Category: society

Liberal democracy

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A definition

Democracies are often called liberal democracies. So what is a liberal democracy and why might it be the best way of government? There are no easy answers to these questions nor is there agreement on these matters. Liberalism emphasises the value of individuals while democracy is rule by majority. These two principles can be at odds.

Liberal democracies have elections between multiple political parties, a separation of powers into different branches of government, the rule of law in everyday life, an open society, a market economy with private property, the protection of human rights, civil rights, civil liberties and political freedoms for everyone.1

Liberals believe that individuals and social groups have conflicts of interest. The social order must deal with these conflicts and resolve them in a peaceful manner. To achieve such a feat, all parties must be reasonable and there should be a balance of powers. No party should be able to force its will upon others.2 It is an important reason why liberals stress the importance of individual rights.

Democracy means that government decisions require the consent of the majority of the citizens. In most cases the citizens elect a parliament that does the decision making for them. Sometimes citizens can vote for individual proposals in referendums. In reality many democratic countries aren’t fully democratic because not all government decisions are supported by a majority of the citizens.

Principles

Liberal democracy is based on a social contract, which is an agreement amongst the members of society to cooperate for mutual benefits. For instance, labourers may accept capitalism if they get a share of prosperity. That deal turned out to be more attractive than state ownership of the means of production.

Liberalism has two principles that can be at odds, namely non-interference with people’s lives and realising everyone’s potential. In this vein there are two branches of liberalism:

  • Economic liberalism promotes freedom of the markets as well as free trade and claims that the state should be of minimal size and not interfere with people’s lives.
  • Social liberalism claims that the state should help to realise the potential of people by promoting their freedom to make choices, which includes ending poverty.

Each liberal democracy more or less embraces these values. Liberal democracies come with a market economy and respect for the rights of individual citizens. Governments interfere with the lives of people and try to promote their happiness and to realise their potential. The conflicting nature of both principles makes liberal democracies differ with regard to freedom of markets and government interference.

In the United States liberalism has a different meaning. There it is another word for social liberalism or democratic socialism. In Europe the definition of liberalism is broader and this is also the definition used here. In the 17th century liberal ideas began to emerge in what is called the European Enlightenment. Around the year 1700 the philosopher John Locke came up with the following basic principles for a liberal state:

  • a social contract in which citizens accept the authority of the state in exchange for the protection of their rights and property and maintaining the social order;
  • consent of the governed, which means that state power is only justified when the people agree;
  • separation of church and state, which means that the state doesn’t favour a specific religion and does not require a religious justification.3

Is it the best form of government?

Liberal democracy is part of the European cultural heritage. Proponents claim that it is the best form of government. These universalist claims are sometimes contested on the ground that they are a form of western cultural imperialism. Another argument is that there is no guarantee that liberal democracy leads to better decisions. From a religious perspective people argue that our Creator may prefer a different kind of social order and government, possibly even a theocracy.

The argument in favour of the universalist claims is that liberal democracy emerged out of a historical process that took centuries in which rational arguments played a decisive role. The European Enlightenment challenged existing practices in government on the basis of reason. Ideas that emerged out of the European Enlightenment were tried out in different ways and refined further. Europeans also invested heavily in educating their citizens. This produced a culture of reason and compromise as well as a massive body of practical experience and best practises.

There is also no guarantee that other forms of government lead to better decisions. In an open society better information can be available so well-educated citizens in a culture of reason and compromise may make better decisions. There are a few democracies that live up to these expectations so it can work out that way. And we may not be able to determine what kind of order God desires. If our Creator is all-powerful then the emergence and spread of liberal democracy may not be God’s plan.

One of the biggest problems facing liberal democracy is high expectations. Liberal democracy itself does not guarantee a reliable government that is both efficient and effective nor does it ensure a flourishing economy. This has led to disappointments. A failed and corrupt government can’t simply be turned into a success by allowing elections. Liberal democracy works best with a well-educated population in a culture of reason and compromise that doesn’t allow for corruption and abuse of power.

On the moral front there are a few issues too. Liberal democracy promises equal treatment for all people. In reality people aren’t treated equal nor do they have equal opportunities. There is discrimination based on ethnicity, gender or sexual preferences. And poor people have fewer opportunities than rich people. Still, the goal of equal treatment and equal opportunities can be something to strive for. It may be better to aim for such goals and fail from time to time than not having these goals at all.

If liberalism promotes tolerance then how to deal to intolerant people? Should their intolerance be tolerated? If people do not accept liberal values, should they be educated or should these values be imposed? And are free markets the best way of organising the economy or is government involvement advised? If the economy is served by stability, should dissent that causes instability be suppressed? An excessive or unnecessary use of force can undermine the foundation of liberal democracy as liberal democracy is based on reason and convincing people by argument. And indeed it is possible that liberal democracy can be overturned.

History

The preconditions for liberalism had already emerged in Western Europe during the Middle Ages. There was a larger degree of individualism than elsewhere. Liberalism itself emerged during the sixteenth century. At the time Europe was ravaged by devastating religious wars. After several decades of warfare Europeans grew tired of the conflict and began to tolerate religious differences. Some catholic countries accepted protestant minorities while many protestant countries accepted catholic minorities. Germany was almost equally divided. At the time Germany consisted of small states that had either protestant or catholic rulers.

This religious tolerance was at first more or less an uneasy truce. No party had been able to gain the upper hand. Religious minorities at first didn’t receive equal rights. They were only tolerated. Over time the case for religious tolerance became more widely accepted. It was based on two major arguments.

  • The argument of ignorance which states that only God knows who is on the right path and who is doomed so humans shouldn’t judge others.
  • The argument of perversity which states that cruelty is at odds with Christian values and that religious persecution strengthens the resolve of the persecuted.1

The concept of tolerance expanded into a general concern for the rights of individual citizens. In the 17th century liberal ideas were spreading. The Glorious Revolution of 1688 in England limited the power of the king. The rights of individuals were written down in the Bill of Rights. Parliament became the most powerful political institution based on the principle of consent of the governed. The 1776 Declaration of Independence of the United States was based on liberal principles too. It states that all men are created equal and have certain unalienable rights like life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.2

The founding fathers of the United States were also early liberals. The United States Constitution reflects this view. The aim of the United States Constitution is, amongst others, to safeguard the rights of individuals against the state. A large group of Americans believe that individual rights should prevail against democratically elected governments. The widespread support for gun ownership in the United States comes from a distrust of the state as a protector of life, liberty and possessions.

Democracy had not been a seriously considered since classical antiquity. It was believed that democracies are inherently unstable and chaotic due to the changing whims of the people.1 The violence during the French Revolution supported these views. It began as a popular uprising incited by liberal ideas but it soon turned into chaos and bloodshed. Order was restored by a despot ruler named Napoleon Bonaparte who did much to spread liberal reforms throughout Europe by ending the feudal system, emancipating religious minorities and imposing a liberal code of law. The spread of liberal ideas proved to be lasting and democracy was to follow a century later.

The Industrial Revolution started a period of accelerated and constant change that was disastrous for many who found themselves on the losing side. The ruling class changed. Nobility was replaced by a new elite of business people. The position of craftsmen was undermined by factories. And workers in factories laboured under miserable conditions for low wages. There were three major ways of confronting these changes:

  • Conservatives tried to hold on the old order of community, religion and nobility.
  • Socialists tried to overturn the elite of business people by giving power to workers.
  • Liberals tried to manage the change, thereby implicitly supporting the order in which business people were the ruling class.

Liberalism often coincides with the interests of business people. They have possessions and some are rich. They feared that the poor might vote for handing over their possessions to the poor. Socialism became the embodiment of this fear. Liberals were at first inclined to limit the right to vote to people who pay taxes because this excluded poor people from voting. When the threat of socialism became subdued and socialists were willing to compromise, liberals came to accept democracy based on the principle of one person one vote.

In the 19th century European countries held vast colonial empires. These colonies were kept for profit. It was generally believed that the people in these colonies had to be educated before they would be able to govern themselves. The colonial era helped to modernise these countries and most Europeans at the time believed that the oppression and the economic exploitation were justified on these grounds. There were only a few dissenters, for instance the Dutch writer Multatuli.

Liberal democracy faced a few major crises like World War I, the Great Depression and World War II. World War I demonstrated that liberal democracy and free trade weren’t a guarantee for peace and stability. The Great Depression once again challenged liberal democracy as the Soviet Union remained unaffected while Nazi Germany was able to recover and achieve full employment while other countries were still struggling. And during World War II Nazi Germany overran most democratic countries in Europe.

After World War II the European colonies became independent. The Soviet Union came to dominate Eastern Europe and China became a communist country. The United States became the protector of liberal democracy but also a number of dictatorships. This era is called the Cold War and it lasted until the Soviet Union dismantled itself after allowing the peoples of Eastern Europe to make their own choices. Major challengers of liberal democracy nowadays are the one-party system in China and political Islam.

The citizens of Hong Kong and Taiwan don’t like to lose their freedoms. Chinese too probably prefer freedom if they have a choice. And the Islamic State has shown Muslims all around the globe that political Islam can easily turn into a reign of terror. The foundations of liberal democracy may be strong, but a collapse of the global economy may turn be a more serious threat to liberal democracy than the alternatives. Reason can easily disappear once people become fearful of the future.

Reasons for success and limitations

The success of liberal democracy is therefore not a historical necessity. Liberal democracy might never have been invented or dictatorships could have gained the upper hand. That didn’t happen. Communist and fascist dictatorships came and went. Perhaps liberal democracy is a temporary phenomenon but we can’t know that now. Only the future can tell. There are a number of causes that might explain the strength of liberal democracy.

  • Liberal democracy is based on the consent of the governed so it is has the consent of the governed by default while other forms of government do not.
  • Science greatly contributes to the success of states and science is best served with an open debate that liberal democracy provides.
  • The economy greatly contributes to the success of states and the economy is best served with individual rights that liberal democracy provides.

A despot ruler or a ruling party in a one-party system might have the consent of its subjects, but if not, only force remains for the ruler or the party to maintain power. Liberal democracies usually resolve such issues peacefully through elections, making liberal democracy more stable by default. Intellectual freedom is helpful to science while economic freedom is helpful for the economy, so liberal democracy can be a potent force. Only when leadership is required, liberal democracy might not always be adequate.

Liberalism has no higher moral value than the individual, which is peculiar because the individual human is an insignificant part of this universe. And individualism may be at odds with human nature as humans are social animals. Humans are not atomic beings that choose to cooperate for mutual benefit like liberalism supposes. Cooperation is part of human nature and not a choice individuals deliberately make.

It is the success in cooperation that makes a society win out. Liberalism gives a framework for living together in peace as long as all major parties are reasonable and willing to compromise. This makes larger scale cooperation possible and that can make a society successful. For instance, the United States integrated people from different cultural backgrounds, which contributed to the success of the United States as a nation.

It is said that history is written by the victors. Strength may be the reason why liberal democracy prevailed. Liberal philosophers have tried to provide a moral justification for liberal democracy or they may have opposed it or they may have tried to improve it. Liberal democracy emerged out of thought and action, experiment and failure, and it was a process that took centuries. Philosophers like Locke contributed to its success as they set out the goals people could strife for.

Apart from individualism, liberal societies lack a higher purpose. From a scientific viewpoint there is no higher purpose to this universe. The moral codes humans live by are not more than an agreement. Only when this universe is created for a purpose there is a reason for our existence. But moral individualism can be dangerous. The challenges humanity is currently facing, most notably living within the limits of this planet, most likely requires making individuals subject to a higher causes like the survival of humanity and caring for the planet.

1. Liberal democracy. Wikipedia.
2. Liberalism: The Life of an Idea. Edmund Fawcett (2015). Princeton University Press.
3. History of liberalism. Wikipedia.

Hog barn interior. Public Domain.

Animal Rights

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Humans are animals. Other animals experience joy and suffering as we do. So, if we are considerate of our fellow humans, we might also consider being less cruel to other animals. Of course, humans are cruel to each other as well, but that may change. So, let us imagine that it will happen someday, perhaps not that far in the future. We can place ourselves in someone else’s position and feel compassion. Other social animals can also do that, as it promotes cooperation. Nature doesn’t have ethics, but ethics are part of our nature. In nature, plants and animals cooperate for mutual benefit or compete for resources, and compassion is closely tied to cooperation. Yet, humans can invent rules and believe they have rights. Animals can’t. Animal rights, like human rights, exist only in our imagination, not in objective reality.

A conscious mind experiences suffering, but consciousness comes in different levels. You can beat a stone, but it doesn’t feel anything. A plant is less aware than an insect. An insect has less awareness than a fish. Fish might be less conscious than mammals. And we relate more to animals like us, so mammals elicit the most sympathy, most notably the cute ones, and being furry may enhance their cuteness. Killing a dog or a cow feels different from squashing an ant or a mosquito, at least for most people. We can relate better to a dog because they are more like us.

And we care more about the people we know than about strangers, which makes us care more about our pets than about other humans in faraway countries. The suffering that goes unnoticed doesn’t affect us as much as the misery we see. That is why the meat industry hides the unpleasant reality from us: animals crammed in confined spaces or mistreated in slaughterhouses. There is an animal holocaust going on that dwarfs Hitler’s extermination campaign during World War II by a wide margin, except that it concerns animals, not humans. It is millions of times the size of the Holocaust because it affects billions of animals each year. When we become aware of it, we react in different ways:

  • Not caring. You may have more urgent problems than animal welfare.
  • Accepting. You could argue that meat is a natural part of our diet.
  • Doing something. You might become a vegan.

Humans have slaughtered animals since time immemorial. Our distant forebears have already driven animal species to extinction. Why stop now? Humans now dominate the planet entirely, and much of the remaining wildlife may soon go extinct. Hence, it may be time to ask ourselves questions, such as, should there be animal rights? And if so, what rights should animals have? Respecting nature and concern for animal suffering are reasons to consider animal rights. Those considerations can conflict with each other. You may protect the wolf out of respect for nature or shoot it to protect the sheep.

Even when we think animals have rights, the animals themselves transgress our moral rules. Predators hunt prey. We can’t order an eagle to eat grass. Some species go extinct because of our actions, while others profit. Rats, cockroaches, and seagulls thrive where humans have disrupted the balance of nature. Should we restore that balance? For instance, humans introduced diseases that eliminated the rabbit population, which had been on the foxes’ menu. The foxes survived by preying on other animals that don’t reproduce as quickly as rabbits, causing their populations to decline. Hunting foxes could prevent that. And if you let your cat go outside, you contribute to a bird genocide. In the Netherlands alone, house cats kill 20 million birds per year. Cat owners seem not to care. Why can’t they keep their murderous beasts inside?

Industrial farms are inconsiderate of farm animals and do not respect nature. If you believe Creation is sacred, factory farms are an abomination. Animals are crammed into small spaces and processed in slaughterhouses. It’s efficient. Producing meat in an animal-friendly manner is costly and can be less environmentally friendly. Excrement produces greenhouse gases, and you may get more excrement per unit of meat. The European Union has regulations concerning the welfare of farm animals, so European industrial farm animals are slightly better off. The measure for animal well-being is that farm animals can behave naturally. If they can’t, they may experience stress and suffering. The question remains whether an animal would prefer to live in the wild if it had a choice. Being hunted by predators also causes anxiety and pain.

What about eating meat? Meat has been on our menu since immemorial, providing us with the necessary nutrients. There may soon be artificial meat and replacements that contain the same nutrients. And so, we might end animal farming and stop making animals suffer unnecessarily. That could be our goal, not ending meat consumption. If there is not enough food for the deer in a forest, shooting the weak and eating them could be better for their well-being than letting them starve. Introducing wolves might achieve the same, but it also increases deer suffering, and wolves may prefer sheep because they are easier prey. In any case, a deer might prefer a clean shot to a lengthy chase by a pack of wolves before being devoured alive.

If you choose the wolves chasing deer, you aren’t a deer and believe the value of nature takes precedence over the rights of deer. Nature itself does not suffer, nor does it care. Humans have profoundly disturbed the ecological balance, so unspoiled nature, as it once was, is gone in most places. And so, we may be left managing wildlife as if the world were a park. Other events disrupt the balance in nature as well. The dinosaurs went extinct after a meteor struck Earth, causing a sudden change in the climate. Letting wildlife coexist with humans can also cause problems. You can’t let pests destroy our crops or spread diseases. The Sacredness of Creation is a religious dogma, and even if you adhere to it, you don’t always get clear-cut answers.

Latest revision: 14 October 2026

Featured image: Hog barn interior. Public Domain.

Happiness

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What is the point?

The biological purpose of our existence is to preserve our genes and allow them to replicate, so our brains are occupied with staying alive and mating, not with making us happy. Anxiety keeps us from doing stupid things. Happiness can make us complacent, which can be fatal. If we see happiness as a goal for our societies, it could be a sign that our civilisation is dying. In Paradise, we will be happy, or so we hope. Thus, what is the point of new ideas, technological development and social struggle? Why do we have agriculture, industry, cities, writing, money, empires, science, property, human rights and democracy? If these things don’t make us happier, what is their point? As human civilisation is in its final days, the historian Yuval Harari asks this question in his book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind.1

Things often don’t happen to make us happier. Things often don’t happen to make us happier. Our forefathers switched from hunting and gathering to crop planting and animal herding because agriculture feeds more people. It was a success for human genes, as there could be more copies of them, and for the genes of domesticated animals and plants as well. It made the lives of humans and farm animals more miserable. By growing crops or herding animals, people had more food. More children survived, so there were more mouths to feed, and people remained as hungry as before. Compared to hunter-gatherers, farmers worked harder, had less varied diets, and experienced more violent conflicts.1 Paradise was lost. That is, in short, the story of Eve, Adam, Cain, and Abel.

Social reforms, such as equal rights for women, aim to promote fairness. But it doesn’t always make people happier. If there is a norm, for example, the man being the head of the family, many women might be content with the arrangement. Men might have accepted that women had been in charge if that was the norm. A norm gives clarity, and change brings discomfort. Feminism liberated women, and overall, it probably made women happier, but not always, and the process of changing norms raises tensions. So what makes us happy? That is not easy to answer. It depends on our characters and circumstances. Several issues influence our happiness:

  • fulfilment of our needs
  • chemical processes in the body
  • money
  • our expectations
  • our desires
  • having a sense of purpose
  • social trust
Maslov’s hierarchy of human needs

Hierarchy of human needs

Abraham Maslow thought of a hierarchy of human needs. He claimed that basic needs such as food and shelter are paramount. Once you have them, you desire security. Maslow believed that if you have food and security, you crave love and attention. And if you have all that, you want to be respected and have a sense of purpose in your life. These needs exist but not in such a neat hierarchical order.

Chemical processes in the body

Some people are always cheerful despite adversity and misery. Others are always bitter and fret, even when they prosper and have nothing to worry about. That has to do with body chemistry. If cheerfulness is chemistry, we can take pills to be happy. Pharmaceutics can end a depression. Is this a false sense of happiness? And what is the difference with the bliss you get from a drug like cocaine? More and more people use pills to feel better. It is often an easy way out.

Money

If you are poor, some extra money makes you happier. Poor people often feel miserable because they worry about making ends meet. It becomes less clear once you can buy the things you need and have no financial worries. More money can make you happier if you spend it on the right things. What is right is a personal matter. So if you can afford it, you should buy that garden gnome you always craved.

The more you have, the less more makes you happier. Your first automobile can make you happy. You can go where you want when you want. A second vehicle makes less of a difference. You and your husband can go to different places on the same evening. A third and a fourth car probably have no use unless you are a car collector and have a garage where you can spend your days gazing at your automobiles.

Expectations

Suppose your daddy promised you ice cream. If you expected a small cone and received a medium-sized one, the outcome exceeded your expectations, which can make you happy. But if you anticipated a large cone and received a medium-sized one, the result didn’t meet your expectations, which could have made you unhappy.

If you anticipated less than what you got, that could make you happy, but if you expected more, it could make you unhappy. We adapt to new situations. After a while, our happiness or sadness is gone. Having low expectations can be a path to happiness. If you expect the day to be miserable, and that does not materialise, it can make you happy.

Expectations management can make a great difference in happiness. Promising nothing or setting the bar low is the way to success. It is also the reason why politicians nearly always disappoint, as they usually are like Santa Clauses promising presents to their followers, whether it is more spending or lower taxes, more regulations or fewer.

Social identification and ranking

What you desire depends on the groups you identify with. If you are a fan of a famous pop artist, you crave her merchandise. Our genes make us desire items that make us more attractive to potential mates, such as clothing. We rank one another socially and compare ourselves to others. If you are better off than the people you compare yourself with, that can give you satisfaction. Being worse off, such as receiving less pay for the same job than your colleagues, has the opposite effect.

Your happiness depends on the people you compare yourself to. The attention given to celebrities, their riches, and their beautiful husbands and wives can give you the unpleasant feeling that your life is subpar. That can make you go to the gym or the plastic surgeon, buy things you can’t afford and turn down potential spouses who are not rich or do not look so great. These problems didn’t exist a century ago, and we might be happier without the Internet and television.

buddha
Rock cut seated Buddha statue, Andhra Pradesh, India

Craving

Gautama Buddha also weighed in on the issue. He was a happiness expert who lived 2,500 years ago but is still famous for founding Buddhism. Mr Buddha taught us that we crave temporary feelings and things which cause permanent dissatisfaction. As soon as you have achieved a desired goal, such as love, or acquired a desired object, such as a garden gnome with a straight hat, you will crave something else, like a garden gnome with a crooked hat. That is why there is a large selection of garden gnomes on the market.

Our desires tie us up in this world, so our souls will reincarnate and keep suffering from craving, or so Mr Buddha said. Yet, it keeps the economy going. When we stop doing that and disengage ourselves from this world, we disappear into nothingness, a state of eternal peace, and the economy collapses because investors can’t make profits. If you take away the Buddhist fluff about souls being tied to this world, happiness comes from accepting life as it is and not desiring more. And that is a valuable lesson that is still valid today.

Having a sense of purpose

Believing your life has a purpose can make you feel better. That human feature contributes to the success of religions. If you believe in God, you may think you play a role in God’s wonderful cosmic scheme, while atheists may believe their lives are purposeless, which is not inspiring. But at least they can poke fun at theists who delude themselves in this fashion, so it can still be a good life. The psychologist Daniel Kahneman arrived at a similar conclusion.

Kahneman interviewed women and asked which daily activities gave them pleasure and what made them happy. Caring for their children was among the activities that gave them the least pleasure. But when he asked these women what made them the happiest, they answered that their children gave them the most joy. Their children gave meaning to their lives. Similarly, if you think your job makes other people happy, that can bring a smile on your face.1

Good societies, bad societies

Finally, there is something humans have some agency in, which is the quality of their societies, and working on that issue is the principal goal of this entire project. Yet, as you can see, it is a single ingredient the happiness mix, and you can be happy without it, so you shouldn’t expect too much on the happiness scale. Maybe, people in Denmark are happier than in Venezuela, but because the situation you live in is the normal, the difference may be smaller than we might think. There are plenty of people who act like Santa Clauses promising you this or that if vote for them you buy their products, and they didn’t make you happier either. In the post-apocalyptic world, there is little left to dole out, but we can have enough, and build a good society.

Latest update 14 October 2026

Featured image: Smiley. Public Domain.

Other images: Maslov’s pyramid chart of the hierarchy of needs. Androidmarsexpress (2020). CC BY-SA 4.0. Wikimedia Commons. Rock-cut seated Buddha statue, Andhra Pradesh, India. CC BY-SA 3.0. Adityamadhav83. Wikimedia Commons.

1. Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. Yuval Noah Harari (2014). Harvill Secker.

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Wisdom of Crowds and Mass Delusions

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Emergent properties

How well groups of humans make decisions depends on how their members share information and form opinions. In this regard, there are two opposing ideas: the wisdom of crowds versus popular delusions and the madness of crowds. As a collective, we know far more than any individual, but collectives can also act more stupidly than most individuals would alone. And you can more easily reason with individuals than with groups. That is because shared beliefs hold a group together and define its identity. Hence, groups are likelier to stick to their beliefs than individuals when confronted with evidence that they are wrong. If some people defect, it causes mayhem that enemies can exploit.

And so, groups know more, but are also less rational than most of their members would be on their own. As the number of individuals in a group increases, their knowledge increases while their wisdom decreases. We are like that because it allows our genes to survive and spread. We are social animals, so we cooperate in groups, and to do that, we need to agree on a set of beliefs to act as a group, like going to war, and agreement rather than correctness of our beliefs usually is the decisive factor. So, if Christians and Muslims go on a holy war against each other, questioning their faith can be fatal.

Now, how can the intelligence of a group not be merely the sum of its members? How can the IQ of all individual humans sum up to 8 trillion, while the resulting IQ of all humanity might be 0? That is quite an interesting phenomenon. Groups have what the experts call ’emergent properties’. These are properties that emerge only at the group level once individuals form a group. These properties seemingly appear out of nowhere. An individual water molecule can’t generate a wave, but billions of water molecules in a lake can. One cell doesn’t make a horse or a rabbit, but billions of cells do.

A group of starlings can fly in intriguing patterns, which a single starling can’t. A single neuron can’t produce awareness. These properties emerge from the properties of the individuals. Individuals have properties that determine what they can do in groups, so a group of starlings can fly in intriguing patterns, while a group of humans can’t. And a group of water molecules can’t form a rabbit, even if they tried very hard, and despite a rabbit mostly consisting of water molecules. Luckily, water molecules don’t have ambitions, so they don’t have problems, and not being able to form a rabbit doesn’t trouble them.

Collective intelligence

Collectives cooperate and achieve much more than individuals. And they can process more information, which the experts call collective intelligence. Their strength lies in their cooperation and knowledge sharing. Bees and ants demonstrate collective intelligence. They share information about where to find food and use it collectively. Bees build beehives using a sophisticated division of labour, while ants can collectively defeat enemies many times their size.1 It is a natural behaviour of bees and ants.

Ants also demonstrate what can go wrong with collective intelligence. They follow each other’s trails. If an ant accidentally walks in a circle, an entire colony might follow it. They could end up walking in circles until they die. In this case, otherwise beneficial behaviour goes wrong with fatal consequences. That is collective stupidity.1 We cooperate based on shared beliefs, which can be incorrect. Usually, our beliefs are beneficial. They strengthen the group’s cohesion, which is often more crucial to our survival than being right.

Groups know more and perform better on quiz questions than individuals because they can share knowledge. In 1906, an Englishman named Francis Galton discovered a phenomenon, later dubbed the ‘wisdom of crowds’. Galton visited a livestock fair where an ox was on display. In a contest, the villagers estimated the animal’s weight. Nearly 800 people participated. No one guessed the weight of 1,198 pounds, but the average of the estimates was 1,207 pounds, thus less than 1% off the mark.

Galton concluded that the finding suggests that democracy is the best form of government. Taking every view into account in Parliament could result in the best possible decisions. At the fair, the contestants independently assessed the ox’s weight. They didn’t arrive at their estimate in a group process, which may explain why it worked so well.2 The term ‘wisdom of crowds’ is deceptive because it is the aggregate estimate of independently thinking individuals, and not the outcome of a group process. Socrates would have agreed. Humans aren’t wise. It didn’t help us in the struggle for survival. And so, Socrates was executed.

No wisdom of crowds

There is no wisdom of crowds, but the stupidity of groups does exist. A Jew can make peace with a Palestinian, but the Jews and the Palestinians as peoples have failed to do so. Groups have collective intelligence, so they can process more information than individuals and are better at murdering than individuals. That is the advantage of operating in groups. Yet, to act as a collective, we must align our views, so that the collective intelligence can also disappear. Humans are social animals rather than rational beings.

We are prone to moral panics, which reduce our ability to think critically. A moral panic is a widespread feeling that some evil person or group schemes against our interests and well-being. Often, genuine concerns cause these feelings, but the claims often exaggerate the seriousness, extent, and certainty of the harm. That promotes group cohesion and generates collective action to remove the perceived threat. For our genes, it is better to be safe than sorry, and murdering others creates room for our genes to spread.

Crowds can make better estimates in aggregate, but only if their members don’t influence each other. As long as we retain an independent perspective, we can’t develop groupthink. When we influence each other, we can go collectively crazy. We seek our peers’ approval, which clouds our judgment. We are social animals who need the group to survive, so we share our group’s beliefs and don’t openly disagree. We may even share ideas we know are incorrect, so we ignore our knowledge and pass on the group’s views for the good of the cause.

Herd behaviour

Information often spreads through herd behaviour. We usually behave the same way.1 YouTube makes use of it. If you come across a video with ten million views, you are more likely to watch it than one with only ten views. Usually, videos with ten views are not worth watching. In most cases, herd behaviour works to our advantage. It allows individuals to survive with less knowledge by depending on collective intelligence. We can’t know everything, so it is usually better to follow the herd. That saves time and energy. Social media is prone to herd behaviour. A cat video can become more popular because it’s already in favour, while a funnier one might go unnoticed.

The same is true for markets. During the Dot-com bubble, investors piled into Internet stocks. Many investors knew these stocks were crap, but they bought them anyway because they kept rising. And investing is about making money, not about selecting corporations with excellent prospects. Groupthink can cause stock market bubbles. In 1841, Charles Mackay wrote about three financial manias: Tulipomania in the Netherlands, John Law’s Mississippi Scheme, and the South Sea Bubble. He argued that greed and fear drive financial markets and that these emotions can make people act irrationally, to the point where they believe a tulip is worth a mansion.3

Confidence game

Information spreads via opinion makers and can lead to mass delusions. Confident but mistaken people play a crucial role in this process. Self-assured people aren’t always wrong, but when they are, they amplify their errors because they have followers. Most people are insecure and follow the lead of people who appear self-assured. Leaders must be self-assured. Otherwise, no one will follow them. Now, wise people do not appear self-assured because no one knows the future. The business of influencers on the Internet is making money out of insecure people by advertising products no one needs.

Confidence is contagious. During the Dot-com bubble, the loudest voices on Internet message boards boasted about their profits in Internet stocks, thereby pulling in more suckers. The quality of group decisions depends on how we aggregate information. To take advantage of collective intelligence, we could try to:

  • make people feel free to come forward with their information and opinions;
  • prevent groupthink or group members from becoming biased by the information or opinions of others;
  • focus on the underlying causes rather than incidents.

That is difficult in small groups and even harder in societies. It is not how humans usually form opinions and cooperate. It goes against our nature. People derail discussions. Stupid people attract attention. And we don’t know the future, so what appears stupid today may prove to be great foresight tomorrow, and vice versa.

Collective action

Large groups struggle with addressing collective action problems. Humanity is the largest possible group of humans, so it faces the greatest possible challenges when it comes to issues that affect us all, most notably the looming technological-ecological apocalypse. It is not that most people are unwilling to contribute to the common good, but we already agree on what the common good is and the methods to achieve it. We can’t settle our arguments with reason because we don’t know the future. And then our unenlightened self-interest makes us seek personal gain at the expense of others. These are all ingredients of our collective stupidity that lead to our collective suicide.

As the collective wisdom of humanity is inferior to that of most individuals, the world might be better off with a single leader with unlimited authority. That can go wrong. During Mao’s Great Leap Forward, 30 million Chinese perished due to ill-advised policies. During that era, Mao ordered the mass murder of sparrows as part of the Four Pests campaign to eliminate rats, flies, mosquitoes, and sparrows. Sparrows eat grain but also eliminate insects, leading insects to feast on China’s crops. However, over 90% of the Chinese survived, so even a leader as stupid as Mao would outdo us. Someone slightly less stupid who accepts advice from experts might do even better.

Latest revision: 9 October 2026

1. Collective Stupidity – How Can We Avoid It? Sabine Hossenfelder. YouTube.
2. The Wisdom of Crowds. James Surowiecki (2004). Doubleday, Anchor.
3. Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. Charles Mackay (1841). Richard Bentley, London.

New World Order

nivtric1 Comment

Direction of history

There is a long-term historical trend toward closer integration. Humanity has been integrating via ideas, trade and politics for thousands of years already. Religions and ideologies unify diverse people under shared myths. Trade and money enable cooperation between strangers as everyone loves money. Empires govern multiple peoples with varying traditions.1 New ideas, such as the scientific method, have transformed the world. States have succeeded in dramatically reducing violent deaths within their borders by brutally repressing our violent nature. And without trade, you wouldn’t have most of the unnecessary items you have now. On the other hand, there is the conspiratorial view. Groups in society support particular developments because they hope to gain from them:

  • Priests and intellectuals benefit most from religion and ideology. They attempt to make you believe their fairy tales.
  • Merchants and bankers benefit the most from trade and money. They try to make you buy their merchandise
    and use their money.
  • Rulers and bureaucrats benefit the most from government. They attempt to make you believe you need their rule.

Could we have done without them, we would have figured it out by now. Of course, they do secretive stuff for their own benefit. Humans are political animals. We all do these things. Fairy tales help us to make sense of the world, so conspiracy theories have also become an industry catering to that demand. The conspiratorial view is a model of reality that has limitations like any other, yet a global elite of politicians, businesspeople, career bureaucrats, engineers, journalists, scientists, opinion-makers, writers, and artists runs the world. They have more in common with one another than with their compatriots.1

It is the price we pay for complexity. Doing business is now a global affair, even for small businesses, as supply chains span multiple nations. Issues such as trade, climate change, disease control, organised crime, and economic management require international cooperation between governments. In the old world order, states were sovereign. Soon, there may be no sovereign states. The New World Order conspiracy theory alleges that the elites conspire to make that happen. The elite’s actions are responses to situations. England established a central bank to promote confidence in the currency and financial markets and, after bankers introduced fractional-reserve banking, to address the problems arising from it. The resulting lower interest rates sparked the Industrial Revolution.

Bankers in the United States replicated the idea and established the Federal Reserve. In The Creature from Jekyll Island, G. Edward Griffin portrays their actions as a conspiracy aimed at enriching themselves. It is indeed curious that private banks are owners. Yet the main windfall for bankers comes from the central bank’s enabling role, which provides financial stability by addressing the problem of usury. There may, at times, be a shortage of money, or the economy may not be able to support the prevailing interest rate, which can lead to banking crises and economic depressions. There was a good case for instituting a central bank, even though the United States could have done without one, and the Americans hadn’t voted for it, and wouldn’t have voted for it, either.

The Fed became a linchpin in the global US dollar-based usury financial system, which helped the United States to become a dominant power. That would have been impossible without a central bank. An empire rests on credit, and cheap credit helped the British build theirs. After World War II had ruined Europe, the elite promoted European cooperation. Their efforts led to the establishment of the European Union. Secret meetings at the Bilderberg Group helped the elites agree on it. Those making these efforts believed that they were doing something good. More than half the Brits now regret Brexit, while only a third are still content with it. The problem is that experts often conspire to solve a problem the public doesn’t understand. Not that things get better because of it, but that is another problem: the problem of complexity, and the cause of that is competition.

Globalisation

By 3,000 BC, there was already trade between Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley involving spices, metals, and cloth. An even longer-distance trade, the silk trade, between China and Rome commenced 2,000 years ago. Later on, Arab traders brought spices from the Indies to Europe. Trade transcends borders and religions. In the Middle Ages, Muslim traders accepted gold coins from Christian states, invoking Christ and his Virgin Mother. Christian leaders would even mint coins with the Arab inscription, ‘There is no god except Allah, and Muhammad is Allah’s messenger.1 Christian traders readily accepted them as well. Gold was the religion of the merchants, not Islam or Christianity.


Money is more powerful than religion. Judas betrayed Jesus for thirty pieces of silver after seeing the proof that he was the messiah, if we are to believe the scriptures. You need only one traitor. That makes the job of messiah a guaranteed losing proposition, unless God controls the script. About 500 years ago, Portuguese explorers set sail for Africa to find new trade routes to the Indies. It was the beginning of a new phase of European colonisation and trade, integrating the world. With the Industrial Revolution, globalisation accelerated. Today, we are the servants of a system driven by money and trade. In 1848, Marx and Engels wrote in the Communist Manifesto,

Because the bourgeoisie needs a constantly expanding market, it settles and establishes connections all over the globe. Production and consumption have taken on a cosmopolitan character in every country. That is true for materials and for intellectual production, as national sovereignty and isolationism become less and less possible to sustain. The bourgeoisie draws even the most barbaric nations into civilisation and compels all nations to adopt its mode of production. It creates a world after its own image.

In the 20th century, European nations fought two devastating world wars, thereby enabling the United States to become the West’s dominant power. At the same time, the Soviet Union, the utopian alternative of state planning, imposed its vision on the countries it occupied. It was the beginning of the Cold War, during which both sides supported armed groups and governments in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. The United States promoted European integration and military cooperation in the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). The United Nations (UN) were another American initiative. Some of the most well-known UN agencies are the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the World Bank. These institutions were part of the US-dominated world order.

There was a plan behind it. The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) played a crucial role. The CFR is a think tank of prominent figures in business, science and politics in the United States. The CFR began its work in 1921 when the US was isolationist and European colonial powers still dominated the world. In the 1930s, the CFR received funds from the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations. During World War II, the CFR, in cooperation with the US government, developed plans for a new world order after the war, which became an order dominated by US financial and political elites.

The planners of the CFR believed that protectionism had worsened the Great Depression and led to World War II. Prosperity was the key to political and economic stability in Europe. They envisioned that open markets would promote democracy and that the United States would benefit from prosperity elsewhere. After the war, European countries received loans to rebuild their economies. By helping other countries, the United States gained economic and political influence.

Under the guise of fighting communism, the CIA organised coups in Iran, Guatemala, Cuba and Chile, among others, and fought wars in Korea and Vietnam. In several cases, they did so to protect the interests of big business. The Cold War also led to the build-up of the so-called Military-Industrial Complex, comprising the armed forces, military contractors, intelligence services, think tanks, and university research projects.

The US dollar reserve status, established at the Bretton Woods conference, underpinned the American-dominated post-war world order. US planners believed that stable exchange rates would promote trade and therefore implemented a fixed exchange-rate system. The gold-backed US dollar became the international reserve currency. This system remained in place until 1971, when the US dollar’s gold backing ended.

Market forces thereafter determined exchange rates, but the US dollar remained the primary reserve currency. The US dollar’s reserve-currency status allowed US elites to reap the productivity gains of other nations. The secret is that debtors, via usury, get hooked on the US dollar. That began in earnest when the United States started dismantling its industrial base, running deficits and kept the US dollar attractive through high interest rates, a policy known as Reaganomics. It allowed wealthy Americans to live well while American industries lost competitiveness due to the demand for the US dollar, thereby raising its value, making the Dutch disease the neoliberal cure for the American economy. The US empire gradually became a financial empire, supported by the US dollar’s status as a reserve currency.

Rules-based international order

The rules-based international order (RBIO), also called the liberal international order, is the system of political, legal, and economic agreements, norms, and institutions, such as the United Nations, that guides state interactions, promotes cooperation, stability, and predictability through international law, aiming to prevent conflict, foster trade, and uphold human rights. It was meant to be a social contract between nation-states. For eight decades, the order functioned to some extent, but it was a Western project, and several other nations viewed it as a tool of Western dominance and exploitation. Furthermore, might makes right. Powerful states such as the United States and the Soviet Union often acted as they pleased. Moreover, many countries aren’t democracies that respect human rights and are corrupt, but they do have influence. In 2024, Saudi Arabia’s election to chair the UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) was a particularly noteworthy low point in the UN’s record of integrity. Corruption pervades the international institutions.

To a great extent, the postwar world order envisioned in Washington became a reality, a fact not lost on conspiracy theorists. It was a remarkable feat of geopolitical planning and another step in globalisation. It is the foundation of the New World Order conspiracy theory. Globalisation has shifted into higher gear in recent decades. The outcome was not primarily the result of a deliberate plan by the elites, even though they helped the process by promoting neoliberal reforms. The recent globalisation is the outcome of economic, political and technological developments:

  • the rise of neoliberalism around 1980;
  • the fall of communism around 1990;
  • personal computers and digital data storage;
  • optical fibre and the Internet, making it possible to connect people around the globe;
  • global standards for data exchange, making it possible for every computer to exchange data with every other computer;
  • and software enabling cooperation between people and businesses worldwide.

Neoliberalism began to take shape in the 1970s and has dominated Western politics since the 1980s. In the 1970s, Western economies were stagnating. Unions had a lot of power. Foreign competition intensified, eroding corporate competitiveness. The welfare state became a burden on state finances. As a result, many businesses faltered. Meanwhile, the left dominated the intellectual climate. Business-sponsored think tanks began pressing for an intellectual counter-offensive, deregulation, lower taxes, and welfare reductions.

The 1971 Lewis Powell Memo became a watershed moment. It spoke of an attack by the left on the American system of free enterprise. It argued that businesses generate wealth, create employment, and pay taxes.2 They felt they paid taxes to fund universities where anti-capitalists conspired against them. From then on, businesses organised themselves to exert political influence through think tanks, thereby changing the political climate and contributing to the Reagan Revolution. Governments left more to markets, curtailed labour rights, reduced welfare, and lowered taxes on corporations and the wealthy. Income inequality increased while jobs moved to low-wage countries.

The collapse of the Soviet empire further spurred globalisation. The Berlin Wall fell in 1989. A few years later, the Soviet Union dissolved, and the European Union enlarged. From then on, there seemed to be no alternative to capitalism.3 Countries, such as China, India, and Russia, realised that they had to compete in global markets and transformed their economies accordingly. India now specialises in services and information technology. China became the global industrial powerhouse. Russia has specialised in energy exports.

In the 1980s, personal computers entered our homes. Businesses also employed computers, but exchanging data between them was arduous. Computers weren’t interconnected, and software suppliers used different data formats.3 The Internet changed all that. Using a personal computer and an Internet connection, you can view any web page from anywhere using the standard language, HTML. Investors realised that the Internet would change the world and that they could rake in enormous profits. It resulted in a massive over-investment in everything related to the Internet during the 2000 Internet bubble. One area of over-investment was in optical fibre, so the price of data transport dropped dramatically.3

Standards for data exchange emerged. Software suppliers began to focus on facilitating the interaction, competition, and cooperation of people around the globe, effectively enabling the world to become a global village in which people everywhere can participate. It transformed the way we cooperate. The traditional way of organising is top-down, via command-and-control. The new way of organising is through teams of people sharing responsibility for a task or product, enabling more complex forms of cooperation. China and India have developed and integrated into the global economy.

As businesses used cheaper overseas labour, workers in developed nations experienced greater job insecurity and stagnant wages. On the other hand, hundreds of millions of people in China and India experienced improved living standards. In that sense, globalisation may have been the best development aid ever. But the real winners are the oligarchs around the world. A 2019 Oxfam report points out that the world’s 26 wealthiest people own as much as the poorest 50%.4 A 2022 Credit Suisse Wealth Report states that 1.2% of adults own 47.8% of the world’s wealth, while 53.2% must do with 1.1%.

Global cooperation

Since World War II, Western elites have promoted the rules-based international order, both openly and secretly. Most elite members believe they act in the interests of humankind and aim for international cooperation. There is no denying that the alternative to a global government is warfare. The main problem is who will control that order? You can’t trust the elites to act in our interest. Conspiracy theorists claim that they operate behind the scenes in secret gatherings like the Bilderberg Conferences to create a global political economy in which they rule the world, and we will be serfs. The British politician Denis Healey, who attended these Bilderberg Conferences, told The Guardian,

To say we were striving for a one-world government is exaggerated, but not wholly unfair. Those of us in Bilderberg felt we couldn’t go on forever fighting one another for nothing, killing people and rendering millions homeless. So, we felt that a single community throughout the world would be a good thing.5

The elite is, first and foremost, a social network. Those gathering at the Bilderberg Conferences have discussed the European Union in advance. It helped them agree on European cooperation and integration. And after two devastating world wars, that seemed a good plan. The American banker and philanthropist David Rockefeller also found himself in the crosshairs of conspiracy theorists. He worked for the Trilateral Commission, which promoted cooperation between Western Europe, the United States, and Japan. In response to the accusations, Rockefeller wrote in his memoirs,

Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterising my family and me as ‘internationalists’ and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure–one world, if you will. If that’s the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.6

The internationalist liberal Western elites have cooperated to create a global order, believing that a single world order is preferable to national self-determination. Patriotism is the primary cause of warfare, a lesson Europeans learned the hard way during World War I and once again during World War II. These were nationalist wars with an estimated combined death toll of 60 million. America was spared, which allowed Americans the luxury of indulging in frivolous fantasies about national self-determination. Few of us aspire to be at the mercy of the elites, but what are the alternatives? You can step out and live like a hermit or join a self-sufficient community like the Amish, but that does nothing to change the global political economy.

The rise of the non-West

The West consists of Europe, North America, and Australia. Today, about 15% of the world’s population lives in the West. The modernisation that began in the West has transformed the world, and today’s modern world is the legacy of that past. Until 1800, Asia had the largest share of the global economy. Asia’s share of world GDP declined from over 50% in 1800 to 17% by 1950. Today, Asia is back where it once was, and China has surpassed the United States on several fronts. The dominance of the West is ending, making Vladimir Putin believe he could seize the opportunity by invading Ukraine.

The post-war liberal world order dominated by Western elites is on its way to the dustbin of history. New powers have arrived on the scene, most notably China and India. Half the world’s population lives in Asia. The populations of India and China each exceed the combined populations of the European Union and the United States. As these countries develop and modernise, the West’s clout in the world declines. China is on its way to becoming the world’s leading nation, perhaps with India following. These trends will likely persist, barring an apocalyptic event or an unexpected historical twist.

Progress or conspiracy

The European Enlightenment refers to the era from 1680 to 1820 during which Europeans’ worldview changed. With its emphasis on reason, empirical evidence, and the scientific method, the Enlightenment promoted individual liberty, religious tolerance, progress, and natural rights, as opposed to the ideas of the ‘dark’ Middle Ages, which supposedly were intolerant and backward. Prominent European thinkers such as Newton, Locke, Rousseau, Montesquieu, Hume, Kant, and Voltaire led the movement that inspired the Glorious Revolution, the American Revolution, and the French Revolution. Conservatives were not particularly keen on these developments, which they believed were undermining traditional Christian values. The bloodshed during the French Revolution further shocked them. And some began to focus on secret societies, seeing these developments as the result of their covert schemes.

In 1797 and 1798, the French Jesuit Abbé Augustin Barruel and the Scottish physicist John Robison published two remarkably similar books claiming that secret societies were undermining the social order by spreading these evil Enlightenment ideas and had organised the French Revolution. Both named the Freemasons and the Illuminati as the main culprits. It was the start of modern conspiracy thinking. The Illuminati were a secret society aiming to counter the influence of religion and the abuse of power, and promote an enlightened, rational society. This tiny Bavarian outfit had a short existence but still thrives in the imagination of conspiracy theorists, perhaps because the name Illuminati means ‘the enlightened ones,’ and Enlightenment ideas, such as the separation of Church and state, have become a foundational pillar of Western civilisation as it is today.

The Freemasons were another secret society with very similar views. They still exist, are obscure, and have rituals. What probably aggravates Christians the most is that the Freemasons believe in a Creator, but regarding the specifics of this Supreme Being, they hold no particular views, which aggravates Christians. That also made them in favour of Enlightenment ideas such as the separation of Church and state. The Freemasons have played a prominent role in the American and French Revolutions. You can find Freemason symbols in a variety of places, including US dollar bills. Some see it as evidence that Freemasons run the world. At least, they helped to build it, as masons do.

Around 1900, the Paris branch of the Russian secret service wrote the infamous work of fiction, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, about a secret Jewish plot to achieve world domination. It was not an instant success, as even the anti-Semites didn’t take it seriously at first, but shortly after its release, the Bolsheviks toppled the anti-Semitic Russian Empire. The Bolshevik movement featured several Jews in prominent positions, which made the Protocols seem more credible in some circles. For instance, Henry Ford and Adolf Hitler believed it. Historians offer another explanation for the collapse of the Russian Empire, which includes Russian war fatigue and an incompetent government.

The German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel took a somewhat different view. He believed in an even grander conspiracy, so grandiose that it encompasses all that happens on this Earth, and the secretive schemer behind the scenes was God, our Creator. These Enlightenment revolutions, Hegel surmised, were the means by which God’s plan would bring us closer to our ultimate destination, God’s Paradise. He then laid out his infamous scheme of Hegelian dialectic, by which social progress was to take place. New ideas replace old ones, sometimes in revolutions and wars.

By the time Marx wrote his works, the learned ones already knew that much of the Bible was fiction and many came to believe that there was no God. Jesus wouldn’t be coming back, for if he were, he would already have done so. It was also Marx’s view. The Marxists, drawing on Hegel’s ideas, believed that we should take matters into our own hands and bring Paradise to Earth ourselves. And so, Marxism looks like Christianity without God:

  • In the Christian view, the meek will inherit the Earth. The Marxists believed it would belong to the wretched of the Earth, the proletariat.
  • Christians wait for Jesus to end injustice and give the sheep what they deserve. Marxists believed that the sheep should take it.
  • Christians believe that history unfolds according to God’s plan, whereas Marxists hold a similar view: history unfolds according to historical necessity.
  • The Christians envision an end time with a battle between good and evil. The Marxists prophesied the coming of a proletarian revolution.
  • According to the Christian view, we would enter God’s kingdom, while the Marxists believed we would enter a communist paradise.

Despite claiming to be rational and scientific, Marxism resembles a religion, with prophets such as Marx, holy books such as Capital, missionary zeal to spread communism, heresies like Trotskyism, and, of course, religious wars to take out the infidels and heretics. Marxism has been the most successful cult in modern history by far. Even the Chinese, despite their proud heritage, abandoned Confucianism for it. Once the Western working class had emancipated and come to live an affluent life, the Marxists sought to liberate new groups of wretched souls in a new liberation offensive now known as Cultural Marxism or Woke.

A view among conservatives is that progressive efforts to implement modern ideas, including racial equality, equality of the sexes, and equality of LGBTQ people, are imposed social-engineering efforts aimed at undermining freedom and traditional Christian values and the family. Yet, Marxism and Cultural Marxism are offshoots of Christianity. Woke tried to curb hate speech and even change our language in an Orwellian 1984-ish effort. As Jesus taught us to love rather than hate, Woke sought to impose Jesus’ teachings on us.

Conservative Christians try to do the same. And so, they should shake hands. And it demonstrates the extent to which Jesus’ teachings have influenced Western culture. And as the most paranoid conspiracy theorist of all, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, already suspected, everything was planned down to the last detail. We live in a simulation running a story. The New World Order will be God’s Paradise. Not only was Hegel right. So was the Quran. The progressives schemed. The conservatives schemed as well. As did the Jews, the Christians, and the Muslims. But God is the greatest schemer of all.

Latest revision: 3 July 2026

1. Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. Yuval Noah Harari (2014). Harvill Secker.
2. Powell Memorandum. Lewis F. Powell Jr. (1971).
3. The World Is Flat 3.0. Thomas Friedman (2007). Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
4. World’s 26 richest people own as much as the poorest 50%, says Oxfam. The Guardian (2019).
5. Who pulls the strings? (part 3). The Guardian (2001).
6. Memoirs. David Rockefeller (2003).