Don’t mistake your life for the truth
There was a meme that did the rounds a few weeks ago - so ancient history when talking about memes.
It’s not worth digging up, so I’ll paraphrase:
“Old scifi is like, ‘It’s the year 3124 and humanity is in peril. They unite to-‘ No, that’s not how it would happen. I now know people don’t unite in a crisis.”
This meme is wildly wrong.
It goes against the science, which is probably ironic if you think about it.
This is an understandable mistake to make. It’s not forgivable because it’s the sort of mistake that warps meaning and blurs wisdom.
The error is mistaking your life for the truth.
You look around, see some stuff happen and think, “Huh, human nature sure is strange.”
No.
The things you see might be a product of the times, not of human nature.
Humans do, in fact, unite during crises. One of the first experiments into tribalism - in the aftermath of World War 2, by researchers asking what the hell just happened to the world - conclusively found that.
You know the one, with the Eagles and the Rattlers.
Yeah, Robbers Cave - that one.
Remember how they hated each other, then faced a common threat, then overcame it together, then came to like and respect each other?
Someone might take issue with the experiment - that’s fine. It’s psychology, after all, so you can never eliminate the confounders. But, if you’ve never heard of it, no wonder you’re confused about basic psychological tenets.
Even without studies like this, it should be obvious that these are not normal times. Between traditional media, alt-media and social media, that’s 99% of the information supply for 99% of people.
And those businesses makes their money by “driving engagement”.
And the best way to do that is through outrageism - getting you angry about what the Other are doing these days.
We didn’t unite with these crises because Zuckerberg poisoned the information supply.
“What? That’s ridiculous. I wanted the world to work together to overcome this, but the Other ignored the basic facts and fought to make it worse!”
Haha, what? No you didn’t even try to want to work together. I know you because you still can’t accurately describe their stance on the controversy du jour.
Listening to the Other is the first and easiest step towards working together, and you didn’t do it.
Instead, you heard people talking about the Other - people incented to make you angry, remember - and decided that was the truth.
“Isn’t this a D&D blog?”
Yeah - and this is incredibly relevant.
Right now, the Other are documenting their opinions en masse in searchable databases.
And you still don’t understand them.
What hope do you have of understanding the lives of medieval peasants?
Or space-faring photosynthesising orcs?
Or ageless beings with godlike power, born in the void between realities?
“I just have them act as a reasonable person would.”
That’d be dumb even if you actually did that, which you don’t.
Of course, by person you mean human and by reasonable you mean modern. So no one in your campaigns goes on adventures - instead, they’re too busy “starting important conversations” and “waking people up to the truth” to deal with the growing undead horde outside the village?
Maybe pointing out how much gold the wealthy people have will help…?
Yeah, maybe a different strategy works better here.
If you want to get out of your head, read Call of the Gods. You’ll quickly learn to look for the logic laying underneath even the strangest behaviour.
Do that and your exotic NPCs will do things that make sense, even as they do things a “reasonable person” wouldn’t.
Find it here: