Don’t Shut Up!
Why Every Word Counts in a Time of Lies
In my last two articles, we’ve established that totalitarianism isn’t a top-down conspiracy run by a shadowy cabal—it’s a tidal wave of collective madness, a machine that runs on mass compliance rather than the whims of individual tyrants.
At the core of the world’s current mess is a paradigm so deeply embedded in our consciousness that we rarely question it: mechanistic thinking. This is the worldview that reduces society to a system of inputs and outputs, people to programmable cogs, and governance to mere management. (Refer to “The Blueprint to Control” if you seek a breakdown of how it’s done in practice.) It’s the ghost in the totalitarian machine, the fundamental assumption that allows mass formation to take hold in the first place.
If you appreciate my articles, please consider giving them a like. It's a simple gesture that doesn't cost you anything, but it goes a long way in promoting this post, combating censorship, and fighting the issues that you are apparently not a big fan of.
So, what happens when we go deeper? What if we challenge the foundation of this system instead of just chipping away at its surface manifestations? That’s where we’re headed next—into the belly of the beast, to dismantle the mechanistic mindset and explore whether there’s an alternative that doesn’t lead us back into the same cycle of control and collapse.
Can we actually do anything with the mess we’ve dissected in the past week, or are we just navel-gazing intellectuals stroking our chins? Our little jaunt through the muck has shown one thing crystal clear: pinning this on a grand conspiracy and hunting down an “evil elite” with pitchforks is a fool’s errand.
Totalitarianism isn’t a mustache-twirling mastermind—it’s a tidal wave of mass madness, and the “leaders” are just the foam on top. Chop off the head, and another schmuck pops up, same game, new face.
“In substance, the totalitarian leader is nothing more nor less than the functionary of the masses he leads; he is not a power-hungry individual imposing a tyrannical and arbitrary will upon his subjects. Being a mere functionary, he can be replaced at any time, and he depends just as much on the masses he embodies as the masses depend upon him.” —Hannah Arendt
Today’s leaders are cogs, not kings—swap them out, and the machine keeps grinding.
Violence might look tempting, and sure, it works when some outside cavalry—like the Allies smashing Nazi Germany—rides in to bust the system open. But from the inside? It’s a backfire waiting to happen. Poke the beast with a stick, and the mob doesn’t just growl—it roars, clutching your attack as a golden ticket to unload their pent-up bile on anyone who won’t salute the “New Solidarity.”
Arendt clocked the flip side: nonviolent resistance has a knack for kneecapping totalitarianism. She points to Denmark’s stone-cold refusal to play along with Nazi anti-Semitism—government and citizens alike telling Hitler’s goons to shove it—and it worked. No psychobabble from her on why, though; she just shrugs at the history books. Lucky for you, I’ve got the mental toolbox to crack that nut, and we can polish up “nonviolent resistance” into something less vague and more surgical.
The masses and their puppet “leaders” are both snared in the same ideological web—call it hypnosis for the herd, self-delusion for the top dogs. They’re dancing to a voice, a droning siren song pumped through propaganda and media.
Mass formation’s a trance state, a crowd swaying to the leader’s croon. But not everyone’s under the spell. When the masses rise, you get three flavors—30% hypnotized diehards, 40-60% fence-sitters too scared to buck the trend, and 10-30% wide-awake rebels who’d rather die than clap for the circus. That third crew? They’re the key.
Step one: they’ve got to speak, loud and real, without idiotic babbling about Satanists or lizard people that can be ridiculed, cutting through the hypnotic hum before it drowns everything. The how shifts—early on, you’ve got some wiggle room; later, as totalitarianism clamps down, it’s censored whispers in the dark—but there’s always a crack to slip through.
That dissident voice isn’t just noise—it’s a lifeline. It won’t snap the hardcore 30% out of their stupor, but it dials down the trance, keeping the mob from going full berserk. Even the “leaders” twitch when they hear it. The trick? Keep it cool, steady, respectful—not preachy, not in-your-face—but relentless.
Yeah, it’ll piss people off; the hypnotized don’t like their dream interrupted. But here’s the uncomfortable truth: they need it. Silence the dissent, and the system turns cannibal, chowing down on its own. Think quiet’s safe? Think again—whether you’re in or out, the monster doesn’t care. Speaking up’s not just defiance; it’s a mercy shot to keep the whole damn pyramid from collapsing under its own weight.
Let’s keep the wheels turning—can this theory actually do something, or are we just pontificating into the void? The dissident voice isn’t just a thorn in the side of the hypnotized 30%; it’s a lifeline for that squishy middle, the 40-60% who aren’t drooling devotees but tag along anyway, too timid to rock the boat.
These folks aren’t zombies—they can still hear a solid argument if you smack them with it hard enough. So, the job’s simple: shred the totalitarian fairy tale with cold, clear reason, slicing through the propaganda and stats-drunk nonsense like a hot knife through butter.
It’s not even hard—the regime’s number-fetish gibberish is so laughable it practically begs to be gutted. The trick is persistence: keep hammering through whatever cracked channels you’ve got, peeling back the curtain to show the cheap tricks propping up the lie. But—big but—don’t waste your breath pining for “the old normal.”
That’s the swamp of misery that birthed this mess. Push that nostalgia, and the hypnotized just dig their heels in harder, clutching their sacred narrative like a security blanket. Get smart—organize, form working groups, specialize, dissect. It’s not just about winning arguments; it’s about stitching back the social fabric totalitarianism loves to shred.
Then there’s the third group—us, the 10-30% who see through the smoke. We’re the punching bag, the “subhuman” freaks the mob loves to hate. Shut up, and you’re handing them the win—silence is a one-way ticket to dehumanization.
Speaking’s not just defiance; it’s what keeps us human. Do it calm, do it wise, but do it—because even if no one listens, it’s a lifeline to meaning. Spill your truth, raw and real, and it’s not about convincing the Other—it’s about saving yourself.
Solzhenitsyn scrawled his soul out in the gulags for eight years and came out sharper; silence would’ve broken him. The act itself flips the script: totalitarianism’s absurdity becomes your anvil, forging something human out of the madness. Every word you spit elevates you while the herd wallows.
Speaking’s the linchpin—everything hinges on it. Doesn’t matter if it’s a book, a rant on camera, or a whisper over coffee—every honest jab at the truth chips away at the totalitarian rot. You don’t need a million voices; the math’s on your side. That 30% hardcore block only rules because they’re loud and the 40-50% sheep follow the noise. But their gibberish is a glass jaw—absurdity’s their Achilles’ heel.
If the 10-20% nonconformists band together (not as a mob, mind you) and sling a sane counter-voice, they can unravel the spell or at least loosen its chokehold. Patience helps: totalitarianism’s a self-eating snake—survive long enough, and it’ll choke on its own tail. No need to storm the castle; just outlast the bastard.
Want a sharper play? Swap the fear bait. Mass formation hooks free-floating dread onto a bogeyman. Unhook it by dangling a scarier one—like the regime itself, a grinning skull promising gulags and gas chambers—or maybe today, simply refer to Cyberpunk. Pair that with a battle plan, and you might reroute the panic, snapping some out of the trance. Done light, it’s a fair warning—history’s got plenty of receipts.
But lean too hard into fearmongering, and you’re just aping the mob’s dehumanizing playbook, trading one monster for another. Ethics matter, unless you fancy becoming the thing you hate. Either way, the game’s psychological, not pugilistic—words are your blade, and the sharper, the better.
So, I’ve tossed you a few scraps—guidelines to dodge the psychological gut-punch of mass formation. Nice little tricks, sure, but let’s not kid ourselves: they’re Band-Aids on a gaping wound. The real festering root of this mess—masses gone wild and totalitarianism strutting its stuff—is that clockwork nightmare we call mechanistic thinking.
It’s the grease in the gears, the ghost in the machine, and no amount of clever wordplay or quiet defiance is going to uproot it with surface-level fixes. If we want a real sociocultural gut-renovation, we’ve got to torch that ideology and dance on the ashes.
In the next round of this circus—my upcoming paid articles—we’re cracking open the mechanistic playbook to see if there’s a chink in its armor, a sliver of light that might let us glimpse a world and a humanity not reduced to cogs and levers.
How you can support my writing:
Restack, like and share this post via email, text, and social media
Thank you; your support keeps me writing and helps me pay the bills. 🧡
Great advice! Don't use language that can be attacked as irrational-madness. Speak with well-organized and logical insight. If one doesn't have enough insight then do not speak till you have studied enough to articulate your thoughts plainly. Better to practice writing them down and read them back to yourself or to others. Our enemy is irrational and tries to force their definition of language on us as the only one to use. Learn what words mean and use them correctly. One of my self-learning tools has been Lily's articles and other's whose writing style and thought process to extend my own skills. The best writers, read what other good writers write and read those authors copiously. Our educational system is a total failure on teaching language skills. Till we get better at education, we must self-educate. Each of us must work at better articulation and to do so we must engage whenever we can those who are better than us.
we need a wave of consciousness