Far be it from me, a patron of dubious pleasures, to deride your taste. While it is true that I am in the occasional (okay, regular) habit of diminishing things you may personally happen to enjoy, it is not my intention to diminish you. Nor, I would argue, should this be considered the possible effect of any act of cultural criticism, no matter how Razer-ish and/or feeble. You are, after all, far more than the sum of your tastes, and if you believe you are not, you should probably see a doctor. I don’t give a turd what Nick Hornby has to say on the matter.
So. Please keep this in mind as I offer a look not directly at the television program Dr Who, but at the press currently surrounding this entertainment. That I personally happen to find Dr Who about as engaging as a TED talk on the topic of “Elon Musk is super awesome and I can’t wait until he puts proprietary wires in my brain!” is not something I will mention.
Oops. I did. This is not, however, the point.
The first and teeny point is that liking things on telly or elsewhere is almost always defensible. Or, at least, this generally requires no earnest defence. If you take delight in the fuzzy incest porn of Game of Thrones or you think of Margaret Atwood as a Great and Prescient Novelist for our times, you go, Glen Coco. Who gives a rat’s what I think, really, because the important thing here is that you are spending your leisure hours doing something that makes your working life more endurable. Goodness knows, if I didn’t have my own cheap and secret enjoyments, which possibly include obsessive repeat viewing of Sex and the City, especially Season 5, I would never amass the energy needed to perform paid labour. We need our shitty entertainment, for without it, the shitty system of capital accumulation we uphold through our toil would break. Can’t have that.
What we can have, perhaps, is a bit of a chinwag about the social significance we attribute to the cultural things that we like. Even leaving aside the Hornby idea of taste as something more than a class filter, but as the actual starting point of the being that has it, there is a current dominant view that liking something is akin to having an actual world view. This is our major point, today, comrades.
We have learned to outsource our opinions to the culture industry just as surely as we outsourced poorly paid labour to the Global South.
You know how it goes. Liking the TV version of Atwood’s mediocre work of speculative fiction serves as a substitute for feminist knowledge. Liking Chris Uhlmann, particularly in a public social media context, for his recent “mic drop” serves as a substitute for foreign policy knowledge. Liking any one of the millions of words Andrew Bolt has written serves as a substitute for knowledge of any kind. We have learned to outsource our opinions to the culture industry just as surely as we outsourced poorly paid labour to the Global South. You want to know what I think? Look at the things I like, and perhaps those others I revile.
In recent hours, Dr Who now joins The Handmaid’s Tale in providing the convenience of feminist thought that involves no thinking. Of course, Dr Who, whose protagonist will now be played by a woman, may turn out to be more legitimately feminist than Handmaid, which, one might argue, is little more than fetish material for the progressive masochist. Still. For crying out fuck. Is this really the victory for which generations of brave dissidents have fought? To be “represented” as powerful?
Congratulations to Jodie Whittaker, of course. And a heartfelt Sisterhood is Powerful to the many ladies, and some gents, who experienced a frisson when they learned that the oppressive distinction between Time Lord and Time Lady could be demolished with a non-binary reboot. But JEEZ. I mean JEEZ. It seems every other day I am called upon to celebrate the progressive victories of the culture industry, and every other day, the material expression of these victories seems to matter less.
I am not so pure as to pretend that I do not very much enjoy the constructed spectacle of an arse-kicking dame. As poor as I found Wonder Woman—a film that seeks to fantasise, rather like Chris Uhlmann, that international conflict is not a complex matter but one for which a single body of evil may be held to account—I really, really enjoyed watching ladies throw heavy things.
Representation, or its lack, in your favourite, or least favourite, entertainments may not matter as much as you think.
And, perhaps, I’ll enjoy watching Ms Whittaker upturn space-time—I am certainly enjoying the hope that Peter Capaldi may now be free to return to his important work as Malcolm Tucker. But, I cannot permit all this widespread pleasure to go on without reminding you pleasure-seekers that representation is not reality. Again, the central function of cultural representation is to permit us to feel that we have had a progressive victory, so we can go to work every day and not smash or seize the means of production.
These French automotive workers were not, I imagine, advocating chiefly for the blue-collar class to be adequately represented on So You Think You Can Dance. These Filipino Facebook contractors are not troubled by the appearance or the non-appearance of nipples on the social media giant—they’re a bit too busy wondering if they can erase the appearance of beheading videos by the end of the day. And, no, Feminist_Dr_Who_Fan_87. This is not a case of “what-abouttery” in which I crudely throw the evidence of the world’s most marginalised in your face for the sake of diminishing your own problems. I am simply reminding you—or, perhaps, just asking you to consider—that representation, or its lack, in your favourite, or least favourite, entertainments may not matter as much as you think.
I am aware that this is an unpopular view. The popular view is characterised in this upbeat post entitled “This One ‘Doctor Who’ Tweet Proves Why Female Representation Is So Important For Kids”. Or, somewhat more haughtily in the New Statesman which declares “representation matters”, without explaining why or how.
“A female Doctor,” writes some bloke called John, “will tell little girls they can play the lead, just as Wonder Woman told them they could be a superhero.”
Cultural sedatives have become a necessary part of our lives. Mistaking these for items that will lift anything but our hopes is a dangerous delusion.
Most little girls, and little boys, come to that, will never “play the lead”. No child of any gender will become a superhero. And no boy or girl writer who deigns to think of themselves as progressive can continue to ignore the harmful aspiration they champion when they insist, over and again, that cultural “representation matters”, continuing to ignore the reality it truly and necessarily fails to represent.
For the past 30 years in the West, the promise of upward mobility, of being genuinely empowered in a democratic or economic sense, has dwindled. Our wages are stagnant. Our chances at rewarding labour have been eaten by the finance sector, the poor imaginations of policy makers and automation. If “representation” matters so much, where is the “representation” of a reality we can observe in the viral appearance of payday loan predators, the “split payment between two cards” option at the Coles checkout or pawn shops?
I am not “empowered”. I am a broke middle-aged woman who sells her personal observations as an Uber driver sells their entitlement to a vehicle that is not full of strangers. I do not own a house, a car or anything with a greater exchange value than my mobile device, which actually remains the property of a telco. And me? I’m one of the lucky ones. I am not alienated from my labour and derive daily pleasure from describing our descent into hell. What do people who work in a callcentre or the arse-end of a financial services provider get? The chance to be “represented” better. Well, golly gee.
Again. Liking things is fine. Our cultural sedatives have become a necessary part of the pattern of our lives. But to mistake these for items that will lift anything but our hopes us temporarily and falsely is, in my view, a dangerous delusion.
Of course, better representation of women, people of colour, people with a disability and other overlooked groups is a pleasure. But to mistake it for a salvation that “matters” is an egregious mistake. When we employ improvements in the culture to help us maintain the belief that the material is also improving, we have lost the political ambition we like to say we have when we applaud Dr Who, or Wonder Woman, or whatever, as progressive.
If we want thoughts about the material future, we must think them. We cannot trust the culture to represent them into being.
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An artistic product is not constituted in whether an audience takes it up as incest porn or whatever else. You might as well describe Nabokov as a purveyor of child pornography. This is not a critical perspective on art or its value or even the purity of its influence, it’s a demographic perspective.
I think it’s sad that your perspective on art is so scornful, but thankfully that’s not my problem.
“For the past 30 years in the West, the promise of upward mobility, of being genuinely empowered in a democratic or economic sense, has dwindled. Our wages are stagnant. Our chances at rewarding labour have been eaten by the finance sector, the poor imaginations of policy makers and automation. If “representation” matters so much, where is the “representation” of a reality we can observe in the viral appearance of payday loan predators, the “split payment between two cards” option at the Coles checkout or pawn shops?”
That is the best para I have read from Razer in recent memory. We have all been quietly screwed by finance spivs and marketeers for a decade and a half, and it is showing in the perversity of politics and the infantilizing of popular culture.
As for Dr Who…my 16 year old still likes it but most of us have grown up to like something like ‘Pride & Prejudice’ in which time I’m sure Razer would have made a passably intelligent companion for an ageing Jane Austen.
Right on Ms Razer! Who cares who plays Dr Who, so long as we get Malcolm Tucker back.
Keep it up Helen. I think that there is an age group out there of which I’m a member who see a lot of this as emperors news clothes stuff. Perhaps because we (in our late 40s early 50s) span the non-TV /TV social divide. Sure, I grew up with TV and sure Dr Who was a favourite but, well, I grew out of it. It seemed a bit juvenile once I was in my middle 20s and had sufficient exposure to the real world to know that middle earth would never did exist and there was no galaxy far away and my imagination had been marginalised by the necessity of rationalising the day to day bastardry that now seems to form the zeitgeist (it was always there or course, the Vietnam war was a great example but now it seem to play out in petite as well as grand narratives).
I heard Scott Stevens host a serious discussion on RN the other night on the topic of comic book super heroes, he’s apparently a fan. The infantilisation of serious social topics like gender and race equality was mesmerising, like looking at horribly formed creature from the bottom of the Marianas trench, all pale and shrivelled and seemingly deformed. ‘This’ I thought, ‘this is what it has come to’. A once informative and and consciousness raising public institution desperately trying to look cool with it’s flabby body stuffed into a pair of hipster jeans. The show, BTW, was called ‘Big Ideas’, the speakers were devoid of irony.
I’d like to see any evidence that well-researched earnest fact-checking about political/economic realities has ever been or ever will be more important to people than their own choice of escapism. Honestly, I would like to see that. But who’s raking it in and drawing big crowds – fantasy or reminding people that whoa, you deluded saddos, fantasy doesn’t actually matter?
Amazing THAT message doesn’t go down better. Do keep it up though! Human nature might change any day now.
Maybe you have overlooked the foundational assumptions of this article.
We have (1) reality (economic and social and (2) representation/entertainment.
These are different things.
Representation may reinforce reality and people’s ideas, but, reality is the most influential force in people’s lives.
So the evidence-based stuff you seem to think I am proposing as an alternative to fantasy (I’m not) is still representation. It is not reality.
I am saying that reality is different to representation and that representation is not where reality starts.
Love it.
Throw us a few fake victories and maybe we’ll forget about the real losses.
Jeez girl, you sure do have a bee up your backside about Chris Uhlmann. He wasn’t trying to rewrite history, he was simply making – in the few short minutes he was given- what I regard as a perfectly legitimate statement about Frump and his administration. Calm down. Both the GOP and the Dems have been leading the US down the tube for years now. We all know that. Frump and his fake news are a daily moment of fun for me. How about Ivanka getting her clothing line made in the sweatshops of Asia? Double standards much? How about our Rupie, a charming man, being Frump’s main supporter? I thoroughly enjoy your writing, but lets stick to the topic of a female Dr Who. I never watch the show myself, I find it too boring, but live and let live, and each to their own etc. etc. etc.
Actually, if Dr Who was an African American + Asian, female Voodoo bi-Queen, I think I’d watch. It would make for an interesting combination.
Got to agree with this piece. How many stories are there in women’s mags along the lines of, ‘So you want to be the Managing Director’ come with a picture of a young succesasful looking woman in Italian business clothes, wearing an expensive Swiss watch and an even more expensive German car just out the window (clearly hers)?
The stories ignore the reality of the price of success. Just as ‘Lady Who’ and Wonder Woman depict only a glossy fantasy, they do nothing to address the real price of ‘making it’.
Pursuing a life where you really can get stuck in and make a difference almost always comes at great personal cost. Outside a cosy government bureacratic career working life is often cruel and unfair.
Establishing your own company from nothing then growing and running it is usually a brutal exercise. To quote Ross Cameron; ‘Do you know who a company director is? He is someone who goes to sleep every night wondering how he is going to pay the wages.’ He is correct.
Women business owners I know have confided (without prompting) that it is harder than rearing children. They are correct.
In my case, a new federal government regulator went after my company based on so-called non-compliance matters. Seems to have been political. It breached the Act it was meant to enforce at least 51 times over a period of a year and destroyed my company. It destroyed fifteen years of great results and intense work. It sent the worst signal possible to my industry. My wonderful employees lost their jobs. My family lost everything, and I mean everything, we ever owned apart from some old furniture.
Prior to this I was being treated for conditions common to lucky white men; hypertension, gastric reflux, anxiety disorder and depression. I had consciously decided to push myself hard year after year because I realised this was the minimum level of commitment for a chance at success. I remember many times choosing to exchange my physical and emotional health in order to secure the company and, as far as possible, our family’s financial future.
Then the federal ‘regulator’ screwed everything up. Now I am additionally being treated for Type II Diabetes and have had treatment for cancer. Having managed to maintain a good diet and exercise routine, it appears likely the principle causative factor for all these illnesses is prolonged exposure to extreme levels of stress.
Men have to be lucky. We have no choice. We can’t justify our place in society by becoming a parent. And we have to be lucky all the time. Especially since we don’t live as long as white women. But luck is not enough because there are two kinds, and the bad kind just means you can die.
It has been five years since my government destroyed whatever rewards had been earned during my working life to that date. Since then I have had 14 months paid work from 732 job applications.
This story is not unusual for white men.
Nevertheless, I am lucky and need no sympathy. As the gender chosen to fight, my white male ancestors fought for years in a couple savage wars. I suspect they quickly learnt to enjoy killing people and only one of them suffered physcial wounds.
Misrepresenting the price of success is often great for societies but damaging to individuals and those who depend on them.
Be careful what you wish for. Luck is a sword with two edges and the world has never been fair.
Very interesting reply. Somewhat divergent, but interesting nonetheless.
Firstly, the killing was secondary to the status, I feel/think. It’s the equivalent of women gaining status through giving life; men have traditionally gained social status by taking it. Alas.
The thing is, it is fleeting. A few years of parenthood is ok, but it’s underwritten by an ennui and fear that belie the ‘ease’ of bringing up children. It sort of IS easy. I do love being at home and fear having to return to the corporate world where I am chained to a desk, working towards KPIs etc. So it’s interesting that you equate bringing up children with running a business. They are more alike that working for the man/running own business. One is adult, the other infantilising.
Good on you for giving it a go. Most of us just don’t have the guts :)
Michelle
I think trying to sheet home everything from a failed business venture to your poor health to a government department and your gender is a bit of a long bow. Even if that was the case you’re clearly not the typical white middle class male company director or senior manager of which I know plenty.
You really do have a bee in your bonnet about Chris Uhlmann, don’t you? He wasn’t trying to re-write history, or even make a deep philosophical political statement. He was given a few minutes to make some points which I thought were relevant. Frump is a cancerous boil leeching the life out of US politics. Yes, yes, I know it has been going on for a long time and both the GOP and the Dems are equally to blame for it. But Jeez, what the fuck. Lighten up girl.
Bloody marvelous Helen – keep it up. Most entertaining. I don’t particularly care if the Dr is a woman or a man or any of the alphabet of sexes or whatever the politically correct descriptor is these days – I remain a rusted on Dr Who fan because it takes me into a fantasy world that takes my mind off all the things I want to take my mind off if only for a half hour or so. And if the creators ever change the lead in and end theme, I’ll volunteer to shoot the perpetrator.
A female Dr Who. Why on earth not. Great idea. After all, I believe females can be doctors and, I suspect, they can also be Time Lords. About time we had another perspective. Looking forward to it.
I think this is the opinion that Razer is writing about. Representation is not reality, and as a commenter very succinctly and astutely said above: if they give us these fake victories, we’ll forget about the very real losses.
I agree m’lady.
When I heard it was someone from Broadchurch, I hoped Olivia Colman was to be the next timeperson. Nothing against the lady actperson selected. But Olivia would have rocked as Dr Whatsit.
And we’ll know things have changed in tv-land when Jennifer Patterson (ex-half of Two Fat Ladies -and yes, I know she’s dead) or someone similarly wrinkled and not skinny, becomes Dr Who.
Well, you are correct. It’s a small example of a much bigger problem
To wit, I followed your link to the article based on a parent’s tweet of her child’s reaction to a Dr Who teaser (talk about a chain of evidence) and the ‘writer’ says,
“And seriously, that huge smile on her face at the end? That’s the thing feminists fight for.”
OMFG! She fights to outsource her thinking to a child on Twitter?
Yes.
And why?
It’s easier than thinking.
That’s the real problem.
I think musing about the “fuzzy incest porn ” of Game of Thrones is much more engaging than wondering if a female Dr Who will be as entertainingly quirky as Baker or Capaldi.
I agree the gender transition is unlikely to advance feminism any more than, or even as much as, Billie Piper did as the Dr’s companion.
For that matter, Capaldi’s role as that of an older male dr probably encouraged us ancient Whovians more than the new female will do for women.
The import of these weighty matters is, as Helen points out, about as relevant as Chris Uhlmann but presented in her inimitable and enjoyable style.😊
I really don’t care if the Dr lead is played by a recently disgraced Dishlicker trainer or one of his doped charges. However I do care that the pleasure derived by those who were mostly driven to school in special buses or Volvos are now having their joy jam scotched. Sure they have a strange and indecent obsession with this show. But jesarse Hell what are you trying to do – you passion wrecker? Drive them back to their stamp collections? Let them dribble and you not quibble.
Geez as a lefty unionist who didn’t even have a bus to get me over the mountain to school every day and never saw a Volvo in our neighbourhood, and who watched every Dr Who episode from the first; I can assure you that nothing will drive us to stamps. Personally I was betting on having a black woman radical socialist for the next doctor.
For those suggesting my demolition of a straw-man. Here are a few of the claims that say this casting “matters”.
Why it matters that a woman is the new ‘Doctor Who’:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/tv/2017/07/17/doctor-who-first-female-doctor-jodie-whittaker/484504001/
Why a female Doctor Who really matters to young girls:
http://metro.co.uk/2017/07/17/why-a-female-doctor-who-really-matters-to-young-girls-6785159/
The new Doctor on Doctor Who is a woman and here is why it is important
https://culturess.com/2017/07/16/thirteenth-doctor-who-woman-importance/
These ‘Doctor Who’ Critiques Are All The More Reason The Show Needs A Female Doctor:
https://www.bustle.com/p/these-doctor-who-critiques-are-all-the-more-reason-the-show-needs-a-female-doctor-70469
Doctor Who: why the new Time Lord can and must be a woman:
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2017/jan/31/doctor-who-new-time-lord-woman-peter-capaldi
A female Doctor? She’s the revolutionary feminist we need right now:
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2017/jul/17/female-doctor-revolutionary-feminist-ideal-we-need-doctor-who
So, I don’t think it’s *all* in my silly old head.
I’m glad Helen has noted the above as I did wonder a little about a strawwoman cricitism of the piece
Actually it is more than that; surely the producers of the series did it knowingly – anticipating just such a reaction – so to take aim at Helen’s very articulate and shrewd response is to respond to your subconscious irritation that she doesn’t just play along with the standard media narrative. Just be a good girl, you.
And wonder woman – wasn’t that show around before I was born? How is it going to make a difference now, when it didn’t then?
Also, Charlotte Wood’s novel “The Natural Way of Things” left me with the same impression. Published to gushing reviews and pointedly discussed as a ‘feminist’ novel, I found it depressingly reductive of gender and neither entertaining nor enlightening.
Equality of representation on TV for women and people of colour matters because a) it means greater equality of opportunity in employment and career-prospects for women and POC who actually work in the culture and arts industries and b) because cultural and artistic representation is not just about mindless entertainment, pleasure or ‘time-out’ but also reflects, influences and forms part of our thinking and our world. It isn’t everything, sure; but it isn’t nothing.
”they learned that the oppressive distinction between Time Lord and Time Lady could be demolished with a non-binary reboot.” … The thing is, it’s not a ”reboot”. The possibility for this change is written explicitly into the lore of the show and it’s the logical result of a story arc, so it’s not on the same level as, say, the Ghostbusters remake, of simply putting a lady there that used to be a dude. She’s not even the first character to become female after a history of being male, she’s just the most important one so far.
No, I don’t think patriarchy is going to crumble when her name appears in the credits, but I sure am thrilled. Doctor Who has something which is, as far as I am aware, almost unique in mainstream family fiction- this character is not a human super hero that has to operate inside a human-crafted system of misogyny while defying it and opposing it, like, say, Buffy the vampire slayer [whom I also adore, but for very different reasons]. Within the context of the show, it is physiologically and culturally completely irrelevant to her, as it is acknowledged her species has almost no perception of gender roles due to the very fact they can regenerate themselves, and she has interacted with other characters on this level [one a love interest]. She stands completely outside of our human cultural baggage regarding gender and can be a commentary on it from that angle, which is what is new and interesting.
That’s just intellectual snobbery. Nobody suggested that a woman Doctor had to mean anything more than a refreshing change and an interesting twist to a very well established formula. Trying to prove that it doesn’t somehow end female disadvantage is just wankery.
So when a reputable publication like the New Statesman says “representation matters” in direct reference to this show, I should discount this claim (made elsewhere) because…?
Of course that bastion of male dominance and patriarchy would be threatened by a thousands year old, shape shifting alien who this time around looks like a woman. Therefore, it’s great that they published Laurie Penny’s thoughtful, personal and funny article. It probably ticked all their gender, LGTBQ and nerd article boxes for the week..
Laurie Penny was “thoughtful”. When did this occur?
Helen, just as many sources squawk on about the Beeb being too PC for their own good. For the very worst, look no further than the usual suspects vis a vis the Daily Mail’s television ‘critic’.
As an older Whovian I have to admit it’s not about who plays Who, but just about the escape. The reboot since Christopher Ecclestone has been great, notwithstanding others in my demographic pooh-poohing certain aspects of that arc.
I wonder how many times in the past 52 years someone has asked, “Hey, in the next incarnation let’s make the Doctor female”? It’s perhaps not an indication that “representation matters”, but a signpost that, at least, surely but slowly, things ARE changing for the better. I have found the patriarchy that has existed for the last 3-5000 years (in the Christian era particularly) abhorrent.
chris
PS: apologies for the commas. They along with semicolons are my bane
I continue to watch Dr Who, a habit picked up when I was a young teen, even though I now think the stories are more often silly and/or incomprehensible. A “cultural sedative” seems apt in my case. I look forward to what Jodie Whitaker can make of the role.
However, do you think it possible that all this representation, while a very poor substitute for genuine thinking and action, might nevertheless inspire someone to actually think and do something useful at some point in the near future? I live in hope, anyway.
I probably didn’t read this closely enough (it does get complicated and I need to collect the kids from school) but is the gist that because a thing is not a thing in the real world then that thing should not be represented in a different way, even fictitiously, even as a suggested representation that could be a normalising model for a way forward from a situation in which the thing in the real world should be allowed to be a thing with improved rights/opportunities/equality/social roles?
That is, do we only represent social formations as they are, not ever as they might or should be?
Is the function of fiction to embody social aspiration now dead?
Nice rant, Helen. We love you and appreciate that you tell it like it is, whether it is pointless or not. It’s how you write it. That is the point.
Terry: Please don’t insult Helen if you don’t intend to.
Oh Helen – missing the point completely.
No one has claimed it will changed the world, smash the patriarchy or do anything significant. Those of us who love Doctor Who and are cheering at the 13th Doctor being a woman merely think its going to make for a great story. That’s it.
You’re raining on this parade for no good reason methinks.
“Methinks” i have referenced publications that do say “representation matters” in reference to this show. I am raining on that particular parade of claims.
Yes and that’s all wankery too. It’s Dr Who right….? Dr Who!!!
It certainly hasn’t lasted over 50 years by taking itself this seriously.
In terms of culture and society you are right Helen. As a 30 year plus fan of doctor who however, there is a little spark of evangelical happiness that something I love has become potentially more accessible to a wider audience. But yes sure, down with the overlords!
My god that was a lot of waffle about everything but the Dr Who show…. unhappy or a laugher of ones own jokes?
I’m on my periods, mate.
As a fan of Doctor Who, I pretty much agree with this, I think it is important for women to have the same opportunities for great roles as men do, and it is great to see Whittaker get this role, but one shouldn’t exaggerate the significance. Her selection will take the show in an exciting new direction.
Doctor Who does, by the way, critique capitalism from time to time, with the Doctor even saying that capitalism is a system that will eventually be replaced by something better. Which is not something that one would ever associate with Star Wars or Harry Potter, for example. He’s probably a Fabian socialist.
And a recent episode had a go at Brexit.
http://www.express.co.uk/showbiz/tv-radio/816121/Doctor-Who-season-10-episode-9-Mark-Gatiss-Peter-Capaldi-Pearl-Mackie-Matt-Lucas
“Thin Ice”, Episode 3 this season, was a critique of Industrial Revolution capitalism in the UK, even if the resolution was insufficiently radical.
“After all, the monster in Thin Ice is arguably capitalism.”
https://them0vieblog.com/2017/04/30/doctor-who-thin-ice-review/
Mistaking the representation for a thing in itself
Or rather peddling the representation as a thing in itself
Our enslavers get trickier and trickier
This, I think, is a trap of no one’s design, though. It’s not something that was intended to happen, even though propagandist distraction is used, say, in times of war. It’s a belief system we’ve adopted to fit with the demands of the era. Our mode of organisation (production) produces strange ideas.
Now, if only more folks would consider that the real world creates ideas more powerfully than ideas create the world, we might get somewhere!