Sometimes people will say something, and the words just land inside me. Like a bird flying home to their nest. Like an ant finding the cool underside of a rock. Like a salmon swimming upstream to the place where they were born.
I’m hosting a men’s breakfast at a women’s festival. And one of the men asks: ‘How do we view the world without taking our view from the world?’ Boom. It landed. It spoke to something I’ve been doing here for the last 24 years writing this column. Viewing the world with my own unique lens and sharing it with you. Finding a view that I didn’t think had found its way, and midwifing it gently into existence. Sometimes with humour, sometimes with rage, sometimes with sadness. Just whatever lens was required to bring it into existence. I think about things a lot. I ruminate on ideas, on values, on wicked problems. Making sense of the world has been my constant and seemingly impossible mission.
I went home and googled the question. Did someone famous say this and I’ve missed it? I don’t think so. It doesn’t ring any bells on my google search. But I don’t trust google searches. So I ask my husband. Not because he’s a man. Because he’s a doctor of sociology, and this is a sociological question. He thinks, and says he hasn’t heard it and agrees, it’s a powerful, important question. So I will credit the speaker, a registered nurse and senior lecturer in Indigenous Medical Education at Queensland University of Technology, Francis Nona. I think about that question all day when I hear it, as I walk around Cairns to find a coffee, and on the plane on the way home.
The question on how we view the world has never been more important. As social media algorithms become the Harry Potter sorting hat for what you see on your news feed, as more people become funnelled into mindsets curated by hate and outrage, it’s never been more important to be a critical thinker. But we’re losing them fast.
Sadly critical thinking is on the endangered list. The words I have heard have come from a human mouth. Not a chat bot. Not a meme. A man. A man who thinks about the world and questions, like I do, why we are like we are. Him: academically. Me: comedically.
I worry that AI is making our brains soft. That we don’t do the hard stuff anymore because we can ask Claude to do it. That we are allowing our view of the world to be moulded by unchecked influence. That we are becoming too stupid to sense danger. Aligned to our ignorance. Our bias magnified. That we only view things the way the world tells us to view it. Then the world shows us who agrees with us and we feel affirmed.
We don’t look beyond because our view does not permit competing views. It has shut down our capacity to be challenged – and lit the furnace of rage. Complex problems are given simple solutions: hate. Misogyny. Racism. Outrage. We are rabbits putting our sweet furry foot in the trap. Over and over again. The one question we fail to ask, is who set the trap?
I think about how I view the world. My lens as a woman in her late 50s is informed by my generational experiences. The daughter of a single mother. The survivor of domestic violence. The microcosm of a small town. Poverty. Struggle. But I was white. My sister was black. As hard as my life was, the life of an Aboriginal woman in that place was 100 times harder. The world told me different stories about myself. The world opened doors for me that it didn’t open for her. I didn’t see it at the time, but looking back, it’s crystal clear.
So how do I view the world without becoming indoctrinated and subdued? Where do I find my source? Not in the dark virtual alleyways of the internet, that’s for sure. Not by looking to America. If you are doing all your research online, maybe it’s time to stop. Ditch YouTube for a library. Read a book. Long form. Listen to live storytellers. Engage in conversations. Seek out the work of accredited academics. Those who research and publish. Listen to people without self-interest. And stand in nature. Listen to the trees, the ants, the birds, the snake in the grass, the rock. View the world from there. It’s the only truth left.
Mandy Nolan’s column has appeared in The Echo for almost 25 years. She is a writer, comedian and artist, is the preselected Greens candidate for Ballina and was the Greens candidate at the past two federal elections.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
