The Illusion of Security: How Systems Maintain Power
For 1.8 years, COVID isolation reshaped my understanding of reality. Not through force or coercion, but through something far more subtle: circular validation. Systems—whether social, financial, educational, or neurological—reinforce their own authority through self-confirming loops that appear natural, inevitable, and true.
This revelation crystallized after a workplace injury at a home improvement store, where pandemic pressures created a perfect storm:
- Customers, frustrated and impatient, treated workers as obstacles.
- Delivery trucks blocked exits, rushing to unload.
- Overburdened employees stacked 25kg boxes in precarious positions.
When one of those boxes struck my head, the resulting injury didn’t just force physical recovery—it forced me into a period of enforced observation, where I began to see how every system I had trusted maintained itself through an unbreakable cycle of validation.
Patterns in Isolation: The Self-Sustaining Systems Around Us
Through months of solitude, I saw the same pattern everywhere. Education, finance, social algorithms, even my own brain—they all operated through self-reinforcing loops that ensured their continuity, regardless of their actual effectiveness.
The Educational Circle: Expectations Shape Reality
A teacher sees a student’s socioeconomic background and subconsciously forms expectations about their performance. These expectations dictate:
- The quality of interaction the student receives.
- The level of support they are offered.
- The opportunities provided.
- The attention paid to their progress.
In the end, the student’s actual performance mirrors the teacher’s initial prediction. Not by coincidence, but by design. The prophecy fulfills itself—not through magic, but through an elegant system of circular validation.
The Academic Dance: The Illusion of Innovation
Academic publishing claims to reward novelty, yet innovation is only validated when it comes from established sources. Revolutionary ideas from outsiders are ignored, dismissed for lacking the proper pedigree. Just as economist Joseph Schumpeter observed that innovation comes from recombining existing knowledge, the academic system acknowledges new ideas—so long as they emerge from those already within the system.
The Financial Fortress: Credit as a Closed Loop
Financial systems exhibit the most mathematically precise form of circular validation:
- To build credit, you need a credit history.
- No credit history? You’re rejected for lacking credit.
- Each rejection lowers your creditworthiness, making future approvals even harder.
- Even secured credit cards, backed by an applicant’s own money, can be denied for lack of history.
A closed-loop system, where the only way in is to have already been inside.
The Social Algorithm: Dating Apps and the Self-Fulfilling Cycle
Online dating platforms employ a similarly self-reinforcing mechanism:
- Fewer matches lead to reduced profile visibility.
- Reduced visibility leads to even fewer matches.
- Each left swipe strengthens the system’s confidence in its judgment.
In the end, the algorithm creates its own proof, maintaining its power by diminishing the very opportunities it promises to provide.
Language as a Weapon: The Subtlety of Self-Reinforcement
Beyond action, protection systems use language itself to maintain their grip on reality. Consider anger: Do we have words for it because we feel it, or do we feel it because we have words that define and therefore create it?
When protection systems face challenges, they deploy language in a perfectly circular way:
- The Brain’s Response: Labels new information as “dangerous.”
- Physical Validation: Triggers symptoms—racing heart, dizziness, panic.
- Evidence Creation: Uses these symptoms as proof that the threat is real.
Language and the body work in tandem to reinforce a version of reality that serves the system’s continuity.
The Protection Paradox: When Security Becomes the Threat
Nowhere is this self-validation loop more apparent than in our own brains. When faced with information that challenges its existing patterns, the brain does not merely resist change—it manufactures physiological danger to protect itself from reprogramming.
During active cognitive attacks:
- Thoughts flood like incoming fire.
- Heart rate spikes to crisis levels.
- Blood pressure surges dangerously.
- Escalating symptoms reinforce the brain’s original “danger” label.
This is not a malfunction. This is a perfect execution of a protection system that would rather generate real physical danger than admit its patterns need updating.
Breaking the Circle: A Path Forward
The first step to breaking these cycles isn’t force or resistance—it’s understanding. Circular validation cannot be dismantled through direct confrontation. Instead, real change requires pattern interruption.
1. Recognizing That Protection Systems Create Reality
- Through physical symptoms that reinforce beliefs.
- Through language that defines and shapes experience.
- Through actions that validate existing expectations.
- Through cultural frameworks that perpetuate power.
2. Accepting That Direct Confrontation Fails
- You can’t argue with a perfect circle.
- You can’t reason while under cognitive flooding.
- You can’t dismantle a reality-creating mechanism using its own rules.
3. Using Interruption as Leverage
- Physical action breaks the thought cascade.
- New language creates new possibilities.
- Pattern recognition enables intervention.
The Ironic Proof of the System’s Power
Perhaps the greatest irony is that this very insight into circular validation may be rejected by academic publishers for lacking the proper credentials—thus proving its own thesis about how systems maintain power through self-validation.
But in that irony lies hope. Because if we can recognize how these systems manufacture their own evidence, we can begin to imagine new realities—ones built not on self-reinforcing loops, but on adaptability, disruption, and genuine change.
