Framing is a powerful tool. An exercise I like doing is taking famous events in history and spinning them in the most contradictory way that makes sense, for example:
- Malcolm X is a success story for the American prison system. He came in as a pimp and drug pusher and left as a reformed man with strong values because of the prison library.
- Guns in America is actually the most leftist opinion one can have. Leftist groups are always talking about armed revolution, and the whole point of allowing citizens have guns is so that they theoretically overthrow the government.
It is a good exercise to do because it allows you to break the patterns of conformity that society presents to you as fact. Now obviously, the Malcolm X one can easily be debunked and say he was a success story of reform, in spite of the American prison system that is mainly driven by profit. I think the guns one actually holds some ground; the second amendment says: "A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." But in practice it likely not motivated by that, and the effects it has had have been disastrous and nothing to do with “the security of a free state”.
However, this sort of exercise of going down to the first principles of a concept and working your way back up to a conclusion of your own, is invaluable in our age of algorithmically fed slop content that pulls you into the culture war.
Juvenal said: Give them bread and circuses and they will never revolt. Today it is Instagram and sugar.
We are riddled with addictions. Everyone is addicted to content, consumption and sugar. Instagram will have you believing whether a trans woman should be allowed in the Olympics is the most relevant issue to you right now. Yes, yes… you go debate whether we should have unisex bathrooms or not, you’re doing great! You really showed them in that reply to a comment a bot made. Here’s a disguised polymarket ad in the next video as a reward. Yeah you can make a shit ton of money on polymarket! Just bet on how many times Trump is going to say Allahu Akbar in his next conference and you could retire.
The French Revolution started because France was in huge debt, and needed to raise money through taxes. At the time, France had three classes of people, also known as estates:
- Third Estate, the commoners – 98% of the population and mainly peasants, paid almost the entirety of tax
- Second Estate, the nobility – high ranking officials that had sweeping tax exemptions
- First estate, the clergy – less than 1% of the population that owned highly valuable land and paid zero tax
And so when money was desperately needed to stop the country from collapsing, a universal tax was proposed for all the estates. The aristocrats went wild. They were doing everything to stop their vast wealth from being taxed, and they were even trying to convince the peasants that they are fighting for their rights. And funnily enough, it worked for a bit. Till it didn’t, and the French Revolution happened.
I do wonder how that event would have played out today, with the power of social media in the First Estate’s hand. I can’t imagine if the wealthiest people on Earth controlled what the majority of which media people on Earth consumed, and how they might distract everyone with issues that don’t matter whenever someone suggests wealth should be taxed and redistributed in public interest. Imagine the scales of non-sensical wars that could be pushed to be accepted by public opinion with such a tool.
I digress with the too on the nose analogy here.
But funnily enough and going back to my contradictory framing point, you could also frame the Monarchy in the French Revolution as quite progressive. They were breaking legacy class structures and imposing a universal tax on everyone and were trying to use the wealth of the highest class to save the country from crippling debt. That is as far as I will discuss the French Revolution, an insanely complicated historical event of which I know very little.
We need to be thinking for ourselves.
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