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Why We Keep Falling for Autocrats
We just don’t learn our lesson, do we?
My father is an autocrat. I fell for his words for almost 30 years, even at times when I could feel in my gut something was off. Even when I could see proof to the contrary. I believed him because he had authority over me.
Finally waking up to reality was a bitter shit show — at a personal level, I felt betrayed that he pretended to be something he was not.
At the societal level, it turns out all autocrats put on a show and pretend to be somebody else. Nobody has the answers to life’s hardest questions and we all have to figure it out on our own.
Nobody’s coming to save us — we’ll just have to save ourselves or relinquish power to someone who poses as a savior.
And since we’re hardwired since childhood to respect and abide by authority figures (our caregivers), it’s only natural that we fall for autocratic leaders later in life as well. After all, we’ve been programmed to believe they have our best interests at heart.
As it turns out, they don’t. They usually have their own and they will use people and systems as pawns in their quest for domination.
When this is happening at a global scale and the wanted outcome is world domination, there’s cause for concern.