Bad as things seem now, America’s division, strife, and chaos have a long way to go. From Tom Luongo at tomluongo.me:
Scott Adams has a perfect phrase to describe our political divide.
“One screen, two movies.”
What he means is that two people see the same event and process it in completely opposite ways, depending on their perspective.
That perspective is made up of a whole host of things — current state of mind, personal experience, personality traits, body chemistry, etc.
Take that one step further and incorporate human survival traits like in-group/out-group bias and the potential for self-reinforcing feedback loops of anxiety to explode into unbridgeable divisions within society become very likely.
None of what I just described is novel. It shouldn’t even need to be explained at this point. But, we’re living in such a state of heightened anxiety it is easy to lose sight of the basics.
I’ve been writing this blog now for more than three years. I have to remind myself of things I wrote previously that I’ve forgotten about in the day-to-day grind chronicling the devolution of our society into madness.
Because all of us, including me, are exhibiting signs of real madness when confronted with the monstrous events we perceive playing out on our movie screens.
Avoid the screens. Read. I’m not a scientist, but I believe that what we watch raises a more visceral response than what we read. Television was spreading the virus, now it will spread violence.
Two things I haven’t done since all this nonsense started are wear a mask or watch TV.
Stay sane.