Unlearning is a process that starts with realizing you’ve been {majorly} wrong. It’s that moment when you go, “Oh man. This changes everything.” Whether it’s leaving a marriage, a religion, a diet or a Facebook group, it’s trying to undo the collateral damage that comes from making mistakes. If you’ve ever been in a cult-style group that’s extreme in any way, you know it’s hard because it means renegotiating (so many) relationships. Can you still be friends with your vegan friends, if you’re no longer vegan? What if you’re too intellectual for people at church? Can you still believe any part of what you did before? It’s part of your past, and it’s led you to now. It presents an existential crisis, an identity crisis, a faith crisis even. Suddenly, everything is triggering. You can’t read a nutrition label without getting upset. You’ve built this framework of consciousness, a worldview made of experiences, the stories and narratives you’ve used to understand what’s happened and it’s apparently led you astray. Now you don’t know what to do. You’re no longer able to tell up from down. How do you deconstruct to reconstruct? What stays and what goes? It feels like a house of cards collapsing all around you. Adjusting is hard; it’s too fast. If your facts are no longer facts, then what is?
On the other hand, what if you’re watching a loved one–friend or family–who is caught up in a conspiracy theory, a political narrative, or all-consuming lifestyle you consider to be philosophically damaging or plain incorrect? They’ve entered an epistemic bubble, which is to say, a self-perpetuating society of thinking in which dissenters painted as reprehensible, ill-informed dupes or frauds. How can you save them from their well-meaning yet destructive path? Can you? Is it possible to preserve the relationship while broaching these topics?
In a world that’s increasingly polemic, or portrayed as such, it’s important to understand others and listen to them and their experiences. Only through these careful conversations can anyone come back from unhealthy extremes to a more nuanced understanding of turbulent topics.
A husband-wife team, some of these topics nearly destroyed our marriage. It’s taken a long time to really get honest with ourselves and each other, to talk these things out, understand each other and to reach our mostly-happy status quo based on intellectual honesty and compassionate empathy.
Being right isn’t fun if you’re alone. And being wrong isn’t as blissful as they say. So whether you’re here for yourself or for a loved one, here’s to unlearning and the massive bravery it takes to undergo!
Ryan and Stephanie