Why I Don’t Believe in “Educating the Masses”
I’ve stopped pretending that people can be collectively “uplifted.” Not because I’m cynical for the sake of it, but because history makes the point for me.
Human needs haven’t changed. Scarcity still dictates behaviour. Under pressure, people default to:
self-interest,
family interest,
tribe/cluster interest.
Social structures evolve at a glacial pace, while human instincts barely evolve at all. Anyone who believes mass enlightenment is around the corner is either selling something or trying to deceive themselves.
I don’t think the masses are “curable,” and I don’t think broad education solves anything fundamental. Most of what gets called “progress” is just people adapting to new forms of the same old incentives.
But my pessimism doesn’t make me passive.
If anything, it clarifies what is worth doing.
I keep learning, reading, and writing — not because I want to fix society, but because these actions repair something inside me. They give shape to a life that has never felt fully stable. They allow me to organise my thoughts, to trace the patterns behind my own reactions, to separate inherited beliefs from the ones I choose.
And maybe — quietly, without noise or performance — my writing can shed a small beam of light for the few people who think in the same cracks I do. Not for a crowd. Not for “everyone.” Just for the ones who recognise these patterns in their own lives and haven’t had the words for them.
I’m not trying to save the world. I’m trying to understand it well enough that it stops distorting me.
If anything I write helps someone else do the same, that’s more than enough.