This is Precisely Who We Are
So, there’s this big scandal involving the Canadian women’s soccer team at the Olympics. Apparently, two Canadian staff members were caught attempting to use a drone to spy on the New Zealand team’s practice. This is obviously not a good look for Canada as the Paris Olympics begin. Canada is supposed to be squeaky clean and wholesome and peaceful and tolerant and inclusive and blah, blah, blah, all the other nice, good, neutral things that we have ever laboured to convey to the world around us. “Cheaters” doesn’t really fit the image we wish to project.
As always, it was fascinating to observe the fallout in real time. First, it was just two rogue staffers acting without the knowledge of head coach Bev Priestman or anyone else, from the top brass down to the players. Priestman even (desperately?) attempted to claim some moral high ground by voluntarily withdrawing herself from the first game. Even though I didn’t order this, I know that I am accountable. Cue sympathetic nods of affirmation. Or not. Barely twenty-four hours later, she had been suspended for the remainder of the Olympics (and will inevitably be fired) due to “information” emerging that she almost certainly knew all about the drone incident. Then yet more information came out that perhaps even the men’s program attempted to use drones to spy during their recent Copa America run. As of fifteen minutes ago, the head of Canada Soccer has said that he is investigating a potential “systemic ethical shortcoming.” Whatever is going on, it seems to be a bit more than a few rogue staffers with a bit of time and tech on their hands.
It’s an interesting phrase, that one. A “systemic ethical shortcoming.” We used to call things like this “moral failures.” I suppose words like “systemic” are having a moment and “shortcoming” doesn’t sound quite as harsh as “failure.” But systems are inconveniently created and populated by, well, people. People who have the capacity not only to come up short but to deliberately act in ways that they know are wrong because they think they can get away with it. This is who we are, even when do our very best to pretend that it isn’t.
And, of course, many people are doing precisely this. Pretending. If there is a phrase that I would love for us to strike from our public lexicon or at least give a five-to-ten-year moratorium, it’s this one: “This is not who we are.” I must have read some version of this sentence in no fewer than half a dozen articles on “dronegate” over the last two days. Some earnest executive somewhere agonizing about lost revenue or status or prestige, scrambling to assure the public that this was an aberration, trotting out the tired old cliché that attempts to create distance between bad behaviour x and real Canadians who obviously could never imagine doing such a thing. This is not who we are.
Except, it is. It is precisely who we are. We like to win and will cut corners to do so. We like status and will do sketchy things to attain it. We like the language of virtue (fairness, justice, equity, etc.) and will use it selectively and performatively, but behind the scenes we have long since abandoned the notion that objective moral codes exist and make claims upon us that are not convenient. We are far more interested in image than substance. We too often choose what is expedient or self-serving over what is right or good or true. “What can I get away with?” matters far more to us than “What is demanded of me?”
This is not true of every person to the same degree all the time. But this is the human condition. This is what it is to be a human being, no matter how pleasant the fictions are that we use to console or flatter ourselves.
I have lost count over the last five years or so where, in the course of conversations on a wide range of cultural issues, I have said that in my view the defining theological and cultural issue of our time is anthropological in nature. Can we tell a morally coherent story about what it means to be a human being, one that does justice both to the soaring heights of which we are capable and the murky depths to which we so regularly and predictably descend? Increasingly, I fear, we cannot. Without theological categories of creation and fall and sin and repentance and forgiveness and redemption, of human beings bearing both the divine image and the mark of Cain, the stories we tell are partial and inadequate at best, false and destructive at worst.
And so, we blunder on with our pitifully naive cultural anthropologies. We express shock and outrage when people do bad things. We use vapid phrases like “systemic ethical shortcomings,” attempting to outsource moral responsibility to some abstract “system” out there that can be corrected by hiring a consultant or doing a seminar. We say, straight-faced, apparently, that “more education” is needed, as if a lack of information was the problem. We soberly assure the public that firings will be forthcoming, that the bad people will be separated from the good ones, and we can get back to business as usual.
We say things like, “This is not who we are” and we appear to believe it.
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Your best stuff, like this, is always assertive and uncompromising.
So now what?
How do we collectively work together to rearticulate our Christian anthropology in such a way as to capture and inspire our younger generations?
Perhaps, as I seemingly often do lol, I am misreading you but to me, you seem to be very wary of, even loathe, of political engagement.
Is there another way?
If the kids aren’t coming to the, “Temple” aren’t we obliged to go to, “Rome”.
I don’t have a comprehensive answer to your question. I would probably anchor any first thoughts in the church and the category of “bearing witness.” The church is full of people whose anthropologies are not much different than the world around us. At the very least, churches must teach and articulate and model a coherent Christian anthropology. We must remind ourselves why it matters. We must help Christians (and others) interpret the world around them through Christian categories, to show how and why these make sense in a way that others do not. At the very least, there ought to be communities who bear witness to a better and truer way of interpreting human experience and morality.
I agree that it would be naive to assume Canadians are a comparatively ethical population. The argument is weakened to my mind by the ubiquity of pronouns without clear antecedents: they, we us.
“Pitifully naive cultural anthropologies” needs an explanation … for me, at least.
I find it a mistake to separate the notion of a “Christian morality” from scientific studies tracing the evolution of moral codes. Clearly the boundaries of ethical behaviour have evolved since the Bible and the Quaran were canonized, for example, and will continue to do so.
Thanks again for raising ideas that we ought to discuss frankly. Unfortunately, North American Mennonites seem to have difficulty going beyond the superficial blurting of an opinion. Sad.
The pronouns refer to Canadians, yes, probably also Western culture. And, at times human beings more generally.
A pitifully naive cultural anthropology would be one where we express shock that even enlightened, progressive modern people still do morally shady things. A pitifully naive cultural anthropology would imagine that education is always the answer to every problem, that when we do bad things it’s because we don’t “know” enough, rather than that our wills are perpetually and stubbornly bent inward. A pitifully naive cultural anthropology divides the world into “good people” and “bad people” and thinks that if we can just get rid of (fire, cancel, etc) the “bad people,” all will be well. A pitifully naive cultural anthropology rehearses lines like “this isn’t who we are” ad nauseum whenever someone who is part of our country or culture does something that we cannot countenance instead of wrestling with the blindingly obvious and empirically observable truth that none of us entirely live up to our moral ideals and that we are all a combination of saint and sinner. I could go on.
I don’t doubt or deny that moral cultures shift and evolve and progress and (importantly) regress over time. For me, Christian moral categories make the most sense of what I observe of the human animal in the wild. We are sinners in need of grace, transgressors in need of forgiveness, the sick in need of a physician.
Thanks for the clarification. I just watched a one hour replay of a Peter Ustinov on-stage event, who in response to a question about his wide experience and what it had taught him about humans said something like “I believe people are good, and are seduced into doing evil.” That we begin good but corruptable, rather than evil but forgiven, has always struck me as promoting a self-image more open to growth. I can imagine that this conundrum would be central to your service in the prison community.
Yes, Ustinov’s response is certainly a much more honest assessment of human nature than what we often see. I would likely even quibble slightly with the idea that we are “born good.” Having raised (and observed) small children, it seems to me that this overstates things a little. Children need to be taught good; selfishness and nastiness seem to come rather naturally.
For me, Romans 7:15-25 remains among the most accurate diagnoses of the human condition that I have ever encountered.
“This is isn’t who we are” is as pathetic and eye rolling as when folks say “to be honest…” – both are superficial and both imply that what we see in front of us isn’t truth.
Yes, “to be honest” irritates me as well 🙂