DIRECTIONS

Narendra:  They’re not trying to hide anything from you, though.

Adrenalina:  Aren’t they?

Narendra:  They would if they could. For certain. 

Adrenalina:  It sure looks like it, though.

Narendra:  But it’s all pretty obvious, isn’t it?

Adrenalina:  Well, yes. Which is maybe why it’s so annoying.

Narendra:  Totally. And, just to be clear, I can see that you’re upset, frustrated about all this. You feel like they’re being careless. Any you’re maybe a little offended by that, too. 

Adrenalina: Perhaps.

Narendra:  It makes you feel like they don’t even care. Or that they think you’re stupid. Or they know you have no power to do anything about it.

Adrenalina:  I dunno. But it does look a lot like obfuscation to me.

Narendra:  Look, they can make things difficult to find and hard to understand, and they do that occasionally, but—

Adrenalina:  They certainly do.

Narendra:  But it’s often too hard to actually pull off. I mean, yes, anything is possible. It’s just that you don’t have infinite resources for every little thing that comes up. Right?

Adrenalina:  So what are they doing?

Narendra:  Well, ask yourself, how overt is the obscene bullshit?

Adrenalina:  Fully.

Narendra:  Right. And how widespread is it?

Adrenalina:  Every channel, every medium.

Narendra:  Every channel, every medium.

Adrenalina:  Right.

Narendra:  Right. So what does that tell us?

Adrenalina:  I don’t know. That they aren’t being very sneaky about it.

Narendra:  And so is it more likely that they, everyone, everywhere all of the time, are totally failing at being sneaky or that they aren’t trying to be? The answer to that seems obvious. So, then, why aren’t they trying to conceal things? 

Adrenalina:  Because they don’t have to.

Narendra:  That’s a solid guess.

Adrenalina:  What? You don’t think so?

Narendra:  I have a slightly different hypothesis.

Adrenalina:  What’s that? 

Narendra:  My thought is that none of that, what you’re interpreting as something like bad reporting, is suggestive of an error.

Adrenalina:  You’re saying it’s stupidity or malice? It's a form of propaganda, surely.

Narendra:  None of the above, exactly.

Adrenalina:  What then?

Narendra:  Instruction. Clear instruction.

Adrenalina:  Instructions for what?

Narendra:  Behaviour. Appropriate behaviour.

Adrenalina:  Huh? But it’s bullshit.

Narendra:  Exactly. If all the “trusted sources” across television, radio, and newsprint (populated by people you know to be PhDs plucked from the best schools and star journalists and personalities distilled and extracted from outlets across the country) are delivering the same “unbelievable bullshit” I think it makes perfect sense to read that as explicit instruction.

Adrenalina:  Instructions for what?

Narendra:  Well, as I said, behaviour. But you tell me. It sounds to me something like, “Here’s what you have to say to keep your job.”

Adrenalina:  Okay. But who’s even listening at this point? Like, I wouldn’t even get that message. 

Narendra:  It’s not obscene enough to blip on the radar of the folks you are listening to? Or what about the people you rely upon or are surrounded by? Everyone around you is eating this shit up. Aren't they? And that’s part of the beauty here, right? You yourself don’t even have to hear any of this, never mind accept it, but it’s guaranteed to make its way to all the people around you. Your boss, Kathleen in HR, the bank manager, your ex-wife, your kids' teacher, your best friend's husband—

Adrenalina:  I guess that’s true.

Narendra:  And it’s even better than that. Actually. Because, you know, you’re still allowed to believe and say whatever you like. Right? It’s not a command. No law's been passed. But what they've done is establish in advance the bounds of any disagreement, in the unlikely event you should go there. Right? And they've also pre-determined the consequences for disagreement. Right? And what are those consequences? Well, we’ve all seen that play out.

Adrenalina:  You’ll lose your job.

Narendra:  You may lose your job. Or you may lose any future jobs or other opportunities. But you may also lose your marriage, your kids, and all your friends, too. Right?

Adrenalina:  Right.

Narendra:  So you still have freedom of choice and opinion and expression. Those haven’t been taken away. You can have all of these, they aren't extinct, but they're now only endemic within the privacy and untamed wilderness of your own mind. And everyone is perfectly clear about what is to be said and must not be said aloud.

Adrenalina:  Right.

Narendra:  And, we're all on the same page that if, instead, you’re going to tell us what you’re actually seeing and what you actually believe to be true — or, worse, you’re going to highlight the reality of this situation — you’re going to have a real problem. Actually, a whole set of problems.

Adrenalina:  Right. USSR-style, but evolved for the 21st century.

Narendra:  Yes. They've got charges placed and primed in everything foundational in your life.

Adrenalina:  But how does this work?

Narendra: Well, you watched as journalism shifted from describing and making sense of reality, from connecting dots, to hurriedly ushering observers to approved conclusions even if that means you have to draw in your own dots. And you saw the public transition into two teams: Team Words-Have-Meaning and Team Alliances; Team What-Actually-Happened and Team This-Person-Says-They-Have-Good-Intentions; Team But-Does-That-Make-Sense and Team Credible-Words-From-Trusted-Sources.

Adrenalina:  Yes.

Narendra: And what they know is that folks are intelligent enough to go along with the fiction. And they've been trained how to do all this. I'm convinced that’s what movies are about.

Adrenalina:  What do you mean? 

Narendra:  Well, nobody likes a realistic film. And worse still is a flawless one. People insist on working really hard through every scene to continue to be taken in by it.

Adrenalina:  I suppose.

Narendra:  Well, if you go to enough movies with other people you quickly realize almost no one is watching the film or even following the dialogue.

Adrenalina:  What are they doing?

Narendra:  Mostly they’re just basking in the projector’s glow. They’re being bathed in noise.

Adrenalina:  What?

Narendra:  It’s a learned behaviour. They went in seeking to be seduced. And to get all the way there requires them to become a party to their seduction. But not just by consenting. They have to take an active, lead role.

Adrenalina:  So what does that look like?

Narendra:  Well, look at it this way: the films people love, the ones with the hundred million dollar budgets and a billion in profits, are full of the most basic and infuriating incongruities. They’re really the worst movies. Which makes no sense. No sense, unless it’s programming — programming that people demand.

Adrenalina:  So, like bad acting? 

Narendra:  Like objects moving, transforming, or disappearing altogether between cuts. Like right before the audience’s eyes. You can’t possibly miss it. Sometimes it’s the very subject of the shot. More often it’s the glass of milk on the table between the protagonist and her best friend as they sit chatting. The glass, it starts half empty, fills, then empties and fills again, over the span of fourteen seconds and without anyone touching it. 

Adrenalina:  Sure. I think they call it "continuity."

Narendra:  Well, and that failure of continuity would be bad enough but these same films are full of dialogue delivered with what is clearly the wrong emphasis on words. Which means the dialogue delivered and the meaning of the words is not what's in the script. Otherwise you get a mic entering the scene or a modern Coke can being left behind by a set-builder that somehow makes it through the entire editing process and winds up in the middle of a muddy trench in Belgium during the Great War. I’m describing just about every movie.

Adrenalina:  So what are you saying, exactly?

Narendra:  You're wanting this to be incompetence or laziness; I’m saying it can’t be.

Adrenalina:  Why not? Isn’t it?

Narendra:  I don’t think the math works.

Adrenalina:  Sure it does. There are constraints of time and funds and people’s attention and patience.

Narendra:  Nah. Any actor, an expert, will tell you they study their lines and do run-throughs for days or weeks or months. Then they film 15 or 75 takes of a single dialogue, with a whole team of experts. And then the best of those lines and takes is taken and cut into a cohesive whole by another set of experts. And then all the expert editors take another go. Then that’s run by every other sort of expert, people who are just there to ensure congruity. And then it’s screened another hundred times until everyone agrees it's perfect. And all that may take place over two or six years. And still the end result is unwatchable to the untrained eye.

Adrenalina:  Is it, though?

Narendra:  I don’t think you realize you’re doing it. You just need it to be so. A person couldn’t naturally keep with the plot, follow the prescribed mood, or sustain their interest. It has to be learned. It takes an almost superhuman tolerance for incongruity, discontinuity. Only a honed skill to tune out that much noise and "error". I'm saying that to watch and enjoy a movie requires the viewer to be so involved in their own seduction that they can’t possibly be watching or listening to the movie. That’s what I mean. Everyone learns to bask in the light and sound and filter out all else or you don't go to movies. Look, you couldn't possibly walk down the street in real life and have time and space break in such a way without it breaking your brain.

Adrenalina:  But, couldn’t it just be that nobody wants to see the error? 

Narendra:  It’s like that. That’s what I’m saying—  

Adrenalina:  Right. That's how the president of Harvard can rise to that position having plagiarized everything she ever published. And that’s also how when found out she is not defrocked in a nationally televised shaming ceremony and marched out of town naked on the back of a donkey but is instead demoted to a senior position at the school with the same pay grade.

Narendra:  I think this thing has to be far more intelligent and intentional. It has to be engaged in social engineering. I don’t mean evil. It’s hard to suggest any of this without it being tinged with implications or accusations of malice, as you suggested. For all I know, this could be initiated by a force that merely has a deeper understanding of the situation and is trying to save your life.

Adrenalina:  But do you think that's actually what's happening?

Narendra:  Well, you do this in your own life. Don't you? If your dog isn't well-trained and is pulling you into the street to get to the park, but you can see a truck coming, you don't try and explain why you're stopping or point out the truck coming down the road. And you don't yell 'no' or 'sit'. Instead, you just reach into your pocket and pull out a treat. Right? And then make it as difficult to get at as necessary for enough time to elapse for the truck to pass. And then you say 'good boy' and take the dog to the park. As in, if you can’t fill everyone in on all the facts of the matter, for technical reasons or safety and security purposes or for a lack of time, or any number of other things, which must be the case some of the time, you’re going to have to stage a distraction or you're going to have to lie in the most obvious manner.

Adrenalina:  But it could also be less benevolent.

Narendra:  But it could also be far less benevolent. For sure.

Adrenalina:  So, folks are trained to just go along with anything and to tune anything, really anything, out. 

Narendra:  People also go along because they like the experience. They anticipate a delightful outcome. And they need to.

Adrenalina:  We like to be taken in.

Narendra:  We want to be seduced. And we probably need to be. It may be essential. And to get there you probably have to be a party to, or even the main actor in, your own deception.

Adrenalina:  Right.

Narendra:  Think about university. You have three options: accept the overt lies and reinforce them yourself; shut up and never discuss anything with anyone and just repeat your teachers' words back to them and to fellow students; or invite conflict and risk outsider status and failure every single day. People are smart and act in their immediate interest, knowing they only have to spend so many months in class.

Adrenalina:  Which is why when you fill out a feedback form honestly the whole school almost collapses in on itself.

Narendra:  Yes. Never having once gotten constructive feedback.

Adrenalina:  Right. And so you're saying you’re programmed to turn that thing on. The tune-out filter.

Narendra:  At some point you don't have to turn it on. That bit of script just runs when things make no sense. And the less sense it makes the harder the filter works.

Adrenalina:  Right.

Narendra:  Real consternation is a visceral, unmissable trigger. And the filter, once activated, will work harder and harder, even until there's no signal at all getting through.

Adrenalina: And then, of course, you're not actually engaging in the world.

Narendra:  Yes. And you're not really even a passive observer.

Adrenalina:  You just go limp.

Narendra:  Yes. "Go limp." Oh, you don't know how good that is. "Go Limp" is the penultimate track on Nina Simone's 1964 album.

Adrenalina:  Don't know it.

Narendra:  Go have a listen. Oh, it's perfect. It's an adaptation of a protest song, an anti-nuclear song. "For they'll rock you and roll you and shove you into bed. And if they steal your nuclear secret, you'll wish you was dead."

Adrenalina:  She's great.

Narendra:  "Momma, no momma, no I'm not afraid. I'll go on that march and return a virgin maid. With a brick in my handbag and a scowl on my face, some barbed wire in my underwear to shed off disgrace."

Adrenalina:  Nice.

Narendra:  "One day at a meeting a young man came by. With a beard on his chin and a gleam in his eye. And before she had time to remember her brick..."

Adrenalina:  I'll have to listen.

Narendra:  "One day at the briefing she'd heard a man say, 'Go perfectly limp and be carried away.' So when this young man suggested it was time she was kissed, she remembered her brief and did not resist."