From Illusion to Light

We can learn a good deal about a society by seeing how it confers social preferment or economic reward. But nothing probes the strengths and the weaknesses of any group more deeply than a revelation of the illusions it fosters, because our illusions attempt to mask our weaknesses and solace our insecurity. Yet we may have a kind of psychological necessity to evaluate ourselves charitably. Not too long ago, for example, I had my picture taken. When the proofs came back and I returned them to the photographer, I tried to point out to him that he did not have quite the right camera angle. Finally, I pulled a photograph—an earlier one—from my pocket to show him what could be done. Now, he was a friend, and he tried to be tactful; but finally he had to be blunt. He said, “Bob, maybe that first photographer was more skillful than I, but twenty years and 100,000 calories make a difference. Your camera angles are all bulges now, and you had better face up to a 220-pound fact.” This experience was not pleasant, for my illusions about myself are rather comfortable. I have worn them a long time, and I take them off reluctantly. But such estimates are probably not too serious. Possibly, as I suggested, they may even be necessary.

While personal illusions may be somewhat necessary, a serious problem arises when illusions gain a solidity that is national—almost cultural—in scope, when the hopes, expectations, and longings of many people are caught up in illusion. Such an illusion gets taken for granted; it becomes almost an axiom. The terror here is that under this condition, under a national illusion, we do not see our weaknesses. Furthermore, because we do not see our weaknesses, we do not overcome them. Rather, we stagnate.

I fear that some illusions of our time, right now, are keeping us from growing, developing. We vaguely realize that something is wrong, but we do not know quite what it is. Today, rather briefly, I would like to discuss one major illusion that seems a serious one of our time, of our nation. Rather than just state it, however, let me illustrate it.

When my wife and I were in graduate school a few years ago, we were hired as house parents in a “home for the friendless” in the Bronx. We took care of what we called “disturbed” children. They were seriously disturbed. In our little group of about fifteen boys, aged ten to twelve, every single youngster was there by court order. One day, all the newspapers in New York had big headlines: “Basketball Scandal.” As my wife and I read what had happened, we felt a little sick. Almost every major basketball team in New York City was involved, and an overwhelming percentage of the stars of those teams had been guilty of point-shaving: taking bribes to provide gamblers with sure bets. The home’s director called all the house parents together and said, “Get your youngsters together and talk about this. Many of them have no ideals in the world except athletic ideals. Let them see that their heroes were wrong; let them understand the necessity of making proper choices.”

I called my little group together, but I knew from experience preaching would not work. Besides, I wanted to know what they thought about the whole situation. So when we were together that night I said, “What do you think the real problem is here?” I hoped that in this way I would get them to comment in a relaxed fashion. They commented all right, but what they said scared me to death. The more they said, the more upset I became. Their first suggestion as to the real problem was the following: “The real problem is that there was not enough police protection. If the police had checked those games a little more carefully, if we had more plainclothes detectives there, the gamblers would not have gotten to the boys.” The second suggestion was no more encouraging than the first: “It’s the sports promoters fault. They realize that a lot of money can be made in basketball games, and they are exploiting the players.” The third: “You know, I think maybe it’s the schools’ responsibility, and the coaches’. They didn’t protect their students.” Finally, one little boy said, “Well, maybe, even, it might be the responsibility of their homes.” Not one of the boys suggested that the problem was the responsibility of the players themselves.

Finally I could not stand the situation any longer and I said, “Don’t you think these men realized what they were doing when they took a bribe? Didn’t they know it was wrong? Didn’t they have a responsibility to reject it?” One little ten-year-old Puerto Rican boy, knowledgeable beyond his years because of the ferocious Harlem environment in which he had grown up, looked at me with a half smile and said, “Now, Mr. T., sure! They knew what was goin’ on. But everybody was doin’ it, Mr. T. You can’t ask anyone to stand out by himself. Everybody was doin’ it!” At this I became a little excited and said, “That is not reason enough! Principles are not established by agreement!” When I said that, something interesting happened in the group: the boys and I genuinely switched roles. I was no longer teaching them. They did not look at me, but exchanged sidelong glances. I could see that they were a little embarrassed at how ignorant I was: I did not know how the world worked. In their eyes, I was the child and they were the adults.

The illusion of collective accountability is what I want to talk about today; specifically, I want to address the illusion that collective accountability somehow lessons personal responsibility. “Everybody’s doing it!” Right now, the hottest potato in education concerns who is responsible for the fact that Johnny cannot read. The colleges toss it to the high schools, the high schools slip it quickly to the elementary schools, the elementary schools send it home. The homes bounce it right back to the elementary schools: “That’s your job!” The elementary schools throw it back to the colleges: “You taught us.” This issue creates a cycle, and often a vicious one.

But note that the cycle always involves an attempt to shift responsibility. No one is ready to say, “Maybe I’m responsible. What do I need to do?” Instead, everybody says, “I’m not responsible.” To illustrate, let me provide an extreme case. In one of my freshman English classes, I had a young man who was failing because he could not spell. He could not even spell his own name correctly: he wrote it in two or three different ways. I have never had a case that was quite this bad. Finally, he came to see me. He was a rather articulate boy. He said, “Brother Thomas, I would like to explain a few things. Number one, no one in our family can spell. My father can’t spell; my grandfather can’t spell. I’m congenitally a poor speller. Furthermore, that’s not the only problem. I came through the word-by-word method in elementary school.” (He knew all the jargon terms.) “I didn’t learn phonics. It’s my teacher’s fault that I can’t spell. It’s not fair of you to fail me because I spell rather poorly. It’s not my fault!”

As I listened to this student, I had an overwhelming feeling that I was talking with a result. In other words, he viewed himself as a result, not a cause. The disturbing thing about a result is that it does not have a future—just a past. When I finally suggested that maybe he had better do something about his difficulty, he was insulted. In his mind, the problem was now mine. After all, he had explained it to me and thereby shifted the responsibility.

I have a little autobiographical poem by John Holmes that I use in such cases. It is called “Talk.” The gist of the poem is as follows. Holmes says: “As a young boy I grew up on the New England seacoast. My favorite recreation was to go watch an old model-builder build little boats. He was an incredibly skillful man, but he was deaf. He could not talk to me, and I could not talk to him. We did not really talk; I just watched him. But, you know, a couple of things I found out while watching him were the best ‘talk’ I ever heard because they came through as if someone had shouted in my ear. The first thing I learned is that sometimes you can put a hundred hours into something, and it is no good. You have to throw it away and start over.” Such a lesson is tough for a youngster to learn. “The second thing is one I will never forget: in the end, your ship has to float—you can’t explain to the ocean.” That second lesson is what my freshman English student did not understand. When he told me why he could not spell, he was going underwater while trying to explain to the ocean. I was brutal with him. I said, “Who cares? Don’t grasp my lapels and tell me why. I want to know what you can do, not why you can’t do something.” He left in quite a huff. I did not convince him. Far too ingrained in him was the whole myth of collective accountability. He was not at fault, and he did not intend to change. Someone else was going to have to change.

In ancient Israel, Jeremiah, who was the most sympathetic of prophets, pleaded with the Lord for wicked people. With great reluctance, Jeremiah finally realizes, “No one is repenting. No one is saying, ‘What have I done?’ Everyone is pursuing their own course as a horse rushes into battle” (see Jer. 8:6). The same phenomenon occurs today. No one is stopping and saying, “Is it my fault? I am wrong.” Instead we hear: “It is my parents’ fault.” “I am the result of a broken home.” “I am the result of bad teaching.” “I am culturally deprived.” These voices are shifting responsibility just as fast as they can in every direction.

Such rationalization is not the only dead-end that results from the illusion of collective accountability. Consider how easily we can drift into the mob state of “good enough,” where even necessary adjustment can turn into needless compromise. As long as something is advertised in a glossy magazine, it is “good enough.” As long as the package is attractive, the contents will probably be “good enough.” We cannot justly blame those who exploit us, because we guide every hand that robs us. We insist upon it.

I saw an example of this “good enough” attitude as a home teacher in New York. My companion and I had quite a beat. We needed a couple of nights—and long subway trips—just to visit three or four families. One of the people we visited was a single young woman who was an executive at General Mills. Her roommate, an older woman, also worked for General Mills; she was in charge of the testing kitchens. The first time we visited their apartment, we tried to include the roommate. Just to start the conversation, I asked, “Well, which one of you is Betty Crocker?” The roommate laughed and said, “I guess I am Betty Crocker for this week.” I then asked if she had anything to do with cake mixes. At that time, it was the late 1940s; cake mixes were just coming on the market. The roommate said that she was in charge of cake-mix development. I said, “You know, the cake mixes are very interesting. I have made a couple of them.” She smiled, and I could see that she thought I was saying this simply to ingratiate myself. I then asked, “Why is the batter so thin?” She responded, “Hey, you have made a couple, haven’t you? Let me tell you something about cake mixes, young man. We spent a fortune engineering those. Most people in this country have a very superficial idea of what makes a good cake. They think of just one thing: Is it light?

“We had to engineer those cake mixes so that they would be light no matter what a person did to them. We tell you not to put any eggs in, but we have to make the mixes so they will rise if you put a dozen eggs in. We tell you to measure precisely, but people don’t do it. Some people think that we mean milk when we say water. The cake has to rise no matter what people put in. Some people forget to put anything in; it still has to rise. You know, the real tragedy is that it is a pretty good cake. Sadly, it is better than most people can make on their own. It is not as good a cake as I can make. It is only superficially a good cake, but most people think it is good enough. What frightens me is that the day is going to come when no one will know anything else. You would think that would make me happy, but it makes me cry.”

I suspect that our age will be known to future historians not as the “atomic age” but as the “cake-mix age,” the “good-enough age.” Please believe me, I am not discounting cake mixes. At times they are useful, although I have to admit that I burst into laughter when I saw on the shelves of a local market not long ago a jar of white sauce—prepared white sauce! How far can we go? “Good enough.” As long as the sauce is smooth, who cares if it contains more preservatives than it does butter? How easily we accept something less than the best; how meanly we are willing to serve.

I have a little text—really the text of what I say today—that I suspect few of us have ever heard quoted, but it needs to be heard. It comes from the New Testament. A group was complaining that the twelve apostles were failing to administer to the poor. The apostles replied as follows: “It is not reason that we should leave the word of God, and serve tables” (Acts 6:2). This passage does not suggest that waiting on tables is wrong, but it does suggest that any service done with less than our best effort is not good enough for growth. We must not fool ourselves. When we give less than our best effort, we are spinning our wheels, we are not growing, we are not developing. The poverty of our effort must not limit what the Lord can do for us.

The final tragedy of “good enough” is that it blunts discrimination. We cannot develop the ability to make precise definitions by lumping together all the possible discriminations in the constantly degenerating category—and it does degenerate—of “good enough.” “Good enough” sounds as if it might be somewhat average. But think for a minute. “Good enough” is not the average but always the minimum, the lowest acceptable standard. The lowest acceptable standard is not even a terrestrial level; it is telestial. No one ever became a fit candidate for the celestial kingdom by operating constantly at a telestial level.

Rationalization—giving in to a deliberately mediocre standard—may be one of the obvious temptations of collective accountability. After all, “everybody’s doing it.” But a much more subtle temptation concerns responsibility for social decision-making. We live under the illusion that we can shift the responsibility for social decisions to “society,” remaining individually neutral while we gather information and consider alternatives before making our personal decisions. The tragic reality is that we cannot shift responsibility in this way. Social decisions reflect the aggregate of individual decisions. Those who stay home from elections, therefore, vote with the majority as clearly as if they had gone to the polls. To refrain is always to support the majority. Doing so is fine, if we understand what we are doing. But if we believe that refraining from voting means refraining from a decision, we are in a terrifying state. For example, consider parents who say, “I’m not going to make the decision that my children shall be baptized at the age of eight. I’m going to wait and let them make that decision for themselves.” Such parents have not put off a decision. Rather, they have made one, and their decision is “No.” Decisions are not neutral. We are for certain things and we are against certain things. Neutrality is just one more deceptive manifestation of the myth of collective accountability.

If, at this point, the problem seems to be shaping up clearly, what is the solution? To find the solution, we need to focus a little more on the problem. We must first recognize that the right to choose, which God has given to all of us, cannot be transferred, cannot be avoided, cannot be compromised. All choice is individual choice. Furthermore, individual responsibility is caught up in the very nature of individual choice. Sharing responsibility does not lessen individual responsibility. Our real problem, then, is not in deciding whether we choose or not. The Lord has decided that for us. We do choose! Our problem lies in making wise and significant choices. We need to remember that if the right to choose is God-given, the ability to discriminate is learned and developed. The process by which we choose wisely and significantly is given in the Doctrine and Covenants: “by study and also by faith” (D&C 88:118). All the secular training in the world is not enough without the direction of our Father in Heaven. Yet our Father in Heaven reserves his choicest blessings for those who can receive them.

For a historical sanction of this principle, consider our own Church history. The Lord let us try a celestial law, the law of consecration. But too many of us were telestial people. A few lived the celestial law triumphantly. A great number, though, found it a stumbling block; they were not capable of discriminating in a way that would make the great blessings possible. Now consider a modern example: since the days of the School of the Prophets, the Church has recognized the necessity for disciplined, trained intelligence. Our entire Church school system is a multi-million-dollar testament to the totality of our commitment to this ideal. The nagging questions that I ask myself, and that we should all ask ourselves, are these: How anxious are we to make ourselves more useful instruments in God’s hands? Do we want to serve meanly?

The Lord will use us, but only at the level at which we choose to serve. Remember the pitiful case of Samson. Like John the Baptist, Samson was a Nazarite, a consecrated man. Unfortunately, the Lord had to use Samson as a mere mechanical instrument of destruction. We will never know what Samson’s full potential might have been. By the end of his life, poor Samson had so blunted his discrimination that he could not understand his potential either. Samson reminds us that we are not saved as part of a holy race, part of the right church. The Church, in other words, provides the opportunity for individual—not collective—salvation. Granted, we believe in vicarious work for the dead, but we do not believe in vicarious education for the living. We must get education for ourselves.

Alma’s doctrine of restoration attests that we will carry our attitudes from mortal life into our post-mortal existence. I worry when someone says, “I am really not interested in learning here.” Is such a person going to be any more interested in learning on the other side? Of course not. I was making this point once when someone said to me, “Brother Thomas, we will have better teachers on the other side.” Here we go again—the myth of collective accountability. “It’s the teachers’ fault, not mine. I will have better teachers who will inspire me and make things interesting.” Once again, collective accountability shifts responsibility away, endlessly, helplessly, from the person who must finally answer.

Who is going to answer for us? The Lord is going to ask each of us the questions; we are going to have to have the answers. So many avenues to learning are available to us today. I would suggest that we get into the habit of a kind of a daily quiz in which we ask ourselves a simple question: What do I know today that I did not know yesterday?

Concerning the need for daily learning, I once saw an adult-education class entitled “Can You Help Your Child with Seventh-Grade Math?” Let me put it less tactfully: Are we an intellectual millstone around the necks of our children? They do not expect us to be an encyclopedia, but they have a right to expect us to talk through a problem. As someone has said so beautifully: “Education is a dialogue aimed at truth.” We must be able to participate in that dialogue. We must not excuse ourselves by claiming that we did not have a good opportunity for formal education when we were young. If we say that, we are simply trying to explain to the ocean while going underwater. We have all the opportunity that anyone can use right now. No one is going to care why we did not have the opportunity before. The real question is what are we doing now?

From time to time, I have parents come to me and say, “How can I interest my child in reading? He just never reads.” The answer to that question is so simple it is frightening. All I have to say is, “Do you read? Do you love to read? Do you talk about the things you read? At your dinner table is the conversation so completely about persons and things that you do not have a youngster who is interested in concepts?” Make no mistake—the Church’s theology is conceptual. We would not dream of sending a youngster off to school ill-clothed and poorly fed, but how blithely we send our children off to school and Sunday School totally unprepared to handle a concept, to be interested in a concept. Some children have never heard a concept discussed at home.

Our responsibility as parents here is manifest and inescapable. If we feel a little humble about our commitment to continuing education, I suggest we feel encouragement. After all, the hallmark of humility is not ignorance, but teachability. If some among us are feeling not only humble but also weak, let me offer a very personal bit of encouragement. Some may have heard me tell this story, but it is very dear to me.

When I was in high school, I was determined to be the heavyweight boxing champion of the world. Those were the Depression days, and boxing was the only quick way I knew to a million dollars. I was a big boy, and I easily won several amateur bouts in high school. I had visions of what I would gain in just a few short years. But I realized vaguely that I had not had very much competition, and I thought I would need a little help, perhaps, before becoming the “logical contender.” Then a man moved in next door, and as I got a look at his face I was delighted. I ran out to help him move in, and the first question I asked him was, “Are you a fighter?” He grinned and answered, “It does show, doesn’t it, son? Yes. I’ve had seventy or eighty pro bouts.” I said, “I’m a fighter!” He looked at me and said, “Well, you’re big enough.” I said, “I haven’t had any real instruction, however. Would you give me some? I’ve won all my bouts so far.” He responded, “Well, okay, come on over to my garage one of these days.”

I did not wait for one of these days. I was over that afternoon. He pulled out some big sparring gloves. He weighed about 120 or 125 pounds; I weighed 190. I stripped off my shirt and said, “I kind of outweigh you a little, don’t I?” He didn’t reply to that, but as he laced on his gloves he said, “Now, son, I fight from instinct. I can’t think before I hit you. If I see an opening, I’ll nail you. I want you to understand if maybe I hit you a little harder than you think I ought to, I’m not doing it on purpose.” I answered, “Oh, sure, I’ll take it easy on you, too.” He looked up at me, and he didn’t smile. He just said, “Don’t worry about it, son.”

The rest of the story is pitiful all the way. I never touch him—I never even touched him. After about thirty seconds, when I was obviously wide open and completely unaware, he hit me on the point of the chin. His huge sparring glove felt as if it had an iron bar in it. I went down like a sack of meal. I was not quite knocked out, but I was pretty dazed. As my head cleared and I looked up, I saw him taking off his gloves. I jumped up and said, “Oh, come on! I realize the difference between an amateur and a pro now, but you can help me.” He kept shaking his head and taking off his gloves. The vision of a million dollars began to fade. Almost in a panic I grabbed him and asked, “Won’t you help me?” He shook himself free. Just then a brisk young fly came flying by. He reached out and grabbed it. He said, “Now, son, you grab the next fly.” A moment or so later a senile old fly came within range, and I made a couple of passes at it. You just try this. I did not come close to grabbing it. He said, “That’s what’s wrong with you, son. Your reflexes aren’t fast enough. They never will be. There’s nothing you can do about that, boy. You’re kind of tall, though. Have you ever thought of playing basketball?”

Here was my whole world crashing about me. I went home. My mother was ill in bed, as she had been a good deal of her life. Actually, it was the last summer she lived. I was feeling pretty sorry for myself. I went in and told her what had happened. I said, “Why did it have to be this way for me? Why weren’t my reflexes faster?” I was complaining on and on about this, and I guess my mother got a little tired of it. She was in pain and finally she said, very firmly, “Oh, Bobby, what you have is enough!” Nothing my mother ever said to me has been so useful. “What you have is enough.” If we feel weak and we feel humble, may I add that what we have is enough, provided that—in the memorable phrase of Henry James—we are “the kind of a person on whom nothing is lost.” We never need be as ignorant as we are today. If we learn something today, tomorrow we will be better, and the next day, and the next.

We must not dwell hopelessly, fruitlessly, on the day when we are going to study, on the day when we are going to read all those good books instead of watching frivolous programs on television. We are living the life we intend to live. In the words of Richard L. Evans, “What is going to happen is happening.” Let us be sure, therefore, that our intent to do something has real meaning. Under the direction of our Father in Heaven, we can do so. We can keep our faces turned to the light of individual understanding and responsibility. He that hath eyes to see, let him see!