Parallel Realities In Action
More on how one planet can hold many realities... at least for a while.
Last November, I wrote about the six different realities that seem to occupy the United States at the moment. Those six realities are political, but in our modern culture, politics is tied in so neatly with various cultural beliefs that these groups are pretty well segmented culturally as well:
And increasingly, we’ve seen these splits become geographic as well. Break things down by urban vs. rural and red state vs. blue state, and you can pretty easily pick out what culture will be dominant, what political topics are hot buttons and where you should stand on them if you want to fit in, and so forth.
Two years ago, I wrote about this same topic from a more bipolar lens (not myself, but rather the case of two realities rather than six) and how fifth generational warfare (war of information and perception) will take place across these realities:
Increasingly, I think that this parallel reality framework is the best way to start any analysis of society, politics, and culture within the United States. We are still one nation but we don’t all live in the same reality.
As an aside: we have always had multiple realities coexisting within the country. Life on the Frontier in the 1800’s was far different than life in cities on the East Coast. That urban/rural split has continued to provide different realities, but so too has the degree of affluence. People who are living on minimum wage in New York City occupy a very different reality than highly paid bankers and lawyers.
I’ve felt these tensions between different realities for a while (as covered in Parallel Realities and the Cold Civil War) by being a conservative on a college campus and then living in Washington DC for five years.
But these differences become a lot more acute once you step away from a reality and then come back to it. College kids often feel this their first summer back home after being educated (and indoctrinated) at a faraway campus that they start to feel more aligned to than to where they grew up.
In any case, a few months back I had a work project that took me back to the DC area for the better part of three months. While we had been back to see family in the area since moving away in 2019, living there for much of those three months provided a different perspective than holiday visits.
Out of many possible options, I have two examples that illustrate this well:
The Plane Experience
On a flight back to DC, I sat across from a guy who was sitting alone, wearing an N95 mask, drinking Coke, and intently watching The Barbie Movie. And yes, he was doing “the thing” where you diligently take off your mask to take a sip of Coke, and then putting the mask back on.
If that sounds unbelievable to you, well, I have photographic proof:
After a bout of pathos for the man, my mind jumped to considering his parallel reality. It is likely one where:
Soda isn’t that bad for you because the FDA allows it to be made.
Watching movies made by feminists makes you more virtuous as a man because society says so.
Wearing a mask still protects you from an airborne disease because the CDC says so.
Now, I could be wrong. Maybe he doesn’t normally drink soda, he was just curious about Barbie, and he has an immunocompromised family member. Sure, all that is possible.
But taken together, he is emblematic of the “Trust the Government Groupies” outlined in the Six Realities. Washington D.C. is almost entirely split between this subset and the “True Believer” activists who pull the strings.
The point I want to get across is not a “oh haha, look at that crazy guy” which is an immediate and understandable reaction for much of the country. Rather, I want you to consider that this man is likely average to above average intelligence and is presumably rational as most humans are. As such his actions, despite appearing insane to us, are most likely a rational choice given the reality he lives in.
Discussions with Other Realities
Second, I had several discussions with friends and colleagues while I was back in the D.C. area. I’m going to combine a few and keep them broad as to avoid calling anyone out (and note I’ve worked with several companies in the DC area). But consider the following:
A former colleague who was mentioning that he was now protected from Covid because he had just got the latest booster (October 2023).
Former colleagues who, as soon as they left the office, put on their mask to go walk to get lunch or go to the metro.
A conversation with a former colleague who thinks that the Covid Lab Leak is still a conspiracy theory.*
A former colleague who is raising a nonbinary child.
Another conversation with a former colleague who got the fifth vaccine dose at the behest of a family member, despite already having an autoimmune issue.
All the people I (anonymously) mention here, I like as people. And all of them would be easily classified as intelligent by an IQ test or similar measure and rational by any definition.
In my reality and the reality of much of the rest of the country (even many blue areas), these views are crazy. Yet in their own reality and that of the DC area, these views are perfectly rational and accepted. In their reality, many of my views are crazy and I got more than a couple times where someone would look at me like I had two heads after I said something believed to be true in my reality.
Where Do We Go From Here?
I’ll close with one case for optimism and one case for pessimism.
Optimistically, ground truth does exist and has always tended to win out in the long run. Obviously, I believe my reality is more correct than the reality that dominates the D.C. area. While many of these beliefs are correlated, it’s still almost certain that every reality has some portion of things right and some portion of things wrong. Further, people can shift from one reality to another as other realities present more alignment with the truth. It’s hard: jumping realities tends to require 1) a lot of time, 2) close proximity in relationship and/or geography, and 3) large events (e.g. Covid) that help show gaps between a perceived reality and actual reality. But it can happen and society can slowly shift toward better realities as we have, generally, for thousands of years.
Pessimistically, bad realities can cause a lot of harm before they burn out: consider the German reality in the 1930’s or China or Russia’s Communist reality shortly after. There is a great, albeit crude, saying on the internet that “the dildo of reality rarely arrives lubed.” The bigger the gap between a perceived reality and actual reality, the bigger the pain is when actual reality comes calling. That pain tends to be most acute in the deviant perceived reality. Many killed during WWII or starved to death during Mao’s “Great Leap Forward” weren’t true believers, even if they were the ones who faced the dildo of reality.