Magical thinking (or what you saw is what you get)

Social media is fueling hatred around the world, especially when it comes to Israel and Jews. A primary culprit appears to be TikTok, which offers short video clips and the opportunity for misinformation. Like sheep, viewers are led to these video troughs. On TikTok, poison sometimes fills the channels, leading people to fast conclusions based on limited or biased evidence. Why are people so quickly drawn to dangerous conclusions? Torah offers some insight into illusory thinking.

Jacob worked for his uncle Lavan for nearly two decades. They agreed that Jacob’s compensation would be the spotted and dark goats and sheep. However, Lavan’s sons removed the speckled animals. Nonetheless, Jacob went into the fields with a striped wooden rod. He placed the rod at the trough where the animals watered. As they looked at the rod, the animals were predisposed to bearing spotted and striped kids and lambs. Eventually, Jacob amassed great flocks, speckled and stippled. In jealousy, Lavan and his family turn against Jacob. Accordingly, Jacob and his family prepared to move to Canaan.

The illusion of the rods may seem like magic to our modern minds. Was the birth of kids and lambs genuinely affected by what the animals saw at the trough?

Visual stimuli can affect pregnancies. Various medical journals have reported that trauma in the mother can affect the health of the child. For example, the barrage of information about conflict manifests as unhealthy anxiety and stress. While striped rods may seem like magic antenatal influencers for sheep, they call to mind that external stimuli can affect future generations.

You likely have a negative sense of magic and illusions. Illusory information like memes, urban myths, biased projections, and misconceptions interfere with pursuing evidence-based knowledge. Psychologists have learned, however, that people use cognitive illusions to adapt to changing environments. In other words, people accept illusions as data if the illusions conform to their prior conceptions of the world. Moreover, challenging events cause people to double down on their assumptions, seeking information to confirm their long-standing views. However, prudent reasoning requires analytic thought based upon consideration of competing factors. By relying on illusory information, people are more likely to make errors in judgment.

Social media offers illusory ideas as freely as factual evidence. Yet, many people, especially young adults, rely solely on social media for information.

With a war raging between Israel and Gaza, preconceived notions of Zionism, Israelis, and Palestinians are bolstered by our selection of facts from among the barrage of information on social media. People are not activating an analytic process because of their predispositions. The historical trauma of Jews, who are scarcely three generations from the Shoah, influences thinking about the current conflict. The same can be said of Palestinians whose national narrative evolves from the Nakba, or defeat by Israel and displacement from their homes in 1948. Each group will absorb facts about the current war as those facts serve their prior assumptions.

What is most beguiling is how people not identifying as Jewish or Arab have formed strong opinions relying on social media. Short videos and memes providing biased information are incomplete and deceptive. Like sheep at Jacob’s trough, opinions birthed from these illusions are streaked and discolored. Those with notions of intersectionality adjust information about the war to their views that Israel is colonialist, capitalist, and racist.  Similarly, those holding unfavorable opinions of Palestinians connect current events with stories of terrorism, intransigence, and brutality.

The Middle East hasn’t changed much since the days of Jacob and Lavan. Magical thinking and deception continue to challenge us. Peaceful coexistence between Jacob’s and Lavan’s family was unachievable then, just as peace eludes Israelis and Palestinians today. One path to a better future is to activate analytical processes that allow us to consider all the facts and discern the best way forward.

Rabbi Evan J. Krame