I wonder if one possibility of what is happening is that human nature as described in stories like yours from school, is on steroids from social control. I’m thinking of this from a Yuval Harari talk:

“If you know enough biology and have enough computing power and data, you can hack my body and my brain and my life, and you can understand me better than I understand myself. You can know my personality type, my political views, my sexual preferences, my mental weaknesses, my deepest fears and hopes. You know more about me than I know about myself. And you can do that not just to me, but to everyone. A system that understands us better than we understand ourselves can predict our feelings and decisions, can manipulate our feelings and decisions, and can ultimately make decisions for us.”

I don’t think we’re at what he describes quite yet, but we are getting there. They are trying to curate what information goes into people’s brains on a mass level and are making no secret about trying to do this. When they grow very adept, many people will be lost forever. In other words, if they can “hack” billions of people, but individually via such methods as algorithms based on your viewing behavior, I wonder if even we in these comments will be able to know what is real. That’s why timeless words and principles are so important. The First and Second Amendments, for instance, help to ground us. The words of people from the past like Solzhenitsyn or Orwell or Arendt help to ground us. The Bible helps to ground us. I think that’s why so many of us are referencing principles and timeless concepts and words from the past. These are beacons of light that seem to be illuminating our lives.

However, what I have not seen in any of these timeless words and concepts is HOW YOU BEAT growing totalitarianism. Is there anyone from the past who has written about that?