Thriving in Chaos: How Our Adaptability Defends Against Disinformation

At all levels of life, we find the phenomenon of self-organizing intelligence. Even single cell organisms change their behavior to compensate for unexpected changes in the environment. We, as individuals, are sensitive to our environment in a wide variety of ways. Our environment is constantly changing het we, again and again, adopt or invent methods to survive and thrive without knowing what will happen next. We anticipate. We expect the unexpected. And if our methods reflect the patterns typically encountered in our environment we usually do pretty well at navigating the obstacles.

However, if the information we get consistently misinforms us about what is likely to happen or about the results of what has happened, our self-organizing intelligence primes us to do the wrong thing. As you may have noticed, we are getting misinformation and disinformation from all directions these days, from advertisers, from the news, from movies and TV, from social media, and from virtually all three-letter agencies in our government.

Keep in mind that our marvelous self-organizing intelligence doesn’t need the truth. It just needs full spectrum Chaos, not just Fox News and CNN but also those we encounter in the grocery store line and the diversity of opinions expressed at thanksgiving dinner. Freedom of speech is absolutely needed if we are to find our way through the Chaos.

That’s right. Only when we are exposed to all sides of everything, including stepping outside to check the weather report and evaluating the safety of our community ourselves is our self-organizing intelligence able to reorganize coherently and serve as a reliable guide.

The process of assimilating new information is automatic so, in Nature, no conscious understanding is needed. However, in our modern world we are inundated with one-sided misinformation. If we were exposed to full spectrum information, both the truth and the lies, our Chaos filters, along with our intuition would sort through it and provide us with reliable guidance. However:

The first problem is now quite familiar to us. The truth is filtered, censored, buried, or, in some cases, murdered. This leaves us with limited or biased information, which causes our reality filters to malfunction.

The second problem is that, when there are lots of lies, we go in search of someone who we believe can guide us to the truth. We are drawn to politicians and news channels that tell us what we want to hear. We are attracted to well dressed, well-spoken people who slip into the role as the “trusted parent”. They nearly always have their own agenda and make a profit when we follow what they say, whether salesmen, doctors, or financial advisors. We come to believe everything they say. This is how the entire world was “locked down” with fear.

The third problem is chronic fear. In Nature we are exposed to life threatening events. Our response is a squirt of adrenaline and a fight or flight response. A few minutes later we are either safe at home unwinding or dead. However, in our modern world where we believe the media instead of our own observations and common sense, the government and media subject us to repeating fear stimuli with no resolution. There’s always a war on something and a host of other unverifiable things for us to be afraid of. This creates repeated squirts of adrenaline and a build-up of cortisol creating a fairly constant fight-or-flight response, otherwise known as chronic anxiety. This derails both our common sense and the ability of our immune system to fight off viruses and bacteria and rebuild our tissue after injury.

The Antidote:

1. Be sure to subscribe to the CHI Institute Newsletter. We question most everything!
2. Take the time to understand the views of people with whom you believe you disagree. You will find there is far more commonality than you thought. Expect to find renewed friendships and expanding community.
3. Seek to validate everything you hear through your own observations. Nuclear war, pandemic, invasion on the southern border. If you can’t verify it yourself, put it in the “maybe” category.
4. Cultivate your intuition. Test your intuition. Learn when to trust your intuition.