To understand why unreason and post-truth conspiracies thrive when societies crumble, we must first examine the state of logic itself under alienation. Because this is not an abstract question for us anymore, rather it is a lived experience.

Lately, the simple act of purchasing necessities has become a labyrinth of calculations. Buying a mouthwash, I compute the price per milliliter across brands and sizes. Dining out is a grim exercise in cost-benefit optimization–which meal will fill me longest for the least money?

A few days ago, after covering urgent household expenses, I found myself performing mental arithmetic so intense it could have rivaled a Neperian logarithm, spilling onto paper like a desperate map of survival.

Eggs or lentils? Dinner at 7 or skip it? Every decision demands maximizing value, minimizing risk.

And then it struck me.Perhaps a hunger strike for some political cause is the most economically viable option I currently have.

Ibn Arabi, centuries ago, prayed to be spared from the imposition of arbitrary, autocratic rules: “Deliver us, O Allah, from the Sea of Names.” I felt the same, only in the modern idiom: “Deliver us, O Allah, from the Sea of Calculation and Logic.”

This is the trap of ordinary life under economic collapse. Rationality, rooted in ratio and measurement, becomes perverted. In a free system, measurement illuminates truths.

Eratosthenes compared shadows in Alexandria and Syene to determine the Earth’s circumference; Newton and Einstein used ratios to liberate thought and move conceptual worlds.

In an oppressive system, however, the same act of measuring–the protein-to-price ratio of eggs versus chicken–ensnares the individual, dragging them downward. A single miscalculation, a flipped fraction, a misplaced decimal, can imperil a family’s survival.

Geometry itself feels oppressive: the triangle, a limit; the circle, an endless cycle of constraint.

This mathematics of survival under scarcity is both precise and punishing. It transforms human reason into a tool for enduring subjugation. Logic is no longer an instrument of freedom, rather it is a chain.

And in such a system, unreason flourishes, conspiracy thrives, speculations become intelligence and the human spirit is left bargaining with numbers rather than with ideals.

Cycles of devil

We are all trapped in this sea of calculation, and it is no wonder that when every act of logic is survivalist, the human mind seeks refuge elsewhere–in myths, conspiracies, and post-truth narratives.

Perhaps the first step toward liberation is recognizing the tyranny not only of the external system but of the arithmetic it imposes on our daily lives.

For ordinary people trapped in an oppressive system, reason itself becomes a tool of subjugation. Logic and calculation are no longer instruments of liberation; they function like the whip of an Egyptian slave driver, compelling us to navigate the system through endless stratagems and compromises.

But the deeper problem lies not in our calculations–it lies in the object around which they revolve.

In film theory, this is known as the MacGuffin: the plot-driving object that determines the actions of every character. In The Maltese Falcon, it is the falcon statue; in Pulp Fiction, the glowing briefcase.

In our lives under capitalism, the MacGuffin is money.

From the moment the alarm rings at 6:45 a.m., our days pivot around the pursuit of wages. Every act–showering, dressing [up], commuting, eating–is conducted in mechanical service to this central object.

Money dictates our emotions: our joy, our frustration, or anger, our fear. On the streets, someone might be stabbed for it; in villages, brothers turn against each other for the value of a plot of land.

Financial calculation becomes a lash, shaping our lives and enforcing compliance to an unforgiving system.

And yet, the elite, those whose touch transforms mere paper into power, operate outside these constraints. If they follow any rational system, it is one invisible to us, a secret logic inaccessible to ordinary citizens.

They manipulate markets, engineer financial crises, and rewrite the rules of value with impunity.

In 2008, subprime mortgages and collateralized debt obligations triggered a global crash; yet through monetary policy, they could rescue themselves, discarding money as if it were nothing more than a bay leaf.

Trapped in an uneven turf

The calculus that governs our lives–the arithmetic of survival–is irrelevant to them. Their MacGuffin bends the world; ours enslaves us.

In the vast sea of logic and calculation that defines late capitalism, the ordinary person is the one struggling to stay afloat, while the social elite glide effortlessly, like sharks, rays, or whales navigating the same waters with ease.

In such a state, it is no surprise that our instinct becomes a prayer for deliverance– “Deliver us, O Allah, from the Sea of Calculation and Logic.”

Throughout history, at the end of every cycle of economic exploitation–when money is rendered worthless and social structures stripped bare–this plea has echoed quietly in the hearts of the oppressed.

Unable to endure the tyranny of reason imposed by an unjust system, people turn to alternative refuges: the esoteric, the rhetoric, the spiritual, the mystical.

In pre-modern eras, economic collapse and social crisis often gave rise to new religious doctrines or reoriented systems of moral and logical thought. In the modern world, however, these paths are blocked by a torrent of distorted logic and truncated calculation.

What emerges instead is an aborted form of spirituality, a fragmented system of belief built on half-truths and conspiracy.

It is this truncated, reactive logic–this hybrid of fear, mysticism, and resentment–that manifests as the political and social phenomenon we recognize today as the rise of fascism.

 When the ordinary individual is crushed under the weight of numbers and calculations, when the elite bend the same systems to their will, irrationality does not emerge from ignorance–it emerges from necessity.

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Mikail Hossain is a writer and analyst