Every ruler has their preestablished views reinforced by their subordinates because they’re afraid to tell them contrary opinions
The fact that In every authoritarian structure, ones views must accord with their superiors rather than with objective reality in order to prevent oppression eventually leads to an equal and opposite burden of omniscience upon those at the top, in the eye of the pyramid. All that is forbidden of those at the bottom—the conscious activities of perception and evaluation—is demanded of the power elite. They must attempt to do the seeing, hearing, smelling, etc. and all the thinking and evaluating of the whole pyramid. But a man with a gun (the power to punish) is only told what the target thinks will not cause them to pull the trigger (write a pink slip, order the court-martial). The elite, with there burden of omniscience, face the underlings, with their burden of nescience, and recieve only the feedback consistent with their own preconcieved notions and reality tunnels.
The burden of omniscience, over time, becomes another more complex burden of nescience. Nobody really knows anything anymore, and if they do, they are careful to hide the fact. The burden of nescience becomes omnipresent. More and more of sensory experience becomes unspeakable. That which is objectively repressed (unspeakable) soon becomes subjectively repressed (unthinkable). Nobody likes to feel like a coward and a liar constatly. Its easier to cease to notice where the official reality tunnel differes from existential fact. Thus the SNAFU principle accelarates and rigiditus bureuacraticus sets in—the last stage before all brain activity ceases and the pyramid is clinically dead as an intellectual entity.
References
- Wilson, A., Robert. (1983). Prometheus Rising Chapter 16 The Snafu Principle (Location 2977). Grand Junction, Colorado: Hilaritas Press.