I am hoping that by the end of next month things will have equilibrated a bit and I will be back substacking it up.

In the meantime, I have paused paid subscriptions. I will keep it paused for at least three months, even though I plan to start writing sooner than that. This means if you contribute on an annual basis, then it will last 15 months. I will also be setting up a loyalty discount for all those who have continued to subscribe despite the lack of content over the last few months.

I really appreciate your ongoing interest and engagement.

And a special thank-you to Richard, whose inspiration I have sorely missed. Soon, my friend. Soon.

Of course, I don’t mean lost souls but underdeveloped higher brains. I know from my studies and experience that extreme wealth comes with its own problems with the higher brain. Undoubtably the biggest of these is the inability to make meaningful human connections.

To be clear, not all billionaires are insufferable, callous people. Some are decent. But as the saying goes, it’s easier to thread a camel through the eye of a needle than it is for a wealthy man to gain access to heaven. And by heaven, here, we mean forming a true connection with another human being.

There are several tangible reasons that make it difficult for ultra-wealthy folk to make meaningful human connections. Firstly, there is the drive to achieve wealth itself. In its extreme form it becomes an all consuming personality trait, known as dispositional greed (see previous articles). In such a state, one is driven at almost all times to accrue more money and/or power. It becomes their defining characteristic. We can see the effects of it on functional MRi scans. There are clear deficits in the regions relating to moral decision making, empathy and mentalisation - all functions necessary to connect with others.

When one exchanges the goal of achieving meaningful relationships with the goal of accruing more money then it should be little surprise when the decades of lost social development has its impact. If all you’re practising is how to navigate toward financial success, ignoring the need to forge the brain pathways needed for true human connection, then you must expect that when you then seek true human connection that you will be like an infant trying to walk - stumbling and falling on your ass.

It’s more serious than that though. Our prime time for developing the parts of the brain necessary for connecting with others is firstly during early childhood and then again in adolescence up to around 35 yrs of age. If our childhood is filled with adults only concerned with making money then we begin life with a deficit of social skills. If we then spend adolescence and early adulthood driven only by our desires to make money or accrue power then the deficit becomes more permanent.

Humans are unique in that between about 18yrs to around 35yrs we grow new neurones. We actually re-innervate our prefrontal cortex - it expands into new areas during adulthood. This is unique to the human species. If this period is spent focused intently on making money over and above making (or learning how to make) human connections, then that opportunity has been spent; neurones have grown into the areas needed to negotiate terms versus negotiating others emotions, desires, and thoughts. You give up the ability to read others’ minds (cognitive empathy) or the ability to feel others’ emotions (emotional empathy) in favour of more transactional calculations. How then can you connect with others? How can you expect not to be alone in all the ways that matter?

All of this is compounded by the absence of social boundaries that often accompanies extreme wealth. Accommodating others in the supermarket, respecting the social norms of queueing, making room for the person sitting next to you on the plane, taking effort to respect your colleagues opinions at work and the emotions of your friends is absent from the lives of many with extreme wealth. They have no “need” within the framework they have created for themselves (dispositional greed) to put the effort into reciprocal relationships. Relationships have been programmed as transactional not transformative; interactions are a means to an end not the end in of themselves. Ultra-wealth provides the choice to bow out of the social framework that helps us all develop the skills to relate to one another. Not all ultra-wealthy folk take the option to live separate to the social boundaries of life, but it often isn’t a conscious choice.

Am I suggesting we should feel sorry for the billionaire Robber Barrons who exploit ordinary folk simply to accrue more wealth? No. Of course not. Despite their sub-normal brain development, they remain grown adults, with the ability to make their own decisions. Perhaps though, we should be mindful going forward that the ultra-wealthy are less likely to understand what is most important to the rest of us; they will fail to appreciate just how important friends, family, and decent relationships are to the rest of us. As such, those with excessive wealth (or the single-mindedness toward achieving such wealth) should first prove they can achieve basic human connections before being charged with any power over any aspect of human development. How can they decide on the destination of humanity if they don’t get what is one of the key purposes of humanity?

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This shutting down of the brain’s humanity is achieved by dehumanising the target group, usually over decades. Israel’s new death penalty law highlights this mindset clearly; showing us all how oblivious the Israeli government, and sadly, many of its people, have become to the basic fundamentals of humanity.

“Whoever intentionally causes the death of a person with the intention of harming a citizen or resident of Israel, with the aim of denying the existence of the State of Israel, shall be sentenced to death or life imprisonment.”

The “Death Penalty for Terrorists Bill” will now make eradicating Palestinians (both Muslims and Christians) a procedural issue. The killing of those threatening the State of Israel will no longer depend on the hatred they can generate within soldiers to kill non-Israelis; it is now merely a process, set in law, with no need for emotions. The genocidal brain, oblivious to the moral wrong, is all that is needed.

Of course, it is an Apartheid law, by definition. It is to be applied to military courts specifically in the West Bank, where Palestinians are tried. It is death to those who try to harm an Israeli or the State of Israel. It is a law targeting Palestinians. This law doesn’t apply to Israelis. Israelis are tried in civil courts.

Notably, “the State of Israel” is not defined in geographical terms. It is whatever the State decides. As such this law can be applied in southern Lebanon, Gaza, and wherever the State of Israel extends its borders to.

The passing of this law should be enough for the International community to condemn Israel as an Apartheid State intent on completing genocide. Passed through Israeli parliament, it can only be interpreted as a frank confession of crimes against humanity. It is similar to the Polish Criminal Law Ordinance (1941) passed by Nazi Germany after invading Poland:

The Polish Criminal Law Ordinance 1941:

“A Jew or Pole who commits an act of violence against a German, or who in any other way acts to the detriment of the German Reich or a German national, shall be punished by death.”

My point here is that the mere fact the Israeli Parliament can pass such a law, with such clear Apartheid language and genocidal intent, is a clear signal that they are deep within the Genocidal Fugue - they have shut off their vmPFC. It is the kind of fugue state we have seen in Nazi Europe and the Rwandan genocide. It cannot be shamed or reasoned with.

Evidence suggests that if this “genocidal brain” continues for prolonged periods it can become a life-long setting. Old nazis and those who partook in the Rwandan genocide seem unable to activate these parts of their brain long after the genocide has been brought to an end. This means, without intervention from the international community, the Palestinian Genocide will continue until it is complete.

The passing of this law indicates that Israeli extremists have succeeded in achieving the threshold needed for an entire population to support the inhumanity of genocide. They have successfully dehumanised all non-Israelis and convinced enough Israelis that they are worth so much more than any other human that they are entitled to kill and torture others. We are entering a new phase of this genocide. One that has made the eradication of Palestinians (indeed, all non-Israelis) legal. It is also a phase where denying the Palestinian Genocide has become impossible.

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Social media platforms are increasingly under the control of billionaires. This has fuelled concerns that these social media platforms are being used to influence their users based on ideological grounds. For example, did Musk use Twitter to push the election in favour of Donald Trump? Or is he using it to push society towards a more feudal mindset?

Up until recently, it has been challenging to get hard evidence to either confirm or refute such concerns. Studying behaviour on social media is fraught with difficulties. Arguably, the greatest challenge is that almost all studies have needed to team up with the very platforms they wish to study. That is, until now.

This month, a study published in the world’s leading scientific journal, Nature, undertook a controlled study on 5,000 ‘X’ users from the U.S., testing the effects of the algorithm on political opinion. Importantly, the study did not require collaboration with ‘X’, and as such can be considered independent. The results are illuminating and should help inform policy around social media and election interference.

What they did

The study examined the effects of the algorithm used by ‘X’ on the political opinions of its users.

The study split the users into two groups. One group (the algorithm “on” group) were only allowed to use the “For You” feed. In the “For You” feed, the algorithm dictates what the user sees. The second group (the algorithm “off” group) were only allowed to use the “Following” feed, which showed posts only from those the user was following, and only in chronological order. The groups were later crossed over.

All 5000 users had their political opinions analysed before and after each period of using each feed. It was a controlled study with a good compliance rate (around 80%). It lasted for 7 weeks.

What they found

The results were remarkable. Using the algorithm “on” feed (the “For You” feed) led to seeing about 20% more right-wing content. More profoundly, exposure to the algorithm led to a greater chance that those users would change their political priorities to include more right-wing issues - crime, immigration, etc.

It led to more people following right-wing accounts. It also led to a clear bias in interpreting key political issues that were prominent in the news. For example, people who were assigned to the group following the algorithm “on” feed were more likely to believe that the criminal prosecution of Donald Trump was wrong. They also tended to view Zelensky more negatively.

Bear in mind that all these changes were in comparison to the same group switching from the non-algorithmic feed (“Following”) to the algorithmic feed (“For You”). As such, this is not the effect of using ‘X’; it is the effect of the algorithm. The algorithm had a material effect on the user, changing their minds about a) what is important to them, and b) specific societal issues.

Figure 1. Directly from the article. The “0” line means there is no effect on opinion or position. You can see that on the algorithmic feed (left), the opinions are being skewed, but not on the chronology-only chart (right).

There were some other interesting findings. Firstly, the ability of the algorithm to change the priorities and opinions of the user only applies to those on the right-wing or independents. Self-identifying Democrats did not change their political priorities or opinions after being exposed to the algorithmic feed, even though they too saw more right-wing content.

So, to be clear, if someone self-identified as Republican and was placed in the group that could only use the X feed “Following” (no algorithm) then their views would not be shifted further towards a pro-Trump or pro-Russian stance nor would they prioritise conservative issues more, but those Republicans (and Independents) who were subjected to content picked by the algorithm did shift further right. Truly incredible!

‘X’ is changing the mindset of communities

This is not to say that those on the left are unaffected by such content. Indeed, it is very likely that those on the left exposed to the ‘X’ algorithm are affected by the inevitable increase in the right-wing content they see. The study did not examine anxiety levels, depression scores, or other measures of psychological impacts (I do hope they do in the follow-up study).

For me, it is beyond any reasonable doubt that such content will have significant effects on the psychology of those on both the left and right.

The other very important and quite shocking result was that once the user had been shifted over to a more far-right-wing position, even when they were switched back to a non-algorithmic feed, their views remained the same. So, the algorithm invokes changes to one’s opinions about current news events and partisan issues in what looks like a permanent (or at least a semi-permanent) way.

Take a Republican (or someone on the right) and expose them to X’s algorithm. They will shift their views further right. They will become more polarised. They will be more likely to support Trump and Russia. And then, even if you stop exposing them to X’s algorithm, they remain more right-wing.

The intent to indoctrinate

So, here we are, with clear evidence that the algorithm used on ‘X’ pushes those on the right further right; pushes a pro-Russia, pro-Trump viewpoint, and amplifies right-wing accounts more than those in the centre or on the left. Whatever arguments are held up to explain this, the fact remains that ‘X’ is (whether intentionally or not) a tool to promote harder conservative positions. This is indisputable.

But the intention behind such a bias matters. If such bias is merely the consequence of user preference naturally leaning more towards far-right viewpoints, then the bias is more structural rather than being actual propaganda. If, though, the algorithm is being intentionally changed to promote more right-wing content, then this bias likely meets the threshold for ‘X’ being a propaganda platform.

There is plenty of evidence that these algorithm effects are indeed intentional.

Firstly, it is no secret that the algorithm has been changed to give Musk a greater presence on the platform. Given that he is a political actor, this material change in the algorithm materially biases the algorithm towards a specific political/ideological viewpoint.

Musk can argue that his intention was not to effect a change in political discourse, but there is little doubt that that has been the material effect of tweaking the algorithm to promote his tweets.

Secondly, you will recall that the Gauthier et al. study we just examined looked at the “Following” feed, as this was not influenced by the algorithm. Since the study has been completed, the “Following” feed has been changed. Now, the default is that Grok (Musk’s AI system) ranks the tweets and effectively decides what tweets (out of those the person is following) the user sees - the algorithm now influences what was previously a relatively algorithm-free feed.

Thirdly, it is no secret that Grok is programmed to reflect Musk’s views. He has stated on many occasions that he has adjusted Grok to reflect less “liberal” viewpoints. The xAI company openly acknowledges that it had to edit Grok’s algorithm due to issues such as promoting the “white genocide narrative” and “election misinformation”.

Again, there is little doubt that the algorithm governing the tweets we see now on both the “For You” feed and the “Following” feed has been changed based on political and ideological grounds.

Does, then, ‘X’ meet the criteria for a propaganda platform? There is clear evidence that it pushes those on the right further right. There is clear evidence that ‘X’ is intentionally changing its algorithm based on political and ideological issues. While there are concerns about other social media platforms, and these concerns need to be examined, there is a graver concern that ‘X’ has shifted from merely having a structural bias to being an active right-wing propaganda platform.

END

On the podcast, I am going to go into a bit more detail about the study and what it all means for public policy. Governments need to act sooner rather than later. You can find the link here: https://dangoyal.substack.com/podcast.

I will also be doing a video to discuss relatively safer ways of using ‘X’ if you still are. Link to my YouTube channel is here: https://www.youtube.com/@dangoyal9631

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References

1. Gautier, A., et al. (2025). The effects of X’s feed algorithm on political attitudes: Evidence from a randomized experiment. Nature.

2. Huszár, F., et al. (2022). Algorithmic amplification of politics on Twitter. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), 119(1), e2025334119.

3. Platformer (2023). Yes, Elon Musk created a special system for showing you all his tweets.
   https://www.platformer.news/yes-elon-musk-created-a-special-system/

4. The Verge (2023). Elon Musk’s tweets are being boosted by Twitter’s algorithm.
   https://www.theverge.com/2023/2/14/23600358/elon-musk-tweets-algorithm-changes-twitter

5. Reuters (2025). Musk’s xAI updates Grok chatbot after “white genocide” comments.
   https://www.reuters.com/business/musks-xai-updates-grok-chatbot-after-white-genocide-comments-2025-05-17/

6. The Verge (2025). xAI updated Grok to be more politically incorrect.
   https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/699788/xai-updated-grok-to-be-more-politically-incorrect

7. Rozado, D. (2024). The political orientation of large language models. (Independent research report).

8. Manhattan Institute (2025). Measuring Political Preferences in AI Systems: An Integrative Approach.
   https://manhattan.institute/article/measuring-political-preferences-in-ai-systems-an-integrative-approach

9. The Decoder (2025). New York Times says xAI systematically pushed Grok’s answers to the political right.
   https://the-decoder.com/new-york-times-says-xai-systematically-pushed-groks-answers-to-the-political-right/

10. X Corp. / xAI (2024–2025). Public statements and system prompt disclosures regarding Grok behaviour and updates.

11. The Guardian (2023). Elon Musk reportedly forced Twitter algorithm to boost his tweets after Super Bowl flop.
    https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/feb/15/elon-musk-changes-twitter-algorithm-super-bowl-slump-report

In part, deciding how to respond to a global pedophile network is hampered by the vulgarity of the crimes in question. It is stomach-turning. It is not something any of us wants to think about or look directly at.

But we must look at it if we are to decide how far we should push for justice. Is it enough that those committing the acts themselves face justice? Or do we need to examine every part of government, the media, and our institutions, and root out every person involved in either the act or the cover-up?

The relevance of these questions hit home last week when I was at work. Out of a patient complement of around 30, there were two patients there due solely to the secondary effects of child abuse.

Bear in mind, I don’t work in psychiatry. I work in medicine. Acute medicine. And here we are decades after the abuse, and the victims are still suffering the physical consequences of that abuse.

I knew from the medical history alone that the first patient had been severely abused. Multiple scars from self-harming, severe self-neglect with bed ulcers and missing teeth that had never been replaced, and a palpable helplessness. Then a look at the medication list: anxiolytic, antidepressant, anti-psychotic, and sleeping tablets. Then a brief look at the emergency room attendances: a catalogue of suicide attempts - some cries for help, others a clear attempt to bring it all to an end.

The abuse had happened over 30 years ago, but it still had a hold over her. It was still destroying her. Indeed, it was clear from this admission that it would likely kill her, at an all too young an age.

The next patient was a guy who had taken the effects of the abuse another way. He had lived with it longer than she had. He had been alive during the times when such patients were assigned heavy-duty mental health diagnoses - schizophrenia or some other primary mental illness. Heavily medicated, often debilitatingly suspicious, and so emotionally flat that it was difficult to imagine him enjoying any part of his solitary life.

Child abuse destroys lives. And when I say destroys, I mean destroys every part of life.

Don’t get me wrong, some victims of child abuse can adapt and affect some degree of self-healing. Such people, in my experience, are often the best of us; they endure the worst of humanity and decide to act compassionately anyway. They have managed to trust people enough to love and laugh despite justifiable reasons not to. But for many, there is no way past that time when they were abandoned by the very adults who were meant to protect them. They are, understandably, stuck at the worst point of their lives (of anyone’s life).

This is the damage to the individual - immeasurable, pervasive, and enduring.

Then there is the damage to society. Not everyone who is abused turns the horrors inwards. Some reflect the horror back into the world.

Nearly half of all violent criminals have a history of child abuse. Some go on to be abusers themselves.

Child abusers tear at the very fabric of our shared humanity. They create hell on earth for their victims and, at times, their victims’ victims. All that we have built - justice, health, education, community - they erode. We are forced to create reams of policies to guard against this minority of evil.

They also inject a general and pervasive mistrust amongst the rest of us. Kids walking home from school, or going into town, or accepting a treat from a stranger are now saturated with the knowledge that such abusers operate in our society. We are more wary of each other because of them.

And now, with what the Epstein files have revealed, we have to add to all this destruction the blackmail and coercion that seems central to the Epstein Network. We now have politicians, journalists, public figures, and others whose perversions have been captured on video and email. They are compromised and are effectively owned by whoever owns the material evidence of their perversions and crimes.

The extent of the damage to society is far-reaching, but ultimately unknown. What decisions were made (are still being made) not based on what is good for the public but what is directed by the blackmailer? Who has control over our leaders? We simply don’t know.

It is difficult to find a more destructive network than that built by Epstein. Thousands of lives ruined. Victims now forced to live with what evil he and his wealthy, ‘privileged’ clients subjected them to. That, on its own, should prompt a furious response from our leaders and our criminal justice systems. At least it should, from those who don’t share such depraved mindsets.

Add to this the far-reaching consequences of pedophilia to society, and the coercion of those with significant influence on our shared public spaces, leaves us with no choice but to press for maximum punishment. The consequences of failing to prosecute those involved are catastrophic.

If we allow those with power and money and status to get off with lighter sentences or simply losing their job, for crimes that destroy lives and society, then the message we are sending to anyone with the warped pedophile mindset is: the safest place for you to operate is in public office, or media, or business; the best way for you to get away with abusing children is to ascend to positions of power. The opposite should be true.

If you are in a position of power and use that to abuse children, then the punishment must be greater. You have abused the trust we have placed in you. You have contaminated the office you hold. Punishment is then due for both the crime of destroying a life and the crime of perverting the office you hold.

It is hard not see this moment as an inflexion point. We can send a message to all those who would harm our children. We can also send a message to those elitists who think they can act in whatever depraved way they wish because they believe they are above the law. We can send a ripple through our political system that there is zero tolerance for child abusers.

No, the Epstein files aren’t going anywhere. They are just the beginning.

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Group 1 - the fanatics

That being said, fascism can’t exist without fanatics. Be it the racist fanatics who believe in superior “races” or God’s “chosen people”. Or the religious fanatics who believe the world is spiralling into a moral oblivion, all because they haven’t followed the preachings of the church. Or the neoliberal fanatics, driven almost exclusively by the need to acquire more power and wealth, they seek the concentration of power in the hands of the few merely for efficiency purposes - why convince a democratic public that you are worthy of their shared wealth, when you can simply bribe a crooked leader?

So, the fanatical fascists are most certainly present. They are, though, the minority. Few people genuinely believe that there is such a thing as a superior race. Anyone even vaguely familiar with science or basic common sense can see that the colour of one’s skin or one’s religious creed confers no natural claim to being better than another. We bear in mind that psychopathies account for less than 5% of society, true psychopaths, less than 1%. As such, true racist fanatics are rare.

The same is true for religious fanatics. Most people have experienced religion in some way or another. Most of us have either dabbled or know someone with faith. It’s not hard to see that most religious folk are decent. They have little need to push their religion on you - they don’t think you are going to hell simply because you don’t go to their church or fail to pray each day. Again, those who genuinely believe that it is the lack of attachment to religious doctrine that has caused societal decay are few and far between.

Neoliberal fanatics are also uncommon. Unfettered greed is not attractive and very hard to defend in discussion with anyone who has had a decent upbringing. Yeah, I’m not impressed that you have exploited your workers and consumers and have managed to hoard more money than a medium-sized country. Didn’t your mother teach you about fairness and playing well with others?

So, that is the first group of fascists: fanatics. They are only a few of them, but they certainly are driven to see power shift from the public to the few. For the racists, they hope that it will mean greater cruelty to non-whites (you don’t want to ask why they achieve satisfaction by hurting other people!). For the religious extremists, they feel that if people can be forced into following their teachings, the world will be better, more ‘godly’ - leading by example isn’t rated as highly as simple authoritarianism. And for the neoliberals, they simply want more freedom to extract more wealth from society - deregulate, remove workers’ rights, end consumer rights, allow them to have free rein to con whoever they like. In their eyes, those who get conned are lesser humans anyway - social darwinism never went away.

No doubt that without the fanatics, there would be no direction to the fascist uprising.

Group 2 - the angry lemmings

The second group we will call the ‘angry lemmings’. These are the foot soldiers. As I say, there are not enough fanatics (“true believers”) to shift society into a fascist authoritarian state. The extremes of beliefs are on the extremes of society. So they must convince others to follow them and do their bidding.

Those who have grown up in a relatively stable environment where they are taught the basic values of human decency tend not to fall for such indoctrination. Those who are insecure and angry are perfect targets.

It is this group, the majority of fascists, that has a problem with accepting responsibility. They are angry with their life but don’t want to take responsibility for what part they played in such failings, and, if successfully indoctrinated, don’t want their “group” to take the blame either. Blame the other.

These are the same kind of folk who eat nothing but processed junk food, weigh 150kg, drink and smoke, then blame their doctor when they need a triple bypass.

Fanatics need these foot soldiers. They spend massive amounts of money trying to indoctrinate them. Social media has made this easier. Microtargetting permits direct access to the easy-to-manipulate angry lemmings without the accountability of public discourse. Many of those indoctrinated see a completely different world than we do.

Group 3 - the grifters

Let’s call them the ‘morally incontinent grifters’.

Grifters defend their position as ‘hustling to do better’. They conflate the hustle of working hard with the solicitation of their voice to the highest bidder. The key difference is the absence of morals.

In part fueled by the false belief that everyone is out for themselves, these morally vacuous grifters amplify the fascistic indoctrination and shield the fanatics all for a few pennies.

You know them. They are slimy, slippery, cunning. They prey on the dramatic and are comfortable speaking in half-truths. While they will protest that simply being the lapdog of the fanatics doesn’t make them fascists, their actions do, and the reality is that without them, there would be no fascist uprising.

Final Word

Trump is actually in Group 3, in my opinion. He isn’t a fanatic. I don’t think he has any strongly held beliefs at all. He is not a psychopath - he simply isn’t smart enough. He is a sociopath who believes he can do whatever he wants to satisfy his urges and desires, including getting rich and powerful. He is a tool of the fanatics.

I think Musk started in group 2 - an angry lemming. Unable to resolve the dichotomy of being the richest man in the world while also being one of the loneliest, he accepts no responsibility for his own role in isolating himself, blames the world for the challenges of relationships, and is someone easy to convince that it would all be better if he could simply control everyone around him and win the argument.

In this way, Musk has also moved into Group 3 - a world-class grifter. He isn’t grifting for money (albeit it certainly motivates him); he grifts to be accepted, to belong, to stop being alone. It is a shame that no one has told him that you can’t feel belonging if you can’t experience what someone else is experiencing - empathy, compassion, and sympathy. He thinks the route to feeling less lonely is to force others to believe what he believes - a similar ideology to a virus.

As for Farage, he is a world-class grifter. Yes, he probably is driven by a racist ideology too, but he has no problems taking money from people of colour. Indeed, I am quite sure that if Al-Qaeda paid him enough, he would be their spokesperson and imbue the benefits of Sharia Law on his angry lemming followers. He is, in my opinion, firmly in group 3 - a morally incontinent grifter.

The vast majority of those we see, propping up the fascist regimes and figureheads, are not the fanatics driving the fascist uprising. Miller is a classic angry lemming. Noem is a classic morally incontinent grifter. Those who are driving the uprising are behind the scenes, pushing funds one way or another to achieve their ultimate goal of consolidating our collective human power into the hands of a few.

Last word. It will fail. The fanatics are in agreement just now. They all believe that the public has too much power. But their ideologies clash significantly. Religion ultimately doesn’t tolerate racism or unfettered greed. Racists can’t tolerate the inclusivity that most religions crave - everyone should convert. And the neoliberals will shift their allegiances with each opportunity that presents - they will be loyal to neither rascist or religious extremist.

Fascism will, as it always does, fail to convince the majority of decent people to surrender their power to fanatics, lemmings, and grifters. How long it takes to fail depends on us all, but fail it will. Perhaps this time, when it does, we finish what we started after the Second World War: redistributing the collective power back to the people.

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It’s a double-edged sword: standards. Believing that decency is at the root of the human condition, that human values and fairness should govern society, is both beneficial - it pushes us toward a better world for all -but it also makes us hard to please.

Progress doesn’t come overnight. The march to a human civilisation where we respect each other, regardless of gender, ethnicity, wealth, or perceived power; where no one goes hungry or fears persecution; where all States take pride in the delivery of healthcare and education to their people, is a long and weary path. It requires a commitment to humanity and a moral stubbornness.

But here, just now, as we sit on the verge of a fascist uprising that may well be mirroring that of WWII, we need to be pragmatic.

It is not that we have to suspend our moral compass - the point of morals is that you can’t anyway. It’s not even that we need to compromise our belief in the righteousness of the human condition. It is that we must become a little less stubborn; a little less perfection driven.

We must focus our attention on seeing clearly when someone is acting for fascism and when someone is acting to stop it.

The Enemy of My Enemy

The confusion is never clearer than when we see people we don’t respect stand up and say something that opposes fascism. It’s hard to process. How do I feel about a horrid person saying something I actually agree with, something important that I agree with?

The left struggles more with such a grift. Switching allegiances based purely on a temporal support of one’s ideology is, thankfully, harder for those on the left. We are stubborn when it comes to remembering the damage caused by those who have pushed hatred and division into our communities. And, in normal times, such stubbornness is warranted. If these were normal times, then forgiveness for betraying humanity should be reserved - the bar should be set high for trusting such people again.

But these are not normal times.

The left is also notoriously unforgiving when it comes to left-wing parties that compromise morality for the sake of expedience or long-term gains. Take the debacle that is the U.K. government's response to genocide. No matter what policies the current Labour Party embarks on - even if they were to end child poverty - many on the left will likely never forgive their complicity in allowing so many to perish under a brutal apartheid regime.

But fascism changes the equation. While the moral turbulence remains when thinking positively about a government that has supported genocide, if they are trying to stop fascism, then such moral turbulence is worthwhile. There will be time to adjudicate their record later. The clear and present danger is fascism. A fascist, authoritarian regime will cause more damage and suffering than anything we are experiencing just now. So, for just now, we must practice tolerance and seek alliances across the divide.

The same is true for centrist politicians and even those on the centre-right. In the face of fascism, there is more we agree on than disagree on. Conservatives (and by that I mean traditional conservatives) are opposed to fascism on the grounds of principle. Certainly, they are opposed to idiots like Trump and Musk assuming moral and legal authority over the direction of civilisation. We agree on this, the most important point just now: no fascists can take power.

It is not about left and right anymore. The debate is no longer about a Hobbesian worldview versus a Rousseauian one. We are not arguing whether capitalism or socialism, conservative or progressive, is the correct path for our shared society. It is now simply about whether someone is for fascism or not.

If someone is not for fascism, then, as uncomfortable as it is, we must stand with them.

Later this week, I will share my thoughts on the different types of fascists to aid in our recognition of them.

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The unifying aspect of all these personality traits is the inability to connect in a meaningful way with pretty much anything in their environments. Psychopaths are too single-minded to connect with other people at any advanced level. This means they often don’t experience life as we do.

They don’t have strong connections with other people. They cannot share experiences. A hug is transactional or self-serving. A kiss, a means to an end. Children, an extension of their own power. Nature serves a purpose to their goals; it is not an experience in and of itself. And as for finding meaning and purpose in feeling what others feel, we may as well be speaking Klingon.

This is what we are seeing play out on our screens. Leaders and those who have co-opted power are displaying a complete lack of human connection. More than that, we are hearing what it sounds like when someone who cannot experience life beyond how it serves them passing judegment about life, morality, and human experience.

It sounds alien to us. There is an instinctive sense of repulsion. We know, as we hear their callousness, that they are not the best of us, and worse than that, if we follow them, then we will suffer a diminished human experience as well. Our sense is right. It is protective. We must listen to it.

Perhaps, though, a word of caution. Psychopaths are most definitely in the minority. A reasonable estimate of all psychopathic disorders is certainly under 10% of the population. So, don’t waste your time trying to argue the moral point with them. Don’t expect they will move when we draw their attention to the horrors of their consequences - death, orphans, pain, and suffering. Right and wrong for them are merely what is right for their own personal ambitions, and wrong is what prevents them from achieving those ambitions.

Instead, talk to those who are vulnerable to their manipulations.

As essential as morals are to our shared space, to society, to our ability to experience the world, it also comes with a self-imposed limitation to our ability to exploit others. Psychopaths don’t have that. They are unencumbered by morality, and as such, they will coerce those with more vulnerable beliefs.

It is to those vulnerable few we must speak. They still have morals, albeit they are wrapped up in what the manipulators tell them to be wrapped up in. When we argue against the psychopaths, we are not arguing to try and rehabilitate those psychopaths; we are arguing to those who have been suckered into their warped ideologies. We must use the bizarre and disturbing lack of humanity displayed daily by our psychopathic overlords to highlight to those vulnerable few the insanity of following such a morally incontinent person.

The vulnerable have morals and can connect on a human level. They, too, will sense what we all do - we are seeing the worst of us lead the rest of us. It may take a bit longer, and it may be a bit more subdued, but they, too, sense the repulsion and aversion to the psychopaths that have taken over. Our job is to foster that sense of repulsion and aversion. We do that through human connection.

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In virtually every other country in the world (rich and poor), healthcare is seen as not just a human right but as a basic part of a country’s infrastructure. Like roads, railways, sanitation, police, and the justice system, a society cannot be civil if there is no basic healthcare safety net.

The starkest example is probably in relation to emergency care. In the U.S., you can be walking down the street, collapse, and wake up in hospital with a bill for 10s of thousands of dollars. I’m not sure the U.S. public (or at least a significant portion of it) understands just how bizarre this is to the rest of the world.

It is enshrined in U.S. law that no hospital can refuse to treat someone if they face a life-threatening emergency. But there is no provision to protect those who cannot pay for that treatment. Even now, as I write, I suspect that many of my American friends are not overly horrified by this, or certainly, not horrified enough. The metaphor of a boiling frog comes to mind.

After coming close to death and requiring emergency care to save their lives, it is now a normal part of life for many U.S. citizens to end up with a financially ruinous bill. To the rest of the world, it is barbaric.

In virtually every other country, if a citizen requires emergency care and is uninsured, impoverished or unemployed, the state will pick up the bill (or at least the majority of it). In the U.S., such citizens would be on the hook for the entirety of the cost of treatments.

Now, I could go into the overinflated costs of healthcare in the U.S. I could highlight that it is the most inefficient in the world - there are zero benefits in outcomes from such ‘expensive’ care. I could mention the obscene levels of copays incurred. The cost of drugs. The fact that an insurance company will increase your premium if you use your policy or refuse to provide cover for some vague reason. But there is a more important consequence for a society failing to provide a healthcare safety-net.

U.S. Healthcare is Dividing Society

What does it do to a community when it must live with the reality of having no healthcare safety-net? For most of us, we cannot imagine a situation in which our country doesn’t care enough about us that it can’t even provide basic healthcare when we need it most. For most of us, this is a very basic tenet of a civil society.

Expecting to foster a sense of community when it is effectively ‘every man for themselves’ is unrealistic. If a community cannot prioritise the most basic of human needs - health -, and agree that if someone is facing a preventable death, the community will step in, then I think it reasonable to question whether there is a community at all.

The constant fear and desperation that U.S. healthcare fosters in U.S. society benefits only the Robber Barons. The isolation caused by a health system that will not care for you if you need it (unless you can pay its exorbitant prices) affects the very fabric of society. You cannot expect each person in that community to behave civilily to each other if the state is behaving in such a callous, barbaric way towards everyone.

In future installments I will explore the options available to the U.S. people for modernising their healthcare system. It starts with electing the right people to power.

Many are fed up with corrupt politicians. Indeed, the entire system seems predicated on the willingness to accept financial support from business interests, with the quid pro quo of pushing for policies that put profits before people. I submit that there are few better ways of ascertaining whether or not a politician has the people’s interests in mind than if they are pushing for true healthcare reform. If you want to know if a politician is honest, then ask them about healthcare.

Even Nigeria (which, up until recently, was the only other country with no emergency healthcare safety-net) has passed a law that makes it illegal for a hospital to hold an individual personally liable for the costs incurred for the first 48 hours of emergency care.

To say the U.S. is falling behind the rest of the civilised world is a gross understatement. The fact that citizens can be refused life-saving cancer treatment, cardiac procedures, or neurosurgical interventions is (and should be) a mark of shame for every U.S. politician. The fact that if uninsured, you are liable for the full costs of even life-saving emergency care should horrify everyone.

If you are making one resolution this year, let it be that your red line for offering support to any politician or political party is that they fight to shift U.S. healthcare policy and law away from putting profits before basic access to healthcare for everyone. It isn’t a lot to ask. Indeed, it is the bare minimum.

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I remember finding myself giving one of my kids a row for shouting at his brother. My voice started to rise. And after a short time, I found myself shouting at my child about my child shouting at my other child. The contradiction sat with me for some time.

It is true in developmental neuroscience that the majority of brain development occurs through passive learning. That is, children learn and develop more from what they see and experience than they do from formal or explicit teaching.

In the above example, it was more important for my child’s development for him to witness and experience how one can respond to a stressful, upsetting situation without getting cross and shouting than it was for me to “teach” him that it is wrong to shout.

The same applies to consumerism.

Perhaps the greatest challenge in protecting our children from becoming consumer chumps - being easily manipulated by advertising and social media - is for us, their adult role models, to show restraint and regulation of our own consumerism.

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As parents, most of us realise that as our children grow up, we, the family, have less and less influence, and the world at large begins to have much more say in their worldview and behaviour. There is some solace that the efforts we have put into our young children - teaching them kindness, cooperation, and to stand up for what is right - will still matter. But there is little doubt that the world we send them out into will have a profound effect on who they will become.

Much of this world centres on consumerism. From the consumption of social media to consuming beauty products, tech, gaming, etc., our kids are surrounded by the intentional influence of industries to sell them stuff. Industries that more often than not couldn’t care less about the health and well-being of our kids.

Perhaps then it is even more surprising that we encourage such consumerism at home. We also enjoy the latest tech. We also enjoy nice clothes, cars, and looking fashionable. We enjoy binging trashy series on Netflix and scrolling through social media. But much like shouting at our kids is easier but ultimately almost always bad for them, so too is failing to regulate our own impulses around consumerism.

As we approach one of the most consumption-driven times of the year, it is useful to remember that saying no to material things, regulating our kids’ exposure to the consumer environment, and trying to show by example that relationships matter more than stuff, isn’t merely a nice thing to do; it matters to their health and wellbeing, and will shape the adults they will become.

Perhaps the greatest gift we can give to our older kids is the ability to decide who they will be, and the fortitude to resist the constant pressure to base their own internal value on what they own or how they look.

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It seems that humanity is permitted some use out of technological advancements before the sociopaths work out a way to exploit it and those who use it.

Social media most certainly falls into that category.

It probably was of overall benefit to humans at its inception. The way it connected people across borders and boundaries was quite remarkable. Perhaps more than this, the ability to share what was once exclusive or difficult to acquire knowledge, easily and with little to no cost, has been of great use to many people.

Twitter is a good example. Initially, a straightforward platform that at first simply showed you a running feed from whoever you followed, much like a news reel. Over time, and as it grew, the algorithm was adapted to try to push tweets towards you that were calculated to be of interest to you. Again, not much harm there, albeit it meant more time spent on Twitter.

Rapidly, it became an impressive news platform. With a camera already in the hands of every user, the global coverage of news events meant that Twitter often broke news before the major news outlets, or, at least, its users did. Not only that, but you could, with some effort, gain a voice on the platform and start to directly influence the public narrative; the more appreciated ‘the public’ found your content or angle of insight, the more influence you accumulated.

And there lay the carrot for the power-hungry, Robber Barons. You can influence the masses!

Very soon after Twitter was purchased, the algorithm was changed. In a “Twitter Spaces” interview, shortly after purchasing the platform, Musk and his engineers let it slip that the algorithm had been changed to make Musk’s tweets more visible. This was the owner of the platform pushing you content you didn’t want to see, but he did. Such a move would have been unthinkable to the previous owners.

Who knows what else has changed since?

So, here we are, at the question: at what point does a social media platform move from being simply a platform meant for sharing to becoming a functioning news outlet with executive control over what content its users see?

It’s not a small issue. If a platform merely adjusts the algorithm to provide the user with more of what they want to see, then fine. It doesn’t even matter whether the motivation is to make more money or simply provide a better user experience. So long as the only inputs into the algorithm are those stemming from the user. But if the algorithm is changed to show what those controlling it want you to see (such as one person’s tweets), it ceases to be a simple sharing platform; at best, it becomes an entity with a sociopolitical agenda, and at worst, a propaganda machine.

This must be the line that is drawn: if a social media platform’s algorithm is found to contain specific elements that direct users to specific sociopolitical content, then that platform must be treated as a news outlet.

This means that all content is published under the responsibility of those running the platform. If there is a CEO, then effectively that CEO becomes the Editor-in-Chief. The company becomes liable for any mistruths, lies, slander, criminal offences, etc.., published on its news outlet.

This forces social media platforms to make a choice. Either they exist merely to connect people with content they wish to see, and as such, the platform can avoid closer scrutiny, or they wish to use the platform to shape the public narrative, in which case the platform becomes a news outlet with all the scrutiny any other media outlet receives.

We need to force the choice and dial back the deceptive manipulation currently shaping elections and public perception.

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Up until the early 1600s, the norm was for a few of ‘God’s Chosen People’ to rule over the rest of us. Their rule was absolute, with each subject being at the will of the all-powerful King or Queen.

If you were outside this aristocracy, life was bleak. Disease, hunger, and war consumed much of life for ordinary people. They had no rights, only obligations to ‘king and country’. Neither king nor country had much, if any, obligation to them.

Around the turn of the 18th century, that all started to change.

Pre-Enlightenment

While many factors contributed to the Enlightenment movement - science, Indigenous American philosophy, population growth, etc -, the key driver for change was the conditions each ordinary person was forced to live in. In the face of opulent, aristocratic rule, the vast majority of people’s lives were getting harder.

It was this juxtaposition of the wealthy living more and more lavish lifestyles while ordinary people struggled more and more each day that provided the motivation to seek change.

The problem was a lack of rational thought.

Superstition was rife. This made the general population very suggestible and much easier to subjugate. A priest could twist holy texts to argue almost anything, and given that the prevailing thought at the time was that only a select few could understand the world and ‘God’s Will’, ordinary people felt disempowered to question such commands.

Thankfully, as the people looked for a way out, a new field was opening up: science.

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The Awakening

Science is generally considered a precursor to the actual Enlightenment. That is, in the decades leading up to the Enlightenment, science had proven that the world (and universe) was understandable by humans. This, while arguably not triggering the Enlightenment, certainly encouraged rational, reasoned thought - an essential ingredient to the progressive ideas stemming from the Enlightenment.

This is where Francis Bacon comes in. During the early 1600s, Bacon, a ‘nobleman’ from England, developed the idea that challenged the practice of basing our actions on superstition and tradition. Instead, Bacon argued, we must base our future actions on knowledge, and that such knowledge comes from observations, not traditions.

While effectively sowing the seeds of what would become empirical scientific enquiry, perhaps Bacon’s greatest contribution to the Enlightenment was to encourage others to question dogmatic beliefs and the monopoly clergymen and monarchs had on knowledge. No longer was knowledge only the birthright of a few ‘ordained’ individuals; it was something that could be acquired and accumulated through experience.

Undoubtedly, Bacon had provided the necessary encouragement to others, such as Hobbes, Rousseau, Locke, and other influential thinkers of the Enlightenment, to question the status quo and challenge it.

Indigenous Americans

Something else was happening around the same time. In the early 1600s, European colonisers were coming into contact with Indigenous Americans.

Here we were, still very much under a monarchial totalitarian system, where a handful of ‘god’s chosen people’ forced everyone else to serve them, and then we observe a community that had no religious indoctrination, no kings or rulers, and yet were generally a happy, well-fed, equal society. It shook things up in Europe.

Again, there is some debate, but there appears to be considerable Indigenous American influence on Enlightened thought. Some argue that as Europe heard of this ‘newly discovered’ society, where hierarchy was minimal, and decisions were made by consensus, Europeans began asking questions about their own autonomy. Indeed, liberalism (as in the idea of individual freedom) may well have been an Indigenous American principle ‘borrowed’ by European Enlightenment scholars.

It makes sense. At the time, the people living in Europe were oppressed and effectively servants of an aristocratic elite. Witnessing an entirely untouched human civilisation that respected each individual in that society (largely) without a prescribed religious belief or an all-powerful, all-knowing king would have been quite jarring.

My point in this context: it was the idea that all humans are equal, have rights, and only participate in ‘State’ activities by choice that sparked (or fuelled) the Enlightenment, which eventually led to a fairer society for all.

Are we in a pre-enlightenment period?

There is, of course, the obvious similarity: wealthy elitists robbing the collective wealth and subjecting everyone else to declining living conditions. There are those taking power from the people simply to empower themselves. There is also the strong sense that superstition ruled over reason.

These elements of the pre-enlightenment period, and, indeed, much of what the Enlightenment sought to correct, we can see today. Modern Robber Barons are accumulating incredible power, and a not insignificant proportion of society is falling for superstition and rejecting reason.

Today, we see Robber Barons (I am sticking with this term going forward) who have effectively become rulers over entire economic zones; political leaders taking back individual freedoms to consolidate power for themselves; and we see religious extremists seeking to force, perhaps not superstition as such, but certainly dogmatic belief, onto the masses.

Meanwhile, ordinary folk are being trampled and forced to live in less and less humane conditions. For some, this means actual poverty - many working two jobs and still in poverty. For others, inhumane conditions mean divided communities, inaccessible healthcare, loneliness and despair. For others still, it means suffering the consequences of war and pillaging.

Not unlike the pre-enlightenment period, ordinary people are being sucked into post-hoc rationalisation (trying to find the reason to justify their position as opposed to using reason to find the ‘correct’ position). Again, not unlike the pre-enlightenment period, ordinary people are easier to manipulate, and this is leading, albeit not always consciously, to greater levels of permissible cruelty.

We are again seeing the attempt to encroach on our individual rights and freedoms. The far-right in Europe is pushing for the European Convention on Human Rights to be nullified - demanding that each country start again from scratch. This echoes the recent calls from our modern Robber Barons to disband the EU and deregulate labour. In the U.S., we are seeing a greed mixed with fixed ideology leading to human rights violations and living conditions for millions spiralling. The juxtaposition of wealth and poverty has never been so great.

The Push Back Has Begun

Those of us (the majority) who manage to resist the lure of post-hoc rationalisation are getting fed up. We are getting fed up with a tiny elite dominating society. We are fed up with their influence spreading through society. We are fed up with those seeking public office lacking the morality or intelligence to push back. We are horrified by the acts committed in the name of religion or some other fixed belief system. We are, in short, fed up and ready for change.

When I look a bit closer at the Enlightenment, I get the sense that the first Enlightenment hasn’t finished yet. The promise of a more clearly defined role for State - not as ruler but as protector - was never fully realised. We never fully achieved autonomy and have remained servants to an aristocracy of sorts. We were never given the full respect in terms of human rights and equal say in the direction of our societies as was promised.

There have been major strides forward. The idea of human rights has been well established. The idea of equality, or at least equal opportunity, remains at the forefront of most of our minds. Your position does not make you better than me. Your position does not grant you the right to take away my own individual autonomy.

In keeping with such moral foundations, overt slavery has been abolished. Women, much like the Indigenous Americans of 400 years ago, are treated more as equals.

States cannot simply dominate over people, at least not for any considerable length of time. If a State is to survive, it must invest the collective wealth back into the public.

There has been progress, no doubt.

Perhaps what has changed is not the presence of the aristocrats; it is simply their boldness to show themselves. The Enlightenment drove them underground, so to speak. They had to toe the line and give some power back to the people. They conceded on sanitation systems and eventually on education and healthcare. Policing became not so much about keeping the servants in line, but more to do with protecting the citizen and community. But now, we are witnessing the attempts to shift society back to medieval times, where religious extremism was the norm and unquestioned; where the public accepted that there were “chosen people” who would rule over the rest of us; where our only role is to prop up those who are self-ordained as better than we are.

Somehow, we have allowed those less capable of reasoning and moralising to take positions of power. As they do, our entire system becomes open to superstitions, dogma, and regressive ideology.

It will ultimately fail. Totalitarianism (complete control of our lives by a few) cannot be accepted by ordinary people. We are far too far down the, as Bacon said, “knowledge is power” mindset for any form of totalitarian regime to take hold for any significant length of time. Yes, by controlling our information sources, starving us of education and healthcare, turning ordinary people back towards the desperation of the 1500s, those self-proclaimed chosen ones can erode our established moral norms and encroach on our freedoms to some degree. But it will never last.

As our own observations will show us over time, these are false prophets who will fail to deliver any improvement to life or liberty. All they will do is wake us up to the reality that there are a few in society who care little for the other, care little for the principles that bind us all, and by doing so, reaffirm those values and principles for the rest of us.

Ultimately, the only outcome of this drive back towards controlling the masses will be to drive us with renewed vigour to complete the enlightenment movement, achieve true equality in society, and take back our power. Get ready.

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It is reasonable to expect that such sociopolitical ideologies are based, at least to some degree, on some sort of rational thought, particularly given how impactful they have been in our shared space.

But when you look, you will struggle to find any tangible basis in sociology, psychology, or even economic theory. There isn’t even a vaguely robust philosophy. From a rational standpoint, there is nothing that comes close to justifying designing a society around the notion of increasing the wealth of the already wealthy at the expense of everyone else.

As far as I can make out (and do bear in mind it is a moving target), the central argument behind restraining the level of tax we place on wealthy people is that there is no inherent fairness in taking more money from a wealthy person over anyone else. That: it is their money. That: they should not be penalised for their success.

Such reasoning leads eventually to the question: why should we (rich folk) carry the rest of society?

If you remove the presence of civilisation, such a position almost makes sense. If you make this appeal to an ordinary person’s sense of justice and ignore everything that was required to enable such wealth, then it holds an air of truth about it.

But we can’t remove civilisation, can we.

The Irrational Argument

The realisation that without civilisation there could be no wealth is the thorn in the side of those who desperately want to accumulate more wealth and power. The sense that all wealth comes with a debt to the very society from which that wealth has been extracted is…inconvenient, to say the least.

For centuries, Hobbs has been the man they have all turned to in an attempt to counter this uncomfortable truth. His idea of the intrinsically “selfish man” helped many an aristocrat hoard more wealth.

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Famously, Hobbs had the notion that prior to modern civilisation human life was…

“…, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”

These days, it’s hard to meet any free-thinking individual who would buy into any of Hobbs’ assertions. It’s even harder to find a sociologist, psychologist, or even serious political scientist who holds much value in Hobbs’ position. As for neuroscientists and evolutionary scientists, it’s a chore just getting through his thesis.

His main assertion was that before modern agriculture and static settlements, man was a savage, scratching out a living from a harsh and resource-limited environment. Turns out this was pure conjecture and in direct opposition to the available evidence.

1) Humans were never “solitary”. Indeed, it is our ability to cooperate and work together that has led to our success.

2) Our ancestors were far from “poor”. From about 1.7 million years ago, our ancestors enjoyed a privileged position for food and other resources.

3) Nor were they “nasty”. Up until about 12,000 years ago, the evidence suggests there was little conflict.

4) There is no evidence man was “brutish”. Our brains have essentially remained unchanged for the last few hundred thousand years. Whatever capacity for civility we had then, we have now. Our ability to relate and be civil to each other likely dates back millions of years.

5) And the duration of life was not “short”. It has only been over the last couple of centuries that life expectancy has returned, in some regions, to pre-agriculture levels.

Fatal Assumptions

Hobbs’ theory for how the human brain works shows the root of his failed assumptions.

Hobbs’ view was that the brain acted in a stimulation-based, memory-governed way. That is, we are what we are exposed to and that memories only inform our thoughts for a limited time before they dissipate. In effect, man is at the will of his environment and has only his primal urges to motivate him.

The brain, of course, does not function that way.

Humans have a massive capacity for thought free of stimuli.

Learning how to regulate one’s primal urges and, indeed, elevate them through consciousness, is typical of the human condition. We are not (or need not be) slaves to our basic urges.

And while memories are instructive, as we become adults, we develop the ability to use them to inform our decisions - our memories need not rule over us.

The Rational Argument

For at least the last couple of million years, humans have not lived lives that were “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”. There is no rational basis for the argument that we are all selfish and, therefore, if someone succeeds, they are free from debt to society for that success.

The rational view is that the ability for humans to succeed rests squarely on the ability of the vast majority of humans to cooperate with each other and work together. There is no wealth (resource-wise) possible by working alone.

In today’s context, there can be no wealth from oil, tech, health, or finance without participation. All businesses tap into civilisation to extract wealth. This means that all businesses rely on the law and order created by civilisation, the infrastructure made by civilisation - education, sanitation, health, etc..-, and the shared sense of civility that allows any form of cooperation to continue.

Paying a salary to your workers doesn’t cut it either. Wealth extraction does not solely depend on the labour commissioned, but relies on participation in society. You have not merely taken hours from the day of your workers, but have cashed in on the millennia of human cooperation and development. Your assets may be land or gold, but society’s assets form the very fabric of your wealth, the very possibility of living a more secure and luxurious life.

This, of course, is a hard pill to swallow for those amongst us who never matured enough to realise (or conveniently forgot) that we all depend on each other.

The more wealth you extract from society, the more you owe society. The more wealth you take, almost universally, the more you have depended on the tenets of civilisation; the more you have used those intangible assets of civilisation that are owned by us all.

The logical, empirical, rational position is that all wealth is made possible and depends on the ability of society to function. Freedom to extract such wealth can only be possible (if both society and the ability to extract future wealth are to remain) if enough of that extracted wealth is invested back into society.

“It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion.” Adam Smith The Wealth of Nations, Book V, Chapter II

The Search Was Never For Rational Argument, Merely Justification

Of course, we are not so naive as to think wealthy people have been stumbling about, confused about whether or not to contribute more to society. We are under no illusion that it was a flimsy philosophy that led to the belief that it would be unfair for the wealthy to pay more taxes. Of course not. The wealthy (not all of them) didn’t want to pay their fair share and then sought some rationalisation to justify doing so.

It is useful to see such justifications for the irrational fantasies that they are.

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If you have morals, you are, to some degree, obligated to make your arguments based on truth. It’s not an obligation imposed upon you, but one you choose to impose on yourself. It is, in essence, part of the necessary constraints we place on ourselves as part of our own personal moral frameworks.

Those with few or loose morals have no such compulsion. They have no self-imposed restraint on being honest in their interactions. Indeed, they do not even have to be honest with themselves.

Those with few or loose morals rarely face those moments when morals “get in the way”; when life would be easier if you could put your own values to the side and simply do whatever you want and damn the consequences.

We do. We must make our way through life with the complexity of making decisions under the weight of our own morality. We must argue while remaining loyal to our own values. And, whatever those morals, we are compelled to put those arguments across with a reasonable representation of the truth, as we see it.

You can see the issue. How can you argue with someone who has few values and, as such, no attachment to the truth? Someone who can shift from one made-up “fact” or moral argument to another. Someone whose core position can morph into a completely opposing position without batting an eyelid (or achieving any sense of shame or embarrassment).

Yet here we are - ruled by psychopaths, who are propped up by sociopaths, who, in turn, have garnered support from the morally loose. Here we are arguing with those who do not need to speak the truth or even acknowledge its existence.

And we shouldn’t mistake extreme beliefs for strong morals.

Religious extremists who insist everyone must follow their religious text to the letter do not have a detailed and full morality. Morality doesn’t work like that. Morality is the ability to bring in the values you yourself have determined to be important into the decisions we face each day.

The essential quality (and one of the main purposes of the adolescent period from 14 to 25 years of age) is to take what you have learned - be it religious or parental influence or literature, or some other informative life experience - and make it your own. It is when you take your experiences and form your own morals that you finally mature into a ‘free-thinking’ adult. More on that in a further article.

For just now, we are concerned with the ability to weigh up options within one’s morality.

It is why having morals requires effort.

You must bring in what you want (the urge or desire or ambition), check it with what you believe to be “right”, and then, in human civilisation, balance it with the shared morality of the society you live in.

It is a complex and burdensome set of cognitive processes. This is why it takes place in the most advanced parts of the brain.

The extremist - whether religious, racial, or greedy - lives more in their association cortex than they do in their prefrontal cortex (PFC). For them, it is more about learned rules or ingrained beliefs and behaviours than it is about morality.

It is this that we argue against when we engage them in their beliefs. We are, in our brief interactions, trying to argue against years of learned beliefs and behaviours. And we must do it with someone who has the ability (through the PFC) to find supportive arguments for their ingrained beliefs and to justify their urge-based behaviour in any way they can think of.

Racists are angry. They have been taught to direct that anger at people who don’t look like them. They will use anything they can to do so. It is rare for them to question the basis for their desires.

The greedy are perhaps even worse. They have only the urge to dominate others. They have been programmed to do so. Morality doesn’t even come into it.

For the rest of us, we process life through the prefrontal cortex, in particular the vmPFC, dlPFC, as well as the most advanced rostral PFC.

From Ape to Man

The rostral PFC is the very front part of the PFC. It is the part of the brain that sits right behind the forehead.

It has no external input. It only deals with what is happening inside the brain. While we can use it for many types of higher thinking, its essential function is to manage multiple goals in decision making. It allows us to see what is best for the self, against what is best for the family, against what is acceptable to society.

The rostral PFC is perhaps one of the most unique structural parts of the human brain. Other apes do have a small rostral PFC, but no other animal that we know of does. It has evolved due to the need (and the huge selective advantage) to balance multiple, sometimes competing goals within a complex society. It is anchored by morality.

Image via: Burgess, Paul & Dumontheil, Iroise & Gilbert, Sam & Okuda, Jiro & Schölvinck, Marieke & Simons, Jon. (2008). On the Role of Rostral Prefrontal Cortex (Area 10) in Prospective Memory. Prospective Memory: Cognitive, Neuroscience, Developmental, and Applied Perspectives.

You will not win the argument

My point is: do not expect to win over extremists through moral, logical arguments based on facts and truths. It is not why they are engaging in conversation or politics. They have their agenda, and they are pushing it through, regardless of truth or moral argument.

You will make an argument - a good, solid argument - that for any self-aware individual would spark inquiry, but in the morally loose, it will simply be skirted and ignored, as they move on to their next learned justification for their basic urges.

The danger, of course, is that we start compromising our own morality in a desperate bid to convince them that they are supporting fascism or an authoritarian regime; that they are following charlatans and grifters. The desperation is noble. But we do not bring back those lost to fixed beliefs by having our own fixed beliefs.

We must keep speaking our truth. We must keep providing our own honest account of what is happening. Engaging where we can. But, ultimately, we defeat ignorance with truth and knowledge, facts and figures. You will not win the argument. But some truth you have spoken will linger, and, over time, the truth (and as such truth is experienced) will push out the falsehoods, and, eventually, force them to mature and find their own morality. At least it will for those who can still be brought back to humanity.

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While knowing the details of the four major types of healthcare systems is unlikely to affect most of our instinctive views on affordable healthcare - I assume most of us simply believe healthcare should be much more accessible and there should be less profit taken from our healthcare needs -, I do think it will help when battling those less socially-minded individuals.

1. Pay As You Go Healthcare

I have intentionally avoided going back thousands of years to discuss what healthcare provision was like for our ancestors. How did they “pay” for healthcare in the Stone Age? As fascinating as this would be, and instructive, a fully egalitarian system of healthcare is currently out of our reach.

As such, the most primitive form of healthcare service is what I refer to as “Pay As You Go Healthcare”.

As it suggests, there is no, or next to no, central provision of healthcare. If you get sick, then you must find a provider and come to some sort of financial arrangement regarding treatment.

Effectively, in such a model, if you can’t afford the treatment (and can’t come to contractual terms with the provider), then you will have to suffer through it and accept the increased risk of demise.

Yes, it is a brutal form of healthcare. The vast majority of countries around the world are trying desperately to move themselves as far away from such a set-up.

In large part, it is morally brutal. Few things draw attention to inequality as much as the suffering associated with the inability to access healthcare. In the words of Dr King:

“Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhuman.”

2. Private Insurance Model

Effectively, this model is the “Pay As You Go” model, but with some of the costs offset by an insurance company. The critical components of this model that matter here are that, firstly, the amount you pay is determined by the amount you use. That is, healthcare is not seen as a basic right, but a consumer product. There are co-pays that relate to the cost of treatment, and one’s premiums will go up if one uses more healthcare services.

This is the very fundamental difference between the private healthcare model and the other models we will look at.

To be clear, the only country that follows this model is the U.S.A. For every other country (high-income), while you may be able to take out additional private healthcare, and this may grant you certain privileges - quicker access to senior opinions, better facilities, etc.. - it does not grant you access to better treatments. In every other high-income country, if you have a form of cancer, everyone has access to the same treatments for that cancer available in that locality. If you have a heart attack, you will not get better stents if you have private healthcare coverage.

Also, to be clear, the model used in the U.S. does not grant those with high-tier private coverage access to treatments that are not available in other high-income countries. The treatments available are almost always the same in all high-income countries, regardless of the healthcare model used.

3. Social Insurance Model

Here we come to the commonest model used.

Social insurance is a model where, like the private healthcare model, money follows the patient. That is, the service provider (doctor, hospital, physio, etc.) gets paid for each activity they undertake for you. So, for example, let us say you fall and break your ankle, the hospital treating you will charge the insurance company for each stage in your journey - the scan, the operation, the anaesthesia, the rehab bed, the physio, etc..

It has some benefits. Primarily, it does encourage the service providers to be thorough. But, sometimes it leads to being “too thorough”. Policy can be geared towards overinvestigating and overtreatment. Insurance models (whether private or social) are invariably more expensive and drive up costs.

But the social insurance model differs significantly from the private insurance model in that premiums are not based on the likelihood of you needing to use healthcare services; they are means-tested. Effectively, it acts a bit like a tax, where employer and employee pay towards a fixed amount. If you are not working, the state pays the premium on your behalf. And, crucially, the premium does not change depending on how much you use the service.

This fixed premium, regardless of comorbidity or pre-existing illness or the likelihood you will need to use the service or how much you have already used it, is an essential component of healthcare globally. Citizens should not be discouraged from attending to their healthcare needs. While a few can overuse such services in these settings, the real problem is that people are not coming forward with health concerns at an earlier stage. It is both good for the healthcare system that people are not penalised for coming forward for health problems, and good for a productive society.

4. Tax—based Healthcare System

The second most common type of healthcare provision in the high-income world is the tax-based, state-run healthcare systems. Like social insurance, it provides universal coverage - everyone has access to all the same treatments. The main difference is that money does not follow the patient.

While each locality will be given a budget in large part dependent on how many people are in that locality, healthcare services don’t charge for each activity they undertake. So, for example, let’s say you attend a physio. There is no motivation to order extra sessions. You get what the professional thinks you need.

Now, when resources are sufficient, this is by far the most cost-effective method of providing healthcare for a population. Indeed, the best performing healthcare systems - Iceland and Norway - both use this tax-based model. They achieve the same (if not better) outcomes than countries that pay considerably more for their healthcare.

But when resources are insufficient, the tax-based model becomes vulnerable to poor performance and poorer outcomes. It is the fact that the system depends entirely on the funding given upfront by the state that makes the system vulnerable to state politics. It cannot, like the social insurance model, continue to claim back funds as demands go up. It must work with what it’s been given.

Conclusion

The red line for healthcare provision for a population is that there is universal access and that patients are not penalised for needing healthcare. No one should be worried about the cost of healthcare before accessing it.

This is why the vast majority of countries have a general agreement in place at a societal level. We agree that we will all “chip in” to a pot of money (whether social insurance or tax), and if, heaven forbid, we need to access healthcare, then we can take the resources from this pot of money.

Practically speaking, it makes perfect sense. Often, if you’re unfortunate enough to need medical treatment, you are unable to work. Therefore, to be lumped with a bill during the very time you are least able to pay for such a bill is a bit nonsensical.

Anyway, that is a summary of the four different models of healthcare that each country can choose.

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Microtargeting is a form of political manipulation. It has been used to shape elections since at least 2016. It is quite likely that it enabled Brexit. And it is beyond much doubt that it gave Trump the Oval Office in 2024.

There are various definitions of microtargeting.

On a basic level, it is when a political actor uses a voter’s personal details to generate more persuasive political arguments to individuals or micro-groups.

The key point is that such “preferences” are not user-driven - they are not showing you what you want to see. Instead, your preferences are controlled by the person doing the targeting - they are using what they know about you to help them convince you of something they want you to believe. It is manipulation, often unseen, and often unregulated.

The best formal definition is a bit wordy, but important:

Political microtargeting is a data-driven communication strategy in which political actors use detailed information about individuals to segment the public into very small groups and deliver personalised political messages tailored to those groups’ characteristics, attitudes, or predicted preferences. It is an algorithmically mediated, sender-driven form of targeted persuasion designed to influence political attitudes or behaviours through tailored content.

When combined with generative AI, microtargeting is powerful. Some simulation studies estimate that it can swing voter preference over specific arguments by around 12 points. It is unknown how accumulative microtargeting campaigns affect society over time.

On a very basic level, it works like this. Let’s say I have an issue like immigration. I know from the 60% or so of all voters who may support me that 10% are white supremacists, around 20% are generally racist, and the other 30% aren’t consciously racist but are fed up with immigration. AI will analyse the profiles of those using social media, identify who is in each group, and what features unify them.

Then I can create three different political ads. One showing I have a strong stance on immigrants because of some sort of purity agenda (for the white supremacists). One ad showing a similar stance on immigration, but with less purity and more “keeping the streets safe” angle (for the generally racist). And then one ad that has nothing to do with race but everything to do with controlling the borders for the prosperity of the country (for everyone else).

Now we are in a situation where someone who doesn’t classify themselves as racist can bring themselves to vote for a deeply racist party. Quite simply, they have never seen that Party’s racist side.

The added problem is that due to these little information bubbles, no one can see what the other person is seeing. No one can counter such narratives.

Microtargeting is no longer operating on a basic level. With AI and the obscene amounts of money some are willing to pour into gerrymandering elections, microtargeting has become very intense.

For example, in 2016, Trump’s campaign targeted black Americans with content designed to demotivate and instil a sense of hopelessness in them. This was intended to drive down voter turnout.

Another example that was recently exposed is that of the paid “X” activists. Over the last week, thousands of Twitter accounts - some with massive followings - have been exposed as false-flag accounts originating from Eastern Europe, South Asia and Western Africa.

This type of microtargeting is even more sinister as it can create a sense that there is a “movement” or “uprising”, and foster support for an issue that is entirely fabricated. Someone (foreign or domestic) can pay individuals in foreign countries to take on a persona and target specific groups. Some can target the supremacists, others the racists, others the non-racist immigration wary.

You can see where this is going.

It brings the debate about the regulation of social media right to the fore. Yes, there is little doubt that there is massive potential for social media to benefit society. We can learn at a rate never before imaginable. But with this power, like all science and tech, there is the power to abuse it and use it for selfish gains, ultimately harming society. There is no doubt this is happening.

What to do?

Be aware. Job one is to know it is happening.

Firstly, choose your reliable sources yourself and vet them as much as you need.

Secondly, be aware that there are many people out there who haven’t yet seen the truth you have. You may be speaking to a friend or family member who seems to have odd views - supporting fascism, for example. Be mindful that they may have been (almost certainly have been) a victim of microtargeting (and I use the word victim here deliberately). They may not know the basic truths. You may need to show them and explain it to them. You may even have to have sympathy for them.

Beyond that, we need to regulate social media. In some instances, heavily regulate. For example, on Twitter just now, you can pay to get your tweet “boosted” - money equating to influence isn’t even hidden on X. Countries really need to decide if certain platforms, absent sufficient self-regulation, contribute or harm democracy. And as such, whether certain platforms harm society, civilians, or the security of the country.

Given that many of these false-flag accounts are overseas, the hope of finding out who is paying for them is severely diminished. We must regulate at the interface.

Lastly, whatever activist activities we are involved in, we must be mindful that many people we are trying to reach will be under the influence of microtargeting. Use the words “it seems you have been microtargeted”. Let them Google it. Don’t get drawn into their positions, but make a clear, basic case for yours. It may seem unbelievable that they don’t see what is happening. It may in fact be that they really don’t see it at all.

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`Notes:

Aagaard, P., & Marthedal, S. (2023). Political microtargeting: Towards a pragmatic approach. Internet Policy Review.
https://policyreview.info/articles/analysis/political-microtargeting-towards-pragmatic-approach

Noetzel, S., Binder, A., & Matthes, J. (2024). More Than Meets the Eye: Understanding Political Microtargeting Processing with a Gaze-Cued Retrospective Think-Aloud Technique. Media and Communication.
https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/8679

Simchon, A., Edwards, M., & Lewandowsky, S. (2024). The persuasive effects of political microtargeting in the age of generative artificial intelligence. PNAS Nexus.
https://academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/article/doi/10.1093/pnasnexus/pgae035/7591134

Hackenburg, K., & Margetts, H. (2024). Evaluating the persuasive influence of political microtargeting with large language models. PNAS.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11181035/

Tappin, B. M., Wittenberg, C., Hewitt, L. B., Berinsky, A. J., & Rand, D. G. (2023). Quantifying the potential persuasive returns to political microtargeting. PNAS.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10288628/

Decker, H. (2025). The role of content personalisation in political social media campaigning: a review of political microtargeting. Journal of Marketing Management (Springer).
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s41358-025-00410-3

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/mar/11/tim-berners-lee-online-political-advertising-regulation?utm

https://dl1.cuni.cz/pluginfile.php/1324115/mod_resource/content/4/Ted%20Talks%20-%20Carole%20Cadwalladr%20-%20Facebooks%20role%20in%20Brexit%20-%20and%20the%20threat%20to%20democracy_complete.pdf?utm

And why would it? It has very little relationship to the human condition.

A hint of truth

Like all the ploys we have seen from those who hoard wealth and power, neoliberalism began with the semblance of something true. At least, true to the human condition: that each individual has the right to be free.

There is an innate sense that this is correct; that we each must be permitted to define and explore our own sense of self. No one can tell us what to believe. And, unless it is essential to the social set-up we live in (choose to live in), no one should interfere with the decisions we make, including the State.

This is a true, albeit incomplete, reflection of the human condition. In simple terms, humans achieved success by learning how to work together; this required defining the other, and by so doing, we further established the self (teaser - in my upcoming book, I discuss the brain areas involved in this and how they evolved).

It is, in fact, a tenet of being a fully sentient being that we have a biographical awareness of who we are. We understand we were born, we have lived (‘these are my parents’, ‘these are my children’), and that we will die. This awareness of the self, while probably not unique to humans, is a fundamental part of what it means to be human.

This liberal ideology was a good position for the selfish to build a political model of how society should be organised that would help them maintain their control over the collective wealth.

Add a gallon of bullshit

Neoliberalism took this decent idea and started building on it, much like building a skyscraper on top of a single brick. Yes, there was no question that it had a solid, real foundation; albeit, such foundations were incomplete, and therefore dangerous.

Nonetheless, the foundation of neoliberalism was real (i.e. part of the human condition)

From there, much as Popper, Adler, and Kant had warned us against, and that which science specifically tries to guard us against, the power-hungry minds went down the rabbit-hole of cascading rationalisations - the confirmations and refutations of self-serving reasoning.

What the elitists wanted was a way to maintain their power over others, but without forcing obedience (the people had already decided they weren’t going to be anyone’s slaves). Liberalism was a useful starting point.

If it’s all about the self, they thought, then aren’t we all ultimately selfish? If so, then left to our own devices, we will all choose what is best for self, and, given the genetic selfishness inherent to us all, they thought, our families. We would cooperate so long as such cooperation made sense to our selfish goals.

For them, the most important point was that ultimately we are all self-serving; music to the ears of the small fraction of society who are truly self-serving.

It was doomed from the start.

While the starting point was a relatively accurate representation of the human condition, transcending that to propose that we are all self-serving simply wasn’t.

People aren’t primarily self-serving. Indeed, as we have learned through evolutionary science, theology, psychology, and neuroscience, it is the ability to care about the well-being of another that sets humans apart from other apes. It is the ability to relate to one another, to form relationships, to be connected, that defines civilisation, indeed, that makes civilisation even possible.

You cannot build any model for society without first understanding that a key foundation of the human condition is the ability (and need) to connect to others. Inherently, people don’t want to be alone.

Neoliberalism had no consideration of this. If you were to commit to the self-serving ideology, then it was inevitable you would end up alone, at least in all the ways that matter. You may end up with loads of stuff, but you would have to enjoy it locked away in your gated house surrounded by CCTV.

Apart from the fundamental truth of individual freedom, neoliberalism consists of only post-hoc justifications. There is no intelligence (actual human general intelligence) behind it. As such, no intelligent, sentient being could, once aware of the essence of such an ideology, abide by it.

The melting veneer

It took a while, but the post-hoc rationalisations have been picked apart - some failing simply by looking at them, others failing experientially. What is left is a single truth that doesn’t even belong to neoliberalism.

In 2008, the hypocrisy was clear for all to see. Free market ideology turned out to be smoke and mirrors. When it came to their own wealth, neoliberalists quickly abandoned their ideology and sought the public - the collective wealth - to bail them out. It became clear to anyone watching that neoliberalism was simply an excuse for greedy people to become greedier.

But it wasn’t until a high-impact, global pandemic that we witnessed the emptiness and inadequacy of neoliberalism as a system of governance.

During the Covid outbreak in 2020, the three most prominent countries led by neoliberals were the U.S. (Trump), Brazil (Bolsonaro), and the U.K. (Johnson). Each leader (and their accompanying Parties) tried to push the neoliberal ideal of doing whatever it takes to keep the markets running, and allowing markets to determine the outcome.

There are numerous examples of Johnson, Trump, and Bolsonaro taking actions to try and support the market that cost lives and livelihoods. In February 2020, as the Covid pandemic loomed, Boris Johnson (the U.K. Prime Minister) gave a speech where he said:

“then at that moment [when Covid hits] humanity needs some government somewhere that is willing at least to make the case powerfully for freedom of exchange, some country ready to take off its Clark Kent spectacles and leap into the phone booth and emerge with its cloak flowing as the supercharged champion, of the right of the populations of the earth to buy and sell freely among each other.”

Boris Johnson, Feb 2020

Johnson infamously pursued a herd immunity approach until the realisation came crashing down that this would mean people dying in hospital car parks and in the streets. The optics would have been terrible.

Each neoliberal leader tried to follow through on their market-first priority, but ultimately failed miserably. All three countries suffered a high economic impact. Eventually, the U.K. and the U.S. had to concede that the outcome from following a neoliberalism - the market first - approach would be catastrophic. They both folded, and due to the delays in using public infrastructure and state powers to protect the public, they needed harsher restrictions to make up some ground on containing the acute phase of the Covid outbreak. All three countries suffered a tremendous death toll:

What they proved is that neoliberalism is neither good for people nor the market.

New Zealand, Norway, and Japan followed a more egalitarian approach, where people came before the markets (even Japan, which was neoliberal-leaning at the time, put the people ahead of the markets). They had much fewer Covid deaths, a less dramatic economic impact, and had much fewer days of lockdowns.

So, trying to follow a neoliberal approach failed both people and markets, while following an egalitarian (people-first) approach led to both people and markets doing better. Thus, revealing a basic, fundamental truth that neoliberalism couldn’t reason away: all wealth comes from the people.

The Death Nail

Perhaps it is fitting that it was ignoring the science of Covid that led to the complete failure of the responses in the U.K., U.S., and Brazil. Neoliberal ideology is founded on a fatal mix of ignorance and hope. There is no empirical evidence that people are inherently self-serving. But there is a wealth of scientific evidence from neuroscience, psychology, and evolutionary science establishing that humans are, by nature, cooperative beings, in need of human connection.

Despite this apparent truth, the neoliberals (who are in fact the robber barons) will not simply admit they based their ideology on hope rather than truth, and then allow the people to take back their power. They will pivot. They will, by all means, tighten their grip.

We saw this very clearly during Covid. Even now, massive amounts of resources are devoted to trying to convince as many as possible that government restrictions caused more damage than would have occurred if we had simply allowed Covid to rip through the country. Even now, the neoliberals see the possibility of pushing the experiment on a little longer - look what happens when you allow too much government overreach?

It isn’t a difficult sell in the U.S. and the U.K. Due to the neoliberal ideology in play at the time, the restrictions necessary to prevent carnage were severe and damaging. Those who survived the pandemic will remember the hardship of restrictions more than they will remember the millions of people who died on average 10 years earlier than they should have.

What we see here is the next phase of the robber baron’s attempt to hold onto power: a post-truth world spiralling towards totalitarianism.

They have bought up almost every information source available, and have no compunction in twisting the facts to maintain the status quo. And, the sad reality is, it is working.

Knowledge is Power

It is useful to consider the demise of neoliberalism. In part, it helps us see what is happening now, with growing oligarchy, fascism and division, and the move back towards a totalitarian political system, for what it is: the death throes of neoliberalism. We are witnessing the death of neoliberalism and the desperate attempt of those ultra-wealthy ‘robber barons’ to hold onto their power.

Knowing that this is what we are seeing is step one.

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They want the power but don’t want to face the responsibilities that come with it.

Case in point is the initial phase of the Covid pandemic.

Here, in the U.K., we had Ministers with little to no experience of science, logistics, planning, or really anything that could be of practical use, leading the pandemic response. Typically, the ministers were from wealthy backgrounds. They had no practical experience of life, at least life as it was for the majority of us.

There they were, living it large on the public purse, bathing in the prestige and privilege that comes with high public office, when news started emerging of a deadly pathogen spreading around the globe.

No doubt, it is the stuff that movies are made from. Indeed, Matt Hancock, our Health Secretary at the time, stated quite openly that he got a lot of his understanding and ideas from the film Contagion, if you can believe that.

And this was how it was in the U.K. We had inexperienced, immature, and maligned politicians charged with decisions that would literally, and quite immediately, cost or save lives.

Sadly, the good politicians didn’t outweigh the bad

Some politicians were clearly weighed down with this sense of responsibility. Notably, the first ministers of Scotland and Wales seemed to take the responsibility heavily on their shoulders. At each press conference, you could see the anguish in their eyes as they battled no-win decisions and an unhappy, terrified public.

The U.K. government seemed unburdened by such weight. Indeed, at times, they seemed near jubilant. Not excited in the way first responders can get with the prospect of using their training to respond to a major incident. A far creepier and sinister kind of excitement.

The U.K.’s £160m Covid Inquiry

The Covid Inquiry in the UK has reached an important milestone. They have recently produced a 760-page report about government decision-making during the pandemic.

There are a few headline-grabbing comments made: “toxic culture”, “too little, too late”, and a reference made to the fact that the delays in acting meant lockdowns were inevitable. And while the identification of these core failures is useful, the language and assignment of blame are woefully inadequate.

For example, when discussing the delays in the initial lockdown:

“might have been shorter or not necessary at all,”

Where does the “might” come from? Wasn’t the point of the £160,000,000 Covid Inquiry to remove the doubts and give us clear lines of accountability, so that such an epic disaster doesn’t happen again?

There is no doubt that starting the U.K.’s national restrictions earlier would have saved lives, shortened the actual lockdowns, and reduced the negative impact on the economy. There is no doubt about this. So why the watered-down, equivocal statements?

Perhaps more damning of the Covid Inquiry’s ability to have any effect on the behaviour of politicians is their attempt to spread the blame around.

They state that all four nations were slow to implement national lockdowns at the start, despite Wales, Northern Ireland, and Scotland not having the powers to order lockdowns or any national restrictions until the Coronavirus Act was passed on 23rd March 2020. The only person in the entire U.K. who could order such measures in time was the U.K. Prime Minister, Boris Johnson.

Maybe the Inquiry is trying to avoid implicating the PM in more serious offences. If indeed the PM was pursuing a herd immunity policy based on some neo-liberal wet-dream, despite the overwhelming evidence and advice to the contrary, then allegations of corporate manslaughter, or at least Misconduct in Public Office, would seem fitting. But that’s not their role, is it?

It raises the very real possibility that the Covid Inquiry is a way to circumvent justice. What if there were no Inquiry ongoing? Would we each take our grievances to the courts? Would Ministers face legal prosecution versus a slightly embarrassing witness statement?

I don’t want justice, I want accountability

Now, it may seem like I am seeking justice for the thousands of lives lost and the damage caused by the prolonged and protracted lockdowns, and maybe to some degree I am, but the bigger point, and why the Covid Inquiry is woefully failing in its duties, is that assigning responsibility to the appropriate minister or government official is essential in maintaining the integrity of public office.

We must know who specifically was at fault. We must say clearly, ‘this was your decision and you got it wrong, and because of that, thousands of people died’. We may not achieve actual punitive justice in such matters, but, at the very least, those responsible should feel the gravity of what they have done. Public office should not be all privilege and no burden. Becoming a Minister should not be an opportunity to merely expand your interests. It must be a responsibility to discharge your duties for the benefit of the people first; it must carry a weight of ‘public interest’ with it.

Not just negligence but misconduct

It is more complicated in the U.K. because we have had some serious failures and misconduct by our Members of Parliament.

The Coronavirus Act allowed the government to print money to respond to the crisis. We then witnessed a swarm of Lords and MPs trying desperately to extract such funds in whatever way possible.

Friends, family, neighbours, and even MPs themselves were all involved in dodgy PPE deals, testing deals, and who knows what else. This was the equivalent of war-profiteering. And what is to stop them from doing it again? Absolutely nothing.

If the exact same situation repeated itself, with the same type of Ministers in charge, almost certainly the same conduct would follow. They would still suck up as much Covid funding as they could, even if that meant taking resources away from the frontline where it could have saved lives and eased suffering. They would still try to express their political ideology regardless of what the facts on the ground were or what the expert advice was. And god help you if, like it was with Trump in the U.S. and Bassano in Brazil, that political ideology is neo-liberal - you will be left to fend for yourself as the wealthy, protected in their subsided bubbles, seek to extract even more money from you.

Perhaps after the Covid inquiry, we will be a bit more prepared. Certainly, those of us on the frontline will be more inclined to take action and not wait for bureaucratic advice. But, ultimately, we will still be in the situation whereby we, the public, will have to roll the dice during the next pandemic; whereby the calibre, integrity, and experience of those Ministers who happen to be in post at the time will dictate our fate. We will still be entirely vulnerable to maligned politicians being in a position to extract the resources meant for life-saving treatments. We are still in a position where public office is seen as a cushy job with stacks of privilege and access, and with none of the downsides.

Johnson utterly failed the people of the U.K. Those around him failed too. Johnson failed because of his misinformed, half-arsed, neo-liberal take on life. This has to be called out and exposed. Dozens of government officials were involved in the PPE scandal. They need to be named and shamed, at the very least.

Yes, we need to know what went wrong so we can do better next time, but more than this, we need to know what went wrong so we can ensure that those who sought the power of public office can’t hide from the responsibility that comes with it. If those sociopathic politicians who were not focused on the public interest and failed to do their jobs are held to account, then maybe, just maybe, the next sociopath seeking the thrills of public office will think twice. Because, as it stands just now, public office remains a very appealing route for the self-centred, egotistical, amoral person to pursue. Part of the Inquiry’s role is to remind us all that public office is meant to be held by those who actually care for those they govern.

The U.K. was, like the U.S. and Brazil, an international outlier in their Covid responses. Many people died who didn’t need to. Healthcare systems have still not caught up. There are dozens of examples of how we should have responded to the crisis: New Zealand spent a third of the time in lockdowns, six times fewer deaths, and better economic performance; Japan had no national lockdowns and a fraction of the deaths.

It wasn’t our fault - we, the people, did what we were supposed to. But certain politicians did not. Certain politicians used a national emergency to fulfil their ideological, political, and financial goals. If that is not Misconduct in Public Office, then I don’t know what is.

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Hi guys,

So, big changes for me on the home front. After investing 16 years of blood, sweat and tears into raising our four wonderful children (wonderful, in large part, due to the investment!), my wife is set to return to her career.

She has always been the most career-focused out of the two of us. For good reason. But when our first was born, we made the decision that I would continue to work and she would pause her career and be the primary carer.

The reason was mainly financial. At the time, I was earning more (even as a junior doctor). We were living in Oxford, so we needed enough money to live in a half-decent area. It made sense that I would work and my wife would stay at home.

Anyway, as the story goes for millions of women around the world, my career progressed (as did my earnings), and my wife’s career was stuck on pause. Each year, as we looked to switch roles, the financial argument always led to us waiting another year, then another year.

Despite all the rants about falling birth rates, the reality is that this is the trap many women find themselves in. Taking time out to raise kids isn’t simply taking a break from a career; it’s stepping off the earning escalator. Costs increase with each child, and then the maths of going back to work simply doesn’t add up - especially if you still need (or want) a parent at home.

We decided a couple of years ago to do something about it. Last year, I worked as many shifts as I could manage. It meant being away from the kids for quite some time, but if we could save enough, I would be able to recoup some of that time later. So I worked. We saved. And now we have finally decided to switch roles.

So, yes, I have been the primary carer for the last couple of months. My wife has been off forging a new career path. It has been…interesting.

The time with the kids has been incredible, even though I am now part of the furniture and no longer the exciting part of their day as “daddy comes home”, and even though there are days I just want to lock myself in my room. Getting to see them grow each day, and to be involved in their dramas - good and bad - is such a blessing.

It has also been a much-needed break from medicine. After 25 years, I am pretty exhausted - emotionally, mentally, and physically. I love helping my patients and teaching junior doctors, but the emotional weight of fighting to get patients treatment in an under-resourced national health service is pretty overwhelming.

I have to say, I am astonished at how differently my brain works now that I am away from the constant pressure and emotional weight. I feel different. Yes, a bit lighter, despite the never-ending housework - where did all the clothes come from?!! - and the gravity of responsibility of keeping the kids heading in the right direction. Also, perhaps, I’m a bit more pensive, introspective, and self-aware. Mostly good, but there have also been some bumps along the way - when did I become so serious, so physically unfit, and where did those love-handles come from?

My plan going forward is to do my best as the primary carer. I will not live up to my wife’s balanced approach, but I am here and engaged. I also want to try and make a go of SubStack.

I have been astonished by the generosity of so many of you in your support and engagement. Given our new financial reality, I am going to try and turn this into my part-time job. I plan to carve out a few hours each day to produce some content along similar lines as I have been doing so far - health, neuroscience, evolution, a bit of politics, and a bit more about society.

I am chipping away at two books, which I am contemplating publishing online through SubStack. One book is about the NHS, from an insider’s perspective. The other is the one I have been working on for years - about the evolution of the human brain.

I am curious to see where this goes. A bit more time. A bit more clarity. And, dare I say it, a bit more happiness. I would love to hear your thoughts and what you think I can produce to help enrich your lives in some way - what content have you appreciated and what would you like to see more of?

I hope you can continue to support me - comment lots, share with friends, and send out positive thoughts.

If you can manage a paid subscription, that would be much appreciated. I’ve set the annual subscription at £20 for the year (around $2 per month). I do appreciate that it is a commitment, and times are hard. However, I will endeavour to provide useful, at times uplifting content that will hopefully offer some respite from the barrage of vitriol we are often surrounded by.

That’s it from me - excited and nervous,

Warmest

Dan