Stop Selling the Ideal

Reviewbrah was right all along

Fast Food for Thought

One of my favourite YouTube channels is TheReportOfTheWeek. Mr. The Week, better known as “Reviewbrah,” is a master fast food reviewer and short wave radio enthusiast. He is a young man who defies contemporary expectations of what viewers are looking for on social media. There are no quick cuts; no loud, exaggerated introductions; no sign at all that Reviewbrah is doing anything other than what he wants to do. It is so refreshing to see someone be themselves on YouTube.

Of all the things to love about Reviewbrah (including his penchant for wearing vintage suits every day), one of the dearest to me is his refusal to review the platonic form of new fast food products. He approaches the subjects of his reviews as concrete particulars. Yes, there are promotional images of a certain new burger, carefully manipulated to look beautiful for the camera. But that pretzel bun is only as pillowy as the one in the customer’s hands.

(Scroll to 6:00 for one of my favourite burns of all time.)

This is how we access food products. There are plenty of items that sound good on paper, or in a picture, but devotees are made or lost based on their personal experience of an item as it was served to them. Reviewbrah understands this well. If an ingredient is missing from some joint’s new chili fries, or if the food tastes cold or stale, this experience will be reflected in his assessment of the product and, cumulatively, his assessment of the restaurant.

“But that’s not as good as it can be! It really is so delicious when done right!” OK, but I don’t have a potentially delicious, ideal fried apple pie in my hand. Not only that, my experience of fast food emporiums is such that I don’t know who on staff is actually invested in manifesting the ideal apple pie.

In my time as a fast food worker my colleagues and I only approached the ideal because we worked for franchise owners we loved and respected.¹ I’d suggest if restauranteurs of much larger global chains want to produce the ideal product on a regular basis, you might start by paying your employees a living wage, with health benefits.

Burgers: Just the Tip of the Iceberg (Lettuce)

Believe it or not this post is not an extended warning to restauranteurs to up their game. I have a question from a reader regarding this topic, so that will have to wait for another day. What I am interested in is the difference between the abstract ideal and the thing itself, and how institutions use the “pitch” of the ideal to sustain faith and loyalty.

The Religious Example

Catholicism is the topic I probably know most about. Yet paradoxically, the more I encounter the faith in the concrete, the more my knowing fades away. I wish I could say this primarily in a “the mystery draws me deeper” type of way, but I don’t. I experience cycles of de-idealization where my encounters with concrete, destructive elements of the Church take a machete to my beautiful field of Church knowledge.

Does that sound depressing? A bit, yes. But it also means I have more room in my field of knowledge to cultivate something new. And it could be something more hopeful, if only by virtue of being true.

It is often hard to access what is true when the ideal is presented to us the thing that matters above all other examples and considerations.

You might think “pitching the ideal” in the realm of Catholicism would refer to the fundamentals of evangelization. But in the Catholic world I have inhabited my whole life, I know pitching the ideal primarily as a defense tactic. Someone naturally observes all the concrete signs that the Catholic Church cannot be the Church of Jesus Christ. The Church has evil people, has historically done evil things, and shows little sign of forthcoming institutional repentance.

The response to these concerns can be found in the latter chapters of any apologetical book.: “What you are describing is not the true Church. Those who have done these horrible things are not true Catholics. They don’t represent what we, the Body of Christ, are about.”

Don’t judge the mid apple pie you were just given, judge the apple pie it is meant to be.

Hm.

I confess there is a theological uniqueness of the ideal vs. concrete distinction in the Catholic Church’s self-understanding. Catholics do not believe the Catholic ideal to be attainable or controllable by humans alone. Indeed, no matter how Catholics behave, the identity of the Church as the Church of Christ is stable. With that in mind, it is only natural that this is what ends up being emphasized to critics: a degree of surrender to the truth of what ails the Church (concrete acts by its membership), but the assurance that it is still Christ’s Church.

I know I am not the only one growing tired with the defense of what the Church is at its essence, how it is holy because of Christ and not because of us, and how those who defile or misrepresent it effectively do not represent what the Church really is.

For all intents and purposes, the Catholic Church is the Church encountered by all of creation, for good and for ill.² If I encounter a Catholic who, even in imperfection, strives to live a virtuous life out of love for God and neighbour, I can better see the reflection of the ideal held up for me. If I encounter a Catholic jerk-face (all the more if they are in leadership!) not only may I not come to know the ideal Church, I may not even get to know a good, loving God at all. Hypocrisy is the faith-killer.

I do not come to all this with pure cynicism or jadedness. In no way have a lost total hope in the Church, which is saying a lot in view of some of the Church’s faults I know most intimately. Namely, myself. My weakness, my sin. But I have only become more convicted with time that the Church I experience irl is inseparable from the Church in its highest abstract ideal.

The way the concept of faith was taught to me only pushes me further in this direction. Faith is not a wholesale imagining from naught. The “leap” of faith is only possible with a tower of logical and empirical foundations to first climb. We Catholics have a crucial role in informing those foundations.

Asking someone to believe in the ideal because the ideal is attractive isn’t enough. Behave like Christ and the world may entertain the idea that this is his Church.

The National Identity Example

From a society, to an institution, right on down to the individual, humans are inclined to defend our idealized selves when our actions paint a contrary picture. I observe in my own life how long it has taken me to come to a sense of flexibility in my self-understanding/ego. It is a learned thing, and an impossible habit to enter into without a commitment to vulnerability.

In moments of violent tragedy such as the mass shootings routinely experienced in the United States, many of our social media feeds are flooded with a sentiment that I believe is harmful to victims, and to progress: “This is not who we are.”

While this kind of understandable and well-intentioned statement is expressed as a lament—perhaps a longing for a time when things in America were perceived as better—its lack of honesty about the long-term state of affairs does little to impel change.

For change to happen, there must be the vulnerability to accept what is demonstrably true about the nation’s destructive patterns, and a willingness to put down narratives that defensively idealize the American identity. Paradoxically, this kind of flexibility of identity is the only thing that will allow the nation to become more…ideal.

The concrete structures and policies of the United States have undermined its stated ideals from the outset. Encountering the American ideal has been the fortune of a privileged few.

The Declaration of Independence (July 4, 1776) famously proclaims that all men are created equal, and are endowed by their creator with the “unalienable” (aka inalienable) rights of Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. From the get-go, nothing of this ideal applied to women, Black people, slaves, indigenous nations, the list goes on.

I have no trouble understanding why the American Revolution was needed from the colonist perspective. But the popular narrative that the war gave birth to a new nation where all could be free, is a myth. To reach any sort of commendable ideal, many of the “all” here referenced would first need to be considered fully human. The ongoing prevalence of systemic racism, xenophobia, homophobia, and misogyny-driven domestic violence all point to a gap in our common humanity being acknowledged and realized.

Behind the critique of Critical Race Theory (CRT) being taught in the nation’s schools is a fearful insecurity about the death of the ideal America(n), along with its founding mythos. A young person who is formed in/sold on the tradition of American idealism circa 1776 is simultaneously taught to see counter-evidence as treacherous. This, too, comes back to the ego, and whether one can accept the fragility (or flexibility) of it to be good news.

A rigidness in one’s self-understanding as a member of a great nation that has always stood for freedom becomes a case of preferring the image of virtue over the reality of it. Idealized American identity is not alone in its favour of a virtuous façade over substantive change. After decades of mishandling abuse allegations and offering piecemeal transparency only under immense legal and journalistic pressure, the Church knows this dynamic all to well.

Lessons From the Tech World

I conclude with an insight taken from another great YouTuber, Marques Brownlee (aka MKBHD) regarding the phenomenon of tech products released with the assurance of big updates coming that would allow a product’s stated features to be fully available. As a tech reviewer, Marques was being asked to review products that were effectively launched as incomplete, with the price tag of something fully realized. But it’s not right or fair to expect someone to review the ideal of a product, including its potential improvement. This was revealed in a big way in Marques’ review of the Rabbit R1, triumphantly debuted half-baked.

(Check 14:00 for a brief critique of tech companies releasing unfinished products.)

I don’t mean to trivialize weightier human experiences by these YouTuber analogies. Fast food and tech products may seem small potatoes compared to national and religious identities. But there is something to be learned from the freedom of these creators, engaging concrete products and recommending them by virtue of their merits, not their ideal merits pitched by the folks who benefit from pulling the wool over our eyes.

In the weightier, more significant institutional identity “products” (if you will) we invest our faith and loyalty into, the truth of a product vs. its ideal state is critical in determining health or illness, stalling or progress—of ourselves, and of the broader whole.

Ideals are important for us. They give us a standard to reach for. But nothing and no one is going to reach that standard by masquerading as something more than they are in the here and now.

For this reason I prefer to dine at Jolibee, where the peach mango pie is crispy and delicious every time.³

- Stu

1. RIP Lick’s Homeburgers and Ice Cream except for their frozen food selection and holdout location in Parry Sound, Ontario. Also, and this one is for the sole benefit of my longtime friend and former boss, John DeCaire, “P2, we tow yuh cah.”

2. You thought I’d stick with the Church encountered by humans didn’t you? No, the whole kit and caboodle is connected. Trees and lizards are impacted by the religious and moral choices of Catholics as any non-arboreal entity of the species sapien.)

3. This post, unfortunately, is not sponsored by Jolibee.