The Intelligence That Undoes Us

The Intelligence That Undoes Us

“Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

Lord Acton’s warning has echoed through centuries, etched into laws and revolutions, always resurfacing as if we might finally learn. We don’t.

Democracy was meant to keep power in check, a system designed to rotate privilege before it curdles. But it’s become a revolving door for the same tired faces and louder, more divisive actors. These days, the voting booth is as much a stage for performance as for principle. The audience drifts, convinced their lines don’t matter, until the next wave of desperation or rage pushes them back in, never to mend, only to break the center further.

We’re left with sharper swings, deeper divides, and, in the chaos, power consolidates in the shadows. Trust in media collapses. Narratives splinter into echo chambers. Fear spreads faster than truth.

Rousseau dreamt of a society guided by the “general will” , a shared compass to steer us towards justice. But what compass do we have now, spinning wildly as every voice drowns in algorithmic noise? The social contract feels shredded; we scroll instead of deliberate. There is no general will , just factions, slogans, and digital mobs.

Marx warned that systems built on alienation and inequality would inevitably eat themselves. We’re living that contradiction daily: billionaires racing to Mars while cities drink lead, technology racing ahead while wisdom lags miles behind. We built networks that connect billions, and yet, most of us feel more isolated, more divided, more easily manipulated than ever.

And so, all this accumulated intelligence , these libraries, these machines, this supposed collective genius, falls prey to the oldest trick in the book:

Fear, weaponized by a handful of opportunists.

Not visionaries. Not philosophers.

Just narcissists with microphones, spinning anxiety into a separatist creed, preying on ignorance and stoking suspicion.

It doesn’t take a conspiracy; it just takes indifference, scrolling, and the false hope that someone else will step up.

We trained algorithms to save lives, but they’re better at provoking outrage.

We wrote philosophies meant to safeguard us, only for populists to rip them apart, turning wisdom into angry slogans.

Acton was right: power corrupts, but above all, it reveals. It unmasks the hollowness of our collective self-image, showing us we are not wise enough for the power we’ve created.

If a future species studies us, they’ll say we had the intelligence of a single ant. But that flatters us, ants build, ants cooperate. Ants don’t vote for their own destruction.

I’ve spent my life searching for the biggest problem I could help solve, hoping to make some small dent in our collective mess. But every time I circle back, the answer is the same:

The Earth will recover faster without us.

Rivers will run clear, forests will return, the world will heal, if we’re gone.

Because we are too stupid to save this place, and too arrogant to admit it.

Power corrupts, absolute power exposes. It exposes the hard truth:

We never became a society capable of thinking beyond our own small, self-centered existence.

And this is the part where I’m supposed to tell you there’s a ray of hope.

But hope, honestly, just makes people forget everything above, lets them off the hook. There is no ray of hope, unless you become it. Don’t expect someone else to step up so you can go back to your avocado toast. If you want change? Be it, for fuck’s sake.

Me? I’ve seen the ray of hope and lost it so many times I’m not sure it exists, or that I could be it, even if I tried. Maybe I’ve given up. Maybe that’s just what it is.

But at least let’s stop lying to ourselves:

If the end comes, it won’t be with fire or flood, but with applause for a madman

while the rest of us scroll past,

waiting for someone else to fix it.