“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” ~ George Orwell, ‘1984’
I have been watching with interest a dialogue online between two of my high school classmates about the current political situation. They’re both being respectful of their opposing viewpoints, which makes it easier to recognize something I don’t think we’re paying enough attention to. We — and by that “we” I mean every one of us — are no longer living in the same perceived reality.
Like “doubting Thomas” we want to believe what we see and hear (technically, what we’re being told, because most of the information we get these days is hearsay). We’re desperate to believe. So desperate, in fact, we’ll believe just about anything, particularly if it provides us with a sense of self-righteousness, emotional validation, or a good dopamine hit. We’re also reluctant to believe that people would lie to us, particularly those in authority, because that makes us feel insecure, and we don’t like that feeling.
As information sources splinter into thousands of factions and the algorithms shuffle us efficiently into our assigned cohorts, we float around in our own opaque bubbles. We view only the information the faction we’ve been funneled into allows us to see, and are thus thoroughly convinced that our point of view from inside our bubble is the only one that’s valid. If you want a wake up call — regardless of which team you support — check out www.ground.news. They take leading headlines and break down the percentage of outlets that covered the story on the left, right, and center. It’s astonishing to see which stories are not being presented, at all, to one side or the other. If you’ve ever wondered why your friend/parent/neighbor isn’t livid about something you saw in the news, it’s entirely possible it hasn’t even crossed their path. This is the way the world works now.
Throw in a little AI generated slop and you have all the ingredients for mass deception on a grand scale. We’re reaching a point where if you haven’t seen it with your own eyes IRL (In Real Life), you can’t trust it, and that’s terrifying.
The saying “on the same page” likely comes from music, where choir members or musicians literally need to be on the same page in order to stay in sync. (Ever catch yourself singing the wrong verse in the hymnal? Awkward.) The saying has evolved to mean everyone is reading the same playbook, or looking at the same plan.
Can we be on the same page if we’re not even reading the same book? No. If we can’t get on the same page, we can’t communicate about it because we aren’t reading the same sentences or seeing the same picture. If we can’t communicate, we can’t make wise decisions, and if we can’t make decisions together, we’re stuck, and that makes us weak and vulnerable, like an animal caught in a trap or a whale washed up on the beach.
I don’t know that there’s a simple solution, but there is more to Orwell’s quote: “The obvious, the silly and the true had got to be defended. Truisms are true, hold on to that! The solid world exists, its laws do not change. Stones are hard, water is wet, objects unsupported fall towards the earth’s centre. With the feeling that he was speaking to O’Brien, and also that he was setting forth an important axiom, he wrote: Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.”
Truisms are true, hold on to that.