By Caitlin Johnstone - September 8, 2022

You're not jaded; everything really is just as phony and vapid as it looks.

I say this because if you are reading this it's likely the result of a personal quest for truth which has led to a gradual peeling away of the lies our society is made of. Your eyes probably found this text because you're the sort of person who's been trying to make sense of the world in a sea of propaganda and deception, which often results in a growing disgust not just with the power structures which oppress and tyrannize humanity, but with our entire civilization.

This experience is very common for people like yourself, and it's very common because it arises from a clear perception of reality. From the very beginning human civilization has been built around serving the interests of the powerful, from religion to philosophy to the arts to law. As the world has gotten smaller and it's become possible to artificially manufacture culture with mass-distributed media, this has only become more the case.

That's why the more you learn about the world, the more fake and stupid our civilization looks. It's because it is fake and stupid. Our news, our entertainment, our jobs, our legal systems, our political systems, our education systems, our financial, monetary, economic and commercial systems; the way our entire civilization is structured and organized has nothing to do with what's true and good and everything to do with keeping human organisms compliantly turning the gears of capitalism and empire.

Mainstream culture is one giant psyop geared toward keeping people fueling the oppression machine. Not because of some grand conspiracy (though there's plenty of that too), but because the manufacturers of culture have a vested interest in preserving our unwholesome status quo. The media are owned by plutocrats who have an interest in making sure everything they're putting out sustains the imperial status quo upon which their kingdoms are built. The Pentagon has more influence over Hollywood than people like you or I ever will.

Things get elevated to mainstream levels of attention and influence by the people with the wealth and power to elevate them, and they're always going to elevate things which serve their interests by manufacturing consent for the status quo their wealth and power are premised upon, not things which harm their interests like material that expands class consciousness or highlights the depravity of the US-centralized empire.

So mainstream culture presents a fraudulent image of reality. It's written into the code of everything that's mass produced — not just in Prager University lectures on the evils of socialism or propagandistic news stories about weapons of mass destruction, but in sitcoms, in advertisements, in clothing brands, in pop music, in textbooks, in trends. When it's not constant messaging that capitalism is totally working and the world is ordered in a more or less sane and truth-based way, it's manipulations designed to shape our values and measures of self-worth to make us into better gear-turners.

If you're noticing this ubiquitous fraudulence, it's not because you're becoming distant from the rest of society, it's because you're becoming more intimate with it. You're getting in real close, so close you can see the nuts and bolts of it, see how the sausage is made . . .

[SNIP]