Some notes on tyranny against the backdrop of U.S. Election Day.

Yesterday, I left for the USA, invited by Mr. Jeffrey Tucker to speak at the annual conference of his Brownstone Institute. Subject: tyranny. He left it very open-ended, only giving me that one word, “tyranny,” as my guide—nothing more, nothing less. I was free to do with it as I pleased.

So yesterday, I boarded my United Airlines flight in Brussels. Scheduled departure time: five minutes to twelve. And I mean that literally—11:55 p.m. Of course, this is also a symbolic time, coming so close to the election of the century in America. You could say, with a bit of playfulness in the language of life, that it is five minutes to twelve when it comes to avoiding tyranny in America. And depending on where we stand as we watch this spectacle of life, it is either Trump or Harris who is eyeing the throne of tyranny.

After a series of security rituals, I made it onto the fully booked plane and settled comfortably into seat 48A, by the window, where I prefer to sit. The seat next to me was still free, and in seat 48C sat a Black man, with whom, after just a few breaths, I was already sharing a cheerful conversation and a good laugh.

Diagonally in front of me, in seat 47B if I’m counting correctly, there was another free seat. Now, you may wonder why I’m discussing the seating arrangement on this flight, but there is indeed a reason.

While everyone was settling in for the winged journey across the Atlantic, I noticed a father and son in Orthodox Jewish attire walking up and down the aisle multiple times. And then I heard a flight attendant next to me speaking to them a bit sternly, “Only if one of the other passengers is willing to switch seats, sir.”

I stared more intently at the screen of my open laptop. “Can’t they sit apart for a few hours? I prefer my window seat. Just pretend you don’t hear or see anything.” I shook myself out of my thoughts and looked directly into the face of the older man of the two. There was something in his eyes that struck me—perhaps a kind of desperation floating on the warm waters of love and sorrow.

“I’ll switch,” I said. I gathered my things and maneuvered to the aisle and then to my new seat. As I passed by, the older man looked at me with soft eyes from behind his glasses and sidelocks. “Thank you, sir, thank you. My son is afraid of flying; he doesn’t dare sit alone. Thank you.” He leaned over to my new neighbors in row 47 and said, “You have a good neighbor.” I was touched, and I briefly put my hand on his shoulder (“I’m just as glad as you are”), and he placed his hand gently on my right side. I felt that the soul had extended a warm hand through a gap in the wall that separates cultures.

Afterward, the man handed me a bag of kosher chips and two kosher candies from behind and expressed his gratitude to me gently and intensely several more times, stirring a soft procession of thoughts within me. I had performed my act of sincerity for the day. I had genuinely listened to the eyes and voice of a man and responded sincerely with a small gesture of humanity. How simple it is to be happy. And why don’t I walk through that door to the soul more often?

As suddenly as it had opened, the door closed again. In the gap between the seats through which the man had passed the chips, the candies, and his words, a pillow had now been stuffed after about three hours. And I noticed that both the father and son avoided my gaze later in the flight, as well as when we lined up in the seemingly endless queue at the customs checkpoint in Dulles Airport in Washington.

I could only guess at the reason for this sudden distance. If I had to make a guess, I would say that they feared they had overwhelmed me with their expressions of gratitude and perhaps thought I didn’t want my kind gesture to lead to endless chatter and a lasting bond. Ultimately, the last word is not mine—interpretations are always just interpretations.

I continued my journey. On my connecting flight to Washington, I sat next to a lady who planned to vote for Trump because he would shake up the bureaucracy in Washington, something she had once believed in herself. And during the taxi ride from Pittsburgh Airport to the stately Omni William Penn Hotel, the driver told me that he thought both Trump and Harris were “full of shit,” but that he would vote for Trump because he would stop handing out money to non-Americans.

I took a seat at a small table in the restaurant at the Penn Hotel and ordered a roasted Amish chicken—one of the best I’ve ever tasted. Next to me sat an African-American couple, both in a rather blessed state after a few glasses of wine. As they got up, the woman approached me with a focused look: “Are you an actor?” “No.” “You are absolutely gorgeous.” It was the second time that day that an African-American person had made me laugh. In the elevator to my room, I looked intently into the mirror—the last thing we should abolish is alcohol.

Upon arrival, I shook Jeffrey Tucker’s hand, and he confirmed, “Yes, something on tyranny, up to you. If it were only a tyranny of ‘the elite,’ then you couldn’t explain why our colleagues and even our family excluded us during COVID.” Exactly.

***

There are various forms of tyranny in this world. There is the tyranny foreseen by Aldous Huxley, exercised by globalist oligarchs and their army of “mind-manipulators.” These oligarchs first amassed their wealth on a battlefield devoid of ethical awareness; then, they purchased Congress through lobbying and bribes; that Congress passed laws placing them above the law; from this emerged a state structure that hides the most anti-democratic system in history under the banner of democracy. This state apparatus allows them to wage a devastating, plundering war abroad through regime-change machinery, subjecting the entire world. Once that external war is over, their urge for domination will turn fully toward their own population. The ultimate goal of the oligarchs is a world population shackled and bound, groaning in the chains of a merciless, transhumanist surveillance state. That’s tyranny indeed.

But there are other forms of tyranny. Take the tyranny of bureaucracy, for instance. It’s loosely connected to the tyranny of the oligarchs but is not identical. Bureaucratic rule emerges even in the absence of oligarchs. Everywhere, people crave rules. In small and large businesses, in academic departments, in family settings—there must be clarity about what is allowed and what is not. We need to know where we can drive, bike, and walk; if an accident happens, it must be clear who violated the rules and thus is responsible for damages.

A highly developed bureaucratic system is a tyranny without a tyrant, said Hannah Arendt. In such a system, the rules choke everyone, but there is no one to turn to. Everyone is merely a cog in the vast machinery of rules, and no one has control over the larger machine.

The seemingly unstoppable rise of regulatory systems, which began at the start of the 19th century, is itself a consequence of a rationalistic worldview and the isolation it brought about. This new worldview directed its gaze outward, believing that Truth could be reached by observing facts with the eyes and then drawing rational conclusions. Thus, human attention focused on the visible surface of things; rationalism literally brought about a “surface-ification” of the experiential world.

This superficiality also manifested in terms of identity: people began to focus more on the image of themselves as seen with their own eyes—in the mirror, in photos, or on Instagram. A certain amount of psychic energy shifted from the inner world—ethical awareness—to the surface of the body. Concretely speaking, we now direct a major part of our attention to our outward appearance. In itself, this isn’t a problem; however, if the amount of psychological energy invested in the idealized outer image crosses a certain threshold and becomes the guiding force in psychological life, then the human being gets lost in the world of appearances.

In such a case, the outer ideal image isolates us from the world around us—primarily from other people—and hinders the spontaneous emergence of empathy. In this way, humanity builds the walls of the prison of the Ego higher, brick by brick, becoming ever more trapped within it. This explains the simultaneous rise of two interconnected phenomena in our culture over the past few centuries: narcissism and loneliness (or disconnectedness). Understanding these two phenomena is key to understanding what is really happening in our culture.

This brings us to the final tyranny, the one most often forgotten, but also the most crucial: the tyranny of the Ego. The human being harbors a tyrant in their own bosom. The outer ideal people try to live up too, is imposed by society, by an Other; we do not choose it ourselves. Thus, we become slaves the Other that indicates the ideal images. It dictates how we must look, how we must live. And as we strive to embody that ideal imposed by the Other, we lose contact with ourselves; we lose contact with the soulful body, that resonating phenomenon hidden behind the ideal image.

In the isolation of the Ego-prison, we lose the connection with the Other, the Soul connection, the bond between resonating bodies. We lose the awareness that we are ultimately one with the Other, an awareness that lay at the foundation of mystical experience and the ethical principles that naturally flowed from this experience that in the end all boil down to this: be kind to others, because you are the Other. The divide between yourself and the other, to a certain extent, only exists in the world of appearances.

The end result of the Rise of the Ego is an atomized society where people no longer live with but next to and against each other, entangled in a merciless struggle to survive (or, conversely, stepping out of the exhausting rat race through suicide).

This tyranny of the Ego rages within every person. And behind the Ego lies the ultimate tyrant, a metaphysical destructive force. This force eventually devours even those who serve it, luring its servant with the promise of money and power, only to make them into pure slaves. It is at this level that the real enemy resides—not in an oligarch or a bureaucrat, but in this force that destroys human bonds, isolates people, and makes them susceptible to indoctrination and propaganda, causing them to gather into blind and murderous masses; the force that always convinces the human being that other human beings are the enemy; the same force that insists more rules are needed to channel the growing tensions between atomized people. There can be no outer tyranny without inner tyranny.

***

I am in the U.S. at a historical moment. The essence is not a choice between two presidents, it’s the position you take in the more fundamental revolution humanity goes through. The American elections play out on the surface of an underlying, brewing metaphysical process. A president has only limited impact on this process; some influence it for the better, others for the worse. Ultimately, every political solution depends on the extent to which a change for the better occurs in the population, the extent to which a new awareness can arise that transcends the rationalistic worldview and its inherent destructiveness.

And that, in turn, depends on the act of speaking. A sincere word is a word that breaks through the Ego, the world of superficial appearances. Any social system without sincerity, without that Act of Speech that connects people from Soul to Soul, eventually becomes a tyranny. Ultimately, the only way to contribute to overcoming the tyranny outside ourselves is to tackle the tyranny within

.