Steer A Middle Course
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Route 24 is your civic education stop for stories driving public trust. We are a space for policy analysis, immersive fiction, and social innovation. While substantive policy debates are encouraged, we are not a space for hateful discourse. Respect this road.
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In this issue: I grew up in a family where some of us spoke English as our first language and some of us didn’t. This made me terrible at learning and using American idioms. I came across this one recently that speaks to our times: steer a middle course. To help everyone get up to speed, it’s often used to express compromise - finding a halfway point between opposite ends. I’ll attempt to explain how we’ve landed at this juncture in American politics and how we might approach steering a middle course.
Check Engine Light
To understand why people think the way they do, it’s important to contextualize cognitive bias. Apophenia occurs when the mind perceives connections between unrelated elements. One example: the clustering illusion - when people overestimate connections in clusters of random stimuli, known as phantom patterns. It offers one route of explanation for how conspiracy theories gain traction in the mind.
Philip Zimbardo’s The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil explains how moral transformation occurs on the basis of three individual attributes: disposition, situation, and power systems. Zimbardo contends that deindividuation - the loss of personal responsibility in groups - is the basis for a spectrum of collective behaviors that reject social norms, from online trolling to violent rallies and even genocide.
A recent study on parasocial research indicates the harmful effects of celebrity fandom on self-awareness. Humans are dependent on social relationships and repeated exposure to a celebrity source develops emotional connection. Be aware. Bonding emotionally shapes an individual’s values, holding the potential for negative influence when such values reject social norms.
also makes valid points in her recent newsletter about such parasocial interactions.
Improved Navigation
How do we attempt to solve for these persistent cognitive biases? One approach may be having deeper conversations. Back in high school, I read Christopher Phillips’ Socrates Café. Phillips applied the Socratic Method - the idea of asking and answering questions to inform perspective - to social gatherings around the world where people from different cultures and walks-of-life came together to discuss their experiences. I’m launching Route 24’s Navigators Circle in an attempt to do the same. When policies alone may fail to change course, let our stories be your guide. Sign the letter here.
In the Driver’s Seat
If you’d like to better understand what led me to create Route 24 and Millennial Ethics, stop by our recent feature in Shoutout LA for the full story.
However you’re able to help fuel Route 24’s work and mission, thank you for being here and Happy Thanksgiving to you and your loved ones!
Stay the course,
Sam
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