Touch And Believe

The current expression of “not trusting anyone over thirty” extends into many areas of modern life. It is not simply the problem of youth questioning age, children questioning their parents, or one generation questioning another. The credibility gap involves many other areas of skepticism: we have reservations when manufacturers endeavor to insure us of a product’s high quality; when our teachers tell us that the values they communicate will serve us through life; when government officials promise us lasting solutions.

But if we are hard to convince, it is because so often our faith has been misplaced. Many turn bitter and cynical because they feel they “have been taken.” Twentieth century man prides himself in having overcome the superstitions of previous centuries-from the medieval view that the people of Ethiopia had heads in the middle of their chests and that the world was flat, to the more recent view that tomatoes were poisonous. But, having outgrown certain beliefs, twentieth century man frantically searches for…