Your personal experiences make up roughly 0.000000001% of what’s happened in the world during your lifetime, but more like 99% of how you think the world works.
Let me tell you about a wild realization. It might make you feel better about the choices you’ve made, and less critical of others.
People do insane stuff all the time. But almost no one is (clinically) insane.
Think about this: people from different generations, raised by different parents who adopted different beliefs, in different parts of the world, born into different cultures, exposed to different political propaganda with different economies and different educational systems, learn very different ways of living.
What’s insane to me might make sense to you.
All of us — you, me, everyone — have had totally different experiences that influence how we think the world works. And what you’ve personally gone through (especially early in life) sticks with you more so than anything you find in a book, the news, or whatever.
That’s why one vivid childhood experience — watching your parents divorce when you’re two years old — shapes your view of marriage more than one hundred relationship books ever will.
Each of us thinks we are the rational ones while everyone else is batsh** crazy.
Clearly we can’t all be correct with this line of thinking.
So who is?
Me, obviously.
Ah, but in your mind it’s definitely you.
And in Elon Musk’s mind it’s gotta be him.
See what I mean?
The person who grew up in a Christian fundamentalist household thinks about God and the afterlife in ways the child of hardcore atheists never has.
The person who grew up in a mobile home thinks about money in ways the trust fund kid of a wealthy entrepreneur never will.
The person who grew up in a hoarder’s house views physical possessions in ways the child who was raised in foster care, with nothing more than a single suitcase containing all their worldly goods, simply doesn’t.
The typical middle class American who has the ability to choose their own path takes freedom for granted in ways the child born in North Korea couldn’t comprehend.
The list goes on and on.
You’ve experienced hardships I never have, and vice versa. You go through life with a completely different set of beliefs, aspirations, and dreams, than I do.
That’s not because one of us is smarter than the other, or has it all figured out. It’s because we’ve had different lives shaped by unique and equally convincing experiences.
So similarly intelligent people can disagree about practically everything: religion, politics, relationships, money, you name it.
We all think we know how the world works. But remember, we’ve all only experienced a tiny fraction of it.
No amount of studying or empathy can ever truly put us in the shoes of another.
I don’t have your scars or wounds and you don’t have mine.
That’s why we each of us sees the world through a fundamentally different lens.
Every decision people make feels rational to them because of the story they’ve created after interpreting their collection of experiences, while it could (and perhaps should) seem insane to others.
Let’s look at the lottery as an example.
Americans spent $108 billion on lottery tickets in 2022, making it the most popular form of gambling by far.
And you probably already know this, but who makes up the majority of ticket sales? Poor people.
The lowest income households spend an average of $412 per year on lotto tickets compared to $104 by the highest income households.
There’s a pithy line that goes something like: the lottery is an ignorance tax on the poor.
I wholeheartedly agreed with this the first time I heard it.
I thought, “How could people be so stupid? Don’t they know that you only have a 1 in 292,000,000 shot of winning the jackpot?”
This seems like insane behavior to me and plenty of others. But I’m not in the lowest income group, and if you’re reading these words while sipping your fancy latte, you probably aren’t either.
So let’s suspend our harsh judgment for a second and try to think about the story they tell themselves:
We are barely scraping by even after working 80 hours per week at multiple minimum wage jobs.
Often we don’t know if we’ll be able to feed our children tomorrow night or afford our electric bill this month.
Our prospects for prosperity are infinitesimal.
We can’t afford new clothes, we don’t have health insurance, we can’t go on fancy trips, heck, we can’t even afford an occasional night out at the movie theater where a small popcorn costs $15.
We can’t see a realistic path out of our current situation.
But buying a few lotto tickets from the convenience store after finishing up another graveyard shift at a dead end job provides us with something invaluable — hope.
You don’t have to agree with this line of reasoning. But can you at least appreciate why they shell out a few bucks for some lottery tickets?
It still seems insane to me that they’d do it, but I get why that story resonates with them. Who am I to say I would do any differently if the roles were reversed?
So let’s give each other a little grace the next time we’re quick to judge someone’s actions as insane.
We all make insane decisions in the eyes of others.
But what seems like insane behavior to me might make sense to you.
For more on this, check out Morgan Housel’s incredible book The Psychology of Money.
Your thoughts? Please leave a reply below.
This puts your entire premise in very clear perspective. "Your personal experiences make up roughly 0.000000001% of what’s happened in the world during your lifetime, but more like 99% of how you think the world works." The rest of the piece does that statement justice, but that one line is all I need to sit with to shift my thinking. A very useful frame shift.
I appreciate that your picture has gauze on his head and not a pair of underwear. That was a good choice. I also really appreciate this article!