Getting Past The Lies To Build A Better Future For The World

19 minutes read time.

The Great, Multi-Millennia Lie

You have been fed a lie. It is a long, exhaustive, and multi-millennia-long lie, woven so deeply into the fabric of our history, our religions, and our politics that we have ceased to see it as a story and have come to accept it as an unquestionable reality. It is the lie of separation. It is the story that country A belonged here and country B belonged there because they were different peoples, divinely ordained to inhabit separate pieces of the pie. It is the foundational myth that has justified a thousand wars, a million injustices, and the endless, brutal cycle of “us versus them.”

None of that was true. Ever.

Before we can even begin to diagnose the madness of our current moment, we must first perform a radical act of de-indoctrination. We must, for a moment, set aside the biases that come with a lifetime of conditioning and confront the stark, beautiful, and deeply inconvenient truths that modern science has revealed about who we are and where we come from. The story of humanity is not a story of neat, separate branches; it is the story of a single, tangled, and profoundly interconnected root system.

The recent explosion in population genetics has acted as a kind of time machine, allowing us to read the history written in our own DNA. That history tells a story that is utterly at odds with the myths of national and religious purity. A series of groundbreaking studies, analyzing everything from the paternal Y-chromosome to the full genome, has painted a new and irrefutable picture of the Middle East, the very cradle of Western civilization.

The research confirms that all major Jewish Diaspora populations—Ashkenazi, Sephardic, and Mizrahi—trace their primary ancestry back to a common origin in the Fertile Crescent. This is the definitive scientific rebuttal to the antisemitic canard that Ashkenazi Jews, in particular, are simply European converts with no ancestral link to the Levant. The roots are in the Middle East. But the story does not end there. The same genetic evidence reveals a profound and undeniable kinship with other peoples of the region. The closest genetic relatives to most Jewish groups are other Levantine populations, including Palestinians, Bedouins, and Druze, suggesting a “shared genetic history of related Semitic and non-Semitic Mediterranean ancestors who followed different religious and tribal affiliations.”

The maternal line, traced through mitochondrial DNA, tells an even more complex story of intermingling, revealing that many Jewish diaspora communities were built not on a foundation of genetic purity, but on a dynamic process of conversion, with local women from host populations becoming the founding mothers of their new Jewish communities. The genetic story is one of shared heritage, of constant movement, and of lines that are not sharp and clear, but blurred and overlapping. The idea of a pure, unadulterated lineage, for any group in the region, is a biological fiction. It is the original sin of our political discourse, a lie that has been weaponized for centuries to justify a state of perpetual conflict.

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The Hostile Universe & The Abdication of Agency

This foundational lie of human separation is propped up by a second, equally pernicious philosophical lie: the lie of a hostile universe and our own powerlessness within it. This is a narrative, articulated with grim clarity by philosophers like Drew M. Dalton, that posits our very reality as a malevolent force. Citing the laws of thermodynamics, this model paints a picture of a cosmos governed by entropy, a universal law of decay where all things are destined to shatter endlessly through time until there is nothing left. In this view, life is a bizarre, statistically improbable fluke, a fragile and temporary rebellion against an inevitable and hostile universal law.

This pessimistic model feels intuitively true because it resonates with our most common anxieties. As we’ve discussed, the lament “Nothing seems real anymore” is not a statement about physics; it is a cry of existential distress, a feeling of not being in control. But this model is a profound and dangerous misreading of reality, because it is an incomplete model. It is a story that describes the ocean only by its tide, without ever mentioning the waves.

While the Second Law of Thermodynamics dictates the inevitable decay of all things, the First Law states that energy is never destroyed; it is only transformed. The universe is not just a story of decay; it is a story of transformation. The pessimistic model describes the inevitable destination, but it completely ignores the magnificent, improbable, and beautiful journey. To understand that journey, we must recognize that life is not a fragile accident in a hostile universe, but a robust and almost inevitable expression of the universe itself. The latest scientific evidence, as detailed in Michael Marshall’s work, suggests that life on Earth did not struggle into existence, but burst forth with astonishing speed. It is not a rebellion against the laws of the universe; it is a fundamental expression of them. Life is the ultimate engine of syntropy, the force that creates localized order and complexity in a universe that trends toward disorder.

This brings us to a new, more complete, and more hopeful model of reality, a human equation for existence: Energy + Agency = Change (e + a = c). This framework doesn’t deny the power of thermodynamics, but it adds the one crucial variable that the pessimistic model completely ignores: our unique, human capacity to consciously and deliberately direct the energy of the world to create a different outcome. The central crisis of modern life, then, is not a hostile reality, but a culturally induced and systematically reinforced collapse of agency. We have been conditioned by a constant barrage of cynical messaging to believe that our “a” variable is effectively zero. The lies that “one person can’t make a difference” and “you can’t fight city hall” are potent tools of social control, designed to make us feel powerless. And when our agency falls to zero, we are left with a world where we feel buffeted by chaotic and hostile forces precisely because we have been convinced not to act. As the research of psychologists like Albert Bandura has shown, a strong sense of agency is not a luxury; it is a universal and essential component of human well-being and development. The challenge, therefore, is not to fight an “evil” reality, but to reclaim our own inherent power to shape it.

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The Über-Asshole & The Rise of Theocratic Fascism

The abdication of personal and collective agency does not create a vacuum; it creates an opportunity. It is in this soil of manufactured powerlessness that the modern authoritarian, the über-asshole, takes root. As the philosopher Aaron James has defined him, the asshole is the one who “systematically allows himself special advantages in cooperative life out of an entrenched sense of entitlement that immunises him against the complaints of other people.” The über-asshole is a more complex hybrid: he is a man who is completely immune to the criticism of his opponents, but who has a bottomless, pathological need for the adulation of his followers. His pathology makes him the perfect leader for a populist movement in an age of anxiety. He doesn’t need to believe in anything himself; he is a charismatic void, a vessel that is uniquely skilled at absorbing and reflecting the fears and passions of a mesmerized crowd.

This pathology is the engine of a new and dangerous political formation, a modern form of fascism that, as the scholar Lazar Puhalo has detailed, is built upon an unholy trinity, a three-legged stool of power:

1. A Populist Authoritarian Government: Led by the narcissistic, sociopathic dictator.
2. A Complicit Corporate Oligarchy: An economic elite rewarded for its loyalty with tax cuts and special privileges.
3. A Corrupt Religious Entity: A religious body that trades its spiritual authority for political power, providing a divine justification for the autocrat.

This is the timeless playbook of theocratic authoritarianism, a playbook being followed to the letter by the white Christian nationalist movement in the United States. As writers from both within the Muslim and Christian traditions, like Ani Zonneveld and Daniel Meeter, have warned, the American Christian Right is not just a political movement; it is a theocratic one that seeks to impose a single, narrow interpretation of its faith upon a pluralistic society through the force of law. Meeter’s most terrifying insight is that an American theocracy “could not help but be a violent one,” because it is fused with a culture that uniquely lionizes a personal right to violence. The Felonious Punk does not need to share their theology; they only need to recognize that their passionate, mesmerized crowd is a potent tool for their own acquisition of power. He offers them the one thing they crave—the imposition of their moralism on the nation—and in return, they give him the one thing he craves: their unquestioning loyalty.

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The Atrophy and Exploitation of Agency

The human capacity for agency is our species’ defining superpower, the engine of our syntropic rebellion against a universe of decay. It is the tool with which we build civilizations, create art, and forge meaning. Yet, the central tragedy of modern life is that for so many of us, this incredible, reality-shaping force lies dormant. Think of agency as a kitchen appliance, a toaster. It can sit there on the counter for months, and the homeowner can claim, “Oh yeah, I have a great toaster!” But if it is never plugged in, if no one puts bread in the slots and presses the button, it does nothing. It is just a large, useless dust collector. This is the state in which too many of us live. We use our agency with ferocious intensity in childhood to learn to crawl, walk, and speak, but once we’ve achieved these basic goals, once we’ve been socialized into the established systems of the world, we too often put this magnificent tool on the shelf and never bother it again. This is not just a matter of laziness; it is a form of learned helplessness, a rational response to a world that feels overwhelmingly complex and a news cycle so relentless that it breeds a sense of cynical futility. We are told, implicitly and explicitly, that the problems are too big, the systems too entrenched, and that “one person can’t make a difference.” And so, convinced of our own powerlessness, we leave the toaster unplugged.

This abdication of personal and collective agency does not create a vacuum; it creates an opportunity for exploitation. Nature abhors a vacuum, and so does politics. The vast, dormant energy of a powerless populace is a resource waiting to be harnessed. This is the realm of what the social psychologist Albert Bandura and the other researchers you found in Science Direct call “proxy agency.” It is the process by which individuals, feeling unable to act for themselves, surrender their agency to a more powerful external force—a religion, a political party, a charismatic leader—that promises to act on their behalf. These organizations become masters of proxy agency. They don’t have to create energy from scratch; they just have to convince millions of people to plug their individual “toasters” into a single, centrally-controlled power strip. They thrive by offering simple, pre-packaged answers to complex problems, a ready-made sense of purpose, and a powerful feeling of belonging to a community that is finally doing something. They offer the intoxicating feeling of agency without the difficult, messy work of actual, individual thought and responsibility.

The most powerful and dangerous modern architects of this hijacking are the very theocratic and authoritarian movements we have been dissecting. The religious despot, as the Persian author described, doesn’t just demand obedience; he offers to relieve his followers of the burden of moral reasoning, replacing it with the simple certainty of divine command. The political über-asshole, as we’ve analyzed, doesn’t just demand loyalty; he offers his followers a sense of righteous, vicarious power, a chance to be part of a movement that is finally “taking America back.” These movements are so successful precisely because they are preying upon our crisis of agency. They find a population that has been conditioned to feel powerless and offer them a simple, intoxicating deal: give us your energy, your loyalty, and your vote, and we will wield it for you. We will be your agency. The tragedy, as history has shown us time and again, from the Crusades of the Dark Ages to the MAGA movement of today, is that this harnessed agency is almost always directed toward entropic ends—toward division, toward hatred, and toward the tearing down of the very systems that a more complex, more difficult, and more humane world requires.

This, then, is the ultimate choice that confronts us. It is the central, active battlefield of our time. We can either allow our agency to remain dormant, to be hijacked and weaponized by the forces of decay and authoritarianism, or we can reclaim it. We can choose to plug our own toasters back in. The only possible response to this weaponized collective agency is to come back with a greater, more positive force. This is not a naive hope; it is a historical fact. We have done it before. The American Civil Rights movement was not a spontaneous outburst of emotion; it was a highly organized, strategically brilliant, and relentlessly disciplined application of collective agency against a system of seemingly insurmountable power. It involved economic boycotts, legal challenges, voter registration drives, and non-violent direct action. It was e + a = c on a national scale, a conscious and deliberate effort to apply the focused energy of a passionate minority to create a fundamental change in the reality of an entire nation. The crisis is not that reality is evil. The crisis is that we have, for too long, forgotten our own power to shape it. The question is whether we will remember before it’s too late.

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The Case Study of Catastrophe – Gaza

To see the real-world, human cost of this entire, interconnected system of lies, pathologies, and legal decay, we need only look to Gaza. The unfolding catastrophe there is not a separate, distant conflict happening in a vacuum. It is the inevitable, horrific, and logical conclusion of a world governed by the very principles we have been dissecting. It is what happens when the foundational lie of human separation is weaponized by theocratic über-assholes who have a contempt for the rule of law and have successfully manufactured a crisis of agency among those who might otherwise stop them. The horror in Gaza is not an anomaly; it is the final, bloody chapter of the story we have been telling, a live demonstration of our entire philosophical analysis.

The conflict itself is built upon the foundational lie of separation, the mythological claim of an exclusive, divine right to land that the genetic evidence proves is a fiction. Upon this lie, a brutal reality has been constructed. The response of the Israeli government to the world’s pleas for restraint has been a masterclass in the authoritarian playbook. The official, scientific declaration of a “man-made famine” by the world’s leading hunger authority was met with a campaign of furious denial and disinformation. Israeli officials dismissed the report as a “tailor-made fabricated report to fit Hamas’s fake campaign,” a direct and cynical assault on objective reality itself. This is the über-asshole’s primary tactic: when confronted with an inconvenient fact, attack the fact and the messenger.

While politicians trade in lies, the human cost is measured in bodies. The official death toll has surpassed 63,000. But new, more horrifying categories of death are now being tracked. According to the Gaza Health Ministry, an additional 1,965 people have been killed since May while seeking humanitarian aid. The famine itself, which is now gripping Gaza City, has claimed at least 124 children. These are not just statistics; they are shattered lives. They are children who, as one human rights monitor reported hearing, are “expressing a wish to die because it’s easier than what they’re going through.” This has led the UN Human Rights Chief to warn that the deaths from this man-made starvation “could amount to a war crime,” and Amnesty International to accuse Israel of “carrying out a deliberate campaign of starvation.” The horror is compounded by the central, cruel paradox of the crisis: there is enough food stockpiled just across the border to feed everyone. As the head of Mercy Corps stated, “What’s missing is not the ability to respond, but the political will to allow it.”

Into this hellscape, we see a flicker of the very agency we have been discussing. The Global Sumud Flotilla, a collection of ships carrying activists and celebrities like Greta Thunberg and Susan Sarandon, is a literal “wall of mass humanity” attempting to break the blockade through non-violent, direct action. It is a powerful, syntropic act of resistance against a state-level policy of entropy and death. But for every act of hopeful agency, there is a brutal countermove. As the flotilla sails, the Israeli military is pounding the outskirts of Gaza City, deliberately creating “facts on the ground” to render the humanitarian mission moot.

And what is the proposed endgame for this catastrophe? The final, chilling synthesis of the über-asshole’s pathology and the theocratic purity project is a plan circulating within the Felonious Punk administration known as the “GREAT Trust.” It is a blueprint for a post-war Gaza that is so monstrous in its cynicism it almost defies belief. The plan envisions the “temporary relocation of all of Gaza’s more than 2 million population,” a sanitized euphemism for ethnic cleansing, offering them a meager $5,000 to “voluntarily” leave their ancestral homeland forever. Their land would then be redeveloped, with investor-financed “mega-projects” including data centers, electric vehicle plants, and, in the ultimate expression of narcissistic, colonial fantasy, the “Gaza Trump Riviera,” complete with “world-class resorts” and “golf courses.” This is the ultimate conclusion of our analysis: a worldview so devoid of empathy that it can look upon a humanitarian catastrophe and see only an undervalued piece of coastal real estate. It is the horrifying, real-world manifestation of a government of, by, and for the asshole.

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The Antidote – A Passionate Call for Agency

It is easy, in the face of this multi-front assault on truth, law, and human dignity, to feel like that salmon, exhausted and overwhelmed by the sheer force of the current. But as the writer Tom Nichols argued in his brilliant “Homelander” analogy, the über-asshole is not a superhero. He is a mortal man, and he has a kryptonite. That kryptonite is the very architecture of the democratic system he is trying to dismantle: the Constitution, the courts, and, ultimately, the voters. The antidote to his aura of invincibility is a relentless and passionate refusal to accept it.

This is where we, as a people, must confront our own crisis of agency. The “feeble response” of the Democratic opposition, their reluctance to use every tool at their disposal to force a confrontation, is a symptom of the same disease of powerlessness they claim to be fighting. The true antidote, the real superpower that can defeat the über-asshole, is the one force his cynical, transactional worldview cannot comprehend: passion. A purely intellectual resistance burns out. Passion is the renewable energy source for a democratic movement—a passion for truth, a passion for justice, a passion for the pluralistic, secular democracy that is being systematically dismantled before our eyes.

This requires a global coalition, a “NATO for Democracy,” a “wall of mass humanity that DEMANDS reason.” It requires reclaiming the soaring, unapologetic, and deeply passionate rhetoric of the great moral movements of history, like the March on Washington. It requires us to understand that our e + a = c equation is not just a philosophical model; it is a call to arms. Passion is the Energy. Without it, our Agency is a cold and powerless machine. With it, we have the force necessary to create real, lasting, and meaningful Change. The choice is ours. We can either surrender our agency and allow the forces of entropy and authoritarianism to win, or we can choose to be a syntropic force in the universe, to be the gardeners in a world that is not hostile, but waiting. We can, in the final analysis, choose to define “goodness” not as a noun, a state to be achieved, but as a verb: the active, passionate, and relentless work of building a better world.

But first, let’s put an end to the lies. Let’s get the mythology out of politics, where it has absolutely no place. Put it back on a shelf for stories we can read to our grandchildren, rather than trying to use them to degrade and exert power over other people. Israel is not one single people group, and Ashkenazi Jews need to get over themselves and start accepting the larger portion of their “family,” giving them a greater voice in how the country is run.

We have put up with the narcissism and foolish rewriting of history for far too long. Let’s start doing work based on fact, not opinion, not myth, and certainly not religious dogma.

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This essay is a synthesis of a multi-day philosophical conversation between August 23-31, 2025, which drew upon the following external sources for inspiration and context: