This paper explores the systemic mechanisms by which economic, political, and cultural elites — “the freeloaders” — have subverted cooperative human instincts and restructured societies to serve their own interests. Drawing on insights from evolutionary biology, memetics, affective neuroscience, and political economy, it argues that humanity’s natural predisposition toward altruism and group cooperation has been hijacked through institutionalized manipulation of narratives, laws, credit systems, and collective meaning-making processes. The ruling classes have “gerrymandered” not only electoral and political boundaries but also the very cognitive, emotional, and cultural landscapes of societies, producing widespread inequality, normalized predation, and a misrepresentation of human nature as inherently selfish and competitive. The article integrates perspectives on group selection, memetic fitness, and cultural evolution to explain how these elites exploit structural vulnerabilities in cooperative systems, creating “subversion from within” at multiple levels — from biological drives to planetary governance. It concludes by calling for a reclaiming of our cooperative heritage and collective agency to repair systemic damages and restore life-supportive cultural evolution.
