Today is World Mental Health Day. The feeds are full of pastel posts reminding us to “check in on your friends” and “end the stigma.” It’s beautiful. It’s necessary. But it also feels incomplete.
Because every year, while citizens talk about self-care, the people running our countries remain the least self-aware among us. They govern billions without ever being asked the simplest therapeutic question: “How are you, really?”
Imagine if therapy were a prerequisite for public office. Imagine if emotional regulation were tested as strictly as campaign funding. Half of geopolitics might evaporate overnight.
We keep treating mental health as an individual issue, meditate, journal, breathe,while ignoring the fact that unhealed leaders make wounded nations. Their childhood traumas become our policies. Their unchecked egos become our inflation, our wars, our polarization.
We screen pilots before we let them fly a plane, but we hand nuclear codes to people who clearly haven’t processed their fathers.
That line shouldn’t feel funny. It should feel terrifying.
What if every G7 summit began with group therapy instead of photo ops? What if debates required empathy training instead of sound bites? What if “national security” included psychological maturity?
Because here’s the quiet truth: The world doesn’t need more leaders with confidence. It needs leaders with conscience. Therapy doesn’t make you soft; it makes you safe to follow.
So while we celebrate mental health today, maybe we should widen the circle. Healing can’t stop at citizens it has to reach the cabinets, parliaments, and palaces too.
Maybe the next revolution won’t be political at all. Maybe it’ll start on a therapist’s couch.
They told you freedom meant choice. But only between two cages.
They told you success meant working harder. But only so someone richer could rest.
They told you happiness could be bought — right after they made sure you could never afford it.
Now they have AI systems in place to replace the most of us
This isn’t an economy. It’s a hypnosis. And every day, billions wake up, scroll through their feeds, and whisper the same prayer: “Maybe tomorrow it’ll all make sense.”
It won’t until you see the lies for what they are
Lie 1: “Hard Work Pays Off.”
That’s not a promise , it’s a pacifier.
If effort equaled reward, single mothers would be billionaires. The truth? Hard work without ownership is servitude dressed as virtue. You’re not climbing a ladder; you’re powering a machine. And the harder you run, the quieter you become, too tired to question why the goalpost keeps moving.
Lie 2: “You’re Free to Choose.”
Free to choose between brands, not systems. Between Pepsi and Coke, left and right, burnout or bankruptcy.
Freedom under capitalism is a beautifully curated illusion, the cage got Wi-Fi and streaming subscriptions, but it’s still a cage. True freedom isn’t the ability to consume. It’s the ability to opt out. And that option’s been priced out of reach.
Lie 3: “If You’re Poor, You’re Lazy.”
They call it a meritocracy. But the children of privilege start the race at the finish line.
Poverty isn’t proof of failure; it’s proof of a system that confuses wealth with worth. The rich call their luck “discipline” and everyone else’s exhaustion “weakness.” Capitalism moralized luck, then shamed anyone who didn’t have it.
Lie 4: “The Market Rewards Merit.”
No, the market rewards manipulation.
It rewards whoever can turn human attention into profit , not whoever creates meaning, beauty, or healing. Teachers, nurses, artists, caregivers, the backbone of civilization, are paid just enough to survive, never enough to rest. Because rest breeds reflection, and reflection breeds revolt.
Lie 5: “Debt Is Normal.”
Debt is not normal. It’s engineered obedience.
The modern serf doesn’t live in a castle; he lives in an apartment he doesn’t own, paying for an education that promised freedom but delivered bondage. Interest isn’t just financial, it’s existential. It keeps you from imagining a life beyond repayment.
Lie 6: “We Can All Be Rich.”
That’s mathematically impossible, and morally convenient.
If everyone could be rich, who’d clean the yachts, pack the warehouses, or code the apps that track our every move? Capitalism sells universality, but runs on scarcity. It’s a pyramid pretending to be a ladder, and every motivational poster is just another layer of paint.
Lie 7: “Capitalism Is the Only Way.”
Every empire says it’s eternal right before it collapses.
Capitalism isn’t nature.. it’s just another story. And stories can be rewritten. We can design economies that reward care, not extraction. Collaboration, not competition. Regeneration, not ruin.
But first , we must dare to imagine beyond the algorithm.
The Wake-Up Call
You were never broken. You were simply born into a system that profits from your confusion.
Your exhaustion is not personal failure, it’s the residue of serving a machine that eats attention and spits out anxiety.
Rebellion doesn’t start with protest. It starts with awareness.
Stop believing the lies. Start reclaiming your life.
Because the most radical act left in a capitalist world is to remember what it means to be human.
What replaces capitalism won’t be communism or chaos — it’ll be something older and wiser. A networked commons where creation circulates instead of concentrates. Where value flows, not hoards. Where work serves life, not the reverse.
It won’t come from governments or billionaires. It’ll rise probably from communities from those who refuse to play the game, outgrow of it and start writing their own rules.
Let’s start with the punchline: in Greece, if you’re a minister, you don’t fear prison. You fear losing your parking spot in Kolonaki. That’s because our Constitution — yes, the sacred text — hides a clause so absurd it would make Kafka blush and Carlin howl. It’s called Article 86, and it’s the single best insurance policy for politicians who want to lie, steal, or screw up catastrophically without consequence.
The Joke That Isn’t Funny
Article 86 basically says: only Parliament can prosecute ministers for crimes they commit while in office. Sounds democratic, right? Wrong. It’s like asking the foxes to investigate who ate the chickens. And surprise: they always vote that nobody did.
Think about the Tempe rail disaster — fifty-seven dead. Contracts signed, safety systems delayed, money evaporated. Who faced justice? No one at the top. Or the TEXAN recycling scandal — millions lost, a company under investigation, but political names safely cocooned. Or the OPEKEPE farm subsidies that never reached farmers — because Article 86 doesn’t allow prosecutors to knock on certain doors.
If you kill people with negligence, cheat the system, or siphon EU money, you and I risk prison. Ministers? They risk a bad headline.
That’s not democracy. That’s is mafia code designed to escape crimes
This wasn’t an accident. Article 86 was designed by elites for elites. It’s the ultimate firewall, a built-in feature of the Greek state: a rule that makes accountability optional. Every time the clause was challenged, parties closed ranks. Left, right, center — all complicit, because all benefit.
It turns law into theater. Trials are rare, convictions even rarer. The few who are prosecuted end up in a “Special Court,” which sounds grand until you realize it’s staffed by politicians’ peers and has the lifespan of a fruit fly.
This is how systems maintain themselves: not through secret cabals in smoke-filled rooms, but through clauses hidden in plain sight that make justice impossible.
The Cost in Blood
We talk about corruption as if it’s just money. But look at Tempe: fifty-seven families burying their children. Look at underfunded hospitals while subsidies vanish. Look at farmers crushed while middlemen pocket their aid.
Who protects the people, when the law protects the powerful?
So here’s the scam: the Constitution protects politicians, politicians protect each other, and citizens protect… nothing. We get to vote every four years and pretend it matters, while Article 86 laughs in our faces.
George Carlin once said: “It’s a big club. And you ain’t in it.” Article 86 is Greece’s version of that club. The rest of us? We’re the punchline, paying the tab.
So let’s stop pretending this is normal. Article 86 is not tradition. It’s not law. It’s a crime scene dressed up as democracy. And until it’s gone, Greece will keep burying its victims under the weight of its own impunity.
If the law itself is corrupted, dismantling it isn’t rebellion — it’s survival.
The vow that was supposed to save humanity has collapsed into a slogan. In Gaza, “Never Again” is happening again, while the world watches and whispers excuses.
The Hollow Ritual of Memory
Every January, the world lowers its head. Leaders line up at Holocaust memorials, candles flicker, violins weep. “Never Again,” they whisper, as if repeating the words will keep the past at bay. We congratulate ourselves for remembering. But remembrance without courage is theatre. And theatre does not stop the bombs falling on Gaza.
For the children buried in the rubble, the words “Never Again” ring like a cruel joke. Never Again? It is happening again—different accents, different uniforms, but the same dehumanization, the same silence, the same graves filled with children who should have lived.
The Machinery of Dehumanization
The Holocaust did not begin with gas chambers. It began with words. Rats. Vermin. Parasites. The steady erosion of dignity until killing became a bureaucratic task.
Today, Gaza is described in almost identical terms. Its people reduced to “human animals,” its children cast as shadows rather than lives. Once language strips away humanity, mass death becomes “collateral damage.” Bulldozers flatten homes as if clearing debris. Starving families are labeled “security risks.” A whole population turned into statistics, denied the simple recognition of being human.
The machinery changes its tools, but the blueprint remains the same.
The Complicity of the World
Here is the obscenity: the very nations that stand solemnly at Auschwitz every January are the ones arming the bombardment of Gaza. American presidents, European prime ministers, they mouth “Never Again” with one hand on their chest while the other hand signs arms deals.
The hypocrisy is unbearable. A leader who weeps at a Holocaust memorial in the morning will justify the bombing of schools in the afternoon. Newspapers that publish endless anniversary spreads on the Shoah relegate Gaza’s dead children to a back-page statistic.
The world, once again, is silent. Silence that is not neutral, silence that is consent. Silence that kills twice—once by omission, once by complicity.
The Weaponization of Memory
“Never Again” was meant to be humanity’s oath. But memory has been narrowed, twisted, turned into a national brand rather than a universal principle. The Holocaust’s memory, instead of serving as a warning for all peoples, is used as political currency.
This betrayal is worse than denial. To deny the Holocaust is to erase the past. To weaponize its memory is to poison the present. It means “Never Again” does not apply to everyone—only to some. It becomes conditional. Selective. Hollow.
And what is a broken oath if not another crime?
The Children as Witnesses
Walk through Auschwitz today and you will see small shoes piled behind glass. In Gaza, those shoes are still on children’s feet when the bombs tear them apart. Both sets of children cry out through time: What is the point of memory if it cannot protect us?
History’s testimony is not abstract—it is flesh, bones, laughter cut short. A six-year-old who drew butterflies in the Warsaw Ghetto. A six-year-old in Gaza who just wanted bread. Both silenced by walls, by starvation, by human cruelty justified as necessity.
They are each other’s witnesses, across time and rubble.
The Oath That Became a Lie
The world swore “Never Again” and then built museums, carved speeches, erected statues. But monuments without conscience are empty stones. Words without courage are lies.
Every child buried in Gaza makes those words hollower. Every silence from the West makes them more obscene. “Never Again” was not supposed to be a marketing slogan. It was supposed to be humanity’s line in the sand. In Gaza, that line is not only crossed—it is erased.
If “Never Again” does not mean never again for them, then it never meant anything at all.
“Never Again” was humanity’s promise. Gaza proves it was only humanity’s excuse.
