From Tyranny to Harmony
My Personal Proclamation for Genuine Freedom
Harmony is freedom in resonance with others.
Tyranny is freedom at the expense of others.
I recently confronted a drug-addled youngster on the train who was playing what I can only describe as a violent marriage of techno metal and digital hardcore—at volume ten, through a twenty-kilogram ghetto blaster. Our entire carriage became an unwilling dance floor, passengers frantically bouncing not only to the cadence of the rails but also to the relentless assault of one traveller's personal soundtrack.
With considerable trepidation and the fear of soon sporting a knife between my ribs, I approached him. "Perhaps you'd consider earbuds?" I suggested, my voice barely audible above the cacophony. He fixed me with violent bloodshot eyes that could have destroyed his sound system. But it worked. Silence returned. For a moment, I felt like a hero.
I don't begrudge anyone the freedom to lose themselves in their favorite music. But I believe there's a way to exercise that freedom without terrorizing the eardrums of everyone within a fifty-meter radius.
This moment crystallized something I'd been wrestling with for years: most people think tyranny requires dictators and military parades. They're missing the point entirely. Tyranny is everywhere, wearing different masks, and we've grown disturbingly comfortable with its presence.
The Many Faces of Tyranny
Tyranny is the oppressive wielding of power by one or few, trampling individual rights, justice, and freedoms—often enforced through fear, sometimes through indifference, always through the fundamental disregard for others' humanity.
The Tyranny of the Group
I was twelve when a cabal of schoolboys decided they were superior beings and took the liberty—I use this word with deliberate irony—of asserting their dominance over me, repeatedly, sometimes violently. The schoolyard bullying lasted three years. The emotional reconstruction took many more, and it probably altered the fundamental architecture of who I am. I harbor an absolute and uncompromising hatred for those who prey upon the vulnerable.
The Tyranny of the Majority
A majority of voters in my supposedly "free" democratic nation of The Netherlands elevated to power a political party dedicated to deporting anyone lacking the proper ethnic and religious credentials. With breathtaking cynicism, they call themselves the "Party for Freedom." But what recourse do we have? Vote against these xenophobes in the next round? Isn't this ritual of perpetually voting against others the very poison at the heart of our electoral disease?
The Tyranny of Ideology
I was raised Christian—or rather, my mother made a valiant attempt. Scripture dictated not only how I should be, but more insidiously, how others should conform to the prevailing doctrine. When people freely embrace a belief system, they often demand your compliance, making it exponentially harder to emerge as different—in my case, gay—especially when your very existence challenges the orthodoxy of those wielding power.
But tyranny has many more faces. After three decades navigating corporate landscapes, I can confirm that organizations are particularly fertile breeding grounds for oppression.
The Tyranny of Autocracy
At sixteen, my physics teacher dismissed my drawing of a four-dimensional hypercube as "mathematical nonsense." Years later, I discovered the identical diagram in a book on Einstein's theory of relativity. Since that moment, the concept of singular authority has never sat well with me. Traditional managers despise being proven wrong, and some will punish you for either not knowing your place or for being perceived as competition that's a little too brilliant for comfort.
The Tyranny of Bureaucracy
Anyone who has witnessed my social media campaigns knows my profound contempt for pointless bureaucracy. Kafka would weep at today's labyrinthine formal procedures: endless supplier onboarding rituals, forms multiplying like digital tumors, documents uploaded into void-like systems, and the soul-crushing re-entry of data you've already surrendered a dozen times. With AI agents now amplifying this madness—caring nothing for time or dignity—we may be hurtling toward peak bureaucratic bullshit.
The Tyranny of Informality
In 1970, Jo Freeman published The Tyranny of Structurelessness, revealing a profound truth: eliminate formal power structures, and people will create informal ones. When power becomes a free-for-all, the subgroup of friends and buddies will seize control. Obedience to official policies gets swapped for compliance with unwritten rules. The graveyard of self-management experiments is littered with noble intentions gone malignant—proof that informality doesn't eliminate tyranny; it merely renders it invisible and therefore more pernicious.
Perhaps most urgent in our AI-saturated age is the rising dominion of machines. The acceleration of work could very well lead to an explosion of tyranny.
The Tyranny of Algorithms
We're in danger of constructing a new form of autocracy where artificial intelligence makes crucial decisions faster and often better than humans—yet nobody can explain the logic lurking within these black boxes. We're entering an era of "computer says no" situations, with human operators shrugging accountability from their shoulders like uncomfortable coats.
The Tyranny of Data
George Orwell's prophecy grows more relevant by the day: when knowledge about everything concentrates in the hands of a few, liberty withers for everyone else. It's one thing to monitor protestors or party-goers strolling down public streets. It's entirely another to impose surveillance of employees racing through warehouse corridors, their every movement tracked, analyzed, and judged. When data flows freely, human happiness may drown.
The Tyranny of Money
Algorithms and data run on thousands of machines requiring vast energy to power the computational engines driving the world's most sophisticated AIs. Money purchases intelligence. Intelligence begets influence and compliance. Little wonder that the tech billionaires and corrupt regimes of this world all scramble for the controls, buying themselves opportunities to craft docile, compliant users and workers.
From Tyranny to Harmony
I have always believed in freedom—genuine freedom.
I believe in the right to free association, democratic institutions that actually serve democracy, and authentic religious liberty. I believe business owners should have the autonomy to pursue success through ethical means. I also recognize that algorithms, data, and capital can be powerful tools for protecting liberties that might otherwise go under in anarchy.
But when one person's freedom becomes another person's cage, we have tyranny. When one person's freedom enhances another person's future, we achieve harmony.
Harmony is like homeostasis. It is not a passive peace—it's an active, balanced state where free individuals coexist cooperatively, fostering genuine understanding and mutual respect. And it requires a constant influx of work and energy.
The Choice Before You
For every schoolchild crushed by a cabal of bullies, there's an addict rescued by a community of survivors. For every entrepreneur suffocating under bureaucratic legislation, there's a solopreneur liberated by the automation of mind-numbing tasks. For every citizen suffering under surveillance, there's another saved from terrorism by predictive algorithms and satellite intelligence.
The knife of freedom cuts both ways.
The question isn't whether to embrace or reject these tools of power—it's how to wield them in service of harmony rather than tyranny.
When I play my favorite music, I ensure it doesn't assault anyone beyond the walls of my home. And in those rare moments when I'm allowed to share my musical taste publicly, I spend hours agonizing over which tracks might actually bring pleasure to others around me. Because I care as much about their joy as I do about my freedom of choice.
My Personal Proclamation
I am against tyranny in all its forms.
I am for harmony in all its possibilities.
This is more than philosophy—it's a blueprint for resistance. Every day, in small acts and large decisions, we choose between harmony and tyranny. We choose whether to exercise our freedom in resonance with others or at their expense. And we choose whether to stand up and speak up or sit in agony and suffering.
Like that one time on the train, I choose to stand up.
Live and let live.
Join me in the fight against tyranny's many faces. Choose harmony.
— Jurgen
p.s. This article cost me two coffees. If this personal proclamation resonates with your conscience, if you believe in freedom that elevates rather than oppresses, then consider buying me another coffee. Upgrade your Substack subscription. If you do the reading, I'll do the writing. Together, we can build a future of work where liberty and respect exist in harmony.
Very well elaborated. There are no shortage of threats from the many faces of tyranny.
I think most of these are somewhat understood or can be perceived, but the threat of the algorithm I believe to be one of the most insidious, as we cannot easily perceive how it is shaping societies and its power to do so is likely far greater than most realize.
I would add one additional facet, that being more people need to be aware of the motivations of tyranny often come from a place overlooked. The desire to make the world a better place. What I've called "The Paradox of Tyranny".
https://www.mindprison.cc/p/tyranny
This was a rich and honest read. I especially liked how this text connected the big abstract forms of tyranny with those quiet everyday moments in life.