Here are indications you’re insulated in a closed system that is amplifying your pre-existing beliefs and limiting a view of reality:
1. When you “get the news” it causes you to shake your head in disgust, dislike or to ridicule “those people.”
2. The people with whom you think you’re having intelligent discussions agree with you. Debate only occurs when discussing how to fix “those people.”
3. When you reflect upon the stories you hear about “those people”, you become angry or fearful: “We are doomed.”
4. You’re bewildered: How can “those people” be such idiots? Clearly, if they had the facts, they would change their ways.
5. You believe “those people” are the ones operating in an echo chamber—not you.
6. Expressing ideas contrary to the beliefs held by those closest to you puts you at severe risk: Should you speak freely you will lose friends and be kicked out of the community chamber.
7. Upon reflection, you realize that you are “those people” to “those people” (causing you to retreat into your chamber).
Worth remembering:
- The people most invested in keeping you in an echo chamber gain power, control or money for doing so.
- Being in an echo chamber doesn’t make you wrong. Your brain believes it’s doing its job: Keeping you alive by locking you in on a predictable pattern. Your brain thinks you are safer by associating only with those people who think, believe and act like you.
- It’s easy to confuse beliefs with your values. They are not always the same.
- Leaving your echo chamber does not mean you are joining the chamber of “those people” you’ve learned to despise. That thinking is an illusion.
- There is a community of conscious thinkers beyond the chambers. We can meet there, where the language of “those people” is not spoken.
Lead forward: If bringing people together is a value you possess, demonstrate that you can live outside chambers, that we are stronger than the manipulated construct around us.
Show us the way.
