We’re Undermining Our Shared Reality and It’s Driving Us Nuts
The tragedy of the latest QAnon killing is that we are bound to keep making them the heroes of their own stories
Although we can knock on tables all we want and predict the motion of an object in space, reality is a lot more fragile than we’d like to believe. While there are bad actors who manipulate the facts that underpin our shared reality for their own ends, that doesn’t necessarily make us the victims.
As someone who writes pretty extensively about conspiracy enthusiasts and the cults their participation engenders, my constant refrain is that these people aren’t joking (and they are in no way a joke).
They are people responding to the same events and threats as everyone else. They are acting the exact same way you would if you knew what they did. They pity the rest of us in our blind acceptance of the status quo.
And they’re not necessarily wrong.
Our leaders (at best) hold us in paternal contempt. Our churches have lost their moral centers. The very notion of intellectual and moral authority has crumbled before our eyes.
In a black and white, Good versus Evil culture like ours, it doesn’t make sense to blame our woes on cultural…
