People are at different base levels of awareness. Humans dominate animals because we know more. Adults can dominate children because they know more. Elites are able to dominate the masses for the same reason.
Powerful individuals are more awake than your average person; they have more energy, live more in the moment, see more clearly etc. This isn't some occult concept; think of charismatic or really successful people you know. Note how they consistently make better life choices, are highly focused, often intuit the right things to say, and generally get more out of life than your average person. This is not to say that the elite are good - just that they are living in a more powerful manner.
From this follows that there is a lot of manipulation going on. Some people are living like it's fucking Roman times and pursuing the archetypal path of emperors or sages. Others just want to watch TV. If you give away your power (as most do) history has shown you will be used as a pawn.
Therefore I believe everything is more centralized than most people realize. Democracy doesn't really matter when you have genius level technocrats and billionaire tycoons working around the clock to build personal empires.
The Council on Foreign Relations, Royal Institute on International Affairs, Bilderberg group, CIA, etc. all are more powerful than any national government. I believe people in these organizations are highly aware, have tremendous resources, and basically live like modern day emperors. Of course they are manipulating the world - whether for good or bad.
I believe the media is highly controlled and designed to create passivity and a consumer lifestyle. This isn't really a conspiracy - it's openly admitted, since capitalism couldn't function otherwise. But I believe the manipulation goes even deeper and involves lulling people into a hypnotic and fearful state.
I also believe that nations are really tax farms for the elite. The fact that the kings of England, Russia, and Germany were all first cousins during WWI, for example, is absurd. Any ways, I'm rambling, but basically I believe our lifestyle is almost entirely artificial and very far away from the natural order of things.