Trump was also deeply involved in WWF, which also happened to be an entertainment venture which pioneered the idea of wide-scale, public cognitive dissonance for profit.
It was frustrating for some of us when we were kids and we were yelling at our friends that “professional wrestling” wasn’t real and they didn’t believe it, they wanted with all their heart to believe in the storylines and dumb drama, because it was engaging to that part of some people’s brains which desperately needs to follow narratives to make sense of the world. It seemed fucking insane that people would believe that a real sport could have people with swords and black-magic, we were like “What is wrong with this person that they can’t reason through this??”
But we let it go, because it was “harmless.” It was just a silly show, what harm could it be if some people really wanted to believe in it?
But we should have all taken notice of that specific phenomenon because it’s a profound window in the human condition and how far along we really are in evolution. We’re not a rational, reasonable species, we’re animals that formed brains during a million years or so of ice-ages and desperate survival. Our brains are designed to tell stories to explain what we feel, and the brain will readily, greedily latch onto a provided story. The brain is not reasonable or logical, it’s just a story-telling device. And we’re not at all immune to cognitive dissonance no matter how intelligent we are. There are countless people who believe one thing and know another and it doesn’t interfere with their reasoning or life at all.
If we’re not taking control of the stories being consumed, the stories consume us. We might all feel a lot smarter than people who get sucked into WWF or MAGA, but we’re also vulnerable to emotional appeals, fear and hate. I’ve seen plenty of it masked with progressive values, but far more rationalized. We need to be on better guard, we need to understand the nature of our actual enemy. It’s people pulling puppet strings with stories and emotions and it CAN be countered.
Trump was also deeply involved in WWF, which also happened to be an entertainment venture which pioneered the idea of wide-scale, public cognitive dissonance for profit.
It was frustrating for some of us when we were kids and we were yelling at our friends that “professional wrestling” wasn’t real and they didn’t believe it, they wanted with all their heart to believe in the storylines and dumb drama, because it was engaging to that part of some people’s brains which desperately needs to follow narratives to make sense of the world. It seemed fucking insane that people would believe that a real sport could have people with swords and black-magic, we were like “What is wrong with this person that they can’t reason through this??”
But we let it go, because it was “harmless.” It was just a silly show, what harm could it be if some people really wanted to believe in it?
But we should have all taken notice of that specific phenomenon because it’s a profound window in the human condition and how far along we really are in evolution. We’re not a rational, reasonable species, we’re animals that formed brains during a million years or so of ice-ages and desperate survival. Our brains are designed to tell stories to explain what we feel, and the brain will readily, greedily latch onto a provided story. The brain is not reasonable or logical, it’s just a story-telling device. And we’re not at all immune to cognitive dissonance no matter how intelligent we are. There are countless people who believe one thing and know another and it doesn’t interfere with their reasoning or life at all.
If we’re not taking control of the stories being consumed, the stories consume us. We might all feel a lot smarter than people who get sucked into WWF or MAGA, but we’re also vulnerable to emotional appeals, fear and hate. I’ve seen plenty of it masked with progressive values, but far more rationalized. We need to be on better guard, we need to understand the nature of our actual enemy. It’s people pulling puppet strings with stories and emotions and it CAN be countered.