THE PSYCHOLOGY OF UTOPIA, OR HOW LOSERS FOUND THEMSELVES A RELIGION

An uncensored guide to the zoo of radical ideas

Author: Vladimir Starok

Translated by Andrew Andersen

I was sitting in a café in the center of Tel Aviv. Not the best time for a café. Not the best place for philosophical observation. But life goes on — probably the only thing it knows how to do without asking, without pause, even when you didn’t request it. In the lull between air raids.

And then they came in. Straight from the protest at the Habima Theatre. There was yet another “anti-war” demonstration — one of those where the word “anti-war” means about the same as “diet” in a cake’s name: it sounds right, but in essence, it’s deceptive. Not really anti-war. Anti-real. Because the war is just a backdrop. A set piece. An excuse to go out and finally feel significant in a world that stubbornly pretends not to notice you.

You don’t have to look for them. No need to check their documents. This biological species has clear field markers, apparently standardized at some international convention somewhere between Portland and Berlin — a place where normal people obviously weren’t allowed.

The first sign — hair. Acid green, emergency blue, alarmingly pink. Not colors — warning lights. SOS to their own, a signal to outsiders.

The second sign — clothing. Second-hand, three sizes too big, worn not out of poverty — God forbid — but out of ideology. Principled bagginess. The aesthetics of deliberate decay. The philosophy of the rag.

The third sign — and here I tip my hat to the genius of standardization — a nose ring. One. Always one. I’ve traveled enough countries to say with complete confidence: it’s an international identifier. Masons use handshakes. The Mafia — tattoos. These — a nose ring. Functional. Cheap. Easy to explain to Mom.

They came in loudly. Demonstratively. With the air of people who had just accomplished something historic. Ordered coffee. Pulled out their phones. Started posting photos to Instagram. The revolution documented. Now they could relax.

I watched them and thought: there it is. All of it, captured in one frame. People who went out to protest war — in a country where war is happening right now, not on TV, not in a history textbook, but right here, outside this café window — and the first thing they did after the protest was check the number of likes.

This is not an anti-war stance. This is a mental disorder with good lighting and the right hashtags.

Bukowski wrote: there are people who truly suffer, and there are people who wear suffering as an accessory. The former don’t have time for protests. They’re busy — suffering.

It was then I realized I had long wanted to write this text.

PART ONE: RESSENTIMENT AS FUEL, ENVY AS THE ENGINE

Let’s call things by their proper names — as people like to say, especially those who never actually do.

Socialism. Communism. Anarchism. Islamism. For all the elegance of the packaging, it’s the same product: a painkiller for those whom life has turned into its personal punching bag. A philosophical aspirin for those who lost the lottery of a competitive world. Nothing more.

A person who failed does not want to admit the failure. That’s biology, baby. Evolution. The ego protects itself by every means available, and radical ideology is one of the most elegant defense mechanisms ever invented by a primate with ambitions of rationality.

Socialism whispers: “You’re not a loser — what was yours was stolen.”

Anarchism screams: “Burn the whole damn thing down — and on the ashes we’ll all be equal.”

Islamism promises: “Yes, you are poor and forgotten, but Allah sees you, and in Paradise you will be rewarded.”

Different drugs. Same needle.

Friedrich Nietzsche — the very philosopher radicals themselves tend to despise for his idea of the will to power — came up with a word for this back in 1887: ressentiment. The moral philosophy of the weak, who transform their weakness into virtue and the strength of others into sin.

A brilliant man he was — even if he eventually went mad, embracing a horse on a street in Turin. Which, in its own way, seems oddly symbolic.

PART TWO: THE UNIVERSITY AS A FACTORY OF THE AGGRIEVED

Let me give you some numbers. Not just any numbers — Western ones. Enlightened, democratic, with centuries-old traditions of academic freedom.

Every year in the United States, around 50,000 people graduate with degrees in Gender Studies, Cultural Studies, Postcolonial Theory, and related disciplines for which the demand in the job market is roughly equal to the demand for typewriters.

The average American student graduates with $37,000 in debt. Not some kid from a rundown suburb, but a graduate of Columbia University with a degree in “Decolonial Epistemology,” or someone from Harvard with a master’s in “Critical Race Theory.” The diploma is embossed in gold. The debt is real. The market is merciless.

The average salary for such a “specialist” is roughly that of a barista at Starbucks, plus tips from people he privately despises.

In Britain — the same story. In Australia — the same story. In Israel — exactly the same. Whether it’s Oxford or Tel Aviv University makes little difference: if you spent five years studying “Third-wave Postmodern Feminism in Latin American Narratives” or “The Political Economy of Oppression,” the market looks at you with the polite indifference of someone being offered snow in the middle of winter.

Do you see the tragicomedy in this?

These are not kids from filthy basements. These are children of respectable families who paid absurd amounts of money for the right to spend four years listening to lectures about the "structure of oppression" — and then emerged with debt, a diploma, and a complete inability to function in the real economy.

Political Science, Sociology, Literary Studies,Pphilosophy, Media Studies — all wonderful subjects. As hobbies. As ways of thinking. As intellectual exercise. But not as professions in a world that needs engineers, doctors, programmers, and people who know how to fix leaking pipes.

And so this person — armed with a prestigious university diploma, tens of thousands of dollars in debt, and a sense of personal exceptionalism carefully cultivated over five years by professors who themselves live on grants and have little idea how the real economy works — suddenly finds himself behind the counter of a coffee shop.

His ego is so bruised it creaks when he walks.

What does he do?

Exactly! He picks up Marx’s Capital — a book nobody has actually finished, including most Marxists — and declares "capitalism" responsible for all his troubles. It’s the intellectual version of punching walls after your girlfriend leaves you. Painful, pointless, but at least it’s something to do.

It’s far easier to declare the system “exploitative” than to admit that Harvard didn’t save you. That a diploma is not a guarantee. That five years could have been spent differently.

That realization is unbearable. Much easier to just show up outside the Habima Theatre with a protest sign.

Charles Bukowski never graduated from Harvard. He worked at the post office, drank cheap wine, and wrote poems that will outlive any dissertation on “Decolonial Epistemology.”

He blamed no one. Declared war on no system. He simply lived — messily, honestly, on his own terms. There was a certain breed in that. Rare. Nearly extinct in an age when every second unsuccessful graduate of Columbia University considers himself an unrecognized genius thwarted by "capitalism".

And it is precisely these “educated losers” — with prestigious diplomas, burning eyes, and empty refrigerators — who become the ideological special forces for the crowd of the marginal.

They give the crowd words. Beautiful, complicated, unverifiable words. The crowd gives them an audience.

A symbiosis. Almost elegant — if you don’t think too much about the consequences.

PART THREE: ICONS WITH PORTFOLIOS

And now — the favorite part. Drumroll, please!

Bernie Sanders. The man who has spent forty years railing about “evil millionaires” and “the injustice of wealth” owns three homes — including a half-million-dollar summer cottage on a lake. His fortune was built on books and political marketing. In other words, "capitalism". The very "capitalism" he promises to “fix.” When caught in this contradiction, his press secretary replied literally: “He earned his money honestly.” Ironclad logic! "Capitalism is evil — but my money is honest". Everything else? Exploitation!

Angela Davis. Professional revolutionary, Communist Party member, icon of the radical left. Loves Cuba and the USSR in words. Lives in a luxury home in California in practice. Has anyone seen her move to Havana? To Pyongyang? At least to Minsk? No. She enjoys the protection of American law, the First Amendment, the comforts of the “decadent West,” and the paychecks of U.S. universities — while her followers dream of a "dictatorship of the proletariat" and chant slogans at rallies, iPhones in hand.

Patrisse Cullors, BLM. Built a career on Marxist rhetoric, raised $90 million in donations — and promptly bought four luxury properties worth $3.2 million. Including a house in a predominantly white Los Angeles neighborhood. Revolution, you say? Revolution… with a jacuzzi and a gated perimeter...

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, aka AOC. Bartender from the Bronx turned Congresswoman and star of left-wing Twitter. Demands abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement, imposing a 70% tax on the rich, and enacting a $93 trillion Green New Deal — with a budget that doesn’t balance on a single line. Meanwhile, she collects a congressional salary of $174,000 a year, enjoys government healthcare, and lives in a Washington apartment that her Bronx constituents could never afford. When asked how to fund her programs, AOC once literally said: “Just print the money.” Welcome to the School of the Printing Press. Nobel Prize incoming.

Ilhan Omar. Somali refugee, Congresswoman from Minnesota, professional victim, and one of the most consistent critics of Israel in the U.S. Congress — a country that took her in, gave her citizenship, education, a platform, and a taxpayer-funded salary. She once compared the U.S. and Israel to Hamas and the Taliban in the same tweet. She has been accused twice of financial misconduct for paying her own husband through a political fund. She voted against funding the Iron Dome — a system that saves civilian lives — justifying it as a “human rights fight.” Whose rights? She didn’t clarify.

Rashida Tlaib. The first Congresswoman of Palestinian descent in U.S. history. Demands an end to military aid to Israel, calls its actions “genocide,” walks out during speeches by the Israeli president, and wears a scarf with the words “Palestine from the river to the sea” — a slogan even moderate Arab politicians recognize as a call for the state’s destruction. Yet she lives in Detroit, protected by the U.S. Constitution, paid by American taxpayers, and enjoys the free speech of the country she repeatedly calls complicit in crimes. The irony is so thick you could cut it with a knife.

Omar, Tlaib, and AOC — the so-called “Squad.” Four Congresswomen who have turned the U.S. Congress into a stage for performative radicalism. They don’t pass laws. They don’t build coalitions. They produce content: tweets, statements, stunts, magazine covers. Their political product is not legislation — it is the aesthetics of outrage. Polished, packaged, monetized.

And it sells. Very well.

These people know exactly what they are doing. They are not idiots. They are simply selling a product to those willing to buy. Ideology is a business model. And a highly profitable one at that — far more lucrative than the honest work they theoretically claim to value, and practically despise.

None of them would ever move to Venezuela. Never. Because they know what happens there. Inflation in the thousands of percent. A third of the population gone. Empty shelves. But of course, that’s “not real socialism enough.” Next time will be different. Surely.

They know their ideas are a product for sale to suckers, not a blueprint for their own lives. And that, right there, is pure, unfiltered cynicism — the only thing in this story that works consistently and without fail.

PART FOUR: IDEOLOGY AS AN ANTIDEPRESSANT

Radical ideology is the best antidepressant for those whom real antidepressants fail. And this is not a metaphor. This is neurobiology.

Research shows a consistent correlation between anxiety disorders, depression, and a tendency toward radical political beliefs — both left and right. The chronically stressed brain searches for simple explanations to a complex world. An enemy must be named. “Capitalism,” “patriarchy,” “Jews,” “migrants” — pick according to taste and geography.

When all your troubles are blamed on “capitalism” or “patriarchy,” you no longer have to work on yourself. No need to wake up at six. No need to learn what the market actually demands. It’s enough to join the pack and chant the right words. Group identity replaces personal discipline. It’s cheaper. It’s easier. And, damn it, it feels good — to feel part of something bigger while your life remains small and empty, like a drum.

Irwin Welsh demonstrated this better than any psychologist — in Trainspotting, Glue, Acid. His characters don’t choose heroin or radicalism out of ideological conviction. They choose them because the alternative is responsibility. And responsibility hurts. Heroin doesn’t — at least at first. Later — only pain, but by that point, they are no longer capable of reading that story.

“It’s not that I’m lazy or unbalanced — it’s the system that’s broken.”

A beautiful phrase. Convenient. Comforting. It doesn’t heal — but it warms.

PART FIVE: YOUTH AS DIAGNOSIS, MIGRATION AS CRISIS

Young people are looking for a quick way to become heroes. It’s evolutionarily understandable — the brain isn’t fully formed until around 25, especially in assessing long-term consequences. But in the past, being a hero meant building, defending, creating. Now, all it takes is a black mask and a smashed bank window to feel part of a historic moment.

This is a surrogate for adulthood. A cheap substitute for meaning. Fast food instead of real nourishment — quick, flashy, devoid of nutritional value, with a guaranteed stomachache at the end.

With migrants, the story is separate and painful — and it requires honesty, not hysterics from either side. A person arrives in a foreign country and finds that their diploma is worthless, their accent mocked, their cultural codes unreadable. They face a choice: long, grueling, humiliating work to adapt, or ideological armor. “I am not an outsider — I am the bearer of truth in a den of sin.” The second path is shorter. And far more destructive.

In France, 70 percent of prisoners are Muslim, despite making up only 10 percent of the population. This isn’t racism — it’s a statistic that demands honest discussion, not polite silence. Radicalization happens at this exact point: integration failure plus ready-made ideology with answers to every question plus a charismatic imam telling you that you are not a loser — you are a warrior of Allah. It’s a compelling offer for someone with no other options.

Marginals — and not only migrants — flee into the embrace of rigid ideologies seeking external control. When the inner psyche is unbalanced, a person desperately needs an external framework: dogmas that dictate how to live, what to think, whom to hate. It’s a flight from freedom — freedom they don’t know how to handle. Freedom demands independence. And that is unbearable.

PART SIX: THE ILLUSION OF IMPORTANCE

Radicalism turns any loser into a “fighter.” It’s the fastest social elevator for those who are unable — or unwilling — to climb the ladder of talent and hard work.

Look at them in the café by Habima. Just an hour ago, they were standing with placards, feeling like Nelson Mandela. Now they sit with cappuccinos, feeling like Nelson Mandela on vacation. Tomorrow they’ll be back out again. The day after — again. And never, not once, do they ask themselves the uncomfortable question: What exactly changed because I was here? What was built? What was saved?

Nothing. But the feeling was wonderful. And feeling — these days — is what matters most.

Radicalism gives you the right to call yourself important without actually contributing anything to society. It’s a way to consume meaning without producing it. The highest art of intellectual parasitism.

FINALE: A POSTMODERN REQUIEM

So…

We built an education system that produces people the market doesn’t need — yet convinces them of their own uniqueness. We let millionaires sell anti-capitalism as a product — and profit handsomely from it. We create conditions where marginalization is easier than integration. And then we wonder where the crowds come from, ready to burn down the shared house simply because, by their inflated standards, there was no room for them inside.

Radicalism isn’t about politics. It isn’t about faith. It isn’t about justice.

It’s about pain. About shame. About the impossibility of admitting your own failure in a world that demands you succeed.

And as long as there is pain, there will be those who monetize it. That’s capitalism too, baby — the purest form, without additives, without conscience.

Bukowski survived without a revolution. Welsh depicted it from the inside and stayed alive. Selby revealed the bottom, raw and unvarnished, offering no ideology in return — only a mirror. Dirty, cracked, but honest. Perhaps that is the only truly honest stance?

Look in the mirror. Don’t look away…

And don’t sell the reflection to those willing to pay for it.

And they — the ones with nose rings and acid-colored hair — finished their coffee, left a tip on the card, and walked out. Probably to the next protest. Or home — to post a story.

Outside the window was Tel Aviv… Outside the window, war raged…

Life continued — as always, without asking permission.