Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World

This was the 1st non-fiction book I've listened to-start to finish in a long time. I was able to stay with the writing in large part because I listened to the audiobook which is read by the author herself. Hearing her story read in her own voice made the telling come alive for me. It starts as an investigation, but the journey the author's takes her into what she calls the "Mirror world." As I don't hang out there myself, I learned from the author as she also discovered the twisted view of reality that lives here. Yet, what made this compelling and challenging for me is how she finds there an acknowledgement of real societal problems-and ones that those of us on the left are ignoring. A thoughtful and chalenging, yet satisfying read for me. Highly recommended.

Naomi Klein appreciates the irony of having written a book called No Logo and now finding herself trying to shore up her own personal brand. Naomi Wolf is another middle-aged, big haired, Jewish thinker who came to prominence in the nineties with an influential book.

And while it's annoying enough to face constant mistaken attributions on Twitter, things escalate when her doppelgänger takes a hard rightward turn into anti-vax conspiracist. Still, it seems thin gruel on which to base a book on.

But this is just an entry point into the rabbit hole that is our society's obsession with the other, with the mirror world. From the mild, like our personal online avatars in the attention economy, to the massive, with right wing media network spouting wild conspiracies as traditional journalism flounders.

Significantly, Klein notes that conspiracy theorists get the facts wrong but the feelings right. Political elites beholden to corporate interest - becomes a cabal of pedophiles planning to institute a world government. Railing at globalists, elites and the World Economic Forums conveniently diverts attention away from capitalism as a broken system and leaves most global billionaires intact.

It's a powerful tool of diversion and distraction that keeps us so busy fighting ourselves, dunking on others, owning the libs or fact-checking the right we miss the opportunity for collective action for something better. Change requires collaboration, even when it's uncomfortable. But we're so caught up in the frantic, divisive, noisy hullabaloo. We're hooked on the dopamine kick of being validated in our own little bubbles as we land another sick burn before doomscrolling to the next crisis.

In the end Klein posits that calm is a force of resistance. That calm is the precondition for focus, which gives us the capacity to prioritize and possibly work together. Just a far reaching and prescient read.

Naomi Klein has a very incisive view of the current world - the strengths and weaknesses of both the left and right, and why people slip between the cracks and land in the Mirror World full of its own set of truths and news and facts that reflect, but don't agree with the views and values of the consensus reality. I like her dawning compassion about the way that the left can be too rigid and not reflective enough, and that closing people out creates conditions for this mirroring. Usually books around a theme bend reality to fit the theme, but Klein found a lot of very honest ways in which doppelgangers apply to our current reality.

There are no firm conclusions, but the raw honesty, the uncertainty, the struggling with how complicated things are – I think that's the point. In particular, her handling of Israel and Zionism is beautifully nuanced