The Human Condition: Fake news
By Daniel Schnee on September 21, 2022.
“The pandemic is over. We still have a problem with COVID. We’re still doing a lot of work on it… but the pandemic is over.” These magical words – spoken by U.S. President Joe Biden this past week on the TV show 60 Minutes – are not even remotely true. The pandemic is not over, and we certainly have a problem with COVID, though not as severe a problem as before. As many see it, we as a global society are now in the best position we have ever been to end such a situation. But what Biden says and what his own White House staff say are at odds. Thus, statements such as Biden’s are misleading, and yet another example of what former U.S. President Donald Trump warned us about: fake news. Now Trump is a highly imperfect man, and I do not for one second endorse his various views and opinions. But he certainly is an expert on the subject of being misrepresented. He defined anything he disagreed with as fake news, which is not the case. But he did have a point when he labelled coverage of his various controversies as a done deal; everything is a smoking gun… until it isn’t. He is eternally guilty until innocent, and constantly affirming it without an actual verdict is just that, fake. But rather than debate which particular item of news is fake or not I see something more sinister behind fake news in general. Regardless of network, fake news or news of a similar sort has a grand, hidden form: to make as many people as possible unhappy. It is not just that scandal sells, but fake news is surgical, it is designed to cut straight to the parts of our psyche most vulnerable to manipulation by information. The less happy we are, the more we are drawn to the information and networks which made us that way. We become addicted to not being happy. So how does this work? We end up complaining all day and night about practically everything. Constant complaints mean we are never happy. If we are in a constant negative mood we are more likely to blame other people for the various problems both we and society face. This is an absolute guarantee we will be permanently unhappy, as others will always surround us and not behave as we desire. Another aspect of this manipulation is teaching us to dwell on the past: perceived insults we can’t let go of, or a golden time when we lived a kind of life we currently seek. If we are taken out of the now into some kind of imagined future or past (created for us by media) we will never be in the now, where we have control of our own narrative. We are then told someone is coming to change things: take our stuff away, add stuff to society we don’t like, and so on. This makes us resistant to change (the change necessary to evolve into a smarter, more savvy version of ourselves). COVID is not over, though it is declining; its end is fake news. But ‘fake news’ itself is not fake. It is now the new epidemic we must be vigorously inoculating ourselves against. Dr. Daniel Schnee is an anthropologist and jazz/rock drummer. 14-13
Big Tech and the MSM are the biggest threats to society as a whole. People need to wake up and put their phones down. It also doesn’t help that the leaders of most countries are only in power because they check off a couple of boxes and are more concerned about how they can pander to their base and how they look on the world stage, look no further than our own man-child despot in charge. The fact people are having trouble putting food on the table every night is the farthest thing from their minds, but you damn better use the right pronouns and heat your house with fairy farts.