“Stories heal, transform and bring us together.” This is the statement that drives the mission of the journalists at “Decât o Revistă (Only a Magazine),” a Romanian narrative journalism publication. They aim to write the news in ways so that people can live vicariously through them, “news that you can feel,” as editor-in-chief Cristian Lupșa calls them (Lupsa 2020). Storytelling can bring a message home, especially when the story features an idea that is so raw that people usually feel alienated for having it in their lives, such as trauma. By publishing articles featuring personal essays on issues such as domestic violence, childhood trauma or abuse of workplace rights, Only a Magazine creates the thread between protagonists of similar stories who are scattered all over the country or the globe. Cristian Lupsa, the founder and editor-in-chief of Only a Magazine, was inspired by the story of a young man with a terrible stutter who wrote a letter to his pizza delivery person. 

 

In his letter, the young man was explaining to the delivery person that he has a speech impairment that keeps him from being straightforward. It takes time for him to articulate words with a stutter, so he would like the delivery person to be patient and not think that the man is mocking him with his frequent pauses. It was especially difficult for him to say the word “pepperoni.” After hearing this story on a podcast, Cristian Lupsa felt seen by a pair of invisible, but perceptibly real eyes. Even though stuttering is a common issue, this story was the “treatment that he did not know [he] needed” (Lupsa 2020). Cristian felt less alone. He never knew this stuttering pepperoni pizza fan, but he felt a connection to him, and perhaps even to the stuttering population of the world. It made him feel “less alone” (Lupsa 2020). Cristian then sought to instill the same feeling of interconnectedness in people who felt any type and degree of loneliness. 

 

Starting 11 years ago, Only a Magazine has been publishing stories on loneliness, friendship, family, and histories of abuse (Lupsa 2020). They work with and for the people, seeking these stories out in the wild and bringing them to attention in a way that instills ease in the lonely and urgency in the unaware. Stories appeal to our empathy and create a bond to networks of others with similar personal stories. One appropriate example for interconnectedness through storytelling is even the current worldwide pandemic. A fundamental difference was that the universal story of many was not a secret looking to be revealed. It was a story that connected people organically. Awareness of a problem wasn’t so much the goal of disseminating it as was interconnectedness itself, or empathy, or solidarity. People started coming out on their balconies to cheer for their front-line workers every day at 7PM in New York City (Newman 2020). Volunteerism rose visibly, as people looked for ways in which to help the ones who were most affected by mass unemployment and the ones who were most at risk, like the elderly or the vulnerable. Restaurants were donating food, volunteers were grocery shopping, seamstresses were sewing face masks. (“America’s Volunteer Spirit Continues in the Face of the Pandemic,” 2019). The beginning of the pandemic offered a glimpse into what an interconnected world could look like, and that it is possible to achieve.

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The old cliché goes that the Internet made connection to the world possible, and it is indeed true. Virtual communication made it possible for family, friends and strangers across the board to interact. The Internet allows for communities to be created around people and ideas and it gives them resources to stay connected. Whether it’s a Facebook group for parenting tips or a Tumblr community for bohemian teenage witches, communication and thus connection became commodities. Besides casual communication, the Internet also gives meaningful ideas platforms to reach the right people. Internet Activism has its own Wikipedia page. Social media is used for raising awareness and amassing a following, no matter how much or less good someone is willing to do. The Pew Research Center notes that 53% of participants in a study on social media activism reported engaging in some virtual effort of civic activism in 2018 (Pew Research Center 2018). Social justice and politics are seeing incredible momentum in the flow of ideas online. People find their niches and stick to them. Just like Cristian Lupsa from Only a Magazine, they feel seen and heard, and they’re eager to keep the connections going. The famous March on Washington of 1963 to end racial inequities in the US amassed over 260,000 people just through grassroots efforts across the country (NAACP). The Women’s March on Washington drew 470,000 in Washington alone, and more than 5,000,000 throughout the US, and it started with a Facebook event ("Women's March" 2020). Imagine what a “Share” button could have done for Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream. 

 

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Empathy is crucial for civic engagement. Empathy is what drives people to march for their friends, family, neighbors, or co-citizens. Through empathy people connect to real and fictional people alike. Reading is also interconnectedness, an idea that I delved into with an English professor I interviewed for this project. Reading is immersing oneself in the life of the Other, a way of tuning into the Other, just as Dr. Doyle mentions in “Darwin’s Pharmacy.” Emotional connection is the most organic way in which people connect. It’s the bottom line of many connection efforts, Internet or stories alike. And just like Barbara Fredrickson, professor of psychology at University of North Carolina, argues, love (or interconnection) is biology, love goes all the way down to chemicals that keep people healthy. 

 

“We know now that a steady diet of love ­— of these micro-moments of positive connection — influences how people grow and change, making them healthier and more resilient.” - B. Fredrickson, “Love 2.0”

 

Oxytocin, the neuropeptide that acts in social bonding situations, can “jump the gap between people” (Fredrickson 2013). According to a study of infants and parents cited by Fredrickson in her book “Love 2.0,” when a mother bonds with her child, their oxytocin levels “rise and fall in synchrony” (Fredrickson 2013). The threads that connect people have, therefore, subatomic, tangible components. As well, from oxytocin, the DNA of interconnectedness can go all the way to the (paradoxical) physics of consciousness. 

 

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In “Darwin’s Pharmacy, Dr. Doyle cites neuro-anthropologist Merlin Donald’s model of reality, which is that the mind coexists with its environment, replicating the processes encountered therein (Doyle …). According to Donald, the brain functions according to its own ability to be “programmed” by its environment, like how language is much more easily learned through active practice than “recorded instruction” (Doyle 27). This theory suggests that reality and consciousness are deeply interconnected because of the processes that result from one and affect the other. Another stance on the association of consciousness with physical systems is the Integrated Information Theory, which postulates that “any system is conscious “ and determines the properties of conscious experience (“Integrated Information Theory,” 2020). This theory was also discussed in the interview with Dr. Joel Snyder, Director of the Neuroscience Program at UNLV.

 

Amit Goswami also echoes this view on the co-existence of consciousness and reality. He posits that consciousness is not just a “world reporter,” but an “active vector in its unfolding” (Doyle 76). Goswami argues that consciousness determines reality, such that when the mind measures something, it exists in one place, but when the mind doesn’t measure the object, it “spreads and exists in more than one place” like a wave or a cloud (Doyle 76). In the same way, the state of Schrödinger’s cat depends on the human consciousness to respond to it to become reality. 

 

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“Both alive and dead, the cat differentially calls on human consciousness to respond to it.” 

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- Richard Doyle, “Darwin’s Pharmacy,” p.78

 

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What Doyle’s remarks can reveal is that concepts that usually belong to radically different disciplines, but which ultimately have the same purpose of providing models of reality, can co-exist. The brain determines reality, which in turn models the brain that replicates it.