Does life always look like how it was? I feel you, maybe, I don’t know. Wait. What? Dissonance. Confusion. Discord. What you describe are mostly feelings, not emotions. Emotions are more basic, physical, measurable (like via a lie detector test) – survival instinct stuff. Then come the feelings – emotion mixed with thought, bias, sense, perception. Before you know it, you don’t know it. What do you feel about this? Have any thoughts about it?

What is the best way to learn about a popular culture?

A TWO-word answer is cognitive dissonance – a popular psychological term for the mental stress experienced by a person who holds contradictory beliefs, ideas or values at the same time.