The uncomfortable question

DRAFT Why do people nowadays defend systems that make their own lives worse? Why do movements that begin by challenging authority end up creating new hierarchies? Why do communities built around freedom develop gatekeepers, purity tests and informal leaders who become impossible to question? Why do people who oppose #dotcons corporate control still spend their time copying corporate platforms, business models and organizational habits? These are not isolated contradictions, they point towards a invisible issue of how power works. We tend to imagine oppression as something imposed from above, a ruling class, a government, a corporation or an institution that wants to control us. The solution then seems obvious: expose the injustice, remove the people responsible, and replace the system with something better. But what happens when people actively participate in reproducing the very relationships they claim to oppose? Power does not operate through force alone, it also shapes what we…