Form and Substance

Form and Substance.  Can you separate the two?  Maybe not completely, but it seems that at the moment we cannot separate them at all.  And, that inability to separate may be behind much of the hard-line positions of hate that are dividing the country.

People seem to be unable to look past the form; many do not take the time to understand the substance that is being presented in one form or another.  If they like the form, they assume the substance is good, and vice versa.  And yet, form is not substance and it is important that we not confuse or conflate the two. 

  

For example, President Obama was eloquent.  His words told us that everything he was doing was good, fair, and for the good of the whole world.  Barack Obama, the man, was well liked.  So, when he deported people or did not let people into the country, many looked the other way, not because they necessarily chose to do so, but because they simply did not look past the form to the substance.  President Trump is not an eloquent man and he tells us that he is going to shake things up.  Donald Trump the man is not liked by many.   So, when he chooses to impose a temporary pause in admission of people to this country, again, looking only at the form, many people assume it is wrong, not necessarily because they disagree with the substance, but, again, because they cannot look past the form.

If we set up our leaders based on form, then we are going to see them as either good form or bad form and, when you have such a binary choice then it is easy to choose one and reject the other.  It is easy also to reject everyone who aligns with the rejected form.  And, if you judge the substance based solely on the form, if you think it is the form, then you are simply going to also accept one and reject the other.  But, substance cannot be so easily divided (one can argue that neither can form, if one takes the time to get past the bigger than life caricatures created by the media, but that is another issue).  To take a real position on substance requires studying the many facts and analyses that go into a substantive position on any one issue; and, often any one issue is actually made up of several smaller issues each of which also need to be well understood.

Why do we so often focus primarily or exclusively on form over substance?  That I do not have an answer for, but I can take a few guesses.  First, it is of course easier to look only at the superficial and not make the effort to delve into more complicated substance.  Secondly, we have become more and more used to quick answers.  For years now we have watched television shows resolve very complex problems in an hour or less.  We expect to get a full briefing on the national and world news in a half hour.  That’s been going on for a while, but social media seems to make it worse as we seem to find the answers to life’s problems in a single meme.  We scroll through the news feed taking in a world of superficial headlines and 140 character tweets.  We have a 24-hour news cycle with traditional media and on line media always competing to get the news out first and always have a new story.  This does not leave a lot of time for substantive research.  Closely related is the seemingly endless need to be entertained.  Entertainment is generally a passive activity.  One watches or listens or reads, but one does not really do much work on one’s own.  And yet, to truly understand substance one must struggle with one’s own grasp of facts and ideas and do one’s own analysis.  These are just some of the most obvious reasons for a focus on form over substance.  We have and are training ourselves to look at the world that way - to allow form to be our substance.

Some may want the pleasant passivity of a form driven view of the world.  But I think most people would find that not only does a substance driven approach make life more meaningful individually, it also makes for a better society overall.  Substantive understanding leads not only to better, more well thought out decisions and actions, it also leads to a better understanding of one’s fellow human beings, even those who disagree with one’s substantive positions.  Entertainment and superficiality certainly have their place, but not in the policy decisions and positions that we take both about our individual selves and about our country and our world.  Those require us to dig beyond form and find real substance to guide our positions.  We need to separate form and substance, understand both, and realize when we are letting form cloud our substantive understandings.