I have been thinking about this for almost 20 years.
And in the last four or five years, I have tried again and again to point to the same fundamental condition that both people and societies live under - often without being conscious of it.
We do not live in reality as it is.
We live - inside stories - about it.
These stories are not lies in the classical sense. They are necessary structures. Frames. Interpretive filters. They organise the world before we even reach the facts. They do not merely tell us what is probable and dangerous, and who is the hero and who is the villain. They tell us what we should fear, what we should ignore, what demands immediate action, and what can be postponed without cost. They shape our perception of proportionality, our tolerance for uncertainty, our understanding of power and our image of how states, people and intentions normally move in the world - long before we encounter the concrete data.
They determine when words are perceived as action, when action is ignored, and when the absence of action is nevertheless interpreted as a hidden threat. They teach us who is assumed to act rationally, and who is automatically assigned dark motives. And they do it so quietly that we mistake the story for reality itself.
These stories are embedded in culture, in language, in media angles and in our own emotional reactions. And precisely because of this, they are not experienced as stories - but as reality.
They function as an invisible filter that shapes what we perceive as reasonable, necessary and inevitable, long before we begin to discuss concrete decisions and consequences.
Once a story has taken form, it colours everything that comes after - everything that lies within its hierarchical placement in our consciousness.
It determines which questions are asked at all, which answers are accepted, and which alternatives appear legitimate. It changes our sense of time, risk and sacrifice - and our willingness to accept interventions, losses and deprivations that under other circumstances we would have rejected.
A clear example is the framing story of an imminent climate collapse.
When you live inside that story, the goal becomes to avert catastrophe REGARDLESS of the price. Economic costs, social tensions, loss of freedom, reduced quality of life and long-term structural consequences recede into the background, because the story itself defines the situation as existential. Survival. It creates a chain of effects - from the individual's daily choices and emotional life to society's institutions, priorities and exercise of power - a displacement of all normal ways of experiencing life, before this story took over - because when the story is so serious and so invasive, it sits so close to the lens that it colours everything else.
You probably know people who - regardless of truth value - live with this story, to the point where they can hardly focus on anything else. Paralysed by the story - which they MUST - feel called to - tell everyone else...
There are many stories about deep subjects that cut into the Human in this time.
New information is not assessed freely, but sorted. What fits is amplified. What does not is explained away, ignored or experienced as suspicious. Therefore two people can see the same statement, the same event, the same quote, the same broadcast, the same clip on the internet - and experience two vastly different realities.
It is not a question of intelligence.
That is worth noting.
It is a question of narrative embedding. And the way it affects our conception of "what is reality".
Therefore it is often futile merely to discuss conclusions. If one wants to understand what is actually going on, one must find ways to expose the story itself - its assumptions, its boundaries and its blind spots.
Many of the stories that have dominated the last 40-50 years are currently collapsing. They can no longer bear the weight of reality. That is what many experience as a form of seasickness - a diffuse sense that the world no longer holds together in the way they were told it did.
And it does not apply to one area.
It applies to many - and more are coming.
Therefore I will show one concrete method for testing yourself whether a story is primarily anchored in reality - or in framing.
The method is simple.
You reverse the statement.
And see what it does - and whether you yourself are entangled in stories.
Not to defend anyone. Not to make satire. But to soberly test whether the interpretation laid over the words can even bear its own weight.
It is easy to do, and can give you a clue.
As for example in early January when Donald Trump in an offhand remark to a journalist is asked whether he would rule out use of military force to take over Greenland. He answered what (competent) state leaders always answer when they are pressed into a hypothetical corner while other nuclear powers are listening -
"I exclude nothing. All options are on the table."
It is an open, formal answer. It does not establish action. It preserves room for manoeuvre.
From here the journalist - and subsequently the media - choose the maximally negative interpretation and the most extreme consequence one can possibly derive. Not because the answer in itself carries it, but because that interpretation is already predetermined by the story the answer is inscribed in.
We live in a story where the American president is understood in advance as irrational, power-seeking, morally corrupt and without internal constraints. Once this assumption is laid over the person, every open formulation is automatically read as latent threat, and every ambiguity as deliberate escalation.
It means that the conclusion is actually made before the analysis begins. And it is here that even highly intelligent people lose their footing - not because they lack intelligence, but because the story fills so much that it takes over thinking. At that point the process is no longer analytical, but self-reinforcing. And there it ran off the rails.
But try reversing the situation.
Imagine that the question instead was -
"Will you rule out paying every resident of Denmark and Greenland two million kroner to take over Greenland?"
The answer would necessarily be the same. Not because it is likely. Not because it is planned. But because state leaders do not rule out hypothetical extremes when pressed at a press conference.
When you make this reversal, the dramatic interpretation collapses. No one would read the answer as an intention. Everyone would understand that it is about form - not action.
It reveals something decisive.
It is not the answer that creates the escalation.
It is the interpretation.
And the interpretation is already decided by the story we are expected to live inside.
..
And then finally a sober empirical check, as one might perhaps expect from the journalistic profession -
In the weeks and months leading up to the story of an "acute military threat", the USA through its official defence and congressional system has continuously approved "Foreign Military Sales" to Denmark.
On 12 November 2025 AIM-9X Block II missiles.
On 5 December AIM-120C-8 missiles and Integrated Battle Command System components.
On 22 December AMRAAM-ER systems.
On 29 December maritime patrol capabilities (P-8A).
And on 8 January 2026 Hellfire missiles.
All open. All formal. All as part of normal military cooperation between NATO allies.
So the question here is simple -
Would the USA in the months leading up to an actual plan for military use of force against Greenland continue systematically and publicly approving weapons sales to Denmark?
The answer is known to everyone who works with security policy, diplomacy or military planning. States do not behave this way towards enemies. They behave this way towards allies.
I entirely agree that one can - and should - discuss Trump's style and rhetoric. Very much how one best manoeuvres with it - and especially wins over it. But states' intentions are read in actions and institutional behaviour. And there is nothing in the USA's actual actions that resembles preparation for military use of force.
On the contrary.
One is naturally free to hate Trump, Americans, American goods - or me because I insist on analysis before feelings - if one wishes. I will not interfere with that. But as long as it is legal, I will continue trying to understand the world as it actually is - not only as it is told. Particularly not by those who repeatedly wish to derail me for their agenda. No one mentioned - no one forgotten.
Good Saturday evening.
❤️🔥🪽
