Reading Sermons
A strategy
Here’s a recent article by Freya India, from her Substack. Read it in full if you want, but I’ll try to capture the vibe with a quotation:
One obvious example of this is that adults act like children now. They talk like teenagers. They use the same social media platforms, play the same video games, listen to the same music. Our world moves too rapidly to retain any wisdom, denying parents the chance to pass anything down or be taken seriously, so they try to keep up with kids, who know more about the world than they do. Fathers are “girl dads” who get told what to think. Mothers are best friends to gossip with. The difference between childhood and adulthood is disappearing, and with it, parental protection.
This is an interesting idea. That the arrested development of adults leads to bad outcomes for their children, and that this arrested development is widespread.
But let’s read closely.
The “talk like teenagers” link leads to a blog post by another author, which talks specifically about how elites use a certain style of communication in public, which doesn’t feel all that convincing as a statement about adults in general.
They “use the same social media platforms”. I mean… sure? There aren’t very many of those, are there? The ones clearly for kids, like, say Roblox, are probably not frequented by many adults. And LinkedIn isn’t crawling with children. So the fact that both teenagers and 40-year-olds can have Instagram seems… fine?
Why is there no evidence for the claim about music and video games? It just doesn’t seem that likely! When I hang out with a few other 30something guys, if someone has an N64 we’re probably all down for an hour of nostalgia. Twelve-year-olds would not be into this. Likewise, isn’t it a well known phenomenon that people listen to new music less as they age?
Likewise, I haven’t heard the term “girl dad” but I seriously doubt many modern dads embrace it. And when I think of the moms I know, none of them have a “best friends to gossip with” relationship with their kids.
Now, is it true that there exist parents who refuse to grow up, and who therefore don’t project a proper aura of stability for their children? Sure, the world is a big place. But there’s no evidence for that here. Elsewhere in the same post there are lots of links purporting to be evidence, but they mostly go to things like random Reddit posts expressing a view. Sure, I wouldn’t have doubted that someone held that view. But is it widespread? How would you know?
Or take this paragraph from Freddie DeBoer, here:
And, of course, it’s mostly all a negotiation with aging. As one of the oldest Millennials, I’m watching as my generation reaches middle age and reacts to that transition, and I can give you an initial verdict on how it’s going: not well, at all. We’re mostly adjusting to it by not adjusting to it. So, so many Millennials are confronting the end of their youth by performatively embracing youth culture, loudly declaring that the only music that matters is that which you discover on TikTok. They need everyone to know that they’ve spent the cost of a new Toyota on tickets to the Eras Tour. (Which soaks up seats that might otherwise be available to actual young people, not wine moms with too much money, but nevertheless.) They might like music. But in a much deeper way, they need it. They need what they think it represents.
I’m a Millennial. Are we doing all that? I think of the people I hang out with, who are mostly ordinary seeming middle class professionals skewing towards government workers, and… I’m not sure any of them even has TikTok? Certainly none of them has seen the Eras Tour, and probably only half could even name what that is.
You could figure this out, or at least try, right? Compare track listens across age cohorts on some platform, over time, to see if there’s more homogeneity. It would be a thorny thicket of confounding variables, but you could try to arrive at some truth. And if that doesn’t sound worth doing to you, as it doesn’t to me, then, well, why worry about it?
These two excerpts both have to do with roasting Millennials, but the phenomenon I want to gesture to is more general than that. I also don’t really want to pick on DeBoer or India - it strikes me as fine to write stuff that reflects your own experiences, and there’s a strong market for sweeping claims about my generation.
Rather, I want to describe the mental move I make when I read paragraphs like these. Mostly to remind myself to do it. But maybe you’d enjoy it, too.
Sheep and Flocks
As far as I can tell, posts like India’s are basically sermons. They exist to create emotional resonance around some feeling, and organize ideas about the world in harmony with that resonance.
India’s post is a sermon on the theme of maturity, on how it’s desirable to grow up. Like many sermons, it makes its point by decrying those who don’t live up to it - think of the pastor at a Baptist church who spends half his time talking about the hellfire that awaits the people not in his audience. It doesn’t really matter if it’s true that fewer people are mature adults than used to be, or how you would even operationalize the claim, if you needed to convince someone. What matters is that the post builds in you a feeling that:
Children are being harmed by a certain kind of behavior
In the old days, the behavior was rare, but now it is common, so we must fight against it
Those who commit the bad behavior are making obvious mistakes, and those with ears to listen can easily move toward good behavior, instead
A sermon doesn’t get into complex tradeoffs, or spend much time nailing down the particulars or evidence base. Because those things aren’t good for rousing feeling.
So am I railing against sermons? No, actually! Here’s an excerpt from one I like:
The world is awful. The world is much better. The world can be much better. All three statements are true at the same time.
Discussions about the state of the world too often focus on the first statement: The news highlights what is going wrong, rarely mentioning the positive developments in our country or the world as a whole.
A pushback on this narrative takes it to the other extreme, which is equally damaging. Solely communicating the progress that the world has achieved becomes unhelpful, or even repugnant, when it glosses over the problems people are facing.
If we only see the problems and only hear what is going wrong, we have no hope that the future can be better. If we only hear about progress and what is going right, we become complacent and lose sight of the problems the world is facing. Both of these narrow perspectives have the same consequence: they leave us doing nothing — they are worldviews that paralyze us.
But that I like it doesn’t make it any less of a sermon.
For example, is it true that people being only given good news is “equally damaging” as only being given “bad news”? That doesn’t seem very likely! There is surely research one could do, and probably research that has already been done. Like:
Do people who focus on positive developments in the world volunteer more, or less, than people who focus on negative ones?
Are optimists more likely to donate to charity?
Why is it unhelpful, or repugnant, to “gloss over” “the problems” “people” “are facing”? Surely it’s okay to gloss over some problems, like an extremely rich person sad they won’t meet a specific net worth goal because their taxes rose a little bit. When I pay close attention, the argument in this sermon - like the argument in any sermon - isn’t very strong.
But I don’t mind in this case, and usually don’t focus on those finicky details. Because I am a willing member of the relevant congregation. The feeling that the sermon wants to lift up in me - that the world is fast-improving and that, nevertheless, our energies are needed to resolve the remaining problems - is a feeling I endorse!
The Sermon Dance
If you notice you’re reading a sermon, I advise the following procedure.
Figure out what it wants to make you feel.
If you want to feel that way, read on!
If you want to feel the opposite of that way, take a breath. Realize that what you’re reading isn’t for you, and that hate-reading a sermon will likely entrench your beliefs in an unreasonable way. It’s easy to fool yourself into thinking you’re reading “that side’s best arguments”. But you’re not.
If you’re neutral, read carefully. The sermon is trying to create a certain resonant structure in your mind, built out of your feelings. You probably shouldn’t let it.
After reading, take a minute to reflect.
Are there any obvious weak points? (Yes.)
Are there any fuzzy definitions?
If you imagine sharing the sermon with someone who doesn’t already agree, do you automatically feel a little cringe reaction, because you know they just won’t get it?
Temper strong emotions.
If you’re mad at how wrong it all is, consider that this is a waste of time, in a way that objecting to an incorrect factual piece isn’t. You’re mad at them for playing one game in violation of another game’s rules.
If you’re champing at the bit to share the piece, to trumpet its perspective from the mountaintops, remember the things you reflected on in step two. Hang up the dazzling raiment of feelings you just acquired in your closet, next to many others. Don’t wear it every day for a month.
Notice how you feel.
If you feel disquieted, or unsettled, or otherwise icky, consider stopping reading that sort of thing. If you keep seeing sermons you hate in the same places, stop going to those places!
If you feel good, enjoy that feeling. All else equal, it’s good to be motivated! Just make sure you supplement your sermons with actual ground truth, too.
I try to stop reading, when I discover a sermon is on the theme of “the current generation has forgotten the old wisdom”, or “people these days refuse to grow up”, because the feelings those inspire in me aren’t useful, and they don’t, to me, have the ring of truth.
I read and savor, when I discover a sermon about the value of careful thinking, or applying universal game-theoretical principles, or donating money to improve the world, because I am (and want to be) inspired by all those things.
But most of the battle is just noticing that something is a sermon, and, rather than being swept along with (or against) its ghostly congregation, to decide.