Amerika

You are controlled, whether you acknowledge it or not, by a narrative of self-pity that induces you to act against your best interests.

This self-pity narrative takes the following form: some large and shadowy organization or government is manipulating you, and you are a victim, and so the best option is to overthrow and take what is yours along with everyone else.

These narrative never pay attention to how large controlling entities are created. When people revolt, chaos results, and then there is a need for some strong power to keep basic order, like having the lights stay on and the trains run roughly on time. The more people revolt, the greater the power of what comes to rule them in the next step.

And yet, people never learn. They refuse to, because in order to learn, they must accept first that the problem is us, or really, our intent. We intend to be “free,” but have no idea what that means, so we abolish sensible rules alongside the bad ones, and end up with a failure of social order and then the tyrants step in, promising to solve our problems — in exchange, of course, for power.

Even in the most free societies this happens, but instead of granting power to one tyrant, we create many: government, industry, special interest groups, mafias, unions, lobbyists and gigantic corporations. We then try to regulate those, but this makes them more powerful by giving them a maze of rules to hide behind.

Witness the narrative of self-pity:

The bad guys control you. You win by rebelling against them. And then, you get another large company which extracts money from you by making products which are designed not to be repaired. It has been the same every time. The victimizer is us, and we are our own victims.

Tags: 1984, apple, george orwell, revolution, self-pity