Control lurks behind the rhetoric of freedom, but how might an explicit acknowledgement look like in practice? In this interview, Uriel Aublof explores how the politics of Margaret Thatcher and Benjamin Netanyahu disguised liberty as control, and why Albert Camus’ emphasis on choice over control could change our politics for the better.

Harry Carlisle: Your recent paper ‘Cosmic Political Theory’ describes a universe overcome with dread. If we’re concerned with fear and the human condition, another thinker that came to mind was Camus and his ‘Absurd’. Was this an idea you also had when writing the piece? Is cosmological thinking ultimately an extension of the Myth of Sisyphus?

Uriel Aublof: If you go back to Camus', Myth of Sisyphus. He was also, in some very important ways, trying to undermine the concept of hope. And I think for me, the imaginative way of trying to bring about hope to the cosmos was to consider the possibility that maybe our choices influence life on a cosmic scale. Can you help us better understand perhaps the key biggest mystery that we had building the universe, that of dark energy and dark matter? If organisms actually affect that? Then in some ways, we have resolved Camus' absurd because that is the main thrust of the argument in the Myth of Sisyphus. We are searching for meaning in a meaningless universe. And the meaninglessness of the universe is inherent. It's a fact. We should just accept it. And this piece is trying to challenge that in a way of, well, maybe not entirely. So maybe there are bigger connections here than we typically dare to imagine.

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Try to imagine how powerful the absence of choice is. Think about Margaret Thatcher. There is no alternative, TINA right? That was the key catchword. There is an alternative. And it's so powerful.

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Harry Carlisle: The very act of seeking meaning creates meaning. But at the moment of realization that you can impact the world like that would be quite terrifying, especially for someone with an overabundance of power.