Some Optimism

Humanity is actually on a good path

Positivity? From me? I know, right?! For regular readers, a positive post by me probably comes as a bit of a shock. “What do you mean by optimism, Sotiris? Are you ok? Is there someone we could call for you?”

I recently realised that things are, in fact, getting better for humanity, not worse. Hear me out.

Frame

You see, for most of my life, I’ve held the belief (and fear) that things were getting worse for people, especially concerning expanding government overreach and insane propaganda pushed down our throats. I saw this as a trajectory towards dystopian nightmares and the ultimate indignity of us being reduced to a ‘Brave New World’ Epsilon-class citizen.

And my fear was warranted.

For example, in the past, people didn’t have to pay such high percentages of their labour in taxes (almost all of your labour goes to direct and hidden taxes). People of the past were relatively free from surveillance and government BS. Sure, they still had to pay a small percentage of their income in taxes, and they still had to submit to personal weapons prohibitions and all kinds of state encroachment. But percentage-wise, they gave less of their time and their earnings to the state.

And slavery? People in the past knew they were slaves. Now we work 50-hour workweeks to pay the vast majority of our earnings to the state, and what’s left is just enough for our survival. Isn’t that what a slave does? At least before, slaves weren’t as delusional.

But here’s the thing: This doesn’t mean things were better for people in the past — and I certainly don’t mean that the state made anything better.

Compared to today, sure, people technically had more freedom, but they couldn’t do much with it compared to what we can do today with the little freedom we’re allowed to enjoy. Using today’s technology and today’s wide access to information, the less freedom you have today is more meaningful.

We now have less nominal freedom, but more material freedom than the people of the past.

How

What made this difference? Technology.

Technology — with the economic efficiencies it brings — has allowed us to enjoy way more abundance with a much smaller percentage of our labour left in our hands — and with fewer freedoms. As the saying goes, a low-class human of today lives a far more luxurious life than a king in the Middle Ages. Do a quick search about how people (even kings) took a shit back then.

Technology has also given us so much access to information and disinformation that we, by and large, have become cynical of state propaganda, except for the merry fools and the gleefully corrupt of this world.

So, as a species, we ended up using technology for more good than harm. Go figure…

The states of the past weren’t more lax; they just didn’t have the technological means to enforce their nonsense.

Stasi psychopaths had to employ half the population to eavesdrop on the other half — idiots. Now, centralised government uses AI to listen in and process your private conversations in real time — and still does a terrible job at it. Regardless, however dangerous state enforcers are (even the secret alphabet agency ones who kill babies for fun), they are still useless, disincentivised, unmotivated, uninspired government employees. Don’t expect results from them.

And what does the state do with all this tech that dictatorships of the past would kill for? Nazi-inspired health passports, which the populace rejected through mass recalcitrance in early 2022, forcing the state to drop the COVID psyop abruptly.

Why? Because…

Government always drops rules it can’t enforce, otherwise its entire house of cards collapses.

Push the people too much with technology, and they use that same technology to bypass the state, and finally realise they can get public goods without centralised government. The state is cornered.

War

Compare the people of Europe during World War 1 with us today in 2026. They were total sheep. They believed anything their one source of “news” (the paper) claimed. Paper said, “go kill and die to supposedly protect your family”, and they happily enlisted — as tragic, useful idiots — to die in ditches for fat, elite pedophiles.

The shame-based ‘white feather’ campaign was also effective in manipulating boys into dying for less than nothing. This is why I oppose the manipulation tactic of shaming; it’s used to kill people en masse by toxic females betting on a fat war widows’ pension. And don’t conflate shaming with healthy modesty.

Regardless, try to pull a shaming tactic today on the shameless youth of TikTok — being shameless is better than shame-based. Try to repeat the toxically feminine “white feather” psyop today when military draft deserters are praised for their actual bravery — rightfully so. Yes, it’s those who submit to the draft who are the real cowards — obedience isn’t a masculine virtue. Disobedience and desertion are true bravery.

Today, the young people of Germany blatantly protest their ridiculous government’s calls to “go to war with Russia”. A few decades ago, Germans eagerly bought into the bullshit fear-mongering propaganda of the banking/military industrial complex, which pulled the strings of both sides of the world wars.

Both sides of wars always think they’re fighting a defensive war when, in fact, they are cannon fodder, pawns, corpses for certain interest groups to walk on. No war can be defensive on both sides; at least one is being lied to, but it’s both. And people are catching on to this now.

I’ll get sidetracked here, but yes, Hitler was employed by his bank-cartel bosses to lead Germany to total annihilation, and up for grabs. The world wars were the ultimate power projection backing the post-1945 banking system — fake money backed by the threat of war. This is why the war in Iran is happening now. Hitler and his coworkers, who led “the other side”, obeyed their bankster masters perfectly, and he was rewarded with a lush, protected retirement plan in Argentina, while his people suffered. And pathetic weasels with daddy issues still today worship him.

Anyway, back to the topic.

Dogma

Dogma, up until the recent past, has been the norm, whether religious, national, or state. People used to throw themselves into a meaningless battle because they were brainwashed to believe that killing and dying “for their king” was their “duty”, and it was the “honourable” thing to do. Total nonsense.

“Honour” is nothing but a shame-based manipulation tactic. “Duty” is a guilt-based one. And “glory” is manipulation centred around pride, with all the desperately insecure and needy falling for it.

And now? Today, in 2026, people are extremely cynical of government. Again, the youth of Germany today are by far more grounded and self-realised than their grandparents. Today’s Germans take a stand against yet another meaningless war against the Bond-villainous Russian boogeyman. In the 1930s, they fell for the banking cartel’s propaganda, fear-mongering propaganda (by the cartoonish Hitler puppet). Germans eagerly went on to die in icy ditches while their wives and children were being raped back home by brain-dead Soviets.

In just a few decades, and despite the propaganda, the state is failing miserably by comparison. Good luck getting Germans to go fight bankster wars this time. States are weaker now, despite their social media, surveillance, and all the tech they have at their disposal (run by hopelessly useless government employees).

The state has grown in power but lost its influence.

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Admittedly, we haven’t seen the end of dogmatism, yet. We abandon religions (rightfully so) but fall for equally fanatical cult-ideologies like socialism, wokeism, progressivism, feminism, climate-panic, and contrarianism (obsessively believing and aggressively defending even the dumbest “conspiracy theory” as long as it’s against the mainstream).

Want to know if you’re in a cult? Observe yourself as you get aggressive and violent whenever your ideology (not you) is being questioned.

Still, though, the fact that we’re moving fast from one cult to the other shows that we at least have the humility to accept we were being fooled. Moving from one lie to the other — not across generations, but in a few years by an individual — means we have at least once admitted to ourselves that we were lied to. And this takes courage and situational awareness.

Even the kids of Muslims today are en masse rejecting the bullshit of Islam, the most backward religion in existence — so pathetic it has to bribe its followers with the promise of meaningless orgies with sex slaves in a pointless hedonistic afterlife. Look at the latest generation of “Muslims” and how rapidly they’ve been “westernised” — TikTok, cosmopolitan influences, and all the sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll they need to get them to see that the world is much bigger than the cartoonish nonsense of the Koran. And imagine how much more open-minded their kids will be. Eastern religions are based on toxic femininity, and specifically, the feminine manipulation tactic of shaming: Islam cannot survive in the shamelessness of the West. Islam is toast, and so are all backward-ass Levantine superstitions. And this is a good thing.

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“What’s your alternative!” I keep hearing, as if I must suggest an alternative to a failed alternative, when the null hypothesis is already there: if god exists, he has abandoned you, and doesn’t care enough about you to even speak to you, let alone help you. If your daddy leaves the home and never comes back, you should be able to connect the dots.

We shouldn’t need a vague belief in an imagined god that certain humans claim to know all about, because they have no means of knowing what they claim they do. We shouldn’t need a god that has abandoned us.

More and more people are coming to terms with existence without a fairy-tale god. This is a good thing because it takes humility to accept the probability that you aren’t “made in god’s image,” you aren’t “god’s chosen,” and you aren’t going to “live forever”. And this is what religion boils down to: vicious vanity and murderous cruelty against anyone threatening the pride you get from your beliefs. This is why people easily kill for their faiths, or at least, hate.

But not anymore: Christianity will be completely dead once millennials are gone. And even today’s Christians aren’t signing up for any Crusades. Traditionally Christian countries openly ridicule Christianity in their media, and it’s accepted to say you’re an atheist. Islam is a couple of generations behind, in that it still has blasphemy laws, and no media in a Muslim country would dare call Mohamed a disgusting pedophile (which he was, by the way). But we’re getting there. Check out this piece:

Saudi Arabia openly welcomes gay people? This would’ve been a crime to even utter 20 years ago.

Are you seeing a trajectory here?

And I’m not saying being gay is an ideal — it isn’t. But leaving people the fuck alone is: people who mind their own business, who don’t provoke you, and whom you shouldn’t fantasise about when they’re in their bedroom. If they provoke you, fair enough; but make sure you don’t first force them to.

Cynicism

I know it may not seem like it, but things are indeed looking better for humanity. Things are still bad, but things used to be even worse. If you had a time machine and went back to the socialist Roman state era, good luck talking to an average citizen of the empire about rights, self-ownership, property, state corruption, overreach, justice, self-regulation, or the futility of war. They’d either ridicule you or execute you like they did Socrates. They wouldn’t get it because they were hopelessly brainwashed, and comfortably so.

What good is relative freedom when you’re unfree in the mind?

In contrast, people of today — even the most state-worshipping, bootlicking tools — are by far more cynical of news, states, religions, Nigerian princes, and motivation guru/scammers.

Better to be sceptical of everything than gullible about anything.

Cynicism is freedom. Better believe in nothing than fall for anything.

Speech

You might say that things today “are worse” because we have wokeism and stuff. So what? First off, democracy has always existed — if anything, it used to be far worse. Now you hear more about it because we have the technological means, and the inevitable free speech they bring. Free speech is good. The more you suppress degeneracy, the more you fuel it.

Is your concern that your kid is exposed to harmful ideas and content? Then your issue is with the state’s enforced schooling, not with people with different opinions from yours. When the state forces your child to undergo woke propaganda, and you still support the notion of centralised government, then you are, in fact, your child’s abuser, not the state. The state is just the symptom.

Today we can speak our mind. We can oppose war without being massively shamed for it as “cowards” or “traitors”. Why? Because people are finally waking up! Slowly, but steadily.

People in the past would read just one paper and would enlist to go kill and die in a ditch somewhere for no reason. It was shameful not to enlist to get blown up as bad meat and die as a killer, given the white feather propaganda. Today, people dodging the draft are seen as heroes, as they are. I wish I were man enough at 17 to dodge the draft. Draft dodgers are the real men.

Is this narrative change not optimistic?

Concessions

The fact that the modern state so desperately tries to cling to its house of cards by using laughably unconvincing propaganda further supports my point here.

A huge chunk of the state’s budget, energy, time, and focus is thrown into ever-increasing propaganda. And if propaganda is required, then our “consent to be governed is required”, otherwise there would be no need for propaganda. By ‘our’ I mean a majority, or a critical mass of the populace, not every last one of us. This is why I keep saying we get what we deserve: Because ‘we’, in general, literally want to be oppressed by a centralised government, having allowed ourselves to buy into state propaganda. Yes, you allow yourself to be manipulated because if you stand for nothing, you fall for anything (one of my absolute favourite sayings).

Regardless, if the state is so desperate in its attempts to gaslight us, it means it’s powerless unless we are gaslit. It means the state’s house of cards, its bluff of perceived “authority”, its Monopoly™ money, and the paychecks of its police/military brutalisers used to protect elite pedophiles — they all collapse.

This notion is empowering: yes, we need to understand we are responsible for our enslavement, but this grants us the power too: responsibility opens your eyes to where you have the power.

Forward

This doesn’t mean you should not complain (protest) about the injustices and oppressions and the involuntary submissions you are forced to tolerate. I’m not saying allow yourself to be herded into controlled-opposition protests by Judas goats… I’m saying show protest, unwillingness, and recalcitrance in your involuntary and circumstantial “backing down” when faced with circumstantial superior force. And trust me, having “served” involuntarily as a conscript, when you submit reluctantly, and make your submission so unpleasant for your oppressors, they sooner or later leave you be. You still submit to avoid violence, but you do it so slowly, so badly, so clumsily, that your oppressor wonders if it’s worth submitting you at all.

It’s not whining or being negative to assert yourself and speak truth to power. It’s not pessimism to point out the bad, no matter how good you’ve got it. If you tolerate the bad, you risk losing sight of the good, since you won’t be able to tell the difference. You dishonour the good when you let the bad slide. This is what toxic positivity and pathological optimism are: blinders to evil, a cowardly obsession with the silver lining that completely ignores the cloud and the omen of calamity.

Last point

Therefore, there is nothing more optimistic than pointing out the bad, because pointing out the bad is the first step towards fixing it.

Thank you for reading, and I hope you share my optimism.