Convocation | Ben Williams

September 13, 2017

Like all of you, I spent the last week in the wilderness. It is a place where I am comfortable, sometimes even more at home, in fact, than I am in civilization or with the hubbub of big cities. At one point on the junior trip we talked about why we go into the woods like this? There were lots of good answers – to get outside our comfort zones, to push ourselves physically and mentally, to gain appreciation for the modern conveniences on which we rely, to do something we wouldn’t do on our own.

I can say that but most who know me well know my other motives. They’ll say, quite accurately, that I go into the woods largely because I want to fish. Fair enough. I have apparently been so unrestrained in my sharing on the topic of fishing that folks now steer anything fish-related my way. That’s how I got a pretty colorful hat from Mr. Weis last week … and a book from another Catie that I read this summer called the “The Big One,” a catchy title … especially for a fishing book. It is the story of an epic fishing tournament that has taken place for nearly a century on the island of Martha’s Vineyard off the coast of Cape Cod.

In the particular year that the book focuses on, the whole tournament is roiled in controversy because the biggest striped bass, a nearly 60 pound monster caught by a local who has won the competition five times in previous years, was found to have ingested a handful of lead weights – nearly 2 pounds of them, in fact. The runner-up fish was only a pound lighter, so you do the math. Who wins? What do the tournament directors do? Well, that’s what the book is about, ultimately. All the stuff early on about where and how to fish, what lures or bait to use, what techniques are required in your retrieve all devolve into a single question: who wins the contest?

Think about it. What would you do in this situation? Knowing, of course, that your decision would likely be challenged by whatever side was not believed. It might even be challenged by both? You should be aware, too, that this big bass was the second fish discovered to have ingested lead weights. The first one was a bluefish that was also tops in its category. In that case, though, the tournament official at the weigh-in simply decided on his own that the bluefish was a legal fish and accepted it at the full weigh-in weight, with the lead weights in its belly. So precedent – of a sort – had been set. Not surprisingly, though, that only made matters more complicated. So … is truth universal here? Is there even truth? I guess it depends on what you think truth is. If it is simply what you believe, then there is plenty of truth. But can you have truths that are completely contradictory, and still call them truths? Don’t they become just opinions in such a situation?

The fisherman at the center of all of this surely knew how and where to catch big fish. He won the tournament five times. Shouldn’t we trust him? He must be telling the truth, right? And when a decision is reached and winner declared, is that person the “true” winner? Just because a decision has been made – does that necessarily make the outcome the right and truthful one? But maybe the most important question is why does any of this matter? Who cares – really – about a fishing tournament? Or whether some guy cheated or not? To us, obviously, it doesn’t matter at all. We could care less about what happens on a little island off the coast of Massachusetts to a bunch of over the top crazy fishermen. Enough said.

But what if we aren’t talking about fish? What if we apply the same standard of truth to more current and pressing issues, like who is to blame for the violence and loss of life in Charlottesville, Virginia? Or whether freedom of speech in this country entitles any of us to freedom from responsibility for what we say? What rights exactly does the U. S. Constitution with its various amendments protect? Can we agree on that truth universally? Or should we place our faith in the Declaration of Independence and the “self-evident truths” that I read at the Sunset Ceremony. Are all men created equal? Do we all have equal access to our unalienable rights?

Or what if we go even further afield? We just experienced – in some portions of the country – a full solar eclipse. For much of mainstream culture in this country, that was an astronomical event, the byproduct of aligning orbits which led the moon to block out the sun completely for some period of time – 2 minutes and one second apparently, at least in Oregon. As one observer noted, “It was a chance to see what our solar system would look like without a sun.”

But others saw this not as an alignment of planets but as an omen, a sign that other events are looming on the horizon, an expression of the relationship – some say hostile and others say amorous between the sun and the moon. These assessments are perhaps more spiritual than scientific, though they too rely on centuries of study and history. The coda of meaning in cultures around the world about the relationship of the sun and the moon is as broad as it is diverse. So are they all wrong? Or at least some of them? If we can demonstrate the why of an eclipse through science and physics and astrophysics, does that mean that other interpretations of the event should be ignored or discarded? Can there be data driven truth and disagreement?

That same issue came up a few days ago when the homeland security advisor was asked in the wake of Hurricanes Harvey and Irma about the relationship between climate change and the strength of this year’s storms. “Causality,” he said, “is outside of my ability to analyze right now.” That’s certainly a fair response. We are talking about highly complex systems. But what if we couple the information we have on storms with the unprecedented fire season in the west. At present 137 major fires are currently active in the West – with California, Washington, Oregon, Montana and Idaho hosting the majority of the blazes. One million acres are on fire in Washington and Oregon alone. Would the juxtaposition of the extreme drought and the extreme storms tell us anything helpful about global weather dynamics? Is there any analysis that might well yield truth?

Truth – especially one that we can share – has long been a human objective. The possibility of it is present in all of the great documents – the Koran, the Bible, the Torah, the Magna Carta, the I Ching, the Declaration of Independence, and a host of others. Each is founded on a conception of man in this world, on our relationship to the divine, to each other, and to the institutions we build. We depend upon those assertions to order our lives, our work, and our beliefs. Yet we also have a responsibility to examine those assertions and the truths upon which they are founded. We need to know why we do what we do, why we believe what we believe, and whether we have asked the right questions along the way.

The officials running the fishing tournament I described at the outset of this talk had that responsibility as well, and frankly they got off to a rough start. They decided, after a very contentious meeting the day after the big fish was weighed that the fish would be disqualified, “for the integrity of the derby.” But, they did not disqualify the bluefish with the same problem, virtually assuring that the word “integrity” would not be associated with their decision. And it wasn’t. After a revolt by many interested parties, including contestants, the contest officials met again and … changed their minds. Both fish were allowed, though the weight of the lead was deducted from the overall weight of the fish, knocking both the striped bass and the bluefish down to second place in their respective categories. Peace returned, which was welcome after the tumult. As one contestant said, “I just want to go fishing.”

A lack of truth on any issue has its damaging effects. It is hard to live with disagreement or to lack confidence about a given set of facts or understandings. But that does not mean that such things are bad. Comfort is nice – as we noted in the Outings Week discussions, perhaps as an end goal, but not as an operating one. We can’t expect to learn anything if we are comfortable at all times with where we are or with what we believe we already know. And surety assumed too quickly is more often than not a recipe for regret. Learning is about testing what we know and discovering what we don’t.

There is no more glorious opportunity, really, not so that we can tear down all the knowledge, understanding, and conviction we have come to rely on, but so that we can affirm all that we discover. There is truth everywhere. We just need to look for it, test it, share it. Who knows ultimately what we’ll discover. But the search itself may teach us more than we can imagine.

This, my friends, is the real “big one” … and for once … I’m not talking about fishing.

Welcome to another glorious year on the Mesa!

 

[This speech was edited for length]