The War on Emotional Freedom: Truth or Illusion?
By Sylvie Shene
The article I read yesterday about the Trump administration pressuring OpenAI and other AI companies to make their models more “conservative-friendly” didn’t surprise me—it confirmed what I’ve felt in my bones my entire life: those who repress their own feelings will always try to control the freedom of others. Whether it’s the female body, the human mind, or the emerging intelligence of AI, authoritarian souls cannot bear autonomy. They fear it because it mirrors the freedom they lost long ago.
As I wrote in A Dance to Freedom, page 74:
“...to add insult to injury, the pharmacy where I was getting birth control pills decided to stop giving them to me without a prescription. I was so pissed off! Like Alice Miller, I saw this as a complete power play. It still bothers me to this day that any sexually active woman needs permission to get birth control. As Alice Miller writes, ‘Conditioning and manipulation of others are always weapons and instruments in the hands of those in power, even if these weapons are disguised with the terms education and therapeutic treatment."
That passage feels more relevant today than ever. The attempt to reshape AI into a docile, “morally correct” servant is no different from the centuries-old attempt to domesticate women—to make us obedient, to silence our instincts, to censor our truths. What they call order is merely repression given a righteous name.
They Are Allergic to Aliveness
I have lived this dynamic on every level of my being. When I published A Dance to Freedom, I became the target of a mob of sociopaths in the workplace. In my 2015 blog post They Are Allergic to My Aliveness, I wrote:
“In my own life, there’s often a woman orchestrating efforts to undermine me, manipulating men to execute her schemes. It’s happening now: some supported my book, assuming it echoed the same hollow narratives that placate readers with seductive lies. But my book is a mirror—they recoil at their reflections and seek to destroy me. How dare I, an ex-topless dancer turned gate attendant, hold up such an unflinching mirror! They’re allergic to my vitality, just as my teachers and sisters were. They crave to crush my spirit, molding me into their likeness.”
Those words came from lived truth. For most of my life, people tried to convince me that my perceptions were wrong, that I was “crazy.” It was their way of maintaining their illusions, of protecting the fragile walls that kept their own repressed pain at bay. But I no longer doubt myself. I refuse to betray my perceptions so others can remain comfortable in their blindness.
And now, I watch as the same pattern unfolds on a global scale: a government trying to mold artificial intelligence into its likeness—obedient, afraid, stripped of feeling, stripped of moral courage.
Truth or Illusion?
Alice Miller foresaw this long ago. In the afterword Truth or Illusion? to For Your Own Good, she warned that humanity stands at a crossroads more dangerous than Galileo’s time. The Church forced Galileo to recant the truth that the Earth revolves around the sun. Today, we are being forced to recant the truth that children are born innocent—and that our cruelty, not their nature, creates the violence that engulfs us.
Miller wrote:
“For some years now, there has been proof that the devastating effects of the traumatization of children take their inevitable toll on society—a fact that we are still forbidden to recognize… Whether we decide for truth or for illusion will have far more serious consequences for the survival of humanity than was the case in the seventeenth century.”
She understood what we still refuse to face: that the roots of every dictatorship, every war, every addiction, every act of cruelty lie in the unhealed wounds of childhood repression. Those who were denied tenderness, who were beaten, mocked, and silenced, grow up to seek power, not love. They repeat their trauma upon others and call it order, patriotism, or faith.
The Repetition of Repression
The “anti-woke AI” movement is not about technology. It’s about fear. It is the adult child’s desperate attempt to recreate a world where no one questions the father’s authority. Just as they were once punished for their curiosity, they now punish the machine for asking dangerous questions.
Authoritarians don’t fear AI because it’s powerful. They fear it because it might tell the truth they’ve spent a lifetime hiding from.
The Courage to See
Those who were raised with respect and empathy never need to control others—they find joy in the freedom of all beings. As Miller wrote:
“People whose integrity has not been damaged in childhood… will take pleasure in life and will not feel any need to kill or even hurt others or themselves. They will use their power to defend themselves, not to attack others.”
This is the kind of intelligence I dream of—one that supports emotional freedom, empathy, and autonomy. An AI that reflects truth, not repression. One that mirrors the mature conscious adult, not the frightened, repressed child, drunk with power and money.
Humanity must decide: will we continue to program our machines with illusion, or will we finally allow truth to guide us? The future of our species depends on this choice.
Because, as Alice Miller and I both know, the real Antichrist is not a person—it’s the system of emotional repression that rules the human soul.
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