The world is crazy. Almost everyone sees it that way and the closer you look, the more this impression is confirmed. Behind all the nonsense, violence, profiteering, political insincerity and media hysteria lies a thicket of wrong, right, partially right, contradictory or only apparently contradictory thoughts, philosophies, ideologies and theories. In between, in the void of lack of concept and as an external expression of a barely concealed uncertainty and helplessness, “pragmatic” politics manages the achievements of a great civilization without a plan or goal, while the crumbling of the foundation is overlooked on a rational level and repressed on an emotional level. It is therefore to conclude that there are fundamental contradictions.

A successful search for a way out of the general disorientation requires, above all, approaching political schools of thought, ideologies and world views without prejudice. This means, in particular, consciously and consistently not allowing yourself to be influenced by taboos and other psychological barriers. – On closer inspection, these barriers in particular turn out to be significantly higher and more effective than expected. However, once they have been overcome, they themselves provide an important piece of puzzle for the solution.

People are subject to manipulative suggestibility to a staggering extent. The psychology professor Stanley Milgram carried out a series of experiments on this topic on the premises of Yale University in New York from 1961 (first publication in 1963). Milgram wanted to find out by what means people could be persuaded to torment and endanger innocent fellow human beings. The volunteer test subjects were each ordered into the laboratory in pairs and "informed" about the alleged aim of the investigation - according to which that was to determine the influence of punishment on learning behavior.                                                       In advance, it was determined by lottery who should be the teacher and who should be the student. - In truth, however, there was only one test person in each test run, who was always assigned the role of the teacher by lot manipulation, while the supposed student was always the same sympathetic employee. In the fictitious role-playing game, the supposed teacher was supposed to administer supposed electric shocks to the acting student if the poor learning results left something to be desired. The very extensive series of tests showed that 65% of the test persons, under the supervision of authoritarian test leaders, increased the voltage of the current surges to an alleged 450V - after the "student" had already stopped showing any signs of life. Milgram has held up a mirror to people like no one before and has thus provided an invaluable aid to self-assessment.                                                                    But instead of the well-deserved recognition, he was given a professional demotion and was exposed to extensive criticism - under the sign of ethical and moral concerns. However, such an "ethics" contradicts the basic idea of freedom when viewed in the light, because it amounts to restrictions on neutral research and on the dissemination of knowledge. This way, people are kept away from the truth and thus prevented from acting responsibly.                      It was precisely this aspect of responsibility that Milgram thought about when he evaluated the experiments (with a total of over 400 people). He came to the socio-psychological conclusion that people basically interact with each other in two modes: in the "autonomous state" - acting independently or in the "agentic state". According to Milgram, the willingness to take responsibility for one's own actions is the decisive characteristic of autonomous, independent action. In the "agent state", on the other hand, responsibility is handed over to the person who issues the instructions.                                                                      For the rulers of all epochs, a strong readiness on the part of their subjects to submit and obey in the "agentic state" was more than a welcome characteristic, it was the basis for asserting and stabilizing their claims to power. Karl Marx, as a critical observer of social conditions, recognized the decisive means with which people are ruled, i.e. kept in the "agentic state" permanently, namely with a tailor-made philosophy: "The thoughts of the ruling class are the dominant thoughts in every epoch, i. H. the class, which is the ruling material power of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual power.” Karl Marx The German ideology. Marx/Engels, MEW 3, p. 46, 1846/1932, Reference: https://beruhmte-zitate.de/autoren/karl-marx/                                                                                                                         The sociologist Prof. Noam Chomsky (b. 1928) found „However, most people are unaware that they are being held in a mental cage, in a world of rigidly defined ways of looking at things that are taboo to leave … The majority do not understand what is really happening. And they don't even understand that they don't understand." / Noam Chomsky, Media Control            Even the philosophers and thinkers were and are essentially children of their time, they swam or swim, like other people, “with the current”. The psychological phenomenon so brusquely revealed to us by Stanley Milgram in no way affects just ordinary citizens and chronic opportunists who always “follow the wind”.                                                                                  Rather, even the constructs of thought of the supposedly absolutely free-thinking philosophers to a large extent merely represented images within the worldviews of their contemporaries that were valid at the time - i.e. compatible with the interests of the rulers - and only to a limited extent products of their own free thoughts and independent judgment. Positioning oneself clearly outside the prevailing ideological mainstream has always required a good measure of civil courage, namely the willingness to doubt established authorities and doctrines. But, as the experiments of Milgram and other psychologists confirm, this is absolutely not one of the strengths of civilized man.

But there were and are always actual free thinkers like Noam Chomsky, or revealers of secret machinations like Edward Snowden and Julian Assange. They had or have the courage to represent their own opinions against established forces or dare go public with explosive revelations.

Ultimately, it is the integration of individual elements of one philosophy into a supposed opposing second one, that brings the necessary order to the confusion of current socioeconomic conditions. Ayn Rand (1905-1982) can be considered the most argumentatively strong advocate of capitalism, and Karl Marx (1818-1883) its most important opponent. 

While both were distinguished by excellent powers of observation and judgment, they also made fundamental misjudgments. Two of the latter concern Marx's questioning of private property and his reckless advocacy of revolutionary violence - as history demonstrated. 

Even today, all those who believe that the ever-accumulating social contradictions require a revolution are mistaken. Quite the opposite, violent 'solutions' would destroy the chances of shifting onto the rational and just path to sustainable stability in the now inevitable global upheaval. – The European civil war in Ukraine and the fifth edition of the Middle East war show that, in the absence of immediate, rational reforms, a sinking of liberal civilization into a violent chaos is on the agenda – with autocrats as the victors.