The Death of Discernment and the Rise of False Authority

An answer always begins with a question. It’s worth remembering. To ask is to admit we don’t know, and that admission is the first step toward real learning. The ancient Jewish philosopher Philo once observed that “the most profitable step toward knowledge is to seek, to ask questions, to think that one does not know, and not to imagine that he has a firm apprehension of anything.”ⁱ Real authority is born out of humility before the unknown, not the presumption of already knowing.

The old physicians understood this well. Training mattered because skill was not a title to be claimed but a discipline to be earned. In a classic description of medical practice, the point is made that “inexperience is a bad treasure… being the nurse both of timidity and audacity. For timidity betrays a want of powers, and audacity a lack of skill.”ⁱⁱ Notice the pairing: ignorance doesn’t only make people hesitant, it also makes some reckless. Both are symptoms of not knowing.

Audacity is an old word. It can mean courage, but it can also mean boldness without restraint.ⁱⁱⁱ Today, we often confuse those meanings. We applaud someone for being “bold,” when in fact what we’re witnessing is arrogance masquerading as courage.

This isn’t a new problem. In Plato’s Gorgias, Socrates confronted one of the great rhetoricians of his time. He pressed him to say what rhetoric really was. Was it simply speech? However, medicine, mathematics, and astronomy also employ language. The difference, Socrates argued, was that those arts were tethered to a subject matter: disease, number, the stars. Rhetoric, untethered, could become a performance of words without the discipline of knowledge behind them.^iv

Aristotle, a generation later, sharpened the point. He warned that style has to fit substance: “weighty matters” can’t be treated offhand, and “trifling matters” shouldn’t be dressed up with grand language. When speech and subject don’t match, we laugh, or worse, we are misled by the sheer emotional pull of the performance. Audiences, he noted, are often persuaded simply by a speaker’s passion, even “though he really says nothing.”^v

That danger only intensifies in certain cultural climates. Søren Kierkegaard, writing in the nineteenth century, described what he called a “leveling” age, a time when genuine excellence is flattened into sameness, when public life sinks into gossip, envy, and noise. In such an age, he said, nothing rises; everything sinks into a kind of deathly stillness.^vi It’s a haunting portrait of what happens when opinion replaces authority, and chatter replaces knowledge.

What, then, secures genuine authority? Michael Polanyi argued that real science depends on what he called “tacit knowledge.” Rules and formulas are never enough on their own. Behind them stands a cultivated ability to see patterns, to ask the right questions, to notice what others miss. He wrote that “scientific knowing consists in discerning Gestalten that are aspects of reality,” and that this skill comes only by apprenticeship, by training perception within a community of inquiry.^vii In other words, authority rests on long formation and a body of work that can anticipate discoveries yet to come.

When you line up these voices, a common picture emerges. Philo shows that knowledge begins in humility. The physicians warn that inexperience breeds both fear and swagger. Plato and Aristotle expose the danger of speech detached from substance. Kierkegaard describes the flattening climate that erodes respect for expertise. And Polanyi explains why genuine authority is slow, communal, and subject to testing. Together, they remind us that absolute authority is not about loudness. It is not self-assertion. It is disciplined attention to reality, proved over time, accountable to others, and proportioned in its speech to the matter at hand.

Audacity may get attention. But authority earns trust. And if we are to navigate an age of spectacle and noise, it is trust in genuine expertise, not swagger, that we cannot afford to lose. 

Hannah Arendt makes a powerful observation: every time we act or speak, we are answering a fundamental question, “Who are you?” Our actions and words reveal us, whether we realize it or not. She described it this way: “In acting and speaking, men show who they are, reveal actively their unique personal identities and thus make their appearance in the human world.”^viii True authority relates to this integrity of voice and action. If words stop revealing the speaker, if they become nothing more than propaganda or noise, speech loses its foundation. What remains is performance without authenticity.

That’s why expertise matters. It’s not just about data or information. Authority relies on the credibility of the individuals and communities behind what they say. It isn’t anonymous or detached. When someone has dedicated years to a craft, their words carry genuine honesty. You’re not only hearing what they know, but you’re also hearing who they are.

Karl Popper, the philosopher of science, offers a different perspective. For him, science doesn’t gain authority because it provides certainty. Quite the opposite. It gains authority because it is open to testing, challenging, and even disproving. “We search for truth (even though we can never be sure we have found it)... our belief in any particular natural law cannot have a safer basis than our unsuccessful critical attempts to refute it,” he wrote.^ix Expertise is demonstrated not in holding onto final answers, but in keeping claims open to ongoing scrutiny.

Arendt and Popper, in very different ways, point us to the same lesson. Authority is not bravado. It’s not about avoiding questions. It’s about having the courage to let your words reflect who you are and the humility to let your knowledge be tested. Without that, we don’t gain authority; we only create noise.

Cicero emphasized that truth, no matter how difficult, must not be abandoned without consequences. “It is unquestionably our duty to know and to adhere to the system that we have embraced, professed, and committed to uphold.”^x For him, the role of the orator was not about using clever words but about moral responsibility. To disconnect eloquence from truth is to give up the very foundation of speech. His warnings are still highly relevant today. We live in a world where boldness is mistaken for authority, where confidence replaces skill, and where the loudness of someone's voice often overshadows the substance of their words.

Cicero’s reflections on pedagogy highlight this point. He remembered Isocrates’ method of tailoring instruction to the student: applying “the spur with Ephorus and the bridle with Theopompus.”^xi Some students needed encouragement, while others required restraint. Rhetoric was never meant to be used bluntly; it was created to fit the student’s character so that speech could be guided by proportion, humility, and truth. Still, Cicero also grappled with the idea that persuasion can lead us to distort reality. He asked the difficult question: might it “occasionally be the duty of a good man to tell a lie”?^xii His goal was not to promote deception but to recognize that rhetoric always operates at the boundary between truth and the temptation of expedience.

Aristotle drew a clear line. He argued that style must match substance. To downplay serious matters is to lose credibility; to exaggerate trivialities with grandiosity turns it into comedy. He pointed out that the right style makes truth persuasive because audiences instinctively grasp proportion. Yet, Aristotle saw the danger: speakers often win agreement through passion alone, convincing “even though he really says nothing.”^xiii His warning reflects our situation. We are flooded with words that stir emotions but say little. The display of passion has replaced the effort of truth.

Wayne Booth called this collapse “rhetrickery.”^xiv He argued that we too often celebrate rhetoric because it succeeds and earns applause, without questioning whether it deceives. In politics, the problem worsens. Wartime speeches reveal the double edge: Churchill’s call for “blood, sweat, and tears”^xv gave people courage to resist tyranny; Hitler’s tirades incited destruction. Both succeeded in inspiring audiences. If success is the only measure, then truth and falsehood become nearly indistinguishable. Booth’s challenge is clear: without ethical oversight, rhetoric can turn into manipulation, and persuasion can become almost indistinguishable from propaganda.

Patricia Roberts-Miller underscores this point further. She defines demagoguery as discourse that divides the world into “in-group” and “out-group,” scapegoating the other while promising certainty.^xvi In such environments, no external words can be trusted, and no internal claims should be questioned. The result is a culture of suspicion where genuine discussion stops. This is our current reality: caught in cycles of outrage, repetitive to the point of deafening, numb to reason, more interested in labeling than listening. Demagoguery has become the air we breathe, and its impact is the erosion of critical thinking.

Against this, ethical persuasion requires humility and accountability. Richard Johannesen raised a critical question about how we even frame ethical standards in communication. He asked whether it is better to phrase guidelines negatively, in a “thou-shalt-not” manner, or positively, in affirmative language. For example, instead of saying, “do not make unsupported attacks on your opponent,” would it be better to say, “support any attacks made on your opponent”? Or instead of saying, “do not distort or falsify evidence,” would it be more desirable to say, “present only factual evidence and present it in its true form and context”? Johannesen observed that negative wording leaves unclear whether inaction and passivity are ethical, or whether only positive actions that promote achieving higher standards are ethical.^xvii

These are not optional courtesies but essential guardrails. Without them, persuasion can become coercion. Jamie and Maren Showkeir support this idea with their call for “authentic conversations.” For them, authority in speech depends on openness, which includes sharing information, taking responsibility, and rejecting secrecy and manipulation.^xviii In their view, persuasion shows respect to hearers by treating them as partners rather than pawns.

Even the business world recognizes this distinction. The Hoffeld Group states that persuasion aims to benefit everyone involved by honestly presenting evidence and supporting free choice.^xix In contrast, manipulation misleadingly influences and diminishes trust. Educational guides uphold the same principle. BC campus, referencing Johannesen, highlights specific “do-nots” like avoiding distortion and concealing bias. Fiveable describes ethical persuasion as speech that respects autonomy, seeks mutual benefit, and balances ethos, logos, and pathos, while manipulation exploits vulnerability.^xx

Side by side, these voices converge. Cicero insists that eloquence must stay connected to truth. Isocrates reminds us that persuasion must be guided by proportion. Aristotle highlights the danger of rhetoric that is disconnected from substance. Booth warns against judging success by shallow metrics. Roberts-Miller points out the cultural price of demagoguery. Johannesen and the Showkeirs offer concrete practices for ethical persuasion. Contemporary analysts agree that persuasion must respect the audience’s agency, or else it turns into manipulation.

This isn’t just academic quibbling. It highlights our current cultural moment. We live in an era where arrogance is mistaken for knowledge, where hubris is rewarded more than humility, and where the loudest voices drown out the wisest. We have fallen into a collective stupor, deaf to true understanding, intoxicated by slogans, satisfied with half-truths. We prefer entertainment over education, inflammation over enlightenment. The ancients warned of this, and our contemporaries echo their warning. The choice before us is clear: revive speech that dignifies listeners and honors truth or succumb to manipulation that dulls our minds and erodes trust.

What is at risk is not just the quality of our arguments but the state of our shared life. When arrogance is mistaken for expertise and manipulation disguises itself as persuasion, the consequence isn't harmless noise but cultural decline. We lose our capacity to think critically, to discuss together, to tell truth from illusion. This dullness in listening reflects a society that favors entertainment over evidence and slogans over substance.

If we are to resist this trend, we need to rediscover an older wisdom. Authority is not gained through force or clever performance. It is entrusted to those whose words are shaped by long apprenticeship, tested by evidence, and accountable to others. Such authority is never loud for its own sake. It is measured, proportioned, and rooted in respect for those who listen.

Our culture does not lack voices; it lacks discernment. What we need now are not more claims but clearer measures, not more noise but a renewed ear for truth. The task before us is to awaken from the stupor of manipulation and restore speech as a moral act. Anything less leaves us vulnerable to demagoguery and deception.

To speak truth with integrity, persuade without coercion, and respect the listener's freedom defines responsible speech. This is the difference between audacity and authority. One breeds arrogance; the other promotes the common good. Our future depends on understanding this difference.

Written by Mark J. Chironna, PhD. - https://www.markchironna.com/
Bishop Mark J. Chironna PhD
Church On The Living Edge
Mark Chironna Ministries
The Issachar Initiative
Order of St. Maxmius
United Theological Seminary, Visiting
Professor, Co-director, House of Pentecostal Studies

Dr. Mark Chironna is a public scholar, executive and personal coach, and thought leader with five decades of experience in leadership development, cultural analysis, and future-focused strategies. With advanced degrees in Psychology, Applied Semiotics and Futures Studies, and Theology, he brings a unique interdisciplinary approach to helping individuals and organizations navigate complexity, unlock potential, and craft innovative solutions.

As a Board Certified Coach with over 30,000 hours of experience, he empowers leaders and teams to thrive through resilience, foresight, and actionable strategies. Passionate about human flourishing, he integrates psychological insight and cultural trends to inspire growth and transformation.

 

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