Two social phenomena have become increasingly visible in contemporary Sri Lankan social media.
The first is the proliferation of channels presenting Buddhism alongside quantum mechanics, string theory, holographic universes, multidimensional realities, consciousness studies, and various scientific concepts. These presentations often suggest that hidden correspondences exist between ancient Buddhist teachings and the deepest secrets of modern physics.
The second phenomenon is the spread of narratives surrounding curses, karma, destiny, and political retribution. Following the social upheavals of 2022, many people observed that some individuals who publicly cursed politicians later died before those they had condemned. These deaths, although often explainable through ordinary causes, became incorporated into stories of cosmic justice, karmic revenge, or supernatural return.
At first glance, these appear to be unrelated developments. One belongs to the realm of pseudo-scientific infotainment, while the other emerges from political mythology and popular superstition. Yet both reveal something important about contemporary subjectivity. In different ways, they transform uncertainty into certainty, promise access to hidden knowledge, and provide symbolic explanations for events that are fundamentally contingent. By doing so, they offer relief from anxiety and help subjects navigate a world that increasingly feels unstable, confusing, and unpredictable. Most importantly, both demonstrate how social media is becoming a powerful machine for producing and reproducing particular forms of desire, drawing individuals into repetitive circuits of fascination, belief, and emotional investment.
The Desire for Hidden Knowledge
Human beings do not simply seek material things; they also seek meaning. We want explanations for why events happen, why society changes, and why we suffer. We are naturally drawn to stories that help the world feel coherent and understandable. This tendency becomes even stronger during periods of uncertainty. Economic crises, political instability, rapid technological change, and social fragmentation often leave people feeling anxious and disoriented. In such circumstances, many begin searching for narratives that can restore a sense of order and certainty.
The modern internet has become an ideal environment for this search. Much of the most popular online content does not necessarily provide rigorous knowledge or careful analysis. Instead, it offers something psychologically more attractive: the feeling that a profound truth exists just beyond ordinary understanding. Viewers are encouraged to believe that there are hidden realities, secret connections, or deeper explanations that most people have failed to recognize. The content creator then appears as one of the few individuals capable of revealing these hidden truths.
This dynamic creates a powerful relationship between creator and audience. Rather than encouraging independent understanding, it often places viewers in a position where they feel they must return again and again for the next revelation. What is being produced is not necessarily knowledge itself, but a continuous desire for knowledge—a feeling that the ultimate explanation is always just one more video away. In this way, fascination can gradually become dependency, and the search for understanding can be transformed into an endless cycle of consumption.
The Four Discourses and Social Media
One of the most useful tools offered by Lacan for understanding contemporary social media is his theory of the Four Discourses. Although developed decades before the internet, it provides a surprisingly accurate framework for understanding how authority, knowledge, desire, and belief circulate in digital spaces. Social media platforms are not simply places where information is exchanged; they are environments in which particular relationships between speakers and audiences are constantly produced and reinforced.
The Master's Discourse
Many influencers and online commentators operate in a way that resembles what Lacan called the Master's Discourse. In this structure, the speaker presents himself as someone who already possesses the answer. Claims are delivered with confidence and certainty, while doubt, ambiguity, and complexity are pushed aside. The audience is not encouraged to investigate, verify, or critically examine what is being said. Instead, they are invited to trust the authority of the speaker.
The unspoken message is simple: "I know something important, and you do not." This position can be highly attractive, especially in times of social uncertainty when people are searching for clarity and direction. A confident explanation often feels more reassuring than a careful and nuanced one. Modern social media algorithms tend to amplify exactly this style of communication because certainty attracts attention, generates emotional reactions, and encourages sharing. Complexity, qualifications, and genuine intellectual uncertainty rarely produce the same level of engagement.
As a result, social media frequently rewards those who speak with the greatest confidence rather than those who possess the strongest evidence. The authority of the speaker gradually becomes more important than the quality of the argument itself, creating an environment where charisma can easily be mistaken for knowledge and conviction can be mistaken for truth.
The University Discourse
A second mechanism operates in a more subtle way. Rather than relying purely on personal authority, many social media presenters borrow the language of science to give their claims an appearance of legitimacy. Discussions about rebirth, karma, Nirvana, consciousness, or spiritual awakening are often accompanied by references to quantum mechanics, string theory, multidimensional realities, energy fields, or holographic universes. To most viewers, these are highly sophisticated scientific concepts associated with advanced research and intellectual expertise.
The problem is not that science and philosophy should never be discussed together. The problem arises when scientific terminology is used primarily as a source of authority rather than as part of a disciplined investigation. In such cases, scientific concepts are often removed from their original context and inserted into speculative narratives without the rigorous methods, mathematical frameworks, or empirical evidence that gave those concepts meaning in the first place.
As a result, what is presented is often not science itself but the image of science. Scientific language functions almost like a badge of credibility, creating the impression that a claim has been validated simply because it is surrounded by technical terminology. This helps explain why such presentations can sound convincing even when they lack methodological rigor. For many viewers, the presence of scientific vocabulary creates a feeling that deep knowledge is being communicated, even when the actual connection between the concepts remains vague, unsupported, or purely speculative.
From a Lacanian perspective, this is a characteristic feature of what he called the University Discourse. Knowledge itself becomes a source of authority, yet the audience is rarely invited to engage critically with that knowledge. Instead, scientific terminology is deployed to reinforce belief, making speculation appear more credible and transforming the appearance of expertise into a powerful persuasive tool.
A particularly revealing variation of this discourse appears when presenters claim that modern scientific discoveries were already contained in ancient Buddhist scriptures. Statements such as "quantum mechanics was described by the Buddha thousands of years ago," "string theory confirms Buddhist cosmology," or "modern science is only now discovering what the Buddha already knew" have become increasingly common. While such claims can be emotionally satisfying for believers, they often collapse important differences between scientific and religious forms of inquiry.
Science advances through observation, mathematical formalization, experimentation, criticism, and revision. Buddhism, by contrast, emerged as a practical path concerned primarily with suffering, ethical conduct, and liberation. To retrospectively interpret modern scientific theories through ancient religious texts often tells us less about either science or Buddhism than about a contemporary desire to secure certainty. The goal is no longer to understand quantum mechanics or Buddhist philosophy on their own terms, but to establish the superiority of one discourse by recruiting the authority of the other.
From a Lacanian perspective, this operation reveals a deeper desire for a complete and unquestionable knowledge. If the Buddha already knew quantum mechanics, cosmology, neuroscience, and consciousness studies, then uncertainty disappears. The difficult work of inquiry can be replaced by the reassuring fantasy that ultimate knowledge has already been achieved. What appears as a celebration of knowledge may therefore conceal a resistance to the very openness and uncertainty that genuine knowledge requires.
In this sense, the social media preacher does not merely borrow the language of science; he transforms science into mythology. Scientific concepts cease to function as tools for investigation and become signifiers in a grand narrative of hidden truth. Quantum mechanics becomes less a branch of physics than a symbolic guarantee that ancient wisdom was always right. The audience is invited not to learn science, but to enjoy the feeling that all mysteries have already been solved. This is precisely why such narratives can become so compelling, and why they are endlessly repeated despite the absence of rigorous evidence. The satisfaction lies not in discovering truth, but in believing that the truth was already known all along.
The Hysteric's Discourse
The relationship between many social media audiences and content creators can also be understood through what Lacan called the Hysteric's Discourse. In this structure, the audience is driven by a persistent sense that something important is missing. Viewers are continually searching for answers to questions such as: What is really happening behind the scenes? What truths are being hidden from us? Is there a deeper reality that ordinary people cannot see? These questions are often fueled by a genuine desire to understand a confusing and uncertain world.
Social media platforms are particularly effective at sustaining this search because they rarely provide definitive answers. Instead, each explanation tends to generate new mysteries. A video claiming to reveal a hidden truth is followed by another promising an even deeper revelation. One secret leads to another, and each answer opens the door to further questions. The audience returns again and again, hoping to finally arrive at a complete explanation, while the content creator continues to supply new puzzles, connections, and revelations.
As a result, neither side ever reaches a genuine conclusion. The process becomes self-perpetuating. The search itself becomes more important than finding an answer. What keeps viewers engaged is not necessarily the discovery of truth, but the ongoing feeling that a greater truth remains just beyond their reach. The promise of revelation is continually renewed, creating a cycle in which curiosity, uncertainty, and anticipation sustain one another indefinitely.
From this perspective, the attraction of such content does not lie solely in the information being presented. It lies in the emotional and psychological investment generated by the search itself. The audience becomes attached not only to particular explanations but also to the very experience of questioning, suspecting, and seeking hidden meanings. In this way, the desire for answers can become an endless pursuit, with each new revelation serving primarily as an invitation to continue searching.
The Analyst's Discourse
The position of the analyst is fundamentally different from the other discourses. Rather than presenting himself as someone who possesses hidden knowledge, the analyst becomes interested in the subject's relationship to knowledge itself. Instead of asking whether a particular theory is true or false, the analyst asks a different set of questions: Why is this idea so attractive? What desire is being satisfied through believing it? What anxiety does it help to relieve? What fantasy does it allow us to maintain?
In this sense, the analyst is less concerned with uncovering secret truths than with understanding the structure of the search for truth. When someone becomes captivated by theories about hidden dimensions, cosmic justice, secret conspiracies, or ancient wisdom containing all scientific knowledge, the analyst does not immediately challenge the content of those beliefs. Instead, the analyst examines the function those beliefs serve in the person's life. What uncertainty do they help manage? What fears do they help contain? What sense of meaning or identity do they provide?
This approach shifts attention away from the object being pursued and toward the desire driving the pursuit itself. The central question is no longer whether there really is a hidden truth waiting to be discovered, but why the subject feels compelled to seek one. In many cases, the endless search for certainty may reveal more about the searcher than about the world being investigated.
Seen from this perspective, both psychoanalysis and Buddhism share an important insight. Neither is primarily concerned with providing comforting answers to every metaphysical question. Instead, both encourage a deeper examination of the attachments, cravings, fears, and fantasies that motivate our search for certainty. The crucial task is not necessarily to discover a final hidden truth, but to understand why we need such truths in the first place. It is at this point that the focus shifts from the mysteries of the world to the structure of our own desire, and from the promise of revelation to the possibility of genuine self-understanding.
The Analyst's Position and the Temptation of Intellectual Performance
The rise of social media has transformed not only how knowledge is consumed but also how intellectual authority is performed. In many contemporary environments, a person who does not appear regularly on YouTube, podcasts, or social media discussions can easily become invisible, regardless of the quality of their ideas. Visibility itself increasingly functions as a marker of credibility. As a result, many individuals feel pressure to become public interpreters of reality.
This situation creates a subtle temptation. The content creator may begin with a genuine desire to educate, explore ideas, or contribute to public discussion. Yet over time, the demands of the platform encourage a different role. Viewers expect certainty. Algorithms reward confidence. Ambiguity performs poorly. Nuanced arguments attract less attention than bold claims. The presenter gradually becomes tempted to appear as someone who possesses answers rather than someone engaged in inquiry.
From a Lacanian perspective, this is where the position of the analyst becomes particularly difficult to maintain. The analyst is not the one who claims to possess hidden knowledge. The analyst is the one who remains attentive to questions, contradictions, and uncertainties. However, social media often rewards the opposite posture: the appearance of mastery. The presenter is encouraged to become a figure who explains everything, connects everything, and leaves no mystery unresolved.
The danger is not necessarily dishonesty. More often, it is identification with the role itself. A creator may gradually begin to enjoy being perceived as the person who knows. The audience reinforces this image through admiration, subscriptions, comments, and loyalty. The platform rewards it through visibility and influence. What began as an investigation can slowly become a performance of expertise.
For this reason, the most valuable intellectual voices may not be those who offer the greatest certainty, but those who preserve a space for questioning. They distinguish clearly between what is known, what is uncertain, and what remains speculative. Rather than presenting themselves as owners of truth, they invite others into the process of inquiry itself. In a digital culture increasingly organized around certainty and spectacle, maintaining such a position may be one of the most difficult—and most important—intellectual tasks.
Repetition and Social Media Jouissance
One of the most striking features of social media is that its power does not primarily come from transmitting new information. Its real power lies in repetition. A viewer watches one video, then another, and then another. Although the presenters, topics, and examples may vary, the same underlying themes often return again and again: hidden truths, secret knowledge, suppressed histories, quantum consciousness, cosmic karma, destiny, spiritual awakening, and revelations that ordinary people are supposedly unable to see.
At first, each video appears to offer something new. Yet beneath the changing content, the structure remains remarkably similar. The viewer is repeatedly placed in the position of someone standing just outside a great mystery, while the presenter occupies the role of the guide who promises access to deeper levels of understanding. Every revelation points toward another revelation. Every answer opens the door to another hidden question. The journey never quite reaches its destination.
In many cases, the performance itself becomes more important than the knowledge being communicated. A presenter may rapidly move from quantum mechanics to Buddhism, from neuroscience to ancient philosophy, from cosmology to psychology, sprinkling the discussion with references to obscure books, little-known thinkers, exotic traditions, and technical vocabulary. The effect can be impressive. The viewer is left with the feeling of having witnessed a profound intellectual synthesis unfolding in real time, in front of their own eyes.
Yet one is sometimes reminded of a curious possibility: what if the presenter understands these terms no better than the audience? What if the performance consists less in mastering ideas than in arranging them into an intriguing pattern? The internet has made it remarkably easy to collect fragments of information, quotations, concepts, and stories from widely different sources and then weave them together into a narrative that sounds profound. The skill required is often not expertise but fluency in the appearance of expertise.
There is an irony here. Some content creators privately admit that they remain unconvinced by many of the theories they publicly discuss. Others acknowledge that they use technical language whose precise meaning they themselves could not fully explain. Their task is not necessarily to establish truth but to sustain curiosity. The objective is to keep the viewer moving from one mystery to the next, from one revelation to another, ensuring that the desire for explanation never quite reaches satisfaction.
From a Lacanian perspective, this is precisely why the cycle is so effective. The presenter does not need to deliver knowledge; he only needs to sustain desire. The audience returns not because the mystery has been solved, but because it has not. Each unfamiliar term, each obscure reference, each invocation of an ancient text or scientific theory functions as another signifier in an endless chain pointing toward a truth that is always promised but never fully delivered.
Lacan would describe this process as a repetitive circuit of jouissance, a term that refers to a peculiar form of enjoyment that goes beyond simple pleasure. From this perspective, viewers are not merely consuming information or acquiring knowledge. They are participating in a cycle that produces a particular kind of emotional and psychological satisfaction. The excitement comes from the feeling that one is approaching an important truth, that a final explanation is almost within reach, even if it never fully arrives.
This helps explain why factual corrections often have surprisingly little effect on such narratives. The attachment is not primarily to the truth or falsity of a particular claim. Rather, it is to the experience generated by the search itself. A debunked theory can quickly be replaced by another. One hidden truth can be exchanged for the next. The enjoyment persists because it is sustained by repetition rather than verification.
Social media platforms intensify this process through their recommendation algorithms. Once a viewer engages with a particular theme, the platform supplies more of the same, creating an endless stream of related content. Over time, the repetition itself begins to generate familiarity, emotional investment, and a sense of belonging. What is repeatedly encountered starts to feel increasingly true, not necessarily because it has been demonstrated, but because it has become a familiar part of the viewer's symbolic world.
From a Buddhist perspective, this dynamic bears a striking resemblance to the cycle of craving itself. Desire promises satisfaction but continually reproduces itself through repetition. Each new object appears to offer fulfillment, yet the underlying restlessness remains. In a similar way, the promise of hidden knowledge on social media often functions less as a path toward understanding than as a mechanism for perpetuating the desire to keep searching. The result is an endless movement toward truth without ever arriving at it—a cycle sustained not by knowledge, but by the enjoyment generated through its continual pursuit.
Returning Curses and the Production of Meaning
The phenomenon of returning curses illustrates these mechanisms particularly well. Consider a familiar pattern. A person publicly curses a politician during a period of political turmoil. Years later, that individual dies from natural causes, illness, accident, or circumstances unrelated to the original event. Almost immediately, a chain of interpretations begins to emerge. Some claim that the curse "returned" to its sender. Others argue that karma has acted with cosmic precision. Still others speak of destiny, universal justice, or invisible spiritual forces settling old accounts.
What is remarkable is not the death itself, but the speed with which meaning is attached to it. An ordinary event is transformed into a message. A coincidence becomes evidence. A death becomes a verdict.
From a Lacanian perspective, this is not fundamentally different from the interpretive mechanisms already discussed. Once signifiers begin to circulate freely, events become available for endless symbolic connection. The death is no longer understood as a contingent event among many others. Instead, it is woven into a larger narrative that retrospectively explains what happened. The symbolic order rushes to fill the gap left by uncertainty.
Why does this happen? Because contingency is difficult to tolerate. Human beings struggle to accept that many events simply occur without serving a moral purpose. Death, in particular, confronts us with what Lacan called the Real: something that resists complete explanation and cannot be fully integrated into our systems of meaning. Faced with this discomfort, stories emerge. Myths arise. Explanations multiply. The symbolic order attempts to domesticate the Real by transforming randomness into destiny and contingency into necessity.
The same mechanism can be observed in countless social media discussions. A political event becomes evidence of cosmic karma. A coincidence becomes proof of a hidden force. A personal tragedy becomes a sign from the universe. Once this style of interpretation takes hold, the world begins to resemble a giant text waiting to be decoded, with every event appearing to contain a secret message intended for those capable of seeing it.
A Buddhist Critique of Social Media Delusion
From a Buddhist perspective, the deeper problem is not whether a particular theory is true or false. The issue is attachment itself. Both the fascination with hidden knowledge and the obsession with cosmic justice reveal forms of attachment that Buddhism has long identified as sources of suffering.
We become attached to certainty when uncertainty feels unbearable. We become attached to secret knowledge because it promises mastery over confusion. We become attached to hatred because it offers a target for our frustrations. We become attached to fantasies of cosmic justice because they reassure us that the universe ultimately rewards and punishes according to our expectations.
Yet these attachments often intensify the very suffering they promise to resolve.
Viewed from this perspective, much contemporary social media discourse appears less concerned with wisdom than with fascination. It offers certainty where uncertainty exists, hidden meanings where ambiguity remains, and cosmic explanations where ordinary human contingency may be sufficient. What is presented as knowledge often functions primarily as emotional reassurance.
Finally
Social media has become one of the most powerful machines for organizing desire in contemporary society. It promises hidden truths, secret knowledge, and deeper realities lurking behind ordinary experience. It transforms uncertainty into certainty, coincidence into destiny, and death into moral judgment. Through endless repetition, these narratives generate their own forms of enjoyment, attachment, and belief.
The problem is therefore deeper than misinformation. The real danger emerges when ignorance begins to appear as wisdom, when speculation acquires the authority of knowledge, and when the desire for certainty replaces the difficult work of inquiry. In such an environment, people are no longer encouraged to think critically about the world; they are encouraged to enjoy the feeling that they already possess access to its hidden meaning.
Both Buddhism and psychoanalysis point toward a different possibility. Rather than promising final answers, they invite us to examine the desires, fears, and attachments that drive our search for certainty. The challenge is not simply to distinguish truth from falsehood, but to understand why certain narratives become so compelling in the first place.
Sri Lankan culture provides a particularly revealing example of this process through the enduring myth of Kuweni's curse. For generations, political crises, national misfortunes, social conflicts, and historical tragedies have periodically been interpreted through the symbolic framework of a curse originating in the island's foundational narrative. Whenever instability emerges, voices reappear suggesting that the curse has once again manifested itself. More recently, social media has accelerated this process, allowing old myths to circulate with unprecedented speed and emotional intensity.
What is striking is not whether the curse exists, but how readily it functions as an explanatory framework. Complex historical, political, economic, and social events can suddenly be condensed into a single symbolic narrative. The uncertainty of history becomes transformed into a story. Contingency becomes destiny. Misfortune acquires a cause. The unbearable complexity of reality is reduced to a form that can be emotionally understood.
The same mechanism can be observed in contemporary discussions surrounding politicians, activists, public figures, and even ordinary citizens. When a political opponent dies unexpectedly, some interpret it as karmic retribution. When a public figure suffers misfortune, others invoke cosmic justice. Social media quickly assembles chains of meanings connecting events that may have no demonstrable relationship. A curse, a political statement, a coincidence, an illness, and a death become woven together into a single narrative that appears self-evident precisely because it satisfies a deep desire for explanation.
Yet perhaps the most revealing irony is that many of the same voices who reject superstition in one context readily embrace it in another when it confirms their preferred narrative. The demand for rationality often disappears when myth supports one's own political loyalties, resentments, or hopes. In this sense, social media has not eliminated mythology; it has democratized it. Every user can now become both consumer and producer of symbolic narratives, continuously generating new interpretations of events and circulating them through the digital landscape.
From a Lacanian perspective, the question is therefore not whether Kuweni's curse is real. The more interesting question is why society repeatedly returns to the need for such a curse. What anxiety does it soothe? What uncertainty does it conceal? What lack does it attempt to fill? The persistence of the myth may reveal less about ancient history than about our contemporary difficulty in confronting contingency itself.
Buddhism and psychoanalysis converge at precisely this point. Both invite us to examine the attachments hidden within our explanations. The challenge is not merely to abandon false beliefs, but to understand why we need them. For whenever uncertainty becomes unbearable, human beings will be tempted to replace it with destiny, coincidence with karma, and history with myth.
For perhaps the greatest illusion of all is not that hidden truths exist, but that our suffering can be cured merely by believing we have found them.
0 කුළිය:
Post a Comment