7 Red-Pill Ideas
On CIA, Index Funds, And More
Hi there,
Sometimes you come across conversations that make you look at the world differently.
I tuned into one such discussion led by Ian Caroll, an independent media guy who’s been snooping around, trying to understand how the state and corporations screw the common folk over and over again.
Here are 7 red-pill learnings that I uncovered from this podcast. If you want to dive deeper, go listen to the full thing and independently verify all of these ideas:
On CIA: Originally tasked with countering disinformation, intelligence agencies expanded their role to include surveillance of their own populations, dictating acceptable narratives, and censoring ideas that criticized the government. With the rise of decentralized media, their control has weakened as people access diverse, unregulated sources of truth (X, Substack, Nostr, etc). So intelligence agencies increasingly focus on shaping public perception, programming citizens to believe narratives that serve state interests. Their ultimate goal is less about truth and more about maintaining control over the flow of information- so the masses don’t end up ingesting ideas that can reveal the dark side of the state.
Mental Programming: An important point to recognize in this regard, therefore, is that we are all programmable. So please ask yourself- Who’s programming me? Have I been programmed to believe certain things about my country, the economy, climate, money, and politics? Or am I deciding my own programming, questioning the narratives floating around by diving deeper, triangulating my views by considering a variety of sources, and being mindful of the incentives each party has?
Where are you getting your beliefs from? Follow the money: On that incentive point, always follow the money. If a creator points out problems in a cosmetic brand- say, that the chemicals they’re using are harmful or toxic, the brand employs enormous media power and confusing chemistry jargon to defend against such claims. This may create doubt in the minds of consumers- so in these cases, follow the money. The creator doesn’t have much incentive to go against the company- they’re not gaining too much by talking about the harms. But the cosmetic brand has a $10B business to defend- so they’re heavily incentivized to apply massive PR pressure and confuse the heck out of people so they end up being indecisive and not taking any action based on the genuine warning. This is very similar to the doubt that cigarette companies manufactured with fake research, which allowed them to continue selling without much outcry for so long.
The illusion of choice: States and corporations make it harder to see the truth by obfuscation and creating an illusion of choice. For example, big FMCG firms keep buying out family businesses (who may have a loyal base thanks to their honesty and ethical biz practices) and letting them continue using their brand name- so you’d not realize that every purchase you make is supporting that mega FMCG corp that you wanted to avoid. Picking candidates in elections is also the illusion of choice- no matter whom you pick, they’re susceptible to the same forces of corruption and toeing the line defined by those who fund them.
Manufacturing consent: What you hear in the news about any war must be taken with a kilogram of salt. Take the American invasion of Iraq for instance. It was built on the lie that the Iraqis were hiding Weapons of Mass Destruction, and top officials in the administration knew that this was a lie. But they handed it over to the media, which played its part by parroting the official narrative without questioning it even once, helping to manufacture public consent. For states, the idea is simple: craft a narrative that’s believable enough for the masses to accept, even if it’s far from the truth. That’s enough for them to embark on their projects- be it a lockdown or a declaration of war.
Index funds hand over all our voting rights to giants like BlackRock and Vanguard, making industries like Big Food and Big Pharma accountable to them, not to us- the retail investors. This fosters a problem-solution loop where Big Food creates health issues, and Big Pharma profits by "solving" them. While this cycle drives massive profits and boosts stock prices, it leaves society worse off. Fund managers, holding the power we’ve ceded, push companies toward these practices for short-term gains, silencing our ability to vote and influence corporate behavior.
Every war is a banker’s war. Money lenders have the greatest incentive to keep wars going (and perhaps even get them started, along with their friends, the weapon manufacturing firms) because wars require nation-states to take on massive debts. And these bankers are more than happy to offer this debt at nice interest rates. So we may all want the wars to end, but there are many for whom the mouthwatering profits create enough of an incentive to lobby and keep them going.
That’s it for today, folks. If you enjoyed this and got this far without yawning a billion times, I’d recommend the following articles as well: