Collective Illusions (Dec 11-17, 2022)

Lived in: Laramie, WY
Reading: Honest Advent (Scott Erickson)
Podcast: Rule of Life season 1
Album: Love is Breathing (Our Hearts Hero)
Watching: Cultural Illusions (Big Think)
Playing: Assassin's Creed: II
Making: Christmas at New Life very punk-rock 🎶🤘
I Learned: Relient K's Handel's Messiah on lead electric
I Made: A Cragheart adventurer for the hit board game, Gloomhaven

Happy Third Sunday of Advent!

I had never heard about collective illusions until I watched that Big Think video this week, and I can't stop thinking about it. The gap between what we think most people believe and what most people actually believe is enormous! (And the illusion.) Only 20% of people, according to survey, actually believe what we think most people actually believe, and 80% of people, statistically, believe what you and I privately believe.

We thought most people believed "fame = success," and so we spoke about success in terms of fame, creating an illusion about what we think success is.

Because we personally put fame at the bottom of the list of things that make for a successful life and pursued other things like having a family, meaningful work, and enough resources for amazing vacations together. But that's not what we said out loud to the group. 🙄🤯💀

Our kids want to be famous because they've mostly only heard what we said out loud to the group and only rarely what we actually believe. And it's tragic, because we privately know that fame is fleeting and unsustainable and usually part of doing meaningful work and not doing for fame's sake.

The illusion I fell for is fame-adjacent - because the rhetoric I heard in my groups growing up was "to be a good Christian = to do great things for God," and "great things = anything that will change a crowd."

... I've been thinking about this for a week so maybe take just a second and look at those statements again.

"To be a good Christian = to do great things for God."

"Great things = anything that will change a crowd."

...

I know.

That's preposterous (when I put it into words).

But I have lived fully under this illusion... without recognizing most people do not actually believe it (because, duh, it is not actually true!), yet that's what I heard from sermons and at conventions and retreats and I have participated in that rhetoric in coffee shops and living rooms and at dinner tables and internet forums and--

It's really quite rather silly. And very freeing to look at the lives I admire, and the God I want to love and be-loved by, realizing those greater things are always a product of living closely with him and never the goal of my striving (which may be an illusion to dismantle another day).

If you have a moment to be so kind, what would you really say fills the blank of "to be a good Christian = ..."? Or "great things for God = ..."? (And if there's a better cultural norm to proliferate, what should we be talking about?)

Is there something perhaps you think most people must believe that you find preposterous? Or perhaps an illusion you realize is just that?

I'd love to hear from you, too. 😊👊 

Until next week,

-Beth