Martian Thoughts

Struggling to survive (or do anything else)

If one causes enough turmoil, those on the receiving end will soon stop considering the cause of their calamity and focus on the disaster itself. Long-term thinking is only possible when the circumstances are favourable enough not to have to worry about one’s survival.

If one makes survival the main goal for those one seeks to exploit, one can rest assured of their safety. We break down into tribes faster than we’d like to admit. It’s natural: law and order are fictions. Once they dissipate, it’s back to the cave and the days when we could only trust those we knew directly. Destroy how we live and why we live, and all people will be able to care about is the fact that they’re still alive. All their efforts will be directed at subsistence. Even if removing the reason for the dystopia was the fastest way to safety, we wouldn’t know because we couldn’t know. When one struggles to survive, there’s little else one can do.

Thus, we can understand what makes absolutist tyrants and ultra-liberals look so similar: they force those below them to struggle to survive so they can do what they set out to do unimpeded.