Breaking Through the Noise: Finding Truth in a World of Competing Narratives
How to stay sane in a world out to tell you what to believe
This week I’ve spent a significant amount of time thinking about systems and what creates harmony or discord in our world. This was especially pertinent as I had a wide aperture open for different perspectives and people to share their world view. I got to see how many different ways someone could spin an event when they all responded to world news like Zelensky. I also saw how little people spend time listening to the others. So here’s what’s going on for me now.
Where I Am Right Now
It feels weird to say for the 3rd time in a row that we stayed in Nara, Japan. But it was a lesson because we realized after 3 years of near constant travel … we’re seeking a home (base). We’re not done travelling but we’re tired of not feeling like there’s a home to go home to. So we’ve been asking questions of where can we explore of potential home bases where we can invest in community over a longer time. So far that’s led us to some interesting realizations of the downsides of being nomads for this long - like the fact that our friends are distributed across the world - so there is no “place” to return to.
My Current State of Mind
I’m quite lost and feel bent in between a dozen directions with competing debates in my head. Most of this week I haven’t been able to quite determine “what” my experiment is anymore with any clarity. I’m opening myself up to opposing narratives, different perspectives and new thinkers.
That has given me a lot to think about. But it’s also opened me up to a lot of bad actors, social engineering, and extractive systems. I’ve started to realize how much the internet, due to some bad incentives structures, has ended up as a net negative to society. That the place that was designed to make the world small, has instead made it too easy to be in your own increasingly isolated bubble.
This has put Katharina and I on an increasing conversation on where in-person community and connection lies. I spent the rest of my week trying to figure out where we could go and how we could connect with more like-minded people. It’s put me up front and center around things like keeping my options open, versus as a good friend talked about community requiring consistency over time. I’ve been confronted with the fact that our current lifestyle requires us to either have nomadic friends who travel with us or content ourselves to being on the periphery of people’s lives in the brief stints each year we see them.
What’s Changing in My Thinking: Finding The Right Story
Having a broad net of content coming my way this week taught me some interesting things.
There is very little “news” left to be read.
Most of what we call news are different people spinning situations according to their world views and/or to suit the desires of those they work for. This became abundantly clear when the Zelensky debacle happened and I got to watch the response from 15 different angles. The vast majority of these responses happened according to whatever would most match the world views of their readership base and/or get their opinion promoted online. There wasn’t room for nuance or perspectives so much as “this is what it is and what it means.”
That’s largely because we don’t want to read it
To truly examine situations and make solutions requires things we don’t have. It requires sustained attention, time, nuance and a broad spectrum of people with different perspectives to be heard so that we can understand the situation and make appropriate decisions. That is hard work. Work that is impossible to do in the age of a 24-hour news cycle that presents you with something new to cheer on or be enraged about regularly. So most people, most of the time, on most issues just want to hear whether it’s good or bad from someone they trust. That means we’re susceptible to a media landscape that seeks to manipulate us to see things their way.
That leaves us as globally in an increasingly worse place
Anybody who truly wants to bring multiple perspectives and bring people together is fighting an uphill battle. They are fighting against an attention economy and the incentives to take advantage of it. They’re fighting human tendencies and overwhelm with decades of conditioning and years of training to stay in the shallows. They have to convince people with entrenched ideas to consider issues from all sides without retreating to their beliefs. That’s a tough fight.
That doesn’t mean there *aren’t* people doing it. My mother regularly pulls me to Ezra Klein who is still partisan but provides good nuance and brings on good conversations. Lex Fridman has 460+ long form podcast episodes with a goal of truly discussing things in the depth they deserve. But it’s increasingly difficult to find yourself with people who are truly bringing us into greater understanding and action rather than polarization and separation for profit and fame.
Which might mean that the “news” may be the greatest threat to our world
The biggest change in my thinking has been from Tyson Yunkaporta’s book Right Story, Wrong Story. In that book, he talks beautifully about the concept of … well… what is a Right Story and what is a Wrong Story. A Right Story is about sense-making with diverse groups of people and perspectives to align with universal principles of the land and relationship with other people. Wrong Story could be considered unilateral or an unbalanced perspective that people try to impose on others.
So Right Story would look like community sense-making where everyone is brought in to provide their perspective as it relates to each other and the land that we all share. Where we consider each other, our connections, and the earth that supports it. Where we create collective understanding and decision-making that allows us to create balance among everyone involved.
Wrong Story would be about creating a specific perspective of the world that aligns with a certain group or viewpoint and trying to impose it on others. To find ways to convince people that yours is correct and others are wrong. To use tricks to make your side look better and others look worse. To disconnect from the universality of everyone. To create benefit for some and disadvantage for others.
… and when I look at the world today. I see a hell of a lot more wrong story than right story. I don’t see news. I see wrong stories masquerading as news everywhere I look to our detriment. Which leaves me motivated to make my own little pocket of Right Story.
My Plans for the Week
This week I’m inspired by Tyson in terms of Right Stories and also Story Telling. About creating connection and collaboration with room for diverse experiences and view points. Where stories are connected to direct experience and truth of the land and nature. Where sense making happens in a grounded way among diverse groups of people who share their land and community.
So I’m imagining to myself how to bring more of it into my world. I’m inviting more and more people into my thinking in open-ended ways. I’m planning to create thought experiments that I encourage others to tear apart. To engage in a couple yarns as Tyson calls them which could be fuzzily defined as “a conversational process that involves the telling of stories as a way of passing on cultural knowledge. These circles provide a safe place for all to speak without judgement.
I don’t know about you, but in this age of anger I could use a couple more Yarns in my life. If you’re up for it, give me a shout. I hope you join me.
If you like reading this, feel free to click the ❤️ or 🔄 button on this post so more people can discover it on Substack 🙏. Also if you haven’t subscribed, feel free to. It’s free as I simply build more community from my early retirement, seeking what’s worth doing.