Critical Me: A life of uncertainty

This is the first chapter of a new book I'm working on, Critical Me: A life of uncertainty, the third in the Global Child series. Enjoy!

Chapter 1: Too early to talk about God

Cultivating a conversation space where ideas can mingle and influence each other is one of our most important skills.

How do we know what we know? I can remember being asked once if I was a religious person. It was an odd question, I thought. I did not really know. I sensed that the person was looking for a fairly uncomplicated response to what I sensed was quite a complicated question, at least if you gave it some thought. Just to be polite, I said, ‘Yes, I think religion is quite a good idea’, which I suspect is actually true.

It seemed that firstly, and most importantly, I was being asked if I attended Church, and not just any Church, their Church. Secondly, there was an implication of whether or not I believed in God, but not just any God, their God. Finally, there was the question of my goodness in terms of following the rules spelled out in religious doctrine, but not just any religious doctrine, their religious doctrine. It was a complicated question and I suspected that my answer was going to be wrong.

I encountered this question as a teenager. The inquiry came from a lovely family who turned up on my doorstep one summer morning. They introduced themselves, a mother, father and daughter all dressed up very nicely. It was a slightly awkward moment as I had been sleeping on the floor just inside the front door, face firmly planted into the brown shaggy carpet. Even though my bedroom was upstairs, apparently, this was as far as I had made it the night before. They had knocked on the front door which had been left open all night for reasons which I do not recall but it explained my impressive array of mosquito bites. I imagine that the family had spent some moments at the door looking down at this strange, sunburnt boy unconscious on the carpet wondering whether they should knock or call emergency services. I will not bore you with the details of how I came to be in this state but what I will say is that I was not ready for a deep conversation about God.

What I most remember about the family is how well dressed they were. They were spotless and this may be a trick of my memory but a little shiny as well. There were pretty dresses, ironed shirts and smart ties, sparkling shoes and red ribbons. I was overwhelmed by their respectability. As for me, all I had on was a pair of board shorts, sunburn, and carpet marks across the left side of my face. I invited them in and in very short order they asked me if I was ready to welcome God into my life. At that particular moment in time, I thought that if God had aspirin and a large glass of water then I may consider it.

Although I did not know it at the time, I was being confronted with some very interesting knowledge questions. I had attended a Catholic school all my life and had been forcibly escorted to Church quite regularly so I thought I knew a bit about religion. It had been an insular little Catholic world so I was fascinated by this pristine family trying to convince me that everyone I had ever known had been gravely mistaken in their choice of Saviour and was most probably doomed to eternity in Hell. I felt this was a bit harsh.?

They showed me pamphlets of an old, bearded, quite stern-looking white man, The Father, who looked quite familiar. There were also pictures of a younger, bearded, white man, the Son, who looked a little sad and even more familiar. Even the angels were unnecessarily white and male. I considered asking them about this but it seemed a bit argumentative and this was not really my conversational style. Even if I did, though, I doubt it would have cracked their polite veneer. They were seasoned professionals. I tried to let the lovely family know that I had already been indoctrinated with this particular story but they would not listen, insisting that it was different. This was a different story, the real story. My Catholicism was not going to get me out of this conversation so easily. This was not good because I desperately needed a glass of water.?

I asked them about their Bible and they responded well to this feigned interest. It seemed to be the same one we used at school. I assumed that if it was, in fact, a different God then surely the new Almighty would have needed at least some different marketing materials. Regardless of my ironclad logic (or so I thought) they insisted that only people who had been saved could enter the fun place after they die. Fortunately, death seems a long way away when you are a teenager and the surf is waiting just down the road. I was able to wear them down with my insistence that we were already in the same Club so finally, frustrated but unwaveringly polite, they left me alone with my false God, mistaken religion, heretical Church, and doomed friends and family.?

I quite liked the nice family, even though they were a bit intense for that time of the morning. I was quite curious about what they really meant. I was genuinely interested. Thinking back, though, they weren't very good listeners, at least the parents were not. If the little girl had been permitted to speak, I think we could have made some progress, but unfortunately, it turned out that her purpose on their doomed evangelical crusade was purely ornamental. I thought that this was a bit sad and a wasted opportunity. The parents had a fixed idea of what they wanted to do, the way they wanted me to think, and how they wanted me to believe. Before they knocked on the door they were convinced that what I was thinking and believing was misplaced. They had already assumed that my knowledge was wrong and it is here that we see the importance of giving some thought to what this wondrous thing called knowledge is.?

It can be tempting to consider knowledge as something that exists in a specific state such as in a book or on an electronic drive. However, those words we see when we open a library book or feel in the case of brail, are merely representations of information. This is potential knowledge. Using the example of a book, we read it, process the information and certain ideas may become knowledge.?Knowledge exists in a brain and as such is created through experience and a person’s processing of that experience. For this reason, it is useful to consider the relationship between us (knowers) and what we know (knowledge). As parents, if we can understand this relationship between knowers and knowledge better, we can help our children to become more aware of how they come to know as individuals, as well as the way they come to share knowledge in their various communities, large and small.?

To start, we can visualise a space between two speakers that we call a ‘conversation space’. It is in this space into which we project our ideas and those ideas mingle with others. When I think back to my teenage self sitting on the couch that summer morning, listening to the polite family trying to convert me to a new imaginary friend in whom I had no interest, there was an absence of such a conversation space. There was no mingling of ideas. Ideas were thrown at me, albeit in a polite voice. You could say they were talking at me rather than with me. As an adult, I tend to notice this type of exchange replicated across many spheres of life. It is not the same conversation, but the same type of conversation. Minds closed to other perspectives. Personal opinions, comfortably unexamined. It is not just religion, of course. We see people debating political parties, environmental issues, historical perspectives, whether two or three fins are better on a surfboard, the merits of space exploration, the greatest pop artist of the 80s, and an almost limitless array of other important and inconsequential topics that we can potentially use to divide ourselves and exclude people for their otherness.?

Learning to value and cultivate this conversation space in our interactions where ideas can mingle and influence each other is going to be one of the most important skills our children can develop as they move into an uncertain future. Not considering someone else's perspective is not really a new phenomenon. It may sometimes feel like our world is becoming more polarised if we listen to political rhetoric or read social-media comment sections, however, if we consider the Inquisition or the Cold War, for example, it is easy to find quite extreme historical instances of severe, widespread polarization. In this sense, whether or not the world is actually becoming more polarized is not the point. What we do know is that exposure to polarized views is becoming more acute with increased engagement with social media. This impacts our children and the way that they ultimately learn to interact with others as well as their attitude towards the knowledge generated through their experiences. As a species, we have some serious issues to deal with in the next few decades so more than ever people need the skills to nurture this conversation space. Parents can help to bring the conversation space back into their children’s lives.