Sharp realized that dictators succeed because people choose to obey, and while people might choose to obey for many reasons, for the most part they obey out of fear. So if we want people to stop complying with the regime, they have to stop being scared. And one of the scariest things in any society, whether it’s a dictatorship or a democracy, is the great unknown. That’s why kids are afraid of the dark, and that’s the reason that your average citizen sweats bullets when he walks into the oncologist’s office for the first time.
