When provocation and attention are the only true goal, no actual results are necessary.
The ‘information economy’ has morphed into the ‘attention economy’. Attention has come to matter more than verifiable accuracy or results, it is the only currency. Our accusations do not to be based in any verifiable evidence. The transgressions we are outraged over don’t even need to have actually occurred. Our war-cry is enough. We get credit for being a warrior based on the volume and provocative nature of our declarations. Whether or not we might have invented it all out of whole cloth doesn’t enter into it.
We have gotten here somewhat honestly. Collectively, the vast majority of us are being hit with a staggering convergence of several forms of powerlessness. The disparity between the ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’ has grown to grotesque extremes, with the upper less than one percent having more wealth than the rest of the population combined may times over. The kind of disparity which played a central role in the grand revolutions in France during the last decade of the 18th century.
Even before the pandemic, a staggering number of people were struggling to sustain themselves. Working multiple jobs and still battling from pay check to pay check. At times having to choose between rent or food or life-sustaining…