The Night of the Morlocks: Voyeurs of Blood

"Tyranny is simply the result of our collective blindness." I repeated this nonsense to myself again this morning. I repeated it and, seemingly, believed it even more than in previous years, when I would endlessly chew on this mantra over my morning coffee. But today I gave it a little more thought, and my beautiful, comfortable concept crumbled.

If we truly wanted freedom and order, we wouldn't have handed the reins of the world over to old, malicious buffoons with such sheer enthusiasm. In reality, we have never been so awake, and we have never been so cruel. We didn't close our eyes to the dangers; we simply settled into our warm cafes with clean hands, and voluntarily unlocked the gates to hell. Not because we were deceived, but because we realized—it smelled of blood.

When we slaughtered the old gods, we thought we had awakened in the era of secularism. However, the throne didn't remain empty for long. We simply forged a new, godless religion—complete with its own unspoken dogmas, a new brand of 'original sin,' and the modern-day inquisition of the sterile guillotine of public consensus. It was here that we stepped into the ultimate psychological trap.

When your official religion mandates love, inclusivity, and tolerance, yet these very principles are weaponized as the primary tools for cruelty, censorship, and violence, you are left with only two choices: lose your mind, or become a hypocrite. For us, therefore, hypocrisy wasn't a moral compromise—it became our sole psychological instrument for survival.

Because the cruelty of the slave hasn't vanished, and the Nietzschean will to power still boils in our veins, we found the perfect, schizophrenic compromise. We decided that by day, we would sit in eco-friendly cafes and preach pacifism, and by night, we would stare at our screens and revel in the spilling of someone else's blood. We became voyeurs of blood.

And since this nightmarish spectacle required directors, we simply hired them. We outsourced our own tyranny. Let’s not fool ourselves into thinking we surrendered to some grandiose, historical evil. The ultimate tragedy of our downfall is its extreme banality. We handed power not to Nietzsche’s Übermenschen, but to his Last Men—to old buffoons and cheap showmen.

In effect, we told them: "Take the power. Be cruel in our place and get your hands dirty. We will publicly feign outrage at your aggression, we will mock your awkwardness, but secretly we will know you are doing it all for us. To mask our own impotence and bloodlust, your job is to be monsters—just do it in a way that leaves us with the illusion of a clean conscience."

Historically, war always had a "rational" packaging—defending democracy, national interests, or territorial expansion. Today, these old masks have been tossed in the trash. Practically no one tries to hide behind rationalism anymore (save for Netanyahu, who stubbornly clings to this old illusion just to save his throne). How else can we explain the current chain of events? Why did Putin attack Ukraine? Not because of geopolitics, but simply because he hates its existence. Why does the Iranian regime bomb the Qatari terminal in response to American and Israeli strikes? Only to elevate escalation and cruelty to a new, bloodier level. Why did Trump kidnap Maduro straight out of Caracas? Because it was a high-quality, high-rating spectacle. This is no longer geopolitics. This is naked sadism—violence for the sake of violence, orchestrated by our hired buffoons to satisfy our darkest instincts.

John Stuart Mill probably could not have fully imagined the grotesque form his described "tyranny of the majority" would take. Today, that tyranny has arrived, but not as we expected—not as a mob with pitchforks in the streets. Today, the absolute majority of the world's population lives under authoritarian (or personalist) regimes, and they have voluntarily stripped themselves of the right to make decisions. This is the real tyranny of the majority: the complete abdication of responsibility from oneself, achieving the desired bloody outcome through the hands of hired clowns. We rule the world through our own inaction.

It is a sad reality that our species almost never grasps the meaning of allegorical warnings. When we were told, "God is dead," we assumed we had been liberated. And to celebrate this "freedom," we immediately created new gods. These reincarnations of the old proved just as ruthless, dogmatic, and enslaving; we simply gave them different names. In some places, we called it "democracy" and "liberalism"; in others, "tradition" and "greatness."

The lifespans of these new gods turned out to be shorter, and they died too. Today, we clearly witness the birth of the final god. This god does not need holy books. It is called "Unfazed Cruelty" and "Powerful Inaction." It feeds on the unbridled reign of malicious buffoons and our hypocritical silence.

It was precisely this all-encompassing silence and the mute tyranny of the majority that brought the era of thought to an end. Two or three centuries ago, there was still hope: a few intellectual titans could formulate a new idea, and people inspired by it could take it upon themselves to initiate and implement positive change. Today, under the mute tyranny of the majority, this is impossible. The voices of geniuses are drowned out by the noise of lazy masses demanding a spectacle. The era that has now arrived will likely become the true, horrifying end of history.

In H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine, the pampered Eloi ignored the Morlocks hiding underground until night fell. Today, that night has arrived. But looking in the mirror, I discovered that I am no Eloi. I discovered that the Eloi do not exist at all. That was our final lie.

The night has come when we, the Morlocks, have decided to destroy one another. It's just that some of us are sitting in a comfortable armchair, waiting for takeout, and, with a black-and-white movie playing in the background, scrolling through the casualty statistics of the latest bombing with quiet pleasure. Some are giving the orders to bomb peaceful cities, while others are executing the primary, bloody purpose of this night with their own hands. We have always known exactly how to destroy one another. Now we have added technology to this ancient knowledge, and tonight looks exactly as it was meant to look—a horrifying, bloody spectacle capable of ending history.

And what is most terrifying of all... we LOVE it.