With layoffs of engineers and technologists rolling out at a pace in the US, with venture capital investment imploding around the globe, with the cost of living exploding and the British wrapping up in outdoor wear in their homes to save on suddenly incredibly expensive energy prices, it’s easy to imagine the whole system is coming unstuck.
It isn’t, we are all being gaslighted.
Gaslighting used to be an incredible technological breakthrough that brought the boon of widespread illumination to humanity. Now this benign meaning is swamped by the idea that gaslighting is the process whereby people are driven mad by the artificial creation of a false sense of reality.
This new meaning comes care of an old British movie, remade in the US, and the verbing of its title. 'Gaslight', a sinister tale of a bigamised heroine’s trials and tribulations, is now synonymous for being driven mad by contrived means.
Most of us are now victims of gaslighting.
If...