a vote for curiousity + creativity over succumbing to the Collective brain

I’ve been thinking about how politics have infiltrated every area of our lives, from social media, to parenting to medical choices and beyond.

To preface, I’m not a political person. In fact, I hated taking government and economics in high school, I found them tremendously boring and I’ve always found the political spin on history to be maddeningly, woefully, incomprehensibly skewed towards the narrative of power-hungry, egotistical elite. With that said, I have exactly no skin in the game of politics. I don’t follow elections, I don’t give two shits about our government. I don’t trust ‘them.’ I don’t think that ‘they’ are here to protect us, because I know that I am here to protect myself, that I am the only person on this planet with my best interest at heart and at hand. And because I’ve read enough policies and regulations put out by the government to know that it’s about power over people not power to the people.

I felt the desire to post about this cluster-fuck of a country, not because I am political, and not because I know more about the way our government operates, or the systems they put in place ‘for us’ than anyone else—because in fact, I intentionally know very little of such things, because most of what I learn only serves to make me angry. So, I am posting about this topic, because history repeats itself, and from where I’m standing, it’s happening right now. I can see the deception so clearly. I’m watching through widening eyes as our beloved government is openly using psychological warfare tactics on it’s own loyal followers. There is so much manipulation, gaslighting, and overt control going on in this system, and they’re getting away with it, because they made sure they could. After all, it doesn’t count as breaking the rules if you’re the one making the rules, I learned that from my parents, and it evidently holds true for Daddy Gov, too.

I believe the tactics used are so woven into what we see as ‘normal’ that we don’t even know how to question them anymore.

I believe it starts in school. Where we are indoctrinated to be obedient, and not to question authority. Where we are told we ‘misunderstood the assignment’ if we come to any conclusion except the one they deigned ‘correct’ for us. We are graded accordingly, often publicly, and usually based on our ability to conform to the narrative our society is spoon feeding us, rather than our ability to critically and creatively think for ourselves. This creates a cognitive dissonance within us, and so often it creates a deep-seated mistrust of self, and of our innate wisdom and abilities.

I believe that because of this, many people no longer trust themselves to think critically, because they’ve now seen that they are ‘no good at that,’ since they’re always coming up with the ‘wrong’ conclusions; as if the world were made up of a series of black and white, universally true or false answers. When we believe this lie, we lose our desire to create, or to challenge the norm. Because that’s what creativity is, right? It’s a challenge to the reality laid out for us. It’s a calling to more than what is, it’s creating what you want to see existing, rather than just accepting or perpetuating what is. Creativity doesn’t fit very well in a one-size-fits-all system.

Creativity is an act of rebellion, just as critical thinking is a crime against society. So just like that, two of the most human elements of existence are routinely squashed as divisive or frivolous. Those of us who choose to lie down and let the indoctrination, the mistrust of self, and the faith in Other wash over us are now merely puppets in a play. 

I believe this is a choice—passively, or actively we are choosing our reality, our narrative. And since ultimately, we are wired for connection it may still feel safer to feel a part of the larger narrative, despite our sadness witnessing the loss of self. We are taught that’s what community is—it’s being a part of a club, it’s believing the same things, it’s accepting a collective reality. But that’s not what community is, that’s what mind control is. That’s what a cult is.

Now with our weakened self-esteem and our CollectiveBrain, we no longer feel equipped to make our own decisions, to decide our own futures. Even if we did it would be at threat of losing our (real or imagined) sense of belonging. Because by this point in society we know that we are not qualified for such decisions— all of our training has confirmed this. So we outsource our belief systems to the Collective. We tap into the loudest, most authoritative voices. The voices that are organized to ‘protect’ us, to ‘keep us safe’ and to run our lives for us, i.e. the government and it’s affiliates.

We tap into the voices that tell us what to do most confidently and most unanimously because we’ve been taught, consciously or surreptitiously that if everyone believes it, it’s obviously truth. Some of us start to smell fish, we start to question things, but we are quickly shut down by the voices in the CollectiveBrain. Who are you to question U.S.? We are taught that truth is easy to spot, because it’s whatever the most people believe in, and we believe it because it seems like everyone else does too.

Since we are still hardwired for connection, they threaten expulsion from the school, or from the society if your beliefs stray too far from the narrative we are allowed to embrace. There is no room for creativity, or critical thinking in this space, because the arts are for the elite, and critical thinking has already been done for you by people more qualified than you to use a brain. You are only making it harder on yourself by not blindly complying. If you refuse compliance, or question standards, then you’d better believe it’s your own fault you’ve been outcasted. You’re dangerous, a threat, a liability. We can’t have that.

In this way, we have been steadily marching towards a doctrine of sameness, of One World Order, of everyone on the same page, as if that’s what will save us. As if truth only exists in uniformity. It’s cleaner that way, simpler, easier to talk about, as long as you don’t question it. Questioning is an act of rebellion, and rebellion highlights difference. If truth is unity, then difference, by default, is a lie, or at best, it’s divisive. We are not different, we are all the same—human. We are one species, and like bacteria we are able to simply multiply ourselves and our experiences to infinity. We all need exactly the same things, and there is nothing more to our lives than reproduction, feeding, and staying close together for protection, right?

That is why we are rewarded when we willingly and graciously accept our place in the CollectiveBrain, but we are attacked when we try to use our own. Just like with that narcissistic parent or partner who told you that you were the problem every time you didn’t blindly obey, or accept their reasoning. They told you that you were hurting them whenever you tried to choose yourself, they pulled back, pulled away, severed connection in order to teach you a lesson about how to exist in their world. 

We’ve all heard of confirmation bias, but what does that really mean? The premise is this: once our brains find a suitably logical explanation for something, they attach to it. They then automatically look for anything that confirms that reasoning, while simultaneously rejecting anything that goes against it’s current narrative. This leads to selective recall of information—only remembering the things that confirm your findings. This entire effect becomes stronger when the issue is emotionally charged, and all of it happens subconsciously, or outside of our awareness. 

Think of how useful this could be in terms of fear. If you are afraid of something you generally want to distance yourself from it, right? But you also want to understand it enough to feel comfortable in your ability to protect yourself from it. But you wouldn’t want to understand it too much since you’re afraid of it, and that knowledge has the potential to access greater fear for you. All of this has the potential to become crazy making, so our brains have adopted an automatic system for this line of thinking.

When we sense a threat, our brains automatically begin scanning our environments with all of our senses on high alert to pinpoint the concern. If it is a twig snapping in a dark forest, for example, we can easily reason that it’s just a small animal looking for food. However, most of us don’t have the wilderness experience to differentiate between a big snap, and a small snap of twigs, so there is the possibility that our brains have chosen for us, using this self-protective automatic confirmation. Meaning that, even in the absence of any real information, our brains have created a narrative, and it’s not very concerned with whether that narrative is based in reality or not.

Now add to that the fact that most of us have seen at least one horror movie or thriller in our lives, so we know it’s never a good idea to investigate the sound, right? Besides, our brains are already assimilating information that leads to a confirmation bias that it was just a wood rat. Though the reality may be very different—it might be a cougar, or a bear coming to investigate you—and if it was you might be able to find out in the morning by checking the tracks in the light. But again, most of us don’t have the kind of wilderness knowledge to be able to read the tracks, nor even to find them. It’s much easier to just wake up in the morning and say, ‘we made it through the night, that confirms that it was a wood rat.’

I believe we approach the Collective narrative, and the flow of politics in much the same way. If it’s not affecting my personal life yet, or won’t at all, it must not be that harmful. I could investigate, but I don’t really know that much about policies, and legal jargon is confusing [much more than reading animal tracks in the mud], so I’ll just leave it to the experts, because if I’m in danger, I’ll know, but until then, I’d rather not think about it.

It’s simple, it’s convenient, and it makes us feel safe to maintain the narrative that the government is here to protect us; that businesses are here to make our lives better, not to make a buck; that big pharma only wants to see a healthy world, and medical institutions have a monopoly on health because they have the most effective treatments, never mind the fact that medical error is the 3rd leading cause of death in the US. For the most part, most of us believe what we’re told to believe. We can feel the medication making us sick but Big Daddy Medicine says it’s not, so we fall in line. We’re told we live in a free country with the First Amendment to the Constitution being freedom of speech, yet when that is taken away from us, when we are cancelled, shunned, fired, or kicked off of online platforms for our free speech we don’t wage war on the government or the institutions that are inhibiting our rights in front of our eyes. Instead, we blame each other. We make up words and concepts like “misinformation” and “conspiracy theorist,” to fit the narrative that Big Daddy Government is telling us to believe in for our safety.

So even though it’s still very possible that it was a bear, [and in bear country, it often is] we are able to maintain our assumptions through the further confirmation bias of not being attacked by anything that night. This serves the purpose of making us feel psychologically safe, so that we are able to sleep through the night believing that it was just a wood rat. Just as using a CollectiveBrain to do all of our thinking serves the purpose of making us feel safe and held in the bosom of capitalism… I mean, community. Just so long as we ignore the fact that one wrong move, or rogue thought will have us expelled from humanity as we know it, we’re safe here in the CollectiveBrain of the arising One World Order.