Isn’t It Obvious?

And so here we are, exhausted by the divisions, the frustration, the rage and our loneliness in a sea of madness few even see.

Isn’t it obvious? Of course it is. So what’s obvious? That there are sharply different views on what’s obvious.

Psychiatrist-author R.D. Laing noted back in 1967 as the Vietnam War raged that what was obvious to President Lyndon Johnson–that the war had to be prosecuted lest the Democratic party lose congressional seats in the 1968 election for being “soft on Communism”–was not obvious to those paying the price of the war as the collateral damage for the all-important political jockeying in Washington D.C.

As historian Peter Turchin has documented, the cycle of socio-economic-political disintegration-integration runs around fifty years, and so here we are. Turchin caught some flak for predicting the handbasket would start its slide into Heck in 2020, and voila.

A great many things are obvious, yet equally obvious is the chasm separating what’s obvious to each of us. The chasm is literally bottomless, and there are no bridges across it, no common ground, and so friendships–the glue of sociability, the foundation of our well-being–are tossed into the chasm with infuriated abandon–how dare you!

Having lived through the last cycle of tumult, discord and disintegration, that we’re in another such cycle is obvious to me, but not to others. That the end of the Debt-Speculation Super-Cycle is upon us is obvious to many of us, but hotly denied by the multitudes counting on The Everything Bubble never popping.

That mass media and social media have merged is obvious to me, but not to others. The source of income for all media players / content creators is now the same, and so the competition for “engagement” (i.e. attention, eyeballs, emotional vesting) is Darwinian on a heretofore unimaginable scale, a power-law scale in which the few winners at the very apex collect the vast majority of the winnings and the 99% trail off in the long tail, collecting the coins that roll off the table of the few.

By way of example, data collected by the Department of Justice on the 58,000 books published in a year revealed that 96% of books sell less than 1,000 copies, and 50 percent of all titles sold less than a dozen copies. (Source.) That’s one heck of a long tail: 30,000 books–most infused with the hopes and dreams of the authors–each sold 12 or less copies.

This aligns with the Pareto Distribution, the 80/20 rule, which distills down (80% of 80% = 64% and 20% of 20% = 4%) to the 64/4 rule: the top 4% scoop up two-thirds of the winnings, and the 96% brawl over the remaining third.

In social media, as in the rest of the economy, the percentages are even less favorable: the top 0.1% amass the vast majority of the gains. The top influencers rake in millions, the selfie-posting multitudes pick up pennies–if they’re lucky.

So what are the tools needed to win this Darwinian competition? Addiction, clickbait, emotional lassos and echo chambers: make the devices and endless scrolling addictive: you’re a winner. Feature sensationalized clickbait headlines: you’re a winner. Snare the unwary with emotional lassos: you’re a winner. Espouse shared beliefs to fellow true believers with ecstatic enthusiasm: you’re a winner.

So isn’t it obvious where this is going? Put another way: is this savage arena a healthy environment? Or is it deranging to all who wander in and are lassoed with such ease? What happens to those lassoed, addicted, ensnared? This chart of loneliness illuminates the inevitable result of making derangement the most profitable activity under the sun.

As others have insightfully pointed out, every individual who tries to walk past the arena has 100,000 well-paid, smart, highly motivated hawkers cajoling them into enter the arena. Hey pal, craving a dopamine hit? Come on in, we got dopamine hits galore inside. You’re gonna love it.

And so here we are, exhausted by the divisions, the frustration, the rage and our loneliness in a sea of madness few even see. Fortunately, I have the perfect antidote for you: click here, and you’ll be delighted by an endless scroll of adorable kids playing with puppies and kittens. Your dopamine levels are going to low-Earth orbit, you’re gonna love it.

Or if you have super-human powers, walk past the arena and keep walking.

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