Stop Being Reality-Based
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| The Galdurian |
This isn't about what is . . . it's about what people think is. It's all imaginary anyway. That's why it's important. People only fight over imaginary things.― Neil Gaiman, American Gods
I've used this quote so many times for so many posts. It is always relevant.
Today it is relevant to these two excerpts from recent updates by Heather Cox Richardson.
By 2004, the administration was so deeply entrenched in its own ideology that a senior adviser to Bush told journalist Ron Suskind that people like him—Suskind—were in "the reality-based community": they believed people could find solutions based on their observations and careful study of discernible reality. But, the aide continued, such a worldview was obsolete. "That’s not the way the world really works anymore.… We are an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do." . . .And now we grapple with the logical extension of that argument as a former Republican president claims he won the 2020 election because, all evidence to the contrary, Democratic votes were fraudulent.-----Perhaps the biggest breaking news today, although it, too, is a continuation of a longer theme, is that, in California’s recall election of Governor Gavin Newsom, the campaign website of challenger Republican Larry Elder, a right-wing talk show host, is already claiming he lost the election because of fraud. . . .But the election isn’t until tomorrow. . . .Former president Donald Trump harped on the idea that Democrats cheated in the 2016 election—he insisted he would have won the popular vote as well as the vote in the Electoral College if it hadn’t been for fraudulent Democratic votes—and that idea is, of course, at the heart of his complaint about Biden’s election in 2020. There is no evidence for these accusations; they are lies. And yet, that recent CNN/SSRS poll found that 59% of Republicans and Republican-leaning Independents think believing that Trump won the 2020 election is important to their identity as Republicans.
Forget "reality." Their strategy is to just proclaim whatever they want everyone to believe and then their tribe chooses to believe it as part of their tribal allegiance, doing everything they can to make it become "true." We create our own reality.
If they think it's the truth, then they believe it, and if they believe it long enough, then it becomes the truth.― Jason Carter Eaton, The Facttracker
That's another quote I've used extensively.
And that's the thing, it's not just a belief. Science shows that our brains react to stories the same way they do to experiences. So repeating a story often enough trains the brain that it is an actuality. Through the stories we tell ourselves and consume from others, beliefs become facts to the brain.
We know from cognitive science and neuroscience that such narratives are fixed in the neural circuits of our brains. We know that they can be activated and function unconsciously, automatically, as a matter of reflex. And just as we--automatically, without conscious control--see Anna Nicole and Hillary Clinton and George W. Bush in terms of such narratives, so we see ourselves as having only the choices defined by our brain's frames and cultural narratives. And we live out narrative choices made for us by our brains without our conscious awareness. . . .The same part of the brain we use in seeing is also used in imagining that we are seeing, in remembering seeing, in dreaming that we are seeing, and in understanding language about seeing. The same is true of moving. The same parts of the brain used in really moving are used in imagining that we are moving, remembering moving, dreaming about moving, and in understanding language about moving. Mental "simulation" is the technical term for using brain areas for moving or perceiving, imagining, remembering, dreaming, or understanding language. It is mental simulation that links imaginative stories to lived narratives. . . .In short, some of the same neural structure in the brain that is used when we live out a narrative is also used when we see someone else living out that narrative, in real life or on TV, or if we imagine it as when we are reading a novel. This is what makes literature and art meaningful. It is also what makes crossovers between reality, TV, and the Internet work. It is why Second Life can flourish on the Internet, with thousands of people finding real meaning in their second life that is not in their first. . . .Language does not merely express identity; it can change identity. Narratives and melodramas are not mere words and images; they can enter our brains and provide models that we not merely live by, but that define who we are.Language is an instrument of creativity and power, a means of connecting with people or alienating them, and a force for social cohesion or separation.Language is sensual and aesthetic, with the power to woo or to repulse, to be beautiful or ugly, to be meaningful or banal.Language has moral force; it can bring out the best in people and the worst. Memories are never just "stored"; they are always created anew. Language does not just evoke memories; it can change them and shape them, and thereby change history--the story of the past.― George Lakoff, The Political Mind
It's the strategy for elections, for guns, for abortion, for race issues, for all issues, including Covid responses like masks and vaccinations. They reject reality and replace it with another, the tribe buys into it and makes it the new set of facts, and it becomes their new, actual reality. And anyone who tries to exist in the original, alternate reality becomes an enemy for resisting what they now know to be true. We are a threat to the existence of their artificial, created reality because we don't believe it, and must be treated with maximum hostility.
A couple of recent stories from my local news:
Within the last two weeks, three people have threatened and harassed volunteers at the [city] offices of the [county] Democratic Party. . . .“Officers did make contact with a male who entered the office using foul language toward the staff. Prior to the male’s arrival he called the office upset about ‘wearing a mask’ and ‘vaccinations’ and was seeking information regarding obtaining a job.”During an earlier phone call, and again at the office, Pritchett said, the man ranted about Afghanistan and vaccines. . . .Another threat came from a recent caller who said Democrats should be “tried for treason and executed on the Capitol steps.” Others have been similarly menacing. . . .It should concern everyone that passions are so out of control that a group had to cancel a meeting, fearful of trouble.This problem starts from the top. . . .-----A public hearing for the group reviewing [county’s] charter was quickly adjourned Monday night minutes after roll call because the large and boisterous crowd in attendance would not wear face masks or abide by social distancing rules.Charter Commission chair’s decision to end the meeting almost before it began was met with angry shouts and chants of “USA, USA!” after the vote to adjourn was taken.He and all but about six commissioners attending in person left immediately after the live feed of the meeting on Facebook was cut. [Chair] described the attendees as angry and unfriendly as they left. . . .The Charter Commission is a 25-member body appointed from a variety of government, business, political and community groups with the task of reviewing the county’s method of operation every ten years.The county charter, similar to a constitution, sets which officers are elected or appointed, the size of the commission and what races will be partisan, among other things.
And that's why my family and I have Covid, because it may be a threat in our reality but it's not in theirs, so they have no fear of perpetuating and spreading something that doesn't really exist.
(Read more about our Covid experience in my second post from today, A Quarantine Tale.)
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posted by Degolar @ 3:34 PM
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