I have for some time now been inventing - for myself - images and concepts that describe the forces shaping our society, without letting them vanish into abstractions and academic terms. Because in reality we all experience them - every single day - but they appear invisible, because they are embedded in systems, media, institutions and cultural norms.
My own way of speaking about them - and most I have shared in posts over the last handful of years - is to give them face, voice and body. To make them concrete as figures or archetypes. I have found that when I do this, they emerge more clearly, and it becomes easier to recognise how power, manipulation and illusion work in our everyday lives.
The figures I describe here are not meant as satire alone, but as modern mythological images - personifications of forces that would otherwise remain hidden. They are my images - my language for pointing at something I believe many of us sense.
It is a kind of contemporary bestiary of the forces of our time. A personal map of the hidden mechanisms that not only mark society as a whole, but also permeate our personal lives.
Everyone is welcome to add in the comments, if anyone has other good suggestions for figures -
Let us start with the most obvious -
…
The Man on Television
The hypnotic storyteller, who with soft voice and friendly face serves a version of reality that always fits the system's agenda.
He pretends to be neutral, but his task is to shape what you may think - and what you absolutely must not say aloud.
Behind the camera lies the cynicism - it is manipulated, cut, twisted and hidden. He is cultural marxism's high priest, who transforms propaganda into "news" and makes it look like care.
…
The Council Woman
The pedantic, zealous guardian, who always interferes where she has no right. She lives off rules, forms and control. In her hands, private life becomes not yours, but an administrative case.
She radiates care - but it is a cold care. She is the system's soulless face, whose most important function is to prove her own necessity by creating new initiatives, oversight and "interventions".
She is motherhood distorted into surveillance and control.
…
The Person in the Advertisements
The eternally smiling seducer, who always promises you happiness and satisfaction - but only if you buy a little more comfort. He reduces you from human being to consumer, from soul to resource.
He is desire's manipulator. He hijacks your senses, fills your dreams with images of things, and teaches you that the material is life's goal. He numbs you, so you can never truly feel your inner calling and purpose - what you are here for. He is never satisfied, because he lives off your emptiness - and ensures it is never filled.
…
The Woman in the Party
She can be either man or woman, but always wears the same mask - that of care and responsibility.
Behind the mask hides ambition's voracious appetite. She wants power, whatever it costs. Freedom can be sold, truth can be bent, EVERYTHING can be sacrificed - as long as she herself gets her position and her influence.
She speaks warmly of community, but all she really wants is to control you. She is power lust incarnate pretending to be the people's representative.
…
The New Churches (Climate-, Gender- and Multicultural-)
Here we find the modern creeds that have replaced religion. They do not preach God, but locked dogmas. They do not offer truth, but narratives that abuse your conscience. Their weapons are guilt and shame - contradict them, and you are a bad person. They are evangelists of a new morality that cannot be criticised without punishment.
Their power lies in feeling - they awaken fear and indignation, and drive people into obedience. They are religion without God, but with the same demand for submission.
They are 'the totalitarian' hidden behind a friendly face, as long as you do, say and think what you should.
…
"The Experts"
The academic high priest - "the expert" who hides behind words no ordinary people understand. He speaks of deconstruction, theories and constructs - and expects you to bow to his superior flow of nonsense.
He is theory's manipulator - he creates concepts so complex that no one dares contradict him, and simultaneously they are designed to undermine everything people once took as natural, healthy and true.
He is not interested in Truth - but in proving that no truth exists other than his own confusion.
He is the force that confuses sickness with health, deviance with normality, abuse with care, man with woman, division with community, chaos with order - that is, lie with truth - until the human being no longer dares trust its own eyes and senses.
…
The Digital Inquisitor
A court without judges - and yet judging.
He is a million voices in chorus, but has no soul.
His power is Fear - the fear of being cast out, exposed, cancelled. He is the incarnation of collective shame, and his weapon is the lynch mob which he mistakes for Justice.
No one can argue with him, because he is not a human being - but the sum of everyone's rage, amplified through algorithms.
…
The Eternal Activist
She lives off indignation. How Dare You!?
If she one day solved a problem, she would cease to exist. She cannot build, she can only attack.
She is indignation's machine - always on the barricades, always in revolt, but never capable of creating anything beautiful or lasting. She is morality's junkie, dependent on the next cause, the next crisis, the next villain role to throw herself at.
She draws her strength from the observer's fear of shame, need for community and urge to react to her fabricated narrative of injustice. She is a parasitic figure - the more you engage in her game, the stronger she becomes.
…
Mister Mammon
You rarely see him, but you always feel him.
He is the system's economic pulse - debt, interest, inflation, credit. He promises stability, but binds you in invisible chains. He is not evil by nature - but his nature is to suck. He lives off your dependence, and the more you owe, the stronger he becomes. He is wealth's illusion, which always ends in deficit for you. Not unlike the mechanism in Las Vegas casinos.
…
The Glossy Image
Narcissism's priestess. Her temple is Instagram, TikTok and YouTube. She lives off your gaze, your envy, your inadequacy. She sells you the illusion of the perfect life - which she herself does not have but pretends to have. She is both victim and priest - trapped in her own filter, but simultaneously preaching to millions.
She makes the self and identity into religion and attention into salvation.
…
The Machine
It is everywhere and nowhere. Surrounds us invisibly. The Matrix. It has no face, no voice, but controls everything through rules, algorithms, systems and institutions. Everyone participates in it - no one fully controls it. It is the sum of bureaucracy, technology and the logic of systems. The Technocracy that wants to optimise the Human even if it requires breaking it. It is humanity, which has built a system no one any longer understands, but which everyone obeys. It is cold, efficient, and indifferent to human suffering - but pretends to be the opposite.
…
These figures are my way of drawing a map of the forces I see pulling at us and shaping our time. I call it a bestiary - not because it is about animals, but because it is a collection of images of beings that are otherwise invisible. Forces disguised as persons, institutions or ideologies, which we can only truly recognise when we give them name and face.
For me it is an exercise in seeing more clearly. In catching sight of power, manipulation and illusion, there where it otherwise slides into the self-evident. "The obviously hidden" that unfolds right in front of us, which we do not see.
And perhaps it is also a way of tearing away a bit of their spell.
I have here named the figures that stand clearest to me - but I am certain there are more. Other forces, other masks, other voices, which also shape our everyday.
So - Who do you see?
What figures would you yourself add to this map?
Good Saturday, friends ☀️
❤️🔥🪽
