Two Sides of the Same Coin: The Ego Trap

I read about half way through a take-down piece of a video making the rounds about Covid-19. The video has millions of views, is getting removed and reposted, and when I watched it, seemed plausible and well done. The take down piece made an interesting observation how the narratives that really grab us have a gnostic nature to them, a way to let the viewer know, "You are special. You are enlightened with secret knowledge and unlike those who are asleep, you are called to use this special knowledge to fight evil and awaken others."

It’s very compelling. It draws us in to be the heroes of our own lives and, importantly, clarifies who the bad guys are and who creates the suffering we find around us. It gives structure to what is otherwise unstructured chaos or at least nature out of our control.

On the flip side, the take-down piece has its own style of narrative that can essentially be summed up as, "These idiots... Look at the stupidity they are spewing now." It comes with a sense of haughty pride with a lot of labeling like "conspiracy theorist" or "tin foil hat" wearer. This brand of narrative also makes the reader feel enlightened but in way that is meant to be more proper, rigorous, and "scientific." It also has a sense of "You’re better than those unscientific idiots sharing a video they clearly aren’t smart enough to properly debunk, unlike you, the intelligent one."

I see flaws in both narratives.

Sometimes scientific revolutions start out looking like crazy, uneducated stories. This happens as a paradigm breaks down and a new, previously fringe, perspective takes center stage. After some revisionist history, the new ideal is considered part of the long line of orderly science leading to that current understanding (the book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions covers this), when in reality it wasn’t orderly at all. Some issues are too complex to easily dismiss. At the same time, believing all kids of randomness becuase of our "feels" isn’t helpful either and it’s much easier to tell a compelling story than to debunk it effectively.

My thought at the moment is both approaches are ego traps for most of us. Most people are not experts in these fields and we’re scared. We don’t know how to cope with the uncertainty so we either believe compelling stories well told or detailed take-downs which use the preferred amount of ridicule for whatever group we think less intelligent to make ourselves feel more intelligent (and more in control).

The answer?

Well, I don’t really have one. We can spend our days doing research to confirm our biases or trying to disprove our strongly held hypothesis. Ultimately it may not matter. Each breath is here for us to take and hopefully we’ll use the time we have to be present, aware, and love.

_{Originally posted on Facebook here}