Bryan Johnson compares the human mind to a corrupt monarchy. Like Thomas Paine's argument against British rule, Johnson says our entrenched mental patterns exert tyrannical control while convincing us we're free. Recognizing this internal tyranny requires deliberate attention to dismantle its hold.
In early American colonies, there was this big debate going on where they were saying, should we have independence of the thirteen colonies? And there was. Half the people were like, this democracy idea sounds amazing. And the other half were like, we really trust the king. It's safe. It's big. It's like, we know this thing. And they were split. And then Thomas Paine wrote this pamphlet, Common Sense, the most widely read pamphlet in the early American revolutionary history. And he said, this is nuts. Trusting the king is terrible. They're corrupt. They do terrible things for us. They don't understand things on the ground. Like, they're just so far away. We can't live under this rule. It was efficiently persuasive, where the people are like, all right, let's do that. And the argument I think would be relevant for us is we live under a corrupt monarchy, and our minds are so deeply entrenched with tyrannical control, we can't see it. And every time we try to think about it, the mind's like, I'm in control. And you have to really sit in it to understand how tyrannically powerful your mind is.
