Reality Tunnels and Politics

 

I learned about the concept of reality tunnels from Robert Anton Wilson. I have always found it a useful tool in thinking through issues, in seeing someone else's point of view in a debate, and in challenging myself to make sure my own b.s. was clouding my perception on issues any more than I could help. If you are not familiar with the idea of reality tunnels, it is a pretty simple concept. Most people think that there is a fundamental reality that is immutable and that we can all agree on based on our senses. The idea of reality tunnels is that even the reality you experience with your senses is being filtered through your perceptions and biases. In other words, think of the famous cartoon, of which there are innumerable versions, where there is a number on the ground and the man on the left says six and the one on the right says 9. Both are right, because from the vantage they are viewing the number that is what each sees. The "reality" that you perceive is taken as being actual reality, creating a sort of tunnel vision that excludes anyone else's perceptions or experiences.

Of course this is a simplistic explanation. For one thing, in the cartoon the number lacks any context of surrounding characters which might identify the top of the number from the bottom. Also, while it is true that we are unable to experience reality itself but only our perceptions of it, there are basic things that are true enough that they can be universally accepted, such as what goes up must come down or water is wet. Sure, in the vast universe there might be instances where these do not apply, but for our everyday lives I would say it is safe to assume these are given. But this is where we begin to slide gently into a trap of reality tunnels. Because we assume that things can be assumed, we buy into a concept of "common sense".

If you spend 15 minutes on Facebook you'll see that everyone thinks that everyone lacks common sense except for themselves and possibly their peer group. It seems to be one universal thing everyone on the platform agrees to. But how can this possibly be? Also, some of the things that are ascribed to "common sense" have often been proved to be incorrect. For instance, many say it's common sense that if someone can get unemployment that means they will have no incentive to find work. And I am sure that in some cases this can be true. But studies have shown that by and large the majority of people want to work, and would rather be paid for labor than paid to do nothing. This idea that everyone except us and the people immediately around us are terrible and lazy is one of the most prevalent and hurtful reality tunnels.

Of course what makes a reality tunnel pernicious is that you will tend to see the things you are prepared to see. Study after study has been done showing that we more readily see that which we are primed to see, and things that we don't expect to see are more easily filtered out of our consciousness. Now people will want links, but I am not going to provide them because I want you to Google, and see not just the articles I would share that bolster my argument (reality tunnel) but the ones that might argue against it as well. That's kind of the whole point of what I am doing in this post. Because this is what I am getting at. It's not just that we don't see in out daily lives that which contradicts our mind set. We tend to ignore anything that seems to disagree with our beliefs.

Left wingers won't watch Fox News or read The Hill. Right wingers avoid NPR and the Washington Post. Both talk about the other's media (not always without merit) as being propaganda. So all the information we tend to take in is that which bolsters our beliefs systems (b.s. for short) and everything else is dismissed as so much noise or nonsense. But how can you be sure your beliefs are right if you never test them. What happens if circumstances change which might affect the validity of your beliefs? Things that were "true" 100 or 50 or 20 years ago might not hold up as well today. Not necessarily because truth has changed, but because our perception of it has.

For instance, imagine a child who sees their father as a harsh, strict man. They may view him as cold and unloving. They may find him cruel and distant. Then they grow up. They experience things that change their view of their father. They learn about the circumstances of his life and upbringing. They find out the reasons why be behaved or believed in certain ways. And they begin to understand him in a new way. Their father did not change. But their understanding of him has, and now where they once saw harshness they now see concern for their safety. What was once perceived as coldness and distance is now understood to be anxiety or a lack of knowledge of how to relay emotion.

Another example of this is Bill Cosby. Cosby was America's dad. He was a comedian who was family friendly, who didn't work blue. Everyone could trust Cosby. And then we found out he drugged and raped women as a hobby. Suddenly rather than a surrogate father figure, he was a monster. But Cosby himself didn't change. Our perception of him did. He was always that person who was doing those terrible things, we just didn't know it. When we stopped seeing him from the point of view of just his t.v. audience and saw him from the point of view of his victims, what we believed to be true about him changed. Unfortunately when it comes to religious and political dogma, we are not willing to entertain seeing things from another point of view. It's easier to say the other side is stupid, or worse evil, often a combination of the two. It doesn't help that there are forces whose sole purpose is to shore up certain reality tunnels and keep people from breaking out of them.

This isn't to say that every reality tunnel is equally valid and should be given full credence. All reality tunnels are flawed to one degree or another, but some are more actively harmful than others. A reality tunnel that says that certain groups of people are "other" and should be criminalized or eliminated because of this can be seen by most people as being pretty clearly more harmful than a tunnel where everyone are brothers and sisters and all are encouraged to live in harmony. (My own reality tunnel sees the biggest danger as groups who proclaim the latter while practicing the former.) I know this may all seem a bit vague and rambling, but my hope is that it may inspire just a couple of people to challenge themselves. That they will look not just at what they believe, but why they believe it. Maybe they'll check out what the other side is actually saying, and not just what their echo chamber reports they are saying. Maybe they'll try to see things from someone else's point of view. And even if after this exercise nothing changes about their b.s., I feel the exercise itself is worth the effort.