You have 3 completely different, mutually exclusive values:
- Freedom
- Stability
- Equality
One can not be advanced except at the expense of the other two. We will ALWAYS have this tug of war between these three. Society doesn’t need to be perfectly positioned between the three sides of the trichotomy either. No one would be happy with that. It’s this constant push and pull and it changes depending on where your society is at that point in time. Just like the seasons, there is a cycle and a society is going to go through different shifts as the society changes.
For example, FREEDOM creates technological advancement, but it also creates inequality. So you’re going to have this tug of war between a society that is growing and prospering and people bitching about the inequality caused by freedom, which results in a pull toward communism. And then the instability caused by the society degrading under communism causes a pull toward absolutism, which then results in the despotic oppression of the people, which causes a pull toward freedom.
The wealth inequality gap keeps growing as the economy becomes richer, but everyones standard of living keeps going up as well, so EVERYONE is objectively better, but if you care about equality you are bitter and resentful even though you are better off.
To an absolutist, freedom is worth dying for. Equality is worth them killing for.
You can’t make the case that they are wrong as equality is their highest moral goal.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfnkmVLGjSg
Most people believe in America there are only 2 sides of the political spectrum: The Left and The Right. This is a false belief. In reality, there is a trichotomy, not a dichotomy. It’s Equality vs Freedom vs Stability. It’s Communism vs Individualism vs Absolutism. There are 3 points to the triangle.
As circumstances change, the will of the people changes too. As an example, in an unstable environment, absolutism becomes more popular. In an oppressive environment, individualism becomes more popular. In an unequal environment, communism becomes more popular.
This is why propaganda works. Because the average person doesn’t think about what they believe. They just absorb what they think other people believe. They’ll just go along with whatever the cultural zeitgeist is. So if you can control propaganda, you can tell them the cultural zeitgeist is with you and people will follow it because they’re sheep. They simply go along with what they are told. They don’t think for themselves. That’s what the whole NPC meme is about. That’s why Communism is on the rise right now because they successfully infiltrated the media and academia and they’re just feeding propaganda to the kids and because they’re weak and they value social approval and conformity, they’ll simply agree with whatever they are told if they think other people agree with it. Whatever is cool is what they will go with. They don’t know the history of communism…they don’t know economics…they just hear what’s popular and go along to get along. They’re not really communists, they’re just sheep.
This is why trying to convince the sheep doesn’t work. You don’t convince sheep through reason and rational arguments. You convince the sheep by showing you are winning. They’re band wagon hoppers! That’s why the answer is to just start it and build it and grow it and the people will start following…as long as your group is winning.