UNCERTAINTY and EXPLOITATION

There's little wonder none of us fully understand how the world works...

Perpetual war, disease, terrorism, poverty and assorted environmental crises.

Whilst consumed by fear and panic, all society is expected to agree on what's happening, and what we're going to do about it.

But if we consider that ignorance and rumour, bias and self interest are present in all sources of information—from social media to television news (even the peer review process can be incentivised, politicised and manipulated).

Plus the questionable integrity of journalists, private interests and money-driven advertising makes it extremely difficult to tell the difference between mistakenly given false information and deliberately given false information.

And differentiating either from objective truth is almost impossible. If you think you know what's happening... You most likely don't.

Everything—including independent media—prioritises someone else’s perspective above your own. Even this is just my take on things, it's your choice to agree or not.

But it can't be any other way.

We're so far removed from events on the world stage, we've little to no chance of knowing what the hell's going on.

And in the cut and thrust of daily life, it's easy and comfortable to adopt the opinions of experts as our own.

In the excitement most of us go with the flow, trying to be as helpful as possible.

But when we act on the say-so of strangers, who are payed for their opinions, it's easy to have our ignorance exploited.

We let them take advantage of our fears. Shaping behaviour, speech and thoughts with vague (yet terrifying) claims; then politicians grant themselves new powers to bring you in line with their policies.

Friends and family buy-in wholesale, cheering on the nightmare. Asking questions is met with insults—bullying, not debate.

Can we trust anyone who leads with emotions, rather than honest conversation?

I'm certainly not saying that tragedy, hardship and emergencies are no big deal.

I'm saying that false authority can exploit the uncertainty of any crisis—real or imagined—to expand their power.

Of course any real crisis can be properly addressed as soon as we know that exploitation, corruption or undue interference in our private lives cannot be introduced through any emergency response.