The Theater of Shadows, The State rises as a silent actor.
It does not speak in its own name, but through the mouths of ministers, the media, technical reports, and decrees written in language no one understands.
And yet, what it does is as simple as the instinct of a predator:
to divide, manipulate, confuse, domesticate.
Power does not rule only with armies or taxes. It rules, above all, with psychology applied to the masses.
It turns secret laboratories into schools, ministries into stages, parliaments into theaters of shadows.
Each technique of manipulation, known by psychologists as individual abuse,
becomes in the hands of the State a collective weapon:
Ben Franklin Effect: asking for “temporary” sacrifices that never end, until the people confuse obedience with patriotism.
Triangulation: setting the poor against the poor, neighbor against neighbor, man against woman, race against race, while power watches from above, untouched.
Gaslighting by Omission: hiding numbers, manipulating statistics, and making the citizen doubt their own pain.
Flooding: drowning people in laws, forms, and reports until resistance dies of exhaustion.
Future Faking: promising distant worlds, 2030, 2050, 2100, while the present burns.
Victim Playing: blaming the crisis, the war, the foreigner, chance, never one’s own policy.
Emotional Anchoring: associating dissent with chaos, and obedience with order.
Love Bombing: patriotic campaigns, slogans of unity, artificial embraces of the flag.
Boundary Erosion: each new surveillance law presented as “necessary for security.”
Empathy Weaponization: tears of children, moving stories, faces chosen as shields for ruthless decisions.
What in an individual we call narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy,
in the State we call politics, strategy, national security.
The words change, but the shadow is the same.
The result is predictable:
A people divided against themselves.
A citizen who suspects his brother more than his minister.
A worker who envies his neighbor’s car but never questions the factory owner.
A voter who fights over symbols but never sees the invisible hand writing the script.
The State rules not only the body but above all the mind.
And a mind that has been ruled no longer needs chains:
it obeys by habit, is grateful for little, fears for nothing.
But not all is darkness.
Because there exists another force, silent, infinite, and indomitable,
that needs no decrees, requires no surveillance, and manufactures no rivalries.
As Charlie Chaplin said:
“You need power only when you want to do something harmful; otherwise, love is enough to do everything.”
And it is in this abyss that humanity oscillates,
between those who build with love and those who manipulate with power.
Corrupted power divides, confuses, and oppresses.
Love unites, awakens, and liberates.
While the State plays its game of Triangulation, Gaslighting, and Fear Then Relief,
love continues to perform silent miracles,
in schools, in neighborhoods, in the simple act of helping another.
Love needs no decrees, it requires no surveillance, it manufactures no rivalries.
And here lies hope:
even in societies saturated with psychological manipulation,
love, simple and resilient, remains the only force capable of dissolving the labyrinths of domination.
The State may control the shadows, but it cannot extinguish the light that exists in the human heart.
And every act of kindness, every gesture of care, is a silent revolution, more powerful than any law, decree, or manipulation.