Retreat - Justifiable but Not Helpful: Discernment in an Age of Manipulation

In this pair of talks, Fr. Anthony examines why discernment so often fails in the Church—not because of bad faith or lack of intelligence, but because discernment is a matter of formation before it is a matter of decision. Drawing on insights from intelligence analysis, psychology, and Orthodox anthropology, he shows how authority, moral seriousness, and modern systems of manipulation quietly exploit predictable habits of perception, producing confidence without clarity. True discernment, he argues, is neither technical nor private, but ecclesial: formed through humility, ascetic practice, and participation in the Church’s communal rhythms, where judgment matures over time through accountability, repentance, and shared life in Christ.

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Talk One: Why Discernment Fails
Expertise, Authority, Manipulation, and the Formation of Perception
Fr. Anthony Perkins

Introduction

Brothers,

I want to begin today not with Scripture or a Father of the Church, but with a warning—from someone who spent his life studying failure in complex systems.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, in The Black Swan, writes this:

“You cannot ignore self-delusion. The problem with experts is that they do not know what they do not know. Lack of knowledge and delusion about the quality of your knowledge come together—the same process that makes you know less also makes you satisfied with your knowledge.”

(pause)

Taleb is talking about intelligence analysts, economists, and technical experts—people who are trained, credentialed, experienced, and entrusted with judgment under uncertainty.

But if, just for a moment, you change one word in your mind—from expert to priest—the danger becomes uncomfortably familiar.

We wear cassocks instead of suits, but the temptation is the same.

Not arrogance.
Not bad intentions.
But unintentional self-delusion born of taking our calling to serve well seriously.

A Necessary Pastoral Safeguard

Before we go any further, I want to be very clear—because this matters.

Taleb is not accusing experts of pride.
He is not describing a moral failure.
He is describing what happens to the human mind under complexity.

And clergy live permanently in complex systems:

• human souls
• suffering families
• conflicted parishes
• incomplete information
• real consequences

The danger is not that we don’t care.
The danger is that experience can quietly convince us that we are seeing clearly—especially when we are not.

A Lesson from Intelligence Work

When I worked in military intelligence, there was a saying—half joking, half deadly serious:

The most dangerous person in the world is an intelligence analyst in a suit.

At first, that sounds like gallows humor. But it isn’t.

The danger wasn’t that analysts were malicious.
The danger was that analysts don’t just possess information—they interpret reality for others.

And here’s where psychology matters.

Robert Cialdini has shown that one of the strongest and most reliable human biases is deference to authority. People are far more likely to accept judgments when they come from someone who looks like an authority—someone in a suit, a lab coat, or standing behind an official desk.

Jonathan Haidt adds something crucial: people formed in conservative moral cultures—cultures that value order, continuity, and tradition—are especially inclined to defer to legitimate authority.

That’s not a flaw.
It’s one of the strengths of such cultures.
It’s one of the strengths of our Orthodox culture.

But it carries a cost.

Because when authority speaks, critical perception often relaxes.
And when authority speaks with confidence, coherence, and moral seriousness, people don’t just listen.

They trust.  And they trust in a way that they, like us - the ones who guide them - feel connected with the truth and the Source of all truth.

But in our fallenness our sense of certainty may be driven by something other than a noetic connection with the deeper ontological of truth. 

Scripture about the devil appearing as angel of light (2 Cor 11:14-15) and wolves going around in sheep’s clothing (Mat 7:15) are not just designed to keep us from trusting everyone who offers to speak a good work; a spiritual meaning is that our own thoughts can be deceptive, appearing as angelic and meek but lacking true virtue.

All of this, combined with the seriousness of our calling, should reinforce our commitment to pastor humbly and patiently, erring on the side of gentleness … and trusting in the iterative process of repentance to bring discernment and healing to those we serve.

From Suit to Cassock

In intelligence work, the suit mattered.
In science, it’s the lab coat.
In the Church, it’s the cassock.

When a priest speaks—especially confidently, decisively, and with moral gravity—people don’t just hear an opinion.

They receive guidance.

And that means any blind spot—any overconfidence, any unexamined habit of thought—does not remain private.

It spreads.

Why This Is Dangerous (and Why It Is Not an Accusation)

This is where Taleb’s insight comes sharply back into focus.

The most dangerous situation is not ignorance.
It is:

• incomplete knowledge
• combined with confidence
• amplified by authority
• received by people disposed to trust

Taleb is not accusing experts of arrogance.
Cialdini is not accusing people of gullibility.
Haidt is not accusing conservative cultures of naïveté.

They are describing how human beings actually function.

And clergy live precisely at the intersection of all three forces:

• complexity
• authority
• moral trust

Which means discernment failures in the Church are rarely loud or obvious.

They are usually calm, confident, sincere—and despite this, still wrong.  And unfortunately, still dangerous.

We are susceptible to the same temptations as everyone else.  In order to serve well, we  need to cultivate a combination of humility and confidence:  confidence because we are called and trained to do this work; humility because we are not experts in everything, are still incompletely formed, and the problems in our communities and in this world are incredibly complex.

Another Lesson from Intelligence: this time, counterintelligence

The challenge of being right all the time is not just that we can’t know everything, but that there are powers of the earth and what I call the marketers of the air that are trying to manipulate us.  And, alas, not matter how serious or smart or well-educated we are, we are still vulnerable to their wiles.

During the Cold War, American intelligence analysts and operatives were taught to keep everything they could about themselves private.  This was because we knew that the spy agencies of the Soviet Union were actively collecting information – what we called dossiers - on everyone they could so that they could develop and exploit opportunities to use us.

The Soviets didn’t need to convert us.
They didn’t need to convince us.

They needed:

• our habits
• our reactions
• our trusted assumptions
• our unguarded patterns

Their dossiers were less about facts than they were about about leverage. 

And it worked.  My first assignment in the Army was as an interrogator.  It was a similar deal there.  The work of getting information out of someone gets a lot easier when you have information about them, about their histories, about their fears, about their motivations.

And here’s the unavoidable turn.

Today, advertisers, platforms, and political actors possess dossiers that would have made Cold War intelligence officers and interrogators weep with envy.

They know:

• what angers us
• what comforts us
• what affirms us
• when we are tired
• when we are lonely
• what makes us feel righteous

And clergy are NOT exempt from their data collection or their use of that data.

In fact, we may be especially vulnerable, because we are tempted to mistake moral seriousness for immunity.

And advertisers, platforms, and political actors with all their algorithms do not do this alone.  The fallen powers of the air have been studying us and our weakness even longer than Facebook.  More committed men than us – here I think of St. Silouon when he was young – have fallen victim to their machinations.  And now they have more allies and useful idiots working with them than ever.

Porn addiction and religious polarization – even within Orthodoxy – show that these allies (BIG DATA and the DEMONS) are having their desired effect.

Discernment Is Not Being Bypassed—It Is Being Used

Here is the hard truth.

Most modern manipulation does not bypass discernment.
It uses malformed discernment.

It works because:

• our instincts are trained elsewhere
• our attention is fragmented
• our emotional reactions are predictable
• our confidence exceeds our perception

This is not a technology problem.
It is not a political problem.

It is a formation problem.

Psychological Bias Is Not a Moral Failure

At this point, I could list all the biases that set us up for failure:

• confirmation bias
• availability bias
• motivated reasoning
• affect heuristics

But that would miss the deeper point.

Biases are not bugs.

They are features of an untrained mind.

And the Church has never believed that the mind heals itself through information alone.

Which brings us to the Orthodox diagnosis.

Discernment Is Formational, Not Technical

In the Orthodox tradition, discernment is not a technique for making decisions.

It is the fruit of a formed person.

And that formation involves the whole human being and all three parts of the human mind: the gut, the brain, and the heart.

The Gut / The Passions

This is the fastest part of the mind.  In our default state, it is the real decision-maker.

It reacts.
It protects.
It simplifies.

It is trained by repetition, not arguments.

If this part of the mind is shaped by:

• urgency
• outrage
• novelty
• exhaustion

Then discernment will always feel obvious—and often be wrong.

Orthopraxis trains our gut through the repetition of godly habits:

• fasting
• silence
• patience
• submission to the deeper rhythms

The Brain/Intellect

This is where narratives are built.
Where reasons are assembled.
Where Scripture and Fathers are cited.

In our default state, it justifies the decisions and instincts of the gut.

It is vulnerable not to ignorance, but to selectivity.

This is where proof-texting lives.
This is where outliers become weapons.
This is where cleverness masquerades as wisdom.

And here St. Paul gives us a crucial criterion:

“All things are lawful,” but not all things are helpful.
“All things are lawful,” but not all things build up.”
(1 Cor 10:23)

The danger is not that clergy cannot justify what they do.
We have big brains and have learned a lot of words.
Wecan justify almost anything.

The danger is mistaking justifiability for discernment.

Orthopraxis here looks like:

• immersion rather than scanning
• repetition rather than novelty
• mastering the middle of the bell curve of tradition rather than its extremes
• making the perfect words of our worship, prayer books, and Bibles the main texts that we rely on to know what is beautiful, good, and true

The Heart / The Nous

The nous cannot be controlled.
It cannot be optimized.
It cannot be forced.

It is healed, opened, and attenuated only by grace.

In our default setting, our connection with God through the nous is narrow or closed, and we are prone to mistaking the movements of our passions – often called our conscience – for revelation and divine inspiration.

Orthopraxis here is simple, but takes time to gain traction:

• the quieting of the gut and of the brain
• immersion in worship
• immersion in prayer
• time spent in silent awe of God

The Quiet Conclusion of Talk One

So here is the point I want to leave you with now:

Discernment is not something we do when the need to make a decision appears.

It is a facility we are developing long before the decision arrives.

Taleb helps us see the danger.
Intelligence work helps us see the mechanics.
Orthodox praxis shows us the cure.

But none of this happens alone.

Which brings us to the second talk—
because discernment is not merely personal.

It is ecclesial.

 

Talk Two: Discernment Is Ecclesial

Communion, Authority, and the Social Formation of Perception

Introduction

Brothers,

Earlier, I spoke about why discernment fails.

Not because priests are careless.
Not because we lack sincerity.
Not because we haven’t read enough.

But because discernment is formational, and formation always happens somewhere—whether we are paying attention or not.

Now I want to take the next step.

If discernment is not merely a personal skill, then the question becomes unavoidable:

Where does discernment actually happen?

And the Church’s answer has always been the same.

Not in isolation.
Not in private certainty.

But in communion.

The Myth of the Independent Discerner

Earlier we spoke about discernment as formation—about how perception is trained long before decisions appear.

Now I want to push that insight one step further.

Because even if a person is well-formed, the Church has never believed that discernment belongs to individual insight alone.

And here it is helpful—perhaps unexpectedly—to look at how knowledge actually works in the modern world.

A Brief Detour: How We Actually Know Things

Some people imagine the scientific method as the triumph of the lone genius.

But that is not how science works.

Individual scientists propose hypotheses.
They run experiments.
They notice patterns.

But no discovery becomes knowledge until it is:

• tested by others
• challenged by peers
• replicated over time
• corrected when necessary

When science works, it only does so when individual insight is embedded within a community of accountability.

Without that community, science collapses into speculation, ideology, or manipulation.  We have seen that very thing happen right before our eyes. 

I still hope that the system can be reformed.  But it can’t without individual and systematic repentance.  I hope that happens.

The Ecclesial Parallel

Even at its best, the scientific community is a pale shadow of The Church and its system of both individual and communal discernment.

Individual Christians—clergy included—receive insights, intuitions, and perceptions.

But those perceptions only become discernment when they are tested:

• liturgically
• pastorally
• communally
• over time

This is why discernment in the Church is never merely private, even when it feels personal.

We know this about the Ecumenical Councils, but it needs to be built into the way we live our lives and govern our parishes.

Why the Independent Discerner Is a Myth

Isolation does not produce wisdom.

It produces clarity without the possibility of correction.

And clarity without correction feels an awful lot like discernment—especially to the one experiencing it.

And surrounding ourselves with people who always agree with us is not better than isolation.  We saw how that affected science when came to the climate and COVID; we can’t be so proud as to think we aren’t susceptible to the same sort of self-rightous group-think.

Authority Does Not Cancel Accountability

Earlier we spoke about authority and trust.

That deference is part of the deeper harmony.

But it creates an asymmetry:
the more people trust us,
the less likely they are to correct us.

All of us need to develop relationships with people who both think differently than we do and whom we can trust to correct us in love and in a way that we can hear.  Ideally this council of advisors includes our wives, confessors, and a cohort of brother priests.

Discernment Does Not Reside in a Brain

Discernment does not primarily reside in an individual mind.

It resides in a body.

The Church does not possess discernment as a technique.
The Church is the place where discernment occurs.

Clergy as Hosts of Discernment

When it comes to leadership, clergy are not just decision-makers and teachers.

We are witnesses, hosts, and facilitators of discernment.

We shape environments.
We normalize rhythms.
We form what should be said—and what should not.

Who are we to have such control?  No one.  We do it in the Name of the one who deserves such power, this must be done humbly and sacrificially – and by sacrificially, I don’t just mean the sacrifice of our time but of our ego and sometimes even the sacrifice of our justifiable preferences and opinions. 

To paraphrase St. Paul once again, all things may be justifiable, but not all things are useful.  And in another place he makes the same point, saying; “though I speak in the tongues of men and angels, but have not love” it’s all just just noise.  And the world doesn’t need more noise: it needs signal. 

I believe that the fact that we are not smart enough or consistent enough to get everything right all the time is a feature, not a bug. 

The people we serve need to see us make mistakes; not so they can see that we are only human (that’s pretty obvious), but so that we can truly witness to them what discernment and repentance look like.

We shouldn’t make a lot of mistakes, and we should certainly avoid making the same one twice, but a zero-defect culture is a cult, not a community.  And cults are neither healthy nor sustainable.

The Liturgical Ecology of Discernment

Discernment is not trained by intensity.
It is trained by ecology.  By immersion into the communal rhythms of orthopraxis.

By:

• developing a relationship with a spiritual father
• repetition over novelty
• calendar over urgency
• fasting over reaction
• worship over commentary
• stability over constant motion
• accepting and sharing the spirit and not just the letter of the guidance given to us by our bishops

The Quiet Conclusion of Talk Two

The Church does not promise us freedom from error.

She promises us a way of life in which error can be healed.

Discernment is not a tool for avoiding mistakes.

It is a way of learning how to dwell truthfully with God and one another.

And that dwelling—like Eden, like the Temple, like the Church itself—is always shared.