Parallel Universe

What do I know? What do I not know? Same for you?

I’ve said this before – we don’t know what we don’t know. Until, that is, we encounter gaps that ache to be defined and known. That is the allure of research. To fill in gaps of knowledge and build toward fuller understanding, of anything. Anything at all.

Through the ages wise men have shared their wisdom. Perhaps the greatest piece of wisdom is ‘knowledge is power.’ Conversations pivot around facts and ideas. Those with more knowledge of those ideas and facts generally are more interesting. People gather around such a person. And they come to rely on them for more information in the future.

What then happens when people in positions of power do not treat others to honest reports of ideas, activities and facts? When interviews and position papers and press conferences represent what is not true, what then do we rely upon? How are we to know what our government is doing and why? What makes them believable? Who moderates the flow of such information? And how do we measure them for honesty, truth and accuracy?

When we speak of history, upon what bases of fact are we relying?

It is all confidence in sources, isn’t it?

Think about that a bit. You listen to someone and you instinctively believe him or her. You go on to think ideas based on those bits and pieces of information. This is how we create and grow our conscious universe. We live in that universe. We share that universe with others. We grow our universes together and expand our futures accordingly.

When an alternate universe is introduced to this scenario, we blink, pause, and reassess our previous thinking. How does this alternate universe change our thinking and conclusions? Ought it change our thinking?

Or is this a fresh challenge to renew our thinking and values and factual basis that aided our construct of our universe in the first place?

I guess the first thought that comes to mind is questioning why there is an alternate universe being presented? What reason has caused the new universe to be talked about? What is the benefit of it? Why now? Who benefits and who doesn’t?

Testing my previous conclusions becomes automatic. It is not a defense of my thinking but a testing of it. New questions are raised and research helps change my past conclusions or add to them, or reassert their value and steadfastness. The process helps me alter my universe as new information arrives on the scene and change in knowledge adds to my understanding of the world around me.

If the alternate view – the alternate universe – clashes and does not fit with whatever construct results of my universe with added thinking, then I would question the accuracy and appropriateness of that alternate universe.

That is what I’m experiencing today. There is the trump universe and my universe. Certainly there is your universe, and universes ad infinitum for each and every person on the planet. The combined weight of these universes, however, eventually form a norm of universes that bring the whole matter into focus.

Is that formation of history, then? And is that why history seems to shift with time as it is weighed with so many different changing elements? Our understanding of the past changes as we learn more from historical records and facts. As we become more reliant on past facts, we understand that past as historical underpinnings of our present. That is how we come to know and understand what is happening right now.

We are presented, however, with ‘alternate facts’ and alternate universes. We are told these are real when no evidence is shared to make the argument whole. We are stunned to be presented the alternatives. Ours is that trusting of a society.

This is when we come to doubt our underpinnings and realize just how propaganda works. It questions the real with the false, the made-up. With repetition it somehow becomes more real until one day we don’t know what is real and what is made up.

Good, logical, educated minds will hopefully protect and defend us from this scourge.

If not them, who? Are you and I so sure we know?

March 7, 2017