Showing and Seeing

Before We Begin

This piece answers three questions.

1. Why does what was taken for granted until yesterday no longer feel that way today?
2. What are we actually doing when we show each other things?
3. What do movies and stories like "The Matrix" do to the world?

First, there's one principle to keep in mind.

The steering-wheel principle. My next choice is decided by whichever of the "eyes" on me weighs more.

There's the way I see myself (my own eyes), and there are all the gazes that land on me from outside: parents, friends, the mood of society, culture, language (others' eyes). When others' eyes weigh more, I move the way they see. When my own eyes weigh more, I move the way I see. And there's no such thing as a pure spectator. The moment I look at someone, I'm seen too, so my life is already being shown to other people. My own eyes always become others' eyes for someone else.

In this piece, we call anything that chooses its own next move a knot. Not just people, but cells, companies, and countries too.

In one line, it goes like this.

The world moves as we show ourselves to each other and see each other. Show the same thing, and the taken-for-granted sets. Pull off something different and show it, and the taken-for-granted loosens.

In seven sentences, it goes like this.

1. Every life is already a way of showing something to other people.
2. Showing gives others something to look at. Seeing is judging it by your own standard. Only when the two meet do you get "someone who saw it for themselves."
3. Teaching and chatter are not showing. They only add more people who pass along someone else's judgment.
4. There are four things we do to each other: firming, loosening, interlocking, and overriding.
5. The taken-for-granted is a belief that nobody looks at again, kept alive only by copying. Once a counterexample is seen, it steps down from "the right answer" to "one way among many."
6. We live in an age when making, spreading, and seeing counterexamples all got cheap at once. That's why the taken-for-granted doesn't last as long anymore.
7. Movies and stories show things first, inside our minds. They're the advance party of counterexamples.

Chapter 1: Four Ways a Thought Crosses Over

There are four ways my thought can cross over to someone else. The difference lies in what I hand over and whether the other person uses their own standard.

Why is showing stronger than words? When you try to persuade with words, a fight breaks out in the other person's head: "your words vs. what I already thought." When you show them directly, what they already thought gets pushed aside not by words but by what they saw themselves. And if they choose it, it's no longer my thought. It becomes their own thought. A flower doesn't tell the bee there's nectar. It just shows it. The bee tastes it for itself, then goes back and dances to bring other bees along.

The heavier you are, the more you need to add "you can do it differently." When someone with a lot of weight shows something (a parent, a teacher, a boss, a celebrity, a platform), the people on the receiving end easily take it in as the right answer. So showing is complete only when it also shows "you're allowed to judge differently." We call this permission. Respecting other opinions, fixing things when you're wrong, treating a different choice as "different" rather than "wrong": these are ways of showing permission.

The one showing has to be real. If I'm actually just living by someone else's standard, what I show ends up passing along that standard too. That's why "living it myself first" matters.

To a small child, everything is others' eyes. A child who barely has their own eyes yet takes in everything as others' eyes at first, whether it's showing or teaching. The difference comes later. Teaching piles on judgment and raises the bar the child will have to get over later. Showing leaves behind material they saw firsthand, so they can use it as their own eyes grow.

Fake numbers are not showing. Bought likes or inflated view counts only get people to pass along "others have already seen it." Nobody actually sees anything for themselves. So it never hardens, and when it's found out, even the real interest that was built on top of it disappears all at once.

Chapter 2: Four Things We Do to Each Other

Even when we stay still, we're showing each other something. That give-and-take does exactly four things, and the world setting and loosening is what you get when these four add up.

The same action can be any one of the four. What matters more than what you do is how it meets the receiver's taken-for-granted. Showing up to school every day is firming in a class where everyone does that, but it could mean something different to a friend who's thinking about a path outside school.

We are each other's "others' eyes" and each other's "counterexamples." Live the same way as everyone, and you become a gaze that firms up what people around you take for granted. Live differently and leave results behind, and you become a counterexample that loosens it. Nobody can opt out of this. There are no pure spectators.

A mood isn't stored anywhere. A group's way of thinking (the mood of a class, a company's culture, a country's common sense) lasts only as long as its members keep showing each other the same picture. That's why some rules stay alive even though nobody truly believes in them, just because everyone copies them thinking "others must believe it." On the other hand, when more people start showing each other different pictures, the mood gets rewoven.

Not just people. When a tree puts out leaves earlier than the season and draws in insects and birds, that tree becomes a counterexample to the forest around it. A company that does great work without an office becomes a counterexample to its whole industry.

Chapter 3: Why Does the Taken-for-Granted Stop Being Taken for Granted?

What the taken-for-granted is

The taken-for-granted is a belief kept alive only by people copying each other, without anyone looking at it again. It has three features.

• Almost nobody has seen it for themselves. It's held up by people passing it along.
• It's not that there are no counterexamples. They're just somewhere out of sight.
• It sits in the seat of "the right answer" and calls other ways "wrong."

When a counterexample is seen, the taken-for-granted changes seats

A counterexample is a result someone actually achieved, against "that can't be done." In a person who sees a counterexample for themselves, the taken-for-granted doesn't vanish. It steps down from the seat of "the right answer" to the seat of "one way among many." As more people see it for themselves, the same thing happens across the whole group. In science, too, a theory that was once the right answer steps down to "a theory that only holds under certain conditions" once contrary experiments pile up.

Right now, our whole civilization is moving from the left column to the right.

Seeing a counterexample shifts weight in three places

A person with a set belief is in a state where, on that matter, others' "it can't be done" weighs more than their own thinking. They've just heard it for so long that it feels like their own thought.

1. My own eyes appear. Because I saw it myself, my own judgment counts for the first time.
2. The outside gazes split. The gaze of the person who pulled it off lands on me too, and that one says "it can be done."
3. "Everyone" shrinks. "Everyone says it can't be done" turns into "so not everyone, after all."

A thought changes when the total of these weights tips to the other side. The reason one counterexample doesn't change things right away is that a long-set thought feels like your own, so number 3 doesn't shrink easily.

There are two kinds of change

• Change through my own eyes — changing because you saw it and judged it yourself. Next time something new comes along, you'll weigh it yourself again.
• Change in the gaze only — you didn't see it yourself, but the people around you changed, so you changed along with them. Only the right answer you pass along has changed.

So change always comes like this. At the front, the people who saw it for themselves change. Behind them, lots of people change all at once by following them. It's like a flock of birds: a few at the edge spot danger and turn, and the rest turn just by watching their neighbors. And when the people who changed by following become the majority, that becomes a new taken-for-granted.

Changing inside vs. moving outside

Changing your mind inside is easy, because nobody can see it. Moving on the outside is hard, because it involves how others react, where your path leads, and money and time. So there are times when everyone has changed inside, but nobody moves, so each person thinks they're the only one who changed. Then when someone moves first, it all collapses at once: "So it wasn't just me." And what really moves people isn't "that's wrong." It's showing "you can go this way."

Two paths when things wobble

When the taken-for-granted wobbles, the people who were holding on tight go one of two ways. They hold on tighter (denying the counterexample, attacking it, longing for the old days), or they let it go (acknowledging what that belief protected, and accepting that it's now just one choice). That's why, in times when the taken-for-granted loosens, a sense of liberation and hostility grow together. There's no need to look down on the people holding on tight. It just means that much was built on top of that belief.

Chapter 4: Why Now, of All Times?

The reason the things we take for granted are wobbling so fast these days is that the cost of making counterexamples, the cost of spreading them, and the cost of seeing them all got cheap at once.

That's why the taken-for-granted doesn't last as long anymore.

Why "you have to work even if you hate it, to survive" is wobbling

For a long time, the biggest taken-for-granted was "everything important is scarce, so to survive you have to work even if you hate it." But there are three kinds of scarcity. Real scarcity (land, time, energy, care) doesn't melt under counterexamples. Predicted scarcity ("it's going to run out soon") does melt under counterexamples. Scarcity set by a story ("everything important is scarce, so put up with it") melts the fastest.

As things that don't shrink when shared (information, digital goods, AI) move to the center, the third kind of scarcity is losing its footing in those areas. And because the things that leaned on that taken-for-granted (jobs, credentials, hierarchy, standards for marriage, a country's story) are all wobbling together, the push to hold on tighter is growing too. That's why this is an age when liberation and anxiety grow at the same time. Where the pressure to survive weakens, what moves people becomes fun, and what's newly scarce isn't things but people's attention.

The two faces of social media and AI

• Social media does two things at once. It spreads counterexamples far (loosening), and it endlessly copies the same words so people firm each other up even more (firming). So right now is an age when the taken-for-granted loosens fast, and also an age when like-minded groups set fast.
• Splitting (polarization). Two groups see different counterexamples, change in different directions, and then each one quickly sets by passing the same words around inside itself. This loosens when there are more "people on the border," who live with a foot in both groups. You may not hear an outsider's words, but you do hear the different way of living shown by "one of us."
• AI is the strongest tool for making counterexamples, and at the same time it's the biggest seat for choosing what gets shown. If it shows many perspectives and leaves the judgment to me, it adds people who see for themselves. If it gives everyone the same answer, it adds people who just pass things along.

Remember the seats that choose what gets seen. Algorithms, news, search, and textbooks don't say anything directly, but they decide what gets seen by whom. We feel "the world is like this," but really it's "the world that's been shown to me is like this." A single like count can even decide "I guess that's what everyone thinks." So keeping many windows open is the first step in this age.

Chapter 5: What Do Movies Like "The Matrix" Do?

Stories like movies, novels, and games are a way of showing, first on the screen in our minds, what hasn't become real yet. If a real counterexample shows "it's already been done," a story shows "you could see it this way too." It can't change the real world directly, but it does four things. A work that shakes a firm belief, like "The Matrix" (1999), does all four at once.

That's why stories are the advance party of counterexamples. Stories wear down the slack in set beliefs, connect people who were hiding, and get the world into a state where "one small trigger will change it." Then when a real counterexample comes along, the world changes with far fewer people. It's like dropping a single grain of sugar into water with lots of sugar dissolved in it, and the whole thing sets at once.

The shadow of stories

The same story can also be used the other way around.

• It becomes a new right answer. A work that gets too famous can turn into a new taken-for-granted: "this is the truth." Even the phrase "the red pill" later became the name of a new right answer, as different groups borrowed it as a badge for their own beliefs. It has the same shape as "change in the gaze only" from Chapter 3.
• It becomes propaganda. When it's used to tie people together and cover up thought, it's overriding in the shape of a story.
• It becomes escape. If you only watch and leave nothing behind in reality, it becomes escape.

A good story stops at "you could see it this way too," and leaves the judgment to the viewer. Close it off with "this is the truth," and it makes people who pass things along. Leave it open, and it makes people who see for themselves.

Not just people. A dream is a movie the body plays for itself. It's a practice pad for loosening a set day and weaving it again. Young animals' play-fighting is a game for safely practicing real fights, and a car company's concept car is a "work" that shakes the industry's taken-for-granted first.

Chapter 6: One Turn of How the World Moves

Put everything so far into one picture, and it looks like this. The world moves as this wheel turns here and there, overlapping itself.

1. The taken-for-granted. Everyone shows each other the same picture and firms it up.
2. A counterexample appears. Someone follows their own eyes rather than others' eyes and pulls off something different.
3. It gets shown. The result spreads. The cheaper making, spreading, and seeing get, the faster this goes.
4. Someone sees it for themselves. Other people see it directly and judge it by their own standard. This is the moment someone who passed things along becomes someone who sees. For that person, it's the start of taking back their own steering wheel.
5. It spreads all at once. People who were quietly thinking the same thing show themselves: "Me too!" At the front, the people who saw it for themselves change; behind them, lots of people change by following them.
6. It sets again. When enough people have changed by following, the new idea becomes the taken-for-granted again. Once it sets into habits and rules, it becomes the "others' eyes" that someone will notice next time.

Where movies and stories fit. Stories lower the threshold between steps 4 and 5 ahead of time, inside our minds.

The world is a board where, by showing ourselves to each other and seeing each other, we endlessly re-divide whose eyes hold the steering wheel, and right now that's happening faster than ever in history.

Chapter 7: Predictions to Check and Things to Be Careful About

Predictions to check

A good theory says things in advance, and can admit it when it's wrong. If this principle is right, we should be able to observe things like these.

1. Even on the same topic, the side that shows real results or something you can try will gather more people, for longer, than the side that only argues in words.
2. The more influential the person showing something, the more people take it as the right answer, and that share goes down when they also show "you can do it differently."
3. The more a belief was taken on just from hearing others, the faster it changes with a few counterexamples. The more it was set by your own experience, the longer it holds out.
4. Before a field changes in a big way, movies or stories that shake that field's taken-for-granted, and the phrases that come out of them, spread first.
5. As social media grows, both the spread of counterexamples and like-minded groups setting together grow along with it.
6. The push to hold on tight to old beliefs is strongest in the period when counterexamples are most visible.

Only what was written down before the results were known can count as a hit. If several of these keep turning out wrong, this piece has to be rewritten.

Things to be careful about

This piece is also a kind of "showing." If it gets heavy, it could turn into "this is the right answer," so it keeps to a few lines.

1. Showing doesn't move other people. It only gives them something to look at. The one who chooses is the one who sees. If someone chooses differently, that's not a failure. The weights on them are just different.
2. Fake things to look at are not showing. Inflated numbers, dressed-up results, and deception only look like showing on the outside. They're really overriding.
3. Counterexamples don't erase real limits. What a counterexample melts is the taken-for-granted that was set by people's thinking. The body, the laws of physics, and real scarcity are conditions you have to read and find another way around.
4. It doesn't say wobbling is always good. The taken-for-granted loosening means weight is shifting, not that things are necessarily getting better. It doesn't look down on people who hold on tight to old beliefs.
5. Movies don't replace judging reality. For important things like health, law, money, and safety, follow accurate current information and the judgment of experts.
6. This piece is also one perspective among many. If contrary results come in, it gets corrected.

This piece in one sentence. We are each other's others' eyes and each other's counterexamples. So what we show by how we live helps decide what the world will take for granted.