Starting a new reality
I read this article about "shared realities," and it obviously made me think of current events. I live in a red state, so whenever I'm meeting someone new, I always have to send out feelers and hints to find out where they stand. Which reality do they live in? Do they live in mine or do they live in the other one?
In the article, it used the Jonestown massacre and Nazi Germany as examples of mass hallucination events, where humans (all trapped in the same consciousness) lived in a shared delusion. The article concluded that shared realities can be broken if a single person questions the reality:
Think about the famous Asch conformity experiments, where participants had to judge the length of lines shown on cards. Most people conformed about one-third of the time, even when the truth was obvious. But when just one person dissented—when even a single voice gave the correct answer—conformity collapsed, and participants almost always trusted their own perception again. If only one such “odd one out” in the Jim Jones group could have done the same in November 1978.
However, the writer is wrong. There actually was a single dissenter at Jonestown (if you heard the disturbing tapes). Her name was Christine Miller, a 60-year-old woman who stood up to Jim Jones and said, "You know, maybe we shouldn't drink the poisoned Koolaid." (Not an exact quote.)
But her voice did not break the shared delusion, and others didn't "wake up." Instead, they all turned on her and admonished her for questioning the "great" Jim Jones with his lisp and raging drug addiction. Despite voicing her independent thought, the mass suicide still continued, with Christine being held down and forced cyanide through a syringe (allegedly).
Unfortunately, when a shared reality is really strong, a single voice isn't enough. I think that's why a lot of people sit around feeling powerless. I actually called my senators the other day (well, left a voicemail), and my husband walked in the room and told me it was pointless, that we lived in a red state, and that those senators are not going to change their vote. "You think they care about your stupid voicemail?" he asked. I told him that if everyone did it, then maybe it would do something. But that's always the caveat. How do you get more people? How do you avoid being a lonesome Christine talking common sense to a room full of people who have lost the plot?
I think the answer is to build a shared reality more alluring than the current one (like building a new Chipotle that has slightly cleaner bathrooms than the old one). Everyone will want to jump into the new reality because it offers that same idealism (some sort of rebirth or transformation) while also having that new car smell.
I guess I'll start: This new reality is peaceful. Boring, even. People realize that their lives are more fulfilling by working together, not by tearing each other down with unregulated, unchecked power and by scapegoating their neighbors. People hold people accountable again, and their punishments are actually proportionate to their crimes. People spend less time online and disassociating and more time connecting with reality and living in the present moment. The loneliness epidemic ends, and people realize that they don't mind letting their tax dollars support others in need because "others" are no longer strangers to them. We realize we actually are all connected to each other, and it's not in that stupid Facebook way.
People live their lives under the virtues of love, because love is everything and all things. And it's not kumbaya all the time (cause that would be unrealistic), but nature feels balanced again. The world no longer feels topsy-turvy, where what's down is up and what's up is down; everything feels as it should. And when people wake up in the morning, they have the feeling of tremendous gratitude for living in a reality they chose and not one that was thrust upon them.
Okay, that's it. That's the reality. Let's jump in.