The Four Layers of Reality
Why we aren't debating the REAL issues
by Lee Camp
It’s time to freak out.
When you watch a mainstream corporate media segment — doesn’t matter which one — I can promise you it doesn’t get to the heart of any issue. By definition corporate media only participates in surface-level analysis. For example, there are three or four layers of reality we should be discussing when we talk about any United States election. And by “discussing,” I mean “screaming about,” and by “screaming about,” I mean “freaking out about”. So, let’s freak out — shall we?
Quick tangent — I got made fun of as a kid for “freaking out” or “spazzing out” all the time. But when you think about it — when you really think about it — shouldn’t we all be freaking out? When you look around and see that so few people are enjoying their lives and so many people are struggling or oppressed, and there are new and bizarre illnesses and viruses to worry about, and all of our so-called leaders are goddamn corrupt morons — shouldn’t we all be spazzing out? If you look at our current reality, it’s all spazz-worthy.
But to realize why we need to spazz out, we need to dig deeper.
We have three or four levels of reality that we should be discussing all the time because they’re incredibly important. But, generally speaking, American politicians and media don’t talk about the deeper layers. In fact, they only talk about the surface layer (because they’re corporate tools).
So, using the presidential election from a few months ago as an example: Layer one was — Who’s going to win? Harris/Biden or Trump? That’s the surface layer. It was fair to talk about it and fair to debate it. But if we stop at that and don’t thrust our shovel deeper, we don’t actually know anything about reality. It would be like if you had never heard of apple pie and then someone shows one to you, you lick the top crust and respond, “I get it. It tastes like crust. It’s dry and crumbly.” But in fact, you still have no idea what an apple pie is.
Now let’s move on to layer two (which is already a layer beyond what your mainstream corporate media will ever report on).
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Layer two is the slightly deeper understanding that American oligarchs win each election no matter what. They win in multiple ways — one is by making sure progressives, socialists, leftists, anarchists, communists, etc. are purged from the process. The other way they dominate every election is with cold, hard cash. And the third — perhaps the most important way — is that our system simply does not pass anything through the government that isn’t beneficial to the business community, AKA Corporate America. A large 2014 Princeton study looked at 1,779 policy initiatives and found that the American public has zero impact on what gets passed through Congress. What we, the American people, want to happen has no influence on American policy. The politicians tell you it does. They act like they care. But nothing you and I want ever gets done.
It’s like being in an emotionally and mentally abusive relationship. Our corporate overlords gaslight us. They tell us we matter. They tell us they love us. They tell us they’ll change. But they never do. They just sit there in their pajamas eating ice cream out of the box with their feet on the coffee table — putting coconut sprinkles into the ice cream container even though they know you don’t like the coconut sprinkles because they’re tasteless and two days later when you find three in your mouth you’ll think it’s hair or scabs or something. Totally ruins the entire ice cream experience. They know that and they don’t care. (But that’s my life.)
At the end of the day we, the people, get nothing unless it aligns with business interests. Look at Obamacare for example — America wanted universal healthcare, but in order to get the Affordable Care Act passed, the ruling elite made sure it was a giant giveaway to the health insurance industry and was not actually universal healthcare.
Wow. Sounds like layer two is kind of important. But nope, the mainstream media will never mention it. They pretend it’s not happening.
Layer three: Capitalism and environmental collapse. Under our current economic system, the most powerful people (the corporatocracy) will eventually own everything. It’s inevitable. The gravity of capitalism pulls everything towards corporate hegemony. Every time. In every way. You can sometimes score roadblocks that slow them down, but that’s all it does — slow them down. As they take control, the environment — the natural world that we all need to survive — will be destroyed.
Take for example Monsanto Roundup herbicide. It causes cancer — it literally kills people. And it (along with other herbicides and pesticides) is also killing the bees and the insects, and unfortunately the natural world needs those little fuckers. A 2019 global scientific review warned that the collapse in insect populations could be catastrophic to ecosystems. You might love that there aren’t many gnats around, but nature is screwed without them. (“Screwed” is a technical term.) And as all the bees disappear and the insects fade into oblivion, we will fade away with them. (Maybe not next week, but it might not be as long as you think.)
So, how could this happen? Why hasn’t Monsanto, now owned by the pharmaceutical company Bayer which has its roots in Nazi Germany, been stopped? Well, they’re too fucking powerful, for one. They own the market; they own the officials; they own the regulators; at times they even own the science.
So that’s what talking about layer three looks like. It’s talking about the economic system and its global impact. And yet again, the corporate media will pretty much never have that discussion. Layer three is more off limits for cable news anchors than it is for female anchors to grow out their armpit hair. (And yes, I know that’s a reference to stereotypical old-school gender norms, but I’m not endorsing it. I’m making the point that the odds of seeing one of those reporters or anchors really dig into the inherent flaws of our capitalist system is about as likely as seeing the anchor of the 6pm hour have a giant Krusty The Clown head of hair bursting forth from under her arms. Again, not criticizing. In fact, I’d love to see that.)
Layer four — Now we really get deep. Level four is the true analysis of our reality. And there are a lot of different topics in layer four. Things like, “What really is money?” or “What the fuck are nation states? Why are we told everything we do is somehow connected to national interests? What does it matter if I was born on this side of a line and you were born on the other side of a line? Who even drew those dumb lines?” Or layer four could be something like, “Why do we live the way we do — in single-family houses or apartments? We live inside seclusion boxes, hardly interacting with our fellow humans except at our wage slave jobs where we go, ‘Hey Jim. At least it’s hump day’ or some dumb crap like that. What the hell is this existence?”
That’s layer four. It’s getting somewhat deep into the philosophical realm. So why don’t our media think the most basic questions of our existence are important at all? They don’t think it makes sense to occasionally talk about layer four, about the basis of our existence? I’m not saying make it the beginning of every newscast — “Hello nation, it’s 6pm and remember you’re a victim of wage slavery, forced to live in a seclusion box as your spirit is sucked dry.” I’m not saying that. But can’t the deepest echelons of our reality ever come up in the mainstream narrative? Or do we have to get this information by purchasing some hidden book in the basement of a bookstore run by a guy with food stuck in his mustache and one glass eye? Is that the only place we can learn about our reality?
Anyway, those are four layers of our reality that are pretty important to our daily lives. There are more — such as the fact we’re made up of energy waves or that no one even knows what makes up 96% of the universe or that modern human existence is a blink of an eye when one considers the age of the planet and other crazy stuff like that — but we’ll stop at four layers for now. There are four crucial layers of our reality. Yet your media, your leaders, most of your teachers, and most of your information sources almost never get past layer one! That’s like going to school from age three to 18 and they never teach you about anything other than how to color inside the lines.
We are stranded at layer one because it serves as a beautiful distraction. Never talk about the deeper economic system. Never talk about how nations are used to divide us. Never talk about how corporations own our society. Media only reports surface-level reality — who will win the next presidential election or who will win the race for governor or which billionaire took a trip to space yesterday, etc.
This book aims to dig deeper. This book aims to give you some insight into the forbidden layers of our reality. And for reporting and discussing these “third-rails”, I am currently one of the most censored comedians in America. My TV show was canceled, my YouTube channel with a quarter million subscribers has been banned globally, over 2,000 videos of mine have also been deleted, and my other social media accounts have been shadow-banned.
If we don’t excavate these hidden truths for our own curiosity, let’s do it because THEY clearly don’t want us to.
(This is a chapter from Lee Camp’s e-book Dangerous Ideas. You can grab a copy for $5.99 HERE or wherever you get e-books.)
