp God's role in moulding anything but oneself, to simply look and see, to see through in order to see what lies beyond the bewitching surface discourse, to apprehend each thing clearly and dispassionately and then to accept what is found, before going to God, and saying: What would you like me to do?
Having glanced (look, don't stare) at the world, through the lenses of intelligent and well-read writers and commentators without a personal axe to grind but instead held still by the transcendental values of truth (reason), goodness (morality), and beauty (aesthetics), to come back to one's own day, which is where the bulk of one's attention is rightly directed, to ask these questions, in the same cool fashion, asking God to guide one in one's deliberations:
- When citing a fact, how do I know that fact is true?
- What is my evidence?
- What is the definition of this term?
- When I say A is an example of (the category) B, what are the intrinsic features of (the category) B, and does A display these features?
- When I say C has the characteristic D, what is my evidence for this?
- When I say that X is good or bad, what is the principle thus upheld or breached?
- Is that principle sound?
- Is it universal or is it constrained?
- What, if any, are the constraints?
- How do such constraints, if any, apply here?
- When presenting a chain of reasoning, are the logical inferences sound?
- When presenting a risk, how plausible is it that the risk will materialise at all?
- If a risk might materialise, how likely is it that it will materialise?
- Can the risk be easily and effectively mitigated?
... and one hundred other tools of reason.
Having examined the situation, one then turns directly to God to ask: What would you like me to do? And then the path will be clear.
An assessment thus performed, using the same tools of optics for the outward and the inward, cannot help but create more space and light to see, and turn the individual from the cockroach scurrying off the edge of the table when the lamp is switched on into a figure in an elegant, torchlit, elfin procession, an orb of light in a Greater Eternity of Light.