The defining crisis of the early 21st century is the collapse of substance in favor of spectacle. This pathology, which originates in a toxic managerial philosophy, has contaminated every aspect of modern life. Whether it’s a business bro CEO celebrating a “launch” for a product that still requires 18 months of engineering, or a politician setting an arbitrary deadline for a “peace deal” that’s guaranteed to fail. We’ve allowed our culture to create a system that rewards the “show” while actively punishing the work.
1. The Financial Engine: The “Square Wheel” Ethic
The root of this problem lies in the Venture Capital (VC) model. Its core tenet is “growth at all costs” or blitzscaling. This is fundamentally an addiction to rapid gain. It is built on a portfolio theory where 9 out of 10 investments are expected to fail. The aim is for the one remaining company to achieve a massive, market-dominating “unicorn” valuation.
This creates the “Square Wheel Ethic,” a mindset where:
- Speed Triumphs Quality: The primary goal is to scale and achieve market dominance. This goal is pursued even if the underlying product is fundamentally unprofitable or unsustainable. The company rushes to market with a Minimum Viable Product (MVP). This product is the square wheel. The goal is to secure a funding high, promising to round it out later.
- The Cheat: This model is enabled by training bumpers that shield founders from real-world consequences. They avoid necessary outcomes, like generating a profit. The value is not derived from customers or revenue. Instead, it comes from subsequent investor funding rounds based purely on growth metrics (user count, speed of expansion). This allows powerful individuals to throw repeated gutter balls. They are protected from the long-term, painful consequences of their operational failures.
When these square wheels inevitably fail (e.g., Theranos, which was pure fraud based on optics; or Webvan, which massively overspent on infrastructure), the collapse is spectacular. The immense waste of capital is the final cost. The squandering of human resources is undeniable. These are the consequences of prioritizing the spectacle of the launch over the integrity of the engineering. Creating massive growth spikes with little to nothing to show for it.
2. The Political Echo: The “Art of the Desk”
This destructive, “performance-over-process” pathology has been directly mirrored in the political arena. The most recent demonstration of this is the proposed Ukraine peace deal.
This approach is characterized by the “Art of the Desk”. It involves creating a voluminous, aggressively detailed document. An example is a 28 point plan with an arbitrary Thanksgiving deadline. The goal is to generate a high-profile headline that suggests decisive action and competence.
The substance of the plan is irrelevant. Its purpose is purely to serve the political goal, claiming credit for a solution.
- Narcissistic Diplomacy: Just as the business bro demands to be called an “engineer” regardless of his qualifications, the politician insists on being called a “dealmaker.” This label is sought regardless of the deal’s feasibility. The proposed terms heavily favor maximalist Russian demands. These demands include territorial cession, a NATO ban, and military reduction. They were fundamentally non-starters for Kyiv. The terms read like a Vladimir Putin wet dream. Functioning as a spectacle for the domestic audiences in the US & Russia.
The Ethical Failure: The priority is not the complex, multifaceted, generational work of securing a lasting peace. Instead, the focus is on the short-term political high of a ribbon-cutting ceremony. The announcement of a deal has more political value to those involved. Its content and functionality are less important than its political implications.
3. The Cultural Contagion: The Attention Economy
This “show over substance” philosophy has become pervasive due to the nature of the digital economy. It is leading to a crisis in both media and cognition.
- Hollywood Stagnation: The film industry operates on the same logic. It greenlights only the established Intellectual Property (IP)—the pre-validated “safe bet.” This is because only a billion-dollar hit (the unicorn) is deemed successful. This results in an endless cycle of reboots and cinematic universes at the expense of original, mid-budget storytelling.
The Dopamine Loop and Attention Hacking: The Attention Economy is a direct exploitation of human psychology. It uses principles like the Curiosity Gap. It also uses Social Proof to generate a continuous stream of dopamine squirts in the brain. The short-form content window (30 to 90 seconds) is the hyper-efficient length for delivering an emotional or informational hit. This happens before the brain tires. It successfully conditions an entire generation toward continuous partial attention. This deliberate engineering has damaged our collective cognitive endurance.
The Political Cost of Short Attention: A populace trained to reject complexity in 30 seconds is fundamentally ill-equipped to engage with complex, long-term policy issues (like climate change, AI governance, or justice reform). This makes them highly susceptible to simple, emotionally charged, yet ultimately shallow, political rhetoric. never miss. They have only ever played with the bumpers on. The market, employees, and society absorb the collateral damage.
4. The Antidote: Reclaiming Substance and Process
Escaping this pathology requires a fundamental commitment to process and permanence—the exact opposite of the addiction to speed and spectacle.
A. The Structural Fix: The Subscription Model
We’ve been in this situation before. The sensationalism of Yellow Journalism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was fueled by an economic model. Newspapers maximized profits by driving mass circulation. They used exaggerated headlines to sell lucrative advertising. The industry only raised its standards of substance and reliability when revenue streams shifted. It relied more heavily on higher-priced subscriptions aimed at a discerning audience. This audience prioritized accuracy over spectacle. Today, the crisis is the same. Sensationalism and clickbait are driven by algorithms. These algorithms reward mass engagement to sell digital advertising. The rise of subscription models like Patreon and Substack is a necessary market revolt. It mirrors the historical solution exactly by shifting the financial incentive from mass-market advertising to direct patronage. Success is tied to low churn and sustained value for a niche audience, not viral engagement.
This shift promotes:
- Slow Content: A focus on quality, depth, and permanence over frantic, disposable volume.
- Integrity: The creator must align their content with the authentic needs of a paying audience. This is more important than meeting the arbitrary demands of an advertiser’s algorithm.
B. The Cognitive Fix: Critical Thinking Education
To repair the damage done to the attention span and civic discourse, we must treat critical thinking as a vital form of self-defense:
- Plato’s Principle: Education must reinforce the distinction between opinion (doxa) and knowledge (episteme). Students must be trained to question the source’s incentive and rely on evidence over emotional consensus.
- Journalistic Rigor: Teaching the fundamentals of verification is important. Understanding the Five W’s (Who, What, When, Where, Why) helps separate verifiable fact from sensational commentary.
- Bridging the Digital Disconnect: Students must be taught practical rules. These include the “Grandma Rule” (Would I say this to a respected elder?) for re-personalizing online communication. Another is the “24 Hour Rule”, which imposes a delay on emotional response. These rules aim to restore the social and cognitive restraint lost to instant gratification.
The Necessity of the Long Game
The solutions to the world’s most pressing problems—global warming, conflict, systemic injustice—are complex and multifaceted. Solving them will take months, years or decades of sustained and unglamorous effort. They are problems that have been slowly growing in our civilization for millennia. We have to roll up our sleeves and get ready to do the real work. Total solutions are not easy. Duct tape is easy; it’s a patch. There are no patches for these problems that will last. They are in need of systemic overhauls to fix the core problems that exist within them. We must stop rewarding the individuals who merely promise a ribbon-cutting ceremony. We must start rewarding the systems and citizens who commit to the real time consuming work. Our future depends on our collective willingness to stop rewarding the show. We need to start funding the substance. These are qualities that the digital economy trains us to reject.
