The Issue With Living in a Bubble

The following is adapted from The Elephant’s Dilemma.

We all live in bubbles, physically and mentally. We live in neighborhoods with people who are in our same income bracket and who tend to look like us. At work, we spend our time with people who most likely have similar levels of education. Online, we create echo chambers, surrounding ourselves with people who believe the same things we do.

These bubbles are nice. They are comfortable and safe. They are also isolating, reducing our connections to our larger community.

When you live in a bubble, surrounded by a world that looks the same in every direction, you become oblivious to the outside world. You get used to all the conformity, all the sameness, and you turn all your attention inward, within the walls of your bubble.

Our bubbles are comfort zones, and when you spend all your time in your comfort zone, you restrict your ability to grow and innovate. Most of us wish to grow and innovate, and that’s reason enough to pop the bubble. Even if you’re content staying in your bubble, there’s a problem: bubbles don’t last forever.

Bubbles Don’t Last

Let’s look at what happens when you only focus on what’s inside your bubble. Imagine a family with a dual income; the woman is, let’s say, a lawyer making a good salary. The man’s a doctor. Between them, they’ve saved a decent financial buffer. They live in a nice suburban neighborhood. They can afford great vacations. They have tuition money for their kids’ educations.

They think We’ve got this life stuff figured out. There’s food on our table. The future’s secure. Our kids will be okay. But is that sense of security justified?

Those parents believe they’ve set their children up for success, but as those kids grow up, they won’t live in the same bubble. At some point, they’ll leave Mom and Dad’s house and head into the wide world.

Maybe those kids will go live in a city, or a foreign country. Maybe they’ll choose a career that does not provide as much financial stability. Then the bubble will pop, and they may not be prepared for the new challenges they encounter.

But maybe the kids follow in their parents’ footsteps. They become lawyers and doctors and live in the same suburban neighborhood. Even then, there’s no guarantee that the bubble will remain intact, as the world is constantly changing.

It’s not enough to sit in your bubble and think, Oh, the world is great. In our little life, everything is fine. In fifty years, if gun violence has spread throughout cities, if there are more pandemics and massive health issues, if only 10 percent of the population has access to clean water, this is going to impact everyone’s bubble.

We need better for our world. If terrible diseases are rampant and life expectancy plummets, that’s not good for anyone. Even those who are somewhat protected cannot continue to thrive when surrounded by enormous amounts of shittiness.

The future is not secure, even within your safe bubble. If you want to ensure a bright, happy future for yourself and your descendants, you must turn your gaze outward and look beyond your bubble.

The Need for Innovation

When you look beyond your bubble, it’s not just problems that you will find. You will also find solutions because stepping out of our bubbles opens us up to greater innovation.

Innovation has been declining in our country. The US generally appears to have stabilized. Compare the state of our society today to the developments of our past. At one time, there was a tremendous amount of progress in our country. We built the railroad and highway systems. We put electricity in every home. We made it to the moon, and we flooded the country with internet access.

Then, progress slowed. We stabilized. We stopped taking moon shots and, instead, focused on less weighty, less impactful innovations. We stopped coming together to take giant swings that shook our culture and became more divided. Innovation started coming from smaller private and commercial efforts that didn’t have the same cultural impact.

If we don’t start to innovate in ways more reminiscent of our past, we’ll remain flat while the world’s challenges peak. If we keep operating the same way we are today, with small steps taken here and there but no massive cultural swings, we’ll end up with a lot of problems.

Pollution, cleanliness, food systems, waterways, airways, and the atmosphere will deteriorate because we won’t innovate fast enough to keep up with their challenges. Even issues like gun violence, mental health, and homelessness will rise if we don’t actively seek to combat them.

The solutions we have in place today will not hold up to the challenges of tomorrow. And often, we don’t correctly predict what those challenges will be. Most of us did not see, or at least take seriously, the threat of a pandemic. I sure as hell wasn’t ready for the impact the novel coronavirus had on the world.

Simply put, if we don’t innovate, the world will not be a better place for our kids—and no college fund or stable upbringing will protect them from that. And innovation relies upon us stepping outside of our bubbles.

Look Outside Your Bubble

Whatever our circumstances, however, we ended up in our comfortable bubbles, we need to look up and reach out. We cannot continue to live isolated lives, doing nothing but ensuring our kids will be okay. If that’s all we focus on, they will end up well-loved, well-educated, and surrounded by a disintegrating world.

Our kids can only thrive if the world around them survives. That means we must act to sustain everyone through war, political unrest, pandemics, pollution, or whatever else we face. We can’t assume someone else will solve all these issues. It’s our responsibility to kick the country out of stagnation and into an innovative, solutions-based future.

So start looking outside your bubble. Drive to a different neighborhood. Seek out opinions different from your own online. Foster friendships with people who had a different upbringing than you. And start changing the world for the better.

For more advice on looking outside your bubble, you can find The Elephant’s Dilemma on Amazon.