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The Psychology of the UN Security Council

The UN Security Council is made up of five permanent members. The United States, Russia, China, France and Britain. These five countries are the most powerful countries in the world, in terms of economic might, military strength, including the fact that they are all nuclear powers, and geopolitical influence. Two of these countries – Britain and France – are former colonial powers, with vast empires that spanned large areas of the globe. The United States is the world’s richest country, followed closely by China. Russia has the largest nuclear arsenal in the world, and was, until the 90s, part of the Soviet Union. As permanent members of the UN Security Council, these five countries have immense powers, which include intervening militarily in any part of the world and vetoing anything they don’t agree with. You could say that these countries run the world. It is, therefore, in my opinion, imperative that we look at the psychology of these countries, because of the powerful place they hold in the running of planetary affairs. The rest of the world is held captive by the actions of these five countries, including their so-called ‘great power competition’ and their ability to veto all other countries of the world combined.

What do I mean when I talk about the psychology of these countries? It is an observable fact that countries have a national character, the same way human beings have an individual character. People who live in a country tend to behave in a certain way that is unique to that country. That is why whenever someone visits a country, they usually come out with an impression of how the people of that country are. The people themselves may or may not be aware of their national character, but visitors to the country often leave with an impression about the character of the inhabitants of the country. We often hear people comment that Kenyans are like this, Americans are like that, the French are like this, etc. Due to similarities in culture, language, education systems, beliefs, religion, etc, a country will have a national character that is observable by others. This is what I am referring to when I talk about the psychology of the UN Security Council. These are my impressions of the countries that make up the UN Security Council and how their psychology affects how they run the world.

The world is currently in chaos, and has been in chaos for a very long time. The UN Security Council seems to either be unable or unwilling to bring about the peace that most people on earth aspire to, even though this is supposed to be their core mandate. I think it is fair to say that the Security Council is exhibiting dark triad traits. Any rational person observing how the most powerful nations behave on the world stage will conclude that these countries are not mentally sound. Whether it’s through the exercise of their veto powers to oppose any attempts at peace-making, their military interventions that invariably make matters worse or their endless debates about the wording of some statement while the situation spirals out of control, the UN Security Council keeps proving time and time again that its members are of the dark triad.

For those who do not know what the dark triad is, it is a combination of three dark personality types – narcissism, psychopathy/sociopathy and Machiavellianism – in an individual or institution. I am expanding the definition to include an institution, in this case, the UN Security Council. These three personality disorders make up the dark triad, which is one of the most dangerous disorders a person can have. Each of these disorders on its own is bad enough. The combination of all three disorders in one individual or institution is a dangerous, destructive, and scary phenomenon that no one should ever have the misfortune to encounter in their lifetime. Unfortunately, all of us on the planet are subject to a dark triad institution in the form of the UN Security Council. This explains why, despite so much effort by so many institutions, including regional bodies, NGOs, humanitarian organisations, religious institutions, and the UN General Assembly, we never seem to achieve world peace. We always seem to default to war and chaos. The UN Security Council, the very institution that has the power to immediately end all wars and bring about the peaceful coexistence we all long for, seems to constantly dig us deeper into confrontations, wars and diplomatic failures.

The Psychopath

Psychopathy is characterised by superficial charm, manipulativeness, lack of empathy or guilt, impulsivity, and a fearless, high-risk-taking disposition. The United States is the psychopath of the UN Security Council. We see it all the time in how the US vetoes resolutions that would bring about peace, for example, in the case of the war in Gaza. We see it in the US’s resolute defense and support of Israel, even while Israel is being accused of genocide and its leaders wanted by the ICC for crimes against humanity. Clearly, the US believes it is above the law. We see this in the US refusal to be part of the ICC and its sanctioning of the judges who delivered an arrest warrant against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. We see their psychopathy in the way they keep the world supplied with weapons, even while presenting themselves as a force for good. They have no conscience and no empathy for the people they destroy. We see the US’s psychopathy in how they overthrow democratically elected governments and how they threaten to go to war with countries that refuse to submit, for example, in the recent case where Nigeria was threatened with invasion. We see it in their refusal to participate in global forums that do not bend to their will, for example, the recent COP30 and the G20. The US is so convinced of its superiority that it does not realise how its behaviour on the world stage comes across as embarrassing for a country that claims to be a superpower. Even the notion of a country being a superpower is an embarrassing, egotistical claim that a mature, rational country would never claim to be. The US’s psychopathy is also clear from its history of slavery and the racism that persists to this day. The Americans seem completely incapable of accepting that black people are equal to white people, the same way they are unable to accept that the US is equal to other countries.

The Sociopath

Sociopathy is characterised by a pervasive disregard for the rights of others, lack of empathy, and persistent rule-breaking. The condition is associated with a profound lack of conscience and can lead to difficulties in relationships, employment, and legal issues. The sociopath of the group is France. Unlike psychopathy, which is a genetic and biological disorder, sociopathy is a product of nurture. This means they are more likely to display antisocial behaviours, such as problems with the law and an inability to fit into society, whereas the psychopath is more adept at wearing a mask of sanity. France’s sociopathy can be seen from its history of slavery, its colonial past, and its neo-colonial present. France was known for its extreme brutality towards its enslaved and colonised people. The way France treated Haiti, for example, is particularly horrifying. France was known to be so brutal towards Haiti that new slaves coming to work in the sugar plantations would last a mere ten years before dying from the grim working conditions. When Haitians fought and won their freedom, the French took this with characteristic vengefulness. They forced the Haitians to compensate them for the loss of their ‘property’ (the slaves), a debt burden that has inflicted generational poverty upon Haiti that has persisted to this day. In their West African colonies, France was also known for its brutality, but it is the way they departed from the former colonies at independence that particularly stands out. With the same mafia-like vengefulness they displayed towards Haiti, France forced the West African countries to join Françafrique, which is the political, economic, military, and cultural networks that France has maintained with its former colonies in sub-Saharan Africa since independence, often described as a form of neocolonialism. When Guinea refused to join this grouping, which was supposedly voluntary, it was utterly destroyed and sabotaged by the departing French. For years after independence, France carried out almost non-stop military interventions in the former colonies to keep them in check. This level of lawlessness on the part of France can only be described as sociopathic. To this day, Françafrique has kept several West African countries under the control of France, although these chains are starting to weaken. France is not taking this new development well, with brutal attempts to hold on to this neo-colonial structure on display.

The Machiavellian

Machiavellianism is a personality trait characterised by manipulation, emotional coldness, and a cynical worldview, where individuals prioritise their own self-interest and use deceit or exploitation to achieve personal goals, often at the expense of others. The Machiavellian of the group is Britain. Despite its brutal colonial past spanning centuries and covering vast geographical regions of the planet, Britain still somehow manages to come across today as the paternalistic, benevolent benefactor of its former colonies. The commonwealth is an attempt by Britain to maintain control of its former colonies, without the nasty, neo-colonial overtones of France. It’s an attempt to look fatherly and concerned for the former colonies, a father figure wanting nothing more than the advancement of the former colonies. This is blatant deception, because Britain is only concerned with maintaining its control of the former colonies. Britain’s Machiavellianism can be observed from its monarchy, an institution that pretends to have no power or influence over what happens in the UK or the world, while pulling the strings in the background. It is a well-known fact that the monarchies of Europe started retreating into quasi democratic arrangements after the brutal overthrow of the French monarchy in 1789, out of fear that the same fate would befall them. In these new arrangements, power was supposedly held by democratically elected governments, while the monarchies only held ceremonial power. But we all know that this is not actually the case, but a Machiavellian deception of the masses. The monarchies still pull the strings in the background, and it is naïve of anyone to believe that they simply handed over power and accepted their new roles. The monarchies are, in reality, the puppet masters, while the governments are the puppets being controlled from behind the scenes. Britain has perfected the art of appearing to be one thing in public, while being something else entirely in the background. Let’s not forget that when Ukraine was about to arrive at a peace treaty with Russia, a few months after the war began, it was Britain that rushed to Ukraine and stopped the treaty from happening.

The Narcissist

Narcissism is defined as a pervasive pattern of grandiosity, a need for excessive admiration, and a lack of empathy. Russia is the Narcissist of the UN Security Council. Russia has been engaged in a great power struggle with the West for as long as anyone can remember, and seems unable to define itself other than in relation to the West. They seem to constantly be trying to prove that they are as good as the West. Russia has been engaged in a passive-aggressive confrontation with the West since the days of the Cold War, which almost resulted in nuclear annihilation of the planet during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The entire war with Ukraine came about because Ukraine wanted to join NATO. While Russia seems to believe that this would be an existential threat, it’s not clear how Ukraine’s joining NATO would affect Russia. The idea that there must be a buffer zone between NATO countries and Russia shows a grandiose self-image on the part of Russia. The truth is, Ukraine joining NATO would be neither here nor there. But for a country steeped in grandiosity, this feels like a red line that must never be crossed, even to the point of going to a destructive war that has caused untold suffering not just to Ukraine but to the world. We are also seeing Russia’s narcissism in its passive-aggressive attempt to gain influence in Africa. It’s one thing to want to trade and cooperate with Africa from a genuine desire to advance mutual interests, but in the case of Russia, it is only doing this as a passive-aggressive, egotistical stance meant to goad the West. Russia’s inability to simply live its own life as an independent country, not at odds with anyone, exposes it for the narcissist it is.

The Sane one

This brings us to the final member of the UN Security Council, China. As far as I can tell, China is the only sane member of the UN Security Council. But unfortunately, China has a see no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil attitude, which means it has failed to live up to its potential. China remains silent as the other members of the UN Security Council run amok, causing havoc everywhere they turn. China, in its dealings with most countries, refuses to take a moral stand, preferring to quietly trade without standing up for human rights. This is a failure on its part and a waste of its huge potential. When Israel started its genocidal campaign in Gaza, it was South Africa that brought a case to the ICJ. South Africa is still suffering today from the wrath of the Americans, who are staunch allies of Israel, through the false accusations of white farmer genocide, and the US boycott of the G20 meeting that was held in South Africa. China is powerful enough to stand up to any country on the globe, but this potential is going to waste. China also boasts of having lifted millions of people out of poverty, while a rich country like the US has people living in poverty, in a land of plenty. China has the moral authority that the US falsely claims to have. Not that China is perfect – we all know about its authoritarianism and the suppression of individual rights. But if there is a non-aggressive country that does not have a history of slavery or colonialism and is quietly working towards the economic uplifting of not only its own citizens but citizens of the world through its Belt and Road Initiative, it is China. China needs to step up, as the only sane member of the Security Council and as a respected partner of many countries in the global South.

Bonus: The Sadist

The dark triad is sometimes referred to as the dark tetrad when sadism is added to the mix. For purposes of my analysis of the UN Security Council, I used the dark triad because none of the members of the UN Security Council display sadism. But as a bonus, I am adding Israel to the list, a country that is not part of the UN Security Council but takes the sadism crown. Sadism is defined as the derivation of pleasure from the infliction of physical pain or psychological suffering on another person. It is characterised by a persistent and intense pattern of fantasies, urges, or behaviours involving the suffering of others. In Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, we see their sadism in full display. They seem to enjoy the suffering of the Palestinians, even going as far as randomly shooting and killing Palestinians who show up to collect food at humanitarian centres. Their sadism is displayed in their intentional killing of children, which has horrified the world. While killing is never a good thing, no matter who is killed, most people have an instinctive urge to protect children. Israel seems to deliberately target children to cause maximum psychological suffering not just on Palestinians, but the entire world that is constantly bombarded with news and images of the killings. We have seen Israel’s sadism in their denial of humanitarian aid to Palestinians, going as far as killing aid workers who are desperate to supply aid. What Israel is doing goes beyond war, which is horrifying enough. Israel seems to enjoy inflicting unnecessary pain and suffering on others.

Conclusion

Now that we know that the forces that run our world are dark triad in nature, what can be done about this? The only way to stop such people is through raising the awareness of the public as to the evil nature of these dark triad institutions. The world right now is at a very low state of awareness, meaning that most people don’t see anything wrong with how the world is run. Most people don’t see anything unnatural about world leaders who scuttle peace efforts, who start wars and threaten to start wars, who exhibit inflated egos and believe themselves above the law, and who keep the world in never-ending chaos. When we start seeing that this is not normal, then we will stop remaining silent and start demanding change. It’s like growing up in a family where the parents are mentally ill. When you are young, you accept their unstable behaviour as just how things are, because that is all you have ever known. But when you grow up, and the true horror of your parents’ behaviour sinks in, you can finally break away from their control as you recognise how much chaos and suffering their mental illness has caused you. This is what needs to happen in the world. We need to start understanding that the chaos in the world is not accidental. It is being caused by individuals and institutions with dark triad personality disorder, and it is time we broke free from their control.

The Ghost of Jeffrey Epstein

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The whole Jeffrey Epstein saga reveals why it’s so hard for the world to eliminate sexual abuse. Let’s consider the facts. There are around 1000+ women who have complained about being abused by Jeffrey Epstein through his vast sex trafficking network. Even though investigations have taken place for years and continue to take place, the only person to ever be convicted is a lone woman. Let that sink in. One woman, Ghislaine Maxwell, has paid the price for the abuses of thousands of men. It’s almost as if the world has never moved on from the witch-hunting days. We are still hunting witches and burning them at the stake. In the case of Jeffrey Epstein, a woman was burned at the stake for the crimes of men, and the world wants us to move on and accept that this is justice. There is a complete refusal to release the names of people implicated in these abuses. Their privacy must be protected. The most high-profile person to be exposed, Prince Andrew, was never arrested or prosecuted. Epstein himself committed suicide before he could be tried for his crimes, thereby escaping accountability. Therefore, in this vast network of sex trafficking and abuse, only one woman has been held accountable for her crimes. One. Woman. All the men, many of them powerful, who did the actual abusing, have not been held accountable up to today. At every level of accountability, they are protected. The media does not reveal their identity. The police do not arrest them. The justice system does not try them and convict them. They still retain powerful positions in society. There is zero accountability.

What is the real problem here? Does society believe that it is okay for a woman to be sexually abused? Do we see sexual abuse as a problem, or are we comfortable living in a world where sexual abuse is common? Is sexual abuse just an unfortunate incident that is best forgotten? Are we okay with the suffering of women? It’s very telling that the only person to be punished in relation to Jeffrey Epstein was a woman. Does it mean that women have a higher threshold of pain? Do women even feel pain? They seem to go through childbirth easily enough, whereas we all know that if it were men who had to give birth, we would have perished as a species. So, it must mean that women don’t mind pain. It must mean that women’s pain is not serious. We all know that there are people out there who believe that black people don’t feel pain. I guess the same goes for women. They don’t feel pain. That’s why we have 1000+ victims and not one man convicted. I guess men wouldn’t survive in prison. Men should not be expected to pay for their crimes. They are too fragile, and also, they are just boys being boys. Who would want to punish boys for being boys? Especially white boys? Their reputations! Their careers! Their prospects! Their future! Their families! Their children! Quelle horreur, to subject a man to such pain.

Why does society have no problem sending one woman to prison for 20 years for the abuse of thousands of women, and not a single man? Are powerful people too big to convict? Will society fall apart if powerful people start paying for their crimes? I tend to think society will become better if we started exposing these powerful people and forcing them to pay for their crimes. They should be locked away and the keys thrown away. After all, the most powerful people commit the worst crimes. Crimes that affect entire populations. Crimes that impoverish entire populations. Crimes that kill entire populations. Crimes that cause entire populations to live without basic needs. And these are the people we choose to protect?

We need to have a reckoning. The kind of reckoning that is taking place in France, a country steeped in rape culture. We need to have a Gisèle Pelicot-style reckoning, where tens, hundreds, thousands of men are held accountable for their crimes against women. Men should be held accountable (arrested, tried, imprisoned – just in case it’s not clear what I mean by ‘held accountable’) for raping women in colleges, in slums, in homes, in the workplace. For raping children. For incest. For sexual harassment. For domestic violence. Instead, we have a culture of protecting the perpetrators and punishing the victims or those who try to protect the victims. Only a small minority of cases reported to the police are taken seriously. Jeffrey Epstein abused girls for years, and even though they kept reporting to the police, nothing was done for years. Only a small number of cases make it to trial, and only a small number of those are convicted. At every turn, there is a concerted effort to protect the perpetrator, to excuse his actions, to minimise them, to hide them. Victims are revictimized by a system that is optimised for allowing the perpetrator to get away with his crimes. Victims are shamed, as if it were somehow their fault. What we have done is we have allowed society to be shaped by the worst among us, rather than the best. The standards of how we live and what we accept are set by the worst people. We must change this. We must let the most gentle among us, the most loving, the most tender, the kindest among us, set the standard for how we should live as human beings on this planet.

Laws of War (International Humanitarian Law)

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“Another Rule of Battle, that Alice had not noticed, seemed to be that they always fell on their heads, and the battle ended with their both falling off in this way, side by side: when they got up again, they shook hands, and then the Red Knight mounted and galloped off.”

(Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Saw)

International Humanitarian Law (IHL) or laws of war is a set of rules that govern how war is conducted, supposedly to balance humanitarian concerns with military necessity. It is an attempt to limit the savagery of warfare by creating the concept of ‘protected persons’ i.e. people who are not party to the conflict and are therefore supposed to be protected. IHL also limits the choice of methods and means of warfare and recognizes ‘legitimate military targets’ that can be attacked during warfare.

Like many who have criticised this attempt at making rules of warfare, I am of the view that the only thing that is achieved by these rules is to make warfare a legitimate activity rather than trying to abolish it. It is almost as if the people who made these rules believed that warfare can never be eliminated, and therefore the next best thing is to come up with rules on how it should be conducted. This is of course a fallacy. War can be eliminated, just like any other evil on the planet can be eliminated, if we put our minds to it.

The problem with trying to come up with rules of war is that you end up with a situation like the one described by Lewis Carroll in his book, Through the Looking Glass, where to an observer, the rules appear to be nonsensical. The destruction and unnecessary bloodshed of warfare cannot be justified by the fact that some rules were being observed. It is no comfort to anyone caught up in warfare that the destruction is limited to legitimate military targets. After all, who is to say what a legitimate military target is? We are all aware of how Israel has defended its attacks on hospitals and civilian areas by claiming that Hamas fighters were hiding in these areas and using them as human shields, which made them legitimate military targets. Therefore, in effect, anything can be defined as a legitimate military target by those fighting in the war.

Another criticism of IHL is what we are all observing in real time, which is humanitarian organisations being more concerned with delivering humanitarian aid to victims of war than in calling out their governments for supplying the weapons and money that are used to keep the war going. It always strikes me as rather hypocritical when humanitarian organisation from the same Western countries that provide weapons of warfare, scream about not having humanitarian space. It is almost as if all they care about is being allowed to do their thing, because otherwise why else do they exist? If there was no war and suffering on the planet, would there be any need for humanitarian organisations? Do humanitarian organisations really care about ending war and suffering if this would be an existential threat to them? Or are they more concerned about playing their part, which is to ‘ease the suffering of people’ while governments play their part, which is to cause as much suffering as possible? Does this seem a lot like a symbiotic relationship, or am I just being cynical? It kind of reminds one of the symbiotic relationship between Christianity and colonizers and how they went hand in hand, each making it easier for the other to operate.

I think it is time we put an end to this farce of laws of warfare and instead start imagining and calling for a world where there is no warfare. If humanitarian organisations really want to help, they should start by taking on their governments for the part they play in keeping these wars going. They should put as much energy into calling out their governments as they do in calling for humanitarian space. Unless of course this would upset the very cozy relationship they currently enjoy with their governments.

The Gravest Danger to Humanity is Nuclear War Not Climate Change

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A few decades ago, the idea that the climate was changing in ways that were dangerous to humanity was floated out of nowhere and suddenly, the entire planet was in a state of panic because supposedly we had very limited time to change our entire way of life before some calamity befell us. No one was allowed to question the “experts” and anyone foolish enough to do so was labelled a climate denier and roundly ridiculed. This alone should have been enough to raise suspicion because any scientific claim should be open to debate and should be provable through experiments that can be replicated. This is science 101 which everyone should know and yet we continue to allow ourselves to be bullied by the people who claim to be the lords of science. We saw this same tendency to bully anyone who tried to question “the science”, with the anti-vaxxer label being given to anyone who questioned the Covid vaccine dogma. The same people who caused panic with their climate change hysteria also gave us the solution: net-zero. According to the so called experts, we need to reduce our carbon dioxide emissions to zero in order to save the planet. This idea is so ridiculous, it is quite simply laughable. Anyone with even a basic knowledge of biology knows that this is a bad idea. The problem with human beings is that when we panic, we usually forget everything we know and believe without question what the “experts” tell us.

Some of us may be familiar with the oxygen/carbon dioxide cycle, which is whereby human beings take in oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide while plants take in carbon dioxide and emit oxygen (during photosynthesis). This balance between plants and humans ensures that the two coexist in balance and harmony. The idea that human beings are enemies of nature or are not part of the cycle of life is a ridiculous idea that we are being deceived into accepting without question. There is an aggressive push by the global elites to force us to accept the idea that we are foreign bodies that are separate from nature, a virus that needs to be controlled or eliminated. Instead of seeing the planet as our God-given home, we are being asked to see ourselves as parasites that are upsetting the delicate balance of nature. This is the same aggressive message that was pushed by Agenda 21 and is being pushed today by Agenda 2030 – that human activities like production, consumption and economic activities are inherently bad for nature. This idea is being aggressively pushed at the grassroots level without people understanding what is being done. The idea is to separate us from nature and cause us to see anything we do as bad for the environment. The idea is to suppress our natural desire to thrive by limiting ourselves to a backward and simple existence. This makes us much easier to control for the elites. This is why we are being forced to give up fossil fuels without any viable alternative because apparently the environment thrives when we are cold, hungry and miserable.

This is the same aggressive message that was pushed by Agenda 21 and is being pushed today by Agenda 2030 – that human activities like production, consumption and economic activities are inherently bad for nature. This idea is being aggressively pushed at the grassroots level without people understanding what is being done.

One of the main proponents of the climate change agenda is Bill Gates, that old philanthrocapitalist who has turned himself into an expert on everything from global public health to global agriculture to climate change. In a Ted talk he gave some years back on CO₂ reduction, Gates claimed that the following equation summarizes the pathway to net zero:

CO₂= P x S x E x C

(CO₂= PEOPLE x SERVICES PER PERSON x ENERGY PER PERSON x CO₂ PER UNIT ENERGY)

According to this equation which we are all supposed to accept without question, CO₂ has to be reduced to zero in order to save the planet. According to Gates, the experts say so and so naturally, it must be the gospel truth. But as I pointed out at the beginning of this article, we must question what the experts say. I’m not sure what kind of expert came up with such a ludicrous idea. Without CO₂ in the atmosphere, plants would not exist because they would not be able to carry out photosynthesis. Why would we allow clowns like Bill Gates to lecture us on things they have no clue about? We have developed such a culture of money worship on this planet that anyone who has a lot of money is automatically assumed to be superior in intelligence. They must know something the rest of us don’t, which enabled them to accumulate such vast amounts of money. In reality, the only qualification these people possess is ruthlessness and aggression. This is what allows them to do whatever they need to do and step on whoever they need to step on in order to get to the top of the food chain. It does not matter to billionaires like Bill Gates that the rest of the world has to wallow in poverty so that they get to keep their billions. According to such people, that is exactly how the world should work and they have every right to take everything and leave nothing for everyone else. Furthermore, in their view, their wealth gives them the right to tell the rest of us how to live our lives, hence the current push for a Global Reset, which is nothing more than a power grab by the elites. If you believe that these people have our interests at heart or are capable of doing anything that benefits anyone other than themselves, you are being naïve and have not been paying attention.

Coming back to the Gates equation, once we accept without question that CO₂ has to be brought down to zero, the next step is to look at which of the four elements (P, S, E, C) can be reduced to zero in order to bring CO₂ down to zero. Gates deceptively makes a show of looking at each of the four elements, although any thinking person can see that S (Services), E (Energy) and C (CO₂) all depend on P (People). In other words, as long as there is P, we cannot reduce S, E or C to zero. Therefore, the only logical conclusion is that P has to come down to zero for the equation to work. This idea is subliminally communicated to us as it becomes increasingly clear that none of the other elements can be reduced to zero while there are people. Once you watch this Ted talk, all the accusations about Gates having a depopulation agenda suddenly make sense. This is a person who is so obsessed with the idea that human beings have to be eliminated from the planet that he dedicates an entire Ted talk to explaining this to us. Because essentially, this is what he is saying even though he tries to couch it in all manner of scientific language. As Jesus’ said: “let those who have ears hear.” The elites keep telling us that we are not wanted or needed on this planet and we continue applauding them even as they say this in increasingly plain terms. The so-called philosopher and intellectual Yuval Noah Harari has been telling us this for some time now. Human beings are supposedly on the way to being made redundant by technology. Can you imagine the sheer arrogance it takes for a person to tell billions of people that they will be rendered useless by technology because there will be no “jobs”? Is this the only purpose human beings have, to work for the elites? No wonder they call us human resources. As far as they are concerned, humans only exist to serve them and therefore when AI and robots replace us in the workplace, there will be no more need for us to exist. We will become “useless eaters” who only “play computer games”. It never occurs to these people that AI and robots could make our life much easier, freeing us to pursue higher-level goals like self-actualization. No wonder all their future scenarios are dystopian since they cannot imagine a future in which everyone is healthy, wealthy and happy. They keep fretting about overpopulation because their limited vision cannot allow them to imagine a future in which technological advances allow us to have all our needs met in new ways that are yet to be discovered. The only future they imagine is one in which human beings fight for limited resources. No wonder they want to kill us all, these no-imagination swamp creatures!

Who is Gates to tell us that we should be aiming at net zero? What gives him the right to lecture humanity? Is it because he has a lot of money? Does his money give him the right to subject us to his ridiculous, insane ideas? What has Gates ever accomplished with all his money that would give him the right to lecture humanity? Everything Gates touches has been an unmitigated disaster, from the agricultural transformation of Africa to disease eradication in parts of Africa to research on GMO food. One of the reasons the world was unable to come up with a “people’s vaccine” for Covid was because Gates quickly inserted himself in the process and insisted that intellectual property had to be respected. All he was interested in was profit even during a pandemic. The pharmaceutical industry has Gates to thank for the billions they raked in. His greed for profit cannot allow him to do anything beneficial for humanity. Now he has turned his attention to the great reset of food systems in the West and we should expect this to be as disastrous as everything else he does. Is this the guy we want lecturing us about climate change? How ironic that the same people claiming to want to transform the planet are the same people who have the most to lose from an end to the status quo. In the end, all they do is give an appearance of action while in reality taking us round and round in a senseless merry-go-round that takes us nowhere. These actions are only meant to preserve the structures that resulted in 1% of the population owning 82% of the global wealth. We should automatically assume that anything they tell us is a lie meant to preserve the status quo.

While the corporate media is busy screaming about a non-existent climate change apocalypse that is supposedly right around the corner, no one is talking about the real danger facing humanity, i.e., the threat of nuclear war. This is a much more immediate threat that we have been conditioned to ignore. The reality is that as long as we have nuclear weapons on the planet, it is only a matter of time before we use them. It is as simple as that. We should not allow ourselves to be deceived into believing that nuclear-armed countries are spending all those billions of dollars on weapons without any plans to use them. The only reason a country would have nuclear weapons is that they can foresee a situation in which nuclear war is the only option. Humanity has allowed itself to be lulled into a false sense of security by the myth of nuclear weapons as a deterrence and the myth of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD). The acronym itself says it all: it would be MAD to assume that no one would be insane enough to use nuclear weapons because of mutually assured destruction. This naïve idea does not take into account that the people running the world and making the most important decisions on the planet are insane, child-abusing psychopaths. One only has to look at how the United States and NATO are currently engaged in provocative actions against Russia to realise that these people have no limits to what they can do. How long before these provocations turn into an actual war between nuclear-armed nations? The fact that we are busy fretting about climate change while psychopathic world leaders threaten nuclear war is simply incomprehensible.

The acronym itself says it all: it would be MAD to assume that no one would be insane enough to use nuclear weapons because of mutually assured destruction. This naïve idea does not take into account that the people running the world and making the most important decisions on the planet are insane, child-abusing psychopaths.

Why aren’t we more concerned about nuclear war even though it is the most imminent threat to our survival? It is because the powers that be have deliberately minimized the danger of nuclear war in the collective consciousness because this is the only way they get to keep their nuclear arsenals and continue projecting their power. Nuclear weapons allow the power-hungry elites to bully everyone into submission with no accountability. These people are not about to give up this level of power easily. The reason the West led by the United States can strut around the globe doing whatever they want, forcing everyone to abide by their “rules-based order” is because of the power these nuclear weapons afford them. Without the nuclear weapon, their words would be nothing more than the pathetic rantings of spoilt brats that no one would have to listen to. With nuclear weapons, whatever they say is backed up by the massive threat these weapons represent. The corporate media never draws our attention to the very real threat posed by nuclear weapons except in ways that cast some countries (North Korea, Iran) as rogue nations that are the only real threats. Once these nations get rid of their nuclear weapons we are told, then the world will be free of nuclear threats. We are supposed to believe that the West is the sole party that is responsible enough to bear nuclear weapons, even though we all know that the United States is the only country to ever have used nuclear weapons on another country. The corporate media never challenges the idea that some countries are allowed to have nuclear weapons while others are not. Who decided this? What makes the United States, Russia, China, France and Britain so special? It is this very special status as the “official” nuclear countries that has allowed these five countries to dominate the United Nations and either drive or sabotage whatever agenda they choose. How can we ever hope to live in a just world when just five nations are allowed to dictate the agenda of a body like the UN? Not many people know today that the United Nations passed the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in 2021 which prohibits nations from developing, testing, producing, manufacturing, transferring, possessing, stockpiling, using or threatening to use nuclear weapons, or allowing nuclear weapons to be stationed on their territory. The corporate media does not talk about this. A majority of countries have signed the treaty, but several countries including all the nuclear-armed countries have refused to sign the treaty. If more people knew about this treaty, they would pressure their governments to ratify it.

The Western world is currently engaged in a proxy war with Russia that is playing out in Ukraine. Every day, Russia issues veiled threats about the use of nuclear weapons which the West doesn’t seem to care about. Meanwhile, the United States and NATO are doing everything in their power to escalate and prolong the war. Every day that the war is fought represents another day that the safety of humanity hangs in the balance. Russia has just taken steps to escalate the war, meaning they are starting to face the fact that the war is with NATO, not Ukraine. The West doesn’t seem to care and is sending ever more deadly weapons to Ukraine. At the same time, the West is involved in risky escalations with China over Taiwan. It seems that as the West loses its control over the planet, it is becoming more and more dangerous and willing to do ever more insane things. One would be excused for thinking that the West is trying to start World War 3 against Russia and China simultaneously. This is the only logical conclusion we can draw from the West’s actions. The West is so used to being the dominant actor on the global stage that they would rather blow everything up than allow anyone else to take this position. At the same time, it is becoming increasingly harder for the global elites to hide their crimes, from the JFK assassination to 9-11 to the covid-19 global coup. This makes them extremely dangerous. What will it take for Westerners to finally confront their governments and say no to this madness? While they are usually quick to take to the streets to protest everything from abortion to racism to inflation, they do not seem to care that their leaders are trying to start World War 3. What they should understand is that this time, the violence will not be limited to faraway places while they sleep safely in their warm beds.

Mass Hypnosis and Global Totalitarianism

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Mass hypnosis – the means

Once upon a time, an ant was sitting on a giant rotating wheel thinking to itself that something felt off. The ant knew that something big was happening, something important, but for the life of it, it couldn’t tell what it was. All it knew was that whatever was happening was going to impact it in a big way. While the ant was sitting there pondering what it could be, the giant wheel finally reached the point where the ant was about to meet the ground. Suddenly, the ant knew what was happening, but it was too late. It was crushed under the giant wheel. Of late, human beings are starting to look a lot like that ant. We know that something big is happening, something important, something that will impact our lives, but we just can’t connect the dots. Everything seems to be changing but we don’t know where this is going. Some are calling it the great reset while others are calling it the new world order. It is almost as if a giant hand is manipulating events, pushing humanity in a certain direction, only we don’t know whose hand it is or which direction it is pushing us towards.

If you have been following the debate, you may have heard the term “mass formation” or “mass formation psychosis” used with regards to the covid-19 pandemic. For the sake of clarity, I will simply call it “mass hypnosis”. Hypnosis is can be defined as an altered state of mind in which the subject has reduced peripheral awareness and an enhanced capacity to respond to suggestions. Mass hypnosis happens when hypnosis takes place on a large scale as in a population or on a global scale. Many have been quick to dismiss this phenomenon, but these are the people who usually dismiss whatever they do not understand. We all know that mass hypnosis is a reality – human beings can be hypnotized at mass scale – and we need look no further than Hitler’s rallies in which the crowds were rendered into a hypnotic state that made them willing to accept without question his insane ideas. We also know about mob psychology which is whereby a group of people commit crimes they would never have committed on their own. It is almost as if something takes over and causes them to act as one by taking on the psychology of the lowest among them. We also know that mass hypnosis plays a role in cults whereby people are manipulated using psychological means to do whatever the cult leader wants them to do.

For mass hypnosis to be induced, four conditions must exist in the target population:

Loneliness (lack of social bonds)
Lack of meaning in life
Generalized anxiety (anxiety with no apparent cause)
Generalized frustration and aggression

Once these conditions are met, the population is ripe for mass hypnosis. All one has to do is provide an enemy that people can direct their anxiety, frustration and aggression towards and then provide the solution that will defeat the enemy. This narrative has to be repeated over and over again until people accept it as the truth. This is something the Nazi propaganda guru Joseph Goebbels knew well:

“A lie told once remains a lie but a lie told a thousand times becomes the truth” ~ Joseph Goebbels

This constant repetition eventually induces hypnosis by fixating people’s attention (narrowing down awareness to a single point of attention) and bypassing the rational, analytical mind.

Long before the covid-19 pandemic started, the world was already in a state of unrest. Everywhere you looked, people were demonstrating against their governments, demanding change and protesting against perceived injustices. Life was becoming more and more difficult following the 2008 global financial crash. Purchasing power was decreasing and people could no longer survive comfortably on their salaries. People were forced to put in more hours just to maintain the same standard of living. The climate change narrative was being aggressively pushed to explain everything from droughts to wildfires to melting ice caps to changing weather patterns. Social ties were weakening by the day as more and more people retreated online. People everywhere felt lonely and isolated. It felt like the world had reached a breaking point. Then in 2020, the covid-19 pandemic started. Suddenly, our attention was focused narrowly on the pandemic, to the exclusion of everything else. The mainstream media went into overdrive, pounding our collective consciousness 24/7 with news of the virus. Everyone had to stay home and normal social ties were abruptly broken. Nothing else mattered. It didn’t matter that businesses were shutting down, economies were collapsing, people were overdosing on drugs or others were committing suicides. It didn’t matter that schools had been shut down, domestic violence was on the rise, people were lonely and scared and relatives were dying without saying goodbye to their loved ones. All that mattered was the virus and protecting ourselves from it. Then to everyone’s relief, a solution was found. Vaccines.

This constant repetition eventually induces hypnosis by fixating people’s attention (narrowing down awareness to a single point of attention) and bypassing the rational, analytical mind.

I’m sure by now you can see where I’m going with this. If you look at the description of mass hypnosis above, you will see a stunning similarity between what has been happening over the past few years and mass hypnosis. Humanity was ripe for mass hypnosis by 2020 following years of instability, unrest, anxiety, loneliness and frustration. The covid-19 narrative was the perfect problem to fixate our attention and vaccines the perfect solution to this problem. This was drummed into us by the mainstream media. Dissent was not allowed. Anything contrary to what the authorities were saying was labelled as misinformation and big tech did their part to stop its spread.

But the question is why? Why would anyone go to all this trouble to hypnotise us? What do they stand to gain? This is unfortunately a naïve question that arises from a lack of understanding of the world we live in. We live in a world where a group of elites who consider themselves better than ordinary human beings are constantly trying to take control of the planet. Remember the cartoons we watched as kids where a supervillain would try to take over the world? Yeah, that’s real. We live in a world where a group of psychopaths driven by greed and the desire for control are willing to do whatever it takes to rule over humanity. These beings have one desire and one desire only – to become our masters while we serve them and do their bidding. As far as they are concerned, heaven on earth will happen when they have total control of every aspect of our lives. This is their dream and the reason why the world is being aggressively hijacked. Their goal is global totalitarianism with them as the rulers of humanity.

Global totalitarianism – the end

Totalitarianism is a form of government and political system that prohibits all opposition parties, outlaws individual opposition to the state and its claims, and exercises an extremely high degree of control and regulation over public and private life. It is regarded as the most extreme and complete form of authoritarianism. Hannah Arendt in her book The Origins of Totalitarianism gives fascinating insights into totalitarianism using the example of Hitler and Stalin. Anyone interested in knowing more about totalitarianism should read her book. The important thing to understand about totalitarianism is that it seeks the complete domination of humanity, but the logical conclusion of this extreme domination is the destruction of life. The people behind totalitarianism are against God, against human beings and against life itself. The ultimate expression of this intense hatred is the destruction of life. Totalitarianism is the anti-Christ we have all been taught to believe is coming. It is a force that wants to destroy life because the extreme hatred that is behind it will not be satisfied with anything less.

The important thing to understand about totalitarianism is that it seeks the complete domination of humanity, but the logical conclusion of this extreme domination is the destruction of life. The people behind totalitarianism are against God, against human beings and against life itself.

According to Hannah Arendt,

“Totalitarian movements are mass organisations of atomized, isolated individuals. Compared with all other parties and movements, their most conspicuous characteristic is their demand for total, unrestricted, unconditional and unalterable loyalty of the individual member. This demand is made by the leaders of totalitarian movements even before they seize power. It usually precedes the total organization of the country under their actual rule and it follows from the claim of their ideologies that their organisation will encompass, in due course, the entire human race.”

From this description, we can observe a few things.

Totalitarian movements are made up of atomized, isolated individuals. If we connect this to the current situation on the planet, we see that human beings were already becoming more and more isolated before the covid-19 pandemic, but this was made worse and brutally enforced during the pandemic. This lays the groundwork for a totalitarian movement to be instituted.
Totalitarian movements demand the total, unrestricted, unconditional and unalterable loyalty of the individual member. For this to happen, the individual has to be in a state in which they feel helpless and look up to an authority for protection and direction. Any voice of dissent is ruthlessly shut down as we are seeing today. Only the authorities can know the truth; anything else is misinformation and must be kept from the people.
The ideology of the totalitarian movement is that their organisation will encompass, in due course, the entire human race. What we see today is an attempt to bring the entire human race into a totalitarian movement. There is a deliberate attempt to bring the entire planet under totalitarian rule. This is why we see mass hypnosis being carried out on a global scale under the pretext of covid-19.

Totalitarianism has several features that all work together to take the masses closer and closer into the desired state of complete loyalty to the leaders and their ideologies (these ideologies are merely a pretext for gaining power. Once in power, these ideologies are promptly forgotten as the true nature of totalitarianism makes itself known). One feature of totalitarianism is the use of terror to create a “mass man”. A mass man is an individual who is completely isolated from others – friends, family, acquittances – and has no social ties. This mass man is completely loyal to the movement to the point of losing his sense of self. One feature of the mass man is that he is no longer concerned with self-preservation. He is willing to lose his very life for the sake of the party. This state is similar to that of someone in a cult who completely loses their identity to the point of being willing to die. In totalitarianism, the creation of the mass man is done by terrorizing people into submission. In Nazi Germany and Stalin’s Russia, this was done through mass murder. Today, the mass man is being created through psychological warfare – the relentless bombardment of human beings with one fearful event after the other – climate change, covid-19 and now the threat of nuclear war. The result is that people become fearful, isolated and lose any sense of self-preservation. Once in this state, it is possible to get people to do whatever the leaders want. Their internal defences are destroyed.

Another feature of totalitarianism is the complete indifference to mass interest. In the case of Stalin, the illogical destruction of agricultural systems in the name of collectivisation led to mass starvation and deaths. Today, we see this same lack of mass interest in the response to covid-19. Lockdowns led to mass job losses, closure of businesses, destruction of economies and mental health problems. The authorities did not care – protecting humanity from the virus was more important than whatever destruction ensued. This complete lack of empathy reveals the true nature of the covid-19 response. It was not motivated by compassion but was meant to bring humanity one step closer to global totalitarianism.

Another feature of totalitarianism is the gradual loss of freedom. One big disadvantage human beings have that works against them is their ability to adapt. As long as something happens very very slowly, as far as we are concerned, nothing is happening. In reality, what is happening is that without realizing it we continually adapt to new ways of being. Eventually, we even forget that we ever existed in any other way. This weakness has been used against us by those who are aware of this tendency of human beings to continually adapt. It has been used to take away our freedoms without us realizing what is happening. Over a very long time, human beings have given up their freedom of movement by accepting the concept of borders which in reality are prison walls that are far away enough that we don’t realize that we are in prison. Our freedom of movement was further curtailed during the covid-19 pandemic through the lockdowns, the closing down of borders and vaccine passports. These very aggressive measures were used to see just how far the elites could go. We already agreed to be imprisoned in our countries, but could they go further and lock us in our houses? Our freedom of speech is similarly being eroded through censorship and algorithms. Our right to refuse medical treatments is being eroded by the forced vaccines. This is totalitarianism in action, only they are no longer using guns to take away our freedom but psychological warfare.

Today, we are seeing the global elites transition from covid-19 to a new form of psychological warfare – the threat of nuclear war. Will this threat turn into reality? We don’t know. If it does, it will just be another step forward in the madness that is totalitarianism. Our only hope is that enough of us wake up from our slumber and resist this march towards destruction. But if we continue watching from a distance hoping that they will stop themselves, we will be shocked at just how far they are willing to go. The problem with totalitarianism is that it does not know when to stop – it just keeps going until it enters a self-sustaining downward spiral that cannot be stopped. In the end, when the totalitarian leaders take over, their true intentions will be revealed – the destruction of life.

The Illusion of Freedom

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According to Wikipedia, “Freedom is understood as either having the ability to act or change without constraint or to possess the power and resources to fulfill one’s purposes.”

From this definition, we see that freedom has three important elements:

ability to act or change
no constraints
power and resources

Most of us have a very limited understanding of freedom. We consider ourselves free if we can move around with a relative amount of ease, earn a decent living, interact with friends and family and take part in the electoral process in our countries. We look at people in autocratic countries and pity them because according to us, they are not free. We on the other hand hold elections every four or five years and therefore this means we live in a “free and democratic society”.

Are we free?

Given the above definition of freedom, are we right in considering ourselves free? If you live in a democratic country and generally consider yourself free, does this idea still hold once you consider the above three elements that are necessary for one to be free? I put it to you that most of us on this planet are not free by any stretch of the imagination. It is just that our definition of freedom has been carefully crafted to give us the illusion of freedom. Once we look at our lives closely, the idea that we are free completely falls flat. What we have instead is an illusion of freedom – a freedom that is in reality non-freedom. Freedom has been redefined to mean that you do what you are supposed to do. You are supposed to live your life a certain way from the day you are born to the day you die and as long as you keep within those boundaries, all is well. The prison walls are disguised as beautiful paintings or murals that we gaze at without really seeing what is behind them.

I put it to you that most of us on this planet are not free by any stretch of the imagination. It is just that our definition of freedom has been carefully crafted to give us the illusion of freedom. Once we look at our lives closely, the idea that we are free completely falls flat.

According to the script we are given at birth, life is supposed to look a certain way. You are supposed to be born, go to school to prepare yourself to be a good worker, leave school and join the workforce, get married, have children, raise the children, retire, then enjoy a few years before death finally takes you. According to the narrative, this is what freedom looks like. You stay within the confines of this prison and experience life within these boundaries and you will never get to see the prison walls. The problem comes in when you try to venture outside the script. Suddenly, you will be faced with all sorts of pressures to return to the script, to give up your futile attempt to climb over the walls. It doesn’t take much really to get you back into the safety of the prison. You will realize very quickly that the system is designed in such a way that you cannot even survive physically if you attempt to scale the walls. It’s a tight system. Let’s say you want to change an aspect of the script that you don’t like. For example, you want to spend your life travelling and painting or taking photographs instead of working in an office. What you quickly realize is that without resources, there is no freedom. You can’t afford to do whatever you want to do. If we could, most of us would probably not be doing what we are doing today. We are doing whatever we are doing to survive physically, to keep our bodies and our children’s bodies alive. That is not freedom however much you may have grown up thinking you are free. If you cannot do whatever you want because of some constraint, be it an authority that is keeping you from doing it or the lack of resources, you are not free. Look at the definition of freedom and you will realize that most of the people on this planet are not free. We live under the illusion of freedom.

One alarming fact about life on this planet is that we seem to constantly be moving towards less and less freedom in every aspect of our lives. It seems almost as if there is an unseen force that acts to herd us towards less and less freedom. While most of us just want to live peaceful lives not bothering anyone or being bothered by anyone, it seems that we do not have the luxury to do this. There is an ever-present force that seems intent on moving humanity towards less and less freedom and we constantly have to fight this force. It is almost as if we are not allowed to just relax and enjoy life. Many of us would willingly live under the illusion of freedom simply because we do not have the strength to keep fighting, but this force is not satisfied with our meekly agreeing to live lives of non-freedom. It wants to take away every last freedom and leave us as slaves. That is why people are always engaged in protests and demonstrations and pushing back against this relentless force. It seems that if we relax even for a second, our meagre non-freedoms will all be taken away. We have seen this with the Covid 19 pandemic. While we are all busy trying to fight the pandemic for our collective survival, some see this as an opportunity that should not be wasted. Governments in many parts of the world have postponed elections, imposed endless lockdowns and curfews, imposed vaccine passports and mandates, shut down borders, etc. Now, we can look at these and say that they are all justified measures in fighting the pandemic, but the problem is that once these measures are put in place, we have to fight to have them lifted afterwards. Two years since the pandemic started, governments are still determined to keep measures in place even when it doesn’t make sense to do so. Measures that were supposed to last for two weeks are still in place even when all evidence suggests that the worst is over. The force seems bent on keeping us down and we have the unfortunate task of fighting just to maintain this state of non-freedom that we live in. We remain in a state in which we cannot even aspire to a state of true freedom.

Freedom has four levels: physical, mental, emotional and spiritual freedom. It is important to understand freedom in its fullest sense if we are to become aware of how our freedoms are slowly eroded without our knowing it. Being conscious is the first step towards protecting our freedom. We will look at each of these levels below.

Physical freedom

Physical freedom means being able to do whatever you want whenever you want. It means having the resources you need to do what you want. Having said that, being free doesn’t mean acting irresponsibly. It means acting without restricting other people’s freedom to exercise their freedom. From this definition, it is clear that people on earth are not truly free to do what they want. There are so many constraints to our freedom that we can hardly claim to be physically free. For one thing, most of what we do day to day is geared towards physical survival. We are still trying to meet the lowest level needs on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs i.e., food and security. That can hardly be described as freedom. How many people truly can do whatever they want or go wherever they want on this planet? Not many. For most of us, our waking hours are spent working to feed ourselves and our families. We simply cannot leave the treadmill even if we wanted to. When we reach the stage in our evolution in which we are not spending most of our time trying to survive physically, then we can start talking about humanity being free.

There are other ways our physical freedom is limited on this planet. Although we are free to go wherever we want within our borders, we are not allowed to move freely outside our borders. To be able to go to other countries, you need a passport and a visa. Depending on which country you come from, it is either mildly annoying or completely impossible to get these papers. This is a limitation to our physical freedom. Many immoral ideas have found their way into the system, for example, the idea that people from certain parts of the world are unworthy to visit other parts of the world. It has therefore become completely justified to make it as difficult as possible for these people to get the papers they need to travel. The reasoning behind this is that those from poorer parts of the world will come flooding into the richer parts of the world, but the question is, why do we live in a world where some people wallow in poverty while others are rich? If we can go to the bottom of this issue and correct the underlying problem, then we will not need to restrict anyone’s movement. How did the poor countries get so poor in the first place anyway? Wasn’t it because the rich countries plundered and looted these countries’ wealth and continue to do so today? Instead of correcting this injustice, we have put in place strict restrictions that stop the poor from going to wealthy countries.

When we see many people in different parts of the world fighting against vaccine passports and mandates, it is because of this very tendency of authorities to take a legitimate system and turn it into something nefarious. Who knows, maybe a hundred years from now after the pandemic is long gone, people will still be required to have vaccine passports to move around freely and no one will remember how the system started in the first place. It will just be an accepted restriction of our movement and no one will question how the system started in the first place, just the same way we never question how we came to need passports and visas to visit other countries. How did this system start in the first place? Nobody knows, nobody cares, nobody questions it, all we know is that it is very hard to travel to other countries because of the visa system. Once you understand how our freedoms are constantly eroded and taken away, you will understand why people are passionately fighting these mandates and passports. If this was a world where no one was trying to take away our freedom, no one would even think of protesting against these requirements. It would be obvious that once the need for restrictions is over, they would be done away with and normal life would resume. But because we do not trust our governments to restore our freedoms once the danger is over, we are forced to go to the streets to fight against these restrictions. Case in point, during the height of the terrorist attacks, it became a requirement in many parts of the world to have strict security checks before entering many places like malls, office buildings or airports. Today, long after the terrorist threats ended, we are still being searched, watched through surveillance systems and taken through metal detectors. There is no discussion about restoring our right to move freely without being subjected to invasive searches. We have all submitted to the idea that everyone is a criminal unless proven otherwise. Our children who were born after these restrictions were put in place have not known any other way of existing. Will our children even think to question why the world is the way it is or will it take a few hundred years before people start wondering why they cannot go anywhere without being searched? This is what happens when we willingly give up our freedoms, we never get them back.

Today, long after the terrorist threats ended, we are still being searched, watched through surveillance systems and taken through metal detectors. There is no discussion about restoring our right to move freely without being subjected to invasive searches. We have all submitted to the idea that everyone is a criminal unless proven otherwise.

Another effective method that is used to restrict our freedom is teaching us to fear each other. In the past, people were kept from venturing too far from their homes through the belief that the earth was flat, meaning that someone could fall off the earth if they went too far. Once we overcame this idea, we were taught instead to fear strangers, which discourages people from mingling freely with others in other parts of the world. Instead of a natural curiosity about how other people live, we fear and demonize and try to destroy those who are different from us. So, most of us live our entire lives within our borders and regard with suspicion people from other parts of the world.

Mental Freedom

Mental freedom is the right to think whatever you want. Unlike physical freedom, you cannot hurt others by what you think so ideally everyone should be free to think whatever they want without any restrictions. Only when thoughts turn into actions is there any danger of hurting other people. You would be surprised however to learn just how much effort goes into suppressing our freedom to think. You may think that you have the freedom to think whatever you want until you start considering the many ways this freedom is curtailed. Just as an example, consider the fact that there is a career known as “critic” whose sole role is to dissect someone’s creative work. Creativity is an expression of what is going on inside someone’s mind and this is expressed through art, literature, music or fashion. What is the role of the critic? It is to limit the expression of creativity by deciding what is and isn’t an acceptable expression of one’s creativity. Because of the influence of critics, people become afraid of expressing their thoughts and ideas freely and over time, we find that creativity is diminished. This is a way of suppressing mental freedom and some people have made a career out of it. Critics are not much different from trolls who wait for someone to write something on the internet then attack them with a vengeance. The mentality is the same. You are not allowed to say something they disagree with and if you do, they will viciously attack you and do everything they can to make sure you think twice before expressing any ideas they disagree with.

Another way our mental freedom is suppressed is through digital censorship. In the dark ages, mental freedom could be curtailed through the burning of books, which was meant to stop the spread of ideas. When this was no longer acceptable, governments started banning books whenever something was said that they felt was a threat to their authority. When the internet came along, knowledge and information became much more freely available and banning information could no longer work. Today, a new way has been found to stop the spread of information i.e., digital censorship. Under the guise of protecting us from misinformation, digital platforms are becoming increasingly authoritarian in what they allow. In reality, this is the same instinct that led to the burning and banning of books and other material. Authorities always get nervous when there is too much information circulating and they always try to find ways of stopping the free flow of information. Behind this mindset is the patronizing idea that people cannot judge for themselves what is and isn’t good for them. This is the role that Facebook and Twitter have taken upon themselves. What gives them the right to determine what we can or can’t read simply because they look down on our ability to make the right decisions? They see themselves as gods who decide what is and isn’t good for us. Other digital platforms like Google and YouTube use powerful algorithms to determine what information we receive when we search for something. On the surface of it, this sounds innocuous enough until we understand the power of these algorithms to determine what we read and watch. For example, when you search for something on YouTube, you get hundreds of suggestions that are similar to what you searched for. I’ve always found this tendency to give similar suggestions quite annoying. For example, if I search for a certain kind of music, I get hundreds of suggestions for similar music. But what if they instead suggested different kinds of music? Then I would have the opportunity to discover something new instead of going deeper and deeper into a world where I only listen to one kind of music. Instead of expanding your horizons, what they do is make your world smaller and smaller. This tendency to herd people in certain directions is what causes people to become radicalized or end up with beliefs such as QAnon or Incel. By the time you realize what is happening, you are so deep inside the rabbit hole you hardly know how to find your way out. The bigger picture is that humanity is becoming more and more close-minded and we are losing our ability to consider that a different way of looking at things could be equally valid.

The media is another powerful way in which our mental freedom is limited because the media tells us not only what is happening around us but how we should think about what is happening around us. This power can be used to very devastating effect as was seen during the Nazi propaganda days. All you have to do is repeat something often enough and it doesn’t matter how ridiculous it is, in the end, people start believing it. We know that most of the mainstream media is owned by elites who have everything to benefit from maintaining the status quo. They need the systems that made them elites in the first place to stay in place even though they do not work for the majority of people. It doesn’t take a genius to see how the media can be used to shape our reality. Closely related to this is the control of what we read. In this age of Amazon, the rating system is used to subtly control what we read. Books that receive the highest rating end up being read the most. This sounds innocuous enough, but what is the end result? The end result is that only popular ideas or authors receive the attention of readers while new or unpopular ideas get buried in the bowels of Amazon to rot and die quiet deaths. How will we ever learn anything new if we only read what everyone else is reading? At the end of the day, we are swimming in a small pond where there is no room for anything new.

Emotional freedom

Emotional freedom is the right to feel whatever you want. Unfortunately, from the time we are young we are taught that we are not free to feel or express emotions the way we want. Depending on your gender, we are taught that there are emotions we can or can’t express. Men are taught to be strong meaning they should not show fear, doubt, sorrow or any other such “feminine” emotions. Women are taught to be soft meaning they are not allowed to express “manly” emotions such as anger. Expressing the “wrong” emotion leads to rejection by society and this is how our emotional freedom is denied us. The result of this very strong pressure is that people end up hiding their true selves and putting up a front that society deems acceptable. Women learn to be soft-spoken, timid and unsure of themselves, which just feeds into the stereotype that women have nothing important to contribute. Men on the other hand embody a very unbalanced form of masculinity which is aggressive, hard, unyielding and stubborn. These qualities are celebrated in men, but the truth is that they represent an unbalanced masculinity or what is known as toxic masculinity.

Women historically suffered immensely under these very unbalanced ideas of how men and women are supposed to feel or express their emotions. During the dark ages, women would be labelled as witches if they didn’t conform while in the recent past, women would be sent to mental institutions simply because they expressed unacceptable desires. Today, other more subtle ways are used to control women. Labelling women as depressed, crazy or hormonal when they choose to express emotions that make others uncomfortable is an effective means of controlling women. The fact that women go through emotional ups and downs such as menstruation, pregnancy or menopause has been used to dismiss them as second-class humans who should not be listened to or taken seriously. The fact that women express themselves differently from men is also used to take away from the fact that whatever they express is just as valid as men. For example, men are taught to speak out boldly, cut in and share their opinions freely while women are taught to wait their turn and doubt that what they want to express is valid. This is why the world is completely unbalanced towards men. Women’s voices are not heard, so we end up with a very aggressive world in which we choose war instead of diplomacy, where politics is competitive and aggressive, and where business is concerned only with profits and not employees or the environment. All these are the result of the suppression of women.

Another sphere in which our emotional freedom is curtailed is in the expression of love. We are not allowed to love whoever we want. Society gives us a very limited idea of what love looks like and then expects everyone to fall into these very confined ideas. For example, we still live in a world where people from different races cannot freely express love for each other. We live in a world where people who differ too much in age cannot express love for each other without judgement. We live in a world where monogamy is the only acceptable form of union. There are so many rules surrounding the expression of love that one cannot help but wonder where all these rules came from. Why can’t people experience love in whatever form they want and make their own decisions about what is and isn’t right for them? Why is it that the free expression of love is so threatening to society?

Spiritual freedom

Spiritual freedom is the right to believe what you want and as we know, this is one form of freedom that has been viciously curtailed and aggressively fought on this planet. The idea that people can believe whatever they want seems to be very threatening to some people. Historically, spiritual freedom was curtailed through the very violent attempt by the catholic church to control what people believed, to the extent of killing people whose beliefs were not in line with the teachings of the church. This was what led to the very bloody inquisitions and crusades. The idea that people should be forced to believe what certain people say is the only acceptable truth resulted in the abuse of human beings for centuries. This same attempt to impose beliefs upon people was used during colonial times when colonialism went hand in hand with the Christianisation of populations. The purpose was to get the people to willingly accept subjugation by giving them teachings that reinforced this such as being submissive, accepting authority that was supposedly imposed by God and accepting suffering with the idea that there was a better life waiting in heaven.

Today, spiritual freedom is not curtailed quite so brutally but there are still hidden ways in which our spiritual freedom is suppressed. A very effective way is through shaming or mocking someone for the beliefs they hold. Many people today are reluctant to share their spiritual beliefs because if they do not conform to the mainstream, they become victims of mockery. Another way this is done is through shunning someone who attempts to explore other beliefs that are outside what is considered the norm in the society in which they live. Converting to a different religion is considered a betrayal which results in being made an outcast by family and friends. We also have the idea that one should convert to a certain religion in order to marry someone from that religion. This gives the impression that what you believe makes you different in some way, but the reality is that people are just people no matter what they believe. At the end of the day, we all want the same things. To live peaceful, happy and fulfilled lives.

Protecting your freedom

Because most people do not understand freedom in its truest sense, it becomes very easy for those who want to control us to redefine freedom and then get us to believe that we are free while in reality, we are not. By defining freedom as the ability to do what you are supposed to do, people live entire lives without freedom while being under the illusion that they are free. We assume that so long as we can go to work and earn a living and take care of ourselves and our families, we are free. But we don’t understand that this life has been defined for us by someone else and we cannot easily go outside this very narrow definition of what life is supposed to be. When we try to spread our wings and experience ourselves the way God intended us to experience ourselves, that’s when we discover that we are not free at all. Once we understand the true definition of freedom, we can start looking at the world we live in and seeing all the expressions of non-freedom around us. Then we can start speaking out about the many things that are happening around us that move the world towards less and less freedom.

On a personal level, we need to take charge of our lives and reject all subtle forms of control. We may not be immediately able to do away with all forms of control, but there are some small things that we allow to chip away at our freedom without being conscious of what is happening. For example, we always complain about big tech taking away our freedom, but are they in any way forcing us to use their platforms? No, we do this willingly and in the process, allow them to control us. Why use google as a search engine for example when there are alternatives like DuckDuckGo that do not collect or store your data? Why do you need to be on Facebook or Twitter when they disrespect their users so much that they feel they have a right to control what they can or can’t read?

We also need to stand up for our right to be different from everyone else and to be our authentic selves. Just because everyone is going in a certain direction doesn’t mean they are all right. They could very well be all wrong. So, we must reserve the right to do what feels right to us and ignore those who try to get us back into the herd. We need to share our views, opinions and ideas freely through blogs, books or whatever other means we have at our disposal. The interesting thing about this planet is that the lowest people, the ones with the worst ideas, the ones who pull everyone down are the ones who are the most aggressive in sharing their opinions with the entire world. You find them everywhere claiming to be experts and sharing their opinions and negative ideas with everyone. They have no problem spreading their negativity. On the other hand, the most positive, enlightened people feel unworthy, they feel that their ideas are stupid, they feel that no one is interested in hearing from them and they keep their ideas to themselves. This ensures that the planet is filled with negativity while the light stays hidden under the bed.

The System is Rigged to Favour the Most Aggressive Among Us

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The world we live in today is structured in such a way that the most aggressive among us always end up on top. According to Darwin, this is the natural order of things. Survival for the fittest. From politics to business to geopolitics to the workplace, the people who are willing to do anything to get ahead are the ones who ultimately end up winning. The ones who are the most relentless, persistent, aggressive, ruthless, cunning, willing to lie, cheat and bribe in pursuit of a goal are the ones who end up on top. The world rewards such behaviour. But if you think about it, is this the ultimate way for our world to be structured? Because let’s face it, who among us are the ones most likely to thrive in such an environment? Who are the most aggressive people among us? It’s the psychopaths! They are the ones who have no boundaries, no limits to what they’re willing to do, no pesky conscience to bother them in the pursuit of their goals and no empathy or guilt to prevent them from destroying anything or anyone who stands in their way.

Who are the most aggressive people among us? It’s the psychopaths! They are the ones who have no boundaries, no limits to what they’re willing to do, no pesky conscience to bother them in the pursuit of their goals and no empathy or guilt to prevent them from destroying anything or anyone who stands in their way.

When we hear the word psychopath, most of us immediately think of is the Ted Bundys and the Hitlers of this world i.e., murderers, rapists and the criminals of society. But today we know that psychopaths can be very high functioning individuals and can live their entire lives without being detected or called out for who they are. They are masters at creating convincing façades that hide the truth of who they are. While they spend most of their days dishing out emotional and psychological trauma to the people around them, they will nonetheless keep their psychopathy hidden behind charming personas and the image of success. Unfortunately, we have been conditioned to admire outward displays of success to the point that if someone is successful, we believe that they are worthy of admiration and emulation. And psychopaths can be among the most successful people due to their driven nature and single-minded focus on getting ahead. They are well represented among CEOs, politicians, lawyers, surgeons and business owners. You will also find them in professions we have been taught to revere such as policemen, the military and believe it or not, church leaders. Hence the kind of abuses you hear about in churches for example the paedophilia in the catholic church or the abuse of children in the Canadian residential schools.

How did we end up having a system that is rigged to favour psychopaths without us even being aware of it? First and foremost, psychopaths are the ones who have been writing the rule book. It is said that history is written by the winners and if the winners are psychopaths, then they will manipulate the narrative to suit themselves. So, for example, the imperialists who go out and conquer faraway lands and subdue people through brutal force become our heroes. The countries that take all the resources on the planet and leave everyone else starving and poor become the admired countries while the poorer countries are despised and blamed for the condition they are in. The billionaires who siphon all the wealth leaving everyone else to make do with the little that is left over are held up as the models of success that we should all strive to emulate.

Secondly, psychopathy is a condition that hides in plain sight because we are not trained to see it. Psychopaths have an outward, superficial charm that easily deceives most people. They are the people who tell the funniest and best stories and are fun to be around. But when you spend enough time with them, you start noticing that they are not really who they say they are. You will notice that their behaviour is not aligned with the way they portray themselves. You may notice how they bully people and emotionally abuse people and how they seem to induce fear in those working close to them. Psychopaths have an uncanny ability to abuse without the object of the abuse being aware that they are being abused. They may make you feel that you are special to them but suddenly turn on you and attack you. This causes your mind to go into denial because you cannot believe that the person you’ve come to trust could turn on you so ruthlessly. Psychopaths are also pathological liars. They will say one thing today and later completely change the story. They lie so much and change the story so much that they are not even able to keep up with the lies themselves. And so, their reality just keeps changing to become whatever is most convenient at the time. If confronted, they will just create a new version of events and the new version becomes the new reality. You can never win with them because their version of the story is the truth and that’s the end of the story.

Below are some ways in which psychopaths have managed to infiltrate the system and rig it in their favour allowing them to dominate the planet to the detriment of us all:

Politics

The political systems in most parts of the world are designed to favour the most aggressive, rewarding them for their ability to do whatever it takes to win, their ability to eliminate the competition, their ability to mount aggressive campaigns, their willingness to bribe voters, etc. Even in countries with so-called ‘mature’ democracies, the most aggressive people still manage to find their way in and rig the system in their favour. Money talks in politics and those who have the most of it can influence the outcome of elections. You end up with situations where people are manipulated into seeing themselves as being on one side of the divide in opposition to those on the other side. What they don’t see is that it doesn’t matter which side wins, the elites ultimately end up winning and everyone else loses. Voters are manipulated into thinking there are only two options and they must choose the lesser of two evils. We are manipulated into thinking that the obscure candidate who represents the kind of qualities we want is a loser not worth wasting our vote on. And so, we continue voting in the same aggressive types because we don’t see any other option. I think it would be better to abstain from voting than to vote for someone you don’t want just because they represent the lesser evil.

Business

Does profit have to be the only motive in business? We have been taught that profit and maximizing shareholder value is the only motive for business, but is this a sound idea? What is the result of this ideology? It’s what we see today, businesses mindlessly pursuing profits at the expense of integrity, the environment and their employees. People are viewed not as human beings but as human resources. Have you ever wondered where that idea came from? If you put human beings at the same level as capital or land and you see them as resources, then you have a right to treat them as a resource and not as human beings. You have a right to ruthlessly cut down on staff whenever the need arises to save on costs. You have a right to pay them as little as possible because it is none of your concern how they survive on the little you pay them. Your greatest concern is keeping as much as possible for the owners of the business. You don’t need to be concerned about what happens when they fall sick because you don’t need to think of a resource in such terms. You don’t need to concern yourself with what happens when they give birth. You don’t need to concern yourself with how they manage to get to work at 8 am every day and how they get home when they leave at 5 pm. You don’t need to care for them, you just need them to work and deliver the results you need. You view them as workers, not partners. But if you think about it, is it possible for a company to achieve anything without every employee doing whatever it is they are supposed to do? From the top person to the lowest-ranked person, everyone has to play their part for the business to run smoothly. If the cleaner doesn’t clean the office, can we work? Employees should be seen as partners, not as resources that are there to serve the owners who see themselves as the important ones.

Workplace

Starting from the point of recruitment, the system is completely rigged to favour the most aggressive. When we recruit, especially for leadership positions, we look for the most confident, outgoing personalities and we overlook the more gentle, reserved people as if they have less to offer. The person who can express himself or herself with confidence and charm easily finds their way into leadership positions. What about career advancement, who is the most advantaged? It’s the most aggressive and assertive people. The more willing you are to show off your achievements, flaunt your credentials and take credit for other people’s work, the more likely you are to climb up the corporate ladder. So, the system ends up supporting the most aggressive people and by the time you reach the top of the ladder, you find narcissists and psychopaths being very well represented. I think it should be possible to weed out narcissists and psychopaths from the very beginning of the recruitment process. There are psychological tests that are designed to detect these traits and these should be administered at the point of recruitment. Then you select out the most aggressive before they even come in through the door. Our processes for promoting staff should also be more discerning, not just looking for the most outspoken people and assuming they are the only ones capable of leading. Even that very soft-spoken, timid person given a chance and the right training would surprise everyone with just how capable they are to lead teams and add value to the organisation.

I think it should be possible to weed out narcissists and psychopaths from the very beginning of the recruitment process. There are psychological tests that are designed to detect these traits and these should be administered at the point of recruitment. Then you select out the most aggressive before they even come in through the door.

Geopolitics

The world is structured in such a way that some countries are extremely wealthy while others wallow in poverty. And it is accepted that this is just the way the world is and it can be no other way. The ones with the biggest weapons have a right to take all the resources on the planet and leave everyone else to scramble for the few remaining crumbs. The most developed countries have a right to forcefully change regimes and foment wars in the name of bringing democracy to the people. They have a right to do this while loudly condemning others for human rights abuses. They have a right to bomb other countries and call these ‘righteous strikes’ because everything they do can only be righteous. They have placed themselves in positions whereby they judge everyone else’s actions but no one can judge their actions. They have given themselves the monopoly of violence in the name of maintaining world order. Does it seem hypocritical that western nations consider it acceptable to have ever-increasing numbers of nuclear weapons but consider it a crisis when countries like Iran or North Korea acquire these weapons? What makes it okay for them to have nuclear weapons while everyone else is not allowed to have them? Is it because they are the most responsible and unlikely to start nuclear wars? No, the opposite is true; they are the ones continually starting wars in different parts of the world and therefore they are the last people anyone would want to have nuclear weapons. The hypocrisy is simply mind-boggling.

Mainstream Media

What is the role of the mainstream media in rigging the system? It is to normalize all this. It is to report on all these things as if they are normal and that is just the way the world is. The media teaches us to be observers of events, not participants. We are taught to be passive consumers of news, never really looking too closely at what is happening or questioning what we are told or analysing things too deeply. We are given a certain worldview in which there are people out there who are the experts, who know what is happening and who are the deciders of what happens. The media divides the world into those who make the news happen and the rest of us who are the consumers of news. So, if for example, war breaks out somewhere, we are supposed to just assume someone somewhere had a good reason for deciding that the war should start. We don’t question this. We don’t ask what are the issues, why isn’t diplomacy being used, why do some countries have the power to veto things at the UN? This is the role of the media, to help you accept that the world created by psychopaths is normal and there is absolutely nothing to see here, just go back to your daily grind and let the important people make decisions on your behalf. The media also keeps us distracted while important things are happening on the world stage. They distract us with sports, entertainment, celebrity news, etc. We become the proles who concern ourselves with mundane things while big brother manages world affairs.

Education

Our education systems teach us from a very tender age that life is a competition and we should view others as our competitors. We are taught from a young age to see ourselves as competing with other people and this is done through exams and ranking systems and reward systems, etc. Our education systems program us to accept the idea that the person who wins is somehow better than everyone else and therefore deserves to be rewarded. This is called meritocracy, whereby you need to prove yourself worthy of the good things in life. In other words, just the fact that you are a human being does not qualify you to enjoy the good things in life. You have to prove your worth. Instead of education systems being places where our creativity is allowed to flow in whichever direction it wants to flow, we make it places where we have to prove our worth as human beings. So, we learn to aggressively pursue academic excellence as this is what guarantees that we will have the best lives afterwards. Instead of each person seeking to discover what makes them tick, what they enjoy doing, what they excel at, we have this competitive spirit out of which the most aggressive emerge as the best people. Everyone else then has to make do with second class lives because the system is already separating and weeding out the weak and rewarding the strong. Is this Darwin at work or is the system deliberately rigged to work this way? Is it survival for the fittest or is it the most aggressive creating a system in which they are the most likely to thrive? We need to question some of these very deeply held ideas and ask ourselves whether they are true or whether they have been made true by the ones who make the rules.

Hollywood

Hollywood plays a very important role in creating a reality in which the most aggressive people are the most admirable people. They portray an upside-down world in which the guy who goes shooting everyone in pursuit of something is to be admired. The cop who turns the city upside down, destroying property and killing people to catch the ‘bad guy’ is an admirable person. Soldiers who go to fight wars are heroes. The idea that we should thank soldiers for their service and give up our seats for them is presented as a valid idea. So, we learn to view things in an upside-down way, where wrong becomes right and right becomes wrong. Those who refuse to fight wars are cowards and wanting peace is a cowardly thing. And what about all the dystopian movies they keep churning out? Have you ever noticed that Hollywood never imagines a future in which the world is in a utopian state? It is always a future in which the world has been destroyed by some catastrophic event. It’s always a future where some people wallow in poverty while others exist in some technologically advanced state. Hollywood never seems capable of imagining a good future for humanity, it is always the worst possible vision of a dystopia that no one would ever want to exist in.

Could our world possibly be structured differently such that the system favours the majority who are just normal people trying to live their lives? I believe this is possible when we start to understand how the system is rigged against us by the minority. We need to reject the idea that human beings are inherently aggressive beings and that competing with each other is a normal state for us to be in. We can cooperate and create a world in which everyone thrives. There should be no need for anyone to have to prove their worth. If we could just see through the programming and change our mindset regarding how we exist with other people, then, we could surely end up in a world where the most aggressive could not possibly dominate and enslave the rest of us.

Mainstream Media: The (Broken) Lens Through Which We View Our World

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There’s an interesting series currently airing on Netflix called Midnight Mass which I watched recently and it got me thinking and drawing some parallels between it and the mainstream media. The series is about a sleepy Island whose residents number slightly more than 100 where a series of horrific events unfold, culminating in a macabre scene where most of the island’s residents turn into vampires and go on a murderous rampage. It’s a horror series, but the events unfold so gradually that it’s not until towards the that you start feeling afraid, which is good for people like me who don’t enjoy horrors. The story is a combination of tragedy and comedy – a tramedy if you will – and many are the times I burst out laughing at the ridiculous beliefs the islanders seemed to accept without question. If you have ever wondered how the catholic church came to commit atrocities such as the witch hunts and the inquisitions, then wonder no more. This series will show you step by step how the most bizarre and evil ideas can take root in a group and spread like wildfire, resulting in events that historians and future generations alike will look at in wonder and marvel at how people could be so gullible as to fall for such obvious lies.

In case you’re wondering why I’m talking about a Netflix series about vampires when my article is about the mainstream media, it’s because one of the characters, a lady called Beverly to me personifies how the mainstream media gets us to accept without question ideas that in our normal state of being we would instantly see through and reject. Beverly is an ardent believer, supporter and spreader of the ideas that result in the islanders turning into vampires. She takes a bizarre and evil idea and somehow turns what starts as a laugh-out-loud ridiculous idea into something that is accepted as biblical truth by the gullible islanders. While any rational mind would dismiss as sheer madness the idea that a murderous priest could somehow be acting on God’s behalf, Beverly manages to present this as a normal and rational idea and even finds a way to explain this with the help of bible verses quoted out of context. Within no time, she gains the support of a few people, eventually spreading the madness to the entire island.

If you think about it, isn’t this exactly what the mainstream media does, taking the most outrageous ideas and blasting them into our living rooms twenty-four-seven until even the most abnormal ideas start to seem normal and credible? They take an idea such as war and make it seem normal that a group of people in one part of the world would one day decide to go on a murderous campaign in another part of the world and this is a normal and credible idea. They take an idea like capitalism, a system whereby a few people have billions while everyone else is either poor or just getting by and they make this appear like a normal and desirable thing, while any other system like, God forbid, socialism is portrayed as dangerous and something to be feared and resisted. They make the idea of people living in hunger and poverty in other parts of the world seem like distant events that have nothing to do with us.

If you think about it, isn’t this exactly what the mainstream media does, taking the most outrageous ideas and blasting them into our living rooms twenty-four-seven until even the most abnormal ideas start to seem normal and credible?

The mainstream media tells us how to think about the world we live in and gets us to give up our ability, our responsibility to think, to analyze and to question. George Orwell referred to this as orthodoxy, which he defined as a state in which one does not think, does not need to think. Someone tells you how to think and you accept the reality that is presented without question. We may have assumed that Orwell was talking about some dystopian existence in the future, but he might as well have been referring to our current state, only now it’s the mainstream media, not the government that tells us how to think. We have become unconscious, accepting what is presented to us as reality, as the only way to think about the world we live in. We don’t question because we don’t need to question. We don’t ask ourselves why should this be so? Is this a normal way to exist? Is any other existence possible?

“Orthodoxy means not thinking–not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.”
George Orwell, 1984

How does the mainstream media achieve this?

Normalizing ideas

One of the powerful ways in which the mainstream media affects our worldview is by normalizing ideas. You’ve seen the way news is reported by the mainstream media. They could be talking about a war breaking out somewhere, about bombs being dropped in some distant parts of the world and it’s like the most normal thing is happening. Maybe we get a cereal commercial right afterwards. No big deal. There is no hint in the newscaster’s voice or manner that would suggest that this is an abnormal event. No questions asked. Just report and casually move on to the next news item. What does this do to us? It kills our compassion. It makes us unconscious beings just taking in without question what is being fed to us. The nonchalant manner in which the most insane things are reported lulls us into a false sense that these are normal events and that’s just how our world is. That’s just how it is and that’s how it has always been and that’s how it will always be. No need to question how such a thing could be normal. The thing is, would any normal person one day decide oh, I’m going to kill my next-door neighbour before they get a chance to kill me because I have a feeling, they are planning to one day attack me and take away my freedom? Only psychopaths think like that, which makes one wonder whether our planet is run by psychopaths. Think of the immigrant crisis and the utter insanity of allowing people to drown in the seas rather than give them a haven from whatever it is they are running away from. Is this a normal thing that normal people do, this utter lack of compassion?

Disseminating ideas

One only has to look at the coronavirus pandemic and how it has changed the world in slightly less than two years to understand the power a new idea holds and the power whoever disseminates that idea holds in shaping our worldview. Whoever gets the story out there first determines how we think about a new idea. I remember the almost non-stop coverage by the mainstream media that first month when the pandemic started. I was watching the news almost non-stop and I’ll never forget how anxious that made me feel. It got to a point where I had to stop listening to the news because I felt like I was going to get a panic attack if I continued watching. It was clear that the mainstream media had one agenda and one agenda only, to make us as afraid of the virus as possible in order to get us to comply with the authorities. This idea was projected so strongly and so relentlessly, at some point I started wondering to myself whether the media had ever heard of something called mental health. Is the mainstream media an expert on public health? No, I don’t think so but this didn’t stop them from shaming anyone who questioned their views, including dissenting scientists who were publicly shamed and cancelled. My point is that the mainstream media has the power to disseminate ideas, but what if their worldview is fear-based? How does this affect us as the ones absorbing these ideas twenty-four seven? With such power over the general public, we need to start asking who are the people behind the mainstream media houses, what are their agendas, what are their worldviews and whether we want these people projecting their worldview upon us.

Asking the wrong questions

The mainstream media is notorious for asking the wrong questions and leaving the right questions unasked and therefore unanswered. Take the issue of the so-called nuclear button that the American president has to have close by at all times in case he suddenly needs to start a nuclear war. Now, what kind of questions does the mainstream media ask? Oh, do we want Trump to be the one with the nuclear button? Really? That’s the question you’re going to ask on that issue? How about, oh I don’t know, WHY SHOULD SUCH A BUTTON EXIST IN THE FIRST PLACE? Who thought up this crazy, psychopathic idea? The idea that nuclear war is something that should take a split second to start is the most insane idea ever invented. Only an insane mind could come up with such an idea. Not to mention why nuclear weapons should even exist in the first place. What kind of psychopathic, insane person would want a weapon that could destroy our entire planet in an instant and have that kind of weapon in anybody’s hands? Why doesn’t the mainstream media ask such questions? Maybe because if they did, we would realize that our world is run by psychopaths.

With such power over the general public, we need to start asking who are the people behind the mainstream media houses, what are their agendas, what are their worldviews and whether we want these people projecting their worldview upon us.

Providing “expert” opinions

The mainstream media is very much invested in you feeling that you are not an expert and therefore need to be told how to think about the world we live in. Let’s say you own a media house and you are very much invested in maintaining the capitalist system because it benefits you personally, what kind of economic experts are you going to invite? Obviously, experts who agree with your viewpoint and will not threaten the status quo by giving alternative views on this issue. The same goes for any issue, from climate change to education systems to governance systems. All you need to do is ensure the “wrong” views never see the light of day and instead the “right” views, your views, the ones that support the status quo are the only ones we get to hear. It’s not hard to get an expert to support any viewpoint. For every expert who supports one view, you will find another who supports the opposite view.

So, what conclusion do we arrive at after all is said and done? That the mainstream media is a broken lens and we need a new lens. That new lens is you and me, observing the world we live in and writing what we see and think in our blogs and when enough of us are doing this, then the world will start changing.

Elon Musk Represents Everything That’s Wrong with Capitalism

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The insanity that is capitalism has become so shocking, so outrageous that everyone by now must surely see that the whole concept is a lie that needs to be overhauled like, yesterday. I mean, here is a system that enables 1% of the population to siphon 50 Trillion from the income of the bottom 90% of the population. And this, in the most powerful nation on the planet. How did we get here? Why is nothing being done about this even though we started hearing about these kinds of statistics almost twenty years ago? It’s absolutely insane that nothing has been done about it all this time. We still continue to stand by, helplessly wringing our hands, while the elites continue to plunder all the resources of the planet. Instead of urgently getting to the bottom of this, using our collective energy and resources to find out how this could urgently be reversed, we continue reading the damning reports and then quickly moving on to the next thing. It’s almost as if we have accepted that nothing can be done about it. During the Covid pandemic, we were again shocked to hear how much the elites were making while everyone else sank deeper into despair. It seems the rich will always get richer, and this is just the way life is. Secretly, we wish we were them. We study them, we want to know what their secrets are, how they became so wealthy, what we need to do to be like them (should we all drop out of college like them, for example), etc. We obsessively keep track of who the richest people are and how much they are worth, instead of seeing the utter insanity of a system that creates this kind of inequality. Please note that I am not trying to blame anyone or to shame anyone for admiring the rich and wanting to be like them. We’ve all been there. All I’m saying is, why can’t we imagine a system that allows all of us to be wealthy, because surely there is enough wealth in this planet to go round, and then we wouldn’t have to spend the rest of our lives wishing for something that will never happen as long as the system remains as it is?

We obsessively keep track of who the richest people are and how much they are worth, instead of seeing the utter insanity of a system that creates this kind of inequality.

Take Elon Musk for example. To me, he embodies everything that is wrong with the system. Recently I read an article about how Elon Musk makes a fortune whenever Tesla meets some set targets. And herein lies the problem. You see, Musk did not personally do the work that led to the achievement of these goals. He’s no doubt a great manager, a great CEO who somehow manages to inspire and motivate and strategize and do whatever else he needs to do in order to meet these targets. But, at the end of the day, the fact still remains he did not do the work himself. The work was done by the many employees of Tesla. So, the question is, why is it that Elon Musk, just one guy in a company of thousands of employees gets to be the only one who is rewarded for the attainment of these objectives? Is it a lack of imagination on the part of the board or what exactly does this mean? Does it mean that the board could not see that Musk did not do the work himself, or is it that it never occurred to them that anyone apart from the CEO deserves to be rewarded for the exceptional performance of the company? Does it mean that the board could not stretch their minds just a little bit and see that all employees of Tesla should have shared equally in the rewards that came from the achievement of the goals?

The problem here, which really is the problem with capitalism itself, is a complete lack of imagination. I mean, it’s stunning that no one even sees anything wrong with this scenario, that it’s reported in the media almost as if it’s the most natural thing in the world that the CEO should enjoy virtually all the fruits of the labour of thousands of people by himself. As far as I’m concerned, all the employees of Tesla should have shared in the rewards. Instead of one billionaire, there should be thousands of millionaires. All the employees, and I mean all of them, from the lowest ranked person in the company to the top ranked person should be able to experience that they work for one of the richest companies in the world. This should reflect in all their paychecks. If a company is doing as well as Tesla is doing, then all the good things that come out of this should be enjoyed by everyone not just the top people in the company. This idea that only the top people deserve to be rewarded handsomely is what has resulted in the 1% phenomenon, pure and simple. It’s because at some point, obviously because of greed, the top people started keeping more and more for themselves, and the more they got away with it, the more ravenous they became. No one questioned why the top people were getting millions while everyone else was getting an annual increment of 3% to their already meager incomes. This was normalized, it was not questioned, we went along with the lie. Because someone is the CEO, because someone came up with an idea, they should forever more be rewarded for this. The people who help bring this idea to life are not partners who should share in the rewards but mere employees who should be thankful just for the fact that they have a job.

Now, I am not in any way saying that Elon Musk is not a smart guy, maybe even a genius for creating successful companies such as Tesla or spaceX or whatever else he has created. All I’m saying is that he may have had the initial idea, but he could never have done it without the people who work for him. Without these people, he could never have achieved what he has achieved. An idea is good, but in itself, it is useless without the people who actually work to make it a reality. So why should the person who came up with the idea continue to be rewarded over and over again ad infinitum for an idea he came up with years ago? Why shouldn’t the people who are collectively putting their energy into the company also equally share in the rewards?

There is an underlying lie that is the foundation of capitalism, and this is what has led to the insane situation we now find ourselves in. The lie is that we are not all created equal, that some of us are more equal than others. Some of us are more deserving than others of the good things that life has to offer. As I said before, capitalism suffers from a serious lack of imagination. We seem to be unable to imagine a situation whereby everyone who puts their energy into the achievement of a goal is considered an integral part of the collective effort and is considered worthy to be rewarded just as much as the person at the top. We are unable to imagine a situation whereby the billions that are earned from these shared efforts are spread out among all the people who put in an effort. We somehow think, or have been taught to think that there is something wrong with equitably sharing the earnings of a company. We have been taught to consider some people’s contribution as lowly, therefore not worthy of being rewarded generously, while it’s okay to be generous with others who are considered more worthy, more deserving of generosity.

There is an underlying lie that is the foundation of capitalism, and this is what has led to the insane situation we now find ourselves in. The lie is that we are not all created equal, that some of us are more equal than others. Some of us are more deserving than others of the good things that life has to offer.

And this is exactly how capitalism has deceived us all, by telling us that only a few people should enjoy the rewards of success, that everyone else should just be grateful to be earning a salary. So, let me ask you this, if the company were to share out the billions equitably among the employees, what would be so wrong with that? Oh, maybe you think that if the cleaner was paid a million dollars a year, they would not know what to do with it, is that it? Or maybe you think the administrator would not be able to spend a million dollars because it is too much for them? Or perhaps the accountant wouldn’t find things to do with a million dollars? Does it make you feel uncomfortable when I talk about the lowest-ranking members of a company being paid handsomely? Do you automatically dismiss it as impossible or unrealistic? If so, then you are the victim of programming. We all are. We have been programmed to think that not everyone is worthy of being paid well, that generosity cannot extend all the way to the bottom of the company and should only remain at the top levels of the company. The idea that some people’s effort is more important than others is a construct we have all come to accept, and maybe it’s time we started questioning it. If you sense this type of programming in yourself, I invite you to pause for a moment and read my article here to learn more about this mindset. Suffice it to say that each and every person deserves to be treated generously by the company they work for, exactly the way the top people are treated generously by the company.

I know I have used Elon Musk as an example, but I hope you can see that this same principle applies to all the elites who enjoy all the fruits of the successes of their companies by themselves. Take Jeff Bezos as another example. During Covid, Amazon made billions which made Bezos the richest person on the planet. Now, I’m pretty sure that Jeff was not personally packing and shipping all those packages to every corner of the planet in the middle of a pandemic. It was the hard-working employees of Amazon who did this. So, why is it that he gets to enjoy the rewards all by himself? Granted, Jeff came up with a great idea in creating Amazon, but does that mean he has to continue enjoying the fruits of the company’s success all alone forever? No! There are thousands of people who are everyday giving their energy to the company, turning Jeff’s idea into reality and they too should get to enjoy the fruits of working for such a successful company.

We need to rethink the whole idea of employee compensation. How do companies come up with their compensation schemes? Well, it’s simple. Most companies use bench-marking, which is whereby they do a comparative analysis of what other companies are paying their staff and from there, decide what they want to pay their own staff. This is one of the factors that has allowed the highest earning companies to get away with paying their staff only a fraction of what they are actually capable of paying. If a company that’s making billions pays the same or a comparable amount as a company that makes much less, then this allows the billion-dollar company to keep much more for themselves, which is exactly what allows the CEOs to pay themselves whatever they want. This whole system needs to be overhauled. Companies should be made to pay a percentage of the company turnover to their employees in recognition of the fact that it is the employees who enabled the company to make that money in the first place. The current practice of bench-marking should not be used to shortchange employees. The more successful a company is, the more the employees should be paid, whether this is a hundred times above the market rate or whatever. This is what has been missing, and this is why inequality is getting worse and worse. No one is looking closely at what portion of a company’s turnover is used on compensation; we are being hoodwinked by being told that the company is the best payer in the market, forgetting that we are comparing billion-dollar companies with companies that are earning much less.

The biggest problem with capitalism is our collective impotence when it comes to dealing with the problem of the 1%. It’s almost as if this problem has no solution, it’s a problem that defies solutions. We talk about taxing the mega-rich more, knowing full well that higher taxes will only benefit the government not the people. In my opinion, it’s not taxing the mega-rich that will lift everyone up, it is forcing the mega-rich to compensate their employees according to how much the company makes. It’s about regulating these companies and not waiting for ‘trickle down economics’ which will never happen. It’s about not paying lip service by telling employees that ‘this could not have been achieved without you’ while actually not rewarding them for their efforts.

We need to stop being over-awed by the Elon Musks and Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerbergs of this world. What we need to realize is that they are ordinary people who came up with extra-ordinary ideas, and who did not bring these ideas into life on their own but utilized the energy and time and attention of the people who work for them. It’s time they stopped enjoying all the benefits by themselves. It’s time for a different approach, a new approach to employee compensation that recognizes and rewards them generously for the role they play in the success of the company.

The Objectification of Human Beings by the War Industry

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If there’s one thing human beings have been programmed to believe, it’s that we are not capable of analyzing issues and coming to our own conclusions. Everything has to be broken down for us by experts. Human beings have been taught to believe that we should always wait to be told by authoritative figures how to think about certain issues, be it politics, economics, unfolding events, even what we should eat and how we should live our lives. That’s why whenever we read news articles, we always find references to what the experts have to say about the issue at hand. The idea is basically to tell us how we should think about the issue, thereby eliminating the need for us to think critically and come to our own conclusions. Whenever a newsworthy event happens, we get the panel of experts to chew the facts for us and feed us with the proper way of thinking about the issue. This programming is so deep within us that many of us automatically shy away from thinking deeply about ideas or events that are happening around us and prefer to take at face value whatever the experts are saying.

It is in this context that I originally shied away from writing this article because I thought to myself, well what do I know about war? What do I know apart from what I see in the media about wars breaking out here and there and soldiers being sent to battle in various parts of the world and bombs being dropped in faraway places? I assumed as many people do that military decisions are made by war generals and political leaders who surely know better than any of us what needs to be done. How many times have we seen decorated war generals solemnly and authoritatively declaring that this and that war is being fought for this and that reason and it never even occurs to us to question why this is so and whether this person actually knows what they are talking about? How could anyone question such an authority figure? He is the expert on such issues after all.

Or are they? Maybe that’s just what we’ve been led to believe? If the people who make decisions about whether or not a country should go to war are the experts on such things, then why is the world in such a mess with endless wars being fought everywhere and nothing much ever coming out of these wars? How comes these so-called experts always say that the war will achieve this and that goal, but this is never the case? Doesn’t that surely tell us that these people have no clue what they are talking about? If they did, why do we have situations such as the ones in Afghanistan or Iraq in which wars are fought for decades and end up making the situation even worse than it was before? What about the current wars going on in the world such as in Yemen or Syria or in some African regions? If the decision to fight or intervene in these wars were made by experts, people who supposedly know better than all of us, then why are things so much worse than they were to begin with?

If the people who make decisions about whether or not a country should go to war are the experts on such things, then why is the world in such a mess with endless wars being fought everywhere and nothing much ever coming out of these wars?

Let’s talk about why these wars are even possible in the first place. Where do the weapons come from? Where does the ammunition come from? It is common knowledge today that both sides of a war are usually supplied by governments or corporations that stand to make huge profits from the sale of these war supplies. Sometimes even both sides of a war could be supplied by the same people. The most shocking thing of all is that the developed world that is always quick to condemn countries that go to war are the same ones that supply nearly all the weapons being used in wars around the globe. It doesn’t take an expert to see that war is a huge calamity for humanity as a whole and that anyone who makes the decision to send people to war whether a president or a parliament or an army general is essentially condemning a lot of human beings to death without caring too much about the individual human lives that are going to be lost.

Let’s be clear about one thing: war is the extreme objectification of human beings, because human beings stop being seen as individuals but as objects to be used to achieve whatever objective the decision makers want to achieve. The end thus becomes more important than the human lives that are going to be destroyed by the war. Soldiers are seen as resources to be used in fighting wars, no different from the weapons and the fighter jets and the bombs that are used in war. The humanity of these people is denied and deemed to be secondary to whatever objective the war is supposed to achieve. The people who are killed in wars become nothing more than statistics for us to briefly reflect on during news reports before quickly moving on to other news. The people who are displaced by war, the millions who are forced to emigrate to foreign lands where they are greeted with hostility and hatred are seen not as the human beings they are, but as destabilizing elements that need to be kept out of the clean and civilized societies into which they attempt to enter. We refuse to see their humanity and choose to see them as different from us and as threats to our way of life.

It’s no big secret that the reason war exists is because war is an industry and a very profitable one at that. Profit is the only reason wars are fought. This is pretty much an open secret today. Of course, those who benefit from war will always try to hide this from the population and they will always find ways to justify why this and that war must be fought. What about the massive expenditure by governments on their military? How could this be justified if no wars were being fought, if there were no enemies to fight and protect ourselves from? These huge budgets could be used for the welfare of the people, but instead they are used to prepare for and fight against real and imagined enemies. Why is this still going on? Why do we, the people who are hurt by wars, who don’t benefit in any way, who have everything to lose from war allow this to continue?

It’s because we have been programmed to see the world in this way. We have been programmed to believe that war is a natural part of being human and the idea of a world without war is never even presented as an option, leave alone debated as a serious possibility. But if human beings can envision a world without poverty, if people can envision a world without disease, why can’t we envision a world without war? We’ve also been made to believe that every country must have an army for the sake of self-defense because supposedly we are surrounded by enemies who are just waiting for an opportunity to attack. But did you know there are countries that have no standing armies such as Costa Rica, Mauritius and Panama? How comes no one is attacking them?

A journalist by the name Hannah Arendt who reported on the trial of war criminal Adolf Eichmann, one of the architects of the final solution during the holocaust wrote a book about what she called the ‘banality of evil’. The banality of evil basically means that the reason people commit acts of evil is because they refuse to think for themselves. They mindlessly take on ideologies and follow orders and commit acts that are evil because they do not take time to analyze and think about what they are doing and question what they are told. We are so accustomed to being told how to think about everything that we do not actually take time to think for ourselves. As an example, consider the idea that is aggressively pushed by Hollywood that soldiers who go to fight wars are heroes. We all know the atrocities that are committed during war, so how are these people heroes? Why do we accept this idea? Are these people heroes or are they pawns in a game that is so masterfully played that we have all been fooled by it for far too long? If only every soldier who thinks about joining the military could pause and think for themselves and ask themselves whether it is justified to kill another human being and whether this is something they personally want to do, then maybe we would start seeing a change in terms of people becoming unwilling to subject themselves to this objectification.

We are so accustomed to being told how to think about everything that we do not actually take time to think for ourselves.

Wars are not a necessary or inevitable part of life on this planet. There are people who would prefer that we continue to think about war in this way, that we continue to view war as an integral part of being human, something that can never be eradicated because it is human nature. But we know that it is not in human nature to kill other people, in fact it is so contrary to human nature that even those who are trained to do so end up being severely traumatized by it.

The worst part about war, despite all the propaganda, is that war never achieves the goals that it sets out to achieve. No war ever goes the way it was supposed to go. People who were thought to be weak turn out to be not so weak after all. Armies that were seen as invincible turn out to be not so invincible after all. The one thing that is certain about war is that it results in casualties and death. So essentially, the value of a human life is made secondary to some obscure goals that will in all probability not be achieved. If we viewed the soldiers who go to fight wars and the people who are affected by wars as human beings who have a right to live long and meaningful lives, we would never allow our governments to send anyone to war. It’s time we said no to this objectification of human beings by the war industry.