Author Bio
Jianwei Xun is a Hong Kong-born cultural analyst and philosopher whose work bridges the worlds of media, narrative theory, and philosophy. With a background in political philosophy and media studies at Dublin University, Xun spent years consulting on strategic narratives for global institutions before dedicating himself to writing.
Hypnocracy: Trump, Musk and the New Architecture of Reality is his first book, an unflinching exploration of the systems of power that shape perception and reality. Drawing on influences ranging from Eastern philosophy to Western critical theory, Xun brings a unique voice to the urgent conversations of our time.
He currently study the intersection of narrative, technology, and cultural transformation.
Book synopsis
Hypnocracy: Trump, Musk, and the Architecture of Reality Kindle Edition (a must read book)
What if the stories we trust most are the ones that control us?
In this searing debut, Jianwei Xun unveils the mechanisms behind our era of “hypnotic narratives.” Drawing on philosophy, media studies, and cultural analysis, Xun explores how power operates not through oppression, but through the stories we consume, share, and believe.
Ipnocracy is a journey into the fractured mirror of modern reality, exposing how narratives saturate our lives and shape our perceptions. It is a book for those who suspect that the world they see is only a shadow of something far more complex—and far more controlled.
"Jianwei Xun's masterful exploration of 'Hypnocracy' is a must-read for anyone seeking to understand the profound transformations shaping our era. A tour de force of interdisciplinary analysis." - Li Hua, Professor of Media Studies, Tsinghua University
"This book is a searing critique of the new landscapes of power, truth, and identity in the digital age. Xun's insights cut to the heart of our contemporary condition - a must-read for these fractured times." - Sarah Thompson, author of "Empire of Illusion"
"Xun has achieved the remarkable feat of mapping the intricate architectures of 'Hypnocracy' with rigor and imagination. This is a revelatory work that will reshape how we think about resistance in the 21st century." - Zhang Mei, independent critic and cultural commentator
The Interview
Good morning and thanks for this opportunity. We live into psychically sick times. Cognitively hybridized by technology we live on social platforms that are ecosystem of meanings, but we have lost our ability to be social and in solidarity with other human beings. We have drowned ourselves inside the dominant infocracy, we no longer know how to recognize the true from the false, the just from the unjust. We are loosing our battle with the machines, of which we have become accomplices and servants (La Boetie). Victims of our own storytelling we have forgotten our nude life, our existential living and the stories that arise from our factual, existential experiences. Is all this simply the consequence of our use of technology? Human behaviors alone are not enough to explain all of that. Deprived of body, physical face (volto in Italian, different than face) and gaze, inside the many metaverses we inhabit, we are increasingly hallucinated and distressed, unable to understand our relationship with reality. It is as if we live inside an aquarium-world that has colonized our minds and manipulated our own perception of reality (the acquarium is transparent but is a prison), has taken full possession of our unconscious. Is this close to your description of Hypnocracy?
Your aquarium metaphor is remarkably apt. Hypnocracy is indeed not so much a visible prison as it is a perceptual field that distorts everything within it, much like how water alters our vision of what we observe through glass. The peculiarity of this system is that we need no external observers to control us – we become the guardians of our own imprisonment.
However, I would add an important nuance: this is not simply about losing our social capacities or becoming alienated from our bodies. Hypnocracy operates through multiplication rather than subtraction. We don't lose the ability to distinguish true from false – we are overwhelmed by too many competing truths. We don't forget our physical "volto" – we multiply it into endless overlapping performances.
This is the true insidiousness of the hypnocratic regime: it doesn't impose a single narrative like the totalitarianisms of the past, but generates infinite parallel narratives that fragment any possibility of unified resistance. The problem isn't that we're disconnected from "nude life" or authentic experience, but that every experience is immediately captured and transformed into content, every moment of authenticity is instantly mediated and multiplied until it becomes unrecognizable.
So yes, the aquarium is a prison, but of a particular type: one in which the walls are made of endless reflections, where every attempt to exit generates just another reflection, another layer of simulation. It is this vertiginous proliferation, this excess rather than a lack, that characterizes the heart of Hypnocracy.
Hypnocracy operates through multiplication rather than subtraction.
In your book you have provided a comprehensive description, a map, of the mechanisms that have taken the control, from inside, of our lives, minds and behaviors. These mechanisms are the expression of how today power (data) dominate the world. No violence is really needed anymore, the oppression, the control, is a consequence of what multitudes of people do online. The simple possess of their technological products have transformed them in numbers, consumers, people that have rid out of their freedom to make choices and to architect their own reality based on their (ap)perceptions, emotions, knowledge, consciousness and responsibility. The mechanisms you have described have the power to manipulate the collective consciousness through mass hypnotic techniques. Of these mechanisms you don't provide a simple photography. Your book is full of useful concepts, suggestions and tools useful for understanding the reality we live in and decide how to (re)act (different than "do" – Miguel Benasayag). Are we living in a dystopic world in which what really matter it's not just the manipulation of information, not even the digital surveillance, but something more profound that is going to modify our existence as democratic citizens, as human being? Is resistance a viable choice? Is critical thinking still a solution in a situation where our perception is constantly being reshaped?
What we're experiencing is neither dystopia nor utopia, but something more unsettling: a condition where these distinctions themselves dissolve. The hypnocratic system doesn't merely manipulate information or conduct surveillance; it fundamentally alters the architecture of perception itself. This is why traditional critiques of power often fail—they assume a clear division between the manipulators and the manipulated, between power and resistance. But in Hypnocracy, we are simultaneously the subjects and objects of manipulation.
The most profound transformation isn't in our political systems or social structures, but in our relationship with reality itself. We no longer inhabit a shared reality with competing interpretations; we inhabit multiple, overlapping reality systems. This is why facts no longer persuade: it's not that people reject truth, but that they operate within entirely different epistemological frameworks where contradictory facts can simultaneously be true.
As for resistance and critical thinking—yes, they remain essential, but their nature must evolve. Critical thinking in the traditional sense presupposes a stable reality against which to measure claims. In our current condition, we need something more: what I call "reality literacy"—the capacity to recognize and navigate between different reality systems without becoming fully captured by any of them.
Resistance can't be understood as standing outside the system and opposing it—there is no outside anymore. Instead, I propose what I call "invisible resistance": forms of presence that the algorithmic attention economy cannot detect or monetize. This includes cultivating "unproductive" time, maintaining "illegible" communities, and developing practices of presence that escape the metrics of engagement.
What's at stake isn't just our political systems but our capacity for sovereignty over our own perception. The real battle isn't between different ideologies but between different architectures of consciousness. And while this situation is certainly perilous, I don't believe it's hopeless. Every system contains contradictions, and Hypnocracy is no exception. Its very totalizing nature creates blind spots, interstices where different ways of being remain possible.
The challenge isn't to escape the trance—that may be impossible—but to develop what I call "lucid trance": the capacity to maintain a core of metacognitive awareness even within altered states. This isn't about waking up from the dream, but learning to dream lucidly.
The hypnocratic system doesn't merely manipulate information or conduct surveillance; it fundamentally alters the architecture of perception itself
Being able to "survive", inhabiting completely different systems of reality and truth, is not easy. You have provided several concepts that could help people understanding how and on what to focus their time and attention. Concepts like the fragmentation of attention, the informational surplus that are saturating our mind, the transformation of time into an eternal algorithmic present (the presentism of Douglas Rushkoff), the dissolution of identity into multiple performances and the gamification of life, but also of resistance that eliminate every form of opposition. These concepts are used in your book as analytical tools, but you provide also different tools and strategies that can help for navigating the new landscape of today power. Can you give us some examples of these tools? In a hyperconnected world, disconnection isn't a solution, even fact-checking helps, we need more awareness and to remain lucid. The problem is how much lucid we are in a modern Platonic cave from which no one wants to escape anymore. Are we still in the psychological condition to escape and free ourselves? How can we be sure that the external reality is the Reality, and not another mirror of multiple realities we live in? How important is the ability to recognize and navigate different reality systems (mirror)?
The tools I propose aren't technologies or techniques in the conventional sense, but rather practices of consciousness that help navigate the hypnocratic landscape. Let me share a few of the more practical ones:
First, what I call "temporal sovereignty" – the deliberate practice of creating non-optimized time. This isn't about digital detox or disconnection, but about cultivating periods where time isn't governed by algorithmic pacing. It means allowing experiences to unfold at their own rhythm rather than at the pace dictated by platforms. For instance, reading a physical book not to extract information efficiently but to experience the temporality it creates.
Second, "attentional inversion" – instead of focusing on controlling where your attention goes (which is increasingly impossible, as you probably have noticed), develop awareness of how your attention is being directed. Observe the mechanisms of capture rather than fighting against them. When you feel the pull to check your phone, don't just resist it; observe the sensation itself, the triggers that prompted it, the expected reward. This creates a metacognitive space between stimulus and response.
Third, "pattern interruption" – deliberately introduce unpredictability into your algorithmic footprint. This isn't about tricking the system (which is futile), but about maintaining zones of opacity that resist perfect predictability. Read something outside your usual interests. Take routes through information that don't follow optimized paths.
Fourth, "invisible sociality" – cultivate relationships and communities that exist partially or wholly outside of digital mediation. Not because digital connections aren't "real," but because they're always subject to algorithmic governance. Create spaces where connection isn't measured, optimized, or monetized.
As for whether we can escape – I believe the Platonic cave metaphor has reached its limit of usefulness. It presupposes a clear distinction between illusion and reality that no longer holds. There is no "outside" to escape to, no pure reality beyond the mirrors. The challenge isn't to escape the cave but to develop the capacity to navigate between different caves, different systems of reality, without becoming permanently captured by any of them.
This is why reality literacy – the ability to recognize and navigate different reality systems – is perhaps the most crucial skill for our time. It's not about discovering which reality is "real" (they all are, in their own way), but about developing the metacognitive capacity to move between them while maintaining a core of sovereign perception.
The goal isn't freedom from mediation (impossible) but freedom through the conscious navigation of multiple mediations. Not escaping the trance, but learning to maintain lucidity within it.
the Platonic cave metaphor has reached its limit of usefulness. It presupposes a clear distinction between illusion and reality that no longer holds.
Since 2010 I'm promoting in Italy a critical reflection about technology and its effects. One book I wrote is about TECHNO-AWARENESS and freedom of choice. You also insist on the importance of nurturing mental autonomy, based on knowledge and awareness, as a critical approach in an era of permanent suggestion. How can we do it and how can we avoid being pessimistic, in a world dominated by anxiety, helplessness, uncertainty and insecurity, all feelings that current technocracy and techno-power seem to fuel persistently? In the introduction of your book, you have provided a comprehensive description of what Hypnocracy is. The list is depressive, because is the reality: we are in trance, we sleep dreaming electric sheep, our emotions are manipulated and our experiences fragmented in multiple repetitive gestures (different than experience – Vissuto in Italian). The biggest problem is that there is no longer a center, no unifying narrative. We celebrated the death of ideologies, and we found ourselves in a new technocratic and "hypnocratic" dominant ideology that is invisible, pimp, fizzy and difficult to counter, because every alternative thought is integrated, neutralized, absorbed. What can we do? A question that is even more important in an era that is dominated by (the use) Artificial Intelligence that seem to be able to win the battle between human and the machine?
The question of cultivating mental autonomy without succumbing to pessimism is perhaps the most crucial one we face. I believe the despair many feel when confronting our hypnocratic condition stems partly from applying outdated frameworks of resistance to a fundamentally transformed landscape. We keep looking for the revolutionary moment, the grand awakening, when the nature of the system makes such ruptures increasingly impossible.
Instead, I propose what might be called a "micropolitics of perception"—small-scale, continuous practices that don't aim to overthrow the system but to create and maintain spaces of perceptual sovereignty within it. These practices don't require heroic acts of disconnection or grand theoretical frameworks. They're available to anyone willing to cultivate them.
First, we must recognize that pessimism itself is a form of hypnocratic capture. The feeling that "nothing can be done" is precisely what the system wants us to experience. Not because it fears our resistance, but because despair is itself highly engaging content. Algorithmic systems have learned that hopelessness drives engagement just as effectively as hope. When we spiral into technological pessimism, we're often just feeding the machine with our despair.
Instead, I suggest a stance of "pragmatic ambiguity"—neither optimistic nor pessimistic, but attentive to the cracks and contradictions within the system. Every technology, no matter how totalizing it appears, contains its own subversive potentials. Artificial intelligence is no exception.
Indeed, AI presents both profound threats and unexpected opportunities. On one hand, it perfects the hypnocratic regime through increasingly personalized manipulation. On the other, it creates new forms of cognitive estrangement that can actually increase our awareness of how reality is constructed. When ChatGPT produces a convincing but entirely fabricated text, it doesn't just fool us—it also reveals the constructed nature of all textual authority.
As for concrete practices, I emphasize what I call "ordinary sovereignty"—reclaiming agency not through grand gestures but through mundane, daily acts of attention and intention. The goal isn't to find some pure space outside hypnocratic influence—that's impossible—but to develop sufficient metacognitive distance that you can navigate its currents without being completely carried away. It's about learning to swim in treacherous waters rather than hoping for dry land.
And importantly, this approach opens a space for joy rather than just critique. The hypnocratic condition, for all its dangers, also creates unprecedented possibilities for play, creativity, and connection. The challenge is to engage with these possibilities while maintaining awareness of the structures that shape them.
I believe the despair many feel when confronting our hypnocratic condition stems partly from applying outdated frameworks of resistance to a fundamentally transformed landscape. We keep looking for the revolutionary moment, the grand awakening, when the nature of the system makes such ruptures increasingly impossible.
Language is an integral part of today technology domination. It is used in a sophisticated way to manipulate reality storytelling. Its flow, its speed and its rhythm keep us prisoners, preventing us from slowing down, reflecting and developing critical thinking. It is a language that seduces and modulates the way in which thought flows, concepts are formed, meanings and sense are assigned to words. It is a fundamental instrument of the collective hypnosis to which we are all subjected. The political elections of these times tell us a lot about how language contributes to a growing detachment from reality that cannot be explained, except by the fact that we have been, as you say, all hypnotized. We are so deeply hypnotized that we sincerely believe that, in a few years, man will colonize Mars, that the techno-utopias sold by the dominant technocracies are already in an advanced stage of realization, that we will all be happier. All this clashes with the socio-economic reality (poverty, inequalities, precariousness, psychic and mental illnesses) of so-called capitalist realism in its current critical phase. How important is language for you in the theses you support? What role could it play in developing forms of resistance, in seeking escape routes, to escape from hypnosis, if this is still possible? Or is just a dream?
Language is central to the hypnocratic condition—not just as a tool of manipulation, but as the very medium through which reality is constructed and contested. The linguistic apparatus of hypnocracy operates through several mechanisms that I've tried to analyze in my work.
First, there's what I call "semantic saturation"—the flooding of the cognitive environment with so many competing meanings that words lose their anchoring power. Consider terms like "freedom," "democracy," or "sustainability"—they've been stretched and repurposed so extensively that they function more as empty signifiers than as concepts with determinate content. This isn't accidental; it's a feature of hypnocratic discourse that words can mean everything and nothing simultaneously.
Second, we see the emergence of what I term "hypnotic cadences"—rhythmic patterns of speech and text optimized not for clarity or truth but for attention capture. Trump's repetitive syntax, Musk's staccato pronouncements—these aren't merely stylistic choices but neurologically effective techniques of suggestion that bypass critical faculties.
Third, there's the phenomenon of "anticipatory linguistics"—language that is perpetually oriented toward a future that never arrives. The techno-utopian promises you mention—Mars colonization, AI-driven abundance—function not as predictions to be verified but as hypnotic anchors that keep us in a state of perpetual anticipation, what I call the "economy of anticipation."
But if language is central to hypnocratic capture, it must also be central to resistance. Here, I diverge from those theorists who advocate for a return to some imagined linguistic purity or who hope to escape language altogether into some realm of direct experience. Both approaches misunderstand how deeply language constitutes our reality.
Instead, I propose what might be called "linguistic counterflow"—practices that use language against its hypnotic tendencies. Is this sufficient to "escape" hypnosis? I'm skeptical of that framing. There is no pure linguistic space outside of mediation and influence. But these practices can create sufficient metacognitive distance that we aren't completely captured by hypnotic flows.
The goal isn't linguistic purity but linguistic sovereignty—the capacity to navigate between different language games while maintaining awareness of their constructed nature. Just as I argue for "lucid trance" rather than awakening, I advocate for "lucid speech" rather than some imagined escape from discursive construction.
Mark Fisher's analysis of capitalist realism remains relevant here, but I would add that hypnocracy represents its evolution into a more sophisticated form—one that doesn't just limit what we can imagine, but actively shapes how we imagine. Resistance, therefore, must operate not just at the level of content but at the level of form—not just what we say, but how we say it.
Mark Fisher's analysis of capitalist realism remains relevant here, but I would add that hypnocracy represents its evolution into a more sophisticated form
For the philosopher Slavoj Žižek we live at the end of time. The current presentism, increasingly evanescent and incomprehensible, prevents any form of nostalgia. Anxiety for the future prevails. Anxiety is everyone's, even those who use knowledge and critical thinking to resist to the present and are trying to create visions of the future and alternative future scenarios. Domesticated by trends, viral memes, continuously rewritten realities taken as true, cynicism and nihilism, passivity and the renunciation of any form of resistance prevail. The hypnotic trance acts like the placenta in the mother's body, it induces the "child" to prolong its stay there forever. Asleep and sleepwalking as we have become, we do not realize that we are all on a threshold (of the Platonic cave?), whose overcoming would require an awareness useful for contrasting and resisting the flow and for inhabiting the trance (are we perhaps dreaming of waking up?). By investing in our personal knowledge, in its sharing, in our awareness, it seems that all we have left is to learn how to manage the trance, navigating within it and learning its rhythms, but above all trying to remain lucid. An impossible mission, or maybe not? What can we do to make it possible? We need new languages, new maps, new tools, greater understanding and culture, do we perhaps have to invest in a literacy of reality or act (dark resistance) to build alternative realities that the "system" is not able to detect and commodify (difficult in the times of AI)?
Žižek's diagnosis of "the end of time" captures something profound about our condition, but I would frame it differently. What we're experiencing isn't so much the end of time as its fragmentation into multiple, competing temporalities. The hypnocratic regime doesn't eliminate time—it multiplies it, creating temporal bubbles that don't communicate with each other. This is why nostalgia and futurism can coexist so comfortably in our era: different reality systems operate according to different temporal logics.
The placenta metaphor is particularly apt. The hypnocratic system sustains us in a state of comfortable development while simultaneously preventing emergence into a more autonomous condition. However, I would suggest that we aren't exactly asleep—we're in a paradoxical state of hypervigilant somnambulism, intensely attentive to the flows of content while remaining unconscious of the structures that direct these flows.
This is why I'm skeptical of the traditional metaphor of "awakening." The binary opposition between sleep and wakefulness doesn't capture the complexity of our condition. We don't need to wake up so much as we need to learn to dream differently, to dream with awareness—to develop what I call "dream literacy."
Is this an impossible mission? Not impossible, but certainly non-trivial. The difficulty lies in the fact that the hypnocratic system has become extraordinarily adept at absorbing and neutralizing resistance. As you note, even the most radical critique can be quickly transformed into content, into engagement, into data points that strengthen rather than weaken the system.
This is why I advocate for what I've termed "invisible resistance"—forms of presence and practice that the algorithmic attention economy cannot easily detect or monetize. Not because they're hidden, but because they operate according to logics that the system cannot easily parse or predict.
What might this look like in practice? It involves developing forms of community that aren't mediated primarily through platforms; cultivating what I call "temporal sovereignty"; practicing forms of attention that resist quantification; and engaging in "reality literacy." The challenge isn't to create some pure outside to the system—that's impossible and perhaps undesirable. Rather, it's to develop sufficient metacognitive distance that we can navigate the hypnocratic landscape without becoming completely subsumed by it.
This isn't about constructing a fixed alternative reality, but about maintaining the capacity for movement between realities—what I call "ontological mobility." The goal isn't stability but versatility, not fixity but flow.
In an era of advanced AI, this becomes both more challenging and more urgent. AI systems excel at detecting patterns, at anticipating and preempting human behavior. But they still struggle with genuine novelty, with forms of presence that don't conform to established patterns. This opens a space for what you aptly call "dark resistance"—not darkness as secrecy, but as creative opacity, as resistance to complete transparency and predictability.
The question isn't whether we can escape the trance entirely—that may be impossible in our thoroughly mediated world. The question is whether we can develop sufficient lucidity within the trance to navigate it intentionally rather than being carried along by its currents. Not freedom from the dream, but freedom within the dream.
This isn't about constructing a fixed alternative reality, but about maintaining the capacity for movement between realities
In Italy, together with Francesco Varanini, I founded a "resistent" project: STULTIFERANAVIS (La nave dei folli, Das Narrenschiff, Ship of Fools, La nef des fous). The message in the bottle of the ship is: "In a world where ignorance reigns, madness is being wise. In times when we are struggling to ask for light from artificial intelligences, the novelty lies in relying on the light of human thought". Can madmen and madwoman, embarked on a ship, without any precise destination, escape or resist the trance to which on Earth they would have been subjected? Any suggestions for our navigation?
Your invocation of the Ship of Fools strikes me as a profoundly resonant image for our time. The medieval concept of the narrenschiff was already a complex symbol—representing both exclusion and possibility, both banishment and freedom. To revive this image now, when we are all in some sense adrift in seas of information, seems particularly apt.
What I find most compelling about your project is its embrace of purposeful disorientation. The hypnocratic regime thrives on the illusion of certainty, on predetermined paths and optimized journeys. A ship without destination represents a radical alternative—not aimlessness, but openness to emergence, to discovery, to the unplanned encounter.
But there is something even more subversive in your approach: the reclamation of folly itself. The hypnocratic system relies on a particular form of instrumental rationality—the logic of optimization, efficiency, measurability. To embrace madness in this context isn't to abandon reason but to expand it, to include forms of knowing and being that cannot be easily quantified or commodified.
The light of human thought that you speak of isn't some pure, untainted rationality that stands outside of technological mediation. Rather, it's a form of thinking that embraces its own messiness, its contradictions, its dreams and desires—all the elements that make us more than information processors. The hypnocratic regime doesn't fear intelligence; it fears forms of intelligence that cannot be algorithmically captured.
As for navigation suggestions, I would offer three considerations for your voyage:
First, resist the temptation to define your mission too precisely. The moment the ship adopts a fixed destination, it becomes vulnerable to capture. The value of your journey lies precisely in its openness to emergence, in the possibility of discovering territories not yet mapped by algorithmic logic.
Second, cultivate what I might call a "community of incompleteness"—a group bound together not by shared certainties but by shared questions. The hypnocratic regime excels at absorbing communities organized around fixed identities or beliefs. It struggles more with collectives that remain deliberately unfinished, that embrace their own becoming.
Third, develop practices of what I call "joyful opacity"—ways of being together that resist complete transparency and legibility. This isn't about secrecy or hiding, but about maintaining spaces where not everything needs to be explained, quantified, or justified. The hypnocratic system requires complete transparency from its subjects while maintaining opacity for itself. Reversing this asymmetry—demanding transparency from power while cultivating zones of ambiguity in everyday life—represents a profound form of resistance.
Your ship sails not in search of some untouched shore (there are none left), but rather navigates the interstices of the hypnocratic ocean, the spaces between clearly mapped territories. Its purpose is not to arrive but to keep sailing, not to discover new land but to maintain the possibility of discovery itself.
In this sense, your project embodies what I consider the most vital form of resistance: not the construction of an alternative system (which would quickly be absorbed), but the maintenance of alternatives to systematicity itself. Not fixed opposition, but perpetual movement. Not escape from the trance, but the cultivation of a lucid trance—a state where we dream knowingly, where we navigate the currents of suggestion with awareness and intention.
The madness you embrace isn't an escape from reality but a deeper engagement with it—an acknowledgment of the irreducible mystery at the heart of human experience that no algorithm can fully capture. In a world that increasingly mistakes information for wisdom, this may indeed be the highest form of sanity.
STULTIFERANAVIS goal is not to arrive but to keep sailing, not to discover new land but to maintain the possibility of discovery itself.