Those generations who came of age in the 60s, the 70s, and the 80s were the blessed ones. Those generations combined creativity, rebellion and backlash, idealism and alienation, and family bonding, along with the long hair and wranglers.   

Yet, it appears that every day in the 21st century is becoming more and more obvious that our final years of liberty are closing by. Applications such as zone-controlled electric cars are coming; if you drive into the wrong zone, the car will shut off. They will limit us to 15-minute cities. They will have total control over the money we have, which they can use to restrict our spending to certain items or freeze at any time. This marks the start of the final phase of humanity. We are on the verge of totalitarianism and servitude. It seems like no one gives a damn. The majority of people are complaining that they don’t have time. As a matter of fact, they’ll simply prefer to play video games on their cell phones or lose their time following some stupid Instagram influencers. Like you’re just walking into slavery and waiting to die.    

We can observe evidence of apathy and widespread helplessness in many contemporary democracies. Low voter participation and the belief that nothing will change regardless of an individual’s (or a very small group’s) actions are prevalent. Apathy is the release of pent-up energy. Hannah Arendt (a German-born American historian) suggests that the desire to be more than indifferent is what totalitarian movements initially manipulate until the individual is totally subsumed.

How can this kind of fanaticism get started under totalitarianism? “Succeeding in extinguishing individual identity permanently and not just for the moment of collective heroic action” is a description of a political organization. According to Hannah Arendt, when social walls collapse, the sleeping majorities behind all parties become one massive, disorganized, angry mob with nothing in common but the nebulous fear that party members’ hopes are doomed, as a result, the most esteemed, articulate, and representative members of the community were fools, and that all the ruling classes were equally dishonest and deceitful rather than evil.

Georgios Ardavanis – 11/10/2023