#narratives — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #narratives, aggregated by home.social.
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The Biology of Narratives
Persuasion is hard. You can’t just walk up to someone and drop your request on them. You have to set the stage. You have to build context. You have to be patient enough for the other person to normalize the idea, and only then, slowly, bring them to a point where the decision feels like their own.
Kids do this with their parents all the time. Politicians do it with citizens. Brands do it with customers. The mechanics are the same. Build the narrative, water it, and wait.
Now, have you ever wondered why it’s so hard to shift someone’s stance on a topic, even when the facts seem obvious to you? Resistance to change isn’t really the person’s fault. It’s natural. It’s biological.
We are physiological beings. Our brains are wired by neurons, and those neurons govern our perceptions, our beliefs, our values, our identity, and the emotions wrapped around them. We don’t actually think critically about a situation as a first move. The very first reaction the brain produces is emotional. A piece of news, a sentence, a visual, an audio clip, whatever the trigger, our brain, depending on how it has been wired by childhood and past experiences, releases a cocktail of hormones. Happy. Sad. Angry. Hopeless. Excited. Whatever fits the pattern it has already learnt.
The second step is where reasoning enters, and this is the part most people miss. The brain doesn’t reason first and then feel. It feels first, and then it goes hunting for reasons that justify the feeling. It pulls from our belief system, our values, our self perception, our identity, basically the bundle that adds up to what we call personality, and constructs an argument. If you win that argument with the other person, you feel great and satisfied. If you lose, something more interesting happens. And that brings me to a pattern I keep noticing.
There seem to be roughly three kinds of people when it comes to handling counter opinions.
One, the stubborn type. They are rigid. They protect their world view at all costs and resist changing it even when shown evidence. This is the kind of person for whom hearing something bad about themselves is painful, almost physically so, because you’re not just challenging an opinion, you’re challenging an identity. That’s actually why criticism stings the way it does. The brain interprets it as an attack on the self, not on the idea.
Two, the easily influenced. They flip with the wind. Whoever spoke to them last shapes their view. They fall for lies and clever framing because they haven’t anchored their thinking in anything strong enough to push back.
And three, somewhere in the middle, basically the most of us.
But here’s the catch. It’s not that you are permanently one type. Depending on the topic, the person you’re talking to, your confidence in the subject, your mood, even how tired you are, you fluctuate. You can be the stubborn one in one conversation and the easily influenced one in another. The three types aren’t fixed identities, they’re positions on a sliding scale we keep moving along.
So why am I going into all of this? Because every bit of it is governed by biology. By how your brain is wired. Whether you are open minded or closed minded, in what corners of life, comes down to the architecture of your neural pathways.
When we come across a counter opinion or something we don’t align with, the brain has two paths. Either it rejects the input outright, which is the cheap and easy option, or, if we are even slightly open to change, it has to do something expensive. It has to build. New neurons have to connect. New synapses have to form. A new neural pathway has to be carved through tissue. That is the actual, physical, biological cost of changing your mind.
This is also why we tend to get more rigid as we age. It isn’t that the brain stops being flexible. People learn new languages, new instruments, and enter entirely new careers well into their later years. But the muscle gets weaker if you don’t use it. The more you practice learning new things, the easier learning becomes. The less you challenge your own views, the harder it gets to challenge them later. Rigidity isn’t really a personality trait. It’s a fitness level.
And these new pathways take time. I don’t know the exact numbers, but the point is, you can’t upgrade a belief the way you upgrade software in an instant. The brain has to physically rebuild itself, and that takes real time.
This explains how the world actually works.
This is why politics is the way it is. You’re not arguing with a person, you’re arguing with their entire wiring. The narrative they’ve been living inside isn’t an opinion they hold, it’s the only world they have access to. To change it, the brain has to literally redo itself, and that is exhausting and slow.
This is why public policy is so hard. You can pass a law in a day, but you cannot pass a behavioral change in a day. Behavioral change isn’t a software update. It’s biology rewriting itself, repetition by repetition, across millions of people, in parallel.
This is why brand building takes years. A brand is essentially a stable narrative living rent free inside a customer’s head. Building one means slowly carving a neural pathway across millions of brains. There is no shortcut. You either repeat enough times to become the default association, or you don’t.
This is also why pivoting an audience is brutal. If you’ve been known for one kind of content and you switch to another, your audience doesn’t start from zero. They start from below zero. They first have to erase the old version of you they had built in their head, and only then can they begin building the new one. You’re working against the pathway you yourself helped create.
And this, I suspect, is how social media algorithms work too, and on both sides of the screen. The algorithm itself learns the way a brain does, through sheer repetition. Every click, every pause, every share, every second you linger, is one more rep feeding the loop. The patterns get stronger, the predictions get sharper, the model’s internal wiring goes deeper. In a real sense, the algorithm is building its own version of neural pathways about you.
But here’s the twist. While it’s busy learning you, it’s also shaping you. It keeps serving the same flavor of content over and over, not just because it’s engaging in the moment, but because every repetition carves a groove on your side too. So you end up with two systems quietly training each other in parallel. The algorithm learning what reliably hooks you, and you slowly becoming the kind of person who gets hooked. The algorithm isn’t just predicting what you’ll like. It’s shaping what you’ll become. And you aren’t just consuming content. You’re teaching it, scroll by scroll, who to make you into. Over months and years, those pathways, on both ends, become you.
And this happens at a scale and speed our biology was never built to defend against.
So the next time you find yourself struggling to convince someone, or being convinced too quickly, or wondering why a political conversation went nowhere, remember. You’re not really fighting opinions. You’re fighting biology. You’re asking a brain to spend energy rebuilding itself, and brains, like most things in nature, prefer the path of least resistance.
The good news is that the same biology that traps us also frees us. Pathways are not destiny, they’re patterns. And patterns can be redrawn, slowly, deliberately, with patience. The same way kids work on their parents. The same way politicians work on the public. The same way brands work on us.
One thoughtful repetition at a time.Subscribe to get notified or follow the blog, and if you like what I write, please share it with your network 🙂
#Biology #Brain #Branding #Life #Narratives #Persuasion #Philosophy #Politics #SocialMedia #Society #Technology #Truth #Wisdom -
The Biology of Narratives
Persuasion is hard. You can’t just walk up to someone and drop your request on them. You have to set the stage. You have to build context. You have to be patient enough for the other person to normalize the idea, and only then, slowly, bring them to a point where the decision feels like their own.
Kids do this with their parents all the time. Politicians do it with citizens. Brands do it with customers. The mechanics are the same. Build the narrative, water it, and wait.
Now, have you ever wondered why it’s so hard to shift someone’s stance on a topic, even when the facts seem obvious to you? Resistance to change isn’t really the person’s fault. It’s natural. It’s biological.
We are physiological beings. Our brains are wired by neurons, and those neurons govern our perceptions, our beliefs, our values, our identity, and the emotions wrapped around them. We don’t actually think critically about a situation as a first move. The very first reaction the brain produces is emotional. A piece of news, a sentence, a visual, an audio clip, whatever the trigger, our brain, depending on how it has been wired by childhood and past experiences, releases a cocktail of hormones. Happy. Sad. Angry. Hopeless. Excited. Whatever fits the pattern it has already learnt.
The second step is where reasoning enters, and this is the part most people miss. The brain doesn’t reason first and then feel. It feels first, and then it goes hunting for reasons that justify the feeling. It pulls from our belief system, our values, our self perception, our identity, basically the bundle that adds up to what we call personality, and constructs an argument. If you win that argument with the other person, you feel great and satisfied. If you lose, something more interesting happens. And that brings me to a pattern I keep noticing.
There seem to be roughly three kinds of people when it comes to handling counter opinions.
One, the stubborn type. They are rigid. They protect their world view at all costs and resist changing it even when shown evidence. This is the kind of person for whom hearing something bad about themselves is painful, almost physically so, because you’re not just challenging an opinion, you’re challenging an identity. That’s actually why criticism stings the way it does. The brain interprets it as an attack on the self, not on the idea.
Two, the easily influenced. They flip with the wind. Whoever spoke to them last shapes their view. They fall for lies and clever framing because they haven’t anchored their thinking in anything strong enough to push back.
And three, somewhere in the middle, basically the most of us.
But here’s the catch. It’s not that you are permanently one type. Depending on the topic, the person you’re talking to, your confidence in the subject, your mood, even how tired you are, you fluctuate. You can be the stubborn one in one conversation and the easily influenced one in another. The three types aren’t fixed identities, they’re positions on a sliding scale we keep moving along.
So why am I going into all of this? Because every bit of it is governed by biology. By how your brain is wired. Whether you are open minded or closed minded, in what corners of life, comes down to the architecture of your neural pathways.
When we come across a counter opinion or something we don’t align with, the brain has two paths. Either it rejects the input outright, which is the cheap and easy option, or, if we are even slightly open to change, it has to do something expensive. It has to build. New neurons have to connect. New synapses have to form. A new neural pathway has to be carved through tissue. That is the actual, physical, biological cost of changing your mind.
This is also why we tend to get more rigid as we age. It isn’t that the brain stops being flexible. People learn new languages, new instruments, and enter entirely new careers well into their later years. But the muscle gets weaker if you don’t use it. The more you practice learning new things, the easier learning becomes. The less you challenge your own views, the harder it gets to challenge them later. Rigidity isn’t really a personality trait. It’s a fitness level.
And these new pathways take time. I don’t know the exact numbers, but the point is, you can’t upgrade a belief the way you upgrade software in an instant. The brain has to physically rebuild itself, and that takes real time.
This explains how the world actually works.
This is why politics is the way it is. You’re not arguing with a person, you’re arguing with their entire wiring. The narrative they’ve been living inside isn’t an opinion they hold, it’s the only world they have access to. To change it, the brain has to literally redo itself, and that is exhausting and slow.
This is why public policy is so hard. You can pass a law in a day, but you cannot pass a behavioral change in a day. Behavioral change isn’t a software update. It’s biology rewriting itself, repetition by repetition, across millions of people, in parallel.
This is why brand building takes years. A brand is essentially a stable narrative living rent free inside a customer’s head. Building one means slowly carving a neural pathway across millions of brains. There is no shortcut. You either repeat enough times to become the default association, or you don’t.
This is also why pivoting an audience is brutal. If you’ve been known for one kind of content and you switch to another, your audience doesn’t start from zero. They start from below zero. They first have to erase the old version of you they had built in their head, and only then can they begin building the new one. You’re working against the pathway you yourself helped create.
And this, I suspect, is how social media algorithms work too, and on both sides of the screen. The algorithm itself learns the way a brain does, through sheer repetition. Every click, every pause, every share, every second you linger, is one more rep feeding the loop. The patterns get stronger, the predictions get sharper, the model’s internal wiring goes deeper. In a real sense, the algorithm is building its own version of neural pathways about you.
But here’s the twist. While it’s busy learning you, it’s also shaping you. It keeps serving the same flavor of content over and over, not just because it’s engaging in the moment, but because every repetition carves a groove on your side too. So you end up with two systems quietly training each other in parallel. The algorithm learning what reliably hooks you, and you slowly becoming the kind of person who gets hooked. The algorithm isn’t just predicting what you’ll like. It’s shaping what you’ll become. And you aren’t just consuming content. You’re teaching it, scroll by scroll, who to make you into. Over months and years, those pathways, on both ends, become you.
And this happens at a scale and speed our biology was never built to defend against.
So the next time you find yourself struggling to convince someone, or being convinced too quickly, or wondering why a political conversation went nowhere, remember. You’re not really fighting opinions. You’re fighting biology. You’re asking a brain to spend energy rebuilding itself, and brains, like most things in nature, prefer the path of least resistance.
The good news is that the same biology that traps us also frees us. Pathways are not destiny, they’re patterns. And patterns can be redrawn, slowly, deliberately, with patience. The same way kids work on their parents. The same way politicians work on the public. The same way brands work on us.
One thoughtful repetition at a time.Subscribe to get notified or follow the blog, and if you like what I write, please share it with your network 🙂
#Biology #Brain #Branding #Life #Narratives #Persuasion #Philosophy #Politics #SocialMedia #Society #Technology #Truth #Wisdom -
The Biology of Narratives
Persuasion is hard. You can’t just walk up to someone and drop your request on them. You have to set the stage. You have to build context. You have to be patient enough for the other person to normalize the idea, and only then, slowly, bring them to a point where the decision feels like their own.
Kids do this with their parents all the time. Politicians do it with citizens. Brands do it with customers. The mechanics are the same. Build the narrative, water it, and wait.
Now, have you ever wondered why it’s so hard to shift someone’s stance on a topic, even when the facts seem obvious to you? Resistance to change isn’t really the person’s fault. It’s natural. It’s biological.
We are physiological beings. Our brains are wired by neurons, and those neurons govern our perceptions, our beliefs, our values, our identity, and the emotions wrapped around them. We don’t actually think critically about a situation as a first move. The very first reaction the brain produces is emotional. A piece of news, a sentence, a visual, an audio clip, whatever the trigger, our brain, depending on how it has been wired by childhood and past experiences, releases a cocktail of hormones. Happy. Sad. Angry. Hopeless. Excited. Whatever fits the pattern it has already learnt.
The second step is where reasoning enters, and this is the part most people miss. The brain doesn’t reason first and then feel. It feels first, and then it goes hunting for reasons that justify the feeling. It pulls from our belief system, our values, our self perception, our identity, basically the bundle that adds up to what we call personality, and constructs an argument. If you win that argument with the other person, you feel great and satisfied. If you lose, something more interesting happens. And that brings me to a pattern I keep noticing.
There seem to be roughly three kinds of people when it comes to handling counter opinions.
One, the stubborn type. They are rigid. They protect their world view at all costs and resist changing it even when shown evidence. This is the kind of person for whom hearing something bad about themselves is painful, almost physically so, because you’re not just challenging an opinion, you’re challenging an identity. That’s actually why criticism stings the way it does. The brain interprets it as an attack on the self, not on the idea.
Two, the easily influenced. They flip with the wind. Whoever spoke to them last shapes their view. They fall for lies and clever framing because they haven’t anchored their thinking in anything strong enough to push back.
And three, somewhere in the middle, basically the most of us.
But here’s the catch. It’s not that you are permanently one type. Depending on the topic, the person you’re talking to, your confidence in the subject, your mood, even how tired you are, you fluctuate. You can be the stubborn one in one conversation and the easily influenced one in another. The three types aren’t fixed identities, they’re positions on a sliding scale we keep moving along.
So why am I going into all of this? Because every bit of it is governed by biology. By how your brain is wired. Whether you are open minded or closed minded, in what corners of life, comes down to the architecture of your neural pathways.
When we come across a counter opinion or something we don’t align with, the brain has two paths. Either it rejects the input outright, which is the cheap and easy option, or, if we are even slightly open to change, it has to do something expensive. It has to build. New neurons have to connect. New synapses have to form. A new neural pathway has to be carved through tissue. That is the actual, physical, biological cost of changing your mind.
This is also why we tend to get more rigid as we age. It isn’t that the brain stops being flexible. People learn new languages, new instruments, and enter entirely new careers well into their later years. But the muscle gets weaker if you don’t use it. The more you practice learning new things, the easier learning becomes. The less you challenge your own views, the harder it gets to challenge them later. Rigidity isn’t really a personality trait. It’s a fitness level.
And these new pathways take time. I don’t know the exact numbers, but the point is, you can’t upgrade a belief the way you upgrade software in an instant. The brain has to physically rebuild itself, and that takes real time.
This explains how the world actually works.
This is why politics is the way it is. You’re not arguing with a person, you’re arguing with their entire wiring. The narrative they’ve been living inside isn’t an opinion they hold, it’s the only world they have access to. To change it, the brain has to literally redo itself, and that is exhausting and slow.
This is why public policy is so hard. You can pass a law in a day, but you cannot pass a behavioral change in a day. Behavioral change isn’t a software update. It’s biology rewriting itself, repetition by repetition, across millions of people, in parallel.
This is why brand building takes years. A brand is essentially a stable narrative living rent free inside a customer’s head. Building one means slowly carving a neural pathway across millions of brains. There is no shortcut. You either repeat enough times to become the default association, or you don’t.
This is also why pivoting an audience is brutal. If you’ve been known for one kind of content and you switch to another, your audience doesn’t start from zero. They start from below zero. They first have to erase the old version of you they had built in their head, and only then can they begin building the new one. You’re working against the pathway you yourself helped create.
And this, I suspect, is how social media algorithms work too, and on both sides of the screen. The algorithm itself learns the way a brain does, through sheer repetition. Every click, every pause, every share, every second you linger, is one more rep feeding the loop. The patterns get stronger, the predictions get sharper, the model’s internal wiring goes deeper. In a real sense, the algorithm is building its own version of neural pathways about you.
But here’s the twist. While it’s busy learning you, it’s also shaping you. It keeps serving the same flavor of content over and over, not just because it’s engaging in the moment, but because every repetition carves a groove on your side too. So you end up with two systems quietly training each other in parallel. The algorithm learning what reliably hooks you, and you slowly becoming the kind of person who gets hooked. The algorithm isn’t just predicting what you’ll like. It’s shaping what you’ll become. And you aren’t just consuming content. You’re teaching it, scroll by scroll, who to make you into. Over months and years, those pathways, on both ends, become you.
And this happens at a scale and speed our biology was never built to defend against.
So the next time you find yourself struggling to convince someone, or being convinced too quickly, or wondering why a political conversation went nowhere, remember. You’re not really fighting opinions. You’re fighting biology. You’re asking a brain to spend energy rebuilding itself, and brains, like most things in nature, prefer the path of least resistance.
The good news is that the same biology that traps us also frees us. Pathways are not destiny, they’re patterns. And patterns can be redrawn, slowly, deliberately, with patience. The same way kids work on their parents. The same way politicians work on the public. The same way brands work on us.
One thoughtful repetition at a time.Subscribe to get notified or follow the blog, and if you like what I write, please share it with your network 🙂
#Biology #Brain #Branding #Life #Narratives #Persuasion #Philosophy #Politics #SocialMedia #Society #Technology #Truth #Wisdom -
The Biology of Narratives
Persuasion is hard. You can’t just walk up to someone and drop your request on them. You have to set the stage. You have to build context. You have to be patient enough for the other person to normalize the idea, and only then, slowly, bring them to a point where the decision feels like their own.
Kids do this with their parents all the time. Politicians do it with citizens. Brands do it with customers. The mechanics are the same. Build the narrative, water it, and wait.
Now, have you ever wondered why it’s so hard to shift someone’s stance on a topic, even when the facts seem obvious to you? Resistance to change isn’t really the person’s fault. It’s natural. It’s biological.
We are physiological beings. Our brains are wired by neurons, and those neurons govern our perceptions, our beliefs, our values, our identity, and the emotions wrapped around them. We don’t actually think critically about a situation as a first move. The very first reaction the brain produces is emotional. A piece of news, a sentence, a visual, an audio clip, whatever the trigger, our brain, depending on how it has been wired by childhood and past experiences, releases a cocktail of hormones. Happy. Sad. Angry. Hopeless. Excited. Whatever fits the pattern it has already learnt.
The second step is where reasoning enters, and this is the part most people miss. The brain doesn’t reason first and then feel. It feels first, and then it goes hunting for reasons that justify the feeling. It pulls from our belief system, our values, our self perception, our identity, basically the bundle that adds up to what we call personality, and constructs an argument. If you win that argument with the other person, you feel great and satisfied. If you lose, something more interesting happens. And that brings me to a pattern I keep noticing.
There seem to be roughly three kinds of people when it comes to handling counter opinions.
One, the stubborn type. They are rigid. They protect their world view at all costs and resist changing it even when shown evidence. This is the kind of person for whom hearing something bad about themselves is painful, almost physically so, because you’re not just challenging an opinion, you’re challenging an identity. That’s actually why criticism stings the way it does. The brain interprets it as an attack on the self, not on the idea.
Two, the easily influenced. They flip with the wind. Whoever spoke to them last shapes their view. They fall for lies and clever framing because they haven’t anchored their thinking in anything strong enough to push back.
And three, somewhere in the middle, basically the most of us.
But here’s the catch. It’s not that you are permanently one type. Depending on the topic, the person you’re talking to, your confidence in the subject, your mood, even how tired you are, you fluctuate. You can be the stubborn one in one conversation and the easily influenced one in another. The three types aren’t fixed identities, they’re positions on a sliding scale we keep moving along.
So why am I going into all of this? Because every bit of it is governed by biology. By how your brain is wired. Whether you are open minded or closed minded, in what corners of life, comes down to the architecture of your neural pathways.
When we come across a counter opinion or something we don’t align with, the brain has two paths. Either it rejects the input outright, which is the cheap and easy option, or, if we are even slightly open to change, it has to do something expensive. It has to build. New neurons have to connect. New synapses have to form. A new neural pathway has to be carved through tissue. That is the actual, physical, biological cost of changing your mind.
This is also why we tend to get more rigid as we age. It isn’t that the brain stops being flexible. People learn new languages, new instruments, and enter entirely new careers well into their later years. But the muscle gets weaker if you don’t use it. The more you practice learning new things, the easier learning becomes. The less you challenge your own views, the harder it gets to challenge them later. Rigidity isn’t really a personality trait. It’s a fitness level.
And these new pathways take time. I don’t know the exact numbers, but the point is, you can’t upgrade a belief the way you upgrade software in an instant. The brain has to physically rebuild itself, and that takes real time.
This explains how the world actually works.
This is why politics is the way it is. You’re not arguing with a person, you’re arguing with their entire wiring. The narrative they’ve been living inside isn’t an opinion they hold, it’s the only world they have access to. To change it, the brain has to literally redo itself, and that is exhausting and slow.
This is why public policy is so hard. You can pass a law in a day, but you cannot pass a behavioral change in a day. Behavioral change isn’t a software update. It’s biology rewriting itself, repetition by repetition, across millions of people, in parallel.
This is why brand building takes years. A brand is essentially a stable narrative living rent free inside a customer’s head. Building one means slowly carving a neural pathway across millions of brains. There is no shortcut. You either repeat enough times to become the default association, or you don’t.
This is also why pivoting an audience is brutal. If you’ve been known for one kind of content and you switch to another, your audience doesn’t start from zero. They start from below zero. They first have to erase the old version of you they had built in their head, and only then can they begin building the new one. You’re working against the pathway you yourself helped create.
And this, I suspect, is how social media algorithms work too, and on both sides of the screen. The algorithm itself learns the way a brain does, through sheer repetition. Every click, every pause, every share, every second you linger, is one more rep feeding the loop. The patterns get stronger, the predictions get sharper, the model’s internal wiring goes deeper. In a real sense, the algorithm is building its own version of neural pathways about you.
But here’s the twist. While it’s busy learning you, it’s also shaping you. It keeps serving the same flavor of content over and over, not just because it’s engaging in the moment, but because every repetition carves a groove on your side too. So you end up with two systems quietly training each other in parallel. The algorithm learning what reliably hooks you, and you slowly becoming the kind of person who gets hooked. The algorithm isn’t just predicting what you’ll like. It’s shaping what you’ll become. And you aren’t just consuming content. You’re teaching it, scroll by scroll, who to make you into. Over months and years, those pathways, on both ends, become you.
And this happens at a scale and speed our biology was never built to defend against.
So the next time you find yourself struggling to convince someone, or being convinced too quickly, or wondering why a political conversation went nowhere, remember. You’re not really fighting opinions. You’re fighting biology. You’re asking a brain to spend energy rebuilding itself, and brains, like most things in nature, prefer the path of least resistance.
The good news is that the same biology that traps us also frees us. Pathways are not destiny, they’re patterns. And patterns can be redrawn, slowly, deliberately, with patience. The same way kids work on their parents. The same way politicians work on the public. The same way brands work on us.
One thoughtful repetition at a time.Subscribe to get notified or follow the blog, and if you like what I write, please share it with your network 🙂
#Biology #Brain #Branding #Life #Narratives #Persuasion #Philosophy #Politics #SocialMedia #Society #Technology #Truth #Wisdom -
The Biology of Narratives
Persuasion is hard. You can’t just walk up to someone and drop your request on them. You have to set the stage. You have to build context. You have to be patient enough for the other person to normalize the idea, and only then, slowly, bring them to a point where the decision feels like their own.
Kids do this with their parents all the time. Politicians do it with citizens. Brands do it with customers. The mechanics are the same. Build the narrative, water it, and wait.
Now, have you ever wondered why it’s so hard to shift someone’s stance on a topic, even when the facts seem obvious to you? Resistance to change isn’t really the person’s fault. It’s natural. It’s biological.
We are physiological beings. Our brains are wired by neurons, and those neurons govern our perceptions, our beliefs, our values, our identity, and the emotions wrapped around them. We don’t actually think critically about a situation as a first move. The very first reaction the brain produces is emotional. A piece of news, a sentence, a visual, an audio clip, whatever the trigger, our brain, depending on how it has been wired by childhood and past experiences, releases a cocktail of hormones. Happy. Sad. Angry. Hopeless. Excited. Whatever fits the pattern it has already learnt.
The second step is where reasoning enters, and this is the part most people miss. The brain doesn’t reason first and then feel. It feels first, and then it goes hunting for reasons that justify the feeling. It pulls from our belief system, our values, our self perception, our identity, basically the bundle that adds up to what we call personality, and constructs an argument. If you win that argument with the other person, you feel great and satisfied. If you lose, something more interesting happens. And that brings me to a pattern I keep noticing.
There seem to be roughly three kinds of people when it comes to handling counter opinions.
One, the stubborn type. They are rigid. They protect their world view at all costs and resist changing it even when shown evidence. This is the kind of person for whom hearing something bad about themselves is painful, almost physically so, because you’re not just challenging an opinion, you’re challenging an identity. That’s actually why criticism stings the way it does. The brain interprets it as an attack on the self, not on the idea.
Two, the easily influenced. They flip with the wind. Whoever spoke to them last shapes their view. They fall for lies and clever framing because they haven’t anchored their thinking in anything strong enough to push back.
And three, somewhere in the middle, basically the most of us.
But here’s the catch. It’s not that you are permanently one type. Depending on the topic, the person you’re talking to, your confidence in the subject, your mood, even how tired you are, you fluctuate. You can be the stubborn one in one conversation and the easily influenced one in another. The three types aren’t fixed identities, they’re positions on a sliding scale we keep moving along.
So why am I going into all of this? Because every bit of it is governed by biology. By how your brain is wired. Whether you are open minded or closed minded, in what corners of life, comes down to the architecture of your neural pathways.
When we come across a counter opinion or something we don’t align with, the brain has two paths. Either it rejects the input outright, which is the cheap and easy option, or, if we are even slightly open to change, it has to do something expensive. It has to build. New neurons have to connect. New synapses have to form. A new neural pathway has to be carved through tissue. That is the actual, physical, biological cost of changing your mind.
This is also why we tend to get more rigid as we age. It isn’t that the brain stops being flexible. People learn new languages, new instruments, and enter entirely new careers well into their later years. But the muscle gets weaker if you don’t use it. The more you practice learning new things, the easier learning becomes. The less you challenge your own views, the harder it gets to challenge them later. Rigidity isn’t really a personality trait. It’s a fitness level.
And these new pathways take time. I don’t know the exact numbers, but the point is, you can’t upgrade a belief the way you upgrade software in an instant. The brain has to physically rebuild itself, and that takes real time.
This explains how the world actually works.
This is why politics is the way it is. You’re not arguing with a person, you’re arguing with their entire wiring. The narrative they’ve been living inside isn’t an opinion they hold, it’s the only world they have access to. To change it, the brain has to literally redo itself, and that is exhausting and slow.
This is why public policy is so hard. You can pass a law in a day, but you cannot pass a behavioral change in a day. Behavioral change isn’t a software update. It’s biology rewriting itself, repetition by repetition, across millions of people, in parallel.
This is why brand building takes years. A brand is essentially a stable narrative living rent free inside a customer’s head. Building one means slowly carving a neural pathway across millions of brains. There is no shortcut. You either repeat enough times to become the default association, or you don’t.
This is also why pivoting an audience is brutal. If you’ve been known for one kind of content and you switch to another, your audience doesn’t start from zero. They start from below zero. They first have to erase the old version of you they had built in their head, and only then can they begin building the new one. You’re working against the pathway you yourself helped create.
And this, I suspect, is how social media algorithms work too, and on both sides of the screen. The algorithm itself learns the way a brain does, through sheer repetition. Every click, every pause, every share, every second you linger, is one more rep feeding the loop. The patterns get stronger, the predictions get sharper, the model’s internal wiring goes deeper. In a real sense, the algorithm is building its own version of neural pathways about you.
But here’s the twist. While it’s busy learning you, it’s also shaping you. It keeps serving the same flavor of content over and over, not just because it’s engaging in the moment, but because every repetition carves a groove on your side too. So you end up with two systems quietly training each other in parallel. The algorithm learning what reliably hooks you, and you slowly becoming the kind of person who gets hooked. The algorithm isn’t just predicting what you’ll like. It’s shaping what you’ll become. And you aren’t just consuming content. You’re teaching it, scroll by scroll, who to make you into. Over months and years, those pathways, on both ends, become you.
And this happens at a scale and speed our biology was never built to defend against.
So the next time you find yourself struggling to convince someone, or being convinced too quickly, or wondering why a political conversation went nowhere, remember. You’re not really fighting opinions. You’re fighting biology. You’re asking a brain to spend energy rebuilding itself, and brains, like most things in nature, prefer the path of least resistance.
The good news is that the same biology that traps us also frees us. Pathways are not destiny, they’re patterns. And patterns can be redrawn, slowly, deliberately, with patience. The same way kids work on their parents. The same way politicians work on the public. The same way brands work on us.
One thoughtful repetition at a time.Subscribe to get notified or follow the blog, and if you like what I write, please share it with your network 🙂
#Biology #Brain #Branding #Life #Narratives #Persuasion #Philosophy #Politics #SocialMedia #Society #Technology #Truth #Wisdom -
Participants needed for a top-ranked study from Edward at University of West London:
'The relationship between life events, personality and self-narratives'
Link to the survey on SurveyCircle: https://www.surveycircle.com/TST9J4/Take part now and support this research project 💜
#TraitPersonality #LifeEvents #narratives #SocialRoles #stagnation #midlife
#survey #surveyparticipants #mutualsupport #research #surveycircle #universityofwestlondon -
Participants needed for a top-ranked study from Edward at University of West London:
'The relationship between life events, personality and self-narratives'
Link to the survey on SurveyCircle: https://www.surveycircle.com/TST9J4/Take part now and support this research project 💜
#TraitPersonality #LifeEvents #narratives #SocialRoles #stagnation #midlife
#survey #surveyparticipants #mutualsupport #research #surveycircle #universityofwestlondon -
Participants needed for a top-ranked study from Edward at University of West London:
'The relationship between life events, personality and self-narratives'
Link to the survey on SurveyCircle: https://www.surveycircle.com/TST9J4/Take part now and support this research project 💜
#TraitPersonality #LifeEvents #narratives #SocialRoles #stagnation #midlife
#survey #surveyparticipants #mutualsupport #research #surveycircle #universityofwestlondon -
Participants needed for a top-ranked study from Edward at University of West London:
'The relationship between life events, personality and self-narratives'
Link to the survey on SurveyCircle: https://www.surveycircle.com/TST9J4/Take part now and support this research project 💜
#TraitPersonality #LifeEvents #narratives #SocialRoles #stagnation #midlife
#survey #surveyparticipants #mutualsupport #research #surveycircle #universityofwestlondon -
Participants needed for a top-ranked study from Edward at University of West London:
'The relationship between life events, personality and self-narratives'
Link to the survey on SurveyCircle: https://www.surveycircle.com/TST9J4/Take part now and support this research project 💜
#TraitPersonality #LifeEvents #narratives #SocialRoles #stagnation #midlife
#survey #surveyparticipants #mutualsupport #research #surveycircle #universityofwestlondon -
Small Blue Dot
The world is fierce, filthy and greedy.
And yet, it is also the very system that has enabled industry, technology and the comforts we now take for granted.Capitalism did not create these instincts. It amplified what was already there.
The urge to survive. To compete. To accumulate. To secure more than what we need because somewhere deep inside, we still fear scarcity.
This is not new. Not even human.
It is biological. It is ancient. It is the same force that once made us hunt, fight and kill for food. Today, the shapes have changed. The instincts have not.
We just call it ambition now.
Cruelty has evolved too. It is no longer always visible. It hides in systems, in incentives, in indifference.
But this is not a cynical take.
Because if you zoom out, we have come a long way.
In the last hundred years alone, we have moved from deeply rigid and exclusionary ways of thinking to at least attempting equity, justice and dignity. Imperfect, incomplete, but undeniably forward.
And yet, if you step outside our urban bubbles and speak to the larger population, you will still find the past alive and well.
Old beliefs. Old fears. Old hierarchies.
We like to believe the world is changing faster than it actually is.
We like to believe the next generation is different.
Maybe it is. Maybe it is not. We do not really know.
We live in the most connected time in history, and still we do not have a clear, honest understanding of what people truly think, believe or value at scale.
What we do have is noise.
Narratives overpowering facts. Stories shaping perception. Algorithms deciding what feels true.
We are becoming less capable of reasoning and more comfortable reacting.
At the same time, most people are too occupied surviving to question any of this.
Busy with making ends meet. Kept just comfortable enough to not resist. Just fearful enough to not challenge.
Power still sits with a few.
In many ways, the world is not very different from the time of kings and queens. The structures have changed. The dynamics have not.
And so, each of us searches for something smaller.
A corner. A community. A sense of belonging.
A place where we feel seen. Where our life feels meaningful.
We live, we work, we take on responsibilities, we try to do right by the people around us.
And eventually, we leave.
Hoping that what remains of us is a story worth passing on.
All of this, on this small blue dot.
Trying to find some contentment.Type your email…
Subscribe
Subscribe to get notified or follow the blog, and if you like what I write, please share it with your network 🙂
#Ambition #Capitalism #Culture #Greed #History #Humanity #Life #Narratives #Philosophy #Politics #Purpose #Society #Truth #Wisdom -
Small Blue Dot
The world is fierce, filthy and greedy.
And yet, it is also the very system that has enabled industry, technology and the comforts we now take for granted.Capitalism did not create these instincts. It amplified what was already there.
The urge to survive. To compete. To accumulate. To secure more than what we need because somewhere deep inside, we still fear scarcity.
This is not new. Not even human.
It is biological. It is ancient. It is the same force that once made us hunt, fight and kill for food. Today, the shapes have changed. The instincts have not.
We just call it ambition now.
Cruelty has evolved too. It is no longer always visible. It hides in systems, in incentives, in indifference.
But this is not a cynical take.
Because if you zoom out, we have come a long way.
In the last hundred years alone, we have moved from deeply rigid and exclusionary ways of thinking to at least attempting equity, justice and dignity. Imperfect, incomplete, but undeniably forward.
And yet, if you step outside our urban bubbles and speak to the larger population, you will still find the past alive and well.
Old beliefs. Old fears. Old hierarchies.
We like to believe the world is changing faster than it actually is.
We like to believe the next generation is different.
Maybe it is. Maybe it is not. We do not really know.
We live in the most connected time in history, and still we do not have a clear, honest understanding of what people truly think, believe or value at scale.
What we do have is noise.
Narratives overpowering facts. Stories shaping perception. Algorithms deciding what feels true.
We are becoming less capable of reasoning and more comfortable reacting.
At the same time, most people are too occupied surviving to question any of this.
Busy with making ends meet. Kept just comfortable enough to not resist. Just fearful enough to not challenge.
Power still sits with a few.
In many ways, the world is not very different from the time of kings and queens. The structures have changed. The dynamics have not.
And so, each of us searches for something smaller.
A corner. A community. A sense of belonging.
A place where we feel seen. Where our life feels meaningful.
We live, we work, we take on responsibilities, we try to do right by the people around us.
And eventually, we leave.
Hoping that what remains of us is a story worth passing on.
All of this, on this small blue dot.
Trying to find some contentment.Type your email…
Subscribe
Subscribe to get notified or follow the blog, and if you like what I write, please share it with your network 🙂
#Ambition #Capitalism #Culture #Greed #History #Humanity #Life #Narratives #Philosophy #Politics #Purpose #Society #Truth #Wisdom -
Small Blue Dot
The world is fierce, filthy and greedy.
And yet, it is also the very system that has enabled industry, technology and the comforts we now take for granted.Capitalism did not create these instincts. It amplified what was already there.
The urge to survive. To compete. To accumulate. To secure more than what we need because somewhere deep inside, we still fear scarcity.
This is not new. Not even human.
It is biological. It is ancient. It is the same force that once made us hunt, fight and kill for food. Today, the shapes have changed. The instincts have not.
We just call it ambition now.
Cruelty has evolved too. It is no longer always visible. It hides in systems, in incentives, in indifference.
But this is not a cynical take.
Because if you zoom out, we have come a long way.
In the last hundred years alone, we have moved from deeply rigid and exclusionary ways of thinking to at least attempting equity, justice and dignity. Imperfect, incomplete, but undeniably forward.
And yet, if you step outside our urban bubbles and speak to the larger population, you will still find the past alive and well.
Old beliefs. Old fears. Old hierarchies.
We like to believe the world is changing faster than it actually is.
We like to believe the next generation is different.
Maybe it is. Maybe it is not. We do not really know.
We live in the most connected time in history, and still we do not have a clear, honest understanding of what people truly think, believe or value at scale.
What we do have is noise.
Narratives overpowering facts. Stories shaping perception. Algorithms deciding what feels true.
We are becoming less capable of reasoning and more comfortable reacting.
At the same time, most people are too occupied surviving to question any of this.
Busy with making ends meet. Kept just comfortable enough to not resist. Just fearful enough to not challenge.
Power still sits with a few.
In many ways, the world is not very different from the time of kings and queens. The structures have changed. The dynamics have not.
And so, each of us searches for something smaller.
A corner. A community. A sense of belonging.
A place where we feel seen. Where our life feels meaningful.
We live, we work, we take on responsibilities, we try to do right by the people around us.
And eventually, we leave.
Hoping that what remains of us is a story worth passing on.
All of this, on this small blue dot.
Trying to find some contentment.Type your email…
Subscribe
Subscribe to get notified or follow the blog, and if you like what I write, please share it with your network 🙂
#Ambition #Capitalism #Culture #Greed #History #Humanity #Life #Narratives #Philosophy #Politics #Purpose #Society #Truth #Wisdom -
Small Blue Dot
The world is fierce, filthy and greedy.
And yet, it is also the very system that has enabled industry, technology and the comforts we now take for granted.Capitalism did not create these instincts. It amplified what was already there.
The urge to survive. To compete. To accumulate. To secure more than what we need because somewhere deep inside, we still fear scarcity.
This is not new. Not even human.
It is biological. It is ancient. It is the same force that once made us hunt, fight and kill for food. Today, the shapes have changed. The instincts have not.
We just call it ambition now.
Cruelty has evolved too. It is no longer always visible. It hides in systems, in incentives, in indifference.
But this is not a cynical take.
Because if you zoom out, we have come a long way.
In the last hundred years alone, we have moved from deeply rigid and exclusionary ways of thinking to at least attempting equity, justice and dignity. Imperfect, incomplete, but undeniably forward.
And yet, if you step outside our urban bubbles and speak to the larger population, you will still find the past alive and well.
Old beliefs. Old fears. Old hierarchies.
We like to believe the world is changing faster than it actually is.
We like to believe the next generation is different.
Maybe it is. Maybe it is not. We do not really know.
We live in the most connected time in history, and still we do not have a clear, honest understanding of what people truly think, believe or value at scale.
What we do have is noise.
Narratives overpowering facts. Stories shaping perception. Algorithms deciding what feels true.
We are becoming less capable of reasoning and more comfortable reacting.
At the same time, most people are too occupied surviving to question any of this.
Busy with making ends meet. Kept just comfortable enough to not resist. Just fearful enough to not challenge.
Power still sits with a few.
In many ways, the world is not very different from the time of kings and queens. The structures have changed. The dynamics have not.
And so, each of us searches for something smaller.
A corner. A community. A sense of belonging.
A place where we feel seen. Where our life feels meaningful.
We live, we work, we take on responsibilities, we try to do right by the people around us.
And eventually, we leave.
Hoping that what remains of us is a story worth passing on.
All of this, on this small blue dot.
Trying to find some contentment.Type your email…
Subscribe
Subscribe to get notified or follow the blog, and if you like what I write, please share it with your network 🙂
#Ambition #Capitalism #Culture #Greed #History #Humanity #Life #Narratives #Philosophy #Politics #Purpose #Society #Truth #Wisdom -
Everywhere She Maps [ESM], She Changes The Discourse - A Topic Modeling Of The Gender Discourse In Youthmappers Blogs
--
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.diggeo.2026.100172 <-- shared paper
--
https://www.youthmappers.org/everywhereshemaps <-- shared Everywhere She Maps home page
--
[lots for me to learn here, both in understanding the methods and the results]
H/T @Maliha Binte Mohiuddin
#GIS #spatial #mapping #women #discourse #gender #discrimination #narratives #LDA #geospatial #equity #topicmodeling #women #feminist #digital #geography #opensource #YouthMappers #EverywhereSheMaps #ESM #literaturesearch #analysis #cartography #spatialanalysis #spatialprofessionals -
Pop-therapy speak is problematic because it dilutes the “epistemic authority” and therefore efficacy of actual-therapy speech 👇
#therapyspeak #pop #diagnosis #transpersonal #psychology #mentalhealth #narratives #narcisissm #gaslighting #biopsychosocial #epistemology #philosophy #culture #bypassing
which I appreciate – as someone who tends to flagrantly over-indulge in pop-therapy speech –because it is essentially in the same category as over/mis-diagnosis, 1/n 🧵
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“We are lonesome animals. We spend all of our life trying to be less lonesome. One of our ancient methods is to tell a story begging the listener to say—and to feel—‘yes, that is the way it is, or at least that’s the way I feel it. You’re not as alone as you thought.’”
—John Steinbeck#bonding #validation #conversation #storyTelling #stories #listening #narratives #influence #campaigning #psychology #Steinbeck #quotes
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“We are lonesome animals. We spend all of our life trying to be less lonesome. One of our ancient methods is to tell a story begging the listener to say—and to feel—‘yes, that is the way it is, or at least that’s the way I feel it. You’re not as alone as you thought.’”
—John Steinbeck#bonding #validation #conversation #storyTelling #stories #listening #narratives #influence #campaigning #psychology #Steinbeck #quotes
-
“We are lonesome animals. We spend all of our life trying to be less lonesome. One of our ancient methods is to tell a story begging the listener to say—and to feel—‘yes, that is the way it is, or at least that’s the way I feel it. You’re not as alone as you thought.’”
—John Steinbeck#bonding #validation #conversation #storyTelling #stories #listening #narratives #influence #campaigning #psychology #Steinbeck #quotes
-
“We are lonesome animals. We spend all of our life trying to be less lonesome. One of our ancient methods is to tell a story begging the listener to say—and to feel—‘yes, that is the way it is, or at least that’s the way I feel it. You’re not as alone as you thought.’”
—John Steinbeck#bonding #validation #conversation #storyTelling #stories #listening #narratives #influence #campaigning #psychology #Steinbeck #quotes
-
“We are lonesome animals. We spend all of our life trying to be less lonesome. One of our ancient methods is to tell a story begging the listener to say—and to feel—‘yes, that is the way it is, or at least that’s the way I feel it. You’re not as alone as you thought.’”
—John Steinbeck#bonding #validation #conversation #storyTelling #stories #listening #narratives #influence #campaigning #psychology #Steinbeck #quotes
-
“A well-known principle of human behavior says that when we ask someone to do us a favor we will be more successful if we provide a reason. People simply like to have reasons for what they do.”
― Robert B. Cialdini, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, 1984#manipulation #persuasion #validation #influence #conversation #memory #neuroscience #campaigning #narratives #storyTelling #Psychology #socialPsych #socialPsychology #facilitation #Cialdini #book
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“A well-known principle of human behavior says that when we ask someone to do us a favor we will be more successful if we provide a reason. People simply like to have reasons for what they do.”
― Robert B. Cialdini, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, 1984#manipulation #persuasion #validation #influence #conversation #memory #neuroscience #campaigning #narratives #storyTelling #Psychology #socialPsych #socialPsychology #facilitation #Cialdini #book
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A #Somaliland analyst, @Abdialibarkhad1, says #Mogadishu’s #narratives lack #credibility, arguing Somaliland’s “#sovereignty is a lived reality” backed by #stability, #democracy, & #economic resilience.
https://saxafimedia.com/somaliland-analyst-mogadishu-narratives-statehood/
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https://www.disabilitynewsservice.com/one-in-three-terminally-ill-people-in-deprived-areas-arent-claiming-dwp-benefits-theyre-entitled-to-at-the-end-of-life/. "A third of terminally ill people living in the most deprived parts of #England & #Wales are not claiming #benefits they’re entitled to in the final 12 months of life. Contrary to successive #Government & #mainstream #media #narratives around the soaring numbers of #benefit #claimants, the new #data backs up what many #disabled #activists have repeatedly warned: that the up-take of benefits is instead far lower than it should be."
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https://www.europesays.com/dk/49736/ Denmark Vs North Macedonia: Free streams obscure contrasting qualifying narratives #contrasting #Copenhagen #Denmark #free #Macedonia: #narratives #North #obscure #qualifying #streams
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Did you have a 'constructive call' lately?
It means: You’ve overcome all your inner revulsion and mustered every ounce of strength to make a bloody friendly call to a deeply disturbed psychopathic narcissist. He didn’t throw things, didn’t kick you straight in the balls, and muttered something about his golf game.
Result: You might want to give him another call. He’ll still be sitting pretty in that job instead of a prison.#Narratives: Use that #wording only with quotation marks.
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“We're going to have to reject #dehumanisation of opponents. We're going to have to move beyond “enemy” #narratives. We're going to have to emphasise cooperation and respect, and we're going to have to reduce the drivers of conflict.”
The new world order is here.
https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2026/03/21/the-new-world-order-is-here-and-neoliberalism-is-dead/ -
“We're going to have to reject #dehumanisation of opponents. We're going to have to move beyond “enemy” #narratives. We're going to have to emphasise cooperation and respect, and we're going to have to reduce the drivers of conflict.”
The new world order is here.
https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2026/03/21/the-new-world-order-is-here-and-neoliberalism-is-dead/ -
“We're going to have to reject #dehumanisation of opponents. We're going to have to move beyond “enemy” #narratives. We're going to have to emphasise cooperation and respect, and we're going to have to reduce the drivers of conflict.”
The new world order is here.
https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2026/03/21/the-new-world-order-is-here-and-neoliberalism-is-dead/ -
“We're going to have to reject #dehumanisation of opponents. We're going to have to move beyond “enemy” #narratives. We're going to have to emphasise cooperation and respect, and we're going to have to reduce the drivers of conflict.”
The new world order is here.
https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2026/03/21/the-new-world-order-is-here-and-neoliberalism-is-dead/ -
“We're going to have to reject #dehumanisation of opponents. We're going to have to move beyond “enemy” #narratives. We're going to have to emphasise cooperation and respect, and we're going to have to reduce the drivers of conflict.”
The new world order is here.
https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2026/03/21/the-new-world-order-is-here-and-neoliberalism-is-dead/ -
Track key narrative trends with ease. Our latest platform #Veritas, helps organisations quickly spot the most impactful #misinformation and #disinformation. Find out more about our beta; link in bio
#ethicalai #techethics #misinformation #disinformation #narratives #ai #aiethics #innovation -
A ‘just’ war?
‘We’re the good guys’: why moral storytelling doesn’t make the war on Iran necessary or legal"The Iran war reveals a dangerous shift in the way states justify their actions: a growing preference for moral storytelling over legal reasoning."
"Once the narrative of a “just war” replaces the rule of law, there is little left to restrain the powerful states from dominating the weaker ones."
"The purpose of international law is not to determine who is morally good; it is to maintain order in a world where every state believes it is waging the “good” fight." >>
https://theconversation.com/were-the-good-guys-why-moral-storytelling-doesnt-make-the-war-on-iran-necessary-or-legal-277952
#war #legitimacy #narratives #RuleOfLaw #Australia #law -
A ‘just’ war?
‘We’re the good guys’: why moral storytelling doesn’t make the war on Iran necessary or legal"The Iran war reveals a dangerous shift in the way states justify their actions: a growing preference for moral storytelling over legal reasoning."
"Once the narrative of a “just war” replaces the rule of law, there is little left to restrain the powerful states from dominating the weaker ones."
"The purpose of international law is not to determine who is morally good; it is to maintain order in a world where every state believes it is waging the “good” fight." >>
https://theconversation.com/were-the-good-guys-why-moral-storytelling-doesnt-make-the-war-on-iran-necessary-or-legal-277952
#war #legitimacy #narratives #RuleOfLaw #Australia #law -
A ‘just’ war?
‘We’re the good guys’: why moral storytelling doesn’t make the war on Iran necessary or legal"The Iran war reveals a dangerous shift in the way states justify their actions: a growing preference for moral storytelling over legal reasoning."
"Once the narrative of a “just war” replaces the rule of law, there is little left to restrain the powerful states from dominating the weaker ones."
"The purpose of international law is not to determine who is morally good; it is to maintain order in a world where every state believes it is waging the “good” fight." >>
https://theconversation.com/were-the-good-guys-why-moral-storytelling-doesnt-make-the-war-on-iran-necessary-or-legal-277952
#war #legitimacy #narratives #RuleOfLaw #Australia #law -
A ‘just’ war?
‘We’re the good guys’: why moral storytelling doesn’t make the war on Iran necessary or legal"The Iran war reveals a dangerous shift in the way states justify their actions: a growing preference for moral storytelling over legal reasoning."
"Once the narrative of a “just war” replaces the rule of law, there is little left to restrain the powerful states from dominating the weaker ones."
"The purpose of international law is not to determine who is morally good; it is to maintain order in a world where every state believes it is waging the “good” fight." >>
https://theconversation.com/were-the-good-guys-why-moral-storytelling-doesnt-make-the-war-on-iran-necessary-or-legal-277952
#war #legitimacy #narratives #RuleOfLaw #Australia #law -
A ‘just’ war?
‘We’re the good guys’: why moral storytelling doesn’t make the war on Iran necessary or legal"The Iran war reveals a dangerous shift in the way states justify their actions: a growing preference for moral storytelling over legal reasoning."
"Once the narrative of a “just war” replaces the rule of law, there is little left to restrain the powerful states from dominating the weaker ones."
"The purpose of international law is not to determine who is morally good; it is to maintain order in a world where every state believes it is waging the “good” fight." >>
https://theconversation.com/were-the-good-guys-why-moral-storytelling-doesnt-make-the-war-on-iran-necessary-or-legal-277952
#war #legitimacy #narratives #RuleOfLaw #Australia #law -
Its never been easier to push a given narrative, shift a perspective or reinforce a given belief. Our new tool attempts to expose the connections within this web, making it clear. #misinformation #disinformation #veritas #techethics #aiethics #ai #media #narratives #news
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Operation Epic Fury - How Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth are selling the Iran war to Americans
"We see the secretary of defense constantly putting [the war] in the framework, the narrative, of a big video game...We're blowing up a lot of stuff, we're killing a lot of people' … it's so distasteful to me...I think there probably is a good reason for why we are doing this, but we're certainly not hearing it from the administration." Professor VanLandingham >>
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-03-09/trump-hegseth-white-house-frame-iran-middle-east-war-as-a-game/106427790„Crusades“ and the “Secretary of War” - The man in charge of the world’s most powerful military. "‘A very dangerous person’: alarm as Pete Hegseth revels in carnage of Iran war" >>
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/mar/08/pete-hegseth-pentagon-trump-iran
#war #hyperreality #media #movies #VideoGames #reality #DesertOfTheReal #spectacles #narratives #crusades #crusader #iconography #extremism #rhetoric #military #justification #GodWillsIt -
Operation Epic Fury - How Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth are selling the Iran war to Americans
"We see the secretary of defense constantly putting [the war] in the framework, the narrative, of a big video game...We're blowing up a lot of stuff, we're killing a lot of people' … it's so distasteful to me...I think there probably is a good reason for why we are doing this, but we're certainly not hearing it from the administration." Professor VanLandingham >>
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-03-09/trump-hegseth-white-house-frame-iran-middle-east-war-as-a-game/106427790„Crusades“ and the “Secretary of War” - The man in charge of the world’s most powerful military. "‘A very dangerous person’: alarm as Pete Hegseth revels in carnage of Iran war" >>
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/mar/08/pete-hegseth-pentagon-trump-iran
#war #hyperreality #media #movies #VideoGames #reality #DesertOfTheReal #spectacles #narratives #crusades #crusader #iconography #extremism #rhetoric #military #justification #GodWillsIt -
Operation Epic Fury - How Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth are selling the Iran war to Americans
"We see the secretary of defense constantly putting [the war] in the framework, the narrative, of a big video game...We're blowing up a lot of stuff, we're killing a lot of people' … it's so distasteful to me...I think there probably is a good reason for why we are doing this, but we're certainly not hearing it from the administration." Professor VanLandingham >>
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-03-09/trump-hegseth-white-house-frame-iran-middle-east-war-as-a-game/106427790„Crusades“ and the “Secretary of War” - The man in charge of the world’s most powerful military. "‘A very dangerous person’: alarm as Pete Hegseth revels in carnage of Iran war" >>
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/mar/08/pete-hegseth-pentagon-trump-iran
#war #hyperreality #media #movies #VideoGames #reality #DesertOfTheReal #spectacles #narratives #crusades #crusader #iconography #extremism #rhetoric #military #justification #GodWillsIt -
Operation Epic Fury - How Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth are selling the Iran war to Americans
"We see the secretary of defense constantly putting [the war] in the framework, the narrative, of a big video game...We're blowing up a lot of stuff, we're killing a lot of people' … it's so distasteful to me...I think there probably is a good reason for why we are doing this, but we're certainly not hearing it from the administration." Professor VanLandingham >>
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-03-09/trump-hegseth-white-house-frame-iran-middle-east-war-as-a-game/106427790„Crusades“ and the “Secretary of War” - The man in charge of the world’s most powerful military. "‘A very dangerous person’: alarm as Pete Hegseth revels in carnage of Iran war" >>
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/mar/08/pete-hegseth-pentagon-trump-iran
#war #hyperreality #media #movies #VideoGames #reality #DesertOfTheReal #spectacles #narratives #crusades #crusader #iconography #extremism #rhetoric #military #justification #GodWillsIt -
Operation Epic Fury - How Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth are selling the Iran war to Americans
"We see the secretary of defense constantly putting [the war] in the framework, the narrative, of a big video game...We're blowing up a lot of stuff, we're killing a lot of people' … it's so distasteful to me...I think there probably is a good reason for why we are doing this, but we're certainly not hearing it from the administration." Professor VanLandingham >>
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-03-09/trump-hegseth-white-house-frame-iran-middle-east-war-as-a-game/106427790„Crusades“ and the “Secretary of War” - The man in charge of the world’s most powerful military. "‘A very dangerous person’: alarm as Pete Hegseth revels in carnage of Iran war" >>
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/mar/08/pete-hegseth-pentagon-trump-iran
#war #hyperreality #media #movies #VideoGames #reality #DesertOfTheReal #spectacles #narratives #crusades #crusader #iconography #extremism #rhetoric #military #justification #GodWillsIt -
The Power Of Using A Story For Better Data Comprehension And Hence Decision Making
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https://doi.org/10.1080/15228053.2021.2016151 <-- shared book review, “Data Story: Explain Data And Inspire Action Through Story”
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[I encountered this excellent graphic from @saurabh Rai, and went and explored the ideas put so succinctly here; I found, well, a technical story overview (link above) to ‘match’; however, this should not be considered an endorsement of this book]
#data #storytelling #data #comprehension #presentation #story #frameworks #context #setting #dataquality #communication #usecase #robustness #insights #correctness #decisionmaking #narratives #decisions -
Big Quarry Literature and Settlers Caught on Screen
The complex anxiety of quarry noir"We dig holes in Australia...It’s what we do. It’s all we’ve ever done, we’re just the world’s quarry, an enormous pit, ever since we struck gold a hundred and fifty years ago." >>
https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-australias-quarry-noir-mines-our-anxiety-about-our-biggest-industry-239523"Dr James Finlay reflects on how Australia’s convict past has been represented on screen, tracing shifts from early cinematic melodrama through to television drama and contemporary film, and considering how these visual narratives continue to shape national memory." >>
https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/history-now-caught-on-screen-australias-convict-history/id1674476464?i=1000749142755James Findlay, Caught on Screen, Australia’s Convict History in Film and Television, 2025 >>
https://www.bloomsbury.com/au/caught-on-screen-9798765100523/#mining #extractivism #Literature #film #screen #culture #SettlerSociety #convicts #history #Australia #fiction #narratives #QuarryNoir #BigQuarry #books #NationalAnxiety #criminality #FirstNationsPeoples
