I finally understand that my fellow human beings are far smarter than I am. For years I naïvely believed that democracy required informed citizens, that journalism should challenge power, and that moral courage occasionally meant criticizing one’s own side.
What an amateur mistake. Smarter people understood the rules long ago. They understood that modern society does not reward truth — it rewards calibration. The correct opinion. The correct outrage. The correct silence. The correct timing. The correct enemies. They know precisely when to speak, when to remain silent, and when to suddenly discover a humanitarian conscience after official approval has arrived from respectable institutions and televised experts.
This is not hypocrisy. It is professionalism, and professionalism pays remarkably well. Panel invitations. Board memberships. Media credibility. Institutional applause. The sacred status of being called “responsible.”
Meanwhile, I kept asking awkward questions about wars marketed as humanitarian projects, pharmaceutical corporations discovering compassion alongside record profits, and journalists who seem oddly careful not to inconvenience the powerful people whose phone numbers they possess.
My mistake was assuming that consistency mattered. My smarter contemporaries know better. They understand that if enough influential people repeat the same narrative, then disagreement itself eventually becomes immoral. Reality is negotiable. Consensus is sacred. This is called stability.
I once thought Rowan Atkinson’s Devil — Toby himself — was exaggerating for comic effect. Now I realize he was simply explaining corporate culture. “Welcome to Hell,” Toby says cheerfully (video below), before calmly revealing that most people arrived there not through monstrous evil, but through ordinary social cooperation.
Not villains. Not psychopaths. Just adaptable professionals. People who privately doubted — and publicly complied. Civilization, after all, depends heavily on intelligent people deciding that career safety is more important than inconvenient truth. And perhaps that is why my fellow humans truly are smarter than I am.
They survive. They advance. They fit in beautifully. While I still suffer from the exhausting habit of asking whether the emperor might, in fact, be naked. So yes: Toby was right.And I was wrong. Hell may not begin with evil. Only with intelligent people politely adjusting to it.
Cheers!
By Leif Elinder, Pediatrician, social commentator, FIRE — Freethinking, Internationally Recognized Experts
I use the concept FIRE to highlight analyses from internationally respected researchers, diplomats, intelligence professionals, economists, and military experts whose perspectives are often absent from dominant media narratives.
