There is one specific article by Edward Snowden that has been inspiring me since its publication in August 2021. It’s called Apophenia – How the Internet Transforms the Individual into a Conspiracy of One. ‘Apohenia’ is a term coined by a German psychologist during the Second World War, it means seeing patterns that aren’t really there, a type of conspiracy mindset, an epiphany into delusion instead of reality. Today, this term leads us back to a crossroads between right and wrong.… Continue reading
Category: Information & Power
From Individual Power to Collective Shame
In 1919, Sigmund Freud’s nephew, Edward Bernays (1891-1995) founded America’s first public relations firm, applying psychoanalytic discoveries to promote consumerism and to use latent sexual energy to manipulate the masses through subliminal seduction.
Freud, and his more daring colleague Wilhelm Reich on whom I’ve written previously, knew exactly how important latent –unrealized potentiality– energy is to the overall health of the mind and body. In their work, the word ‘sexuality’ bears almost no resemblance to what it means to us today.… Continue reading
I’ve Closed My Substack
Yesterday I migrated most of my ‘Old Revolutions’ Substack content here to my own website. If you are subscribed to my publication Old Revolutions on Substack you don’t have to do anything, you will receive emails from my WordPress website LauraSlot.Com instead. My reasons for this change:
- Substack is heavily collaborating with questionable, unreliable journalists like Taylor Lorenz. I do not want my content to be surrounded by that type of marketing.
All Talk, No Action
Journalism Since the Great Financial Crisis
In early 2009 I attended a memorable panel discussion at Columbia University’s Journalism School in New York. A handful of elite journalists who were trained in finance, statistics and data came to talk to about fifty of us students. The main questions were: What could journalists have done better in reporting on the financial sector before the crash? Why hadn’t we, the best reporters in the world who were writing the first draft of history, seen the crash coming?… Continue reading
Dutch Media’s Unforced Errors
Balancing the Scales after Deceit
A law of nature dictates that energy always tries to balance itself, like a scale that’s always moving to the middle, which is the most natural, comfortable and peaceful position: homeostasis. Call it physics, biology, whatever you like, but this law also applies to all the energy that humans put out into the world. Today, in the Dutch media landscape, the scales have been tipped toward a gigantic imbalance that can only be restored by building new media initiatives.… Continue reading