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Comment by scrollaway | Hacker News Reader

At some point you might be willing to consider you're the indoctrinated/brainwashed one. You said it yourself, you see everything around you repeat what you believe is false 24/7.

Reality is hard. It's easier out here in europe, we've been lucky enough not to suffer too much from the awful american media diet. We've mostly seen this happen to you all from the outside.

There's a lot of propaganda in your country. I sympathize with you, truly; it's difficult to tell what's real and what isn't when you've been gaslit for years. It's especially more difficult when you think that accepting reality means giving up your ideas and opinions on eg. personal freedom (it doesn't). But getting out of there is going to be your fight.

Saw this thread this morning; if there's hope for that guy, maybe there's hope for you. https://www.reddit.com/r/self/comments/kt9ues/update_my_husb...

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> Reality is hard. It's easier out here in europe, we've been lucky enough not to suffer too much from the awful american media diet.

I live in the U.S. and stay away from the media. I recommend it. I used to think it was important to stay abreast of all of the comings and goings, but that was B.S. It's a stressful waste of time for me. I don't really get into sports either.

> There's a lot of propaganda in your country. I sympathize with you, truly; it's difficult to tell what's real and what isn't when you've been gaslit for years.

What you say is true about it being difficult to tell what is real. But, the only people that I spoken with that know what it's like in America are those that have lived here recently for a year or more, and preferably those that have moved around some. It's a large country, with different cultures; I don't even know them all. A lot of it is annoying (the parts of the country where people act really fake and the parts where people seem nice but are passive aggressive isolating backstabbers), and a lot more of it is honest, loud, quiet, funny, and cool.

I sometimes act as if I understand the people of this or that country, because I work with people of different countries each day at work, so I know I act the same way; I don't really know what it's like either.

At some point you might be willing to consider you're the indoctrinated/brainwashed one.

After living in both a conservative state and a liberal coastal area for years, I've realized that every radically different culture probably looks like brainwashing to other radically different cultures. What we might be seeing is what happens when those cultures compete for the same space.

Much like living organisms, both cultures/memeplexes produce their versions of antibodies and immunities.

Both living memeplexes have developed a sense of "self" vs "defective self"/"harmful other" vs "harmless other", just like an immune system. Both "believe" themselves to be the "true" organism, and that the other is defective. Both have diverged enough that mutual symbiosis is no longer working. Both claim the same space as their own.

Both have failed to process the metaphorical signaling molecules of the other. Driven by their respective fitness functions, both are evolving and diverging.

Ultimately, the two organisms will have to relearn how to communicate and merge back into a symbiotic whole, establish a clear boundary between the two, or failing those, each will continue to seek to destroy the other until perhaps nothing is left of either.

That's all swell and dandy until one of these cultures controls the media and government and shuts down the other via every means possible, from non-stop propaganda and censorship to witch hunts and persecutions on ideological grounds. We are in '1984'.

I think the median case is exaggerated on both sides. But both sides are gradually radicalizing. One probably doesn't want to bump into extremists from either side. Both are overhyping their respective persecution complexes. Both are using extreme events and individuals to try to justify extreme behavior in non-extreme median cases. When neither events nor individuals are mentioned, many of the complaints people raise can be applied to either side.

I do agree that the left lacks self-awareness of how much it behaves just like a religion -- I moved away from my religious home state to try to get away from dogma, and just found another breed of it. The right lacks self-awareness of how much influence it still has.

Both lack mutual awareness of how to relate to one another, and that's something we need to work at from all sides. Neither side has 100% of the "truth", whatever that might be.

I don't really know what a solution looks like, but I do know that it has to start somewhere, maybe with believing that an amicable solution is even possible. We've spent a lot of time airing grievances. What do we want to happen next? Would you (and others reading) be willing to help brainstorm some ideas to try to bridge the divide?

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