Unplugging from Tyranny

This post is taken from a chapter in my latest book - “The Slow Walk to Tyrrany”

Democracy is based on its people and reflects it. It is a characteristic of the mechanism itself. The system is built by the people and for the people. Its downfall normally represents a certain disintegration of the societal fabric itself. As I mentioned above, the introduction of the phone and high-speed internet changed how we interact with the world and see ourselves in it. It is a massive change that cannot be ignored when addressing the current crisis we are experiencing in the West. One of the outcomes of the development of phones, their various apps, and how we use them is that we all developed a dopamine addiction to a certain extent. It was created through our constant scrolling and intensified by the social media algorithms built exactly for that purpose. One of the consequences of our growing dopamine addiction is that it is negatively correlated with our capacity and willingness to focus, expressed in our diminishing capacity to read long text or listen to long-form content while sitting without moving. One of the most relevant books I read on the subject is "Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence" By Daniel Goleman. His book presents the idea that focus functions like a muscle. The less we use it, the less it works. I have no doubt in my mind that we all lost, to a certain extent, the capacity to focus. It is a mixture of our increased need to absorb as much information as we can as fast as possible, combined with our incapability to admit that learning and acquiring knowledge takes time and effort. The outcome of this trend is visible all around us and is well-known by politicians. The way they chose to use it against us is by shooting headlines and slogans we can repeat without truly understanding what stands behind them.

Furthermore, as society moved from a knowledge society into a group-thinking society, we delegated our opinion to our leaders, allowing them to summarize for us what we should think. By doing so, we habituate ourselves to work based on our feelings and our need to be part of something. Algorithms on social media understood it a long time ago and got more and more optimized to make sure we are exposed to extremities that fit our social box by presenting us with what reinforces our opinions or infuriates us. On many accounts, we have become emotional animals and have lost our capacity to think independently and in complex manners. The great contemporary philosopher Adam Sowell recently said, "Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good." This sad truth represents what I call "The end of reason" and is one of the main subjects we must address to save Western democracies.

Operating based on feelings is associated with immaturity. Every parent is familiar with this concept. children have very little reasoning power and lack the capacity to see beyond themselves and the moment. As they have not yet practiced managing their emotions, tantrums and disproportionate reactions are common occurrences. As humans mature, they learn to restrain and understand that their feelings are not always the best guide if one is searching to achieve long-term goals. It is not a painless process, nor one that is learned  quickly. It is a trial-and-error process in which one learns that life is not only unfair but that feelings do not and cannot always change or dictate reality. Humans have surpassed the rest of animals on earth and become their masters thanks to our capacity to think, control our urges, share knowledge, and create. It is a process that has been accumulated over many generations and passed down through stories, myths, and, later on, books. What truly separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom is our capacity to think and prioritize it beyond our feelings. It is a complex process that allows us to control ourselves and our environment. It is one of the foundational human aspects that allow us to build trust and is at the basis of any social structure and the genesis of all human inventions. As I mentioned previously, history can be seen as the development of philosophy. In other words, humanity reflects the outcome of a long process in which we learn how to use our capacity to think, acquire knowledge, and pass it down more efficiently and clearly throughout generations. The recent development in the West can be seen as a general regression concerning knowledge and independent thinking. Somehow, we are marching backward, prioritizing once more our feelings while losing our capacity to focus and share a common physical reality.

If we are to fully understand this phenomenon, I believe a deeper dive into the effect of social media is needed. Social media did not only make us all dopamine addicts; it changed our relationship with reality itself. This change is directly related to our relationship with our feelings and how we approach the world. In the digital world of social media, the rules are completely different. Online, one can be whoever one wants, talk with whoever he feels, and demand the world to be in a certain manner. If a person finds himself in an uncomfortable internet space, he can always change the platform, change his user, or just block everyone and everything that makes him feel bad. In this world, a male can be a girl, a wolf, a liberal, a Mexican, or a tyrant. One can die online and still be alive in the real world and vice versa-  die in the real world and still be alive online. It is an endless ocean with endless islands where one can be where and how he wants. It requires no accountability, has no consequences, and does not require to prove any real achievements. People who grow up in this reality or spend more time there than in the real world develop a distorted perception and relationship with reality. In their mind, they are so habituated to the online world that they believe they can demand from the real world to work in the same manner. Online, it is all about feelings. People there amass followers and supporters not based on their knowledge but on how they make others feel. Knowledge there is not absolute, as in the real world, and limitations and history do not apply there. Online, facts are relative, events are manipulated, and truth is subjective.

Differently from the past, people used to acquire knowledge and know-how about the world by spending hours and hours reading history and philosophical books and developing a deep understanding of specific topics of interest. The current population (especially the young generation) builds their worldview based on short videos and limited-duration podcasts about nothing and everything. The difference is great, as it is the difference between believing in something and knowing it. While some will say it is only philosophically semantic, I will strongly argue that it is not the case. Knowledge comes from curiosity and is built with confidence. People that pursue knowledge know how to explain themselves and are not afraid to be challenged. In many cases, the most curious people are actually searching to be wrong, as it represents a step in their pursuit of truth. The hours that have been put into studying a field give them the logic and the conviction to hold a deep debate without getting emotional or aggressive in the process. Beliefs on the other hand, are based on assumptions, hopes, and slogans. People who hold a set of beliefs do not have the depth of understanding or the capacity to have a deep, calm, and mature argument. When presented with data, a general negation will be their first reaction, accompanied by attacking the personality of the person presenting the data. As I will cover later, beliefs are not established based on facts or reality; they exist where knowledge ends.

A clear side effect of having a society that uploads itself out of reality is the general disconnect it creates with the local community and the perception of individuals toward it. It is not clear who was the first person to say the sentence "A person with a hammer sees everything as nails," but as psychology evolved, the term "recency bias" has been established to define this phenomenon. The simplest explanation for this bias is that we, as humans, have a cognitive bias that favours recent events over historical ones, a memory bias. In my previous book, "Meaning in the Age of Absurdity," I described what I termed "The Digital Bias Paradox." In short, it describes the beliefs formed and held by people who consciously or unconsciously prioritize information obtained from social media regardless of the lack of evidence or clear contradictions they observe in their actual physical day-to-day life. This phenomenon reshaped how people see the world and interact with it. It frames how people go out to the world (normally with a negative bias), affecting society as a whole. In numerous conversations I had with people on topics related to politics and the general social conditions in the West, I came across this phenomenon. It always reflected some sort of negative bias toward a group of people, the state of society, or the state of our economy. People who live long enough in this manner will, over time, prefer not to look out of the window to avoid a massive cognitive dissonance. Furthermore, as they go outside to the real world, they will not be able to see it differently from how they explain themselves to the world. The unavoidable consequence of a society that at large approaches the world in this manner is the loss of capacity seen in the West to have deep, peaceful, and meaningful conversations with physical people. This concerning development emerges for several reasons.

First, most people do not perceive the world in the same manner. Prior to the internet, a basic frame of reference existed between most people in a community as they shared the same reality. Once we uploaded our communities online, many people sharing the same physical space lived a completely different reality based on widely different reference points. Secondly, most people suffering from a "Digital Bias paradox" do not take the time to look at the data or frame it differently. Most just heard a variation of the same conclusion repeated by different sources, confirming their bias. The conscious or unconscious knowledge that one's opinion is not based on data or knowledge renders the conversation more emotional due to defence mechanisms. It is launched unconsciously to prevent a person from facing a cognitive dissonance. This reaction prevents people from having a real constructive conversation in which they share knowledge and aim to establish truth. Thirdly, we lost our capacity to debate by spending most of our time online surrounded by people who agree with us or alternatively finishing an online disagreement by posting a mean post. Debate is the foundation of knowledge, an integral part of the process of reaching for the truth, and the foundation of any democratic structure. It is paramount to any free society. As we lose it, so does our capacity to handle our own thoughts, the thoughts of others, and the complexities of reality. Finally, the online world presents us with the most extreme cases happening around the world constantly, creating in our own world an impression detached from the actual way the world functions around us. Anxiety and fear cannot be avoided as we see with our own eyes the worst of human behaviour. This emotional state, confirmed by what we perceive to be reality, prevents us from believing the world can be any different from the horrific bubble we got exposed to. Historically, we were never meant to be exposed to so much negativity and horrific events, especially in the Western world, where most of us live in a relatively safe, comfortable, and peaceful society. Once exposed to so much harshness, our capacity to overcome the emotional trauma requires enormous mental strength. A strength that we lose over time as we surrender to the digital world that replaces the physical world we are living in.

The divide seen in the Western world is a direct outcome of our introduction to a new tool that changed many fundamental aspects of our lives. It is too early to fully understand how it reshaped society, but I have no doubt in my mind that it had an enormous impact on our relationship with the physical world around us and how we perceive truth. Our approach to knowledge and our incapacity to focus are part of the changes seen all over the West. By changing how we approach the world and build our worldview, we change how we approach the topic of communities, truth, and knowledge. We became hectic and in need of instant gratification while developing an intolerance to contradicting opinions and started to see in people around us a threat instead of inspiration. It made us more divided and vulnerable to external threats, putting society and democracy in danger. I believe that this division is taken advantage of by people searching to control and rule us by force. As we become less focused, lose tolerance for each other, and become more detached from the real world, groups of interest can take over the system more easily. All they have to do is fuel this divide by presenting us online a horrible reality, regardless of the real world around us. As many people started prioritizing the digital world over real reality, social media and the internet became the main manipulation tools used by people pursuing power. In reality, and as I showed in the previous chapters, the current issues that are threatening Western democracy are partly structural and partly related to a societal imbalance in our communities. These issues persist only because we have lost the capacity to communicate with each other in the real world, share a reality, and address the real problems at hand. We are divided because we are distracted and forget what we have in common. We are ignorant as we are too busy scrolling for the sake of dopamine and too lazy to challenge our own set of beliefs. If we are to overcome this crisis, I believe we should first and foremost tackle these problems. In the next chapter, I will address the topic of community and culture and concentrate on our ignorance regarding the system. I believe that if we are to solve the current political crisis in the West, this is where we should start.

The lack of knowledge today in the population regarding fundamental topics such as the history of democracy, the history of ones own country, governance, basic laws, basic accounting, philosophy, and commerce is shocking. Many people pass more than 12 years of education and come out without having a clue about the system they live in, their rights, their obligations, the philosophy related to democracy, or the long fight that has been fought to protect freedom. Unsurprisingly, many people do not feel connected or part of their society, get crushed by the system, and fall into slogans. They just don't know and lose the capacity to ask to know. In a recent conversation I had with a dear person, when I presented this point, her reaction was that it is too much information for a single person to learn and that many people have other things to do in their lives. While she is right about the fact it requires time and motivation, I believe there is nothing more important than having this type of knowledge. This knowledge is the basic requirement that each citizen in a free democracy should have. Democracy requires active and knowledgeable individuals, as a society will reflect its citizens. Without it, democracy will not survive and will fall into the power of the people who control the media and have the best slogans. Without knowledge, we become all sheep waiting for the wolf to guide us back into tyranny. The price of freedom is self-responsibility and self-governance. It requires us to take responsibility for ourselves, our communities, and our children. We should learn to control our emotions and not allow them to lead our lives or policies.

Without having knowledge or the capacity to acquire knowledge, society changes in numerous ways. First, knowing your history teaches a person much about who he is. A shared history creates unity and trust. It allows a person to have heroes to follow and inspire from. We all come from a great history that is worth learning. Secondly, learning how to learn teaches a person to form his own opinion and encourages curiosity, plurality of opinion, and open conversation. It enables people to be capable and autonomous, creating stronger individuals who are less prone to tyrannical takeover. In the process of acquiring knowledge, one learns how failures are important and experiences one's own weaknesses, creating tolerance and humility. Most importantly, knowledge and history allow a person to understand where he lives and what is happening around him, allowing him to fight for his rights, control his destiny, and be free.

The advancement of the government's grasp on our lives, the increase in welfare and regulation, our incapability to have calm and deep conversations on subjects we disagree on, and the growing extremity of the progressive and conservative are all signs of the weakening individuals forming the western democracy. The demand of the younger generation to increase the Nany state is a symptom of laziness at best or acceptance of tyranny for the sake of short-term comfortability based on ignorance. Many people have asked me what I think is the solution to saving our crumbling democracies. While I covered many urgent subjects that should be addressed, such as the size of government, corruption, the economic disaster, the outcome of the national debt, and the need for a more balanced society (progressivism and conservatism), I truly believe that the most important step that needs to be taken is to recreate strong, active and knowledgeable citizens. Not by exposing them to the most extreme disasters in the world on their TikTok or flooding them with Fear porn about global warming, wars on the other side of the world, or suffering children living far away. Not by frying their brain with hate, shame, and momentary cat videos to decrease their cortisol level. It is only by taking them out to the real world, teaching them about the greatness of people who built their great nations, explaining to them why freedom and democracy are worth fighting for, and making them understand their rights and obligations toward themselves and their communities. Knowledge is power. The kind of power that builds curiosity creates trust, self-control, humility, and open conversation. Characteristics that we are currently lacking. It is time to come back to apply what works and not what makes us feel nice for the long-term benefit of ourselves and the security of our children.

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The Political Aftermath of Covid

The post is part of a chapter in my book “The Slow Walk to tyranny”. Learn more about my book by clicking the link.

The effect of COVID-19 on society and the political system can be considered one of the most meaningful destabilizers to Western democracies since the French Revolution and the Civil War in the United States. It changed many things and opened many doors which arguably should have never been opened. The topic is not widely addressed, and I believe it is not understood correctly by many. Nevertheless, it marked a drastic change that has not been concluded or brought to its end. For many people, the Covid period is an emotional black hall that should not be addressed. The emotional weight, the many controversies about its origin, and the real health impact on society are still unclear, and for many, they are better left alone. It was a tragic moment that changed everyone's reality, changed how we see health, and changed our interaction with society, our friends, our neighbours, and our government. While I have a lot to say about the subject in general, for this book, I will concentrate only on the political aspect of this period and how it affected us as a society. I will avoid speculating on medical data and its origin or making judgment calls about people's behaviour. I believe the line that the government crossed in this period is so meaningful and impactful on the structure of democracy that this topic, above all, should be the first and maybe only conversation we should have at this moment.

In a democracy, the relationship between the government and its citizens should be a relationship of service. The government, elected by the people, functions as a management body that should promote the healthy and productive function of the market by overseeing it and limiting it in the form of regulations and laws. The process in which it is done should be straightforward and require a vote of the elected representatives after passing a process of scrutiny and numerous committees formed by professionals, overseen by the ruling system. In a democratic system, government power is theoretically limited by the Constitution and the court, both in its reach and capacities. Preventing extreme oppression of minorities or the takeover of a tyrannical group by manipulating the system. From the citizens' side, democracy promises freedom, private ownership, transparency, and equality in front of the law. Due to its Constitution, the US has a more solid foundation in reference to freedom than other Europeans. Regardless of the clarity and variation of constitutions, Freedom to express oneself, ownership of properties, and the right to defend oneself, work, gather, and move are all rights shared in Western democracy. It is exactly these rights added to equality of opportunities and equality in front of the law that people expect their government to hold and fight for. Not so long ago, many people sacrificed their lives fighting for these values and rights, allowing the Western alliance to win the Second World War and paving the way for a freer, more equal, and prosperous world.

Accountability of the government was always on shaky ground in the West. Most citizens accepted on themselves that a limited amount of corruption existed in the system and lived with it. Some fought it more, and some others less. For many people, the belief in their capacity to replace the government in the next election and the overwatching eye of the courts sufficed. On many occasions, if politicians crossed the line, they resigned by themselves due to social pressures and to avoid public humiliation. Investigative committees have been established over the years to protect the integrity of democracy and keep politicians at bay, promoting government transparency. Over time, a general equilibrium has been established, dictating the relationship between the government and its citizens and their limitations. This general equilibrium and its basic assumptions are what I define as "the Western democratic social contract." Not like the Social contract discussed by many great philosophers (Hobbes16, Lock17, and Rousseau18), which delves into a philosophical argument regarding the original state of humans and how we come to be a society, The social contract I'm referring to is only quasi-philosophical and address only the current status quo, ignoring anything that came before it. Practically, it refers to the set of beliefs all citizens in the early 21st century held regarding their relationship with the government, its role in society, the general structure, and its limitations. I call it quasi-philosophical because this "agreement" or set of beliefs held by the public is originally built upon a constitution and the foundation of democracy as a whole. There is nothing philosophical about it once it is written and integrated into law. On the other side, and as I will show in a moment, it is somehow philosophical because the system and the social contract at its core hold true only as long as the government upholds it. From this perspective, the social contract is not held on equal footing but is based on the belief we all hold as citizens that the government will hold its end of the bargain. After all, the government can break it at any given moment. The power is always in its hands. Furthermore, many of the assumptions held concerning the "Western democratic social contract" exist only because they were never really tested. We just all consciously or unconsciously prefer to believe they are true.

A great example of this is the case in many European countries. In most countries, the people agreed to not hold any weapons, allowing the government to monopolize guns. The assumption underlying this agreement between the citizenry and the government is that the government from its side will never use it against its law-abiding citizens. Practically, the only reason this assumption holds true is just because it has never been proven wrong. The harsh reality is that if this assumption does not hold, Most European citizens will be unable to defend themselves. Hopefully, it makes the Second Amendment of the US Constitution more relevant.

The Social contract creates a status quo and stability for society and the political system. It creates boundaries to the game we are all playing and allows people to concentrate peacefully on their own business. It is a fundamental aspect of a functioning democracy as it is for any other social game we decide to play. It builds trust and promotes healthy collaboration. Covid changed it all. It was a tragic moment that broke the status quo and the social contract. It was neither the Virus nor the potential danger. It was the actions that governments worldwide almost anonymously decided to take and how they executed them. Actions that only a few years before Covid would have been unimaginable in a free democracy. Actions that used to be associated with communist regimes in China. By doing so, they crossed a line by changing the game's rules and breaking the social contract. Many, if not all, governments in the West decided to take an anti-democratic approach, closing by force the economy, locking citizens in their homes, limiting their movements, capacity to work, meet, and mainly having the freedom to choose for themselves. This decision and many other policies that followed were imposed as decrees that never got voted on or have been only in a later stage. A general censorship campaign has started for the sake of "protecting" adult-free people from being exposed to what the government arbitrarily considered to be "misinformation" and "Disinformation." They forced people to vaccinate as the only route to get back limited freedom and imposed draconian measures on all the uncomplying population.

Questions relating to the necessity of these measures and the efficacy of their outcome are not relevant to this discussion. Personal opinions or the answers to these questions do not affect in any way the validity of the problem I'm trying to raise in this conversation. The only relevant aspect of the government's draconian actions is how they were taken and their implication concerning democracy and the existing social contract. It is all that matters in the long run and the source of many problems that evolved since then. A line has been crossed that was never crossed before. It broke the structure we all believed we were living in. Opening the door to chaos, violence, and exponential disintegration of democracy. The main issue with crossing this line is that we never reestablished a new frame or contract that clearly limited the game's rules. We just all understood that we were living in a new reality in which the old rules no longer applied. The terror associated with facing the unknown spread in the system, creating chaos as a lack of trust and violence started to spread. I will even go as far as to say that the violation of the game's rules had such a profound effect on the population that it affected all aspects of life for most citizens, promoting distrust in our neighbours, friends, family, and communities.

One of the most devastating effects of breaking the social contract we all used to hold is that it pushed us all into chaos. This chaos prevents us from framing the reasonable expectation we can have regarding the political power the government can have on us. In short, it broke our belief that we are living in a real democracy that has a system in place to protect both its citizens and itself from tyranny or autocracy. A clear example of this can be seen in how politicians in recent elections addressed their opponents and the extreme belief people hold regarding the potential outcome in case some opponents win. Since Covid, we have seen in several elections, including the one in the US, doomsday predictions about a dictatorial takeover of the right and the left. The fact that citizens are willing to hold these ideas as truth and have a real fear of such a possible future is a clear symptom of the non-existing social contract and the confusion about the validity of the structure of democracy itself. The general chaos built as the game's rules crumbled, turning people against each other. As time went by, politicians became more vocal and extreme in their tone, accusing their opponents of Fascism and tyrannical ambition and even suggesting similarities with Hitler. Elections in many Western countries turn into a fear festival. The outcome of this change is that for many voters, it is no longer a question of the best candidate to promote a better future but avoiding the next dictatorial takeover. Fear is a horrible virus created by our incapability to control the future. It is the outcome of facing the unknown, brought by the realization that the game's rules no longer stand. Without a clear structure, no trust can be achieved, and the most horrible scenarios seem more realistic than ever. The division and extremism all over the West is a direct result of the notion we all have that we are no longer living in what we consider until recently to be a fair, free, and equal democracy.

Another outcome of the breach of the foundation of democracy seen in the post-COVID era is the new outreach of government. As the rules have been broken, a new step into new territories has been made. Questions regarding how far a government can go became a new testing ground for many Western governments. The recent increase in surveillance, the mounting amount of censorship, the open corruption, and the increase in regulation observed all over the West are undisputable. I believe that it is all part of a process taken by the government to test how far they can go.  The fact that it contradicts some fundamental democratic principles does not seem to bother them much, as many understand that the Constitution can be violated or changed. The recent call of the progressive party in the US to cancel the First and Second Amendments is a clear example of this process. The latest step taken in the UK, jailing people for expressing their opinions on social media, is another horrible step that would not be imaginable in a free democracy ten years ago. Governments that discovered their newly obtained power are searching to understand their limits. These concerning developments are playing a major role in the increasing division and polarization of society. The violent action taken by governments sets an example for many young people, legitimizing the use of violence for what they subjectively believe is a just cause. As the rule of law is falling apart, people start taking the law into their own hands. Creating new standards for what is legitimate based on their personal notion of justice.

The shift we all experienced in the COVID period needs to be addressed if we are to reestablish a functioning democracy held by the rule of law. By refusing to address this issue, we are robbing ourselves of the capacity to truly understand the source of our problem. If we are to handle with it and reestablish a stable and fair democratic system that people can trust, clear lines should be drawn again. Not based on the newest standard of tyranny but based on the old values of democracy. The old democracy dictated that the government exists to serve the people, with as little interference possible by the government under rules that allow people to be as free as possible. Without it, we cannot reestablish trust with our government, communities, and neighbours.