By: Jim Taylor

True believers


Sometimes themes converge in weird ways. That’s what happened recently to an editorial colleague of mine, who found herself attending two professional conventions in the same building, in the same room, less than three weeks apart.

        One was a group of editors. Predictably, they spent much of their time discussing the value of editing—the importance of helping clients publish prose unencumbered by flaws, omissions, discrepancies, inconsistencies, or redundancies.

        The other was a group of marketers. Yes, the people who deluge us with direct-mail offers, phone calls that interrupt supper, and e-mails that fill our inboxes with stock markets tips, discount diet pills, and medications promising sexual prowess.

Different businesses, obviously. But they discussed the same concerns, Antonia Morton noted. At both conventions, she heard the same phrase several times: “educating the client.”

        Of course, editors all want to “educate” their clients to be more literate—and thus to use their editorial services more. But marketers? Aren’t they totally different animals?

        “They focused on teaching people to be more accepting of direct-mail and telemarketing – which most of us in the non-marketing world consider an unmitigated pain in the ass,” Antonia said with characteristic bluntness.



Everyone believes in something

Antonia found herself wondering what real difference there was between “the self-serving falsity of marketers hoping to foist themselves on an unwilling public,” and editors like her – who just want more people to use their services for what they consider a public good.

        But should the dilemma surprise us? Every profession has its true believers. Cigarette manufacturers probably convince themselves they fulfill a necessary social function.

        Even atheists believe in something—atheism.

        Granted, religious belief has taken some hard knocks recently. Richard Dawkins’ book The God Delusion rode the New York Times top-ten list for over six months; it was joined there by Christopher Hitchens’ God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.

        But Dawkins in particular misses an important point. He too believes in something. He believes in science.

        As reviewer George Johnson wrote in Scientific American, these books “put theological doctrines to the same kind of scrutiny that any scientific doctrine must withstand. No one who has witnessed the merciless dissection of a new paper in physics would describe that atmosphere as overly polite.”

Precisely. Physicists believe in the process of winnowing truth from supposition. Surgeons believe in surgery, pharmacists in prescription drugs, lawyers in the law, and politicians in politics.

        Some people believe in the military. And sports fans believe in, well, almost anything.

        Everyone, in fact, believes in something.



Response to life

And those beliefs are not subject to reason. That’s where Dawkins and his ilk go off the rails.

        Beliefs are, at their root, an emotional response to life experience. Beliefs assure us that we play a meaningful role in the universe – even if the universe itself is meaningless.

        So no one will never persuade an editor that a misplaced comma doesn’t matter. Or a telemarketer that marketing is unimportant.

        Only a life-altering experience can make us re-assess our beliefs.

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Copyright © 2007 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups permitted; all other rights reserved.
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