Vol. 4, Issue 3: The Consensus Trance

Or How Do We Define Critical Thinking?

My wife is a therapist. She’s a really good one, too*

*I might be biased

Recently, she had to give a presentation to her clinic and the topic that she wanted to give the presentation on was claimed by someone else. So she rolled up her sleeves and did a presentation on something called Complementary and Alternative Medicine - which in this case had to do with integrating more eastern-style medicine to western protocols to more roundly address root causes for nutritional and other physical health ailments that may impact mental health. It was super interesting, at least to me.

But before she went through all of that in detail, she touched on something called the consensus trance, which is a state where individuals passively adopt widely accepted beliefs or norms without critical examination. The concept has its roots in work done by Erich Fromm in the 1950s, but was “popularized”* in the mid-1980s by psychologist and parapsychologist named Charles Tart. He was kind of an out there dude, as the parapsychology part of his training might suggest and in the same book that he outlined the consensus trance, he also discussed an experiment that he conducted about out of body experiences. He hits as a little Carl Jung and a little Peter Venkman.

*I have no idea how popular this actually is

So Tart sits back and looks around and notices that there are ideas that take hold and there are ideas that don’t and the ones that do are typically just accepted without being reexamined*. His theory becomes that when someone is born they’re inducted into all manner of dogma (consensus) due to the power and persuasiveness of the authority figures espousing them (whoever they may be: parents, religious figures, teachers, etc.), and the top down authority and bottom up acceptance of these ideas bring social pressure to conform and be taken as doctrine without question (the trance).

*There’s obvious merit to this in many ways; you can’t literally question everything all the time, you’d never get anything done. Unless you’re my daughter, who literally questions everything all the time. I don’t know how she gets anything done

It’s like a collective conscious - people subverting their own judgment in order to conform with the consensus or ditching individual critical thinking to go along with collective belief systems. It’s similar to - though not really the same as - Jung’s collective unconscious. One is extrinsic, the other is intrinsic.

Tart’s idea of the consensus trance explains how societal norms shape us without question, but what happens when we start to notice the tension between those norms and our personal truths? My therapist often talks about ‘duality,’* a concept that suggests two seemingly opposing truths can coexist. And this is where things get interesting — because it’s a perfect reflection of the consensus trance in action.

*The primary example he uses is that your personal trauma can be extremely impactful to you, and you can hold space for people going through trauma that may be “worse” when you compare the two. Or how Miller Lite can both Taste Great and be Less Filling

In a one of my rambling, incoherent posts from way back when, I mentioned something called the Asch experiments, where participants were shown two sets of lines that were the same length and actors were paid to say one was longer than the other to see how an unpaid individual would react. That’s the consensus trance live and in action. It’s an individual or individuals suppressing what they see with their own eyes to go along with the majority opinion. There’s limitations to this comparison of course. The Asch experiments have to do with immediate social pressure, whereas the consensus trance is largely about passive conformity, but it’s close enough that it’s not hard to see or understand. That’s me pulling my Asch out for all to see.*

*As it was last time, the ass pun is free of charge

One of the great things about humans is our need for a sense of belonging. That’s the thing that allowed like-minded individuals to come together and create society, civilization, make advancements across fields like science, medicine, mathematics, engineering, etc. But the other side of that belonging coin is that it’s easily exploited. The desire to fit in is strong - think about how many times in your life you were there while someone was talking shit about something you liked or even loved (a family member, a deeply held belief of some kind, the Big Bang Theory*) or better yet, something you didn’t care about but recognized that the behavior was wrong (like watching people pick on a kid in school) and you kept quiet because you didn’t want to rock the boat or be seen as different from the group. I’ll raise my hand: that’s happened to me more than I care to admit. Peer pressure can be a really nasty thing. And if you broaden the aperture, the tendency to want to fit in gets magnified.

*I’m an unapologetic fan of the Big Bang Theory. It’s not the highest of art, but it’s anodyne, inoffensive and frankly, it soothes me to watch it. Chuck Lorre, if you’re reading this, call me

That’s the thing that I struggle with when I think about the consensus trance - and the thing that I’m working out in real time through the prism of the consensus trance - is what constitutes a healthy dose of skepticism vs. what we should take as adjudicated and settled. Effectively, the consensus trance as blind adherence to dogma vs. the consensus trance as a healthy challenge to existing mindset.

But really, what has consumed my thinking since I heard about this is the consensus trance as a barrier to growth. While the consensus trance is often seen as a psychological or cultural phenomenon, it extends beyond personal belief systems and can shape industries, particularly those with massive societal influence, like media.

Here’s where it gets super interesting (NOTE: HOT TAKE INCOMING): the consensus trance, that is to say “sticking with what works” in the face of a rapidly changing technology and consumption landscape, is the single biggest growth inhibitor facing the media industry right now. There are enormous companies out there who, when faced with massive businesses in secular decline, choose to adhere to the way things are done, simply because they’ve always been done that way. This is not limited to legacy media companies either. Companies like Netflix and Apple are just recreating the old model on new platforms. Much like traditional cable TV networks, Netflix and Apple rely on subscription-based models and on-demand and live content, but fail to break away from traditional broadcast schedules, essentially recreating the same experience in a digital form.*

*Even if the programming is in many ways more compelling

And if I were in front of them, the question I’d ask is why? They’ve made massive investments in content, billions of dollars in aggregate, and they’re using a streaming model that is - for all intents and purposes - the exact same one that my grandparents watched on the Philco in their living room in the 1950s. I may not know a lot, but I do know one thing: most of the content my children consume (the future people with money) is not consumed in that model.

The reluctance of media giants to move beyond established models isn’t just about business; it’s a manifestation of a larger societal issue. As we continue to navigate a rapidly changing world, the question becomes: how do we strike a balance between healthy skepticism and blind adherence to what has always worked? Is the consensus trance holding us back from growth in ways we don’t even realize?*

*Remember the end of the old live action Bat-Man series where each storyline took two episodes and at the end of the first episode they asked all of these really obvious questions to be answered in the next episode? “Will Bat-Man and Robin escape the confounding clutches of the Riddler?” That sort of thing. No point here, just saying

The consensus trance doesn’t just apply to individual behavior or small-scale social dynamics; it’s an overarching force that can either propel or inhibit growth on a societal level. And as industries like ours continue to grapple with a changing landscape, the true challenge lies in recognizing when adherence to the status quo is a barrier — rather than a safeguard — to progress.

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The writing of my book, My Life In Ad Tech: A Modern Day Fairy Tale, is underway and coming along. My conservative goal is to be done with writing by the end of the year, so that I can full edit in Q1 of next year. Stay tuned for riveting updates in this space.

That’s all for today. Until next time, friends.