MAP & TERRITORY MEDIA & REALITY

During the last three days, since the historic landside victory for Donald Trump in the US Elections this week, there has been a flood of postmortems now occurring on all of the news channels, cable news programs, podcasts, and radio talk shows. Everyone is trying to figure out what happened and why. Within nearly all of the categories that typically vote Democrat (women, Hespanics, Blacks, Jews, young people, families making less than $100K, etc.) people broke at unprecedented levels for the Republicans. Surprisingly one group that increased for Harris were people making more than $400K a year (the 1% wealthy).

Now prior to November 5, if you listened to the mainstream media (ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, and even Fox, Newsnation, etc.), you would have thought that it was “the tightest race” ever. It was “razor thin.” That’s what they all said. But no. What the media presented and the reality of what people thought and did were miles apart. The mental map that we received from the media and the actual territory were not the same at all.

Now to add to the gap between media and reality is the fact that the media’s reports, stories, and framing about Donald Trump was 90% negative and for Kamala Harris it was 87% positive. The media was definitely and highly biased for Harris and against Trump. No wonder we got a distorted picture! No wonder what we saw and heard via TV, newspapers, radio, social media and what we experienced at the grocery store, the gasoline station, the monthly electric bills, mortgage and/or rent bills, etc. were worlds apart. The world of media and the world that we live in were not the same.

That’s the thing about the reality of the territory, it is what it is in spite of your mental map. And whatever the mental map—it is just a map. No matter how strong your bias is for your map—your beliefs and your confidence— it doesn’t change what is. Being told that inflation is now “lower” does not lower the price of eggs and bread, and especially when you mean “the rate of inflation is lower now than it was.” Being told something does not make it so. Whatever the facts on the ground are—that’s what’s real. The verbal spin about it is someone’s interpretation about it.

Korzybski said “The map is not the territory.” There are several excellence metaphors of that metaphor: “The menu is not the meal.” “The sex manual is not sex.” “The picture of your children in your billfold is not your children.” Korzybski also said that a map is

only good and useful (not particularly ‘true’) if it’s structure is similar to the territory. Then you can use it to navigate the territory—you can use your mental map (your thinking, believing, understanding, etc.) to achieve your goals and experience what you want to experience.

So in NLP and Neuro-Semantics we ask, “Does the information (map) correspond to the reality?” “What are the brute facts on the ground and not the so-called ‘facts’ filtered by the bias of the speaker?” Untrue facts mislead our minds and emotions because they distort what’s real.

Why did Trump win? The good news is that people distrusted the media. They trusted their own eyes and ears, their own pocketbooks when they shopped more than what the media told them. That’s good. It means that the common people—especially the working men and woman used their common sense. It means, to quote Lincoln, you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.

The media said that crime was down, but it wasn’t and we could see new levels of crime going on all around us. The media said the border was secure yet we could see thousands coming across the border every single day adding up to millions unvetted people entering. The media said Trump was dangerous, a Hitler, a Fascist, a Felon, etc., but we saw him preparing fries and serving hamburgers at the drive-through and getting into a garbage truck with the appropriate vest. What the media did not say is who Trump is dangerous to—not the everyday person. He’s a threat the elites and the bureaucrats.

Map and territory—they are not the same by any stretch of the imagination and that’s why we put such a big emphasis on clear, critical, and creative thinking. Your mental map and mine come from how we think. For democracy to succeed, there needs to be an educated populace—people need to think for themselves and speak up. There’s been far too much censorship and social pressure against questioning. To Speak Up, Speak Clear, Speak Kind, see the small book with that title. For thinking clearly, critically, and creatively, see Thinking for Humans. When you graduate from that book, then you’ll be ready for Executive Thinking.

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