The Experience Machine

We all have a mobile phone, we cant do without. A friend of mine calls it his multimedia-
prosthesis. What we also seem to share is a story of how we got fucked by phone companies, and that
should be something we all can do without. My story is about a second-hand phone I bought off someone,
and a little switch hidden somewhere in the back you are supposed to flip to off in order not to get a bill
of 225,41. That is a thousand plus percent markup from my usual bill of 12,15. First my heart sank,
then my blood pressure shot up and my mind exploded How can they do this to me, Ive been a loyal
customer for years, I always pay on time. When I contacted them. And with them I means some poor Commented [A1]: Beter een komma gebruiken
wage slave who has no single drop of power to steer the dream crushing wheels of progress, but at least
they feel very bad for you. But I can see if we can come to some arrangement, would you like that
sir?
Say what? You can? I mean yeah you do that!
Well, in my case that took a few months, of solutions posed, and then suddenly revoked because of new
tariffs and so on. In the end I got a hundred euros off the bill and an upgrade to a different data plan and I
was happy. Happy until I started doing the math. My monthly fees doubled, I had a new contract for at
least a year and I only got a hundred euros off, that meant I paid them to rip me off again. Of course, you
can say well, you should have known better, and so on. And I should have, however, must companies
make money that way? They are part of a society, and should fulfill a constructive role, contribute, not
make their sole concern how much money they can make for themselves. Obviously, they can get away
with it. The solution we need is that they block a subscription and ask whether the subscriber wants to pay
twice as much as they agreed to and give an ok. I was offered a solution I was happy with, not one I
needed. And that is what we call experience.
People want to feel they are being listened to, feel that someone gets them, that they really know
what it is actually all about. Populism provides for those needs. The need for the experience of voters that
they are being represented, listened to, not lied to is what populism provides. Actually, they offer things
that will make us pay double in the long run, lose our humanity or both. The populists say get rid of all
foreigners because they are taking our jobs. Because Dutch people love picking bell peppers so much.
The populists say more hands at the bed, because we not only visit our grandmas at Christmas, but twice a
week. The populists say terrorists, we need more safety. And so, we lose the cornerstone of our
democracy, our civil liberties. Commented [A2]: Welke vrijheden verliezen we precies?
Our society is shifting form an idea of objective truth to subjective truth. That means we are
shifting from the collective to the individual. In the collective we are aware of our obligations toward
others. What do we want to achieve? That answers questions like: rebuilding the world after a war, going
to the moon, finding a solution for poverty among the elderly (AOW). In the individual society we are
only aware of our individual needs, we demand our rights. People want to feel secure, no matter what
their grandparents or great grandparents fought for. If we do not find a better way, the individual
experience will lead to a war of every human against every human. Feelings are necessarily private and
lack common ground, what one person perceives as a solution is a problem for another. We need a
common ground of dispassionate reason to come together and talk out our differences. That is though Commented [A3]: Tough?
because sometimes we have got to go against our own direct interest or feelings. But morals, cost
something, when you look into the face of the other and see their pain, how can you keep hurting them?
Populism allows us to ask not what we can do for our country, but what our country can do for us.

Verdere opmerkingen:

- Doelgroep is een algemeen publiek: Een lezer van een kwaliteitskrant

(vriend/collega/ouder) kan het volgen. : Ik neem aan dat eventuele publicatie gaat plaats vinden
in/op een Nederlandse krant, tijdschrift of website? Het lijkt mij dat je de keuzes voor jezelf kleiner maakt
wanneer je in het Engels schrijft. Dit lijkt mij niet zo handig.
- Verder vind ik het lastig je introductie (telefoon abonnement, bedrijf dat alleen voor
winst gaat) te koppelen aan de hoofdlijn van je verhaal (populisme). Misschien kan je
dit verduidelijken om een deel van je introductie terug te koppelen in je slotwoord
waarin dit misschien makkelijker samen vloeit.