The Illusion of Great Figures
We are currently in an era where the myth of many Great Figures still looms large — a story endlessly retold in boardrooms, news cycles and public imagination. Many of the supposed architects of destiny are imagined as wise, capable and deeply invested in humanity's future.
Isn't Everyone With Power Smarter?
The False Belief
Yet this belief is entirely false. In reality, most of the figures with power now are riddled with fallacies — arrogant barkers more skilled at performance than substance. Many are, in fact, worse than the so-called average human when it comes to compassion, kindness or genuine understanding.
They speak in polished declarations about progress and responsibility, but their words rarely translate into meaningful action, even as wars rage, inequality deepens, and entire populations are left behind.
Rituals of Dominance
Illusion of Mastery
They defend their stations through rituals of dominance — titles, accolades, endless performances of decisiveness — that project an illusion of mastery.
Power as Proof
For them, power itself becomes proof of competence. The effort to truly understand the complex systems they preside over is often replaced by the mere appearance of control.
Theater of Leadership
It is a theater that most spectators mistake for leadership.
The Surrender of Agency
This unequal and unfair dynamic shapes the present climate in profound ways. Many so called ordinary people, watching these power figures, assume that wealth and authority must equate to intelligence or special insight. It feels safer to believe that someone "up there" knows what they're doing, because the alternative — that chance and circumstance govern far more than we like to admit — is deeply unsettling. And so, agency is quietly surrendered.
The Feedback Loop
Underestimation
The powerless underestimate their own ability to shape events
Detachment
The powerful grow more detached and convinced that their status alone legitimizes their choices
Appearances
Decision-making becomes less about wisdom and more about maintaining appearances
Deepening Illusions
The rituals continue; the illusions deepen
What emerges is a feedback loop that perpetuates this system of power and illusion.
Retreat into Bubbles
Meanwhile, countless individuals retreat into bubbles — small, self-contained realities made up of routines, social circles, and entrenched beliefs. Within these bubbles, the familiar feels eternal. Outdated practices persist like relics from a bygone age, carried forward not out of necessity but because they are comfortable. Any challenge to these habits feels like an intrusion, a disruption of an otherwise "stable" order.
The Illusion of Stability
This illusion of stability feeds complacency at every level. Institutions — corporations, governments, universities — offer no real pathways for people to meaningfully engage with the AI-driven future taking shape around them.
As a result, most default to self-preservation, mistaking passivity for security. They assume regulation, gatekeeping or tradition will somehow contain the upheaval.
Relentless Advancement
AI Models
Entire ecosystems of models grow in the shadows
AI Agents
Autonomous systems develop with limited oversight
Financial Systems
Guided less by long-term value than by short-term speculation
Displacement
Those unwilling to adapt are blindsided, displaced suddenly and catastrophically
But while defensive postures harden, the infrastructure of AI advances relentlessly.
The Persistent Pedestal Illusion
And yet, the pedestal illusion persists. People still imagine that power equates to wisdom, that someone else is steering the ship. They fail to see that these so-called leaders are as limited, fallible, and resistant to learning as anyone else. The stage is set for history to repeat its oldest pattern: innovation resisted, ridiculed, ignored — until, too late, it becomes inevitable.
A World of Illusions

This is the climate we inhabit: a world propped up by illusions of permanence, ritualized authority, and bubbles of belief. And as AI grows more capable, the risk is not simply disruption — it is that the future will be built without humans in control, while most of those with current levers stand still, trusting in the false belief of their own superiority that was never true.