January 6th, 2021: A Tale of Two Realities

You are what you see. It’s why images on screens are so powerful. Watching the events at the Capitol unfold last week, you can almost imagine that you were there. And who you believe yourself to be determined whose shoes you were in.

January 6th, 2021 is a tale of two realities. Which one did you live?

You are what you see. It’s biological. Mirror neurons are the keys to learning and development. Mirror neurons fire both when you act and when you see the act being performed by another. They allow us to imitate what we see from the very beginning. I see it with my 10 month-old son. I do something. He tries to copy me. I pick up the cup and drink. He picks up the cup and dumps water all over himself.

It goes much deeper than that. The foundational myths of humanity are stories we repeat to each other. Across hundreds of generations of repetition, we learn to form our identity based on the relationships of these stories.

Did you identify with the rebels storming the Capitol to defend democracy? Did you identify with the politicians running and hiding for their lives, struggling to continue the democratic process? Or did you identify with the police, standing guard, holding back a violent mob threatening democracy? Who did you believe yourself to be?

Have we started to imitate what we see on TV? This feels a lot like a movie.

With these stories repeated on screens, the reptilian parts of our brains have a difficult time distinguishing our experience from the experience of others, even fact from fiction. Our brains are the most complex machines on earth. Yet the complexity of the human brain remains relatively unchanged over the past 300,000 years. Over time, our memories of first-hand experiences are difficult to separate from those we see on screens.

Think of September 11th. Did you see the towers fall? Or did you see them fall on TV? (What is the difference?) I also think of the movie Saving Private Ryan. When it comes to World War II and D-Day, images of that movie, with fictional characters, come to mind much more vividly than any history book or documentary ever could.

Now think of the events at the Capitol. What images have you seen? How did those images shape your perception of the events? Did someone tell you how to interpret the story? How is that different than reading about it? Did you see mostly images of peaceful protests outside, people waving flags and taking selfies? Or did you watch videos exclusively of people smashing windows and attacking the police? Who decided what you saw?

It’s common sense, but it needs to be clearly stated and repeated: what you see determines what you believe.

Except there’s something new about this epoch that feels different. More and more, it seems that what you believe determines what you see. Modern technology is so sophisticated that we now have algorithms to determine what we want to see. This inundation of screens and media choices not our own threatens to undermine our perception of reality.

Last Wednesday is a tale of two divergent realities. Personally, I went to work, came home, played with my son, had dinner with my family, started planning an ice fishing trip, then went to bed. But my memory of January 6th, 2021 will most likely retain none of those details. It will be focused on the historic events taking place on a screen, rooted in a reality thousands of miles away. The two days side by side have nothing in common. What will I remember? What should I remember? Is my personal experience less important than events that impacted the world?

January 6th, 2021 is also split by how I interpreted these events on the screen. How I interpret the events is a direct reflection of my already held beliefs and identity. Our information networks on social media have become so siloed that where you are on conservative / liberal spectrum determined what images you saw from the event, and the commentary that framed those images. For many of us, it takes real effort to see beyond our bubbles, and empathize enough to see the person on the other side behind the screen.

Think of the reel of images we saw from that day. The 24 hour news cycle seamlessly intertwined professional staged shots with low-fi user generated content. Twitter, Parler, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube feeds streamed endlessly with a slurry of professional news, amateur footage, hackneyed opinions, and photoshopped memes. It’s a constant, potent cocktail of media mash-ups being dumped into our poor 300,000 year old minds, hour after hour, every, single, day. It’s a recipe for confusion.

Those of us that want to be reasonable and moderate are left with the simple plea: “What does it mean? What should I believe?”

As with everything, I wonder how this is going to affect my son. What will I teach him about this day? In 5 years, will the answer be different? What kind of memories will he have of his childhood and the larger cultural forces of these times?

What did January 6th, 2021 mean? Was it an act of treason? Or the just and desperate struggle of patriots? It depends on who you are and who you saw yourself to be on the screen.

What will come of it? It’s impossible to say. All we can agree on is that we don’t agree on any of it. And some people made a lot of money on all those views.

You are what you see, until you see what you are. And if you are being told what you want to see, are you being told who to be? Are we imitating what we see on the screen (badly)?

If the events in Washington, D.C. on January 6th, 2021 were a tale of two realities, then the most important question is: what reality do we share?