Cake by the ocean, contagion theory, & brain worms
I woke up this morning with “Cake By The Ocean” playing in my head. Ever had one of those days? Where a song just pops in your head and keeps coming back up? Like Rhinestone Cowboy or something similar? Ear worms we used to call them. A catchy, contagious sound that becomes our soundtrack for an hour or a day. Harmless and occasionally annoying, but a part of life for many.
It's one of the reasons people are careful in working with young people after a classmate or anyone their age is reported as having committed suicide. There's a fear - a real one, that it will give other young people the idea to follow suite. Call it societal peer pressure or whatever, there is an impact.
Other things can fall into that category: school shootings, bomb threats, negative rumors, and so on. We get the idea that when certain things happen in our culture, because of the nature of social media and communication, we have to be vigilant about the ripple effects.
We're usually more quick to respond to those kinds of ideas or events, but less so about things that we allow to consume our minds, form our gossip ingredients, and lead us down a trail of "do or die" bravado and beliefs that we feel cocky or confident enough about that we'll allow them to end or tilt relationships.
A kind of momentum builds inside of people and they begin to look for things to confirm their current level of information and their feelings. People and situations that look like what they're looking for, good or bad, assemble in front of them. The landscape around them is transformed into their assumptions.
The world becomes more black and white - A vs. B, good versus evil on the basis of their version good and evil. People become despised devils and enemies OR angels and allies. Sides are chosen and their size and speed of develop grow exponentially till they become a new reality for swaths of the population.
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We've all heard stories of ministers, pastors, priests, or other religious leaders doing wrong or messing up in significant ways, but that's all we hear. It doesn't "make the news" when the vast majority of those people do good things, don't screw up, do help people, and so on. The vast majority.
We've all heard stories and even have seen videos of law enforcement officers doing wrong or messing up in really big, egregious ways - and that's usually all that is shared. It doesn't "make the news" when the vast majority of them do good things, don't screw up, do help people, and so on. The vast majority.
A few bad doesn't mean the whole bunch is. We take the exceptions to be the rule because of other stories or ideas we've been learning and internalizing as The Truth about life. We develop contrast conceptions that show us nothing or very little of good about the people or groups we've pre-decided are "bad".
And you can take any host of categories of people and run the same scenario: men, women, homosexuals, Democrats, Republicans, Trump fans, Harris fans, immigrants (legal or not), Russians, Ukrainians, Southerners, Yankees, Rednecks, hood rats, etc - you name it, there's a stereotype or overgeneralization.
We allow people or ideas to take over our minds and run us wherever they want us to go - even if they don't know why they're headed in that direction. It's almost a herd mentality; a survival skill that says to run with what feels like a larger, safer group so you're safe from the perceived dangers.
One of the hunting strategies of native Americans was to assemble key riders and runners to chase a herd of animals, usually buffalo, into a certain direction so that they would run off a cliff and either kill themselves or be injured so badly that they were easily slaughtered at the bottom of the cliff.
The same thing happens with people. We're stampeded into thoughts and actions through how we carry out our spending, our voting, our travels, our socializing, and so on. And someone "out there" is benefiting from our being directed - usually remotely and many layers of influence deep so we'll never know who.
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I like social media, the news, arts, entertainment, and so on. At the same time, I realize they, like many things, are tools and agents for messages we might not realize we are hearing and integrating. Even the way we hear or see things becomes the message, the most important thing, or trusted source.
There was a time in history when media was almost non-existent. Newspapers and other "slow" methods of communicating were just about the only way you knew of anything outside your local area. Unless you went somewhere to look for yourself, you didn't know much of the world even existed.
Fast forward to now when we live in a 24-hour news cycle that's really turned into a moment to moment news cycle. We know things around the world almost immediately. Or at least what people or idea streams are telling us from their curated point of view; leaving out other worlds of information and context.
Once those kinds of ideas are planted in our minds, they are there to stay until something potentially forces us to see something different. And for those who grow up in those ideas, that is their reality and changing it/modifying it is likely even harder - the contagion is their reality, the brain worm is their brain.
The apostle Paul (the guy who wrote a lot of the New Testament) noted how the world appears to us and how easy it is to be taken captive in our minds by different thoughts, basic principles that seem like common sense, etc - he warned people/us to be aware of what we are aware of.
"We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ" 2 Corinthians 10:5
"Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind." Romans 12:2
"See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces of this world rather than on Christ." Philippians 2:8
"...to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness." Ephesians 4:23-24
[And it's interesting to me, as a side note, how many people will read those passages and see the words God or "in Christ" and assume I'm referring to "church" or "religion" from their own experiences &/or pop cultural point of view and quickly turn away with the assumption I'm "one of those people".]
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People struggle in our culture because of the overwhelming firehose of information that hits them all the time. We're almost trained to drink it in and to filter it in a certain way and NOT to think at all about what our filter is made of or where it came from.
And it's all about purposeful division. Can I divide you against others so that you'll vote for something or buy something and not vote for someone else or buy someone else's product? Can I convince you to part from your money and time to get you to spend it on what I want you to spend it on?
I ask God on occasion about all this - What are we to make of it? What "side should we choose"? Are any "sides" something he's interested in or wanting us to pay attention to? Why can't people on either side see how they use scripture/the Bible to beat each other up and judge each other?
And usually the answer I get/hear back is, "What is that to you? Why would you assume that because someone says they're representing my point of view actually is? Don't let people set my agenda for you. I'm not a political football nor am I on anyone's side as you're thinking about it. I am God. Relax into that. We're in no hurry here."
From the point of view of a believer in God through what he's done in Jesus (again, don't read "going to church" into that), I know we were never promised a "rose garden" as the old song says. We spend a lot of time asking him for things he never promised, but that people said he promised if we did/do X, Y, & Z.
I don't even think he's called us to take it on ourselves to create heaven on earth. We're called to trust and depend on him - and that will lead us into doing things that will cause things like that to happen on its own - but as soon as we try to make things happen, we try to control it and end up making a lot of things worse.
It's like that scene from the Harry Potter movie where he drinks the lucky charm potion and does something that shocks his friends because it didn't seem to do what they were trying to do, but his actions turn out to be exactly what was needed. Counterintuitive 100%.
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Over the past year, I've started multiple X/Twitter accounts to see what just a few "nudges" from me might result in. Sure enough, if I open an account with a certain political lean or interest in any topic, in less than a day or two, I'm flooded with more things that confirm my original interests that I checked off. Echo chamber created.
Same thing happens in conversations - we have our own social algorithms that operate in our daily interactions. Try it sometime - "go native" with a stranger and pick up on their cues and see how quickly they run a conversation with you that confirms the original cues you picked up.
It doesn't mean that the conversation partner really thinks what you've confirmed, only that we're willing to go along to get along and, in doing so, help each other confirm the echo chambers we're in. In the situations where there's push back, people learn to curtail those kinds of people/conversations and the worldview purification cycle continues.
I look forward to seeing people have conversations with people they disagree with. Genuine interactions where someone can say, "I disagree and here's why..." or even, "I disagree and I don't know why." Slower, purposeful times where people can connect and potentially begin to understand each other more.
And that is one of those things that helps "create heaven on earth". And it's something that we have little control over. All we can do is be intentional and know that "for this starfish", it meant everything (I assume you know that story) and the world is changed, little by little, like that.
Grace and peace.
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