How scams work—a thread.
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All scams (religion, consumerism, covid...) work in the same way:
You are conditioned to see a problem, then given a solution in the future if you do what you're told.
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"Unless you live righteously in this life, your afterlife will be miserable"
"Because you are bored or miserable now, buying this product will bring ease and pleasure"
"Because you're not rich enough now, buying this shitcoin will reward you with more future gains"
...
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"There is a virus that you have to be reminded of every hour of the day to notice, which will only disappear if you take the treatment given by those who profit from it enormously"
"You are in the cycle of samsara and you will reach enlightenment if you meditate hard enough"
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And so on.
All these are based on diverting your attention away from your direct surroundings, into an imaginary future situation.
They exploit the fears and hopes already instilled into you by your culturally inherited presumptions about reality.
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More or less everything is in human culture is based on this dynamic:
Ignore the present moment
->
feel unfulfilled
->
be given a promise of future fulfillment
->
keep chasing the horizon until you die or figure this out (profiting those who run the particular scams).
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Fundamentally, it is always yourself who gives other people the authority to deceive you.
When you see reality directly for yourself, and trust your own direct experience, you become harder and harder to deceive.
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The last and most important thing is this:
trying to get out of the scam cycle is the final, most difficult scam.
It is difficult because it's so simple: there is no problem to begin with.
Cheers,
—FOTG
