Once I heard the Dalai Lama scold over 200 representatives of Sydney media.

https://atsuccess.com/blog/2022/04/how-badgood-are-you.html

I won’t tell the story again - read from the link above if you’re interested - but I cite this because I am always suspicious of the impression that the media gives us.

At the Berlin Congress, I talked with a dear friend about the political situation in the USA as she lives in a Southerly state. I wondered - had the current environment impacted her? Or was it all a media storm in a teacup? She started to answer with stories about State politics, and I stopped her:

“No” I said, “I don’t mean that. I mean going to shops, talking with your neighbours - living your everyday life. Have culture politics impacted this?”

I asked because Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman - in his revealing book “Thinking, Fast & Slow” - documents how our reality is distorted by whatever we most recently read, see or experience. In this, he echoes FM’s “faulty sensory appreciation” - Kahneman calls it “availability bias”. 

They are not quite the same but utilise similar cognitive mechanisms. For example, at the Berlin Congress, Rachael Sullivan echoed this idea in her marketing talk - Keep it simple, stupid. 

Well, she didn’t say that - she emphasised that you repeat the same simple message. 

FM was cheeky about it to a pupil one day:

“All the darned fools in the world believe they are actually doing what they think they are doing.” FMA

What I learnt from my friend was that her local life had changed. She avoids her neighbours now - because they are genuine in their desire to convert her into the MAGA extremism that has taken hold in America. Previous to MAGA, they got on well together - often chatting and sharing family stories. That is all over now. 

FM discoveries about human behaviour echo in all of our endeavours.