Life in Activism: Be Skeptical of Your Skepticism

Photo by Laura Chouette on Unsplash

We Americans are skeptical of just about everything these days. Long term polling from Gallup shows a marked decline in confidence among Americans in practically every major national institution:

• Organized religion

• The military

• The Supreme Court

• Banks

• Public schools

• Newspapers

• Congress

• Television news

• The presidency

• The police

• The medical system

• The criminal justice system

• Big business

• Tech companies

• Higher education

In fact, since the start of the 21st century, Gallup has measured a notable decline in confidence in all but two institutions: small business and organized labor. Since confidence in organized labor has consistently been below 30% the entire time and remains there, that leaves small business as the only major national institution that is both popular and not experiencing a decline in public confidence.

In a way, we should be proud of ourselves for our increased national skepticism. After all, skepticism has been instrumental in developing the modern world. The scientific, political and economic transformations that liberated the vast majority of the population from experiencing only short, brutish lives as subsistence farmers under autocratic governments would not have been possible without more people taking an increasingly skeptical eye toward the world around them.

However, in another way, there is something comically absurd about this across the board decline in confidence in . . . everything. You would think that if the population of a country was losing confidence in its government, legal system, schools, military, religions, medical system, media, financial system and economic system that it would be undergoing some sort of catastrophic societal collapse. However, as someone who has lived in America over the past half century, I for one did not notice a collapse taking place. What I did notice was crime decreasing, median household income rising, poverty declining, life expectancy rising, graduation rates increasing, tolerance and diversity increasing, and scientific wonders abounding. I noticed those things, but missed the dissent into dystopia that triggered a decline in confidence, or maintained an already low confidence, in literally everything except small business (which I can tell you, as a small business owner, you really should not have total confidence in, lol).

Honestly, I think something else is happening here. Instead of every aspect of our national life getting worse, we have become skeptical of everything except for our own skepticism. It is as though we have never stopped to wonder: Am I perhaps being too hard on everything?