Working Notes for Social and Internal Alchemists. Note: Assisted by Chatllm.
Note to the traveler: These are not lessons for the unconcerned, nor proofs for academic debate. They are field notes for those already walking as social and internal alchemists— those who have felt reality refuse to match its official description, and who are willing to use that fracture as material.
1. What Is Perceptual Dissonance?
Perceptual dissonance, as used here, is the felt tension that arises when:
What you directly perceive, sense, or intuit in a situation conflicts with
What your social fields, institutions, or inherited narratives insist you are seeing.
This is the moment when:
The body registers danger and the policy manual calls it “best practice.”
A supposed “enemy” acts with more courage and compassion than one’s own “side.”
An act of solidarity appears from a direction the narrative has coded as impossible.
Modern psychology speaks of cognitive dissonance—the discomfort of holding conflicting cognitions and the drive to reduce that discomfort (Festinger, 1957; see Cognitive dissonance).
Perceptual dissonance, in this work, emphasizes the sensory and intuitive side of that conflict:
A perception or lived event arrives that the current story cannot safely absorb.
For the social alchemist, this tension is not merely something to escape; it is the fire beneath the vessel—that which can harden delusion or soften identity for re‑casting. In gnostic and alchemical language, this is the moment of chemical wedding, when apparently opposed principles are brought into dangerous proximity, and the ordinary ego‑narrative is no longer sufficient to keep them apart. The disturbing, unclassifiable event becomes a kind of prima materia—the raw, unresolved stuff of experience that must first be faced and held before any genuine transmutation of self or story is possible.
2. Socialized Codependence: The Shared Distortion
Socialized codependence here is not pop-psych “codependency” between two individuals.
It points instead to fields of mutual emotional and perceptual capture, in which:
Belonging, safety, livelihood, or spiritual validation become contingent on:
Repeating certain stories,
Ignoring certain harms,
Not seeing what would destabilize the group’s self‑image.
In a socialized codependent field:
Families, parties, congregations, and institutions collaborate (often unconsciously) to suppress or reinterpret perceptions that threaten the shared story.
Individuals learn to gaslight themselves first, so that external enforcement is rarely needed.
Selective exposure becomes a survival skill: we seek information that confirms the group narrative and avoid what contradicts it Selective exposure theory.
The intent is often survival and coherence. The cost is perceptual poverty: a narrowing of one’s ability to register reality beyond the permitted frame.
3. When the “Total Conflict” Story Cracks: Sydney/Bondi and Beyond
The Sydney/Bondi case is only one example, but it is a clear one.
3.1 The Bondi Beach Hanukkah Attack (Sydney, Australia)
During a Hanukkah celebration at Bondi Beach in Sydney, gunmen targeted Jewish families in an explicitly antisemitic attack (see coverage in outlets such as Texas Public Radio and Fortune).
In the midst of the shooting, a Muslim man—a father, the son of Syrian refugees, and in some accounts a former police officer—risked his life to protect Jewish children and families, helping them to safety.
He was later praised by Jewish community leaders, Australian officials, and international observers as a hero.
For anyone conditioned into a “Muslims vs. Jews” / total civilizational conflict frame, this is more than a “heartwarming story.” It is perceptual dissonance:
Lived event: A Muslim man protecting Jewish families from antisemites.
Installed story: “These groups are natural and total enemies, with incompatible moral universes.”
In a socialized codependent environment, several reactions appear:
Denial or minimization
“He’s an exception.”
“Media spin.”
“He isn’t a ‘real’ Muslim / real representative.”
Silence / non‑circulation
The story is simply not shared in certain networks.
People remain “unaware” as a loyalty move.
Re‑narration
Motives are recoded to fit the myth: “He wanted attention,” “It was staged,” etc.
For the social alchemist, the point is different:
To hold the crack open long enough for perception to re‑organize, rather than forcing the event back into the old container.
3.2 Muslim Protection of Synagogues and Jewish Neighbors in Europe
This pattern is not unique to Sydney. A few more cases:
Norway (2015): “Ring of Peace” around synagogue After a terrorist attack on a Copenhagen synagogue, a group of young Muslims in Oslo organized a “Ring of Peace,” standing hand‑in‑hand around the city’s main synagogue to symbolically protect it during Shabbat services (Chicago Tribune News).
In several European cities, local Muslim community members have publicly joined or organized efforts to protect synagogues after antisemitic attacks — forming human “rings of peace,” standing visibly outside Jewish institutions, and issuing joint Jewish–Muslim statements rejecting violence and antisemitism.
Each of these examples:
Contradicts the total-war script of “inevitable enmity.”
Produces perceptual dissonance for those invested in “all Muslims hate Jews” or “all Jews are enemies of Muslims.”
Forces a choice:
Update the story to include shared moral ground, or
Intensify distortion to preserve a simpler hatred.
3.3 Jewish and Muslim Cooperation in Crisis and Care
There are also quieter, ongoing collaborations that puncture “total conflict” frames:
Joint responses to hate crimes Jewish and Muslim organizations in the U.S. and Europe have repeatedly issued joint statements and coordinated security or legal responses against antisemitic and Islamophobic attacks; such coalitions are regularly reported by mainstream outlets (for example, interfaith coalitions documented in local and national press after spikes in hate crimes).
Shared local initiatives In some cities, synagogues and mosques share space for community meals, disaster relief, or refugee support, especially in response to war‑related displacement. While less dramatic than a terror attack, these acts similarly contradict totalizing narratives.
For those whose identity and worldview are anchored in a “clash of civilizations” model, such stories generate low‑grade, chronic perceptual dissonance.
The usual defenses apply:
Selective exposure – only consuming media that reinforces the conflict frame Selective exposure theory.
Re‑coding – explaining away cooperation as “strategic optics,” “naïveté,” or “deception.”
4. Alchemical Use of Perceptual Dissonance
For the social or internal alchemist, the question is not:
“Is this event good or bad for my side?”
but:
“What does this event do to the perceptual architecture I am living inside?”
“Where do I feel the strain between what I see and what I’ve been trained to see?”
Some working moves:
Name the crack, precisely
Not “everything is a lie,” but: “This specific human act does not fit the template I was given.”
Map the contracts around it
What do I risk—socially, economically, spiritually—if I let this perception fully register?
Which friendships, identities, or institutions would need to move?
Track my own defensive magic
How do I shrink, distort, or avoid the perception to remain a “good” member of my field?
What stories do I tell myself to make the discomfort go away?
Experiment with a larger frame
For example, shifting from “religion vs religion” to “extremists vs civilians,” or from “identity vs identity” to “those aligned with life vs those aligned with domination.”
This is nota call to dissolve every distinction into a bland oneness. It is an invitation to recognize when distinctions have hardened into perceptual prisons that can no longer register obvious, living facts.
5. Why This Page Is Not for the Lay Public or Academic Theorists
These notes are not designed as:
therapeutic advice for the general public, or
a neutral summary of academic debates.
They assume you are already:
Practicing some form of inner cultivation (meditative, somatic, ritual, contemplative);
Aware, through experience, that institutional and media narratives often diverge from lived reality;
Willing to treat your own perceptions as laboratory material, rather than seeking a final ideology to live inside.
Perceptual dissonance and socialized codependence are used here as operational tools, not final truths. Their value is measured not in how many arguments they win, but in how much clarity, compassion, and range of action they open in the traveler.
