What You Call Love
August 7, 2019·2 comments·In Brief
Institutions have spent decades engineering the symbols people use to assign meaning to their lives. A politician invents values to win power. A financial firm invents ESG frameworks to gather assets. A trader invents rotation trades to earn commissions. The gap between what these systems claim to represent and what they were actually designed to do is widening. But recognizing this manipulation raises an unsettling question: if the symbols are constructed, what remains real?
• The mechanics of meaning-making are not accidental. Every category you use to understand the world—love, value, rotation trades—was designed by someone with an incentive to shape how you think. Understanding this isn't cynicism. It's literacy.
• Deconstruction of symbols creates a trap. Once you see how meaning is manufactured, it becomes tempting to believe nothing is real at all. But that's a false equivalence. Seeing through manipulation doesn't mean abandoning the concept of truth.
• This applies everywhere power intersects with persuasion. Politics uses invented values. Finance uses invented frameworks. Advertising uses invented emotions. The mechanism is identical. The scale of its application is what changes.
• The discomfort isn't in recognizing the manipulation. It's in the moment after recognition, when you realize you still have to navigate a world full of engineered symbols. You can't opt out of meaning-making just because you understand how it works.
• What separates clarity from nihilism is whether you believe anything exists beneath the symbols. The question no longer is whether manipulation is real. It's whether reality is.
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This commentary is being provided to you as general information only and should not be taken as investment advice. The opinions expressed in these materials represent the personal views of the author(s). It is not investment research or a research recommendation, as it does not constitute substantive research or analysis. Any action that you take as a result of information contained in this document is ultimately your responsibility. Epsilon Theory will not accept liability for any loss or damage, including without limitation to any loss of profit, which may arise directly or indirectly from use of or reliance on such information. Consult your investment advisor before making any investment decisions. It must be noted, that no one can accurately predict the future of the market with certainty or guarantee future investment performance. Past performance is not a guarantee of future results.
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Comments
I used to think there were some facts that you could count on…like the time. Then I read Carlo Rovelli’s book on time. “The Order of Time” and well…Mind. Blown.
In the 60’s Marshall McLuhan commented (I’m paraphrasing):
The smartest, most intelligent people on the staff of the NYTimes are not the editorial writers. They are the ad writers.
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