Social Facadism, or The Battle for Our Generation

“Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: 'What! You too? I thought I was the only one.'"
-C.S. Lewis-

Last night, I went on a date.  It was good.  That's not exactly what this post is about.

What it is about is hard to define.  A lot of things have been sort of coalescing in my mind lately-a mixture of things I'm learning, things I thought I already knew, and things I'm pretty sure I should have known. 

Those who know me well know that I am somewhat hesitant to engage in most forms of social interaction.  Especially with large groups of people.  A long process of observation and analysis at Ward Prayer every Sunday as well as other social functions with my peers has led me to something of an understanding about this.  At these functions, the predominant form of interaction tends to be a large circle of young people. 

These "social circles" shift in their size, and their specific occupants, sometimes even merging with other circles.  Within these circles, young people (especially in mixed gender settings) take part in conversations that generally focus on very superficial topics.  Volume is loud.  Jokes are told.  Little communication of any real value takes place.  To the outside observer (or at least to me) it becomes clear quite quickly that the people in these circles would not normally behave in this manner--that is, they are putting up a sort of social facade to protect themselves.

This is not a new concern for me.  It is a large part of my hesitancy to engage in social discourse.  I'd like to be the kind of man that is completely genuine and real, but the pressure of social risk implied in these situations often leads me to unconsciously put up my own social facade.  The saddest part is that the risk implied in these situations is entirely about what others think of me.  I generally avoid talking about topics that are controversial or important for fear of being judged by others for my viewpoints.  This leads to a situation where raucousness is substituted for actual substance in conversation.  The result is not pretty.  It is not fulfilling, only self-perpetuating.  The more one engages in this sort of "risk free conversation", the more difficult it becomes to talk to others in a real, sincere, earnest manner.

The part of this concern that is new  relates back to the opening line of this post.  I went on a date last night.  It was nice.  We went to the gymnastics meet at the U.  New experience.  Fun.  Afterwards we went to the Institute for an after-party they were holding.  As my date and I stood eating our french toast, the conversation turned to this very subject.  I began to look around the room, and see all of these young people.  All of us fighting this same battle.  To some degree I guess every generation has to fight it.  For me it is almost never a question of winnability; I spent far too much time reading hero stories in my formative years.  To me, going out guns-a-blazing is as good as a win if you're standing for the right thing.  So, when I say that I was concerned, it has nothing to do with giving up.  To the contrary, the level of risk I saw as I stood there seemed to spur me forward, to urge me on.

I think many of us believe that growing up is a natural process, that with each passing year you simply become wiser and more mature by default.  But what if it isn't?  What if (and I'm relatively certain that this is the case) the only way for all of us to mature to the level that we need to is by real, concentrated effort to become better?  What if by choosing to simply engage in risk-free conversation, we're putting ourselves into a rut that we will still be stuck in when we're forty and fifty years old and the Church and the world need us to be the wise leaders our parents were by that age?

But the risk, as it turns out, is more immediate than that.  The C.S. Lewis quote at the top of this post implies that without real sharing, meaningful friendships cannot be born.  Until we're willing to open up to each other, and find out that--guess what?--most of us aren't crazy or standing alone on those difficult, controversial topics, we'll continue to walk around, hiding in our shell of self-imposed-social-hermitry.

As my date and I discussed this for quite some time, and as I've discussed it to a large degree with others, it's become obvious that there is no clear cut answer for this.  There is not a "magic-bullet" that will simply cure this societal ail.  The only thing that can is for each of us to step up, and reach outside our shell.  In nearly every case, this has led to a very positive experience for me.  In a few cases, I've been ridiculed by those who should have stood by me.  So it has always been for those doing the right, I suppose.  The important thing is that in either case, if we do so, we'll be following the advice of Lehi to his elder sons to "Awake, my sons; put on the armor of righteousness. Shake off the chains with which ye are bound, and come forth out of obscurity, and arise from the dust." (2 Ne 1:23; emphasis added).  Think about it.  The risk is too high not to.

Living on the Verge of Failure

Last Thursday I got a text from the 2nd Counselor in the Bishopric of my ward.  The dreaded text: "Can you speak in sacrament meeting this Sunday?"  I told him that I could, and with such short notice, he told me that he would just let me pick my own topic.  Some people might find this a relief, but to me, it was a nightmare.  Friday and Saturday I thought and thought about what to say, and managed to put together a decent outline on obedience and repentance, but something was missing, and I knew it.

In the middle of the first talk in sacrament meeting, it came to me--Factors of Safety.

Say you're building a bridge (something we MechEs rarely do, but this is a hypothetical), and you figure that the biggest thing that will ever drive across the bridge weighs 5 tons.  You could design your bridge to hold exactly 5 tons, and feel satisfied.  In this case, your safety factor would be exactly 1. 

Here's the problem with that:
It turns out that when you design something with a safety factor of exactly 1, it's what my Strength of Materials prof calls "on the verge of failure."  A fly, a crack in the deck of the bridge, that extra sandwich the truck driver ate for lunch, any of these things could be enough to cause the bridge to fail under a load it should have been able to hold, per your design.

Solution?  Say you figure the bridge needs to hold 5 tons.  Design it for 10 tons, just in case.  You now have a safety factor of 2.

Life, as it turns out, is a bit like this.  In Alma 36:1, the prophet Alma reminds his son, Helaman, that "inasmuch as ye shall keep the commandments of God ye shall prosper".  The words "inasmuch as" here could just as easily be rendered "to the degree that", leaving us with "To the degree that ye keep the commandments of God ye shall prosper."

It turns out, there are various degrees of obedience.  For instance, we're commanded to read our scriptures every day.  Technically, I suppose that if I read one verse of scripture every day, I am being obedient to the commandment; however, if I'm doing just the bare minimum, it begs the question: am I living my life on the verge of failure?  If so, and if we desire the blessings of the Lord in the full degree to which he desires to give them to us, we ought to ask ourselves what kind of safety factors we need to introduce into our lives.