The world is a mirror 1, or a pair of tinted sunglasses, or maybe it’s a beach picture with some tacky instagram filter on it, or maybe it’s one giant Rorschach test. Basically whatever you see staring back at you, is more about you, than the incoherent ink shapes. Similarly in the actual world, what you see and think about the world will reflect what you see and experience in the world. Nihilist, blackpilled, doomers2 rarely make great dinner guests.
Look, it’s hardly a hot take to say the worlds gone a bit mad. I wonder how many times that, or some more loftily worded variation of it, done in a way in which the writer tries to convince his audience he’s smarter than he is and thus crush his inner critic and end his imposter syndrome once and for all, has been typed on this website alone.
Everyone loves to blame the media for making it seem like the worlds gone mad and for ‘whipping up hysteria’. While we’re on that: ‘whipping up’ is an interesting wrinkle of English isn’t it? The only things that are ever whipped up are hysteria or food. “I’ll whip up a Victoria sponge, to make you feel better about the bad man whipping up hysteria”. Sometimes you might whip something ‘into shape’ but that’s a bit different. Whipping isn’t that uncommon, just look at the popularity of horse racing, or BDSM sex dungeons.
Whipping up is a bit like ‘drumming up’ which, of course, is only ever paired with support. And that doesn’t even make sense. To ‘drum up’ something is to create support for. So ‘drumming up support’ simply means to ‘create support for support’. As useful as a blow up dartboard that one. Anyway my point was yes media bad, but if you read much history you’ll know newspapers and have always created a feeding frenzy about current events.
The world is always ending, it’s always the worst ever, everything is unprecedented. People bemoan clickbait and lying in journalism as if it’s something new the evil media has stumbled on. Sure the medium has changed, but sensationalist and clickbait headlines were as much a thing 100 years ago as they are today. Saying that, I’m not sure people in 1922 were vociferously tearing through the paper, headed towards the quiz section to find out which Hogwarts house they would be in3, or to find out ‘what child stars from 1883 look like now’. No, they had a war on their hands, they had just survived a pandemic, and America had a seemingly mentally incapable President. They were different times.
We do live in different times now. There is no ubiquitous news any longer, we’ve gone a la carte. Where you once had 3 or 4 publications take on the world, you now have seemingly infinite podcasts, social media grifters and even 4chan conspiracy theorists to engage with. Now events happen, and your news site or talking head of choice pick out their little blue or red filter to slap over the top of it distorting it in the manner that pleases them most4. All news is political, and the mental gymnastics to navigate topics without a hint of consistency or irony might just consign Simone Biles to retirement.
This leads to my point about the world being one big Rorschach test. We’ve never had more choice or autonomy, over what we see, listen to, and by extension - think. What we see and think about the world says more about us than it does the actual events or facts. As I spoke about last week everyone has an opinion (parroted from someone else, of course) on everything. War experts, who last month were telling you about difference between pandemic and endemic, are now telling you about why bans on SWIFT payments will or won’t be an effective sanction strategy. I didn't want to mention Russia this week but that had to be put in5.
How you read the ink blotches really does change your world. Some see the ink screaming racism back at them, and sure enough in every company, tv show, and other facet of life, there it is. Racism can be everywhere if that’s what you’re looking for. On the other side of the aisle, those who read the world to be wokeness gone mad, will see every move for diversity as a sign of bowing down to the woke world view. Whatever you look for, there it is.
We all project out our views, often without knowing it, after all, those who bully are the most insecure. And so, if when you look at the ink blotches you see a giant dick staring back at you, rest assured it’s not a comment on your endowment.
According to Thomas Dreier anyway
A ‘doomer’ is an internet meme to describe nihilists, essentially.
Yes, i’m aware Harry Potter wasn’t written in 1922.
Ironically ‘Pleases them most’, means ‘pleases the bosses most’, which means ‘pleases the audience least’.
Sorry