Yuval Noah Harari asks an important question:
Why do advanced societies—rich in knowledge, technology, and education—keep falling prey to mass delusion, deception, and destructive narratives?
His answer, however, misses the core truth.
Harari claims the problem is information. In his view, humans are generally good and wise, but when “good people” are fed bad information, they make bad decisions. In short: fix the information systems, and the problem resolves itself.
This explanation is comforting. It is also wrong.
The False Divide Between “Good” and “Bad” People
Harari still divides humanity into moral categories: good people versus bad information. This framework itself is a symptom of emotional blindness.
There are no good people and bad people.
There are only more or less emotionally repressed people.
Some carry mild repression; others carry dangerously unresolved childhood pain that has been split off from consciousness. The more severe the repression, the more vulnerable a person becomes to illusion, authority worship, scapegoating, superstition, and lies that offer emotional relief.
People do not cling to false narratives because they lack facts. They cling to them because those narratives protect them from unbearable emotional truths buried in childhood.
Information does not create mass delusion.
Repression does.
Why Facts Alone Never Save a Society
If information were the problem, modern societies would be the wisest in history. We have access to more data, research, journalism, and scientific knowledge than any civilization before us.
Yet here we are—more polarized, more irrational, more susceptible to propaganda than ever.
Why?
Because repression blinds people emotionally.
A repressed adult is still governed by the frightened, obedient, desperate child they once were—seeking safety, belonging, and authority. That child does not respond to facts. That child responds to fear, reward, punishment, and illusion.
This is why propaganda works even when facts are available.
This is why educated people fall for mass delusion just as easily as the uneducated.
This is why intelligence offers no immunity against deception.
The Question Harari Never Asks
If a layperson like me—with only a sixth-grade education—can see this clearly, the real question is not:
Why do societies fall for mass delusion?
The real question is:
Why can an intelligent, highly educated, world-famous thinker like Harari not see the emotional roots of it?
The answer is uncomfortable, but simple:
Because he, like most people in our society, remains emotionally repressed.
This is not a failure of intelligence. It is a failure of emotional consciousness.
Harari stays safely in the realm of cognition—stories, myths, information systems, power structures. He analyzes from the neck up. He never descends into the body, where repression lives. He never confronts the forbidden emotions of childhood: terror, rage, grief, helplessness.
And without that confrontation, emotional blindness remains intact.
Education Does Not Equal Awareness
Our society confuses education with wisdom.
But emotional insight has nothing to do with degrees, status, or IQ. It has everything to do with whether a person has had the courage to feel what was once forbidden to feel.
That courage is rare.
That is why historians, philosophers, politicians, and technologists keep circling the problem without touching its core. They describe the surface mechanics of delusion while remaining blind to its psychological engine.
The Paradox Is Not Human Nature — It Is Repression
Harari calls human history a paradox: rapid accumulation of knowledge alongside persistent superstition and deception.
There is no paradox.
Knowledge accumulates externally.
Emotional awareness must be gained internally.
Without confronting childhood repression, technological progress only amplifies human blindness. AI, media, and global networks do not create delusion—they accelerate it when placed in the hands of emotionally unconscious adults.
Until thinkers like Harari integrate childhood repression into their understanding of human behavior, their explanations will remain polished, popular, and incomplete.
Societies do not collapse because information fails.
They collapse because unfelt childhood pain runs the world.
And no amount of data can heal what people are still too afraid to feel.
This essay was written in collaboration with artificial intelligence (ChatGPT) as a tool for reflection, synthesis, and articulation. The responsibility for the ideas and interpretations expressed here remains my own.
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