COGNITIVE CONFORMITY AND PSYCHOLOGICAL TRAUMA IN THE AGE OF AI: A POST-TRUTH AND PTSD ANALYSIS OF MENTAL PARITY IN LIONEL SHRIVER’S MANIA

Abstract

This paper deals with the impact of machine intelligence in creating a climate of intellectual uniformity in Lionel Shriver’s bleak novel Mania, where the tenets of Mental Parity call for compulsory equality of mental faculties across the entire population. The text reveals the scenario wherein enforced conformity leads to psychological effects akin to PTSD: confusion, social isolation, emotional distress, etc. The paper addresses how AI dictates and monitor systems work as a façade for mental oppression beneath the cover of fairness, thus obliterating uniqueness. It scrutinizes how post-truth concepts condition our culture while mocking discomfort concerning mental diversity, linguistic control, and the pressure to think alike. This brings together Michel Foucault’s theories on communication-power, Freud’s theory of mental repression, and Shoshana Zuboff’s theory on surveillance capitalism to discuss how institutions and emotions are influenced when uniformity of thinking is enforced. The very concept of negotiating a culture that values emotional correctness and ideological purity-as Pearson and Darwin show-presents its own psychological burden.