Humans are social creatures. We are born in families, raised in communities, and legally reside in governments. We eat food we didn’t grow, wear clothes we didn’t make, use words we didn’t think up, play games we didn’t invent, sing songs we didn’t compose, and abide by teachings we didn’t originate. Although we are individually creative, our lives are profoundly dependent on the truth expressions of others.
Within the native groups into which we are born and live, there are all sorts of elective groups that we can choose to join and possibly leave: hobby groups, athletic teams, associations, companies, congregations, schools, orchestras, and political parties to name a few.
Many of our personal truths are sourced and confirmed in the truth exchanges that take place within these groups. These exchanges hone our skills and shape our understandings.
Different understandings among the members of a small group regarding a common concern are resolved by one-on-one truth interactions. Through these pairwise encounters, members come to know in what way an emerging understanding is relevant to each member of the group and why. Understandings that are personally true for all members of a group as a result of these pairwise exchanges can be thought of as group-resolved truths.
Establishing group-resolved truths via these pairwise encounters is numerically impossible for large groups. There are ninety (10 x 9) distinct individual pairings in a team of 10, roughly ten thousand (100 x 99) in a congregation of 100, and almost a million (1,000 x 999) in a small community of 1,000.
Although establishing group-resolved truths via pairwise exchanges is not possible in large groups, the need for shared understandings and concerted action doesn’t go away. That need is all too obvious in the case of a national emergency. For large groups, a hierarchy forms among the members to address the need for coordination. Exhaustive pairwise exchanges still take place, but only in sufficiently small subgroups starting with the leaders at the top. The understandings that the leaders wish the whole group to hold are broadcast down the “chain of command” via appropriately authorized personal truth expressions. These authorized expressions are discussed and clarified through one-on-one exchanges at each level but seldom between individuals at different levels. The overall general consensus that results can be thought of as a group-authorized truth.
A brief look at the origin of basketball illustrates how quickly group-authorized truths can emerge in elective groups, even large ones. James Naismith conceived the game in 1891. He was a local leader in the YMCA organization in Springfield, Massachusetts. His goal was to create an interesting and nonviolent indoor sport for men. He posted a set of 13 rules on the gym’s bulletin board, mounted two peach baskets at both ends of the gym, divided the gym class into two teams, explained the game, and started play with a soccer ball. Naismith writes, “When the class arrived, I . . . told them that I had another new game . . . I promised them that if this was a failure, I would not try any more experiments. I then read the rules from the bulletin board and proceeded to organize the game.”[1]
The Thirteen Rules were group-authorized truths flowing from a leader trying to engage the class in a wholesome activity. The class was a small, elective group. Those who didn’t want to play were free to leave.
Naismith continues, “As was to be expected, they made a great many fouls at first; and as a foul was penalized by putting the offender on the side lines until the next goal was made, sometimes half of a team would be in the penalty area. It was simply a case of no one knowing just what to do. . . . The game was a success from the time the first ball was tossed up. . . . Only a few days after we began having a gallery.”[2]
The ramifications of the truths embedded in the rules quickly became group-authorized truths for the class through one-on-one exchanges that characterize personal instruction, play, and penalties. The group of those interested in basketball flourished as word got around. The rules were printed in a school paper in 1892. A French translation of the rules appeared in the chapter, “Le Basketball,” in Les Sports pour Tous by Ern. Weber. The first set of girls’ rules was printed in 1898. “As early as 1900 . . . basketball [was] an important part of the [physical education] program for Japanese women.”[3]
What started out as a game in a gym class has evolved into a global sport. Changes in the rules are still needed to meet the different needs, abilities, and interests of the participants. But now the desired changes are discussed and developed among the leaders before being broadcast to the leading participants. Rule changes are further discussed when passed down the line of basketball enthusiasts. However, actually playing basketball provides most of the motivation and opportunity for the extensive one-on-one exchanges that convert the authorized modifications into group-authorized truths.
The authorized expressions of the leaders of large groups are central to understanding the spirit and direction the groups are taking. Their broadcasts “light up” the world relational web (WRW) in the regions frequented by those interested in the group. The leaders are like the stars by which we recognize the constellations in the night sky. But just as the stars fade when the sun comes out, their broadcasts pale against the radiations of the multitudes of those who put the authorized rules and conventions into play. Thus, Frank Deford’s Sports-Illustrated article “Shooting for Three” may have lit up the night sky of the basketball sports world back in 1967 when the three-point shot was being introduced, but where are his carefully scripted expressions in the exchanges among friends discussing a recent three-point shot that won or lost the game?
An important convention of basketball play was left out of Naismith’s rules. Without the understanding that every participant is expected to abide by the rules of the game, play deteriorates. We now turn to the group out of which this critical convention arose: humankind.
In terms of membership, the WRW is an infinitesimally small component of the global relational web (GRW) of living things on earth, all going about their versions of the game of life. Although we are focusing on those members whose expressions are restricted to how truth is humanly understood and communicated, the game being played will still be called “life.”
In one sense, life is a free-for-all. We are free to appropriate the personal truth expressions of others that aid or impinge our play. We are naturally self-guided by the conventions of our families, communities, and interest groups. These groups are diverse, and their leaders, like us, are self-guided by analogous conventions.
In another sense, life is highly constrained. Everyone is subject to the enforced law of the land even though that law differs in who gets educated and in what ways; who gets to play and in what roles; who gets health care and for what needs; who gets paid and how much; and who lays down the law and under what constraints. The consequences of these laws to our material lives are immense and concerning.
In basketball, teams tally wins and losses, but don’t change the rules. In life, political parties struggle for the power to change the rules—and in their favor. In either case and in the long run, the health of the game is more important than who wins, but the self-promotional issues, both personal and political, confronting the party members and leaders in politics are obvious and ever present. The issues arise out of a complex hierarchy of mixed loyalties to self, party, government, and humanity. History is filled with the consequences of these conflicting loyalties.
Spirited discussions in America undermined the loyalty of the early colonists to the King of England. In their Declaration of Independence, they asserted that their God-created and unalienable rights of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” were not being fairly represented. They declared their independence in 1776, and a new nation was born when they won the war.
The Articles of Confederation was their first attempt to fashion a legal framework that would accommodate the spirited competition of the political parties representing their diverse economic, religious, and cultural interests. It was flawed. The Constitution of the United States of America emerged eight years later out of a need for and a greater loyalty to a federal government.
Although the Constitution is still a beacon attracting immigrants from around world to the spirit of the unalienable rights it protects, the Constitution’s ability to hold together and serve the heated interests of a rapidly growing nation was tested less than a century later in what is called the Civil War by some and the War Between the States by others. Leading up to the war, loyalty to the federal government plummeted among secessionists in the southern states. Interestingly, the professed loyalty to humanity remained high on both sides, even though racial disparities dominated the political rhetoric. The complexity and consequence of those disparities are captured in this excerpt from Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address:
Both [parties] read the same Bible and pray to the same God; and each invokes his aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces; but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered— that of neither were answered fully. The Almighty has his own purposes. “Woe unto the world because of offenses! for it must needs be that offenses come; but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.” . . . Yet, if God will that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bond-man’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said: “The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”
The legal rights of those Americans who had been enslaved were substantially changed as a consequence of the War Between the States. The Thirteenth Amendment, ratified in 1865, outlawed slavery and involuntary servitude. The Fifteenth Amendment, ratified in 1870, stated “that the right to vote shall not be denied or abridged on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” Strangely, it was not until 1920 that the Nineteenth Amendment assuring that “the right . . . to vote shall not be denied or abridged . . . on account of sex” became a part of the constitution. This was more than eight decades after the first Women’s Rights Convention 1848 declared among other things, that men have compelled women “to submit to laws, in the formation of which she had no voice,” essentially the same concern that sparked the American Revolution https://www.nps.gov/wori/learn/historyculture/declaration-of-sentiments.htm.
These amendments suggest a healthy and vibrant growth in both the quality and the breadth of participation. This growth reflects the creative spirit out of which the WRW has arisen. However, progress in free expression in the WRW can be reversed and dramatically was a decade before women got the right to vote. This happened in Germany when a charismatic demagogue, Adolph Hitler, emerged out of the chaos of a world war and the Great Depression. His narrow loyalties to self vastly outweighed his broader loyalties to multiparty government and to humanity. He promised his supporters a Third Reich that would live a thousand years.
Many were drawn to his angry and vengeful spirit. In fact, he “came to power through participation in Germany’s democratic process . . . [even though] he and his ruffians were anything but democrats or constitutionalists at heart.”[4] Once in office and in control of the police, he used whatever means necessary to silence his detractors. Some members of opposing parties were murdered; others were sent to concentration camps; opposing public media were shut down.
Although a dramatic economic recovery ensued shortly after Hitler took control, his party and government came to a devastating end after another world war that he himself had fomented. Seventy-five million persons were killed. His country and much of Europe were left in ruins. Along the way, Hitler had incited a divisive spirit among his followers so deep that they would gas or murder six million Jews and even more non-Jews. Most were fellow Germans and Europeans whom Hitler had inspired his supporters to hate.
This cursory take on few historical events reveals how quickly political truths can change with the times. We are attracted to leaders that can bring together those facts most relevant to our interests and flesh them out in appealing narratives. The biasing downside of that appeal is obvious but easily overlooked. There is another downside. The spirits of the groups that command our allegiance tend to become the spirits of the truth exchanges that fill our personal truth galaxies. When ruling party loyalty exceeds governmental loyalty, spirits of deception and dominance enter the personal truth galaxies of the loyalists. When that happens, spirits of divisive tribalism and selfish imperialism soon beckon. Eventually, all parties suffer, the innocent as well, especially should war and even genocide ensue.
Generally speaking, we want the loyalties of our leaders to be in line with our own. We often assume that to be the case for the leaders we support. However, the validity of that assumption can be difficult to ferret out. We simply are not privy to the first-hand-information being exchanged between our leaders and their close associates. When the goals of our political leaders are power and their loyalties to humanity and government are small, truth is simply not a concern. Such leaders have no reason to raise an issue of any truth that counters their self-interested desires. When a contravening issue does arise, they naturally discount it with distracting and derisory spins. They would rather tell us what to think than have us think. Demagogues, autocrats, and dictators gain the upper hand when enough of us fall in step with the spirit of their directives and that spirit’s inevitable effect on our own loyalties.
Expressions stemming from party loyalty are culturally dependent. They come and go as do the associated constellations of party leaders and their group-authorized truths. This will continue until there is a universal loyalty to humanity and compatible governance. Then things will change. We turn now to where that change is underway, our galaxies of institutional truth.
[1] Naismith, James, 1996, Basketball: Its Origin and Development, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, 56.
[2] Ibid., 57.
[3] Ibid., 59, 151, 168, 153.
[4] Davies, Norman, 1997, Europe: A History, Pimlico, 966.
