What if they aren't idiots ... or even a cult?

What if they have been brain-seduced by story?

Like many, if not most, of us, I’ve been baffled by the political divide in the US. I hear the other side say the same things about my side as my side is saying about their side. In my saner moments, I ask how that could be? Beyond “they’re just lying,” is there a fundamental human dynamic at play here?

I know “they” aren’t all bad people but somewhere along the line, we split apart like a fault line. This morning, a random quote from my Readwise app, offered a clue and maybe even a hope. Here’s the quote:

I don’t remember that quote from a book Gottshall wrote years ago … but maybe I didn’t need it then. This morning it practically screamed at me that this was at least a factor in where we are right now.

Our brains need stories … as I learned from Mary Catherine Bateson long ago when she said, "Our species thinks in metaphors and learns through stories."

Invitation to a one-book book club

I haven’t read this book yet but I’d love to read it and have conversations about it. The holiday season is upon us and everyone’s going to be busy, but I’m going to schedule a chat for 12/16/2023 to talk about this. However, feel free to comment now as a way to jumpstart our thinking … and let’s stay on the positive side and think how understanding this part of our brains might help us bridge the divide.

PS … In case you are a Kindle reader and haven’t discovered Readwise, I highly recommend it. It randomly feeds back your Kindle notes, 5 at a time, every day. My memory being what it is, this app rapidly became one of my favorites. There’s a free trial period that hooked me into another micro-payment app. Here’s a link and Readwise tells me you’ll get a free month if you use this link. As far as I know, I don’t receive anything. https://readwise.io/i/joyce893