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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