Politics in the western democracies are a decoration. They have no real relevance for important decisions, no real power. The purpose is to administer and entertain the population. They communicate political decisions that have been made, but do not make any decisions themselves. In the background, the economic and financial life is governing all aspects of our existence. In short, the power is exercised by and with money. We live under the reign of the financially rich. That becomes more and more apparent, and there are more and more famous individuals and official representatives who communicate this publicly. We live in an era of lies and deception. That becomes also more and more visible.
The master of deception and lies is commonly named Satan or the devil. In Goethes tragedy Faust he is represented by Mephisto. Right now he is as active as never before, near the peak of his power. Most important for his power is that most people remain unaware of his existence and his actions. Those who fully comprehend his activity are no longer under his control. When we know his name, then he becomes powerless. That is what an old fairy tale tells us. A powerless Satan is for sure an ambitious objective, but it is not a question of all or nothing. Every small discovery, all new knowledge gets us closer, as long as we recognize the truth. The more we see though the devil and his system, the less power he has over us.
The deception most relevant for the foundation of the modern society is not limited to the alleged power of political structures that seemingly point the way. Even more important is the deception regarding mankind itself, the human nature. Our actions are always embedded in an environment that we act in. We never learned to closely observe ourselves to our thinking. We prefer to look at other peoples actions. Empiricism is our scientific method and belief, so watching ourselves beyond the sense-experience is not considered valuable. We want to observe a lot of humans, looking from the outside at their measurable actions, and derive our knowledge from that. We see that human action and the environment interact with each other. Human action has an effect on the environment. The environment has an effect ton human action. That way we get to a condition of the environment and a condition of a human, and the expression of each we can observe. It raises the question, who impacted who to what extend. Every human acts differently depending on the surroundings. At work we behave differently compared to being with friends. Around family we do not act as we would around strangers. In an airplane we do not behave like we do in a stadium or sports field.
Every environment offers different opportunities, and the relation to the present people plays another major role. However, we can only observe people in environments that exist in reality, or can be created for an experiment. We depend on the experiment to appear as a real situation, giving a perfect illusion, or need the participants to treat it as a real environment for some reason. The simple request to to pretend that the experiment is a real situation will not deliver any durable results. Most people cannot even predict what they would do if they suddenly became a billionaire. If we truly want to know, they must become billionaires. And the way that happens (lottery, heritage, own business, experiment) will impact the way they behave. The arena in the “Hunger Games”-trilogy only works because it creates a real environment. Hopefully nobody will state that the true nature of humanity shows itself in that arena. But what goes to show is the behavior in a very specific environment. What we observe when looking from the outside and what we capture empirically tells us a lot about human behavior in the world, as it is perceived right now, but very little about human potential and human nature.
We can assume that mankind shaped the world, as we find it now, by themselves and in accordance with their true nature. That is what I assumed in the past. And this can make sense, if I also assume that there are no beings with equal or superior abilities who are not a part of mankind but also act and have an effect on the world. Then I have made humanity the definitive element in the interaction of humans and the world. This is what we commonly assume today. When we take a closer look at individual humans, we can see how differently they develop depending on their surroundings and experiences. Humanity includes all those individuals. Some of them can have a very big impact on the environment of many others. Often there are aberrations that result in this imbalance and then cause even more to loose their way and get tempted by this centralization of power. As a result we get an environment that can become very alienated to the undeterred nature of its inhabitants. The more we adapt to our surroundings, the more prone we are to get carried away like this.
My observation is that it takes quite a bit of confusion and pressure from the outside to push someone into a behavior that is more destructive for themselves and others than it is useful. At the same time there are always individuals who try to make the world a better place even in difficult situations. I consider this an indication that the environment, as we have it today, is not just a consequence or representation of human nature. We can live like this right now, but we can also live very differently in the future. If you wish to find true certainty regarding this question, you can only find it in an observation of human nature itself. With a little bit of practice you can observe this on yourself, looking at your own thoughts, feelings and intentions.