The news, The They, and the despair of solitude

Jimmy Kimmel has a segment on his show called "Lie Witness News." Basically this segment is completely absurd, totally fabricated, and made up news stories. A reporter from the Jimmy Kimmel Show asks regular people totally made up news stories that often make very little sense. People oddly answer these news stories that are mendacious with a bunch of lies essentially themselves, implying like they actually follow these news stories and they often have a passionate opinion on them. I have wondered to myself why are people lying so much about these news stories, that seem ridiculous on face value? It comes across as very odd behavior. I now think I have come up with an answer.

I am reading a book about Being and Time by Simon Critchley, with Critchley being a good philosopher himself, by the seminal philosopher Martin Heidegger. Heidegger has a very famous concept of "The They" in Being and Time which states that there is an impersonal social force that demands conformity of opinion through rigid social norms that crushes individuality. Nietzsche's concept of "The Herd," is a very similar concept to Heidegger's concept of The They. So why are people lying about watching the news? Well we live in a democracy (at least in theory) and people are supposed to watch the news and keep up on current events so they can vote in an informed manner. I think many people aren't really paying that close of attention to the news and when they do it is in a hyper partisan way that already confirms their perferred in-groups biases. So people are lying so they can act like they are part of The They essentially. Someone doesn't want to be perceived as being out of the loop. Even when they are in the loop it is often in a very dogmatic and confirmation bias way, that conforms to the norms of their political in-group.

Don't get me wrong, the 4th estate is very important. We really do need the news in a functioning democracy so ordinary people can stay informed. The news though is a levelled down, The They version of thinking. It's also hyper pastisan as I mentioned before, and in no way resembles geniune philosophical thinking usually. It's "idle chit-chat" as Heidegger would put it and I think Lie Witness News is showing that. There are good journalists still like Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi, but they often don't really have a political in-group. Without Glenn Greenwald I would have never known of a complete warmonger like Victoria Nuland who served under the Clinton, Bush, Obama and Biden administration. (Foreign policy doesn't really change that much from the two parties in my opinion.)

Heidegger writes in Being and Time about The They, and how we can possibly get out of The They. So how do we get out of idle chit-chat? Well we have to be shaken out of it, through anxiety or angst. Anxiety breaks us out of The Herd by disrupting our life, by unsettling us. It's uncomfortable but a chance for authenticity. Heidegger doesn't think we can remain authentic for very long and that we always slip back into The They, and I agree with him. The They attitudes is just part of what it means to be human. But when we are authentic and out of The They it's like we have no in-group and are in solitude intellectually. This solitude can feel lonely and despairing but to deeply invesitage something you need to seperate youself from The They and idle chit-chat, and not understand the news in Lie Witness News way of levelled down thinking. (Well the people in Lie Witness News aren't even thinking in a levelled down manner, they are just straight up lying.)

I suffer from very difficult depression but in a way depression can maybe be a good thing, because you often feel outside of The They. We usually run from difficult emotions like anxiety and despair. Hard emotions though can shape profound critical thinking, and can take us away from the levelled down news, and into a more authentic form of thinking. Thank you.