This World is Built on Lies. Vladimir Rojankovski
internationalists. After the fall of the Iron Curtain under Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan, one of the first post-Cold-War “liberated” air flights from Moscow to New York in 1989 felt like some sort of an action movie: memorably, Irish Shannon Airport pilots and employees decided to form a sort of lineup applauding us as we went out to the transfer zone. It seemed to many that a wonderful fascinating road to the New Tops of Civilization was ahead of us all. Indeed, Russia had vast territory and natural resources, as well as military and medical technologies, and Europe had the best industrial technologies, which neither Russia nor China possessed back then. The U.S., which enjoyed, in various proportions, all of the above, took the path of rapid development of financial and investment technologies that were complementary to the status of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. It would seem that a perfect macroeconomic shape was emerging: natural resources and heavy industrial technologies of Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and some other countries of the former USSR should have given impetus to the acceleration of industrial technologies in Europe, investments into which could be provided only by the USA with its powerful financial sector. The industrial revolution in China, in turn, brought a large number of inexpensive workers, who even without technology transfer, eyeing huge deferred demand for change and urbanization in this country, were ready to reduce the cost of the second technological breakthrough in Europe.
In reality, we have the following picture for 2020. Apart from the known “side effects” of the chronic monetary expansion (money printing by the world’s largest central banks) which led to slower growth and dwindling personal savings, Europe so far has never launched an independent space exploration expedition (although it was very close to it at the turn of the new millennium), and the automotive industry has unexpectedly moved away from its long time adherence to higher power and speed giving way to energy-saving technologies. Investments are stagnating due to the lack of new markets due to mutual sanctions and low returns on investment. As a result of the financial crisis of 2008, the United States locked up its financial and investment technologies to itself, while downplaying accelerating downfall of the manufacturing sector. At the same time, China has obtained not only the offshore assembly facilities it hoped for under best-case scenario, but also – as a surprise gift – technology, which allowed it to build its own powerful industry, including an ultra high-speed railroad network and aircraft manufacturing. Russia froze exploration and production of new minerals and energy resources due to the lack of foreign markets and switched to the model of import substitution and preservation of technologies received from the West during another “thaw” from 1991 to 2006. Should we look for the party to blame here, and doesn’t it make more sense to just reverse this detrimental process?
At least once in my life I felt like more than winning a lottery. In 1996 I was selected to participate in a Russia – United Kingdom government financial education and work program entitled The Chancellor’s Financial Sector scheme. A London city job was part of an innovative scheme to assist the former Soviet Union in its transition to a free market economy – something that eventually yielded mixed results: although today certain sectors of Russia’s economy, particularly, retail, largely comply with free market principles, lack of freedom for entrepreneurs – suggests Russia is still mainly a State-controlled highly centralized economy.
To say it was hard to get selected by the British Council by passing all the course work and arduous exams is to say nothing. Imagine a student whose English teachers have never been in a single English-speaking country and whose skills came solely from language classes conducted by the same kind of teachers who had never crossed a USSR border due to the iron curtain regime. How about preparing and passing the IELTS tests followed by a no-gimmicks pre-selection interviews with ‘real UK bankers’ (that was our real lifetime experience back then!)? It really felt like Alice in Wonderland: learning self presentation skills (Soviet schools discouraged students from standing out of the crowd for “ethical reason”), sticking to polite but assertive attitudes, setting up pronounced goals and prognoses, developing patience and respect, always remembering to add “please” and many more. It sounds funny now, but back then it really wasn’t.
I went to a final interview with a lot of enthusiasm but very limited English linguistic capacity and funny quasi-American accent caught during my recent trip to New York. Reading my first books in English gifted to me by my aunt living in Englewood Cliffs, NJ, I drew quite an interesting conclusion: the hard rock music was more ear-pleasing with the soft British accents (that’s why, I thought to myself, most rock stars such as Mick Jagger, Elton John, David Bowie, Robert Plant, Ian Gillan and many others were originally from England), but to study English the American accent was easier for listening since it didn’t swallow suffixes.
This world is built on lies
They lie to us while saying “none of our troops are there”. They lie to us suggesting that the modest opioid use is safe and carrying personal guns is good to protect our lives and homes. They lie to us when they say there is a capitalist system and a “communist” system, whereas in reality it’s THEIR system as opposed to OUR system. They lie to us saying that not all countries are equally involved in using performance enhancing drugs among their Olympic Olympicetes. They lie to us when they say that electric cars kill the oil industry. They lie to us when they defend their own interests thousands of miles away calling them our national interests.
But even worse, they don’t simply lie, they want our engagement and endorsement of their lies. Having failed – partially or wholly – their internal agendas, they seek our approval and involvement in their external ones. Don’t they try to unify us (AKA “the voters”) around something that invariably won’t make our lives better?
Why is our typical headline news’ content so much focused on various sorts of propaganda, starting with international politics and ending with the mere advertisement urging us to buy some unnecessary items? Of course, in the era of smart TVs we are free to build the watch content by ourselves. However, no matter how hard we try to shift our priorities, in general circumstances like a job interview, or just visiting a friend’s party, all conversations usually start with either discussing various boring household topics or what our politicians have done recently “to fight our enemies”.
People prefer negative news to positive news, as well as fake and conspiracy content to dry description content – this was one of the takeaways of Morgan Stanley analyst and venture capital investor Mary Meeker in her annual report called “Internet trends 2019”.
There are several reasons why users tend to read fictional news and immerse themselves in conspiracy theories.
Social networks catalyze the distribution of “sizzling” content. Sometimes it’s easier and more interesting to get the news about, let’s say, Donald Trump’s jump in blood sugar levels than it is that the Federal Reserve System has changed its key interest rate. An average reader is unlikely to take time diving into the story about the Fed, although potentially it affects him or her more profoundly than the above-exemplified news about Trump’s health.
As a result, struggling for readers’ attention, news producers more and more migrate into a quasi-entertainment format, thereby losing objectivity and credibility. Fact-checking doesn’t matter because it doesn’t sell well anyway.
Most of us view the news as entertainment while lacking media literacy and expert knowledge. We are not used to reading between the lines, let alone looking for useful information in the news – we are just thirsty for sensations not always having time for a thorough review of what we consume and repost. Readers en-masse do not distinguish between info-noise and important news, which is usually more boring.
People want easy explanations of how the world works and the reason for what is happening to them. Given this, various conspiracy theories accommodating aliens, fortune, fate and the “world evil”– provide the most unconditional