I'll post a new essay sometime shortly after the Ides of March. In the meantime, THINK. 

As you surf the Web, social media, and news/talk radio and TV shows, are you truly capable of separating similitude from dissimilitude? There are other instances when such a distinction is easy for you. For example, you know how to distinguish between the two when you watch a movie. A movie is obviously a similitude as evidenced by its two-dimensionality or by its requirement for special glasses to see it in 3-D. And you know that actors get paid to simulate. But when you immerse yourself in media that freely switch between truth and falsehood, you probably struggle in hopeless befuddlement over what is purportedly “true” or “real.” Yes, an actor simulates, but don’t all of us simulate to some extent? And to simulate, don’t we also need to dissimulate? When we put on masks accepted by a culture, don’t we also have to mask who we truly are?
 
Sometimes I find myself to be as simple as a fish in a pond, wanting to accept my reality as the only one and wanting to believe that all fish swim in the same pond or one that is irrefutably similar. But at other times…
 
I can understand dissimilitude because few people want to reveal what they are behind the social masks they sometimes wear, a factitious identity being preferable to a “true,” and possibly embarrassing, one. I also understand that in our desire for individuality, we might want to hide, to misrepresent ourselves in acceptable masks lest others recognize our dissimilitude. I find anyone who claims to wear no mask somewhat difficult to believe. Certainly, I sometimes catch myself wearing one at times. I’m sure that if I were to find myself in the presence of Queen Elizabeth or the Pope, for example, I might tend to assemble all the manners my mother taught me in an attempt to mask temporarily my rather ignoble nature. I also believe that even a professed open-to-the-world personality that some free-spirited naturist or Burning Man or spring break partygoer professes would probably, upon close investigation by an experienced psychologist, break like a rubber band on a cheap Halloween mask, revealing an underlying and socially determined—and restrictive—model of behavior. I say this in light of an ancient memory of mine, one that harks to a study I remember reading years ago about how people behave when they are drunk, and I recall it in the context of signs that in our own times we are “drunk” on media.
 
In addressing how people act when they are drunk, MacAndrew and Edgerton wrote, “Over the course of socialization, people learn about drunkenness what their society ‘knows’ about drunkenness; and, accepting and acting upon the understandings thus imparted to them, they become the living confirmation of their society’s teachings.” (88) * Apparently, drunk people act in accordance with drunken behavior in its cultural archetypes and stereotypes. As another researcher also wrote, “One feature of drinking…is that it is essentially a social act.” (429) ** This doesn’t contradict what we know about physical addiction, but is rather a recognition that even alcoholics have a tie to their culture. Some social influence governs that first drink and the behavior it subsequently induces. But my focus is not drinkers and their behavior as simulations of cultural stereotypes. It is on the emulation of stereotypes or cultural archetypes insinuated into a broad spectrum of media and manifested in the actions of those drunk on those media. Those inebriated by their media addiction behave as the media sanction certain behaviors.  
 
I believe the same principles that apply to similitude and dissimilitude with respect to drunken behavior also apply to behavior in those who drink copiously from the spigot of modern media. There is a difference between the young and old in such behavior that parallels the use of alcohol in societies. I say this with respect to another study on behavior associated with drinking. Blum and Blum in 1969 noted a difference between behavior in cultures with a history of drinking and cultures newly introduced to alcohol. *** Here’s what they found, but, as you read it, note my brackets in which I substitute “adults” and “youth” for “cultures” and “addiction to social media” for “drinking”:
 
 "...In those cultures [adults] where drinking [addiction to media] is integrated into religious rites and social customs, where the place and manner of consumption are regulated by tradition and where, moreover, self-control, sociability, and ‘knowing how to hold one's liquor’ [knowing how to behave independently of media influences] are matters of manly pride, alcoholism problems [masked and imitative personalities] are at a minimum, provided no other variables are overriding. On the other hand, in those cultures [youth] where alcohol [addiction to media] has been but recently introduced and has not become a part of pre-existing institutions, where no prescribed patterns of behavior exist when ‘under the influence,’ where alcohol [addiction to media] has been used by a dominant group the better to exploit a subject group, and where controls are new, legal, and prohibitionist, superseding traditional social regulation of an activity which previously has been accepted practice, one finds deviant, unacceptable and asocial behavior, as well as chronic disabling alcoholism [disabling risky behavior]. In cultures where ambivalent attitudes toward drinking [media enabled behaviors] prevail, the incidence of alcoholism [drug use, risky behavior, exhibitionism] is also high." ****
 
Hope all those brackets didn’t make the original unnecessarily complex. The point is rather a simple one: We act as we are expected to act. We simulate similarly, and we dissimulate as we manifest our society’s stereotypes. Ironically, our dissimulating masks our simulating and vice versa.
 
Can you see a parallel between behavior associated with the consumption of alcohol and behavior related to a consumption of those forms of media I listed above? The inexperienced simulate and dissimulate in one way; the experienced, in another. Both act as representations of culture, at times simulating and at other times dissimulating.
 
 
 
*MacAndrew, C. and R. B. Edgerton, Drunken Comportment: A Social Explanation. Chicago, Aldine Press, 1969.
 
**Heath, D. B., Sociocultural variants in alcoholism. In Pattison, E. M. and E. Kaufman, Eds. Encyclopedic Handbook of Alcoholism. New York. Gardner Press, 1982.
 
***I would invite you to browse the quotations found at the site upon which I stumbled: https://www.peele.net/lib/sociocul.html#ii  I found it by accident when I was looking for the study by MacAndrew and Edgerton I had read all those decades ago. Memory, as you know, can be general rather than specific—as was my recall of that study I read all those decades ago—but the access all of us have to a readily available encyclopedia of reports makes retrieving easier today than it has ever been.  So, I’m thankful for Peele and his addiction website for finding the specific words of MacAndrew and Edgerton for me.
 
****Blum, R.H. and E.M. Blum, A cultural case study, pp. 188-227, in Blum, R. H., et al., Drugs I: Society and Drugs. San Francisco, Jossey-Bass, 1969. 

I think I see where all the overbearing social media condemnations come from. It’s cognitive dissonance. Let me give an example. Vice President Biden said something nice about Vice President Pence. Then, as “they” say, “all Hell broke loose” in condemnations of VP Biden by Democrats. “How could you say such a thing Joe? How could you say you like Republicans?” So, that’s the example, and I’m sure we can find numerous instances of like turning on like in our current society. But what’s this about cognitive dissonance and how does it apply? Even more importantly, does it apply to you and me?
 
Three studies indicate that “individuals change their attitudes” when they see someone with whom they have an affinity do or say something anathema to their worldview. * That’s the conclusion of Michael I. Norton, Benoit Monin, Joel Cooper, and Michael A. Hogg in “Vicarious Dissonance: Attitude Change from the Inconsistency of Others.”  
 
Poor Joe. He made what he thought was an innocent statement only to be vilified for saying what he deemed reasonable and innocent. Seems no one has a sense of humor or humanity anymore when it comes to straying ever so slightly from the “commonthink” of today’s politics. Got to fall in line—or else.
 
Citing L. Festinger’s 1957 A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance, the authors define the term as “a state of discomfort that results from holding incompatible cognitions, such as smoking while aware of the negative consequences.” In other words, if someone in your commonthink group strays and appears to say or believe something that contradicts that common thinking to which you subscribe, you have a tendency to change your attitude to reestablish consonance.
 
If we share worldviews with a group, we are affected by any member of that group assuming a contradictory position. As the authors point out, “witnessing a group member engage in counterattitudinal behavior” induces vicarious discomfort. Gosh! Are we really mental sheep?
 
Obviously, the attack on VP Biden is an example of cognitive dissonance. Recently, a similar attack was leveled at arguably the greatest tennis star ever, Martina Navratilova when she made a comment about the athletic prowess of transgendered people competing in women’s sports. Martina’s years of supporting minority gender causes accounted for nothing because of her slight straying from the group’s commonthink, because she said something deemed counterattitudinal.
 
Maybe the good news is that when well-known people like VP Biden and Marina Navratilova express a counter attitude, members of the group can adapt, see that the counterattitudinal statements aren’t the end of the world, and achieve consonance within a group with an evolving worldview. At the very least counterattitudinal statements might convince some to achieve consonance by recognizing a complexity of thought they formerly rejected in favor of a simple uniformity.
 
I hope we aren’t becoming a world of the cognitively dissonant, but I believe we appear more often than not to be headed down that straight and narrow path. Anyway, Joe, say what you think, even kind thoughts toward those of opposing views. The world might become a more peaceful place with a rational, and not an emotional, exchange of ideas.
 
 
*Norton, et al., Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Vol. 85 (1), Jul. 2003. Pp. 47-62.

You’ve stood between two mirrors and seen a reflection that seems—if you were not in the way—to go on forever. The illusion of infinity in those reflections might serve as an example of fashionable dress, manners, and philosophies.
 
It is only upon your stepping between the mirrors that the repeated image occurs. You start the process of bouncing light, each reflection a seeming perfect imitation of the others. Now consider what you are wearing, how you act, and what you think.
 
Are you a reflection or initiator?
 
I ask this after reading about research by Jonathan Touboul called “The hipster effect: When anticonformists all look the same.” * Touboul writes “Beyond the choice of the best suit to wear this winter, this study may have important implications in understanding synchronization of nerve cells, investment strategies in finance, or emergent dynamics in social science, domains in which delays of communication and the geometry of information accessibility are prominent.” Here’s the gist. At some point after someone starts doing something—the something is irrelevant—imitators arise, first believing they are going against the grain of society at large to become creatively individual, and second falling into a pattern that becomes the new conformity.
 
Want an example or two? Read the news of the day in early 2019, paying particular attention to the rebirth of socialism in prosperous capitalistic societies. Or simply look through your own past, paying attention to what you looked like and wore in high school.
 
It’s not easy to be the first person to stand between two mirrors because more than 100 billion humans have preceded you and many of them in the last one or two millennia, probably billions of people, have seen their repeated reflections. But every so often, someone by happenstance does something or appears in some way that becomes the initiator. At different rates, depending on what the reflection reflects, the action or image spreads, and a new conformity arises in conflict with the old conformity.
 
In a summary of the research online, Brandeis University offers this: “In general, Touboul says, the population of hipsters initially act randomly but then undergo a phase transition into a synchronized state.” Don’t most of us fall into this pattern of eventual synchronization? I know I certainly have when I examine my own history, and I certainly recognize such synchronization in others with whom I have associated. As a college professor for four decades, I had the opportunity to watch many “hip” movements turn into conformities that generated their own anti-conformist trends. Today, the speed of conformity turned anti-conformity turning into conformity appears to be enhanced by social media.
 
The process should give us all pause. Are we reflections?
 
*https://phys.org/news/2019-03-hipster-effect-anti-conformists.html   Accessed on March 4, 2019. See also  https://arxiv.org/abs/1410.8001  Also accessed on March 4, 2019.

When it comes to the universe, I can confidently say I know what I don’t know. That might seem to be trivial, but knowing what one doesn’t know is an ology I’m happy to have studied. I don’t have a name for it, but I find ignoranceology acceptable.
 
First what I know about the cosmos I learned from some pretty sharp people with access to instruments too expensive for me to buy, big telescopes and such. Anyway, the people who have looked outward into the vast reaches of the universe, have indicated we know very little about the composition of Everything, except to give ourselves two terms: Dark Matter and Dark Energy. Turns out that, give or take a few percentage points, those two “whatevers” make up 95% of the cosmos. Ordinary matter and energy, the stuff of our daily lives and the terms of E = mc^2 (or m = E/c^2), make up a startling low 5% of All That Is. But, here’s where my ignoranceology comes into play: At least I know what I don’t know, since no one has yet definitively given us the composition, the makeup, of Dark Matter, and no one has definitively explained why Dark Energy is part of the universe.
 
Now, in contrast, no other creatures on the planet—just humble us—know that they don’t know. That makes the breadth of our mental reach greater than all other life-forms combined. All those other brains amount to operating on what they know. I—all of us—can operate on knowing more: That we know less. We realize that the 5% isn’t Everything. Every other being operates as though the 5% is Everything.
 
And now the analogy you’ve been waiting for: With regard to everyone around me, I probably know less than 5%. My ignoranceology should be the heart of my efforts to understand my “human universe.” Instead, I usually spend my efforts on what I already know. Maybe you do, also.
 
With our ability to know what we don’t know, don’t you think we might consider making an effort to study our ignorance. I can envision high school and college courses on the subject. I can see self-help books, too. Heck, throw in a non-credit continuing education cruise to some little-known destination, where passengers might disembark to spend time contemplating the unknown—as well as the unknowable.
 
We have all been somewhat blessed with knowledge, but we have also been blessed with ignorance. I’m simply recommending our spending a little time realizing that our knowledge has a larger context, that 5% should be viewed against a background of 95%, the former defined and the latter undefined. Sure, the knowledge of our ignorance is humbling, but at least we’re not wandering over the planet or even traveling in outer space thinking we know all there is to know. In fact, that would be the course objective of Ignoranceology 101: At the end of the course, the student will understand the limit to his or her understanding and identify what he or she doesn’t know. 

“You’re not going to make one of those science-life analogs again, are you?”
 
“Sorry, but once the idea pops into my head, I just can’t resist.”
 
“So, what’s it this time? Some parallelism between the way snowflakes crystallize and philosophies take shape? Maybe some comparison between photons and paparazzi?”
 
“No, I was thinking about gravity and how if Earth were cognizant of its movement around the Sun, it would think it’s traveling in a straight line. I think it’s okay to say that with respect to spacetime, everything moves in a straight line. We just get fooled because to us Earth falls in an elliptical orbit around Old Sol. Spacetime is curved, but we think we move in straight lines.”
 
“Oh! I can’t wait to hear what lesson you’ll derive from that. It’s probably as far out as all those other analogies you’ve written.”
 
“Well, I don’t want to be one of those Deepak Chopra guys who applies quantum mechanics to life or one of those Teilhard de Chardin types who applies evolution to morality. There’s always a danger in seeing meaning where there is none or where creativity replaces reality. But..”
 
“I knew it! Here comes the ‘but’.”
 
“But when you think of how we travel our life-paths, we pretty much think at any moment we are headed in a straight line on a flat surface, much like a conscious Earth would think in its orbit. Outsiders, however, see the curved path we follow from a dimension beyond our limited and self-contained comprehension. That is, if we are on a path of addiction, we see only the miniscule movement of one drink at a time or one fix at the moment. If we are on a path of desire, we see the goal immediately ahead of us. The path is straight for us. We think we are headed to what we want, some satisfaction for the body or mind. Others, however, see the curve, see the spiraling like some heavenly body falling into the warp of a planet or a sun’s apparent pull. What we don’t realize is that addiction or desire has warped our path much the way a large body like the Sun warps the spacetime through which Earth travels. Others have a perspective we don’t have. In fact, each of us recognizes the warp in others’ spacetime, that is, each of us sees the larger context and the laws that govern our behavior. Each of us can see what object or goal warps the paths of everyone else, but not his or her own.
 
“From the perspective of our free fall around the object of our goal, we believe we move in a straight line, but others recognize that any obsession we have warps our path. That’s the reason we are eager and able to give advice to others but reluctant to take advice from them. Each sees his or her own path as straight, whereas others see the path as curved. I'll try again: When we walk on Earth's surface, we think we are walking on a flat surface, but we are really walking on a curved surface.”
 
“Gosh! You sure went out of your orbit on this one, but I think it makes a little sense. On a flat surface, movement seems to be a straight line, but in spacetime, movement is on the curve caused by some object that warps spacetime. Since we travel in spacetime and not just in space, we follow the curve of that warp. The bigger the control on that warp—for Earth, the Sun—the greater the warp. The bigger the addiction—like nicotine or alcohol, for example—the greater the warping of our personal spacetime. Yet, like free-falling astronauts around Earth or planets around the Sun, we don’t personally recognize the real direction of our movement through curved spacetime.”
 
“Yeah. What I said.” 

Even if social media were to fade from use, we would still cling to our reductionism. Remember that before social media spread it, gossip permeated every culture. It’s in our nature to reduce the personalities and actions of others to a statement or two and to see others as caricatures.
 
Our personal affinities, hormones, dislikes, and egos drive us toward simplification in a complex world with even more complex people. So, Einstein becomes the reduced version of a scientist, Marilyn Monroe, the version of a Hollywood actress, and Jack Kennedy the version of a politician. Sure, there are other representatives of those life choices, but I’m doing what we all do: Reducing. It really doesn’t matter whom we reduce. What matters is that we reduce, and the moment we do and regardless of the individual, we demonstrate our laziness, our insecurities, and our affinities.
 
Yes, now we are in the midst of a particularly vitriolic period because of social media’s reach and availability. We are witnessing the worst side of gossip, but if we lived in some small medieval village, in a convent, in a court, we would do the same, only with a smaller—but just as socially lethal—radius of effect.
 
The backyard fence of social media has now made the world a neighborhood of petty gossipers. That’s a reduction, of course, but as a human, I can’t seem to avoid reducing.