Who would you prefer to be?
Would you prefer to be an emotionally complex philosopher who constantly brushes up against life’s imperfections, or a pig with all its needs fully met?
Let’s imagine this happy pig for a moment.
It has an abundance of delicious food to feast on, comfy hay and mud to roll around in, shelter, shade, sunshine, and water – everything it could possibly desire.
As such, it is wallowing in porcine perfection.
It is the height of heights for a pig. 10/10.
And poor old Socrates?
For him, perfection is an impossibility.
Most days, his happiness levels probably hover more around 150/300.
Not 5/10.
He has a far greater possible depth of experience than the pig, but because of that depth, he is only too aware of his shortcomings, of the imperfections of life, of how he could experience so much more.
As such, he is dissatisfied.
Similarly, we might ask whether you would prefer to be a caged animal in the zoo or the same animal out in the wild, with all its risks, dangers, and liberty.
But maybe you don’t like that particular hypothetical.
You don’t like imagining you’re an animal.
Nope, you’re a human, and discussing animal happiness has nothing to do with you whatsoever.
Okay. Fine. Let’s change the scenario then.
You now have this choice.
You can live in a 5-star, high-tech apartment that lets you cater to your every whim.
You can order as much Uber Eats as you desire. You can watch whatever TV, Netflix or cable TV you desire.
You have massage machines, a spa bath, robots to do all of your housekeeping, and you even have a special ‘drug-drip machine’ to make you feel high whenever you wish (and all without negative physical consequences!).
You’d even have your memory erased so you can’t recall anyone you know, and you’d receive a special high-tech surgery, so you’d like being alone and never speaking to anybody.
We would even guarantee that you would always feel fully satisfied with life.
You’d be at a 10/10.
And all of this for just one catch: you can never leave your apartment.
Would you accept that offer?
I’m guessing that, like the majority of people reading this article, you wouldn’t, even if it might be hard to articulate exactly why, even if your average ‘happiness’ levels may be a lot higher in this apartment than in regular life.
Yep, it just wouldn’t feel right.
Deep down, you would suspect that in this hypothetical apartment, you wouldn’t truly be living.
But even so, what does this hypothetical scenario have to do with us today?
What’s the relevance?
Well, what if we're actually heading towards something like that apartment, but are taking such microscopic steps in its direction that no one can see it?
What if we’re heading towards a point where we're going to voluntarily step inside that apartment, deadbolt the door, and throw away the key?
And what if this is all done through a classic piece of misdirection? A Trojan horse? One where we all miss what's really going on?
Now, here is where this article might get controversial.
So let me give you a ‘trigger warning’.
If you are a staunchly good, law-abiding citizen who loves the government and bureaucracy, you might want to quit reading now.
For the rest of the article may irritate you.
That said, you might also be an open-minded, rule-loving citizen willing to listen to differing viewpoints.
If so, come along for the ride. You don’t need to agree with the thrust of the article. But you can’t be any worse off for having a read.
Okay. In true Trojan horse style, I probably should’ve hidden the ball a little longer. But there it is: the powers that be are subtly manipulating us through a fear and safety campaign that has us clamoring for more protection.
They are building a network of laws that will not only help keep us safe (like the animal in the zoo), but also docile and manageable.
Now, if you've been reading my articles for any time, you'll know I'm no conspiracy theorist.
But even so, if we want to keep our freedoms, then we need to open our eyes to what's going on.
For the more we succumb to the allure of ever-greater safety, the more we may be tightening a noose around our own necks.
I understand that you might be reading this and thinking to yourself, "Hang on, Jeremy, what are you talking about? I like these safety rules. Would you prefer to be in the Wild West? Would you prefer to be living in some anarchic society where you could get mugged every time you walked out on the street?”
Well, no, I wouldn't.
But even so, I’d still be happy to do without the majority of government rules and regulations that encroach on my personal freedom and autonomy.
I could do without excessive council regulations, draconian lockdowns, and (drum roll) our brand-new online ‘safety’ laws.
Granted, we might have differing opinions on this, too.
You might like these laws.
You might detest those renovation cowboys who want to modify their house without the proper council tick of approval.
You might celebrate legislation to stop irresponsible bogans from spreading killer viruses, and you might want even stronger punishments for online trolls and people who spread – are you ready for it? – 'disinformation'.
Point taken. We're all going to have differing views on such things.
But even if you like what I personally would consider 'excessive regulation', is it really healthy for you?
Is protecting yourself from all possible dangers even good for you?
Let me give you an analogy.
Back in the early '90s in the Arizona desert, a billionaire threw cash at a massive glass dome called Biosphere 2.
It was meant to replicate something we might one day create off-planet. A foreshadowing of the limitless possibilities of space exploration to come.
To get everything right, they crammed in fake rainforests, deserts, and even a small ocean.
Then they added eight humans and sealed them inside for the next two years.
It was meant to be a kind of self-sustaining Eden.
No wind. No pests. No mess. Just pure, engineered protection.
A utopian template for the generations to come.
And at first, things seemed to be going well.
Fast-growers like eucalypti and figs shot up 20-30 feet in record time.
Veggies, fruits, and wild plants cranked out bumper crops that had the harvesting crew salivating.
The rainforest in the dome grew thick and lush.
Desert shrubs greened up fast, and the ocean algae bloomed like it was party time.
But then the first problem arose.
Those eucalyptus and fig trees that had never had to deal with winds, storms, and natural weather conditions that would’ve helped them develop ‘stress wood’ and strong roots started to topple and snap.
Their trunks flopped, and they simply buckled under their own weight!
And that was just the start.
Soon the whole system went off the rails.
Soil bugs started hogging all of the oxygen (it plummeted from 21% to 14%), and before you knew it, the humans were gasping like marathoners at mile 26.
As a result, CO2 spiked to 4,000 ppm at night, causing crops to curl up and die.
Pests exploded too. Ants. Roaches. Snails. With no natural balance, the entire system began to implode.
Ultimately, it was a cautionary tale of how the diversity and challenges we often fear can actually breed strength.
And it’s a similar story to what we have learned from the modern rise in allergies.
Think about it: we have never lived in such a sanitized world, one which, intuitively speaking, should keep us safe from allergies and the like.
But not so.
It would seem that playing in the dirt and tumbling with sweaty, unclean animals actually strengthens our immune system and reduces the risk of developing allergies.
And ‘high exposure’ scenarios (like where you’re exposed to multiple pets or farm animals) actually tend to work best.
In fact, research shows they can reduce your risk of conditions like asthma and food allergies by up to 50%.
If you doubt the statistics, just look around you. Very few people my age have peanut allergies and the like. But in the modern, younger generation, they’re legion.
Okay, you might say, when living organisms are pampered, they grow weak.
But you were never worried about a bit of dirt. That wasn’t why you wanted all of the rules and regulations.
That wasn’t your main safety concern.
And on this, happily, we agree.
What actually bothers me is our modern obsession with what we might call 'intellectual hygiene', with censorship.
And here, of course, things get controversial.
For am I suggesting that we should just let people say whatever they want?
Am I suggesting we should allow people to publicly air opinions that are clearly wrong?
What if, like our friend Socrates, they were ‘misleading the youth’?
What if they were to incite violence?
What if they were to increase social tensions?
What if they were to express opinions that are hurtful to certain groups?
Since these are emotional – and nuanced – issues, let's step back and take a look at things from a grander philosophical perspective.
Let’s take a peep at what the ancient Greeks called dialectics.
Put in modern terms, this revolves around the idea of:
1. A thesis (e.g., an opinion)
2. An antithesis (a counter opinion)
3. A synthesis.
The synthesis is a fusion of the thesis and the antithesis.
It is a better version of them.
It is the thesis that has learned something from the antithesis.
But – and this is the key point – if we don't allow for the antithesis, how can we ever get to the synthesis?
If we ban free discussion, if we silence opposition, then we will remain forever at the level of the thesis and, as such, will stagnate.
What’s more, banning free speech rests on the assumption that we can tell right from wrong, good from bad.
As the great English philosopher John Stuart Mill stated:
“All silencing of discussion is an assumption of infallibility.” (Chapter 2 of ‘On Liberty’)
And this, as history has demonstrated, is wildly arrogant.
Indeed, one era’s certainties are another era’s shame.
But even so, surely some censorship is good?
Possibly.
Most theories, when taken to absolute extremes, do fall apart.
But even so, these theories might be true for 99+% of the time.
And given that's the case, we don't need to throw them out if we find a teeny sample of highly improbable cases that seemingly disprove them. We just need to recognize that there might be some exception of the exception of the exception where we might want to use a different theory. But in practice, that doesn't invalidate our overall idea.
Also – and it’s best to be upfront about this – there may not be a perfect solution.
Sometimes, no matter which way you turn, you'll face challenges.
Just as importantly, many decisions have second-order consequences that we often don't think about.
For instance, our government locks us up during COVID to protect us from the virus, but as a result, more people suffer from depression, and suicide rates go up.
Or our government locks us up to protect us from the virus, and as a result, the economy collapses, and the Victorian government goes from $22.4 billion in debt on June 30, 2019, to $72.7 billion on June 30, 2021.
And although we don’t immediately feel the pain of those additional 50 billion dollars of debt (plus the interest it continues to accrue), it could have been used to fund hospitals, schools, roads, public healthcare, and the like.
Just as bad, it’s a lot of debt that our children and grandchildren will now inherit.
This is the problem with artificially tinkering with the natural order of things (like free speech). You create unforeseen problems.
It makes me think of the introduction of the cane toad into Australia.
In 1935, agricultural scientists imported about 100 cane toads from Hawaii to Queensland's sugarcane fields. The idea was for them to act as a natural pest controller, devouring the invasive French and greyback cane beetles that were ravaging crops and prompting heavy pesticide use.
Theoretically, this would slash chemical pollution, boost biodiversity by reducing toxin runoff into waterways, and ‘help the environment’ by curbing agricultural damage without synthetic sprays.
It sounded like a genius idea on paper: Cane toads were voracious eaters, already ‘tamed’ in other regions, and beetles were low-flying enough for easy snacking.
But as you may know, things didn’t run as planned.
Rather, the toads arrived, shrugged at the beetles (which mostly flew too high or at night to bother them), and instead feasted on whatever was handy – native insects, small vertebrates, even pet food from farms.
Without local predators, they bred like... well, toads, and in Australia's warm, wet north, they exploded from 100 to an estimated 200 million within decades, causing far-reaching ecological damage.
So second-order consequences can be vast and hard to predict, something that should make us proceed with caution when we create laws that restrict our freedom.
One of the main problems with governments is that while they love to create laws and regulations, they typically shy away from removing them.
To give you an example, in the U.S., the Code of Federal Regulations has ballooned from roughly 22,000 pages in 1960 to over 185,000 today.
That is a mind-numbing amount of regulation – but not anything foreign to other Western countries (like Australia!).
And while new regulations come in all shapes and sizes, one of the main drivers for them is a concern for ‘safety’.
Indeed, these days, we typically put ‘safety’ on a pedestal and are happy to trade our freedom for it.
This was clearly evidenced in the post-9/11 war on terrorism.
At the time, sweeping laws were introduced in many countries – including Australia – that gave government agencies unprecedented power to enforce restrictions like house arrest, movement bans, monitoring, or even detention without standard criminal conviction or normal trial procedures.
Now, personally, I never liked these laws. But even if some people might feel they were justified at the time, what about now?
Well, now, as you might have guessed, they are still in force!
For one thing governments hate doing is relinquishing power.
And these laws were a hugely successful power grab.
Unfortunately, while this should bother us, since most newly introduced rules or regulations don't affect us personally, we typically let them slide without opposition.
As a result, the government can introduce them one at a time without pushback.
And herein lies the problem, and it’s called ‘salami tactics’, or ‘salami-slicing strategy’.
The idea is to sidestep resistance by isolating or eliminating one small segment at a time, slicing society ‘like a salami’, so that no unified opposition forms.
This is precisely what Hitler did to tighten his control and eliminate ‘undesirables’.
He first targeted the communist dissidents, then the socialists, then the trade unionists.
From there, he turned on various religious critics and groups like the Jehovah’s Witnesses who refused loyalty.
After that early consolidation of political power, he escalated the persecution of the Jews, moving gradually from boycotts to the Nuremberg Laws to ghettos to extermination.
Then came other groups the regime considered defective or dangerous: disabled people, the Roma and Sinti, homosexual men, and others labelled “asocial”.
And he could get away with it, because at each step the majority of people would breathe a sigh of relief and think, “At least it isn’t us!”
So when a government brings in oppressive or unjust rules that don’t specifically target us, we should pay attention and, where necessary, resist these rules.
What’s more, we should be wary of rules that limit our freedom, all the more since it is easy to miss the true implications of these new rules.
Take, for instance, the Online Safety Amendment, which will come into force in Australia on December 10.
From that date onwards, platforms like YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, X, and even Reddit and Kick will be required to take reasonable steps to prevent Australians under 16 from creating or keeping accounts unless a parent explicitly consents. In practice, this means most existing under-16 accounts will be removed.
Now, I’ll be honest, even though the issue is clearly nuanced, I broadly disagree with not letting children under 16 have social media accounts.
I've seen lots of excellent YouTube channels by kids under 16. MrBeast started when he was just 13, and I have young nieces and nephews who could also do a great job. So banning them seems like a shame. Why not allow them to develop skills that could be of immense use as they grow older?
But what about the dangers, you may ask? Cyberbullying. Harassment. Harmful content. Grooming and predators. The negative possibilities are endless.
Very true.
But as kids, we also played alone in the park, and there we could have, conceivably, met predators in the flesh. But we still played, and the vast majority of us had no issues.
Of course, you might say the risk is much higher online, and in some ways that will be true.
But we should also ask ourselves who should be doing the caring. The state or the parents?
To this, of course, I can already hear the cries!
Not all parents can be trusted to take proper care of their kids!
True.
But just because some people might do bad things doesn’t mean we should create laws that affect everyone.
Rather, we should create laws that affect the people who actually do the bad things.
And if we want evidence of terrible things happening when the state overreaches to ‘protect’ people, we need look no further than the Stolen Generation.
Because that is what can happen when the State, in all of its arrogance, thinks it knows best.
In any case, my qualms are not so much about banning the kids. The real sting in the tail is something I initially missed.
Indeed, I suspect protecting the kids is more of a Trojan horse. The real point is that this legislation ushers us one step closer to a surveilling state.
Yes, that does sound dramatic (like a grand conspiracy theory), but hear me out, because now it's not just the kids that will need to prove their age – and very probably show some form of ID – it will also be the adults.
That means that every search and every comment anyone makes on platforms like YouTube can now be monitored.
And it gets more intense as well because from December 27, a new Search Engine Safety Code comes into force, and over the following six months, platforms like Google and Bing must introduce age-assurance measures to restrict access to ‘Class 1C’ and ‘Class 2’ material, which, in practice, will mean that age-verification will increasingly be tied to logged-in accounts.
Now, we probably don’t want any children accessing this stuff, and maybe we do even want to know who is searching for it, but it is nevertheless a dangerous precedent, especially since the commissioner for eSafety can unilaterally decide what counts as Class 1 or 2 and issue removal orders that she insists apply globally.
That’s the danger: bureaucratic creep toward overreach.
It starts with ‘protecting the kids’, but does it really stop there?
Toss in digital ID (which, in the upcoming years, will be functionally required in Australia), and suddenly our every online movement will be monitored and assessed.
Australia already has a habit of silencing voices that disagree with mainstream narratives, and we continually deny visas to anyone who fails our ‘character test’, a broad enough category to allow the government to do as it pleases.
And it isn’t simply extreme psychos, obviously violent, or misogynistic people who are denied a visa.
Candace Owens was denied a visa on the grounds that she would apparently ‘incite discord or racial vilification’.
Peaceful Palestinian activist Bassem Tamimi was also denied a visa because he would apparently ‘incite discord’.
Kent Heckenlively, an anti-vaxxer, was denied a visa on character grounds because he was deemed "not in the national interest" due to his vaccine skepticism.
And the list goes on and on.
The truth is, we don’t have freedom of speech in Australia, and we have never had a constitutional law to enshrine it.
What we have is people like our current Home Affairs Minister, Tony Burke, who openly stated that he ‘couldn’t care less about freedom of speech’ when deciding who may enter the country.
That said, none of this is overly dramatic. Not yet. But a glance towards the UK and we might wish to pause and think.
Right now, their government arrests around 30 people per day for what are deemed ‘offensive’ or malicious online messages.
In fact, you can get a knock on your door from the police in the UK for simply liking or retweeting a post!
What’s more, digital technology now gives authorities and corporations unprecedented powers of surveillance and behavioral control, and this can easily degenerate into social credit systems like those in China.
And once that happens, any suggestion of ‘dissent’ can be punished, all the more so when we have introduced CBDCs (central bank digital currencies), which can be frozen at the flick of a switch.
Of course, you might still think that such things wouldn’t bother you.
“I have nothing to hide,” you think. “I'm happy to be a good little law-abiding citizen.”
And that, most likely, is what most people in Nazi Germany thought while others were being persecuted. But the truth, ultimately, was that few people were safe.
So maybe it’s like the proverbial frog being boiled alive. If the water temperature is raised slowly enough, it doesn't notice.
Restrict our freedoms one teeny bit by teeny bit, and we never raise an objection.
Not until it is too late!
What’s more, since the media feeds us a highly curated version of the news, we are typically ignorant of the things we should be objecting to.
And if this sounds conspiratorial, just ask yourself whether we read the same news as they do in Russia, China, Israel, Iran, or wherever.
No, each country tells its own story, and each country says it’s the truth.
What’s even sneakier is that, beyond the simple lies the media often tells, it often curates events and ideas in ways that give us an illusion of freedom.
As linguist Noam Chomsky famously observed, “The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum.”
In this way, we’re like the frog in the well that thinks the well is the entire world. It can hop and swim about all it wants inside that well, so it thinks it is free. But how much is it really living? How much is it truly experiencing all of the wonders of life?
And this is the real danger of where we are heading.
For fear of offending, for fear of stirring up trouble, we censor ourselves even before others can censor us.
And if we do speak out, then ‘cancel culture’ is ready to swoop down on us and expunge us from the face of the earth.
But ultimately, if we keep giving in to the ‘god of fear’, no one will ever need to cancel us. We will shun all ‘dangers’. We will ask to be protected. We will have become what Herbert Marcuse called a ‘one-dimensional man’ – a flattened version of humanity, one that spins in ever narrower circles. A docile, domesticated version of ourselves without both our rougher edges and our spark, our vigor, our life.
We’ll be the eagle that has been trained to behave like a barnyard hen – safe, well-fed, but never soaring.
Narrow our vision with media campaigns and legislation, and we’ll spin in ever smaller circles.
The colors.
The mountaintops.
The exploration of ideas and philosophies that make us truly human.
They will disappear from sight and mind.
As such, our life will be hollowed out of all substance, and we will become little more than living zombies.
So maybe it is time to step out of the cage.
Maybe it is time we recognize what spiritual seekers have long known: that it is our challenges that generally spur us toward our greatest growth.
Maybe it is time to acknowledge that we all have a deeper side to us. A spirit that yearns for a deeper connection to life.
To something beyond the mundane.
So rather than lobbying for more safety, laws, and protective restrictions, maybe it is time we opened the metaphorical city gates, let the outside in, and learned from a richer set of experiences.
We might not like everything about those we let in.
They might, from time to time, push our buttons.
But we can’t deny that they will add more color and texture to our existence.
So while we might be safer if we keep the gates closed, and while we might be safer with a paternalistic government that erases all dissenting voices and people, will we be more fulfilled, more evolved?
Or will we be making a ‘deal with the Devil’, selling our souls for safety and security?
Like soil that, without manure, decomposing matter, and the like, slowly degrades.
Like the trees in the biosphere, will our restrictive, sanitized, safe life ultimately lead to more depression, anxiety, and boredom?
So call me crazy, but I'd prefer to be Socrates dissatisfied.
I'd prefer to risk the dangers so I can taste the full spectrum of experiences that life has to offer, even when they bring me pain.
I’d prefer to be given the freedom to choose my own fate, voice my own opinions, and let others voice theirs.
We can choose a glorified cage.
Or we can choose the vast uncertainty of life.
We can give in to the god of safety, to a paternalistic society that monitors our every thought and action, or we can accept uncertainty, embrace self-responsibility, and take our chances.
But here is the thing: the time for choosing is now.
For if we don’t decide soon, our decision will be made for us.
And when the cage door slams shut, we might never find a way to open it again.
— Article by Om Reiki Founder, Jeremy O'Carroll
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