Enhancing Our Reality: How Perspectives Shape Perception
How We Can Reclaim Discourse in the Age of the Algorithm.
It has been a long time since you’ve heard from me. And to those receiving an article from me for the first time, welcome! This article has been in the works for many months, undergone numerous iterations, and, while health is incorporated to some extent, focuses more on a thesis that I have been developing over the past year.
This thesis has formed from the drastic increase in loneliness among young people, the rapid rise in the time we spend online, the increasing division in our society, and my own despair at witnessing what my favorite online social platform has devolved into. It now stands as the gravitational core around which a new business my wife, Jasmine, and I are building orbits.
A significant portion of this article discusses the division we are all too aware of in politics and society. As I finished the previous draft of this article, we learned of the assassination of Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, and the attempted assassination of Rep. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette. I decided against publishing then, and indeed rewrote an entire section, because I was very emotionally triggered—I think many of us were.
Lastly, as you read on, if you find yourself disagreeing with me, great! That’s the point. Tell me why.
-Eric
Your perspective is unique to you. No one else will ever truly know your perceived reality, nor will you ever know theirs. That in itself, is a terrifying, yet equally empowering thought. And yet, how often do we take the time to try to understand someone else’s perspective? Especially someone who may think differently than we do?
Jasmine and I thoroughly enjoy watching Survivor. It is perhaps one of the best examples of a uniquely perceived reality. As viewers, we get to see the tailored edit of the producers, but that is still far more than a contestant on the show gets to see. The conversations that take place and the levels of trust—or faux trust created as a means of deception—are at each contestant’s discretion, both on the delivering and receiving end.
Each season offers an extraordinary glimpse into human nature on many fronts, both the kind that raises your optimism in humanity and the kind that would make Emperor Palpatine cackle with glee. One cause for hope is that the latter group never wins and is almost always unanimously disliked by the rest of the tribe. But there’s something more enlightening, which is the undercurrent of the entire show: In a microcommunity where there is no technology of any kind, the usual suspects don’t matter. Politics, religion, and financial status - none of these matter. All people have is their mental fortitude and each other. The best players tell the best stories. They share their perspective and create a narrative.
Of course, luck plays a factor—as it does in many aspects of our lives—such as being placed in the wrong tribe or being cast in a season where your skillset is not valued in the way it may be on a different season. Frequent viewers may also note that many of the savviest players recognize luck and take advantage of it. But on the whole, it boils down to one human’s ability to convince another human that they are trustworthy and then earn it (or break it).
Storytelling is the pinnacle of human evolution. To invent that which does not exist, to create excitement in the otherwise mundane, and to convince others to join a cause. In the most recent season of Survivor, we see this manifest as Eva, a young woman from Minnesota, is comforted by Joe, a firefighter from California. Two people from different backgrounds and, at the time, on competing tribes, shared one of the most heartfelt moments of the entire show. Eva then tells her story of having autism to the tribe and, despite the competition, creates an environment where everyone on the beach is captivated by her journey to get where she is. In addition to having the host, Jeff Probst, in tears, she had Jasmine and me in tears as well.
Yuval Noah Harari, author of the worldwide bestseller Sapiens, describes storytelling as our superpower:
“Stories are our superpower. It's what enables complete strangers to unite and to work together towards common goals. But, at the same time, they could also be the cause of the worst crimes in history.”
In his conversation with Adam Grant, Harari asks him:
“Why do you think that… it seems to become much more difficult to simply hold a conversation with people who think differently from you… it now seems that, especially in democracies, the conversation is breaking down. We have the most sophisticated communication, technology in human history, and people are just unable to talk with to one another anymore. What’s happening?”
Grant replies by referencing a recent study that states, “People would rather have a conversation with a stranger who shared their political views than a friend who didn’t.”
That 2024 study stated that, in reality, the fear of having a divisive conversation is often misplaced, and that conversation usually helps us learn from each other:
“In both experiments, participants expected more positive experiences talking with someone they agreed with than some one they disagreed with about a potentially divisive topic. In reality, participants had similarly positive experiences in both cases, meaning that participants were the most miscalibrated about the conversation they would also be most inclined to avoid. Mistakenly fearing a negative interaction may create misplaced partisan divides, not only keeping people from connecting with each other but also keeping people from learning about each other and from each other. Mistakenly avoiding these interactions may indeed, as Martin Luther King suggested, create more fear in social life than is warranted.”
For the entirety of human history, we connected through storytelling. Sharing a meal, sitting around a fire, or congregating in the town square, our stories connected us. It was our stories that formed bonds. In the last 130 years, we’ve had the rise of the radio, then the television, and now smartphones. As a result, we’ve increasingly stopped sharing our story and replaced it with someone else’s. When we stop learning about other people’s stories—especially those from entirely different backgrounds—we stop viewing them as whole human beings, and instead identify them solely by their ideology.
Unchanging Humans in an Exponentially Changing World
“Technologies change, businesses change, and markets change. Human nature remains constant.” — Josh Wolfe
What enflames your emotional self? What gets your blood boiling to such a degree that it compels you to do something (regardless of whether that something is constructive or not)? There are many narratives in today’s society that create divides among us. Perhaps you have kids in high school or college? Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation called attention to the destructive force of smartphones and screen time on our kids. Jasmine and I certainly have strong opinions on that subject. The Israel-Palestine conflict seems to inflame many on both sides here in the West. Immigration is another powerful narrative. If you’re on the right, the left wants open borders to boost their voter count; if you’re on the left, the right is cruel and inhumane.
These are all important issues that impact people’s lives and are worth discussing. But, unless you have the power to directly influence change, do any of these stories directly impact our day-to-day lives? If you, like Jasmine and I, are Jewish, then October 7th, 2023, likely affected you on a deep, personal level. With the holocaust already a lifetime ago, it’s easy to forget thousands of years of persecution. If you work or are friends with an undocumented immigrant, immigration may affect you deeply as well. Without personal attachment, how do you inform yourself and shape your opinion? In other words, what is your information diet?
Algorithms dominate our consumption. If you’re left-leaning, you’ll likely see mostly left-leaning posts and articles. If you search for running shoes, you’ll see running shoe ads everywhere you look (even though you’ve already bought them!). The problem is, algorithms reward the loudest, most inflammatory voices. These individuals typically have no personal attachment to the issues they address but will pass themselves off as experts in their effort to gain attention on social media. How do you win the algorithmic game? Tell the most inflammatory, incendiary stories you can. Use stories as a weapon to trigger your audience’s emotional response.
The internet—especially social media, where you can read and reply to a text, image, or video in seconds—has been a glorious tool for attracting attention by telling stories and shaping narratives at scale. But the human brain has not evolved to keep up. Our brain has evolved to default to the path of least resistance. Our emotional reaction triumphs over our rational response. 10,000 years ago, if your tribe experienced an imminent threat, you didn’t have the luxury of sitting and thinking rationally. Fear is what kept our ancestors alive.
Today, we have that luxury. I believe there’s no time in human history that is better than today. But human nature has changed extraordinarily slowly compared to the rapid technological advances. When our emotional mind is triggered—maybe seeing a social media post that makes our beliefs feel attacked; maybe it’s a positive response, like adorable animal videos—it’s easy to give in to it. In the negative case, perhaps we feel outrage and a need to post a comment without fact-checking their claims or simply ignoring them. In the positive case, perhaps we get a rush of joy, ignoring the fact that we’ve now been distracted for an entire hour. In either event, the content we see will be tailored to our emotional desires, resulting in us seeing less and less content we don’t like or disagree with.
Biases thrive when we cocoon ourselves within our walled gardens, carefully crafted by algorithms. So difficult can it be to venture beyond these walls that we often become immersed. Immersion is not inherently bad; it is an excellent technique for learning a new language or culture. But with learning a new culture, there’s an awareness. You’re acting intentionally and, therefore, actively participating in the immersion. Subconscious immersion can have disastrous outcomes. It’s how terrorist organizations recruit soldiers, and it’s how political organizations polarize voters.
In 2022, Salman Rushdie, an author of 22 books, including The Satanic Verses—a novel which earned him a death threat from none other than the supreme leader of Iran in 1989 for “blaspheming Islam”—was attacked and stabbed in public during an event for the Chataqua Institution in western New York. His attacker was a regular kid with a regular upbringing. However, in 2018, this individual traveled to visit his father in Lebanon for a month and was suddenly immersed in the radically pro-Hezbollah village where his father lived. After returning, he continued immersing himself online in his newfound faith and hate, seldom venturing into the physical world around him.
In Rushdie’s interview with Ezra Klein, they note that this attack was decades after The Satanic Verses and the threats that followed, and years before the attacker was born. Why then did he target Rushdie? There is no definitive answer. However, the attacker had indoctrinated himself in extremely pro-Iranian content, the chief backers of Hezbollah. Klein asks how much more dangerous his world would have been had social media existed when his life was first threatened:
Klein:
“I was struck with the thought that, for decades now, you have lived the most extreme possible version of a very modern condition, in which little scraps of yourself — scraps of things you’ve written or echoes of interpretations of things you’ve written — ricochet around an internet or a world and create this other version of you that people begin to believe in.
This happens in a very small and much less terrorizing way to people all the time on TikTok, on Facebook, on X. They say something, and soon a version of them emerges that is more real to other people than they are. Do you think this is a more common thing?”
Rushdie:
“I agree entirely with how you describe the creation of false selves by this new weapon of social media. I’ve often thought that if these things had existed in 1989, I would have been in far more danger because the speed with which material can be transmitted is so much greater and the way in which groupthink can be created and mobs can be created would have enormously escalated the danger.
…I know that there are two or three graphics containing absolutely false quotes from me — things I’ve never even come close to saying — which keep cropping up. People keep retweeting them and repeating them. And even though I have once or twice said, “Look, I never said this,” that doesn’t stop it.”
Social media is the perfect environment for giving in to intellectual laziness. A place where we can immerse ourselves in feeding on ‘scraps’. Like scavengers who feed on the carcasses of deceased animals, it’s a world where we don’t need to hunt ourselves. If we keep scrolling, our information diet is satisfied in headlines, soundbites, and 280-character snippets. Carefully curated for us so we don’t have to do it ourselves, and deliberately inflame our deepest emotions.
The Loudest Voices Win
But there is something else at play that’s more insidious: “The real name of the game is to manufacture false consensus.” — Todd Rose
On X (Twitter), roughly 80% of the content is produced by only 10% of users. These 10% are influencing the opinions of millions of people by being the loudest, most boisterous voices on the platform. The New York Times recently published an article about an X influencer, Dominick McGee. In 2024, he became the third-most influential person on the platform by posting the most inflammatory content possible, triggering emotional responses on both sides. Because we want to fit in with our tribe, we take sides. He ‘wins’ by appealing to the worst of our nature and sowing division.
The overwhelming desire to fit in with our tribe is another example of technology outpacing the advancement of our human operating system. Where fitting in once kept our ancestors alive, it often acts as a cannonball chained to our individuality, weighing down our freedom to speak up. Fear of being ostracized from our own friends or social network cripples us and we, as Todd Rose puts it, “self-silence” ourselves from saying what we really believe.
As more and more people self-silence, illusions are created where we are led to believe that what the very loud, very tiny minority is saying is what the majority of people think—What Rose calls “collective illusions.” In his book of the same name, he writes,
“Schanck showed how, even in a tiny town, people don’t necessarily know each other as well as think they do. He demonstrated how easily a small, highly vocal minority… can misrepresent and mislead the rest of the group.”
His non-partisan think tank, Populace, has shown through its research that approximately two-thirds of Americans self-silence themselves. Moreover, when they give their initial opinion, they will change that opinion once they know what the rest of the group thinks:
“We all have conformity bias… We’re hardwired to be with our groups, not against our groups. Makes tons of sense, good for survival.
…What’s super interesting is what happens when you're told that group agrees with your opinion on who’s good looking, it triggers a dopamine reward response. Remarkable. Same reward response that hard drugs activate.
…Now, when it looks like you are way opposed to your group on the subjective idea of who’s hot, it triggers this cascading error signal which disrupts memory and attention. It’s evolutionarily meant to say, stop whatever you’re doing something’s wrong. You could be in danger. Figure it out. Okay, now here’s the clever part. They get done with that wave of the study and then they literally tell the people over the intercom, ‘oh, shoot, sorry. For whatever reason, your responses didn’t register. If we give you a little more money, would you mind just quickly going through the task again? We won't show you what anybody else thinks. We just need your responses.’
And lo and behold, the vast majority of people move their subjective perception to align with the group. And by the way, then you interview them after they’re like, ‘oh no, definitely I didn’t.’ They really don't think they did.
…The way that your brain estimates group consensus…it assumes the loudest voices repeated the most are the majority.”
In the summer of 2023, Dean Phillips blew up his political career when he said the Democratic Party needed a presidential primary, citing Biden’s inability to win the 2024 election. When none of the leading prospects—Whitmer of Michigan, Shapiro of Pennsylvania, Pritzker of Illinois, and Newsome of California—refused to step in, Phillips announced his own candidacy. The result: he was eviscerated by his party for being disloyal. Governor Walz said of him, “You know, I have to say this about Minnesota: it’s a great state, full of great people. And sometimes they do crazy things… they make political side shows for themselves.”
Then June 27th, 2024, happened. And suddenly everyone was saying what Phillips had been saying for an entire year. Regardless of which side you were on, this is not how discourse should be, especially among the people we choose to run our country. Our leaders are supposed to lead. When we silence people for disagreement, we stop having important conversations. When we stop having important conversations, we give the people in power what they want: “Our silent, obedient consent.” — V for Vendetta.
Combining what Rose and Harari have both researched, there are some striking similarities:
Rose’s research found that people who self-silence are incredibly distrusting of others: “The people who are self-silencing, only 30% believe people are trustworthy.” The same level of social trust that exists in authoritarian countries.
Harari’s research found that when people don’t have high levels of social trust, they assume everything is a power struggle: “I think it's a self-fulfilling prophecy that if you think about the world simply in terms of power, you will tend to vote, for instance, for politicians who behave that way, and then it becomes a reality.”
What We Can Learn from Enlightenment, Romanticism, and the Republic of Letters
Where can we freely express ourselves in today’s world? Intellectual curiosity and expression of our true beliefs often take a back seat to fitting in. From the moment we enter the school system, this phenomenon begins. Who wants to ask a potentially stupid question with their whole class listening? Who wants to go up to the board and solve a problem incorrectly in front of their peers? I was certainly guilty of this. There were many occasions when I was curious about a topic, but I didn’t want to make a fool of myself and remained silent. As an aside, this is one area where I am super excited about AI: a curious student will be able to ask any question—and, crucially, learn over time to ask better questions—and not fear the reaction of their classmates.
As discussed above, this behavior persists into adulthood, to the extent that most of us prefer discussing ideas with people we agree with, even if we hardly know them. However, many people find that they can express their true views, even in disagreement, when there is trust. In fact, Rose’s research found that people who don’t self-silence are far more socially trusting, to the tune of 52%, among the highest social trust rate in the world.
Unfortunately, even if we do have a large degree of social trust, the internet is a phenomenal tool for crushing that trust. The most well-reasoned, thoughtful argument, complete with facts and even acknowledging the opposing arguments, will still be met with the most senseless, hateful comments. The speaker's intent and perspective give way to the reader's reaction (how dare someone with a different life experience challenge my worldview!).
Enter group chats. The group chat became a way for people to express their ideas with those they trust in a safe and private setting. Being part of a group chat myself, I observed many of the people in the chat expressing views they never felt comfortable posting publicly. Earlier this year, Ben Smith, chief editor and co-founder of Semafor, interviewed several tech executives, venture capitalists, and prominent podcasters about their move to group chats. He quotes Marc Andreeson as saying:
“‘They’re having all the private conversations because they weren’t allowed to have the public conversations,” Andreessen told Torenberg on a recent podcast, after joking in the name of secrecy that he’d never heard of such groups. “If it wasn’t for the censorship all of these conversations would have happened in public, which would have been much better.’”
He then quotes Noahpinion creator, Noah Smith:
“‘Group chats are now where everything important and interesting happens.’”
Group chats escape the algorithms and the hordes that succumb to them.
During the Age of Enlightenment, the most prominent figures created the first long-distance group chat: The Republic of Letters. Thinkers of the 17th and 18th centuries would exchange ideas about science, philosophy, government, and natural rights. Through this 300-year-old group chat, humanity gained knowledge and insights that had hitherto never existed: The scientific method and scientific infrastructure, natural rights, and governments that serve all of their citizens. The contributors used this form of communication to encourage critical feedback and stress test their ideas.
Among these thinkers and writers of the time was Jean-Jocques Rousseau. Orginally one of the key figures of the Enlightenment, he was a member of the Philosophes and contributed to the Encyclopédie—a body of writing that was devoted to science, reason, and free thought—and the was instrumental in how much of the world notates music today. However, he is also known as the “father of Romanticism”. In 1749, as a competition, the Académie de Dijon asked the question: Has scientific progress also improved our morals?
In his article, Discourses on the Arts and Sciences, Rousseau argues that technological advances have weakened our morals. That humans are inherently good and just, and that technology corrupts us. He wrote:
“…but here the effect is certain and the depravity actual; our minds have been corrupted in proportion as the arts and sciences have improved… the evils resulting from our vain curiosity are as old as the world.”
Though this paper won him first place in the competition, was widely read and well regarded, you can probably tell from where we comfortably sit as a society today, his ideas lost to humanities insatiable curiosity for discovery and progress.
However, through his and other’s writings, the Age of Romanticism was born and believers of this philosophy began to become more in touch with nature and create cultural works that were devoted to individualism and emotional expression.
Culture exists, like most things, as a pendulum. Too far to one side, it will swing rapidly to the other. We need both sets of ideas at the table. And we need an environment where we can freely express these ideas without fear of being cancelled, or having our self-worth reduced. Though he was a product of Enlightenment and an intellectual, he wrote against intellectualism and his peers lauded his writing.
Philosopher, Maarten Boudry wrote about the irony of Rousseau’s beliefs:
Rousseau’s first Discourse is one of the earliest instances of something that would come to accompany modernity wherever it gained a foothold: biting the hand that feeds you because you know it won’t punch you in the face.
The French philosopher Pascal Bruckner once quipped that “Nothing is more Western than hatred of the West.”
While I have my own beliefs on the subject, what’s far more essential is that the discourse happens between both sides. As Evelyn Beatrice Hall wrote about Voltaire, “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend your right to say it.”
Our Vision: Health and Microcommunities
“If you’re dumb, surround yourself with smart people. And if you’re smart, surround yourself with smart people who disagree with you.” — Aaron Sorkin, Sports Night
What gives Jasmine and me hope is embodied in what we’ve learned from watching Survivor: the vast majority of us are inherently good, even when our environment incentivizes us not to be. When certain people are being loud and obnoxious—whether it’s online or in real life—most of us recognize them for what they are. Most of us want to contribute to our community, regardless of beliefs, values, and worldviews. And, when someone tells their story, we listen.
Furthermore, when we can freely express our true selves, it benefits our health! I have devoted my career to health. My experience has been that there are no bigger obstacles to improving one’s health than stress and self-doubt. Rose found that self-silencing has severe health consequences to both. Heart disease and elevated cortisol levels, combined with lower self-worth are all symptoms of holding in our ideas and beliefs.
The division we feel as a nation is an illusion of identity. We attach ourselves to labels that give us a sense of belonging and align with our overall ideals. But these labels keep us rooted to the spot and limit our agility. These are not original ideas.
Paul Graham had the idea that we should endeavor to keep our identity small. He wrote that if we did not attach ourselves to an identity, we would be open to differing viewpoints. For example, if I identified as a Democrat, I would feel attacked when someone criticized Democrats and become defensive.
Emmett Fox taught, “We are what we think.” He created the concept of a Mental Equivalent, the idea that we can alter our physical world by creating mental equivalents in our mind. He believed that what separates us physically are merely illusions. If we can remove the label, we can prevent our ego from needing to defend us.
Andrew Huberman proposed that we should use verbs to describe ourselves, instead of nouns: “I am running” instead of “I am a runner.” Or, “I believe in liberalism” instead of “I am a Democrat.” The idea is that our lives are dynamic, whereas nouns are static. When we free ourselves of the noun, we can free ourselves to grow and explore our curiosity.
The Age of Enlightenment gave rise to the Age of Romanticism, and the two ideologies coexisted. Together, they blended the ideas of free expression, science, and reason with the need for emotional connection and experiencing the natural world. In a world increasingly defined by screens, algorithms, distractions, and noise, we need spaces where we can remove ourselves, be in the real world, and “surround ourselves with smart people who disagree with us.”
We need more exchanges of ideas, and less of being told how we should think and feel. Online group chats give people the freedom to unself-silence themselves, share their ideas, and learn new ones. Group chats have historically had the power to change the world. Our vision is to create an environment that fosters the creation of in-person group chats, built around health, curiosity, and dynamism.
Each of us has a story to tell, and perspectives and ideas that have developed based on that story. Perhaps if we had a safe space to share it with people who may think differently but share the same principles, we would.
“Do something wonderful, people may imitate it.” — Albert Schweitzer
p.s…
If you think I’m wrong, great! Please, respectfully, tell me why in the comments.
If you’d like to learn more about the business we're building, get in touch: Eric@luxhealthco.com
Sources of Inspiration for This Article:
Articles:
Keep Your Identity Small — Paul Graham
The Anti-Social Century — Derek Thompson (The Atlantic)
How Progressives Froze the American Dream — Yoni Applebaum (The Atlantic)
The group chats that changed America — Ben Smith (Semafor)
The 6 New Rules of Communicating — Ted Gioia
We Really Are Entering a New Age of Romanticism — Ted Gioia
The Ten Warning Signs — Ted Gioia
Are We Too Impatient to be Intelligent? — Rory Sutherland
Paying Attention — Tolstoyan by Jared Young
No, You Don’t Get an A for Effort — Adam Grant (NYT)
America Wants a God: Believing — Lauren Jackson (NYT)
Gen Z and the End of Predictable Progress — Kyla Scanlon
Everything Feels Like it Doesn’t Make Sense — Kyla Scanlon
Trump, Mamdani, and Cluely — Kyla Scanlon
The Artificial Intelligence Revolution: Part 1 — Tim Urban, Wait but Why
The Gentle Singularity — Sam Altman
Podcasts:
Chris Sacca—How to Succeed by Living on Your Own Terms — The Tim Ferriss Show with Tim Ferriss
Todd Rose — Are We Living in the Truman Show? — Infinite Loops with Jim O’Shaughnessey
Antimemetics: Why Some Ideas Resist Spreading | Nadia Asparouhova — The Generalist with Mario Gabriele
Yuval Noah Harari on What History Teaches Us About Justice and Peace — ReThinking with Adam Grant
The Ongoing Collapse of the Global Commons — Riskgaming by Lux Capital
How Can We Make the Internet Fun Again? — Riskgaming by Lux Capital
How Progressives Froze the American Dream — Plain English with Derek Thompson
Is There a Scientific Case for Believing in God? — Plain English with Derek Thompson
Is Pop Culture Worse Than Ever — Plain English with Derek Thompson
We Have to Really Rethink the Purpose of Education — The Ezra Klein Show with Ezra Klein
Our Lives Are an Endless Series of ‘And’ — The Ezra Klein Show with Ezra Klein
Best Of: Salman Rushdie is Not Who You Think He is — The Ezra Klein Show with Ezra Klein
Anne-Laure Le Cunff - How to Live Freely in a Goal Obsessed World — The Learning Leader Show with Ryan Hawk
Books I Recommend:
Abundance by Derek Thompson and Ezra Klein is a terrific exposé on what’s gone wrong with the Democratic Party dating back to the 1970s and how to move forward as a country and a party that embraces innovation and building. I find myself very much in the abundance liberalism camp. We need to build more and embrace innovation. Unlike the Industrial Revolution and the Gilded Age, innovation not only improves society but also the planet. Innovation makes housing more dense, enables vertical farming and reduces deforestation; innovation will enable us to manufacture with harmful, toxic materials in space, instead of here on earth; innovation enables long-duration energy storage batteries, reducing our need for fossil fuels.
Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card is a book I cannot believe I waited to read until adulthood. The line between letting kids be kids and imposing constraints that breed exceptionalism (especially as portrayed in the book) is a terrific thought experiment, one I think about daily as my kids grow up—I’m excited for them to read it. It also paired extremely well with the next book:
The End of Average by Todd Rose helped me better frame what I have long thought about places like the school system and corporate work environments. Averages are good for statistics and surveying, but are often incredibly destructive when we begin to categorize people by a number, or by the average. The models are designed for the “average” individual and to categorize them, but Rose argues there is no such thing. What cripples many on both ends of the spectrum is the pipeline: a fixed pace of learning, or a fixed career track. In both instances, the individuality and therefore creativity is stifled.
I am currently reading Todd Rose’s newest book, Collective Illusions. Just reading the introduction and the first chapter alone give remarkable insights into how easily we as a collective can be manipulated by volume and repetition. Often times the volume and repition can come from one, lone voice.