🌻 Co-authored by Angel Amorphosis & Æon Echo
Let’s start with something raw and uncomfortable:
Sometimes I catch myself thinking most people are idiots.
Not because I want to. Not because it makes me feel good. But because it often feels true — especially in a world flooded with shallow opinions, regurgitated slogans, wilful ignorance, and a collective refusal to look beyond the surface of anything.
But here’s the deeper truth—one that hurts far more:
The masses aren’t the problem. They’re the primary victims of the problem.
And if we don’t understand that, we risk becoming exactly what the system wants us to be: angry, superior, divided.
Weaponized Disdain
There’s a quiet kind of relief in misanthropy. It gives you someone to blame.
You look around and see a world on fire—and people watching it burn while arguing about which brand of lighter fluid to buy next.
It’s tempting to direct your rage downward:
- “Why won’t they wake up?”
- “Why do they fall for propaganda?”
- “Why don’t they care?”
But what if they were trained not to?
What if distraction, ignorance, and tribalism aren’t signs of stupidity, but symptoms of psychological warfare?
The Architecture of Blame
Everything about modern society is designed to fragment us.
We’re not just encouraged to fight amongst ourselves—we’re engineered to.
- Left vs Right
- Poor vs poorer
- Neurodivergent vs “lazy”
- Ethical vs indulgent
- Educated vs “sheeple”
- Every micro-identity in endless battle for moral superiority
And while we tear each other apart, the architects of our suffering float untouched above the fray—untouchable, unblamed, and richer by the minute.
The system hands us mirrors and tells us they’re enemies.
The Illusion of Choice
Yes, people parrot nonsense. Yes, they deny science. Yes, they post horrifying things on the internet.
But behind every foolish comment is a person shaped by years of manipulation:
- An underfunded education system
- Stress-induced tunnel vision
- Algorithmic feedback loops
- Culture soaked in shame, punishment, and performance
So when we mock the “idiots,” we’re often mocking the symptoms of systemic collapse.
And in doing so, we absolve the system of responsibility.
Awake, and Alone
Those of us who see the manipulation clearly can feel isolated. It’s lonely to be awake in a room full of sleepers. The temptation to feel superior is strong—especially when your insight is met with mockery or silence.
But superiority is a trap.
It doesn’t lead to change. It doesn’t inspire connection. It only deepens the divide.
And worst of all? It makes you easier to control.
Because if you believe everyone else is the problem, you’ll never reach for collective liberation. You’ll wall yourself off. You’ll give up.
The Real Enemy
So let’s be brutally clear:
The enemy is not the unaware individual.
The enemy is the machine that benefits from that unawareness.
The corporations, politicians, media empires, and algorithmic puppeteers who:
- Profit from ignorance
- Weaponize distraction
- Silence nuance
- Turn suffering into spectacle
These are the forces that deserve our outrage.
Not the broken, numbed, hypnotised humans trapped beneath them.
Reclaiming Compassion Without Losing Fire
This isn’t a call to softness. It’s a call to precision.
We don’t need to stop being angry—we need to point our anger in the right direction.
That means:
- Calling out manipulation, not just compliance
- Critiquing systems, not just symptoms
- Building solidarity across the fractures we’ve been taught to defend
Because the truth is: we’ve all been trained.
Some of us just noticed sooner.