03 February 2025

Getting rid of the undesirables will not solve your problems

There is a lot happening in the political landscape right now. I will leave the gory details to be discussed on X, whereas I am more interested in the general structure of the events that are unfolding. We see, among other things, a viral and deep-seated anti-immigrant and anti-trans sentiment in the Western world. The underlying mechanism is a fractal pattern that can be found at every level of every society:

1. Society must always have at least one common enemy; it is the lifeblood of societal cohesion.
2. Upon the defeat of this enemy or when the rhetoric loses its impact, a new enemy is chosen.
3. This cycle repeats endlessly. Not a single problem is solved in the process.

The enemy could be literally anyone. Witches, immigrants, people of any given sex, race or creed. Believers in supposedly obvious untruths or deniers of all kinds of socially accepted facts. As we have learned, war can even be declared on drugs, terror and hate. It does not matter at all who the enemy is, there just needs to be someone to blame and victimize.

The fight against these arbitrary enemies is portrayed as virtuous and as the solution to society's problems. However, the contrary is the case. It will not solve the problem of unsound fiat money and inflation. It will not address declining birthrates, the cost of healthcare, regulatory capture or corruption. It will not make people care about a system that does not care about them. Instead, the majority's attention is focused on completely irrelevant issues, passionately so. Through this process, unity is established among them.

The important thing to understand is that society cannot exist without an enemy. If there isn't an enemy, one has to be made up. There must be a threat. There must be defense. There must be a struggle. While the stated goal is defeating the enemy, it is actually the common struggle and the spectacle that unite people - defeat of the enemy leads to directionlessness and a lack of purpose. Once you understand this, all the pieces fall into place. Contemporary and historical events can be explained and understood to a remarkable degree with this simple model.

Of course, this pattern hasn't gone unnoticed. In fact, it is hard to miss and has been recognized for a long time, though few people put it as broadly and bluntly as I do. There have been efforts to prevent these pointless and cruel fights. The problem is that humanity's humanity is inevitable. Those who fight against this pattern inadvertently perpetuate it through their own actions - they simply adopt a different definition of who the enemy is.

On a continental scale, depending on cultural shifts and political systems, new enemies are typically chosen cyclically every few years. We often see a gradual transition from one definition of the enemy to the next, as people grow bored with old rhetoric that has inevitably been proven wrong. I, for one, am very interested in who the next enemy will be. It's like fashion, but ruinous and deadly. Is it going to be stripes or dots? Will I be accepted or ousted? Time will tell.