AllTop Viral!

In 1641, René Descartes published Meditations on First Philosophy. Descartes was worried about a question that might sound familiar to those of us living in 2018: How can we trust reality? At the time, Europeans believed that demons were active in the world, and that they were seeking to undermine the faithful. One of the ways that they led good people to do bad things was by tricking them. In demonological treatises, authors argued that demons had the ability to deceive humans into believing anything. If demons could convince you to believe anything, then how could you trust reality? That’s how Descartes begins his Meditations. His conclusion is now infamous, and you know it even if you don’t recognize his name: cogito ergo sum. I think, therefore I am. You can’t doubt existence if you’re being fooled, in other words. Unfortunately, the world has gotten a little more complicated in the centuries since Descartes. We now live in the post-truth world. The best way to understand the post-truth world is through professional wrestling. Take a look.

But here’s the interesting thing about this video. Kayfabe is not an entirely new concept. For centuries, fiction has used a kind of kayfabe to make stories more compelling. The Scarlet Letter, for example, begins with an introduction promising that the story is real. Edgar Allen Poe both did the same. Readers have been able to parse truth from reality––just like wrestling fans.

If this video is correct, then the political arena has been taken over by kayfabe. That’s precisely where we’re not expecting to see it. We have not learned to tell the difference between political kayfabe and entertainment kayfabe. So for right now, politics and entertainment are structurally very similar but with one important difference. We don’t realize that politics is basically entertainment. 

This conclusion can lead down a lot of rabbit holes, and we would love to hear what you think in the comments. But for the rest of this article, I want to consider just one of the reasons we’re in the mess: we’ve given up working for our news. We don’t want to read real journalism anymore. We don’t want to fact check for ourselves by reading multiple sources. Instead, we prefer to turn in to terrible cable news where we get far, far more exciting programming than, say, CSPAN. What we don’t consider, though, is that we’re paying a high price for that entertainment. We’re surrendering the most powerful weapon we have as Americans: an informed vote.

Full story at YouTube.

More vids.