Playing God Without Permission

After watching Mr. Robot, one line stayed with me.

“The top 1% of the top 1%, the guys that play God without permission.”

At first, I thought it was just about very rich, very powerful people. But the more I think about it, the more I get stuck on “without permission.” What is it like to have that much influence over other people’s lives without asking any of them?

At the beginning of the show, Elliot sees E Corp behind everything. But as the story unfolds, even that enormous company turns out to be part of a larger network called the Deus Group. It is like thinking you have reached the top, only to discover another floor above you.

That left me wondering. The names we know, the people we see on television, the names at the top of an organization chart, are they really where power ends? Or do we just know the most visible part?

Of course, taking that thought outside the show and looking for a real-life Deus Group is another matter. I do not have evidence that a secret group of people controls everything. But even without such a group, a decision made without my involvement can still change my life.

C. Wright Mills’s The Power Elite offers one way to think about this. He examined the connections between business, political, and military leaders in 1950s America. His account looks at how power becomes concentrated when the interests, positions, and relationships of people in these seemingly separate circles overlap. It does not mean they always agree, or that one person controls everything. Source

That makes my question, “Who is at the top?”, feel a little incomplete. Maybe I should be asking, “Who is making decisions with whom, and who is missing from that conversation?”

For example, I can choose where to work. But I do not decide on my own whether the job I want exists, or whether it pays enough to build a life around. I have choices. I just did not put all those choices on the table myself.

I had not thought much about the difference before.

Thinking about Mongolia, the question does not feel far away. In June 2026, protesters demanding greater benefits for Mongolia from Oyu Tolgoi blocked a transport road. The company said the disruption could affect government tax revenue. Source

Reading that, before deciding which side was right, I found myself wondering about something else. At what point does an ordinary person get to take part in a conversation about an agreement like this? While its terms are being decided, or after the consequences start showing up in their life? A clause in a contract is a sentence on paper. But someone may live with its consequences every day.

And the more I think about it, the less it seems to be only about decisions being made for us.

Steven Lukes describes one form of power in terms of its influence on people’s desires, beliefs, and ways of understanding their own experience. Source That makes me a little uncomfortable. I might believe I want something for myself without really knowing where that desire began.

Is my idea of success actually my own? Or am I willingly chasing something other people taught me to value? Still, being influenced by others does not make every desire false. It is just difficult to tell where my own choice begins.

Maybe that is why Elliot’s line stayed with me. “Playing God” is not about knowing everything. It is about being able to make decisions that reach into the lives of people you will never meet.

It is strange to think that someone who does not even know who I am could make a decision that changes part of my future. For them, it might be one issue in their working day. For me, it might shape how I spend the next few years.

But I do not want to arrive at “we are nothing.” The decisions we make are real too. I just want to believe that I am choosing my life while still asking who set the boundaries of those choices.

So what, exactly, are we?

People deciding our own lives, or people finding room to live among decisions made by others?

Maybe both. I just want to understand how much of each.