I practiced and taught psychotherapy for over 40 years. Over time, I learned that repeated narratives can acquire weight of established truth independent of evidence. People do not simply experience facts. They experience interpretations, fears, memories, identities, and emotional reinforcement. Public discourse increasingly functions the same way.

There is an old story about a person seeking forgiveness for gossip. They are instructed to cut open a pillow on a windy rooftop, releasing thousands of feathers into the air. The next day, they are told to gather every feather back. Of course, it is impossible. Once released, the damage cannot be fully undone.

Modern public language often works similarly.

We now live in a culture of emotional acceleration. News arrives instantly, spreads algorithmically, and is amplified long before careful scrutiny has time to catch up. Narratives increasingly compete not simply to persuade, but to activate fear. Fear accelerates moral certainty, compresses nuance, and rewards emotionally satisfying explanations before evidence has fully settled.

We are all vulnerable to this process. The immediacy and volume of information leave little time for........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)