The Moral Coward: How our search for security creates the next dictator

The path that leads us toward tyranny rarely starts with blatant hatred. It begins much more quietly and, for that reason, more effectively: it starts with our fear. Not the immediate fear of a clear danger, but that constant state of anxiety we feel when uncertainty starts looking like a permanent threat. We fear the "other," the unpredictable, making mistakes, or being cast out. We hardly ever admit it’s fear—we’d rather call it "prudence," "responsibility," or "being realistic." It’s our survival instinct being hijacked by our need for control.

When we let fear organize how we interpret the world, we start demanding answers. That’s when the idea of security shows up as a promise of relief. It offers us predictability and a sense of control. It doesn't even matter if that control is real; we just need it to be emotionally convincing. Security works like an anesthetic: it doesn’t get rid of the risk, but it numbs the pain that risk causes. The trap is our own collective blindness: absolute security is an impossibility. Seeking "zero risk" is, by definition, choosing total immobility.

To keep this illusion alive, we simplify the world. We multiply rules, differences start to annoy us, and diversity starts to feel like noise. Freedom, which we used to celebrate, begins to look like a danger. Questioning starts to sound irresponsible; dissenting feels like a threat to order. Little by little, we buy into the idea that someone needs to decide for us—and that they know better than we do.

At this point, we start seeing obedience not as a weakness, but as a virtue. Obeying becomes a sign of maturity and "doing our part" for the common good. We outsource our moral responsibility to the authority, the system, or the rules. We say, “I’m just following protocol,” and it stops sounding like an ethical cop-out and starts sounding like the "right" thing to do. Obedience gives us a massive psychological win: it takes away the burden of deciding and protects us from the discomfort of standing by our own judgment. Stanley Milgram showed us something haunting: most of us don't obey because we’re cruel, but because we desperately want to belong and be in sync with the group.

But this constant obedience has a price. To keep the promise of security going, the system has to dehumanize anyone who threatens it. And we start this not with violence, but with language: labels, stats, categories. The "other" stops being a person and becomes a "problem to be managed." Hannah Arendt called this the banality of evil: when we help dehumanize others without hatred or passion—just as part of the daily routine, where our empathy only works for "people like us."

The cycle then closes in on itself. Dehumanizing the other justifies everything we’ve done. Our initial fear comes back validated: “See how dangerous they were?”, “Thank God we followed the rules.” Violence creates the very evidence we needed to justify the control. The scariest part is that this doesn't require movie-style tyrants; it happens in our democracies, in the name of "care" and "protection," exactly where we believe we are doing good.

This is where our Angel with Amnesia philosophy comes in. We are like "angels with amnesia": we aren't naturally evil, but we are deeply forgetful. We forget our responsibility and our shared humanity in exchange for cheap emotional comfort. Our proposal isn't about chaos; it's about waking up. Empathy and critical thinking aren't just nice ideas; they are acts of resistance that snap us out of autopilot and stop our egos from being ruled by fear.

Breaking the cycle doesn't happen during the final act of violence—by then, it’s usually too late. It happens much earlier, the moment our fear starts begging for security. The question we have to ask ourselves isn't whether something is "legal," but what we are willing to give up just so we don't feel afraid. We only save our humanity when we refuse to trade our conscience for relief. True resistance is a daily loyalty to what makes us human: the courage to think and feel for ourselves, even when the system offers us the sweet sleep of obedience.