Reality feels like it’s getting thinner all the time. It used to feel solid. I felt confident that existence was a real thing. These days, I feel like if I’m not gentle, I might just poke through reality with my finger. And find what? Some different reality? Some more real reality? Would it negate this reality, or would it just be another illusion?

This is what happened when I stopped trusting my senses. But how can I when I know they are so easily duped? We are creating alternative realities all the time. I suppose we always have with our stories, but now it’s different. Interactive media is getting more convincing all the time? How long will I, or any of us, be able to keep track of what is real and what is not?

Maybe everything is real. Maybe a thing becomes real as soon as it is imagined, and it becomes more real the more firmly it is believed in. Maybe that is why we cling to our beliefs with such vigor. When you bring my beliefs into question, you bring my reality into question. You make my reality less real, and if I believe there can only be one single reality, that’s a problem. My mind loops back on itself.

I crave something to believe in. I am afraid to feel unmoored. What happens if I give up my belief in everything even myself? What happens if I believe in everything? That every thought is real and tangible? That every dream is real? That real exists on a spectrum of belief?

Social norms make life simple. They say, “this is what is right and proper. If you do this, you are good. If you do that, you are bad.” Simple can be good. Simple allows us save the energy of constantly having to consider. Consideration can be exhausting. When people say, “I hate political correctness.” I think what they mean is, I hate having to constantly consider how to behave.

Social norms interfere with individual authenticity. They say, “forget who you feel you are. Be the person the the people around you expect you to be. Meet their expectations. Don’t put them in a position that requires them to think too hard about who you are, what you might do, how they might make you feel.”

I hear people say “I hate political correctness.” I think what they mean is, they are too exhausted by the demands their incredibly busy and stressful lives place on their cognitive bandwidth to spend time thinking about the impact their words may have on people who don’t conform to their expectations. I think they are too tired to consider the world from multiple perspectives and adjust their behavior accordingly.

I also think it’s threatening to have our own social norms challenged by someone else’s social norms. If my social norms are working for me, and your social norms contradict my social norms, learning a whole new set of social norms seems like an awful lot of work, and I’m already tired because life is hard, and I’m just trying to get through it.

Life is easier when you have a script to follow.

Learning a new script is a lot of work.

I think in all societies there must be tension between the the individual’s need to be authentic and society’s need to inform and predict the behavior of the individual.

Diverse people invent diverse solutions, and diverse solutions often lead to better outcomes. But those better outcomes require so much patience; so much listening; so much effort. I’m already tired from the demands of my days.