Lately I have been playing a simple game on YouTube. It is published by someone in Japan under the title, “Find Three Differences”. In this game, you are shown two drawings side by side. The challenge is to find three things in the right-hand picture that are different from the nearly identical picture on the left. You are given 90 seconds to find three differences before a curtain drops. The pictures then reappear and the differences are circled in the right side drawing.
This, of course, isn’t a new game. I can remember this game from the Sunday newspaper comics section, back when newspapers regularly showed up on people’s doorstep. In the newspaper edition, there was no time limit imposed as in the YouTube version. I can’t say this is a terribly difficult game but it can be challenging at times. The artist can be quite clever in omitting small details in the right-hand picture.
I find it to be a nice diversion from my daily stresses. While you are focusing on the pictures to find the differences, you can’t waste time on distractions if you want to beat the clock. Your brain gets a ninety second reprieve from multitasking. My brain seems to like that as I find it helps calm me even as I ardently seek the anomalies in the second picture. I also get a sense of accomplishment when I find all three differences. When I don’t, there is a moment of disappointment for not seeing what is now so obvious.
It has occurred to me that this puzzle game is a lot like what I do as a therapist. I focus on my client and listen to what they are saying. I also am observing all their nonverbal communication: how they sit, how they move, facial expressions, breathing, eye movement and any other clues they give me to convey what is taking place within them as they talk about their lives. I am looking for discrepancies between what they are telling me in words and what their whole body is saying.
By taking this whole person approach, I potentially gain insight into how I can best respond to my client. It is as if clients show me two pictures of themselves: the one they are used to presenting to the world and the one they don’t know they are presenting to the world. One of my tasks as a therapist is to help the client see themselves in their wholeness. Sometimes this involves helping the client see what is missing in their life or what is impeding them from getting what they need to feel more whole.
Seeing the whole picture, achieving the gestalt, if you will, can be quite daunting. In the, “Find Three Differences” game, the more complex the picture, the more challenging it becomes to find the differences. This also holds true when trying to make sense out of the world we live in. It can be blindingly difficult to know what to believe or how to respond.
As I have tried to sort out for myself what is true and what are “alternative facts” as supporters of the former President continue to promulgate, I find myself increasingly anxious about the space between what is the truth and what has been left out or perhaps added in to fit someone’s or some group’s beliefs. It is the discrepancies between these opposing pictures that very dangerous ideas can take hold. It becomes increasingly difficult to decide which picture has omissions and which picture is complete. We don’t need to look very far back in our history to see where authoritarian, anti-democratic forces have used big and small lies to convince people that what they see is not necessarily what is true. It is as if the “Find Three Differences” game now asks you to view the left picture as the one with omissions and the right one as the correct picture. The standard of comparison has been reversed. The truth is a lie and the lie is the truth.
I will forever be grateful to my German neighbors who lived next door to us for many years. They had both lived through the Second World War : Carina in Germany and Peter in the German Army. I came to appreciate that they provided a unique view into how Germany transformed itself from a fledgling democracy into a dictatorship that would wreck havoc and suffering on the world in ways that are still hard to fathom.
Peter grew up in an isolated German speaking enclave of Romania. His community was one that the National Socialists, (Nazi’s) used as a propaganda tool to point out how these “German” people were abused and discriminated against by the Romanian government. They fomented conflict within this enclave, feeding the German speaking population misinformation about how the Romanian education system was teaching their children “lies” about their German heritage.
When Peter was 18, he was drafted into the Romania Army. Filled with the propaganda Nazi Germany had been flooding his community with and how Germany would “liberate” his beleaguered and oppressed people, he deserted the Romanian Army. He fled to Germany and into the welcoming arms of recruiters who were very happy to take this idealistic young man-boy into the welcoming arms of a German Army unit he would fight with for the next six years in many of the major campaigns of WWII. He was told he was a true German, a patriotic German who would save Germany from the tyranny of those who sought to eliminate the white race and replace it with decadent races. Pretty heady stuff for any eighteen-year-old.
Carina grew up in Eastern Germany in relative affluence. Her father had been an artillery officer in WWI. She joined the Hitler youth in her early teens. This youth organization’s purpose was to create strong and capable women who would bear the next generation of the Germanic race. The activities she and her friends participated in were about healthy living and having fun with her peers. Mixed in with all the fun and practical training was indoctrination into the National Socialist, (Nazi) belief system that emphasized the superiority of the Germanic white race, patriotism, law and order, and unquestioning loyalty to Hitler who had promised to make Germany great again.
She was also taught that some races were inferior and decadent. She was taught that the Jews had betrayed Germany with their socialist ideas. She was taught to fear those who were different from her. Party loyalty was paramount in order to save Germany from the clutches of those who would want Germany to be a democratic society that accepted multi-ethnic, multi-cultural progressive ideas which would dilute the purity of the rightful creators of Germany.
Through my German neighbors, I was privileged to see through the lens they had once been given in their youth. This helped me understand better how a relatively small, ideologically driven group of people could gain control of a nation in turmoil, as Germany was after WWI. This group became very skilled at exploiting the fears of Germans. They took advantage of the weaknesses and chaos in the political system. They infiltrated the social and political life in Germany by gaining access to local and state governments, churches and schools. They questioned school curriculum that taught anything that didn’t glorify Germany or presented alternative views of history that questioned the superiority of the Germanic race. They proclaimed themselves the saviors of a proud nation disrespected by their enemies and undermined internally by liberal ideas, especially those espoused by democratic countries in Western Europe, the United Kingdom and the United States.
Peter and Carina would often talk with me about what they saw in the rise of right wing politics in America. They knew first hand how an otherwise civilized country could be deceived by dedicated opportunists through effective propaganda that pandered to the most basic fears of a segment of the population in order to foment division in a nation. They understood from their own experience how a proud society could be turned in on itself and split over issues manufactured by those who would seek power, even at the cost of tearing a nation apart. Carina once said to me, “By the time we understood what was happening, it was too late to do anything about it.”
A key element in propaganda of any kind is to present the goals of the propagandists as “normal” and the ideals of their opponents as flawed. This can be seen in the differing views of the attempt on January 6 of this year to overturn the election. The political party that lost the presidential election would have us believe that it was either justified because the election was rigged or the rioters were just patriotic citizens who were peacefully demonstrating their constitutional rights to challenge their government.
They would want us to reject a fair election, supported by numerous courts and recounts of votes, as the picture with the missing details. They would have us believe that rule of law, the Constitution and the orderly transfer of power is the incomplete picture. They ask us to accept that those who broke into the Capitol by force, caused multiple deaths, hundreds of injuries and sought to lynch the Vice President and Speaker of the House on a gallows they had raised in front of the Capitol were the true patriots.
My time spent talking with my German neighbors showed me how a nation that had given the world great artists, composers, philosophers, scientists, engineers and writers could be conquered from within by a relatively small group of malignantly narcissistic individuals who turned the virtues of that country against itself. I came to understand how fragile democracy is when freedom is first used to spread a destructive ideology and then eliminated when the power to limit it is obtained through the elective process. As my German friends often pointed out, Hitler was first elected in a fair democratic election. Of course, not long after that, the Reichstag, their Capital building, was burned to the ground and their legislature was dissolved.
There are always those who would want to flip reality so that their picture is the legitimate one and everyone else’s is wrong. It will take strong and ethical people to insist that the true picture of democracy gives voice to all eligible voters. It doesn’t rig the system to the extent that only one political party stays in power. It allows for diversity of thought in its schools and universities. Democracy doesn’t attempt to impose one group’s vision of history on everyone else. In a democracy, we don’t let one group control the norm for society, we draw that picture together. It’s a messy process. It’s an imperfect process but it is the correct picture to which we should look to identify what is missing or wrong in the alternative picture any one political party or interest group would portray.
When I play, “Find Three Differences”, I don’t always find all three. Some are so subtile the eye easily overlooks them. When the answers are revealed and it is too late for me to identify what I overlooked, I will say to myself, “How could I have missed them!” In the game the stakes are low. It’s only my ego that gets pricked a bit. In real life though, the stakes are very high. Finding the missing three facts, (or more) may be the difference between an authoritarian government that controls our lives and thoughts and a representative democracy that allows us to live in a country that values diversity of thought and the rule of law.
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