Let’s be honest: how silly and irrational are horoscopes? Imagine believing star signs have any meaning other than the one we arbitrarily attach to them, and now imagine me really saying this and meaning it. Boom, did I trick you into keep reading? Maybe, but only for less than a paragraph. Now that you’re here, why don’t you stay?
Am I saying horoscopes hold the truth about our existence? No. But psychology doesn’t either. Then am I saying any stance on life is equally valid? Nope. There are differences, some things have been studied for longer, some things haven’t been studied enough, others have been proven to have little accuracy. However, accuracy is one criteria amongst many other we might value at a specific moment. Can we have conversations in which saying this doesn’t mean “yeah sure, therapy and astrology are basically the same. This psychologist on substack said it”?
You might have noticed what incredibly split times we’re living in. Factions form around the biggest and smallest themes: pro or against, nothing in between. Each team is not only absolutely convinced of the legitimacy of all of the opinions and values it’s standing for, but also adamantly excludes anyone whose point of view diverges of even 5% from them, and places them in the group of enemies where those who diverge 90% also are thrown.
If we consider the fact that we are in the era where we say “complexity” more than ever before (check out how smooth the upward curve is here), it’s uncanny how simplistic everything is, how little nuance we have (ironically, “nuance” has peaked two decades ago and then descended again).
It’s no mystery what an impact the internet has. Jia Tolentino, in her book Trick Mirror, talks about “five intersecting problems” of the internet: “first, how the internet is built to distend our sense of identity; second, how it encourages us to overvalue our opinions; third, how it maximizes our sense of opposition; fourth, how it cheapens our understanding or solidarity; and, finally, how it destroys our sense of scale.”. Not a lot of nuance, it seems. Not a lot of finding common ground, meeting in the middle, collaborating, changing perspective or seeing through differences. Some circumstances are so extreme that seeing the perspective of someone else might seem a blasphemy. But most of them allow some space for discussion.
Writing about this is hard, so far the longest I’ve taken to jot down some words. I get distracted, sidetracked in my thoughts, I stop and start again only to find myself frozen with dismay. The human mind (or call it heart, soul, essence) and the individual, for me, are full of hope. Looking closely is the cure I believe in, because by looking we see, and by seeing we hold. But the world, some of it, some times, scares me too. It baffles me and renders me powerless. In the face of this powerlessness either I withdraw or I go back to closeness.
Closeness sits me in front of someone whose fear is the irrationality of his surroundings (what he sees as irrational): people slipping into absurd theories, talking with a language he shares no words of. He holds tight onto his beliefs: science, what’s proven, what’s logical. Maybe he’ll say closing a house and a border is safer, maybe he’ll argue being an influencer is not a real job. He built foundations that he deems rational on grounds that are emotional.
I can stand in front of him as someone whose goal is to fight (let’s be honest, there’s a perverse pleasure in conflict… but more on this another time) and it’d be perfectly in line with my goal to yell, mock, but even just to refute, disagree, show proofs against his beliefs. I’d use my rationality to confute his. We’d both come out angrier, and by doing this over an over we’d be confirming that that was our goal all along (something in common, at last).
Or I can stand in front of him thinking about the flames that are already burning all the ground we have in common, all the ground around us, the flames that will keep eroding roads and parks and beaches around both of us, roads and parks and beaches neither of us will get to go to after we’re done. And once I know this I can decide to stop calling my view rational and his delusional, and understand both views are basically emotions in disguise. The only real delusion, I’d understand, is to keep doing the same thing over an over expecting a different result.
In the middle, we’d confirm we still disagree. In the middle, it won’t be all the same, my view and his view. But we’d zoom out far enough to see we’re sitting inside the same ship, and neither of us, if we are very honest with ourselves, wants to see it sinking.
I am disheartened by not one, not two, but many things said and done by many people (including myself) when we’re moved by fear, hatred, and need to be superior. Our use of “superior”, I notice, has regularly decreased in the last century. Good. It’s time to match words with actions.
(Note: Some things are less complex than others. Free Palestine.)
Empatherapy 