inspiration/motivation
I don’t really want to tell you about myself, so first I’ll tell you about my inspiration and motivation for why I want a resource like this to exist.
My main inspirations: Mr. Rogers, Jeff Rosenstock, Mr. Parise, and the Trans Rights Movement. There are many more I have chosen not to list.
Fred Rogers spoke to everyone with dignity. Your position, your status, your age were factors off the table. You were treated gently, with kindness and equality.
Jeff Rosenstock is a punk artist releasing music for free, giving away his art for as long as I can remember, and he still finds success. Almost 20 years I have been following his grassroots, true-to-form DIY style with admiration.
Mr. Parise was a science teacher at a pivotal time in my childhood. He always encouraged my weirdo ways and pushed me to lean into my differences and passions. He helped foster my love for science in the most creative ways.
Pharmacists in my area wore pronoun buttons during COVID. This non-verbal, direct show of support for the Trans Rights Movement has a heavy influence in my choice of language, how I intend to spread my message almost entirely through people, not social media, and how trusted members of the community have private opportunities to show support that we don’t always see, but the people looking for it can pick up on those signals.
Primary motivation
My primary motivations for starting this project now: the scale of misinformation, isolated communities that reinforce beliefs blindly instead of being open-minded, and a theory about cognitive dissonance, referred to as “cognitive surrender”.
We are experiencing cognitive dissonance on a scale that is new to humans. Our normal channels for interacting with the world and understanding reality have become eroded. We are unsure of the news we hear on a daily basis. We don’t have time to check it all at once. We forget, and that moment of cognitive dissonance where we aren’t sure if what we heard is real goes completely unaddressed.
This is not a brand new phenomenon, but because of the current landscape of news and social media in America, we are drowning in a completely flooded zone.
For a week straight, nearly everyone I interacted with on my family, online and in my immediate community spoke of how they weren’t sure what was going on. There is a baseline skepticism of reality that is supposed to be quelled by sources we are continuing to engage with, but they’re making us more paranoid.
Our fear of reality is only exacerbated when we reject information that contradicts our beliefs and causes internal confrontation. We have grown so used to disregarding that mental discomfort, cognitive dissonance, that we stopped realizing that we were doing it way too much.
This was brought on by a slow and steady uptick of the scale of misinformation and extraneous information that is shoved in our faces. Advertisements, commercials, billboards, every web page. Excess information we have to push away just to exist.
Address your cognitive dissonance.
Reject sources of misinformation.
Reject sources that engage in censorship in any form.
Make an effort to rebuild trust.
Start with just a single email.
If you work better with direct information, I’m a man in his 30s who likes problem solving, math, science, video games, cats, beer, plants, and being stupid for fun.
But I also care deeply about the people who I interact with, and those connected to them.
Thanks for reading.
Nicky | nicky@iwbyf.org