My regular readers know that I believe we all live in our own individual reality. The way each of us sees the world around us is informed by so many different circumstances of our life to date that it is almost impossible for any two people to see things exactly the same.
That said, I really thought that all of our separate realities had more in common than I am finding they actually have.
The term "gaslighting" comes from a play, and later a movie entitled "Gaslight". In the movie, the husband arranges the gas lights in the couples' home to flicker, and then tells the wife they are not flickering, it is her imagination. Throughout the movie, the husband manipulates the truth in an attempt to make his wife believe she is losing her mind.
He consistently misrepresents the truth and reality. Psychologists have noted that many narcissists and abusive personalities employ this same tactic. If you can blur the line between truth and reality for a person you are seeking to control, it becomes much easier to control them.
And there in lies the basis for my newfound insight into how disparate our realities are.
I am a natural skeptic. Nothing I can take credit for, I was just born one of those people who is given a piece of information and have to question it.
How do you know? Where did you get that information? How deep is the data set that supports it? I was that way as a small child, and I suppose I am more that way now.
Many people are not natural skeptics. Their tendency is to believe anything that supports what they already believe.
This has made our separate realities even more disparate.
And even more frightening are the people that are willing to believe anything because they trust who said it.
And that makes many people very easy to manipulate with false information.
I've said many times that none of us really know that many people. To really know someone takes a lot of time and energy and exposure. Most of us know a handful of people at most.
Everyone is capable of misstating the truth. It can be a faulty memory. It can be false information that the speaker believed. It can be deliberate misstatement of the truth. It can be something the speaker views as kinder than the truth.
The degree to which you know how truthful a person is is directly related to how well you know them.
And it is hard to know more than a handful of people.
So, everything you hear or see can be viewed with skepticism. The more skeptical we are, the more truth will exist in our universe.
One of the most important tenants of problem solving is that first you must agree on what the problem is. To do this, you have to find a shared reality. To find a shared reality, individuals must parse their truth down into pieces, until the individuals find two pieces that match. And then the building of understanding can start.
There is a path out of shouting past each other. There is a path to shared understanding.
Ironically, that path starts with challenging everything you think you know. And then listening to what others think they know. And then finding a particle of shared truth in your disparate viewpoints to build on.
I am uneasy of the path we are on as a society. I believe we have to stop shouting past each other. I'm going to try hard to find a particle of shared truth with people.
But if a person doesn't want to recognize my truth, or recognize their need to be a skeptic, I accept I may have to limit my exposure to them.
I can only work to make it better with people who are willing to accept that their version of reality may contain false information.
I can only identify the false information in my reality if I stay skeptical, and accept being challenged by others who see a different reality.
The path to hope is now skepticism. An alternate universe indeed.
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