I’m Convinced the World Is Run by the Devil

Or, why people spend time doing things they hate

Sophie Schmidt — the founder and publisher of Rest of World, a publication that talks about, well, the rest of the world — the world that’s typically overlooked and underestimated — once wrote this about North Korea:

To the outside world, North Korea projects an image of absolute control over its population. After all, the population lives under constant ideological education — including a Pyongyang TV channel that names and shames individual residents for treasonous violations — and with extremely high penalties, like a minor infraction sending three generations of a family to a prison camp.

Imagine your grandparents, your parents, your siblings (along with you of course) being sent the to the prison because you somehow found a way to visit TheSundayWisdom.com and read one of my posts. Truly horrifying!

Whenever you hear people talking about dystopian futures, you imagine something similar. And when you talk about North Korea specifically, one of the alltime famous works that’s gonna get brought up is, well, you guessed it, George Orwell’s 1984.

1984 is a classic! It’s like the Casablanca of dystopian futures. 1984 was written in 1949 and is set in a totalitarian society ruled by something called the “Party” led by the enigmatic figure “Big Brother.”

But I believe a far more nightmarish representation of a dystopian future is NOT Orwell’s 1984, but Aldous Huxley’s 1932 book Brave New World.

Brave New World presents a future society that’s highly controlled and extremely conformist. Where people are genetically engineered and conditioned from birth to fit into specific societal roles. The government, known as the World State, uses various methods such as sleep conditioning and propaganda to maintain stability and control over its citizens. Unlike in 1984 and North Korea, where it’s still possible to realise that you’re part of an oppressive government, it’s not so straightforward in Brave New World.

In Brave New World, once people come of age, the government gives everybody a hallucinogenic drug called soma, that people take every day. The interesting part is that it’s not mandatory to take soma, but everyone takes it anyway. It makes you calm, rids you of any negative emotions, and turns you into a model citizen. Kind of like anti-anxiety medications and antidepressants. Who wouldn’t want that!

In this world, you don’t have to force people to fall in line, you just make them dependent on a drug, and then watch them as they continue to take the drug, voluntarily, day after day. In this world, you might feel something’s off but you cannot really put your finger on it. Kind of feels like the current world we live in, no?

HOW TO MAXIMISE HUMAN MISERY

I’ve got a dark side. I often spend a lot of time wondering what all I would do to maximise the misery of the people I don’t like.¹

Nothing sinister though. My fantasies are harmless. Like, maybe I’d hire someone to put a tiny pebble in someone’s shoe every morning, just enough to bug them but not enough for them to notice it’s there. Or, I’d sign them up for every spam email list known to humanity. For my pièce de résistance, I’d get them hired at a job where they have to attend all sorts of useless training sessions and meetings day in day out.²

What I’m actually trying to say is that if I really want to maximise human misery, I would 100% make them spend more time doing things they hate.

Picture individuals languishing in endless traffic jams, their patience fraying with each passing minute as they inch forward at a glacial pace, trapped in a metal cocoon of frustration.

Add to this the stress of deciphering complex legal documents, and the sheer tedium of waiting in line for hours at government offices, and you have a potent recipe for human misery.

Then there’s the soul-crushing monotony of mandatory meetings, where hours are squandered discussing trivial matters, while pressing deadlines loom ominously in the background.

And let’s not forget the joyless obligation of attending family gatherings with distant relatives, where strained conversations and awkward silences reign supreme, leaving one longing for a quick escape.

But the most devilish thing I would do is create a world where, unlike money, success, career, or fame, “fun” is not something important to pursue. I would create a world where not being enough productive is a big big problem, but not having enough fun is not an issue at all. A world where, even if people really really suffer from lack of fun, they don’t complain. In fact, I’d dream up a world where people often strangle fun to death with their own hands for the sake of “productivity”.

I think the devil is real and above all he wants us to be productive. That’s why people eat up books such as Atomic Habits, Getting Things Done, Eat That Frog in gobs. Books that are disguised as advice and hacks to make yourself better, which basically translates to: how to make the most out of your time, or, more appropriately, how to squeeze every drop of productivity out of you until you’re left bone dry.

Books of this genre are like the soma in Brave New World that people willingly take everyday — and force themselves into doing things they absolutely hate — without any kind of Big Brother coercing them — just for the sake of making the most out of their time, and becoming more and more productive.

Now, I dunno about you, but if you label a day as “productive” despite despising nearly every task you did, but still somehow convince yourself that it’s a positive thing, guess what buddy: you’re in hell!

HOW TO INCREASE YOUR WORTH IN SOCIETY

I’m not saying that productivity is inherently bad. I’m not saying that trying to improve yourself by making the most of your time is bad. I’m not even saying that trying to use hacks to build good habits is bad.

I for one try to put a lot of effort in forming healthy habits, such as reading, working out regularly, eating right, learning a new language, and many other such pursuits.

The only difference is that I’m not necessarily trying to do all these so that I can increase my output or increase my market value. So that I can get a promotion, or perhaps, a better job with a better salary, or, so that I can make some money, or perhaps close a business deal. I mean, those might be side effects of my endeavours, but none of them are my primary motivations.

A sinister motivation of increasing your productivity or picking up new skillsets is one where you don’t do something for the sake of it — you do it with an ulterior motive. One where self-improvement is only a means to some end.

In such cases, you may not really wanna do something, yet you force yourself to become better at it, by setting hefty goals, and then failing at it, and then hating yourself for it, and then doing the same thing all over again. All in the name of increasing your market value.

This is the version of productivity or self-improvement or habit building that I completely despise, because you aren’t doing any of the things for fun, or to explore your curiosity. You aren’t picking up new hobbies — such as business writing, or a new programming language, or painting, or chess — because you want to try something new. You aren’t coming from a place of exploration; you’re doing all these so that you can increase your worth in society.

This is a very cold and logical reason for doing something. It’s also a recipe to spend time doing things you absolutely hate doing, such as doing online courses you aren’t interested in, just because it’ll help you grow in your career, or, attending networking events to expand your professional contacts even if it scares the hell outta you, or, sacrificing weekends and evenings to work on passionless projects solely because they bolster your portfolio.

When our actions lack genuine passion, we resort to honing skills not out of intrinsic motivation but as a means to excel in the workplace. We prioritise mental resilience, not for our own well-being, but to navigate office challenges more adeptly. Leadership skills become a commodity to impress potential employers, rather than a quality cultivated through genuine experience.

Even though these skills are best honed through real-life encounters, you’d rather fork over $999 for a twelve-hour hands-on course, just to speed things up.

THE GREATEST TRICK THE DEVIL EVER PULLED

I think one of the reasons we’re becoming more and more productivity freaks, one of the reasons why books on finding, marinading, cooking, eating, and digesting frogs sell like hot cakes is because most free societies allow you to “be whatever you want to be.”

This credo on the first glance sounds great, because you have absolute freedom to do what you want to do — be whoever you want to be and nobody would coerce you to fit into any particular role. The world is your oyster in such a society. But at the same time, it also sends the message that you’re basically on your own.

There’s no ceiling above your head, and you can be however good or however bad you wanna be. This essentially translates to: If you aren’t successful, it’s totally on you! Because, well, you had the opportunity to become whoever you wanted to become. Nobody was stopping you — neither the society nor you friends and family — so, why didn’t you become your best version? Most likely due to your own shortcomings. What a leuser!

I believe, to avoid such kind of misery, to avoid this exact kind of fate, we unknowingly push ourselves to the extremes — we work ourselves to death, we signup for courses that promise to 10x our output, we join companies that pay us a lot of money, but eat away a bit of our soul every day, we willingly drink the soma to keep emotions like joy, fun, excitement, thrill in check, and carry on with the drudgery with a faux-stoic expression.

Now, all this isn’t super obvious to everyone. Unlike North Korea and Orwell’s 1984, things are not so straightforward in Huxley’s Brave New World and the world we inhabit. We feel something’s off, but we can never put our finger on what’s exactly the problem.

We often don’t realise how the world is organised; we don’t realise that we’re all part of this rat race of increasing our worth in society — via job, status, money, fame, whatever. And there’s no cap or limit on any of these; you must continuously outpace others.

You might be 10x more productive now than you were before, and 100x more productive than you were before that, yet it’ll never be enough. This race doesn’t have a finish line.

I believe this obsession with self-improvement, this endless drive to increase our worth is not inherent in our nature, but rather a consequence of our environment.

The 19th century poet and critic Charles Baudelaire had a famous line (that was also used by the character of Kevin Spacey in the movie The Usual Suspects): “The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.”

I believe a world that rewards self-obsession and individualism, where success is measured by one’s ability to continually outperform others as well as themselves, can only be designed by a devil who, unlike Kim Jong Un, we believe doesn’t exist.

In such a world, one that allows you to be whatever you want to be, you’re effectively nothing but a commodity in a marketplace of personal branding, and your primary job is to enhance your market value through relentless self-improvement. And the quickest way to increase your market value is to call 666-666 for a 12-hour hands-on course on self-improvement, productivity, and building effective habits . When you call, don’t forget to tell them the devil sent you.

1. They aren’t necessarily my enemies, it’s just that I don’t like them much.

2. To think about it, I think these are far far more sinister ideas than wishing for something like, I hope they lose money, or their job, or get into some sort of accident.