Yesterday I watched a documentary called The Corporate Coup D'État that explains how corporate lobbying has debilitated democracy in the USA.

The first time I stumbled upon stuff like this was about four years ago, when I watched another documentary, Requiem For The American Dream, where Noam Chomsky explained how billionaires and corporations have gradually taken control of the American political process. The concentration of wealth means that the richest individuals are constantly increasing their power, in order to increase their wealth, in order to increase their power, in order to increase their wealth... and this cycle has created a situation where the vast majority of Americans have practically no power at all.



But here's the thing about that Chomsky documentary: I had to watch it twice, take a lot of notes and do a lot of reading before I felt like I'd properly wrapped my head around what he was saying. And this is not because I'm just so stupid (I think), but because the political and economic processes that he talked about are gradual and complicated. Understanding them takes some effort. I still feel slightly "insecure" talking about them. Afraid of using the wrong words and sounding like a dumbass.

I think that this is actually one of the most important reasons why so many people are so invested in conspiracy theories like QAnon at the moment. People notice that something bad is happening – but in order to understand the badness, you'd have to be patient and familiarize yourself with all these big words and concepts that rarely come up in normal everyday conversations.

The idea that behind the scenes, the elites are engaging in satanic rituals is viscerally exciting – it's a vivid image that immediately speaks to the deepest parts of your mind. Whereas all these legal and political manoeuvres that are taking place are dry and complex and just dull to think about. When you try to imagine them, you just imagine stacks of paper filled with legal language, and a bunch of boring people saying boring things in dusty, boring rooms.

Stories about how Hillary Clinton is molesting children in the basement of a pizza restaurant!!! may just benefit the corporate elites, because they divert people's attention and create more noise – when too much noise is actually the root of the problem.

Understanding what's going on in the world requires the ability to tolerate difficulty and boredom. That is the tragedy. Or the challenge. If you really want to understand the world, and do something about it, you need the ability to pay attention to things even if they don't reward you with hits of dopamine every 2 seconds. That's a skill that's more important than ever, and also a skill that people are losing. Perhaps that's a problem we should try to fix before we can fix any of the other problems.