Thinking in an Insecure Society
Is 21st-century culture destroying unique ideas?
Citizens of global cities are now paranoid by default. Fear and doubt are no longer optional. They have become requirements.
What brought us here?
The Internet. The Personal Computer. The Smartphone. Terrorism.
Surveillance is not new. Nor is the desire of powerful kingdoms and economic empires to control their populations. It’s the anger of being “violated” and the refusal to understand the “Other” that has turned our survival instincts into jackpots of panic and anxiety.
The founder of modern psychiatry, Emil Kraepelin, once described paranoia as a disease characterised by "the furtive development, resulting from inner causes, of a lasting, immovable delusional system that is accompanied by the complete retention of clearness and order in thinking, willing and acting".
Paranoia develops in secret, in the mind of a person, who functions the same way any other human being would. The difference is their total lack of self-criticism.
Paranoia gives birth to:
conspiracy theorists — the nameless inventors of plots and warnings;
passionate idealists — social, religious or artistic reformers marching towards Utopia;
hypochondriacs — the health freaks;
and litigious fanatics — who ruin themselves in court with their admirable attempts to prove the validity of their delusions.
Paranoia is thinking and feeling like you are being threatened in some way, even if there is no evidence or very little evidence that you are.
False interpretations of real facts may make you think you’re right, since all evidence can be twisted to become compatible. This is why whenever a particular opinion is given the cultural spotlight, more people will automatically begin interpreting the world in that specific way.
Without the ability to think critically, the 21st-century city dweller is helpless in preventing the spread of paranoia, which weaponises their high level of stress and low self-esteem. And just like that, they are mislead into a disproportion of beliefs — a single event is generalised into a trend.
In reality, it was merely luck.
