Sensemaking: How to Make Sense of Things
Sense making is about information. Unbeknownst to me until I finally watched this video series on sensemaking, much of the information we receive and give from interactions with friends and family to the consumption of mass media can potentially be a form of warfare — known as the information ecology and its warfare as pollution. We must be able to think to make sense of the facts which seldom we do. The 19th Century philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche once said “madness in individuals is rare, in groups it is the norm”. This is because we delegate our beliefs and our capacity or willingness to think for ourselves. It is of the naïve belief that everyone we trust in our in-group has thoroughly thought through every issue and has determined by scientific inquiry the true nature on the subject matter. This is false and must be overcome. In order to create a better world, we must be able to do better sense making this is the first step which becomes fundamentally a necessity in this increasingly complex world.
All forms of information can be subjected to game theory rivalrous dynamics. For example, capitalism is a simulated reality given that it distorts truth and avoids truthfulness.¹ Selling is proving it must be bought without proving it is the best to be bought. Zero sum games emerge as a natural byproduct of capitalism. All religions or rather, all ideologies, are creations of in and out groups that cannot exist with its antithesis and creates rivalrous dynamics. No matter how much morality an ideology claims, it has an antithesis to which it is uses to create an in-group and disincentivizes the in-group from challenging its ideology while it invites members to attack the antithesis. Echoing the work of memes by Richard Dawkins, ideologies are memes which propagate and protect themselves with these tactics.
“Madness in individuals is rare, in groups, it is the norm.” — Friedrich Nietzsche
The question we must ask ourselves is: why are there zero-sum rivalries?
Girardian Philosophy
The philosopher Rene Girard developed an idea challenging all of ethnology and fundamental disciplines attempting to explain human nature. Rather than explain that beliefs, rituals and religious systems of all colors were created to regulate human behaviors, Girard explains as to why that is. We are all fundamentally mimetic: we want to be like others or have they already got. The result of such mimetic drives is violence. The core of theory states that in order to avoid violence or the mimetic crisis, there must be victim that becomes a scapegoat and from there create beliefs, prohibitions and rituals commemorating this victim and remind the peoples to be anti-mimetic. Anti-mimetics must consist the core of humanity for it to avoid the pitfalls of violence.
However, much of the game theory rivalrous dynamics today in the information ecology arguably stems from this mimetic drive. It is scarcity or rather, scarcity itself becomes fabricated by unchecked mimetics. Girard warns that zero sum games for materialistic things — or simply things of matter — can attract acquisitional mimetics (inevitably one could argue it seems to do) which the later can set off conflict mimetics and lead to violence. We can observe that even ideologies with an antithesis of non-acquisitional mimetics falls within conflictual mimetics. Communism during the Cold War despised the nature of capitalism — even though the Communist government needed money and additional land to expand its Eurasian Empire — and sought to spiral into conflict with the capitalist model through proxy wars and near nuclear war. Mimetics forms our ideology and all zero-sum game theory scenarios and inevitably causes our lack of sense making capabilities in the informational ecology.
How to Get Over Zero Sum Games and Pollution in Informational Ecology
Attempts to avoid mimetic conflicts in one’s daily life is a start — although in practice may be impossible to fully achieve. Otherwise, we can rely on forms of information to navigate any pollution in the informational ecology. There are two forms information transfer: truth, truthfulness and representative. The first is obvious; it is the exact reflection of our empirical reality or epistemology. The second is a bit trickier. Truthfulness can be of good faith to convey truth but may contain untrue information. Yet truthfulness does express the truth and should be part of any relationships — which involves tremendous vulnerability and intimacy cutting out dishonesty — and embrace epistemology: embrace a truly complex world as aforementioned.² In addition, we need to admit that we do not know and must be courageous to say it and in some situations, conclude that there is a lack of data to capture the complexities of the issue to make a sound conclusion. Finally, I would like to ask: how many conservative and liberal friends do you have? Trying to get into as many in-groups as you can help make sense of things and overcome the narrative warfare rampant and fundamentally characteristic of the culture wars.³ Not only that, but be willing in whichever in-group you are in to challenge them: gain sense of things by attempting to understand the sense others have made.⁴
Food for thought: How many conservative and liberal friends do you have?
Recap map to make sense of things:
- Try to be less mimetic
- Seek the truth
- Be truthful
- Admit that you do not know or cannot know
- Be vulnerable in relationships
- Enter as many in-groups as possible (have conservative and liberal friends)
- Challenge members in your in-group
References
[1] War on Sensemaking. Performed by Daniel Schmachtenberger. August 19, 2019. Accessed October 1, 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LqaotiGWjQ.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid.
