Abstract urban form
January 5, 2025

The World is a Scam

You’ve been sold a lie so deep it's like the air. Invisible and everywhere.

Enough dopamine?!! Reading this? Feel like you're on a treadmill? A cog or product of someone else’s system? You are, if you participate in society, you are on a chain, a chain of chains.

Do you feel it? Do you sense it? The unfairness. We all know about it. We all know the rich get richer. There's no news there, but of course, the rich are not rich in isolation. They need to sell something to someone. They need to sell you.

Data turns humans into products and services. Eyes and labour. It's inevitable—survival requires society, and society requires organisation. Power came first (I own the land), then merit (I have the skills), then money (I have the means). But today? The modern world isn’t built on merit or money; it’s built on persuasion—on illusion. It’s a system designed by the rich and influential, with the rest of us (the products) playing a dud hand.

Some of us struggle to keep ourselves warm in the winter, some of us buy a banana taped to a wall for 6 million dollars. The game of value is broken.

But not the way you think it is, you are not free to see clearly. The more convinced you are of your freedom, the better the system has worked on you. Don’t take my word for it—that’s the opposite of the point. You are embedded in a matrix to train your mind into hypnosis (yes, its that dramatic), but I'm not in the business of convincing you, observe the game, rather than projecting the words here.

You Just Lost The Game

How the game is played

The wheelhouse of this matrix is exactly what you do every day, it's the regularity of it, it's the monotony of it. It’s the bounded highs and lows of it. It’s the pace of life, this is all set and maintained without any deliberate attempt to do so —the order sorts itself naturally.

Do you ever see how your world is bounded? Do you see the edges of it? Do you see the edge of your eyesight for example? Of course, you don’t see until you see. But the world is built so you don’t see, so that only those who see already see, and that’s expedient for some. If you don’t notice the blindfold you’ll never take it off. I wonder who would benefit from a population that is kept blind and looking —oh that’s right.

But I’m not blind? Other people are blind but I have freedom of thought. No.. no you don’t. There’s no such thing as freedom of thought. Everything you think and believe is a result of conditioning and the environment, your brain doesn’t work without an outside, and natural selection doesn’t select for truth, it selects for survival. Some of us think we are far removed from the basics of survival, but its mechanism goes on. Survival is broader than just living. Today it is meta-survival, it is control, comfort, security, more. And society has been around long enough for the top dogs to entrench their survival so deep that you don’t see it at all.

The first step is education. Education is an institution. It is regulated to cover a spectrum of fairly useful worldly knowledge and practical skills. However, humans are really bad at seeing negative space; it's not the brain's specialty. Things hide in these omissions. Again, nobody is scheming this all up—it just happens according to our current psychology. Have you noticed the hidden assumptions of education? What about the hidden morals of education? Let's consider.

Here are the assumptions that underpin education (don’t worry about the exact way I word it; just that some of these exist in some form):


So we get given the tools of education, but we are also given the energy and underlying assumptions, behavioral conditioning, collective trauma, groupthink, value systems, and stories about the world that are (more often than not) taken to be the world.

The stories about the world come from this energy; they come from groupthink. A story about the world is not the world, it is a pointer.

But how do we know that? How do we know that what I’m saying is true or not? That’s the dilemma; that’s epistemology. So we start with a story of how it seems and then validate it with direct observation—it’s the best we seem to have. The fact that believing in not aging doesn’t keep you young is our truth yardstick: direct observation.

But the trouble is we don’t stick to that; we can’t. We have software running that is a narrative, that has assumptions baked in. And certain parties have in on that software. Certain parties create mind viruses that keep shape of that narrative, and the rich have a huge stake in that mind pie. They don’t think of it like that though, they project their mind out because they have the power and platforms to do so.

One of the recent ones is the softening of language. Corporate, social, and medical language has softened. There aren’t spastics or midgets or strictly men and women anymore. It happens due to there being a moral direction. It doesn’t just happen because we are told it is better; it has to hijack the brain and be agreeable to those minds. We want to be good people, so we do what is good to be seen that way—it’s engrained to stay part of the tribe.

What about the positivity drive? Dislike buttons are disappearing from the internet, and tumultuous discourse is being censored and removed. This isn’t because it's good not to be negative; it's about control. The public has been domesticated and tamed. Outrage, and acting on outrage, are not okay.

So those in power shape the narrative around what is good to align you to an agreeable morality. They hijack good to maintain devilry. This is greed. That is why brands are contradictory. Why they suggest the wine at the restaurant that isn’t selling and say it's their best, or why the browser extension Honey (owned by PayPal) says it gets you the best deal on your purchase when it shows you lesser deals approved by sponsors.

Money

But the most egregious and ironic epitome of this moral jitsu is none other than Fearne Cotton’s Happy Place Festival. You can’t put a price on happiness, right? Wrong, the price is £38.50 (plus fees), which by the way, prices out the very people who could stand to “benefit” most from its “message.” But hey, you're worth it, aren’t you? You need to be pampered to be happy, that’s just how life is. That’s normal... yes?

We all need breaks and mental health days and even the occasional festival dedicated to “mental well-being” and “happiness” run by a soulless organisational machine with polished marketing strategies and corporate fingerprints, full of toys and goodies designed to distract you from the same greedy pocket-lining mechanisms of the 1% which are, happily, contributing to the very stress, overwork, and underpay you are looking to escape from.

“But you're just being a Debby downer, it's just a fun day out, chill out,” those yoga mat-wrapped superfans might say. “Don’t think about how festivals often double dip on flat stall fees where vendors pay upfront to secure a space and then get fleeced on sales commissions, just have fun, life’s too short to worry about that shit. Don’t worry that society dopes you up on medications and ‘GOOD VIBES’ to keep you placid about its devilry.”

Need some curated mindfulness with that kombucha? Nothing like paying a premium to be reminded to breathe, eh? Maybe Fearne Cotton's book will offer some consolation? Scripted? Sure is! That’ll be £15 with a discount applied, how generous.

Do you see how normal it has become to be a product? How you are hypnotised into positivity at all costs? This isn’t to blame anyone or to say you can’t have fun at the occasional festival. It’s pointing out that society is made from examples like this.

So the matrix is made of chasing what’s perceived to be good and putting that good around a corner you can’t quite reach, and continuing to sell you the next thing, while keeping you poor, busy, and just comfortable and uniformed enough to think that’s normal among your peer group. And sure, your piece of the pie might get bigger, but theirs is a multiple of that growth. And as they get better at squeezing you without you noticing (like how companies realised they could just raise the prices of groceries on top of the Covid crisis and excuse it on the supply chain just because they can), everything gets shittier, because everyone else has to cheat on the economics game just to keep up.

The independent brands? Pushed out or bought up because they can’t keep up or because they pay their workers “too much.” Have you noticed how thin and plastic clothes are now? They have to cheat on the product to survive because the game theory is broken, and monetary influence keeps it broken for the sake of “growing GDP and shareholder value.” Every high street in the UK looks identical because diversity has been killed to funnel profit.

The only way to break through in a saturated market is to be endorsed or bought by an existing company or come up with a completely novel and useful idea. But this is increasingly rare: one, because most of the low-hanging fruit is taken; two, because it's hard to have the tools to create the product without already having big capital; three, because the population is effectively taught not to be inspired or think that anything is possible. Big business doesn't want that, it wants consumers, not entrepreneurs.

They also want you to be misinformed and confused so that our versions of reality don't overlap and we fail to see clearly what is going on. This goes back to education. You're not really given the tools for good epistemology. You have access to more information in a day than a caveman had in a lifetime, but are you seeing the big picture? Are you happy?

Monopolies can create applications that initially net many users because they have the resources to develop massively useful tech. After they establish a large user base, they create subscription tiers and fill the platform with ads and sponsorships, knowing that there is no competitive threat. They don’t even hide it anymore—that’s how docile we have become. Every other ad on YouTube is a scam, and many of the online shops Google recommends are nothing more than pretty facades. What do they plan on doing about it? Nothing. And why are there scams? Because ripping people off makes a better wage than working.

No wonder the only high street shops staying open are Ladbrokes and Bargain Booze. The overworked poor have no other route to get rich than gambling or going viral. Have you noticed how everyone online is a lunatic while we struggle to speak to one another in person? Isolation crisis—that’s good business too. Another reason you feel down? The food is nutritionally poor due to overfarming, such that a tomato is 50 times less nutritious than in 1950, but go ahead, drive to the gym after your office job to get some endorphins going—you’ll need them. Maybe while you’re there, you’ll think about buying that big car and putting a small dog in it.

Shoes

Being Poor Costs You More


To allow all this to go on, it has to be hidden and normalised. Normalisation is hiding it. You are normalised to the quality of Netflix content. You are normalised to the career-family trajectory. You are normalised not to question or create conflict. You are normalised to spend and keep spending. You are normalised to think this is normality.

Society traps you in a mental prison, a matrix of norms and morals that keeps you boxed in. Your thinking is "boxed" by your environment (e.g., societal expectations, education, media)—and your environment is "boxed" by the systems designed to profit off those constrained ways of thinking and behaving.

So that’s why it's easier to turn on the TV than to think about all of this. That’s exactly it—you can’t do anything about it because the environment is designed to prevent that. You’ve been made powerless and then told that’s democracy. Working your way up the ladder to change it will take most of your life, and by that time, the system you're trying to change from the inside is likely to have corrupted you because most people share the basic psychology of those at the top. They're just not at the top.

That’s why regimes topple only to be replaced by much the same system—because changing the system without changing the underlying psychology changes nothing. Those at the top keep creating this psychological norm unconsciously. They maintain a peaceable image and status quo. They create an environment where if you're a CEO, you get paid x amount, and that is both normal and deserved. We do question this, but then we get stuck into our Christmas turkey and forget it—it’s too hard.

This is the result of the rich getting very good at what they do and being allowed to do it. Again, it's just psychology and group dynamics emerging and evolving. It’s efficiency and big data. AI and algorithms know you better than you do. Big data means big brother knows exactly how tightly to squeeze the working classes. This is late-stage capitalism and the endpoint of stage orange in spiral dynamics.

One of the reasons huge wealth inequality is so persistent is because it is so hard to combat directly. If your country has tighter regulations, the rich move funds and business abroad, and that's bad PR for the presiding government. It would take global governance with international powers to directly tackle wealth inequality all at once. Brexit was precisely a rebellion about being controlled by policies created "somewhere else." Countries aren't going to simply surrender their sovereignty.

If everyone lived off-grid and became self-sufficient, the wealthy would lose their consumer base. They need to sell you need. If we unplug, they need to pay us more to plug us back in. That’s why you're hypnotized to not notice injustice, corruption, and wealth inequality. So they can pay you the least to keep you making them more, and they do this with media and false comfort, a treadmill of things, entertainment most importantly, and a lack of time to think critically about what you're doing. Big data is keeping everything optimized to keep the money coming in.

It’s bread and circus economics. The worst offenders are self-aware and have built doomsday bunkers ahem, I mean “storage spaces” all over the world.

When you sit at a big chain restaurant, someone has optimised the layout, the seating, the ambient air temperature, the music volume, the portion size, and the agreeability of the staff for maximum profit margin. They don’t do that knowingly; they do it because of the hidden rule of what makes money sticks around. This just sorts everything by itself—they just copy what other successful chains do. Then they have people who come in and analyze where they are losing money and tighten things up, and this is a race of maximum brain optimization for control of your impulse.

All you need for a like on Instagram or Facebook is enough dopamine to be released by your brain, and the algorithm knows exactly how to hack this. No matter how smart you think you are, there’s a part of the brain that is dumb and emotional: on, off. That’s how it's built. No one is perfectly rational, or adverts wouldn’t exist. You can’t beat it. The only way out is not to play, but you have to play to secure your bottom line. It’s dependency. They don't want you living quietly in the woods with no urgency and no needs, living, only wanting the wisdom and peace of nature.

Corrupt corporations deflect responsibility always: “You need to recycle to save the planet,” which has very little effect compared to, say, the electricity use of data centers, the CO2 emission from the production of concrete, or the use of private jets for CEOs. (A private jet flight from London to Paris is six times more polluting per passenger than a commercial flight.) And what are you going to do about that? Nothing, of course.

I’d love to give all the exact details about how corruption and manipulation happen, but that’s mostly squirrelled away and obfuscated by the interests it pertains to. But let's face it, unless you're at the top of an international business, you know you're getting screwed. You feel it. The people at the top also know you're being screwed, but they know exactly how. They must deny this to themselves to enjoy their lifestyle. It's all justified to themselves to ignore the inequality. Those people end up on top because they are shameless in their pursuit.

I would never dream of being a manager because I couldn’t justify the higher pay to myself, let alone be a CEO. I would instantly recognize that I don’t deserve whatever multiple the pay is, so I’m not one. It all sorts itself. I only accept higher pay when I understand I have done something commensurately skillful. In theory, society would work like this, but it doesn’t.

The reward for a promotion is only slightly less comfort for a lot more pay. If it were equal, there would be no incentive for going up the ladder. In fact, it is often way more comfortable and less stressful as you go up for way more pay. That is the reward for strong-arming and sucking up to your superiors. It's a psychological mechanism based on competition.

The other way companies maintain this unfairness is by hiding it, by only allowing key information to pass from top to bottom, not bottom to top. The information given to middle managers is not given to the bottom level, and the information at the top is not given to middle managers. This is because if you knew exactly what your boss did all day, you might not see them so favorably. You are made powerless through a lack of information. You only report from your level.

When businesses do their equality thing of "let's hear everyone's voice," they aren’t hearing anything relevant from the employees on the ground floor because they are deliberately uneducated about how the business runs. Why? Exploitation.

Teachers in school don’t tell you that when you're older, you will be put into a system where you will directly or indirectly be in competition for money and resources with every human being, with a veneer of benign friendliness overlaying it. We are not very far removed from survival; we are psychologically deeply rooted in survival and fear. We cooperate in the sphere of that fear, even though it is hidden.

Chess

The Game Played by the Rich Isn’t the Same as Yours

The wealthy exploit broken rules and shortcuts (legal loopholes, bribery, monopolistic practices).

Extravagant wealth is unjustifiable: it’s rarely, if ever, achieved ethically. Exploitation—of people, resources, or loopholes—is the real game. The game isn’t about working harder; it’s about knowing which strings to pull. Examples abound:


To pretend that wealth of this magnitude is earned purely through hard work and ingenuity is naïve at best and deceitful at worst. It often involves exploitation—of people, resources, or loopholes. The real game isn’t about working harder; it’s about knowing which strings to pull. Astroturfing. Greenwashing. Captive insurance, the list goes on.

It’s also not to assume that you aren't informed that this goes on—it’s more like pointing out how deeply this is all structurally embedded. You are the apple on the tree that is being shaken from below, but it is all one tree.

The matrix isn’t just capitalism; the matrix is you seeking more.

The big lie of society has nothing to do with money. It has to do with you needing to be someone, to do something, or to be useful, and society is nothing more than a big hoax to prevent you from seeing there is no need—that this is it already. It wants you to overlook the beauty and perfection of what is, in favor of a never-ending pursuit of more.

To do this, they must create the myth and religion of value. Value is a collective hallucination that keeps the wheels of commerce and culture turning.

Money: The Ultimate Fiction

What is it, really? Pieces of paper or digital numbers in a bank. Its value rests entirely on collective trust. Break that trust (hyperinflation, a financial crisis), and suddenly, it's just Monopoly money.

Labour and Worth

The Lie: Your work has a fixed value.

The Reality: Labour is valued arbitrarily, based on supply, demand, and how much someone with power is willing to exploit you. A hedge fund manager "earns" millions, while a nurse barely gets by. Objectively, which job matters more?

The Art Market

A Picasso is "priceless" not because the paint and canvas are rare, but because of the stories, prestige, and speculation woven around it. Art's value is determined by an exclusive club of critics, auction houses, and wealthy collectors. Essentially, it’s money laundering with a creative twist.

Technology and "Progress"

Why is the newest iPhone worth £1,200? It isn’t, objectively. The raw materials and labor cost a fraction of that. The price is tied to branding, perceived innovation, and your fear of being left behind.

The Myth of Infinite Growth

Society worships GDP and stock market performance as indicators of "value" and "progress." But infinite growth on a finite planet? A neat trick, until it isn’t.

Meanwhile, environmental destruction is often excluded from the calculations. Why? Because assigning "value" to nature would disrupt the whole charade.

Value as Social Control

"Value" systems—whether financial, moral, or cultural—are tools of control.


Value only exists because enough people agree it does. It’s a dance of perception, power, and propaganda.

Life never gets better than sitting in a chair, but society is constructed to make you think you need anything at all. It's designed to direct your attention away from what is and into an imagined (better) future that never comes. This isn’t deliberate; it's seeking. We feel that something has been lost, that we’re here and we have to make that better for ourselves. That is the matrix. The matrix is your dream of you. And with you comes need. The matrix isn’t the outside oppressing you—it is the mind creating and oppressing you. There is no outside.

It is an innocent forgetting that looking out a window, feeling the texture of wood, and the sound of birds is simply it. Directly what is apparent is everything; it never gets better than that—how could it? No experience is forever, and every good experience lives in the context of its opposite.

Society tells you not to bother with deep mastery, skill acquisition, and developing rare modalities of consciousness like deep intuition and insight, an incredible sense of the abstract, systems thinking, and construct awareness. All these doors of perception are closed in the typical life trajectory. The source of creativity is soured. Devotional creativity is a deep embodiment of beauty and intelligence.

To be clear, I’m not throwing everything under the bus here. There’s plenty of organic, healthy business around. It’s rather that the larger economic environment has been manipulated by a relative minority. Many things are improving globally, like literacy rates and the diminishing of absolute poverty. Government social policy, philanthropy efforts, and whistleblowers make a difference, and many people live well and comfortably. Especially if you bought a house 30 years ago and/or bought the right stocks. But this is all part of the larger system described.

You can make a decent bubble in that system—it’s the privilege of capitalism. But everything that feeds in and out of that system contributes to its state as a whole.

There are plenty of highly developed humans and progressive countermeasures, but these are too easy to work around or too niche. VAT is fair, but the rich just exploit in other areas like water moving around obstacles. The systematic solution has to come all at once.

This is not an anti-capitalist or moral message; it only shines a light on the way the system is gamed.

This is the product of just 32 years of living and using open tools for research. My thinking and the topics I highlighted are also biased. The epistemic issue precisely reifies a narrative and belief system as being more than a story. That said, stories often reflect a partial truth.

I also use many of these subscriptions and tools like Adobe, Microsoft, Google, and Instagram. They provide tools and platforms that have few alternatives. I recognise that I use them out of necessity for my work. It isn’t realistic to cut ties to every product that contributes to wealth inequality immediately. Systemic change is necessary. Recently I was part of a follow-for-follow event on Instagram, and that helped me bring my content to more people—you can bet it benefits the organizers a lot more than anyone else. If the tools are used to facilitate passion, original work, and creativity, this creates a silver lining.

Light

Beyond the World

With that in mind, how can we unplug? The real unplugging is to be free from psychological need, but some actions can lessen inequality:


Nothing is going to be better or worse than reading these words, any words, anything. It's that simple.