Let’s take a peek into the kitchen of public interest. If everything sounds strangely familiar, you’re not mistaken.
We live in an era where the cauldron of public discourse simmers with a single dish: the Universal Public Interest. And the secret ingredient that gives it that slightly chemical aftertaste is the infamous “Mrs Dash” – an instant seasoning blend of alibism, technocracy, and moral blackmail.
First‑class kitchen: the methodologist in a white hat
Let’s begin in the laboratories of public administration. Here, “public interest” isn’t treated as a value but as a physical constant. For the bespectacled bureaucrat, public interest isn’t about people; it’s about the harmony between paragraph 4, letter b), and Annexe No. 12.
It’s a fascinating alchemy: take a completely absurd regulation (say, the obligation to register every hamster with influencer ambitions), shake it in a cocktail shaker full of stamps, and out comes a product labelled “critical public interest in the harmonisation of rodents.” If a citizen asks why this is necessary, the answer is a “complex methodological umbrella for societal needs.” Translated into human language: “We added Vegeta, so just eat it and don’t ask why it’s so salty.”
Fourth price category: Vox populi with a beer in hand
While the bureaucrat uses seasoning to mask the absence of meaning, the metaphorical pub uses it even more liberally. Here, “public interest” is the equivalent of a baseball bat wrapped in a national flag.
“It’s in the public interest that my neighbour doesn’t have such a tall fence, because then he can’t envy my big‑screen TV!” or “It’s in the public interest to ban the internet because they write things there I don’t understand!”
The pub philosopher is convinced that his personal bile is actually the concentrated wisdom of the entire nation. In his interpretation, public interest isn’t about protecting the weak but about the right of the stronger (or louder) to steamroll anyone who steps out of line. It’s collective egoism disguised as civic virtue.
Flavour inflation: When everything is a priority, Nothing is edible
The tragedy of this “seasonization” of language is that we’ve grown used to the artificial taste. Public interest was once meant to be rare saffron – something you reach for only a second before the ship sinks or when the plague breaks out. It was supposed to be the argument of last resort, the moral nuclear briefcase.
Today? Today it’s cheap filler.
A politician needs to raise taxes? Public interest in fiscal stability. A corporation wants to cut down a park for a parking lot? Public interest in regional economic development. An activist wants to block an entire city from breathing? Public interest in awareness. A methodologist needs to push AI as his path to immortality? Then AI becomes an indispensable part of school curricula, despite the risks and despite common sense.
The result is that words have lost their weight and turned into mere background noise. When someone on TV utters “public interest,” the average citizen instinctively reaches for their wallet or remote control, knowing someone is either trying to rob them, forbid something, or command something.
Conclusion: are we still hungry?
If we keep sprinkling this rhetorical spice into every petty dispute, we’ll end up with a society that is “harmonised” and “engaged,” yet utterly tasteless. Individual freedom will become just a “recipe error” that must be drowned out with another dose of collective seasoning.
Maybe it’s time for a diet. Maybe we should simply take this spice mix away from politicians and activists. Next time someone pulls out the “public interest” card, we should ask:
“Couldn’t you cook this from honest ingredients? Maybe logic, facts, and respect for the individual?”
But that would require them to actually know how to cook. And that, I’m afraid, is in direct conflict with their interest… well, not the public one, but certainly their own.
And for children, let’s add the hundred‑times‑repeated mantra about critical thinking and cognitive decline. Or is that, too, now in the public interest?