3. The Science of Submission: Why People Defend Their Own Oppression
Why do people fight to protect the very system that keeps them powerless? Why do they resist change, even when they are suffering? Why do they dismiss, ridicule, or attack those who challenge the status quo?
The answer isn’t simple, but it is deliberate. Control is most effective when people don’t recognize it as control. The systems that shape society don’t just enforce obedience—they manufacture consent. They condition people to believe their struggles are normal, their limitations are personal, and their suffering is just the way life works.
This isn’t just social conditioning—it’s psychological engineering. The greatest weapon of control is not force. It’s belief.
The Psychological Architecture of Oppression
Most people assume oppression looks like force—military occupation, police crackdowns, surveillance. But real control is built inside the mind. The system doesn’t need to force you into submission if it can convince you to submit willingly.
This happens through three key psychological mechanisms:
Learned Helplessness – People who experience constant struggle without real solutions begin to believe resistance is useless.
Fear Conditioning – People are trained to associate change with danger, keeping them loyal to a broken system out of self-preservation.
Cognitive Dissonance & Identity Investment – When people dedicate their lives to a system, they will defend it—even if it’s hurting them—because accepting the truth would mean admitting they were deceived.
These forces work together to keep people obedient even when obedience harms them. They create an illusion of choice while ensuring people never question the foundation of the system itself.
1. Learned Helplessness: Training People to Accept Powerlessness
Imagine a dog placed in a cage where the floor delivers random electric shocks. At first, the dog will try to escape, scratching at the walls, looking for a way out. But after enough failed attempts, something changes: it stops trying. Even when the cage door is left open, the dog does not leave. It has learned that no action will make a difference.
This is called learned helplessness, and it works on people the same way.
When people are raised in poverty, told to “work harder,” and still see no way out, they stop believing change is possible.
When political activism seems to achieve nothing, people stop engaging in it.
When workers strike, protest, or demand better conditions and are repeatedly ignored or crushed, they begin to accept their exploitation as inevitable.
The system is structured to introduce just enough struggle that people feel defeated, but not so much that they actively revolt. The goal is to create exhaustion—an environment where people are too drained to resist, where compliance feels easier than fighting back.
This is why people justify their own oppression:
“That’s just the way the world works.”
“Nothing will ever change, so why bother?”
“At least I have a job. It could be worse.”
They were trained to believe there is no alternative. The door is open, but they don’t see it.
2. Fear Conditioning: Keeping People Afraid of Change
Learned helplessness keeps people passive, but fear keeps them loyal. The system conditions people to believe that stepping outside its framework means entering chaos, suffering, or destruction.
This is why people cling to a broken system, even when it is hurting them. They fear the unknown more than the suffering they already understand.
Healthcare: Americans are trained to believe universal healthcare is "government control" rather than basic human infrastructure. Even people drowning in medical debt will fight against it because they’ve been taught to fear it.
Capitalism: People are told that without billionaires, the economy would collapse. They believe exploitation is a necessary trade-off for "innovation," even though the system disproportionately benefits the ultra-wealthy at their expense.
Politics: Voters in failing democracies still participate, believing “the other side” will make things worse—even when both sides serve the same corporate interests.
This is why people defend the very systems that harm them:
They have been trained to fear alternatives.
They associate any challenge to the system with instability and suffering.
They believe that oppression, while unfair, is at least predictable.
This is why revolutions don’t happen overnight. Before people can change the world, they must overcome the fear that has been drilled into them since birth.
3. Cognitive Dissonance: Why People Reject New Information
Cognitive dissonance is the discomfort people feel when presented with information that contradicts their deeply held beliefs. Instead of considering the new information, most people reject it outright—because changing their belief system would mean admitting they were wrong.
This is why people defend the system even when they are suffering under it.
People who grew up struggling financially defend the idea that “hard work pays off”—because if they accept that the system is rigged, they must confront the fact that their suffering was unnecessary.
Veterans defend the military-industrial complex—because if they question it, they must face the fact that they were used as pawns for corporate and political interests.
People who worked their entire lives in toxic jobs reject critiques of capitalism—because if the system is broken, what was their life’s work for?
Accepting the truth would mean rewriting their entire worldview. That kind of transformation is painful, so most people double down on the lie instead.
This is why:
People defend billionaires who exploit them.
People reject facts that challenge their political identity.
People fight against the very policies that would make their lives easier.
It is easier to believe the system is fair than to accept that they were deceived.
How This Keeps Control in Place
When you combine these psychological forces—helplessness, fear, and identity investment—you get a society where people actively police their own oppression.
If someone suggests a better way, they are dismissed as naive.
If someone exposes the system, they are called a conspiracy theorist.
If someone refuses to play by the rules, they are ostracized.
This is why the ruling class doesn’t need to enforce control through military force most of the time. People regulate each other. They enforce the rules of the system without even realizing they are doing it.
And this is why change is so difficult—because before people can break free, they must first recognize that they are in a cage.
Breaking the Cycle: How People Wake Up
Not everyone remains trapped in this psychological framework. Some people wake up. Some people resist. The question is: what makes the difference?
Exposure to new perspectives. Many people never challenge their beliefs simply because they have never been exposed to alternatives. Conversations, books, media, and even social platforms can introduce disruptive ideas that crack the illusion.
Moments of crisis. When the system fails someone personally—medical bankruptcy, job loss, war, injustice—it forces them to confront the reality that they were lied to.
Critical thought and questioning. Some people naturally question everything, resisting social conditioning even when it makes them outsiders. They refuse to accept "just the way things are."
The system relies on people never questioning it. The moment someone starts asking, “Why is it this way?”—they have already taken the first step out.
What Comes Next?
This is just the beginning. In the next part of this series, we will go deeper into how the ruling class exploits this psychological submission for profit, power, and control.
We will break down:
How billionaires manipulate public perception to protect their wealth.
How propaganda is designed to keep you fighting the wrong enemies.
How social media and AI are being used to reinforce compliance.
The truth has been hidden in plain sight. Now it’s time to see it.
Sources
Martin Seligman’s Research on Learned Helplessness - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3746073/
The Role of Fear Conditioning in Political Psychology - https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1948550612454881
Cognitive Dissonance and Resistance to New Information - https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1999-10156-000
The Just-World Fallacy and System Justification - https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/01461672002611007
Psychological Strategies of Propaganda - https://www.jstor.org/stable/3791985
The Science of Conformity and Social Control - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0749596X1200083X
