Credit: Aiden McManus

As far as I know, in most religions, vanity and pride are sins (or at least vices). I’m no theologian, but I can only guess that it has to do with putting yourself ahead of (or on par with) the divine.

Conversely, in most religions, faith is considered a virtue. And it’s almost an extension of humility. Faith is about accepting that your senses and reason are insufficient to reveal the true nature behind the universe and existence, and blindly placing your belief in the idea of the divine.

But if you think about it, faith is its own kind of pride or vanity. Faith is the idea that you already have the right idea — and about the biggest thing.

That’s it. You’ve made up your mind nothing is going to change it. You’re right, and anyone who thinks differently is wrong — bless (or damn) their poor, wretched souls.

But where’s the humility in that?

Of course, even science is based partly on faith. After all, the scientific method relies on our senses and our reason. It trusts (only) what we can observe and test. Science has faith in the very faculties that religion deems inherently fallible.

But its humility lies in that everything, no matter what, is always open to re-examination.

So with that, how can we keep ourselves from slipping into a culture of nihilism? To a place where nothing is certain and everything is meaningless?

"All is Vanity" by C. Allan Gilbert

A couple of weeks ago, I had the pleasure of watching a talk by Slavoj Žižek. He’s kind of like the Werner Herzog of continental philosophy (a Laconian to be exact) and also happens to be a professor at the Institute for Sociology, Ljubljana, and at the European Graduate School.

Zizek gave his talk at the 2009 annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion. It’s this shindig where academics and clergy from all faiths and countries get together to discuss things like God, the meaning of life, and not the internet. The event is huge.

Anywaysm Zizek was part of a “wild card session” where the topic was “The Death of God: A Continuing Currency?” Some of the ground that Zizek covered was how God’s greater plan has nothing to do with the world being an unfair and unjust place. Rather, it’s just that the universe is imperfect and full of bulls**t, so we have to all work together to deal with it (which ties in nicely with his own brand of Marxism). He explored concepts like how when Jesus died on the cross, it was like God committed suicide, and even posited his own, hilarious interpretation of the book of Job.

The clip is a long one (35 min), but if you have a short attention span, fast-forward to the last 5 minutes. His conclusion is succinct, humorous, and generally charming.

iPhone Version

Print publishing is seen as a lot more authoritative than blogs because of the investment put into it.

With a blog, you just write and publish. With a piece of print, someone was hired to assign the story/beat to someone who was hired to write it, and when the writer files it, it’s then vetted by people who were hired to proof it, fact check it, and edit it for length and tone. And then, the publishers pays to have it printed and distributed to points-of-sale and subscribers.

A lot of capital is invested in bringing a piece of printed content to market, and that’s a cue for consumers that that content is at least worth considering. This also goes for both consumer magazine, which do less editing and fact checking, and online newspapers, which have all the same costs minus the actual printing/distribution ones.

The content may be good or bad, but a lot of paid professionals were involved in creating it. And that says something to the audience.

The way that interwebs have eroded the barriers to publishing, it has also eroded the gage that consumers use to gage authority and credibility. To publish now requires no capital beyond an internet connection.

Publishers don’t need to focus on ROI anymore. They can be hobbyists or activists or sycophants, and their content can still be very well trafficked. They can game the game, and consumers are left with fewer and fewer ways to gage what content is worth trusting.

This is a problem for everyone: consumers, publishers, advertisers, and PR folks.

An over-saturated publishing market is drowning authoritative content. Consumers are less sure who to trust. Advertisers are losing the consumer reach that authority channels once offered. And PR folks have less and less access to authoritative, unbiased third-parties.

Over all, there’s just a lost less beach front mind share than there used to be. Attention spans are fleeting, so even if you can measure the effectiveness of an online campaign much more accurately than you can an offline one, it doesn’t run as deep.

Realtime life in the stream is just a little too fast paced to make an enduring impression. Brands end up having to run a rat-race, and as Lily Tomlin put it: “The problem with winning the rat race is you’re still a rat.”

The more we vie for consumers’ attention, the more we might be pushing them toward entrenched cynicism, apathy, and possibly outright nihilism. So the question becomes, what can brands do to prevent their consumers from losing faith and interest, and falling victim to social media exhaustion.