Why Do Some See Clearly When So Many Are Asleep?

Henri Bergson's concept of a "spiritual immune system"

Recently, while attending an event on the island of Guernsey, an Austrian friend handed me a piece of paper on which was printed a photograph of the 19th century French philosopher, Henri Bergson, along with one of his reflections about consciousness.

Seeing Bergson’s photograph swept me back to a graduate school class I took on Marcel Proust’s novel, À la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time, widely known by the English title Remembrance of Things Past). Proust was influenced by Bergson’s theory of time, our perception of time, and our memory of past events.

The Bergson quotation—printed on the paper in German translation from the original French—was very satisfying for me to read, as it addressed a question that I’ve been pondering since 2020.

Why did a small minority of people quickly perceive all the anomalies and implausibilities of what we were being told by our government, while the majority were apparently unable to spot the lies we were being told?

In English, the text reads:

Fortunately, some are born with a spiritual immune system that sooner or later rejects the illusory worldview that was grafted onto them from birth through social conditioning. They begin to sense that something is not right and search for answers. Inner knowledge and anomalous external experiences reveal to them a side of reality that others do not perceive, and thus begins their journey of awakening. Every step on this journey is taken by following the heart instead of the crowd, and by choosing knowledge rather than the veil of ignorance.

Bergson’s uses the term “immune system” metaphorically. Though I appreciate the metaphor, I am more inclined to characterize this as native curiosity. I was a curious kid with a strong tendency to question things, including what adults and authority figures told me. However, as I relate in my forthcoming book, Mind Viruses, I didn’t begin my “journey of awakening” until the Bush administration invaded Iraq in 2003 under false pretenses. It was only then that I realized that our U.S government lies to us about major things—probably about a lot of major things.

The idea of an individual “awakening” is ancient, and it captures the idea that most of the time our minds are in a somnambulant state, probably because active thinking requires an enormous amount of energy.

The human brain is heavily tilted toward doing and thinking the same repetitive patterns, apparently from the natural selective mechanism that if we are still alive, we must be doing something right, while changing the behavioral pattern could be hazardous. This is apparently why we have such a strong tendency to choose what is familiar, even if what is familiar is foolish and inimical to flourishing and well-being.