Navigating the Great Reset: Understanding the Call for Change

Have you ever heard of the term “apophenia” If not, hold onto that thought. Irsquo;m coming back to it.

A quick Internet search defines the Great Reset as only a proposed set of ideas, all of which seem to be acknowledgements that the world is experiencing ongoing crises that can only be addressed by working together as a world and rethinking a lot of the ways we’re doing things.

The world is undergoing those crises, and we can only address them by working together. Failing to do so will cost the entire human population dearly and could very easily drive us extinct. Our own greed, paranoia, tribalism, and denial are on the verge of destroying us. I’ve been watching these crises build all my life, and the clarion cries of alarm about what we’re doing to ourselves have been going largely ignored by world governments longer than I’ve been alive.

The Obstacles to Change

The problem is that in human society, the people most empowered to bring about change are also the people who are most invested in the status quo and best equipped to delay their own direct consequences from any crisis. Rather than risk their own comfort and their place atop the social pyramid, they’re incentivized to actively ignore—and perhaps to try covering up—even extinction-level threats for as long as possible before acknowledging them.

Furthermore, note that the more authoritarian and autocratic a society is, the more likely it will be to ignore the needs of the populace because of this. A population with zero oversight of its own leaders is going to be in for a world of hurt. Thatrsquo;s what makes the current surge of authoritarianism around the globe at this critical moment such a threat. If it succeeds in seizing control in the U.S. with its unrivaled military, it’s probably going to seize control throughout the world, democracy will wither everywhere, and the human race will be left with the proverbial snowball’s chance to save itself from itself.

The Current Crisis

Anyone who tells you the philosophy espoused by “The Great Reset” is bad is somehow invested—financially, emotionally, or both—in maintaining the status quo. We hate surrendering power once we have it. We just do, and I’m no exception.

But the whole situation is reaching critical mass. We’re all on board the Titanic fighting over who has the right to declare whether there’s really an iceberg looming there in front of us and whether running into it would be such a bad thing. We’re fighting over what the exact temperature of the water is and how deep it goes when we should just try to avoid going into it. It’s all insanely, suicidally dysfunctional.

The Dangers of Apophenia

The kicker is this: the same disorganization and dysfunction that’s brought us to the brink of destruction also makes most of the grand conspiracy theories out there complete non-starters. Trying to get a gardening club to agree on and implement a project can feel like a herculean task for pity’s sake.

Have you ever tried to organize a large event? Ever worked in a big corporate office or a big government office? The only way grand secret cabals ever happen in real life is because the big secret everyone wants to keep is that they’re doing exactly what comes easily and naturally under the circumstances. Following the path of least resistance. When anything huge and sinister goes down without fanfare, that’s exactly how it happens. And sometimes organizations can’t even accomplish that much. The only thing leadership can do to influence it is to try to make some behaviors easier and more natural than others.

Yet, conspiracy theories continue to proliferate because of a thing called “apophenia.” See, I told you I’d come back to it. Apophenia is the phenomenon where people love discovering patterns and—once they discover them—to tease out meaning from them whether it exists or not.

The Human Element of Change

Apophenia is a real thing. I exploit it constantly as a storyteller. It’s an integral part of how our minds work. We wouldn’t be human without our apophenia. But apophenia can be deadly dangerous too when it leads us to latch onto a false narrative and cling to it for dear life against growing mountains of subsequent evidence.

One you make up your mind about the way things work, it can become nearly impossible to let go of bad information and embrace better. So if you’re hearing hullabaloo and panic about the “Great Reset,” this is why: people who need to believe that change would be bad feel threatened by the idea of the Great Reset because the Great Reset would be change. Then, after reaching the conclusion it’s bad, they go back and come up with the justifications for their conclusion, becoming more and more invested in the patterns they teased out with each passing iteration. Because that’s what humans do.

Is everyone espousing and defending the idea of this Great Reset well-intentioned? Probably not. They’re human too, right? Same foibles. Same weaknesses. Some of them are bound to be insane. But the idea that change needs to happen is not wrong. Change of some sort is long overdue, and it needs to look a lot like these ideas if it’s going to get us anywhere.

A Call to Action

All of which is a very long-winded way of saying “If this question was tagged with the ‘novels’ and ‘book’ topics because you’re thinking about writing or promoting a book in which the Great Reset is portrayed as sinister and dangerous please don’t. Things are bad enough as is.”