I was born after the fall of communism in Eastern Europe. And they always told me how it was normal living in disguise. Pretending you like the regime, concealing your opinions, revealing your real preference only in privacy.
Since the new regime was the best that has ever happened, now it is not normal living in disguise. But it was totally wrong. To be honest with you, when I realized who rules us, it was a huge shock for me.
Evolution of homo sapiens and living in disguise
Homo sapiens are social animals who possess Theory of mind. They can empathize with others and gain evolutionary fitness.
They hide their intentions on how to lure potential mating partners, where to find food, what opinion they have on the hunter-gathering political situation because they may persecuted, what they think about the potential partner of their pals, pretend they can make and use tools even if they cannot since they want to have resources in reciprocal altruism.
So living in disguise is own to homo sapiens as nothing else. Our prehistoric instincts are, however, useful even in these days.
A child says something different to his or her teacher, classmates, parents, siblings, and friends.
Living in disguise in communism
The Czechoslovakian regime, no matter how it claimed how democratic it was, made people pretend even more.
You didn’t have an anti-communist stance, never been vocal in public places, such as schools, occupations, shops, restaurants, pubs and so on.
When a parent, you must have been silent when your children were hearing you, because they may have easily revealed it.
Newspapers, TV, party’s publications, everything had its firm order.
Pretending in demoracy and capitalism and how refined it is now
While the aforementioned manners disappeared after the Velvet Revolution, people became vocal in pubs, schools, restaurants, and even workplaces.
So there is desired freedom, you can freely vote, speak, and share information and media, of course, are democratic as well! No such a way!
Since capitalism is the shared government of the super-rich families and regular voters (despite someone calling capitalism the sole government of the super-rich), these are their media, newspapers, websites, and televisions.
And they control the politicians, so you see a thousand of political events in the media, yet all of them are deeply ingrained in the political background.
One super-rich family goes against two of them, and a politician ends. A politician makes one group hostile, therefore journalists start to write against him.
They give space in media to only those who have background influences backing them.
A politician opposes passing a law because the law would advantage to a hostile interest group.
98 % of politics is occurring in the very background so I hate the smiling faces of both governmental and private media presenters pretending and living in disguise, saying something they know is not caused by some event, yet they put it flat-out differently.
The funny thing is they maintain this course and never deviate. Do you want to be a journalist? You must lie, lie, and lie.
Capitalism and living in disguise and people caught the bait
No matter how many people wrote about it in the mainstream media, no revolution occurred (I mean in the nowadays Czech Republic).
One journalist wrote that two of the foremost oligarchs would divide the power. But when they were learning the division at the school, both of them were absent.
Another journalist wrote that by revealing there were background crooks (they are connected to the politicians and steal the funds) and revealing there were oligarchs, Czech politics became naked.
Yet, they didn’t mention the international clientelist groups, only in hints.
If people were normal, this would have ignited a revolution, sweeping over the oligarchs, crooks, movers-and-shakers, and super-rich families. No, everything is going on as before.
So what is the lesson?
Since people’s morality is far more closer to moral nihilism than some perfect morality, even the AI-augmented media will still lie, no matter what happens.
I, who was taking lessons from the communist past, have realized that it was continuing to the present day.
People are great at living in disguise. Our prehistoric instincts don’t lie and it is another example that the societal progress isn’t on par with the technological one.
Leave a Reply