The Current and the Wind
Living in an hyper commercialized environment, sometimes makes me pause to think who the ideal customer for any product (content, goods or services) I am consuming or about to consume. This process informs me if it is relevant to me before deciding if it is something I want or need.
Just like in marketing or in sales promotion of any business, one has to have a target market for one’s product. In healthcare lately, there is an increasing focus on diagnostic care and not preventative care (only 2.9% of America’s health care spending goes to preventative cures). Ever wonder why most of the covid hysteria from governments focused solely on diagnostic treatment (injections) while failing to push for prevention tactics like going out in the sun, exercising, eating healthy and promoting lifestyles that boost ones immune system?
To the pharma/medical industry, the ideal customer has a slow-burn chronic illness, which makes them dependent on the system, but not so sick that they die and stop paying bills. Since the system makes money when patients are sick, there is an incentive to keep, convince them and make them sick over time.
Similarly in the media industry, the ideal customer is the daily news consumer. With this unhealthy ritual, they are sold ads, ideas, values and what and how to think. Kind of like out sourcing ones brain power and critical thinking skills to the media companies. Thinking is hard, it takes work, time and effort so many revert to a dependency on traditional sources, government institutions and in recent times, devices to inform us the latest news. Of course, dependency on devices is exacerbated by the internets structural problem of recency bias.
At Khakis & Leathers, we maintain our focus on understanding and analyzing the overarching ideas of our time, connecting the dots and spotting the patterns while utilizing history as a benchmark. Sometimes using data from the news to understand the bigger socio-cultural trend.
According to David Perell, “the daily news is the wind while demography, cultural trends and technological shifts are the currents. The currents are deeper trends — too invisible to be covered in the daily news, but so strong they exert a heavy influence on our lives.”
News can be very distracting as they tend to magnify inconsequential issues, manufacture consent and propagandize outright fake news so as to keep us misinformed. What we should better spend time is a focus on the current of persistent economic system of class and power, financial and industrial interests and the increasing technocratic/technological society.
“To be completely cured of newspapers, spend a year reading the previous week’s newspapers.” -Nassim Taleb
When you stop reading the news the first thing you notice about people who read the news is how misinformed they are and their cognitive biases. Another thing you notice is that you weren’t as well informed as you thought which makes you seek out valid, dense and deep dives in specific subject matters (books).
I know stepping back from news might seem hard but it’s doable. We seem to be afraid of silence, afraid to be alone with our thoughts. That’s why we pull out our phones when we’re waiting in line at a coffee shop or the grocery store. We’re afraid to ask ourselves deep and meaningful questions to avoid introspection. We’re afraid to be bored. We’re so afraid, that to avoid it, we’ll literally drive ourselves crazy, consuming pointless information.
Can you do something different? I believe so. Part of the answer is to spend less time consuming and more time thinking. The other part is to change your information sources from the news. Seek out dense sources of information (thank goodness for Substack and independent journalists). Some indicators you’ve found them are timeless content and reading publications like this.
If you must read the news, read it for the facts and the data, not the opinions.
Let’s close with this quote by Winifred Gallagher: “Few things are as important to your quality of life as your choices about how to spend the precious resource of your free time.”
See you next week!
- Ope