Bubble Heads

We are all "bubble heads". We see the world indirectly in terms of the "bubble worlds" we create in our heads. Training starts early as we teach our children to "suspend disbelief. 99% of all children's stories take place in bubble worlds full of people with animal heads living in cute little universes where the scary, complicated rules of real life are put aside.

It is wrong to see this as some kind of conspiracy. It really is training in the way our minds must work, but many people don't understand this. They think, for example, that other people's religions are "bubble universes" divorced from reality. Not theirs. Other people suspend disbelief and live in a bubble where it's quite possible to be reborn as a cockroach.

In the Greek bubble universe, the gods "pulled the strings" from Mount Olympus. It's easy to see that as a fairy tale for grown ups. But the Christian bubble universe operates by suspending the laws of nature in the same way that makes the story of "Peter Rabbit" work. People don't really die. Life itself is a pleasant little story that ends well if you just stay out of Mr. McGregor's Garden.

We are quite aware of the bubbles that we build to make our stories work. Inside the bubble world of Star Wars, the laws of physics are suspended and the "Galaxy Long Ago" is ruled by the "Force". To make the stories work, all living things are neatly divided into good guys and bad guys.

We are less aware that the same kind of thinking underlies the bubble worlds of corporations, armies, political parties and nation states.

Even in the supposedly "objective" world of Science, we can make little progress unless we look for rules that apply only in carefully constructed bubbles, isolated from the messy world around. For example, gravity is excluded from Quantum Mechanics.
We're all bubble heads. Deal with it.