It’s a three-story building.
Tan brick facades. Double-hung windows. A distinctly 1920s look.
On each of the edifice’s four sides, a set of doors provide entry. Above them, four Roman columns support a structure holding a modest clock.
The building is quaint. Not majestic.
And yet, it’s of great historical importance.
This building, you see, is the Old Collin County Courthouse. It sits in the center of a leafy square in downtown McKinney, Texas. A bevy of shops and restaurants surround the square in all directions.
Long before Dallas’ suburban sprawl overtook McKinney, this was the heart of Collin County. It’s where residents would gather to conduct business and gather supplies. It was a gathering place.
That spirit is still alive in the shops and restaurants surrounding the square – a refreshing oasis from the strip malls so prevalent in greater Dallas.
It’s still alive 32 miles west in Denton, where another set of shops and restaurants surround the Old Denton County Courthouse. And it’s still alive 28 miles west of there in Decatur, where some modest establishments buttress the Wise County Courthouse.
In fact, a similar scene can be found in many of Texas’ 254 county seats. Nearly every town has its county courthouse – or former courthouse – on a square, with shops and eateries around it.
The same can be said for municipalities outside the Lone Star State. When I visited the town in rural Missouri where my father was born, it had the same setup as McKinney. So too have towns I’ve frequented in North Carolina, Nevada and Vermont over the years.
This is no coincidence.
The courthouse square setup is an American staple. And while its utility might have faded in the era of 15-gallon gas tanks and Walmart supercenters, its importance most certainly has not.
Did you hear?
Those three words represented the start of seemingly every conversation when I was in high school.
Gossip was the name of the game, and we all fancied ourselves to be Michael Jordan.
It would be harsh to fault us for these delusions. Adolescence is a near-impossible assignment. A quest to find the answers within while complying with the abstract ideals of coolness.
It’s confounding mission. One that could demoralize and distress even the strongest willed of teenagers.
And we were no match for it.
So, we shifted our gaze. We galvanized around the stumbles our peers made on the journey. The land mines that we could avoid, now that others had triggered the trip wires.
We gossiped.
Most of this gossip made the halls of my high school the old-fashioned way. Someone witnessed something – or claimed to – and shared it with the group.
But a nascent technology called social media had also found our cohort. And suddenly, some of the fodder for gossip was originating online.
Things, of course, are far different these days. Online rumors re now the norm, not the exception. And social media-based discourse has gotten so toxic that it’s spawned a new name – cyber harassment.
This has led to severe effects for modern-day adolescents. And those effects have led some states to consider bans on social media for minors.
I understand where this movement is coming from. Several young people have taken their own lives because of cyber harassment. It’s tragic, and I feel for their families and friends.
But I do wonder if the proposed bans will have the desired effect. For the root cause of the toxicity afflicting adolescent culture is not social media – or even the Internet itself.
It’s gossip.
And gossip is firmly rooted in our society.
Back to that county courthouse in McKinney, Texas for a moment.
The building sits mostly vacant now. Courtrooms and county offices reside in an expansive building five miles away.
The modern courthouse is surrounded by parking lots and a highway. A supermarket and several other stores sit a couple exits down the highway, along with a movie theater and an assortment of restaurants.
The highway is now the central corridor for McKinney residents. Anyone looking to pick up supplies, take in mass entertainment, or conduct official business sets their vehicle’s GPS for U.S. 75. The shops and restaurants around the old courthouse – while still frequented – are off the beaten path.
This modern arrangement has its advantages. Residents can gather supplies from store shelves, pay for them at a self-checkout kiosk, and load them into their car in the parking lot – all without making eye contact with another human being. Efficiency reigns supreme.
But at what cost?
You see, back when the highway didn’t exist and the courthouse was based downtown, the luxury of secluded shopping simply did not exist.
Anyone heading for supplies was going to have to head to the courthouse square. They were going to have to engage with the store clerk, even if just to hand over payment. They were going to see other locals milling about. And those other locals were going to see them.
Any misstep in this adventure would be harshly scrutinized.
Whispers would softly spread around town. And judgmental stares would brand the afflicted like a hot iron.
Yes, the gossip mill was as much a part of life as maintaining a vocation and putting food on the table. Commerce on the courthouse square took two forms of tender – dollar bills and embedded insecurities.
People measured their success not only by what they had, but how it measured up to others. The fear of inadequacy loomed large.
Treks to the courthouse square offered opportunities to disprove that notion. To put on airs, to act proper, to get a pulse of where one really was. And hopefully not to be confirmed as a pariah in the process.
These days, that style of commerce has faded. But if we think the associated demands have not, we’re kidding ourselves.
People are still dealing in embedded insecurities. They’re still keeping up with the Joneses and yearning to gain acceptance.
But now, they’re doing all this online. They’re depending on an unsavory place where judgement converges from all angles at warp speed.
Yes, everything from neighborhood forums to social media mom groups to websites like People of Walmart lives in cyberspace 24/7. And all of it turbocharges the courthouse square effect.
McKinney, we have a problem.
How do we solve the puzzle? How do we reconcile our desire for validation with the risks of critique-based abuse?
These questions have dogged us for a couple decades, if not longer.
Some have proposed attacking the riddle’s central premise. By ridding ourselves of embedded insecurities, by affirming that we are adequate and no one else’s perceptions are worth a damn, we can sidestep the strife entirely and live happily ever after. Or so they say.
It’s an appealing concept. But not a realistic one.
You see, embedded insecurities are not a bug of our society. They’re a feature of our existence. They’re hard-wired into our brains for a reason.
Like just about any other species, we rely on a group for security. Without the power of the pack, we are so much more vulnerable to so many threats.
We stand little chance of warding off these threat time after time on our own. Fight or flight only gets us so far.
So, we find sanctuary in numbers. We conform to shared rules and make ourselves presentable to masses. All while harboring anxiety about triggers for rejection.
Drowning out this impulse won’t cure us of its effects. It will only accentuate them.
No, the key is to channel those embedded insecurities. To balance those inevitable questions of adequacy with constructive answers. To openly engage and to grow from the interactions.
And to do all this away from cyberspace. Far afield from the trolls, keyboard warriors, and endless scrolls that do us no favors.
It’s time to engage with each other in public again. Human to human, with our five senses as a guide.
It’s time to pick up on cues – both verbal and nonverbal – and to adapt our behavior accordingly. To be honest without being cruel. To find a common denominator of acceptance, even with those we disagree with.
The courthouse square might no longer be the physical center of society. But its spirit still can be.
Let’s make it so.