We all think that our experiences and beliefs and fears and wants are normal. We secretly think of ourselves as “the” yardstick to measure everything off of. If you went to college and don’t smoke and don’t like heights, then you think that that is true for everyone, and everyone’s friends! This has been true for a long time I fear, but, in today’s social media-saturated “cat-video” meme world it is even more pronounced.
We all live in our own little echo chambers. Doesn’t it seem that everyone you know voted for candidate X or voted against candidate Y? How could anyone vote for Y? Doesn’t it seem that everyone you know loves to hike or watch NASCAR or homebrew or collect Star Wars original (in the wrapper) figurines? This is part of the reinforcing, the constant calcification of our blue vs red world. How many of us have watched FOX and MSNBC and read a newspaper in the past week? I haven’t.
We are all normal, in some ways, and an absolute anomaly in other ways. Every once in a while, my Pandora radio station (based on the Velvet Underground) will play John Coltrane followed by Green Day and then Johnny Cash, and I think, wow, I’m so eclectic! We all are. There is something about you that is not true for anyone else you have ever known. Yet you and I are exactly the same in many ways, even if you are half my age, a different skin color and gender, and have never even been to California or Texas or any of the many other states that I’ve lived in.
The danger with this “everyone is like me” illusion that Facebook, Instagram, and cable TV feed is that we get intolerant of anyone different. Some of this intolerance is borne of fear; we are always afraid that we won’t get our fair share. Part of it due to the acrid “identity politics” times we live in. Part of the ugliness is because we think too much of ourselves. Part of it is a result of not having common experiences with someone of a different walk of life as we drift endlessly through our own echo-chamber ecosystem.
Not only would this world be a dangerous place if were all the same, all “normal” (think of biodiversity at a minimum) but imagine how boring it would be! Everyone having the same likes? Everyone having the same ideas? Everyone getting up at the same time to drive the same car to the same work (okay, that is impossible I guess). But think of how utterly mindlessly banal life would become if we didn’t meet someone seven feet tall right after meeting his cousin four-foot eight? Accents are fun! What is living in Thailand like?
Since we have not solved cancer, global warming, or even male pattern baldness yet we have some work to do. Way too many people die of dysentery and drone strikes for us to say that we have finished all the hard work, solved every problem, had every important original thought. Thank God that we are all so different so as to allow for diverse approaches to problems…even diverse ways in identifying what the problems are! Our diversity is our strength. Our common shared experiences are the language we can use to build a better world.