Living in Alternate Universes

Why it’s so hard to see the other side’s perspective

Image generated using AI with ChatGPT (OpenAI), May 2026.

I grew up in a fundamentalist community where the world was neatly divided into two categories: acceptable and unacceptable. We had a fluid understanding of what was considered din lumea (literally translated from Romanian as “from the world”), and what was not.

By fourteen, I was fully indoctrinated. My future would follow a well-worn pattern: Finish high school if possible, find employment through a member of the community, marry someone from within the circle before my mid-twenties, start a family. Wait too long and your prospects would narrow with each passing year.

It wasn’t until after high school that I realized that I was not ready to live up to the standards set forth by this community. Instead I attended a community college. My family, suprisingly, supported the idea. I pursued a degree in philosophy and anthropology. I dabbled in all kinds of new ideas. I experimented with alternative lifestyles. I fancied myself a bit of a bohemian. Suffice it to say that I took one step forward each day until eventually I was no longer part of my community. Ultimately, I ended up in the San Francisco Bay Area, where I’ve lived ever since.

I have the life I want now, but the baggage from my childhood remains. I still struggle with feelings of inadequacy, as if I’ve failed to meet some invisible standard. The mere fact I still refer to it as “my community”, present tense and possessive, is a constant reminder that it will always be part of me.

The coffee table debates

Every year I visit my family during the holidays. They typically don’t visit me, which is painful. I understand there reasons but it still would be nice to share my new life out here with them.

When I visit them, we often have long debates over strong coffee after dinner. The conversation usually revolves around some religious theme or conservative value. It’s a game I play to see how far I can push without breaking anyone. Usually, I end up being the one that’s broken.

The conversations over the years all blur together, but more often than not the conclusion is the same — “College brainwashed you.”

I can hear my brother in law’s voice now, “Did you learn that in a book?”

I point out their hypocrisy with my own facetious response, “the bible is like a person you can torture until eventually it tells you exactly what you want to hear.”

It’s not anger that I feel, but rather a deep sadness for myself.

They’re rigidly committed to their beliefs and values, but happy. Without question, they accept it all, regardless of any counterargument I can make. I on the other hand question everything and wonder how much easier life would be if I just blindly accepted their beliefs, but I just can’t.

Facts are dead

After years of trying, I’ve learned that it’s impossible to change someone’s beliefs with rational argumentation. Typically, our debates are steeped in emotion. Judgements are made based on how someone feels as opposed to what makes sense. Their confidence cannot be shaken and instead only strengthened.

I know now that this is what cognitive psychologist call “the backfire effect”. When people evaluate information that contradicts their deeply held believes, brain imaging studies show the parts of the brain associated with reasoning shuts down, and instead areas associated with emotion and identity light up.

The universe or echo chambers we help create and curate for ourselves are constructed not of facts, logical things, but rather shadows — things that are intangible. Reality exists between the fine line of subjective and objective reality. More often than not, objective reality is trumped by subjectivity. How I feel about something is experienced as more real.

People inhabit fundamentally different universes constructed not from shared facts but from feelings, values, and subjective experience. They are an integral part of one’s identity, one’s understanding of their place in the world. These are not just “bubbles” we live in, they’re entire lived realities built on emotional foundations that rational argument cannot burst.

All of life’s lessons are but a footnote to Plato

Photo by Bruno van der Kraan on Unsplash

It reminds me of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. We’re all prisoner’s rigidly chained in a cave facing a wall. Behind us burns a bright fire, casting long shadows on the walls in front of us. Unable to move our heads and see behind us, we notice the shadows of people carrying objects and figures.

We sit around with our fellow prisoners and guess at what the shadows mean. We try to convince each other of how right we are and wrong they are. In Plato’s allegory, one of those prisoners is eventually set free. Plato goes on to describe the prisoners experience as he exits the cave and finally sees the world for what it really is, and not just mere shadows of it. The prisoner realizing the outside world is the true reality, eagerly returns to the cave to free the other prisoners. Back in the darkness his vision is impaired, and the other prisoners mock him and reject his claims.

Despite the obvious similarities, what has always resonated with me is the prisoner’s experience of the light that blinds him as he makes his way out of the cave.

The experience of seeing the truth is painful. And the experience of returning into darkness is equally painful because now that you have seen the truth, you no longer fully belong among those who still mistake shadows for reality.

There are days when I still long for darkness

We sit around the coffee table, in our separate universes, and we try. We fail, mostly. But we try. And in a world increasingly fractured by unbridgeable divides and increasingly more painful, maybe that stubborn, futile effort is worth something.

Maybe it’s all we have.

What I’ve come to learn is that I’m not always right despite how strongly I might feel about something. That self-reflection is an aperture through which some level of new truth might be reflected in my universe.

The way forward is not through argumentation but through shared experience. If you want to change someone’s mind, argue less, and befriend them more. Have the coffee without the debate.