The above image was made with stable diffusion using the prompt 'painting of a herd of people.'
Having spent the better part of the last decade covering high level corruption and cover-ups for wanttoknow.info, I often find myself at odds with the fictional stories in other people's minds about how the world works. Their media environments have been manipulated precisely to produce these fictional stories, and challenging their false narratives is rarely possible. Even attempting to challenge the lies upon which their worldviews are based can provoke unproductive conflict and invite social ostracism.
These souls typically divide the world into two teams, and if you're not on their team, you're the enemy. Both the reds and the blues engage with the world in this way. They are impervious to facts, allergic to context, and unable to process nuance. Many seem literally unable to hear information that contradicts their programming.
I've tried several strategies for communicating with people like this, none of which are entirely satisfactory. Finding common ground is usually possible, but this can limit conversations to the shallow and the uncontroversial. Respectful inquiry can sometimes take things deeper, but it's just as likely to go nowhere. In rare circumstances, aggressively challenging false narratives can lead to a breakthrough, though it more often starts a fight that no one wins.
Frustrated with the situation, I mostly find myself refusing to engage at all with those who comprise the status quo. They can pass their canned opinions back and forth between each other all day long and it generally has nothing to do with me. And yet, inevitably, occasions arise that force me to confront their nonsense. I'd like to think of myself as the kind of person who can meet anyone on a purely human level. As time goes on, I'm finding this more and more challenging.
When I was younger, I was isolated by my intellect. I felt this way within my family, in school, in the workforce, and at social events. My circumstances conditioned me to show up in the world in only very limited ways that those around me could make sense of. My whole experience of social reality consisted of accommodating average people who weren't capable of accommodating or understanding me.
Obviously this was super unhealthy, and I spent most of my twenties unlearning the bad habits that came out of it. But I never did figure out how to bridge the basic divide that alienated me from others. I merely resigned myself to living in the world as an outlier and kept my own company whenever possible.
That's fine on a personal level, yet it isn't really operative in social or political terms. Average people, fueled by lies that they mistake for truths, are constantly making choices that negatively impact everyone. I don't feel like ignoring them and hoping for the best is an appropriate response to the situation. They can't be written off because their nonsense is harming us all.
So I'm flailing around in search of ways to engage more productively. And I'm willing to entertain even the most radical approaches. Society is on an increasingly dire path and we desperately need people to shift our direction towards something more positive. There are a handful of people doing this right now. There needs to be far more than that.
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