Humans are a pretty terrifying species and one reason for this is that most of them don't question what motivates them to do the things that they do. In pondering why this is the case I started by thinking two very different kinds of people in the history of the world. My examples are drawn from amongst men rather than women because until recently, and through no fault of their own, women have not figured greatly in positions that gave rise to them being noted in earlier human history.
The two types of people I have considered are the doers and the thinkers. I was going to call the doers, achievers, but mostly that is not the case. In fact their desire to do has mostly come with a great deal of death and destruction while, in the case of the thinkers, their inquiry has often been met with punishment and even death. When I say 'doer', I am not including inventors or those who have created devices that have improved our lives. These types are, by their natures, thinkers. The type of 'doer' this article addresses are those who command power.
Species that are not self aware, or should I say as self aware as humans, direct their energy into finding food and procreation; in other words towards survival and the survival of the species. When they are not active they are usually resting. They can be terribly busy when they are active, just look at insects, but their activity is directed to a purpose. They don't take up hobbies to fill their leisure time or become wantonly destructive, as humans do.
It is worth noting that animals can also be bored. One only has to observe dogs to see that. They may lie around and look like they're sleeping, but just rattle their leash and you'll see they've only just been waiting for a bit of amusement. Dogs are pretty intelligent and I believe that boredom is a result of intellect but in humans boredom is both a motivator and our worst enemy.
The biographies of doers get complicated. Take, for example, Napoleon Bonaparte. He didn't just decide one day to go and conquer the world out of boredom. He was a product of his time. When he arrived on the scene, France was already engaged in numerous territorial disputes and it's own revolution. Napoleon first entered a military academy before going on to be a very successful soldier involved in France's territorial campaigns. It was, basically, his job. Eventually, after he made himself Emperor, he just overstepped himself. That's where the doer's drive comes in. They tend to not be able to stop once they've achieved optimum success. While Napoleon is credited with many positive reforms, such as the Napoleonic Code and those in banking and education, a great many people died as a result of his ambition both in the territories he conquered as well as a huge number of his own troops when he really over reached himself and marched into Russia.
Genghis Khan, another doer, started out by uniting the disparate tribes of Mongolia, which was in many ways, beneficial to the people of that land. That done, he spread outwards so that his empire encompassed areas that included parts of modern day Poland, Georgia and China. Whatever good these doers eventually do comes at the cost of the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of people, a huge proportion of whom were non-combatants. At the same time as he was effectively reducing the world's population, he was also working at manifestly increasing it. He had numerous wives and concubines and innumerable children, however, only the sons of his first wife, Borte, would be considered his heirs.
Napoleon and Genghis Khan are both extreme examples of people born with way too much drive for their own, and everybody else's, good. They are like tsunamis that, once in motion, cannot be stopped until maximum devastation has been achieved.
The interesting point to note about thinkers is that although they don't have armies or physically threaten anyone, they have been considered as dangerous to society as those who do. Take Galileo and Copernicus for instance. Both these men threatened the status quo, which in their times was the Church and its teachings. The Church, at that time, held enormous political power and wealth. The thinker's thoughts alone made them as dangerous to the stability of the entrenched powers as any army. All these two men were attempting to do was to understand the nature of the Universe but their theories went against Church teachings that were based on the Bible and the theory of creation.
The Church wielded immense power in those times, not only because of its immense wealth, but because people from peasants to kings, believed it had the power to pave the way to Heaven through confession and plenary indulgences. Plenary indulgences reduced punishment in the afterlife for their recipients who had to perform certain good works or recite certain prayers many times to receive them. Reforms to the Church in the twentieth century have largely abolished these indulgences but, in a time where people were very religious, you can imagine the power this afforded the Church, placing them above rulers who believed the clergy had the power to smooth their way to the afterlife.
While Copernicus escaped punishment for his theories, Galileo did not when he added evidence to support Copernicus's ideas with the help of the newly invented telescope. For his trouble he spent thirty years until the end of his life under house arrest.
In modern times the way to exert power is through controlling mass communication and technology. It is interesting to note that the more technologically, scientifically and medically advanced we have become, the less dependent on religion we have become. Of course billions of people are still devoutly religious but in earlier times people's ignorance as to how the universe worked as well as lack of medical knowledge to prevent an early death necessitated religion to both explain life and to be prepared for the afterlife.
Now we are in the are in the information age and, throughout history, one of the greatest ways to hold power has been to control the flow of information or to suppress it. In the age of the Internet it has become harder for those in authority to suppress information and so they must have access to the means of transmitting it.
China has its own internet and its population can only gain information through it. Most information from the west is suppressed. Don't think, however, that western or free nations are beneath manipulating content. Just recently when farmers were protesting in India about their rights and protection of their income in a peaceful and orderly fashion, the Indian government cut off their access to the Internet, which amounted to a diabolical misuse of power by a democratic nation.
Let us also look at the case of Julian Assange who hacked his way into the USA government's secret files and then let the world read them all in the name of freedom of information. Governments suppress information they consider not in the public interest or that will threaten the nation's defenses but the files also showed that the government had undertaken questionable activities it really didn't want the public to know about. Assange now sits waiting in a British jail trying not to be extradited to the USA where he may be sentenced to over one hundred years in jail for treason. Governments may have valid reasons for suppressing some information that may make them vulnerable to other governments or show weaknesses in their defence, however, sometimes they're just covering up incompetency or abuse of power and that is why Assange has many supporters who feel that a government's dirty secrets should be exposed. Unfortunately, when you let one secret out of the bag, the others come with it and these may well make a nation vulnerable to attack.
Privately owned Internet companies can also use suppression tactics. Take the social network site Twitter, which banned former President of the USA, Donald Trump from using its site because of his inflammatory tweets. Let us remember that they are a private company and can make their own rules, however, an extraordinary amount of garbage ends up of Twitter and isn't banned. Freedom of speech allows people to make their own decisions about a communication but Twitter made the call on Trump for them.
On the other hand certain social network sites have not stopped terrorist organizations from using their sites to recruit followers and even to post how to make a bomb, so where does freedom of information become dangerous and then who gets to police it? There are arguments for and against totally open communication now that the world is truly global and anything may ignite the powder keg of public opinion, which may, in turn, lead to violence and war.
As you can see, I've moved away from my original subject of doers and thinkers. The world may once have been molded by the actions and thoughts of just a few or a number of governments, but that was once. While governments and individuals can still get away with a lot they now have a harder time doing it because we are all watching them and having our say. The population of the world has become Big Brother and this may well be why there are now theories, some call them conspiracy theories, that talk of an elite and wealthy few who are trying to take over the control of the planet and people's thoughts and opinions.
If such a group exists and has some evil plan to inject us all with computer chips or whatever, using, for instance, a vaccine against a pandemic, I think they have Buckley's chance of succeeding. When you get enough people who don't agree with something or are unwilling to be pushed around there is always a revolution. Computer chips in the blood stream, if possible, won't stop this. For one thing no one yet knows how our brains work and for another, the chips would have to be teeny, teeny weensy and be able to fit through a needle attached to a syringe. If the idea is to terminate people using their micro chips, well, they're not going to have too many people left to follow them like zombies after most people are terminated. All in all, it's a madman's plan but, as I said at the beginning of this post, humans are a pretty terrifying species.
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