it's their fault!

let's all polarize
let's pry the wound open
let's spread the plague
let's swell the abscess

with hasty judgments
simplify the chaotic
binarize the multiple
manicheanize the binary

let's sniff out enemies
dig deeper trenches
shoot at each other
insults, then bombs

let's plant in the peace
furrowed by war
the seed of a war
for us bored with peace

then as we die
weapon in hand
let's raise our arm
pointing the finger

and with the last breath
that snuffs out the heart
let's scream it out loud:
it's their fucking fault!

Drafted from Italian with Blog Translator, then revised by me.

Understanding without enlisting

Let's run an experiment: for a week, let's jot down the topics people talk about around us, at the bar, in the town square, at the office. Gaza and Tel Aviv, Kyiv and Moscow, Tehran and Washington, whatever general is in the news. They've read three headlines and already handed down a verdict. Then let's notice how often people talk about the condo's boiler, the city budget, the waiting list for an MRI. Faraway wars matter, sure, but we have no way of checking them firsthand and no leverage over them — and meanwhile, plenty is going on right here at home.

The mechanism pays off: it generates attention, clicks, viewers, and votes. Politicians and the media chase whatever pays, and debate over a faraway conflict — easy to oversimplify, hard to verify — pays. I call it Sinister design, because the diversion works and the effect is dark.

Look, I'm not saying we should only worry about what's on our own doorstep. There are structural problems we can check for ourselves, and politicians have to answer for them. Artificial intelligence and robotics, for example: we all use them, and we can already feel their impact on society. And then there's the future of the job market, of pensions and wages. There are no sides to root for here, just issues to be managed. If we sweep them under the rug because they don't lend themselves to polarization, sooner rather than later we'll find ourselves facing an emergency, with decisions already made by others.

So before we raise our voices about a topic, let's ask ourselves three questions.
Are we giving credit to a claim whose validity we can verify directly, without relying on secondhand sources? If the answer is no, we have to suspend judgment.
Are we trying to pick out the good guys and the bad guys inside a tangle? Two-line explanations reassure us more than they hold up, whereas accepting chaos is exhausting but keeps us from falling victim to obsessions, dystopias, and assorted spin doctors.
Does this news inform us or stir us up? If it leaves us outraged, moved, or ready to pick a fight, it may be recruiting us instead of helping us understand: it's emotional (dis)information. And that goes for mainstream and anti-mainstream alike.

But then why always and only the same sides? There are plenty more in the world. That certain crises touch us more than others — for reasons of history, energy, alliances, or borders — may well be true: the subject matter concerns us. That this entitles us to root for Palestinians or Israelis, Russians or Ukrainians, Iranians or Americans, no. Justice and rights don't have a passport. Other wars and other minorities stay out of the main event, and not because they're a second-rate matter, simply because they draw a smaller audience. That isn't justice, or defending rights: it's self-interested selection. Learning more about certain crises — as subject matter that touches us — makes sense. Picking a side doesn't.

Here's my advice. If an issue fails the three tests above, let's not give in to cynical indifference, but let's not swallow partisan propaganda either. Understanding the subject is fair game; rooting for a side isn't. As for the time to choose and act, let's spend that on what we can verify.

I'm writing a saga about this, Sinister design. Start from the first installment or filter them all by label, then make up your own mind: don't let yourself be influenced, not even by me.

Drafted from Italian with Blog Translator, then revised by me.

On the edge of the cliff

Sometimes I feel like I'm teetering on the edge of a cliff. Beyond the edge lies the dark abyss of absolute despondency.
For years I believed — and only now do I realize the incredible, optimistic naïveté that drove me — that people, even when they make mistakes, were still able to correct their course, whether through their own analysis or with someone else's guidance.

I have to resign myself. An enormous part of the population — Italian for sure, but probably not only Italian — and perhaps even the majority of it, even though every day in their private lives they're forced to wade through the muddy swamp of a reality that is plainly, unmistakably and undeniably complex, the moment they move up a level — to political, social or even scientific questions — terrified by perspectives that necessarily involve accepting chaos, uncertainty and sometimes even chance, they cover their ears, shut their eyes, switch off the prefrontal cortex of their brains and give themselves over to the same old ridiculous, childish, absurd Manichean explanations that are fed to them by design. They then polarize into two opposing camps, leaving themselves wide open to those who manipulate them through the age-old technique of divide et impera.

This dynamic had revealed itself to me some time ago. It was a nasty blow, I admit, but it didn't make me lose faith in my fellow human beings. I thought, in fact, that by explaining things — and a bit of evangelizing — the lost souls could be brought back onto the right path. Forgive the messianic-sounding bit, but metaphors work better the stronger they are and the closer they sit to the individual's cultural roots (and maybe I'm fooling myself again).
Unfortunately, it was an outlook marked by an optimism comparable to the happy ending of a C-grade romantic flick.

Not only does explaining things get no traction on the minds of the polarized puppets. It even draws their sarcasm (the barroom kind, of course), their indignation and, if you keep at it, even their wrath. When you raise doubts about the position of someone lined up on any side of any polarized issue whatsoever — a fan of the Israelis or of the Palestinians, of Russia or of Ukraine, of Iran or of the USA, a conspiracy theorist or an "officialist" — it doesn't even cross their mind that you might be referring to a factor in the dispute that only makes sense if you take a certain level of complexity for granted. No, the simpleminded, polarized fan takes for granted that only the moronic binary reading is allowed, and so he immediately thinks you're AGAINST him and therefore WITH his enemies. When, after an exhausting and endless effort of clarification, you've managed to make him understand that you're not a fanatical fan (like him) but are simply dedicated to understanding the situation in all its complexity, and are therefore uninterested in the simplifying idiocy of the polarization itself, he treats it like a joke.

If you persist, and he realizes that you truly accept neither his absurd partisan stance nor the equally absurd opposing one, he starts to get indignant and accuses you of ethically unacceptable behavior. His distorted view of reality doesn't allow for chaotic, inevitably hybrid situations, so it doesn't admit disinterest in either of the two factions along with interest in the issue itself. He'd paradoxically be happier if you were on the other side of the barricade. That you refuse to put up the barricade at all he finds incomprehensible. You're a coward, a deserter. He forgets, though, that the war you're deserting was invented by him.
And if you still don't give up, the indignation sometimes even turns into wrath.

This kind of attitude, which I believed was the province of a minority of frenzied zealots, turns out to find room among the calm, silent majority too.
It's a tragic, discouraging, shocking aspect of the social reality we live in today.
Just when science and technology put in our hands tools that could be used to build that better world we've been fantasizing about for years, people decide to create perhaps irreparable rifts within the very social structure they live in and depend on.
A senseless attempt at a slow (and maybe not even that slow) collective suicide.
Pure madness.

Drafted from Italian with Blog Translator, then revised by me.

Managing chaos: antisemitism and anti-Islamism

We currently find ourselves at the crest of yet another wave rippling across that historic sea of accusations of antisemitism and anti-Islamism that Europeans have been hurling at each other, or fending off, for centuries with extreme virulence and indignation. So, who's right?

As usual, I suggest we not rely on broad categories, as arbitrary as they are poorly matched to reality. Let's leave binary readings like good-evil, good guys-bad guys, right-wrong to the cartoons. And if you resort to childish reasoning of that kind, go ahead and go back to watching cartoons: there's nothing wrong with that, as long as you, like good kids, don't play with serious things, because then all hell breaks loose. Socio-political questions — especially delicate ones like the one at hand — are made for people who can accept and handle chaos, complexity and randomness. For everyone else there are sporting events, our traditional recipes, or reality and talent shows.
So, let's stick to a serious approach and judge case by case. Here's the guideline I suggest applying to every single instance.

Accusing Israel, Israeli civilians or soldiers, or any individuals of the Jewish faith, of having unequivocally committed specific criminal or even ethically despicable acts — like striking innocent children or occupying other people's property — is, in my opinion, NOT antisemitism. Just as accusing Muslims of heinous acts of terrorism, or of not respecting and perhaps insulting the customs and values of the countries that host them, can NOT be considered anti-Islamism.

That's for the "no" part. Now let's get to the more sensitive part: the "yes" one.
Attributing responsibility for any geopolitical event to alleged Jewish cabals, Jewish lobbies, international Zionist networks or Mossad operations, off the cuff, without proof — because come on, they're surely behind it all, always — this, besides being slander, is YES, as far as I'm concerned, antisemitism. Of the same kind used a few decades ago to unleash pogroms or justify exterminations.

In the same way, leveling vague, sweeping accusations of barbarism, bigotry and backwardness at the Islamic world — because come on, it's obvious, just look at them — is YES, in my opinion, anti-Islamism. Of the same kind used in the past to proclaim crusades or launch witch hunts.

Personally, I stick to the first scenarios. And there are plenty of unequivocally criminal or ethically despicable acts for which to condemn one side or the other.
The second type of scenario, on the other hand, strikes me as not only sordid but also quite irresponsible.

Drafted from Italian with Blog Translator, then revised by me.

Managing chaos: fascism and anti-fascism

Another prominent victim of the average (mediocre) individual's inability to accept and manage chaos is the debate on fascism and anti-fascism. Or rather, on fascism and non-fascism. The distinction will be clarified at the end.
Those who feel they belong to the socio-political groups accused of sympathy for fascism deny, out of convenience, that fascism exists. Those who, on the other hand, identify with the factions devoted to anti-fascism accuse the former en masse of being fascism apologists.

As usual, I have to say everyone is a little right and a little wrong: that's the fate of someone who's at ease handling chaos and is called on to assess the positions of people who, unable to appreciate the extreme complexity of reality, need simplified models to make it easier to understand, only to end up not understanding squat.
The first group is wrong to deny that fascism exists. They're right, though, to reject the polarized explanation resting on the traditional political camps: "fascism is all on the right and anti-fascism all on the left" (using those terms has the same effect on me as nails screeching on a chalkboard). The others, obviously, are right and wrong the other way around.

Okay, so what's the explanation without the simplifications? Here it is. Fascism as a well-defined political force no longer exists. As an attitude, though, it very much does.
What it makes sense to call fascism today is really an atavistic, creeping, cross-cutting cultural trait of Italian society. A trait that predates the twentieth century, probably present already in the Renaissance, and maybe even earlier. The ventennio, the twenty years of Fascist rule, embodied it as the hallmark of a specific political movement, gave it a name, and blended it with other components, customizing it.

This is the source of all the misunderstandings, mix-ups, and confusion. And those who by nature can't grasp the nuances of a complex reality, instead of accepting their limits, try to get past them through simplified interpretations. Simple, then, but unfortunately wrong.

If you stop thinking of fascism as a political force and identify it instead with an intolerant, overbearing, aggressive, sly, opportunistic, and cowardly attitude, you'll realize (unless you're a hopeless case) first of all that fascism is alive and well, and second that, even though it may at times be more frequent within certain socio-political groups than others, it's still a cross-cutting phenomenon.

Washing your hands of it — by denying fascism exists in one case or declaring yourselves anti-fascists in the other — isn't enough, my friends. To be sure you're not fascists, you have to make sure you really aren't. And the only way to do that is to behave like non-fascists.
Always.

Drafted from Italian with Blog Translator, then revised by me.

Talent

Let's be honest: the world is full of ordinary people, if not downright mediocre ones.
Finding a person with talent in a field — be it music, literature, critical thinking, art, science, or sports — is a rare event.

Yet a lot of people reason in a very strange way. Although they accept without batting an eye the total absence of talent in most people, from these special cases — those with talent in a single field — they expect talent across the board. That is, someone who sings well is expected to have excellent communication skills. A good writer, a political vision. An athlete, moral integrity. And so on.
And yet it's a matter of basic probability: if it's rare, as it is, to find a person who is talented in one field, just think how hard it must be to find one with talent in multiple fields!

Maybe someone is thinking of Leonardo da Vinci as a counterexample. Fine, da Vinci was an incredible figure, with an eclectic talent. But he lived five centuries ago. And people still talk about him as a case that's more unique than rare!
If anything, his is an example that proves the very point just made.

Drafted from Italian with Blog Translator, then revised by me.

Emotional (dis)information

The news should convey information. Add to what the viewer knows. Nothing more and nothing less.
If, when you watch a newscast or a video, it hits you emotionally instead — outraged, angry, saddened, euphoric, or moved to pity — you're the target of manipulative techniques designed to rally support for some cause. The aim may be political, economic, military, strategic in general. What's certain is that nobody is trying to inform you.

Government bodies, propagandists, the so-called "spin doctors" are masters at using these techniques, and they rely on compliant media to carry them out.
I'm not talking only about state TV and state newspapers. You're a victim too, you who think you're drinking from the pure springs of that flashy bluff called anti-mainstream.
The techniques are sly, but the effects are so blatant that they become harmless, as long as you're aware of them and keep your guard up.

To escape the spell, all you have to do is ask the question implicit in the opening: does this news hit me emotionally? If the answer is "yes": switch off the squawking box right away, use the filthy rag to wipe your ass, or set your phone down on that pile of papers that are blowing away.
Discipline yourself to run that simple test every time. And act accordingly when the answer is yes. Don't worry: what you give up isn't real knowledge.

Drafted from Italian with Blog Translator, then revised by me.

Wars and simpletons: part two

You can find part one here.

Let's spell out why the simpletons who root for one side or the other in a war, convinced as they are that they're guided by sharp analytical and geopolitical insight, actually don't understand a fucking thing. Worse, they're more or less knowingly playing into the hands of some filthy propagandist.

Remember, we're not talking about fans of Putin or Zelensky, of Israelis or Palestinians, of Trump or Khamenei. There's no "or" here, only "and": we're talking about ALL of them. About anyone who oversimplifies issues that are in fact complex and whose roots are lodged deep in the rocky soil of history. History they ignore, of course, apart from a few scraps filtered in on purpose here and there. And which, just as obviously, they can't analyze in any way that's remotely useful to the debate.

In war, any war, everyone has a little right on their side and everyone is very much in the wrong. There's no right or wrong. There aren't good guys and bad guys either. Or rather, none of that exists in absolute terms. You can only talk about it in relative terms: relative to each side's motives, which are driven by survival, security and prosperity, and therefore by domination. These are viewpoints that are subjective and partisan by nature, selfish and ruthless. Also, why not, ancestral, primordial and tribal.
Often, as in feuds between families or clans, conflicts have gone on for so long that nobody remembers anymore why they started. They get handed down from generation to generation, as if they were part of the genetic code.

Besides, the tangle they're caught up in is far more chaotic than the spokespeople for each side make it out to be, or than their supporters perceive it to be.
Finally, in every war, communication is always polluted by censorship and propaganda. ALWAYS. So if you read or hear something that seems to prove one of the combatants right — maybe your favorite — or to prove the other one wrong, know that it's not information confirming or refuting your partisanship — which is misplaced anyway, by its very nature. You're actually the target of crude advertising. The kind we call propaganda.

So if you pick a side, not only have you not understood a fucking thing, you're also complicit, as a mouthpiece for a sleazy megaphone.
Go on, if you feel like it. But now that you know, you can no longer afford to pose as a champion of justice.

Drafted from Italian with Blog Translator, then revised by me.

Wars and simpletons

There are plenty of poor deluded souls: a great many, far too many.
You see them squaring off in two camps of public opinion, artfully manufactured on the battlefield of a conflict, a feud, or a dispute.
With the stubborn certainty of a mule, they always know who's right and who's wrong. Each side accuses the deluded on the equally bogus opposing side of naïveté or malice. They charge the other camp with being enslaved to propaganda, and they wave around the sources lined up on their own side as the keepers of pure truth.
They root for their team, putting on that pathetic and irritating air of misunderstood analysts.
The tragicomic twist in all this is that they're right. Every one of them is right. The accusations they hurl at the "enemies" are true. They're true on both sides, though.

The reason for this idiotic polarization is well known: the inability, typical of certain simple minds, to handle chaos, the complexity inherent in every area of reality, not just social but also anthropological, biological, natural. It's a complexity they deal with every day in their miserable little lives, yet paradoxically can't accept when it comes to events unfolding at a higher level, and therefore an even more complicated one.

We could watch them with tenderness and leave them to wallow in their pathetic little simplified kiddie pool for children who can't swim in rough water.
The problem is that their numbers aren't negligible. They're massive, and so they influence the society the rest of us have to live in too. Those who wield power, whether political, media, or financial, know this and act accordingly, feeding the polarized explanations to these self-proclaimed sharp minds. That way, power slips out from under the oversight needed to make it do its job for the benefit of the community rather than itself.
It's the "divide et impera" of Roman memory. Still extremely relevant and effective today.
Unfortunately, it's a self-reinforcing spiral, a vicious circle, an almost irreversible trend.

Still, we have a duty (moral, human, sacred in a secular sense) to keep trying. If it turns out to be in vain, at least we'll have nothing to blame ourselves for.
And if it ends in catastrophe, we'll be able to point the finger and say: "We told you so!" A slim consolation is always better than fat and base inaction.

Drafted from Italian with Blog Translator, then revised by me.

Uncontrolled immigration: the theories

I read a provocative cartoon. It went more or less like this: <<Who wants uncontrolled immigration, according to the populists? The "bleeding-heart progressives." But who really wants it? The "industrialist-capitalists" (meaning anyone who needs a pool of cheap labor).>>

I've never been much of a conspiracy theorist, but I'm more convinced by the second thesis than the first. First of all, because it makes more sense. Why, after all, would ordinary people, based on their political views, want uncontrolled immigration, with all the public order problems that come with it? The others, the ones in the second scenario, have very concrete interests in importing low-cost workers. And besides, as the Americans say, if you want to get to the bottom of something, "follow the money." And it's pretty clear where the money trail leads.

Careful, though: this completely undercuts the other conspiracy theory on the subject. The one about ethnic replacement, which, according to fans of the wildest hypotheses, is supposedly being pursued by the usual pluto-Judaic-fascio-Marxist-supercazzolous-cabal-with-scappellamento-to-the-right-as-if-it-were-antani.
Anyone who wants low-cost labor is interested, as the very phrase says, in the cost of that labor, not in its ethnicity. Ethnic replacement would be, if anything, a consequence and not the goal of the mechanism.

Paradoxically, once the replacement had taken place, the "industrialist-capitalists," or whoever stands for them, would go looking for very Christian marginalized whites to save on labor costs, thus setting in motion a process of ethnic replacement in reverse.
A vicious circle, in short. The usual dead end that people blunder into when they believe in fanciful theories just because they have, well, the appeal of fanciful theories.

Drafted from Italian with Blog Translator, then revised by me.

Sinister design - part seven: going to extremes

You can read part six at this link.

The imbalance that generates polarization feeds — and is fed by — a socio-political-media vicious circle through which polarization itself gets amplified and heightened rather than eased or calmed.
In the long run, this unstable process, geared toward constant growth, can only push things to the extreme.
Right now we're at one of the peaks produced by this mechanism, and its effects and symptoms are plain to see in the tone and level of the debate in the public arena.
A debate I'd sum up like this: bullshit hackery screamed at the top of its lungs.

You can find the other installments of the "Sinister design" saga at this link.

Drafted from Italian with Blog Translator, then revised by me.

Our kind of progressivism

A short reflection on progressives in Italy. First, the name. I call them that for lack of a better term: "left," just like "right," now make anyone who says them sound pathetic.

Their problem, because it's obvious that for a few years now they've had one, is partly about identity and partly about approach.
In a world where the proletarian and working class of the past no longer exists, they've had to, by their very nature, identify new battles, new underdogs whose rights need defending.
This is the source of the first problem, because the groups they've taken up the cause of are heterogeneous, with demands that often clash with each other (for example gender minorities and immigrants from places with an extremely traditionalist and often bigoted cultural background), and that are opposed even by their traditional voters.

I actually agree with some of their positions. First of all because they're often anti-populist, and that alone is a merit.
What I don't agree with is the method they use. And that's where the second of the problems I mentioned comes in.
You can't force views on society that, however right they may be, are still revolutionary compared to old, deeply rooted ways of thinking. People need to be guided toward modernity with humility, understanding, explanations that are easy to grasp. They shouldn't be insulted, looked down on, snubbed, and made to feel backward just because they're hesitant in the face of change. Even where change is necessary or even inevitable.

I've read some reactions from distinguished Venetian intellectuals and artists to the victory of the "right-wing" candidate for mayor. Haughty rants, contempt for the rabble, indifference to the problems of ordinary people, from people who don't realize they don't have the same problems as those folks not because they have a better idea of the world, but only because they're privileged, and think that privilege will last forever.

This isn't working. If this is how they communicate, or rather their very rulebook of conduct, they'll end up more and more detached from an electorate that struggles to understand what they're even talking about. Even when they're actually trying to get a good message across.

Drafted from Italian with Blog Translator, then revised by me.

The group illusion

Political, economic, or religious groups don't exist in the real world. They're a product of our minds.
Of course, even though these groups are not physically real, they are treated as such, and people identify as members of one or more of them. These individuals do exist—they are real—and as they declare their affiliation with a group, we are led to assume the reality of the group itself.
That's where the illusion starts, but it doesn't end there. We profile groups, and so end up with a fairly precise set of characteristics associated with each one. So we tend to attribute that set of characteristics to all the group members, as if they were not unique human beings but just repetitions of a certain pattern. A procedure that would appear unacceptable if it were applied to us is cheerfully used to simplify the rest of the world.
This might be fine under certain circumstances. However, we need to keep in mind that hardly any of those group members will be correctly described by that specific set of features. In fact, the majority of them might not fit any of those attributes at all.
This distinction is not just important; it is fundamental. The consequences of this mental trap can be socially disastrous.
Groups can be very useful as conceptual tools. Always be careful not to take them too seriously though.

Sinister design - part six: collective madness

You can read part five at this link.

But Sinister design also has a side effect that, who knows, might even backfire on the people feeding it.

We Italians, and maybe not just us, are slowly and relentlessly sliding into an abyss of collective madness. We now live in a virtual world where we believe we're caught up in struggles that are further and further removed from the fabric of our own lives, crises of which we know only what propaganda feeds us, whichever faction we take our cues from.

We used to fight over the fence we shared with the neighbor, the price of eggs, the boiler service. Now we end up out in the streets telling each other to fuck off in the name of faraway countries, peoples, and events.

Not to mention the time and energy we give away for free, uncritically swallowing partisan directives, when for far more reasonable and paid requests we have no problem flipping our boss the bird.

The power of propaganda is truly incredible, and so is the thoroughness of the brainwashing it manages to pull off.

Goebbels looked like a loser who, without the rise of Nazism, would have been doomed to obscurity. But it's incredible how much talent, even the malignant kind, historical events can leave buried or bring to light, completely at random.

They beat the Nazis, sure, but consultants, spin doctors, and platforms studied those propaganda techniques with a fine-tooth comb.

You can find the other installments of the "Sinister design" saga at this link.

Drafted from Italian with Blog Translator, then revised by me.

Accepting chaos

People often struggle to accept the elusiveness of a reality that is extremely complex, globalized, and interconnected, where a seemingly minor event in some obscure corner of the globe can upend their comfortable lives thousands of miles away.
So they tend to prefer explanations that are both easy to grasp and fascinating to follow. A bit like the plot of a Hollywood blockbuster, when the more fitting cinematic model would really be the existential dramas of arthouse cinema.

The most typical of these explanations involve monolithic mass-control plans, run by a small group of super-powerful individuals, all in agreement with each other, to screw over us billions of poor pawns.
Reality, of course, is much more like a chaotic tangle, where countless control schemes, power blocs, bureaucratic cliques, random events, opportunism, hunches, visions, mistakes, strokes of dumb luck, and power struggles all get woven together. It's basically what happens every day in our own small, insignificant lives, scaled up to the global level. We ourselves are tiny nodes in an extremely complex graph, and we see it firsthand every single day: how can we think the whole world could be boiled down to an anime storyline?

The more you can accept, understand, and handle chaos, the more you keep your feet planted on the ground and the better your chances of staying afloat. Follow the master-plan theories, on the other hand, and you get lost in a parallel virtual reality that can easily turn into a real madhouse.
My advice: stay out of it. Better confused than insane.

Drafted from Italian with Blog Translator, then revised by me.

Sinister design - part five: displacement

You can read part four at this link.

But then notice: the polarizations that work best within the mechanism are precisely the "displaced" ones.

The examples are the usual ones. Two peoples are fighting a real war thousands of miles from here. Meanwhile, back home, two factions spring up, "displaced" ones, you might say, that act out a conflict whose roots, motives, and ideals belong to ecosystems totally foreign to our own. That makes them hard to grasp in their finer cultural details and anthropological recesses. These are the most buried and ancestral elements of the dispute, and for that very reason the most fundamental. This elusiveness is why the whole issue gets simplified in a banal, pathetic, and sadly ridiculous way.

The same thing happens with other issues, displaced onto dimensions other than space: fascism and anti-fascism on the time dimension, viruses and vaccines on the scientific one, capitalism and communism on the economic one.

What makes these polarizations effective is precisely how elusive the topics are. They're far removed from the concrete parts of the lives of the people who take the bait, so they persist, since they can't be directly verified.

The motto is well known by now: "Let them squabble over displaced issues. Then it'll be easy to fuck them over in their own backyard."

You can find the other installments of the "Sinister design" saga at this link.

Drafted from Italian with Blog Translator, then revised by me.

The aquarium

No matter how hard you try to explain to someone splashing around in an aquarium
that they're splashing around in an aquarium,
they won't get that they're splashing around in an aquarium,
precisely because they're splashing around in an aquarium.

Drafted from Italian with Blog Translator, then revised by me.

The real conspiracy

I've never understood why people who can't resist the lure of conspiracy theories, instead of dealing with cases that can't be verified (the moon landing, 9/11, the pluto-Judaic cabal, and so on), don't focus on the conspiracies that are right there in plain sight, and have been for centuries, if not millennia.

I'm talking about the petty, cowardly, underhanded, criminal brainwashing of little kids and teenagers, carried out for religious, patriotic, military, or political ends.
Who the fuck, as an adult, would ever believe in kingdoms of heaven and last judgments, in supremacy over peoples who live on land beyond arbitrarily drawn borders, in supreme causes worth getting yourself killed for, in flawed systems of government, if those beliefs hadn't been planted in people's heads while their minds were still forming, still vulnerable and unable to judge what's best for their own well-being?

I think it's the most squalid, heinous collective crime ever committed, and one that's still being committed on a global scale. A piece of filth that all of us, having been through it ourselves, should rise up against. And above all, we should keep our kids safe from it.
Ironically, it's often the parents themselves who offer up their children as a sacrifice on the altar of social convenience. The same parents who might get outraged if their kids bring home a failing grade in math. The shame of a bad grade, no; taking advantage of the vulnerable and mental manipulation, yes. Insane. An abomination for which I can find few acceptable justifications, but plenty of ugly motives.

The time has come to wake up: conspiracy theorists of the world, unite! Drop your pointless speculation about things that can't be verified and point your finger at this glaringly obvious outrage. Finally fight for a better world. Save our young people from organized, legalized indoctrination, whether mystical or secular.

Future generations will thank you for it. If you care about being remembered for choosing the right side of history, this is your moment.

Drafted from Italian with Blog Translator, then revised by me.

Distrust

The skeptic and the compulsive contrarian are personalities marked by profoundly different attitudes.

The first is a virtuoso who cultivates doubt, tries to understand, and knows how to suspend judgment. They're ready to question everything, but they go about it methodically: they look for evidence and use reason.
The second is a collector of obtuse certainties, often a victim of ridiculous polarizations. They reject every official claim out of hand, sometimes just for the sake of it. Driven by an itch to look "cleverer" than everyone else, they end up a compulsive denier.

The skeptic is inspired by curiosity and a critical mind. Their tools are facts, data, and logic. They pursue their goal with rigor and patience.
The contrarian is driven by phobia and vanity. Speculation and distrust are the tools in their toolbox. They have no time for analysis; they jump to conclusions.

The skeptic studies the system, identifies its constraints, and carefully maneuvers within its degrees of freedom.
The contrarian yanks, thrashes, kicks, and ends up tangled in a snarl of junk alternative yarn.
The skeptic swims upstream, alone, toward the source. The contrarian, instead, gets sucked into a murky whirlpool, at the bottom of which they'll find nothing.

Drafted from Italian with Blog Translator, then revised by me.

Sinister design - part four: the allegory

You can read part three at this link.

In the previous installments I talked about a whirlpool: the mechanism that sucks us in when we pick a side on crises we can't verify. To make this clearer, I'll use a movie allegory — and no, I'm not saying we live in a simulation: I'm only using the film as an example.

Nearly everyone has seen "The Matrix," the wonderful trilogy starring Keanu Reeves. And plenty of people came out of it feeling exhilarated: "It's a smart story, I understood it, so I must be smart too." They think.

And in fact the result looks encouraging. But then you look at them, and it becomes clear they haven't picked up on all the symbolic sides of it, the metaphorical layers that make it relevant even without the technological apocalypse. They stopped at the plot about sentient machines that drain humans of their energy while keeping them living in a simulated dream, the matrix itself. They can't put two and two together, can't connect those blessed dots.

So let's spell out the allegory. In our reality, the "machines" can be represented by politics and the media. The dreams — the film's matrix — are the polarized issues that politics and the media hand to citizens. And the energy being drained is that of the individuals who fall for the trick and devote themselves, heart and soul, to fueling the mechanism: that's the whirlpool.

Let's look at a few examples from the string of polarizing issues pushed on the masses in recent years. Did we dig in, helmet on and bayonet fixed, taking a position (any position) on the various disputes over the pandemic? We got sucked in. Did we pick a side on the Russia-Ukraine war? We're sinking toward the bottom. Did we pick a side on the Palestine-Israel question? It's already too late. Did we pick a side on the US-Iran war? Same story.

And you can be sure that when interest in the crisis of the moment fades, politics and the media will supply us with new ones. As I said before, the content isn't the point. The goal is distraction, splitting public opinion. Divide et impera.

Okay, take some time to think it over. Then, if you like, go ahead and rewatch the film. Maybe this time the parallel will be clearer.

You can find the other installments of the "Sinister design" saga by following this link.

Drafted from Italian with Blog Translator, then revised by me.