Why is the subject of calculated neglect so neglected on Quora?

Carl I think there are a couple of things happening….

1) As I mentioned in a previous A2A on this topic, we are all increasingly losing our capacity for discernment of the deceptive manipulation and calculated neglect that is being willfully and artfully applied on a global scale. In a sense, the “neglect” of this topic is therefore partially attributed to ignorance about its reality. So we become frogs in a pot of water being brought to a boil, and a large part of the calculated neglect becomes (of necessity) keeping us ignorant of that fact.

2) The second issue, more specific to Quora, is that Quora itself is gradually becoming subject to the same propaganda mechanisms that have been injected into other social media of late — via Cambridge Analytica, Russian hackers and bot farms, etc. Someone recently asked me to answer a question with “totalitarianism” in the topic, which was then — unbelievably — changed to “socialism” by Quora content review, when it has absolutely nothing to do with socialism! So Quora is not immune to deceptive manipulations that continue to keep people ignorant and misinformed.
The steady attack on civil society by neoliberal agents — which includes undermining educational institutions, news media, informational resources, and indeed “facts” themselves — has coincided with a culture steeped in consumerism, self-soothing, comfort-seeking, titillation and distraction. A perfect union. Thus an increasingly global pool of worker-consumers is essentially self-medicating to manage the pain of being boiled alive by capitalism, and the neoliberal plutocrats and their obedient owner-shareholders are more than happy to provide additional consumables for that self-medication.

But, like David Foster Wallace’s observation about fish in water, a majority of us simply do not recognize the pain that is driving us, or that capitalism is the root cause of that pain, or that we are being force-fed a spectacle to further dilute and redirect our democratic will away from realizing or correcting actual causes. And so instead we are encouraged to lash out — to elect folks like Trump, or blame immigrants and minorities, or blame progressive-minded policies, etc. — and the neoliberal puppet masters, delighted by this windfall of populist conformance, can then amplify that misdirected ire so that we become dumber, more ignorant, more confused, more divided, and more tribalistic in our blame. It’s really quite ingenious.

My 2 cents.

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