Supremacy is a Problem

Supremacy — whether painted in racial hues, religious banners, national flags, or even the smugness of intellectual elitism — is the metaphysical disease of our species. It is the conviction that my group, my tribe, my caste, my mental software configuration, is not merely different but somehow better, ordained, inevitable, the top rung on some imaginary ladder and that all other visions of tribe or the sacred are false, dangerous, or subordinate. This is not merely a potential theological position; it is a psychic enclosure, a wall built around the infinite to make it manageable, controllable, and ultimately usable as a weapon.

The trouble with this is, the ladder is a hallucination. Biology doesn’t operate on "supremacy," it operates on diversity. Evolution thrives on variety, mutation, and various oddball experiments. If one strand of life declared itself "supreme" and wanted to exterminate other aspects of itself, it would also be sawing off its own branches.

Supremacy as a mental program — let’s call it an ideological virus and spreads because it offers an easy, narcotic hit: "I’m more important because I was born into this group." It saves one the trouble of self-examination. But with a very high price of self oppression, ecological destruction, and a nervous system tuned more to fear and resentment than to joy or curiosity. From a third eye vantage, the whole thing is also a grotesque narrowing of the possible. The divine is not a one-language, one-costume performance; it is a vast, multiversal chorus. To claim that your tradition alone holds the truth is like staring at one star and declaring the rest of the night sky an illusion. The sacred is too big to fit into any single scripture without spilling over its edges.

The opposite of supremacy isn’t "inferiority" or "sameness." It’s mutuality, synergy — the recognition that no single perspective holds all the cards. When one lets go of supremacy, they gain the freedom to actually learn from a larger group chorus with a greater data set, rather than trying to hammer every anomaly into a pre-approved rigid hierarchy of suboptimal people always defending lies and corruption.

In short: supremacy is the error of confusing one reality-tunnel for the reality. It is mistaking your map for the territory, and then trying to burn all the other maps. 

The Asymmetry of Violent Rhetoric

Our work of sharing self-development is to help make sure you continue to move toward love and less toward fear and hate. Or to say that more philosophically, less a part of the Empire - which is a movement of assimilation or slavery or death. And we're very transparent in saying that in the United States the lion’s share of its Empire comes from the rightward side of the house, the old confederacy, who with all their disparaging of the government working for working people, turns their version of "gov mint" over to American robber baron criminal oligarchs - who, along with Israeli and Russian Oligarchs that co-fund it, want the working people in-fighting, which is called divide and conquer. As that's the whole point of conservative media.

The contemporary vector of that oligarchic grift money fueled media is regressivism - as everything is about going backward. To channel the spirit of the Wild West founding when violence was sanctioned and sanctified in the birth story of the Republic. So to the backwards mind, to speak violently is to speak authentically. Now, in 2025 we had a key propagandist co-member of such media and co-member of their end times death cult die, and before even knowing who did the killing, the cult was calling for more death. And since it thrives on outrage the fear based gun culture rhetorical lie machine ecco chamber results in cultists all trying to out hypocrasize themselves via an atmosphere of embattlement. Presenting the world as a zero-sum struggle, a war of “real Americans” against shadowy others - immigrants, intellectuals, bureaucrats, globalists, thinkers, non-oligarchic ball garglers, multiculturalists, religions actually coexisting in harmony, etc... That multiethnic, multicultural, multi-religious community, which they call "The left", for all its challenges, problems, struggles, and rhetoric of revolution for the people, tends toward protest action and its disruptions can be irritating but rarely lethal and within said groups, violence is overwhelmingly denounced. But for however many progressives in that camp that slip through and celebrate a killing, you'll find 1000x more regressives doing so because for them violence supposedly becomes not only permissible but virtuous, and is viewed as a defense of civilization against decay. And since their cult is based on projection, inversion, and confession the opposite is true - as they are the primary group in a devolutionary decay.

For example, around 80%+ of shooters all fit the same profile - internet radicalized slep fascistic white males that have spent way too much time in the darker corners of the internet, who are in some variation of theocratic end times cults such as Mormonism which thrive on guilt and shame, not to mention sexual repression - as one of the incubating factors to fascism is based on sexual insecurity, they nurture a fetish for weaponry cause they are their dark falices. But beneath their BBK's they wish they had is a deeper psychological crisis. The right-wing fascination with violence is a symptom of their unprocessed grief. The world they thought they owned—the stable hierarchies of race, gender, religion—is dissolving before their eyes. Instead of mourning that passing and seeking renewal, they mythologize it as a battle to the death. The violent word becomes a spell against the chaos of change, a way of insisting that the old cowboy order is still alive.

The real antidote lies not in counter violence, which only fuels the paranoia, but in each of us in the pro-democratic majority continuing to become active - speaking out, acting and participating locally, engaging in non-violent civil disobedience, which is as American as apple pie, and the general sharing of better ideas to continue the construction of a richer cultural story. One where strength is measured in resilience. The right-wing obsession with violent speech is a symptom of it's spiritual impoverishment because virtually all of them are in these not only sexually repressed but also spiritually bereft perverted supremacist cults which are just factories of hate. And until they address that poverty, until they are offered alternative visions of belonging and purpose that are more compelling than their fantasies of civil war, the war will continue to be in their own minds.

Life Taking Vs Life Giving Systems

Life-taking systems compared to life-giving systems are the essential polarity of human civilization’s spiritual, economic, and ecological struggle. One paradigm consumes, extracts, commodifies, and alienates; the other nurtures, regenerates, harmonizes, and connects. These are the forces that either nourish or vampirize the living world.

A taking system is built on extraction. It is the foundation of empire which sees Earth not as a living web of relationships, but as a warehouse of resources to be plundered. It views human beings as units of labor, as consumers, as demographic segments to be manipulated. These systems — settler colonialism, unbalanced industrial capitalism, and technocratic surveillance states, are obsessed with control. They create scarcity in the midst of abundance to maintain leverage. They produce alienation by severing people from land, from each other, and from their own inner depths. 

In such systems of death, the metric of success is monetary growth at all costs. GDP increases while ecosystems collapse. Profits soar while human mental health deteriorates. The feedback loops are ignored because they threaten the narrative of perpetual expansion. These systems are thermodynamically non-resilient and unsustainable because they devour more energy than they return. They are like tumors - cells that have forgotten they are part of a larger organism. Strong courageous people will need to conclude them or else this system will conclude entire planets.

A giving system, in contrast, is built on the logic of reciprocity. It understands that no being exists in isolation and is based on regeneration, not extraction. In such systems, economic activities are designed to enrich the commons - not to privatize them. Agriculture becomes permaculture. Industry becomes circular. Governance becomes participatory and deeply local, with decisions made in alignment with ecological limits and human well-being. Work is not divorced from meaning - Craft, creativity, community rituals, these are not side projects; they are integral to the fabric of existence. Success is measured not in accumulation, but in the health of relationships: between people, between humans and ecosystems, between inner life and outer action. Moreover, such systems operate on biocentric time. They are patient. They value cycles over deadlines, depth over speed. 

The essential difference is taking systems treat everything as a means to an end while giving systems recognize that life itself is the end. The “resource” is not a commodity—it’s a relationship. The tree is not lumber in waiting; it is a co-creator of the biosphere, a being in its own right.

Taking systems are loud and institutionalized. Giving systems are often quiet, local, and mimic nature. They grow in gardens, in co-ops, in community gatherings, in regenerative farms, in art collectives that refuse to be commodified. They are rhizomatic—networks without a center, spreading invisibly until they reach a tipping point.

The real future is to conclude them, render them obsolete, by nurturing life-giving alternatives that are so compelling, so nourishing, that people naturally gravitate toward them. The question is not whether we can transition to life-giving. It is whether we will remember that such systems are not utopian inventions, and short of natural anomalies like caldera volcanoes erupting or meteor striking, both of which happen every few thousands or millions of years, are how life in the natura world wants to organize itself.

Improving the Masculine #3: Bro Lone and Male Loneliness

Human beings are social creatures, yet there is a noticeable difference between how women and men engage with friendship and emotional intimacy. Across cultures, women consistently demonstrate stronger social ties, richer networks of support, and more emotionally fulfilling friendships. In contrast, men are often more socially isolated, with many struggling to form and maintain close friendships, especially as they age. This disparity reveals both deep-rooted cultural conditioning and unaddressed emotional needs among men.

Women tend to be more socially skilled, not because of innate biological differences alone, but largely due to how they are raised. From a young age, girls are encouraged to nurture relationships and value emotional closeness. As adults, this translates into friendships that are often more intimate, communicative, and mutually supportive. Women also tend to prioritize connection and community over competition, making it easier for them to sustain long-term bonds. 

By contrast, men are often socialized to value independence and emotional restraint. Vulnerability is lameley seen as weakness, and emotional expression—particularly toward other men is discouraged. As a result, many men rely heavily on their romantic partners for emotional support, leaving them particularly vulnerable to loneliness if those relationships struggle or end. Since we'll just come out and say it, women are better socially than men, it's such that women typically excel at relationship based professions, such as nursing. While men, who play with toys, become mechanics, or drivers, or engineers, or software developers so they can sit by themselves alone. 

We've spoken numerous times in the past about how women are more heart, and men are more mind. The ability to reach out to a friend, to open up, and say, "hey man we should get together" is a heart based activity, and is thus more feminine. And the manly alpha macho con bro will often say or think, "I don't need to reach out, I'm good alone".

The “brolone” — this curious term, this symptomatic poetry of our time, names a phenomenon not merely of male loneliness, but of existential drift, a psycho-cultural pathology hidden behind memes and muscle mass, keyboard warrioring in toxic forums, or behind podcast posturing and gym-bro gospel. It is, in its essence, the wail of the wounded masculine psyche adrift in the postmodern echo chamber.

Now let’s understand this not as an attack, but as a diagnosis. The “brolone,” as we perceive it, is the man who has been stripped of myth, of elderhood, of authentic initiation into the mystery of what it means to be a man among beings. He wanders a landscape devoid of soul, surrounded by pixelated idols of success — Lambos, OnlyFans, testosterone boosters, crypto stacks — and beneath this glittering emptiness is an ocean of unmet sorrow. A child’s hunger for meaning dressed up in the Kevlar of performance.

This becomes especially clear in adulthood. As careers, family responsibilities, and geographic moves increase, many men find it difficult to maintain friendships. Women, form tight-knit, emotionally supportive circles. They vent. They hug. They send thoughtful texts and plan wine nights. Thus often continuing to invest in relationships through regular contact and emotional sharing, men may drift apart from friends due to neglect or discomfort with emotional intimacy. Over time, this leads to isolation, depression, and a quiet crisis of disconnectedness that affects health and well-being. Thus, if you look at the stats of mostmen, as they age, they spend more and more time alone. And then into middle age and their golden years, if they're still married, their wives tell their friends, of which they have more, that my husband has no friends.

This isn’t new, mind you. The crisis of the masculine has been unfolding for decades, centuries even, since the sacred rites of passage were replaced by heavily departmentalized Capitalism, external individualism, Americanized rural areas and suburbs both stupidly built primarily around the automobile - with usually single individuals in their separate boxes, not to mention other things such as diplomas, paychecks, and war. Layered now with the digital acceleration of anti-social media and algorithmic isolation, it has reached a fever pitch, because one can easily spend all of their free time, which the Oligarchs want you to have as little time as possible because they work you to the bone, in front of screens. And that's not to mention the drug of mass multiplayer gaming. This is a global problem but is most amplified in countries which have the most grueling work schedules. So it's bad in the US, and it's even worse in Japan for example. 

Relationships, making them and maintaining them, is work. And many men, often tired from their slave jobs, are not as willing to put in the work as women are. And this is something that men need to accept as their fault. Speaking personally, we have buddies we've known from growing up, who we see on occasion, but some of whom we might personally see only once or twice a year now, and that's only because of our spouses being friends. The women maintain those relationships. Our old school mates are stoked to see us when they do, but at the same time are unwilling to put the work in themselves. A lot of friendships are actually quite fragile, and are always a two way street. So it goes without saying that when you do reach out to a friend, to get together socially, and they don't do the same nearly as often, or not at all, well then after just 2 or 3 "I've called him, it's his turn to call me's" the relationship pauses, and then before you know it, it's been six months or two years and you don't really have a continuing friendship anymore. We think anyone listening to this has experienced such.

Another one is neighbors. If you have crappy, disrespectful, or psycho neighbors, that sucks. If you have nice cool neighbors, into your 30's and 40's, maybe with kids similar ages, then amazing. But even with them, both my wife and I, who have a quite decent network of people we know, are constantly amazed by how few neighbors reciprocate invitations. We know handfuls of kids who always want playdates together, and then the dad's are like "no we cant" or "I got something else to do" or they say, “We should catch up soon.” But they really mean “never.” Yet in reality, building friendships with others in your neighborhood who have kids around your child's age can be priceless. The dads who don't put the work in, even via building relationships on behalf of their children, some of us other dads who are social and do put the work in, replace the unsocial dads last names with - brolone. There goes Nick Bronlne. Who I know this weekend is sitting on the couch by himself watching Netflix or the game. While his daughter also is alone and less happy because of it.

The male psyche, once tied to land, tribe, and cosmology, is now drifting in a matrix of mirrors reflecting only the self. And it is lonely. Not just lonely for connection — though surely it is — but lonely for purpose, for depth, for a place in the grand story. The “brolone” chugs his protein and benches his weight, not because he is strong, but because he lacks mental strength and is terrified of being nothing at all. And as we'll surely get more into in this series, often adheres to dark red-pill ideology not because it enlightens, but because it offers a structure in a void of hollowness. It is, in other words, a poor substitute for the Mystery. Because without myth, without any sort of numinous anchor of a living Earth and a living spirit, the male mind loops itself into absurdity. And so he becomes the caricature — retreating into digital harems and manosphere priests. He seeks transcendence through domination because he has not figured out that true strength is in building real community. Not via a dark imperial hate church, although praise to any more open minded system, religious or secular, which brings community together. 

Which by the way will result in a longer and more healthy life. As one of the primary ingredients of blue zones — places like Okinawa (Japan), Ikaria (Greece), and Sardinia (Italy) which are regions in the world where people are claimed to have exceptionally long lives beyond the age of 100, is continuing rich social interactions, all through their lives. As a somewhat professional, somewhat hobby documentary filmmaker, our closest agescent hobby is a form of documentary photography - street photography. And we'll never forget this shot we took in an early morning walk in Barcelona, of about 30 old grey haired dudes, standing around a fountain. Who would obviously all meet up regularly at this location, easily walkable to in their 15 minute city, to drink their coffee and socialize. And one of the main things we think of when looking back at the picture, of them laughing and chuckling, is these guys are going to live a long time. Way more than the lonely old timer we spoke of earlier who has no friends and just hangs out in his garage. Okinawan elders for example belong to moai — lifelong social groups that offer emotional and practical support. They literally have built-in best friends for life. Meanwhile, the average American man over 50 has fewer close friendships than ever before. Many have… zero.

So the solution, if one dare propose it, is not ridicule, nor another prescription of norms. It is encouraging men to put work into relationships. So reach out to your old friends. Even if it's awkward. and or Make new ones. As men’s tendency to spend too much time alone is not simply a personality trait—it’s a cultural failure to teach emotional intelligence, empathy, and the value of sustained connection. Loneliness is not a weakness; it’s a signal, a social and spiritual hunger that needs addressing. To bridge the gap, society must do more to encourage emotional education for boys, challenge harmful regressive gender stupidity, and create spaces where men can safely cultivate friendship, vulnerability, and trust. In doing so, we not only improve men’s lives—we strengthen the social fabric of all.

And beyond even that, there must be a cultural reckoning, a renaissance of the masculine as steward, as visionary, as lover of life. Not as the CEO or the influencer, with initiation rites that do not involve hazing or humiliation but maturely and sophisticatedly say: “You are more than your cock and your cash. You are a carrier of dreams, a sculptor of meaning, a mirror of the infinite.” Until then, the “brolone” shall roam aimlessly — looking for brothers in the gym and finding only echoes. Looking for God in alpha advice and finding only hunger. And so, with compassion, we must call him in — not to tame him, but to wake him. Not to shame him, but to show him: the journey inward is the way outward. Which will externally then result in better co-masculine communal connections.

Improving the Masculine #2: Dad's Downloads to Their Sons

To speak of young boys and the shaping of the men they are to become is to invoke one of the most delicate and vital alchemical processes in the human journey. For in the crucible of childhood, the psyche is molten, receptive, and impressionable — and it is here that the figure of the father, or the lack thereof, becomes a kind of mythic force, casting long shadows across the soul’s landscape.

In a later part of this series we'll of course speak to the massive importance of the mother, and especially how that relates to a boy's future relationships with women, but for this one, we'll say a father is typically the primary channel through which masculine aspects of culture pours itself into the next generation. And the “downloads” dads give sons are not merely advice, but psychic imprints—gestures, tones, and ways of being that are installed deep in the nervous system before the child even has words to critique them.

Unfortunately, a lot of young boys receive “power dad downloads” from their dads or father figures, which are usually laced with the loveless imperatives of empire: be strong, do not cry, dominate rather than yield, win at all costs, conceal vulnerability, measure your worth by conquest. These instructions are not arbitrary; they are the father relaying what he himself absorbed, the survival codes of a brutal world built on hierarchy and competition. Such downloads harden the son, but they also narrow him. They train him to mistake fear for strength, control for love, and achievement for identity.

Contrast this with the father who transmits love, kindness, and permission to be tender. That father is sending a different and much superior signal into the circuitry: that masculinity need not be armored, that strength can reside in openness, that vulnerability is not weakness but a deeper form of courage. This kind of download does not cripple a son for the world; it equips him to remake the world, to resist the machinery that demands hardness at the expense of humanity.

The difference is profound. The “power dad” equips his son to survive the empire as it is, but at the cost of reproducing its brutality. The loving father equips his son to not only question the empire but help break cracks in it, to imagine alternatives, and to live a more full human life. One teaches adaptation, the other teaches transformation.

Neither father acts in a vacuum. They are both expressions of the cultural field. The power dad is, in a sense, a victim too—he is transmitting the survival program written into him by generations of scarcity, war, repression. And the loving father, if he resists that program, is engaging in cultural mutation—he is hacking the code, breaking the chain of inherited trauma, and contributing to better parenting. And that's exactly what the world needs - More better parents.

Labor Day and Awakening the Dragon

Labor Day, at least in the American context, is one of those curious holidays that has been both hollowed out and yet still retains a subterranean charge of meaning. On the surface, it has been domesticated—absorbed into the consumer calendar as the symbolic end of summer, a long weekend for barbecues, travel, and back-to-school sales. The American empire, as it so often does, has taken what was once a cry of resistance and repackaged it as an occasion for zombie consumerism.

There used to be both labor sections and business sections in newspapers. Now they only have business sections. Also, we used to have newspapers.

But if we peel back the veneer, we find the radical heart of Labor Day beating still. It was born out of struggle—the strikes, the marches, the martyrdom of working people who dared to demand that their lives not be consumed entirely by the hellfire furnace of pure capital. It is a holiday carved out of blood, a reminder that the eight-hour day, the weekend, the protections we take for granted were not gifts from benevolent rulers but concessions wrested from reluctant masters who have skull faces from the film They Live under their rubber masks. (Joke).

So to speak to Labor Day is to remember that labor itself—the act of human beings shaping the world with their hands, their minds, their sweat—is the true wealth of nations. And it is also to remember that labor, when it forgets its power, is devoured. The empire celebrates “Labor Day” precisely because it has, in large part, neutralized the labor movement, diffused its radical energies, and transformed its holiday into just a symbolic nod. Yet the potential remains, waiting like dry tinder.

Labor Day should be reimagined not as a pause before the machinery resumes its grind, but as an annual invocation of solidarity. A day not merely to rest, but to remember and act on the leverage of the many against the few, to recall that no empire, however gilded, survives without the daily consent of workers. In this way, Labor Day is not just a relic; it is a sleeping dragon. Its true meaning is not the picnic but the picket, not consumption but the refusal to be consumed. And the task for us, if we are to honor it honestly, is to awaken that dragon, to see Labor Day not as an end-of-summer sale but as an annual reminder that the world is made—and could be remade—by the hands of those who labor.

Why American Empire Hates Democratic Socialism

The American Empire despises democratic socialism not because it misunderstands it, but because it understands it all too well. For democratic socialism, in its essence, is the insistence that the fruits of collective labor be shared more equitably, that the machinery of wealth serve human beings rather than enslave them. This is heresy to empire, whose lifeblood is the concentration of power in the hands of the few and the perpetual commodification of everything.

Empire thrives on hierarchy, on the myth that some must toil endlessly so that others may accumulate without limit. Democratic socialism punctures this myth by saying: health care is not a privilege, education is not a commodity, housing is not a speculative token, but all of these are human rights. In other words, it asks the system to bend toward compassion, and empire, which feeds on extraction, recoils like a vampire before the dawn.

But beyond economics, there is a deeper reason. The American Empire’s cultural engine is the religion of individualism. It insists that you are alone, that your successes and failures belong to you alone, that solidarity is weakness. Democratic socialism, by contrast, whispers the forbidden truth: you are not alone. You are woven into a fabric of mutual dependence, and when that fabric is honored, all flourish more deeply. This revelation threatens not just profits, but the very mythology of empire.

So the hatred is strategic. Empire equates socialism with tyranny, with gulags, with the death of freedom, because it cannot allow the possibility that people might see through the smokescreen—that they might notice that Scandinavian democracies are freer, healthier, more educated, and less violent precisely because they temper capitalism with social care. To admit this would be to admit that empire is not the pinnacle of civilization, but a devouring machine.

Thus the propaganda of those who wholeheartedly paint any socialism as un-American, as theft, as laziness institutionalized. Meanwhile, the empire loves to privatize gains and socialize losses, quietly subsidizing the wealthiest corporations, bails out banks, and calls this “the free market.” What is rejected is not socialism per se, but the redistribution of care downward rather than upward.

The American Empire hates democratic socialism because it is the mirror held to its face, the reminder that another way of organizing human life is not only possible, but already flourishing elsewhere. And empire, like all narcissists, cannot bear the sight of its own alternatives.

What is a Shaman and What is Shamanism?

Do you like music? And do you care about nature and our environmental crisis? Then you should care about shamanism. Which is one of humanity’s oldest spiritual (spiritual meaning full spectrum nature which then allows for direct experience with the mystery) practices. Older than organized religion, older than written language, and in many ways, as old as consciousness itself. It is as old as the hills. Found in various forms across nearly every continent and culture, shamanism is less a "belief system" and more a spiritual methodology - a toolkit for navigating the spiritual world, healing the psyche, and restoring balance between humans and nature. 

First thing to note here, is there is always a denigration of shamanism from empire - which is the human administration of the darkness of the world composed of anyone who's down for conquest, commodification of the elements, their extraction, not to mention lying and authoritarianism - from kings to dictators. So due to the way our country, the US of A was founded, with some good and a lot of bad, most modern day Americans know little to nothing about shamanism because, while the US was founded with a secular and also freedom of religion attitude, the dark side of extremely Abrahamic religions of Empire tried to kill off all the Native American shamans due to their spiritual power. Through much of South America, and in Mexico, which is ground zero for psychedelics by the way, and has a beautiful history, before being colonized by the psychotic Spanish conquistadors, and now having to deal with drug cartels, there are more reference points on shamanism because their indigenous cultures we're not quite as genocided. As there indigenous people have been the gatekeepers of this ancient technology for the human spirit. 

So what the hell is a Shaman? To answer that question, you must first understand three basic things which the modern day empire doesn't want you to know, let alone even think about, let alone even have the lexicon to grasp. The first is that you are a spiritual being having a human experience. That in no way means we disrespect or discount both the good aspects of organized religion or science and the scientific method. As today you'd be hard pressed to find a scientist who doesn't dispute the intelligence in nature which 50 years ago was rarely the case. But the most free and open society should allow for full freedom to find value in all of these things. In fact, we think of other very old esoteric practices such as astrology and alchemy as ancient sciences. The second is related to time and that due to the processional cycles of the Earth, that we must understand time is not linear but cyclical. So our species evolves and somewhat de-evolves. Increasing in consciousness and decreasing in consciousness, over thousands of years. So during the dark ages, where the church exclusively ruled, was a bottom barrel low point in history, but if one goes back in time, what is ancient is actually more advanced. Think of the phrase, "A Long Time Ago in a Galaxy Far Far Away..." This is most evident by ancient megalithic monuments such as, speaking of Mexico, Teotihuacan otherwise referred to as The City of The Sun which our species could not rebuild now. Instead we currently build Chick-fil-A's and corporate office parks. Speaking of the sun, the third key principle is that we are a part of nature, and if evolving, will as a society have a veneration for nature. One of the main points of that type of relationship is not just a scientific grasp of animals and plants but also their ability to teach us things. For example cannabis, our relationship with it, which ultra-regressive empire and its Rockefeller for profit medicine built a 50+ year war on some drugs to denigrate because of how much it can rock the boat. Yet alone around the dogmas and stigmas of psychedelics, which are more properly contextualized as enthogins, are in reality actually teacher plants that are designed to interface with human beings and one's ability to do so is their birthright.

Shamanism, is not a belief system; it is a map of the experiential terrain of consciousness—a map that predates civilization, religion, and even history itself. It is the original science of the soul, the primal technology of the sacred. When we speak of shamanism, we are invoking a tradition older than time, a kind of meta-language through which human beings have for tens of thousands of years accessed the invisible dimensions of being—not through faith, but through direct encounter.

So shamans are basically medicine people who usually, but not always, work with teacher plants and animals, through their ingestion by both themselves, and the people they are working with. They are medicine people for both the mind and the body who, while working with such teacher substances, from nature, act as an intermediary between the human world and the spirit world. Which again, you are a spiritual being, is absolutely real. 

Shamans don’t gain this role by self-appointment or simple training. Traditionally, it’s considered a calling—often following a personal crisis, illness, or "initiation by ordeal," which breaks down their ordinary ego and opens them to the unseen. They are often called upon to: Heal physical or psychological illness, seek guidance from spirit allies or ancestors, mediate natural and supernatural forces, and/or perform rituals to cleanse individuals, communities, or land. All those things we just said, many people are like, hua? What? I don't get it? This is nonsense right? Because we've become so disconnected from who and what we are as a species.

You see, the shaman is not a priest. The priest deals in doctrine, intermediates between the divine and the flock, speaks in absolutes. The shaman, on the other hand, is a technician of the sacred. A voyager. An empiricist of altered states. The shaman goes into the domain of the ancestors, of the spirits, of the archetypal landscape—not to preach, but to bring back medicine, to retrieve lost soul fragments, to diagnose the illness in the village or the dissonance in the individual. The shaman heals not through words alone, but by navigating the deep symbolic language of dreams, visions, plant intelligences, and myth. Why? To teach something utterly profound—that reality is not fixed, not dead, not inert. Reality is alive. It is a dialogue. And we are meant to participate in that dialogue, not as passive consumers, but as co-creators. The shaman understands this and learns to walk between the worlds, to keep the conversation going.

So when we talk about reviving shamanism, we are not talking about returning to some romanticized tribal past. We are talking about reclaiming our birthright as multidimensional spiritual beings. In a world gone mad with reductionism, materialism, the cult of the machine and weasley utra watered down big religions, the shaman reminds us that spirit is real, that healing is possible, and that the deepest truths are not found in books, but in visionary ecstasy, in communion with nature, in the silent language of the heart. And in the next part of this series, we'll get specific about how it works.

The MAGA Cult is ALL Projection, Inversion, and Confession

MAGA as slogan functions less as a policy platform and more as a psychological spell, an incantation deeply embedded in the dynamics of projection, inversion, and confession. This triad is the very machinery through which the MAGA cult sustains itself, manufacturing an alternate reality while displacing responsibility for systemic collapse onto scapegoats.

Projection (The Externalization of Inner Shadow) is the oldest psychological defense—disowning one’s own flaws by attributing them to the Other. MAGA is a masterclass in this tactic. Fears of lawlessness are projected onto immigrants and Black Lives Matter activists, even as its own adherents storm capitol buildings and revel in anti-institutional chaos. Accusations of “fake news” are projected outward, while MAGA’s media ecosystem fabricates an alternate epistemology, untethered from verifiable fact.

The deep anxieties about economic precarity, cultural irrelevance, and loss of identity are projected onto globalists, urban elites, and progressive movements, as if these external “enemies” are responsible for the hollowing out of middle America—when in truth, it was the very neoconservative mixed with neoliberal policies (neither of those neo's is a good thing) embraced by MAGA’s own economic elites that orchestrated this dispossession.

Inversion (The Ritual Flipping of Reality) is the alchemical trick of reversing cause and effect, victim and perpetrator. MAGA paints itself as the bastion of “law and order,” even though its leader is a lifelong criminal and as it undermines the rule of law through authoritarian overreach and mob intimidation. It declares itself a defender of freedom, while pursuing policies that constrict civil liberties, reproductive rights, and voting access.

The inversion is most visible in how MAGA lies to champion the “forgotten man,” while its policies—tax cuts primarily for the ultra-wealthy, deregulation of corporate pillaging—further entrench oligarchic control. Inversion is how billionaires can convince struggling communities that they are their avatar. It’s a magician's sleight of hand, flipping the mirror to reflect a distorted, comforting illusion.

But perhaps the most fascinating—and psychologically revealing—dynamic is confession (The Unintentional Reveal of Inner Desires). MAGA thought crime rhetoric is laced with accusations that, on deeper examination, are confessions of its own shadow. Accusations of election rigging come from those seeking to undermine electoral integrity. Claims of media dishonesty emerge from those engaged in constant disinformation campaigns, Q-Anon can't see any of the pedocons, and shouts of “cancel culture” erupt from those eager to purge dissenting voices from their own ranks. This is the phenomenon where accusations become admissions—a subconscious leakage where the very things MAGA decries are the behaviors it enacts most aggressively. Beneath the bravado, the movement is whispering its own pathology into the open, but through the veil of accusation.

The Function of This Triad is that projection, inversion, and confession work synergistically to create a closed-loop reality system. Any external critique is deflected by projection. Any factual inconsistency is neutralized by inversion. And any internal contradiction is hidden in plain sight through confession-as-accusation. This triad doesn't just defend MAGA from external challenge—it fuses its adherents into an identity cult, where shared grievance replaces critical thought and as a reult,m for anyone within the cult, they live in halls of mirrors of constant lies.

Archetypes Across Ages

An archetype is a pattern older than any one culture or story, a primordial shape in the collective psyche that keeps reappearing in myths. or fairy tales, dreams, or art and proliferates across geography and ages. Characters, images, and motifs that recur not because someone invented them, but because they are expressions of structures somewhat timelessly present in the human mind.

They're not rigid scripts; but more like the strongest gravitational fields or vortexes in the landscape of human imagination. They pull stories, symbols, and personalities into recognizable forms - humanoid, animal, god, but the details differ through civilizations. As shape-shifters, they don’t exist as neat, singular entities, but as dynamics of energy that appear in different guises depending on the time or location. A Hero in one culture may be a dragon-slayer; in another, a wandering ascetic. A Great Mother may manifest as a caring elderly woman, devouring witch, or even the nourishing Earth. 

From a more mystical vantage, archetypes can be seen as the language of the collective unconscious. Meaning the hidden mind of humanity dreaming itself across millennia. They are the bridges between the individual psyche and the great ocean of shared meaning. And from a metaphysical perspective, archetypes often reveal themselves with uncanny vividness: appearing not as personal hallucinations but as presences woven into the deep grammar of being.

Carl Jung, who popularized the term in the modern West, saw archetypes as psychic blueprints. Examples such as The Hero, the Trickster, or the Shadow are not just characters in stories, but living energies that animate our behavior, our fears, or our longings. When one encounters an archetype in any medium of story - in fiction or nonfiction real life, etc... it resonates because it is not foreign—it is something already living within all of us. They are recurrences that stir beneath the surface of culture and psyche, or can also be thought of as great masks through which the human spirit speaks. 

Jung himself never codified a fixed list; instead, he spoke of archetypes as primordial, universal patterns in the collective unconscious that manifest in myths, dreams, and symbols. They merge and split, they adapt to new cultural contexts, they wear masks. But in modernity, one will often find “twelve primary archetypes” listed as a simplified framework of shorthand groups which are distilled for accessibility. It is like saying there are twelve signs of the zodiac. Not because there are only twelve cosmic influences, but because twelve is a manageable lens through which to perceive the infinite. Like constellations, which are drawn across the vastness of the psyche to make them more navigable, the “twelve” that are often most referenced today are the Innocent, Orphan, Hero, Caregiver, Explorer, Rebel, Lover, Creator, Jester, Sage, Ruler, and Magician. 

The Innocent is the child at dawn—radiant with trust, longing for paradise, embodying faith in the goodness of life. 

The Orphan is the exile who knows abandonment, the one who has tasted betrayal. 

The Hero is the warrior of will, striding forth to overcome obstacles, to prove strength, to bring order out of chaos. 

The Caregiver is the nurturer, the parent, the one who tends and sacrifices. 

The Explorer is the wanderer, the seeker of new horizons.

The Rebel is the firebrand, the destroyer of false structures. 

The Lover is the pulse of desire, union, beauty, passion. 

The Creator is the artist, the innovator, seized by vision and compelled to give it form. 

The Jester, or Trickster, is the clown who unmasks illusion with laughter. 

The Sage is the seeker of truth, the philosopher, the one who strives for clarity beyond illusion.

The Ruler is the king, the queen, the sovereign who seeks order and structure. 

The Magician is the shaman, the alchemist, the transformer of reality. 

Together, these twelve are a chorus of human possibility, each with gifts and dangers. So think of the twelve not as a closed canon, but as a practical map of organizing the infinite archetypal terrain. Beyond them, there are countless others, some culturally specific, some universal, all alive in the collective imagination. Some additional ones which abound the wider Jungian tradition are the Shadow, the Anima/Animus, the Wise Old Man, the Great Mother, the Child, the Self, and more. These don’t always slot neatly into the “twelve,” but they’re no less essential.

Yet to really grasp archetypes we must stop thinking of them as fixed categories, like items in a filing cabinet, and instead recognize them as living forces, autonomous powers within the psyche that are not abstractions but living energies, ancient as the collective unconscious itself. They appear not only in stories we hear but also unconsciously inhabited in people within the drama of our lives. Each of us is a theater where the twelve act out their eternal play. Sometimes the Lover takes the lead, sometimes the Rebel storms the stage, sometimes the Sage speaks through us. 

So here’s the catch: an archetype is not a thing one “sees” so much as a lens they look through. We don’t encounter “The Hero”; we encounter someone who we interpret as fitting the Hero-pattern. To know primary archetypes is to know our inner dramatis personae, the gods and goddesses who move within us, as an ocean of forces waiting to be recognized, shaping our choices, our desires, our fears. To know them is to know ourselves more deeply, to see that life is not a linear march but a dance among archetypes. Sometimes we are Hero, sometimes Fool, sometimes Magician, sometimes Lover. To say, ah, the Rebel has arrived, the Lover is stirring, the Shadow is rising. Because when one recognizes them, they are less likely to be possessed by them unconsciously, and more able to dance with them creatively. 

Each contains both light and shadow and can thus change over time: the Hero can become tyrant, the Caregiver can become martyr, the Sage can become cold, the Rebel destructive. If one is evolving and improving, they will be going through, individuation, meaning living the most consciously and uniquely, part of which requires not banishing these archetypes but to more dance with them in life, to recognize when one has seized the stage, and to invite others into balance.

So an archetype is both ancient and immediate, both inside us and larger than us. It is the recurring face of humanity’s inner truth, wearing different masks in different ages, but always reminding us that beneath the surface differences, our stories are branches from the same deep root. Since an arche, meaning "first principle" is older than us, they had long ago been woven into the very structure of consciousness. Not invented, but discovered. For to discover an archetype is to encounter something that feels both intimate and cosmic at once. With our personal stories suddenly aligning with an eternal drama. This is why people feel seized by archetypal experiences; it is as if something larger than the ego has taken the stage, demanding expression. That’s why myths and religions recycle these figures endlessly—they are ways of dramatizing inner energies. 

So the real task is not to memorize lists, but to develop archetypal literacy, to be able to see when one of these great forces is moving in our personal interactions, or in the culture around us. To know these archetypes is to know the language of the psyche itself—to see that our lives are not random, but mythic stories in motion. Across ages.

Beware Of The Words "Good" and "Evil"

Beware of the words “good” and “evil” — they roll so easily off the tongue. But they are not innocent. They are ancient axes, sharpened by myth and wielded by empire. They are binary swords meant to divide what is, in truth, inseparably entangled.

To speak in terms of good and evil is to flatten reality. It is to reduce the infinite nuance of being into a two-dimensional moral cartoon. It pretends at clarity, but at great cost: the cost of understanding, the cost of compassion, the cost of truth.

“Good” and “evil” were once sacred concepts—alive with mystery, tangled with shadow. In the oldest stories, the hero and villain were often one and the same. The dragon you slay is the one in your own chest. The devil is not out there—it is your disowned hunger, your unmet grief, your fear of death wearing a mask.

But modernity—and especially political and religious institutions—weaponized these words. They became tools for control. You are good. They are evil. And especially the worst groups all train their members to think their adversaries are "evil". No dialogue necessary. No mirror held up. Just the green light for crusade, for colonization, for drone strikes, for silencing.

And psychologically, the words are toxic. Because once someone identifies with “good,” they can slow or stop growing. Why reflect, when you are righteous? Why change, when you are chosen? And those labeled “evil”? They become un-human. Disposable. Burnable. The moral boundary becomes a license for cruelty.

Now, this does not mean we deny harm, or relativize atrocity. There is real darkness in this world. Genocide, pedophilia, lies so vast they drown generations. But to go into toon town and just call it “evil” and stop there is to shut the book before we’ve read the reasons. We must ask: What series of bad decisions set up the circumstances for this? What created this violence? What wound does it express? What truth was never witnessed? Because evil is not an essence. It is a symptom—of disconnection, of trauma, of forgetting. And good? It is not purity. It is integration. The ability to embrace shadow without being possessed by it.

So better to speak and frame these instead more in the spectrums of light and dark, wholeness and wounding, of awakening and sleepness, or love or fear. Let us reclaim the language which does not live in hard black & white binary dualities. For binary material reality, from sunrise, to sun set, is a full spectrum from light to dark. As nature is a massive spectrum.

And that is the point—not to judge, but to heal. Not to punish, but to understand. Not to divide the world into saints and sinners, but to remember that we are all both, and more. Far more.

Improving The Masculine: An Introduction

We live in a time of tremendous social transformation. As outdated norms unravel and new paradigms emerge, many men find themselves in a strange liminal space—no longer anchored by the old scripts of masculinity, yet also not fully at home in the new ones. From mental health crises and crumbling friendships, to confusion around identity, intimacy, work, and purpose, it is clear that something in the masculine experience is unraveling. And yet, within this tension lies a profound opportunity.So we're going to do a series, as always, peppered in amongst our other outputs, on "Improving the Masculine". Which is not about returning to old, rigid models of manhood—nor is it about dismissing masculinity altogether. It is a call for evolution: to confront what isn’t working, to celebrate what is, and to reimagine what it means to be a good man. Not only as an individual, but as a son, father, husband, uncle, grandfather, and mate or buddy. To speak of improving the masculine is not to launch an attack on men. As you may have noticed, we are one, and very much like being a weight lifting, occasional red meat eating, weapon yielding one with an extremely strong sex drive. But to recognize that masculine identity — as it’s currently modeled, rewarded, and weaponized in certain parts of society—is running outdated software complete with viruses and malware. It’s not that men are “broken,” but that many have inherited a narrow, brittle vision of manhood that cannot meet the challenges of this moment without distorting into something weird.

The imperative for young men to improve — and we don’t mean in the gym or in the economy, but in the psyche, the soul, the story — has never been more urgent. For we are living through a strange and volatile epoch, where the absence of deep meaning has created a vacuum. And into this vacuum, old ghosts are marching again. Because fascism offers what modernity has stripped away: myth, purpose, identity, belonging but as counterfeit relics, as weaponized fantasies. It claims clarity without complexity, purpose without reflection, identity without individuality. It is a mirror for the unexamined mind. And young men, if left unsupported, isolated, and spiritually starved, will stare into that dark mirror. It seduces with structure in a world of chaos. It flatters the wounded ego, giving it a role in a grand cosmic drama — Us versus Them. Order versus decay. The Fatherland versus the Other. Fascism, that hideous relic of the collective shadow, is once more whispering in the ears of the disenchanted, the disenfranchised, the disconnected — and young men, in particular, listen. In the United States, especially in the wake of the questionable 2024 election, we’ve seen how this brittleness can be exploited. Dumb AF Authoritarian and proto-fascist cults offer counterfeit initiation into manhood: they take the raw energies of protection, purpose, and belonging—core masculine drives—and channel them into grievance, domination, and obedience to a strongman whose of course, really an ultra weak man. These movements don’t so much build men up as offer them a place to put their pain and confusion, wrapping it in flags and slogans. Claiming also to offer instant brotherhood and clear roles. And when life inevitably confronts them with powerlessness, economic instability, social change, and the erosion of old hierarchies, they reach for the only models they’ve been given: dominance or withdrawal.   

And here’s where the heart of the problem lies. When a young man has not cultivated depth — when he has not improved in the ancient sense of the word, which is to grow closer to the good, the beautiful, and the true — then he becomes porous. He is much more receptive to manipulation. To dogma. To tribalism masquerading as truth. Yet healthy masculinity, like what native American Warrior men had and still have, offers the same—community, mentorship, shared challenge — but more rooted in mutual respect and creative contribution, without submission to a hierarchy of worth. Improvement, then, is not vanity. It is immunization. It is a spiritual hygiene. It means learning to think critically, to feel deeply, to differentiate between the voice of the soul and the voice of propaganda. It means confronting one’s wounds instead of projecting them onto scapegoats. It means cultivating discipline not for domination, but for discernment.

To improve, for the young man today, is not just self-help. It is civilizational maintenance. It is the refusal to become a vessel for someone else’s fear. It is the sacred act of choosing to be whole when Empire profits from men being broken. Improving the masculine means widening its repertoire. It means reclaiming strength not as the ability to overpower, but as the capacity to hold one’s ground without losing one’s humanity. It means giving men the skills to metabolize grief, fear, and failure instead of outsourcing those feelings into scapegoating or violence. And crucially, it means offering belonging without requiring conformity to authoritarian stupidity. In the mythic sense, the masculine archetype is not just the warrior but also the steward, the builder, the protector of the commons. Improving the masculine now means reviving those aspects and integrating them with the relational intelligence that’s been historically undervalued in men. Without this work, the vacuum will keep pulling men toward the counterfeit version of power that fascism sells. 

Basically, What’s mainly “not working” is that our culture too often leaves men without real initiation into adult responsibility and emotional sovereignty. We’ve stripped away traditional rites of passage without replacing them with new ones. We’ve trained men to associate vulnerability with weakness, collaboration with loss of status, and care with emasculation. The young man who knows himself — who has faced his shadow, walked into his fears, and come back with insight — is not easy prey for ideology. He does not need to find his worth in an imagined past or in the vilification of others. He does not fantasize about strongmen or purity or submission to the State. He understands that real power is relational, not hierarchical. He seeks to heal, not to conquer. But to reach that point, he must be initiated. Not in some mystical sense, but in the psychological, existential, communal sense. He must be taught to dance with chaos rather than flee from it. He must have mentors — elders who model nuance, not noise. And he must come to know that the world is not black and white, but infinite shades of becoming.

Why Therapists Need Therapy

The therapist-in-therapy phenomenon — one of psychology’s open secrets, though “secret” might be overstating it. The simplest answer is that therapists are human beings, not omniscient wisdom machines in cardigans. They get caught in the same messy whirlpools of anxiety, heartbreak, family drama, existential dread, and late-night doomscrolling as the rest of us. But there are deeper, more systemic reasons they often need therapy themselves: like a mirror gazing into another mirror, reflecting infinity. The healer who heals must themselves be in a perpetual state of healing. It is not a flaw; it is the nature of the work.

You see, therapy is not a sterile transaction where one “healthy” person fixes another “broken” one. No, no. Therapy is an energetic exchange, a co-creation of a sacred space where the rawest aspects of human suffering are brought to light. In this dynamic, the therapist becomes a vessel for another’s pain, bearing witness, holding space, sometimes absorbing—consciously or not—the psychic turbulence of their clients. 

This is why therapists are often drawn to the profession in the first place. Many are wounded healers, alchemists of their own pain, seeking to transmute personal suffering into compassionate service. But the shadow of this is that their own unresolved wounds can be reactivated, in subtle or dramatic ways, by the stories and emotions they engage with daily. The therapeutic encounter is not a one-way street—it is a mirror, and every mirror reflects back to the gazer.

If a therapist does not engage in their own ongoing self-reflection, their own therapy, they the boundaries between client and therapist blur, and the therapist’s own unconscious material can contaminate the space. This is known as countertransference—when the therapist projects their unresolved issues onto the client. Without rigorous inner work, the healer can become trapped in a cycle of unconscious reenactment, playing out their own dramas through the therapeutic relationship.

Moreover, therapists are constantly immersed in the landscape of human suffering— grief, trauma, anxiety, existential dread, and even frankly their patient's despair and suicidal tendencies. To navigate this without becoming numb or overwhelmed requires not only professional skill but deep inner resilience. 

And then there’s the simple human truth: no one is beyond the need for guidance, reflection, or emotional support. To be a therapist is not to transcend the human condition, but to dive more deeply into it. The best therapists are not those who have conquered their inner demons, but those who have learned to dance with them, who remain humble in the face of their own complexity.

Since one cannot do physical or mental brain surgery on themselves, nor can one initiate themselves, one could even argue that the best therapists are the ones who get therapy, because it keeps them humble, self-aware, and less likely to start believing their own press releases. 

So therapists who engage in their own therapy are not hypocrites—they are practitioners of integrity. They recognize that the journey inward is infinite and endless, that the labyrinth of the psyche has no final exit. They model what they teach: vulnerability, self-awareness, the courage to seek help. Therapy, for the therapist, becomes a sanctuary where they can unload, process, and renew their own psychic equilibrium.

So therapists often need therapy, not as a sign of weakness, but as a profound commitment to authenticity. Because you can only guide others through territories you are willing to walk yourself. The healer must continually return to the well to remember why they chose to be a healer in the first place. It's almost a job requirement.

Media Problems #12: Normalization of The Unhinged

The mainstream media’s normalization of extreme views—particularly those emanating from the black heart authoritarian right which is really wrong—is not a mistake, not a glitch, but a feature of the system as it's been architected. We are dealing here with a grand theater of consent manufacturing, curated by corporate mandarins whose loyalties lie not with truth, but with capital, continuity, and the maintenance of the status quo.

Let’s not mince words: most media companies are not public institutions devoted to democratic enlightenment. They are conglomerates—profit-seeking organisms nested within larger webs of financial interest. Comcast, Disney, News Corp, and their ilk don’t serve the public; they serve board of directors at most and as a second, shareholders. But those people, like fungi, and no offense to mushrooms, flourish in darkness and decay. They do not want systematic reform for the benefit of the majority—they want return on investment for only themselves. 

So what happens? You create a media landscape that doesn’t challenge power, but packages it in digestible forms. Thereby, corporate media always undermines more pro-middle class grassroots voices and amplifies more pro-oligarchic astroturf. And that's from what is considered more middle of the road networks like CNN and not even the full Russian style pure propaganda outlets like Fox that Joker spiral. For example, they undermine, second guess, or outright criticize every positive thing from progressive candidates and normalizes the majority of things from a more regressive/reactionary candidate. A landscape where “both sides” are given equal footing, even if one side is trafficking in barely-veiled fascism and the other in tepid liberalism at best or neoliberalism at worst results in a hall of mirrors where genocidal policies are treated as mere “controversial opinions,” and white nationalism is rebranded as “economic anxiety.”

This normalization is not accidental—it is systemic. Because the architecture of ownership determines the architecture of narrative. When Tub girling oil companies, psychotic defense contractors which are really offense contractors, and date rapey tech bro-illionaires own the platforms, you can bet your last molecule of serotonin they’re not going to support radical critiques of cutthroat capitalism, or serious examinations of racial or ecological justice. Instead, they court controversy, not to ignite dialogue, but to drive engagement. Rage clicks are currency. Outrage is the algorithm’s sacred cow.

Right-wing extremism, then, becomes not just tolerated but profitable. It’s reality television with higher stakes. It draws eyes, it generates fear, it creates an atmosphere of perpetual emergency in which deeper systemic change is always deferred—because who has time for climate reparations when there’s a new migrant caravan on the way? And what does this do to the collective psyche? It shifts the Overton window. It makes the unthinkable speakable, the outrageous negotiable. Suddenly the idiocracy is debating whether trans people have the right to exist or whether child labor laws are “overreaching.” This is not discourse. This is necromancy. It is the resurrection of ancient hatreds under the guise of free speech. From the psychedelic vantage point, this is madness. It is the triumph of ego over empathy, of spectacle over soul. A society that cannot distinguish between a lie and a viewpoint is not a society—it is an open-air asylum.

What is needed, then, is not just media reform. But to turn it off. Tune into and drop back into the real world away from scrying screens. Engage in the rewilding of consciousness itself. A return to direct experience. To the logos that bubbles up in silence, in poetry, in sacred communion with nature. We must learn again to feel truth, to taste it on the tongue of intuition. Because the media will not save us. It is the Gorgon’s head. Look at it too long and you’ll forget your name.

The revolution will not be televised—it will be remembered.

Why People Resist Change

Change is hard because it is, at its root, a kind of death—a shedding of the familiar self, a disintegration of the known narrative. You see, the human psyche is a masterwork of pattern and preservation. It constructs a reality from the fragments of past experiences and then becomes attached, even addicted, to that architecture of self and world. Change, then, threatens the very foundation of identity. It is not merely the adoption of a new behavior or idea; it is the dissolution of the old paradigm.

Now consider: we are creatures of habit, not just biologically, but ontologically. Our neural architecture is carved by repetition. Synaptic pathways fire and re-fire until they become the grooves of personality, behavior, perception. Change asks that we climb out of those grooves—and the walls are steep, my friend. They are carved not only in the brain but in the culture, in language, in memory.

And then there is fear. Fear is the true guardian at the gate of transformation. Not the melodramatic fear of monsters or fire, but the subtle and pervasive fear of uncertainty. Because to change is to step into the unknown. It is to relinquish control, to dance with chaos, to say to the cosmos, “I am willing to become something I cannot yet imagine.” And that is terrifying. The ego recoils. The mind invents reasons, distractions, delays. The system seeks homeostasis, not evolution.

But here’s the great paradox: without change, there is no life. The static is the dead. All things that live are in flux—cells dividing, stars dying, thoughts arising and dissolving like mist. So when change arrives—whether through crisis, revelation, or quiet longing—it is not an enemy, but an invitation. An emissary from the deeper self, calling us to become more than we have been.

The trick, if there is one, is to surrender. Not to force change, not to wage war against the self, but to listen. To follow the subtle signs, the inner urgings, the discontent that whispers, “This is not all.” Because when you follow that thread, when you trust that the process of transformation is guided by an intelligence greater than the ego, then change becomes not a trauma, but a sacrament.

So yes, change is hard. But it is also the metamorphosis of the caterpillar into the butterfly—not a linear improvement, but a dissolution and rebirth. And in that, we touch the Mystery. We become, not something different, but something truer.

Israel is a Litmus Test For Everything

To ask where someone stands on Israel is to ask where they stand on power, on trauma, on narrative, on who gets to be human—and who does not. It is not just about geopolitics. It is not even just about Palestine. It is about everything. A barometer, indeed, because the Israeli-Palestinian situation is a microcosm of global injustice: settler colonialism, militarism, racial supremacy, and sacred texts twisted into justifications for walls and weapons.

Someone’s attitude toward Israel tells you: can they hold complexity? Can they acknowledge Jewish suffering without weaponizing it? Can they recognize Palestinian humanity without being accused of hate? Can they see beyond the propaganda, the slogans, the inherited guilt?

You see, Israel is not merely a country. It is a mythological construct. For some, it is the final stand of a persecuted people, a divine promise fulfilled. For others, it is a high-tech apartheid regime cloaked in the language of democracy and survival. Both of these realities coexist—and if someone can only see one, if they erase the other, they’re telling you something profound about their lens.

If they defend Israel unconditionally, regardless of how many children are buried in Gaza rubble, it tells you they have sanctified the state over the soul. It tells you their morality is tribal, not universal. It tells you they fear truth, because truth threatens their myth.

If, however, they can mourn both the Jewish past and the Palestinian present, they’re telling you something else: that they understand trauma can’t justify trauma. That history doesn’t confer moral immunity. That the victim can become the perpetrator unless they awaken.

This is why the Israel question is a litmus test—not because of the region’s uniqueness, but because it demands you choose between empathy and ideology. Between seeing with the eyes of the wounded, or retreating into inherited dogma.

And in this, it reflects all things: war and peace, justice and memory, who we protect, and who we are willing to forget.

So yes, ask someone about Israel. Listen closely. You will hear not just their opinion on a nation, but the architecture of their conscience.

Why "influencers" Should Have Zero Influence on You

The influencer—the digital high priest of narcissism. A creature birthed not from wisdom or experience, but from algorithms, attention economies, and a society spiritually starved enough to mistake performance for authenticity. These are not wise elders or deep thinkers or artists—they are mannequins of desire, draped in grifting for product placements and hollow aspiration.

Why do they suck, you ask? Because influence, in its true and ancient form, was the result of initiation—of depth. The tribal elder, the mystic, the poet—they influenced because they had been somewhere the rest of us hadn’t. They had crossed into the mystery and returned with maps. 

But the social media influencer? While posing well for the camera, they go mentally nowhere. They have nothing to bring back because they never left. They don’t deepen the culture; they flatten it into brands and selfies and have the attention-sucking ability yet level of the depth of a wacky wavy inflatable arm flailing tube man. These people should have zero influence on you because they are avatars of a system that wants you distracted, dissatisfied, and docile. Their influence is not designed to liberate, but to bind. To bind your self-worth to metrics, your desires to commodities, your time to scrolling. They sell you a fictional life of curated perfection, where every emotion is a tawdry marketing opportunity, and every moment is staged for visibility.

And worse still, they’re not even real. Their personas are as manufactured as the products they push. Behind the filters and the follower counts is often a deep emptiness, a constant anxiety to remain relevant, to feed the machine and pretend that they desperately don't need therapy. They are not living— they are surviving within a spectacle, and they try to tractor beam the gullible into that same illusion. To be influenced by such beings is to become less real yourself. It is to lose the unique texture of your own soul in the smooth, bland sheen of the collective feed. It is to mistake simulation for sensation.

So we say, look elsewhere. Look to nature, into books, into the eyes of those you love. Let your influencers be the ones who make you feel more alive, not more inadequate. Let them be gonzo journalists, beat poets, punk rock rebels, shamans, authors, real educators, musicians, scientists—anyone who cracks open your mind instead of packaging it. Because influence, real influence, should expand your consciousness, not shrink it. Influencing you to be a deeper individual who can then influence others as well.

Why The Fourth Estate Matters Now More Than Ever

The Fourth Estate - that evocative term, redolent of revolutions and ink-stained fingertips, is a phrase born not merely of political theory but of mythic necessity. It refers, traditionally, to the press, the media, the scribes of society, whose sacred charge is to speak truth to power, to bear witness, to ensure that the grand machinery of governance does not descend into the madness of unchecked authority.

But to truly understand the Fourth Estate, one must return to the original trinity from which it emerges. The first three estates in the old European order were: the clergy (those who mediated between the divine and the mortal), the nobility (those who wielded temporal power), and the commons (the masses, the people, the voiceless many). The Fourth Estate arose as an interloper, a rogue current - a force not born into privilege, but carved from the urgent need to observe, to interpret, to communicate.

The concept originated in Europe, and its roots can be traced back to the 18th century. The term "Fourth Estate", as the fourth branch after what are now the executive, legislative, and judicial, underscores the significant role of the press in a democratic society, emphasizing its responsibility to serve the public interest, provide accurate and reliable information, and act as a check on power. The idea behind the Fourth Estate is that the media, through journalism and reporting, acts literally as a fourth power alongside the traditional branches of government. It is seen as a force that can hold those in power accountable, inform the public, and contribute to the functioning of a healthy democracy through an educated voting electorate. And doing so by constantly providing valuable information, analysis, criticism through information dissemination, encouraging public accountability and transparency, fostering civic engagement, serving as a watchdog, sharing respectful debate + public opinion, and most importantly, speaking truth to power. Which can only be done by honoring what is called the Journalistic Oath.

In its ideal form, the Fourth Estate is the nervous system of democracy. It senses, transmits, and warns. It reveals what the powerful would prefer concealed. It holds the mirror up to civilization and asks, “Is this what we are?” When functioning properly, it is a  carrier of truthful stories, a bridge between worlds, a holder of the collective shadow.

Journalists do not exist in dictatorships. Not only do they exist in a more free democratic society, they are the fourth table leg of said society, always moving it forward toward less and less dysfunction. While even then, they never have it easy, we are currently sailing through dark and stormy seas for journalism throughout the entire world. Even the more free world. Because many of the institutions they work for, are doing basically the opposite of honoring their oaths, resulting in far too large an amount of the population getting either only partial information, incomplete information, skewed information, or malevolent propagandised information that equates to an oftentimes under educated voting electorate. In our age of echo chambers and corporate-owned narratives, the Fourth Estate has become a battleground. The line between journalism and propaganda has blurred. The ghost in the machine now writes headlines. What was once a sacred function has, in many quarters, been hijacked by spectacle, by ideology, by profit. This is the stale rotting corpse that is legacy media and even far too much of new media, which to put it simply, rarely tells the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. 

Yet the archetype remains. And you, me, all of us—by the very act of perceiving and narrating, we are now part of the Fourth Estate. Social media, for all its perils, has decentralized the scribal function. The myth of the single authoritative voice has shattered. Now it is a chorus, a cacophony. And although real independent journalists always should lead the way, any of us speaking truth to power will always be a revolutionary act.

Epstein and the Dark Web of Compromise

Jeffrey Epstein - a name that now vibrates with the peculiar hum of deep scandal, systemic rot, and the kind of obscene wealth that moves in shadows. He was not just a financier. Not just a predator. Not even merely a trafficker of bodies, though that alone is horror enough. No. he was a node on a network, a black hole of leverage, a smiling concierge at the intersection of sex, power, and secrecy. And when you really look at the contours of that map, you begin to see that Trumpstein is not the disease. It is the symptom — the swollen tip of a much vaster, subdermal iceberg.

Now, let’s be clear: we are not in conspiracy theory territory. We are in conspiracy reality — a realm where the most wealthy and powerful, otherwise known as the extremely mentally sick, do not operate by the same rules as the rest of us, because they live in a parallel legal and moral ecosystem. Epstein was a Brownstoner, meaning his homes and creepy private island, (little to nothing good happens on private islands) under cover during parties, lured rich men into isolated situations with desperate trafficked women, many under age, as bait, that were honeypots wired for sound and video. The whole reason for him inviting people to these places, which was supposedly to hang out, have fun, stay the weekend, was to get blackmailable content on them, and the obvious one would be sex with an underage individual. Even if they looked 23 turns out they were 17 and then you're technically a pedo should the world find out.

Epstein's little black book was a cartography of influence: royalty, presidents, CEOs, scientists, media moguls. And what was he doing with all these other slimy oligarchs and underage girls? He was constructing insurance policies. He was building a library of compromising materials — a kind of perverse karmic blockchain where every transaction could be called in, every indiscretion cataloged for future leverage. This is the logic of power at its most dark reptilian. It’s not about money. These people already have more money than they could burn in ten lifetimes. No. This is about control. About obedience. About entrapment in velvet chains.

And yet the media—mainstream, corporate, hypnotic—has treated Epstein as a grotesque anomaly, a rogue operator who fell through the cracks. But the truth, if you dare stare into it, is far more chilling: he was part of a system, a cabal, if you want to use the old mythic language. Not some grand unified conspiracy, mind you - but a decentralized web of mutual compromise, where the rich are bound together not by ideology, but by shared vice and mutual threat. And this is just the tip. For if Epstein fell, there are others who remain cloaked, shielded by their lawyers, PR firms, foundations, phony philanthropy, and even state secrets. 

We know someone who is a therapist to very famous people in Los Angeles and NYC. Who, newsflash, clients lives are just as fucked up as your average persons. But what they told us, without violating any direct doctor / patient privilege of who specific clients have been, is, speaking more generally, that once very rich & famous people do when they get to a certain level of wealth and fame, is get tired of the toys, and eventually become most concerned with is their image while they're alive and then their legacy after they die. What people think of them. It eats at them. So blackmailing is a giant worry and they are very wary of getting close to people who might one day attempt such a thing. 

Over time, Intelligence agencies, one might reasonably infer, were not unaware of Epstein — they were likely intertwined with his operations. After all, blackmail is a powerful tool in the arsenal of geopolitics, and what better way to leash a politician than with a tape you never need to show? Blackmail, at an intelligence agency level, is as old as the agencies themselves. If not as old as the Republic.

So why is this so important? Because it reveals something existentially grotesque about the world we live in. We are ruled not by philosopher-kings, but by haunted weasels with secrets in their closets and strings attached to their wrists. And our collective inability to confront that fact—our preference for distraction, our addiction to spectacle — is part of the same sickness. What Epstein shows us, if we dare to see, is that morality and legality are often inversely correlated at the top. The higher you go in the hierarchy, the less sunlight reaches the roots. And if we are to dismantle this iceberg, we must go deeper. Not just into the files and the names — but into the systems, the ideologies, the incentives that allow such monstrous machinery to thrive beneath the surface of polite society.

This is not a story about one man. It is a mirror. And if we stare into it long enough, we might finally begin to understand the shadow that haunts our civilization. And maybe—just maybe — begin the long, painful, beautiful work of reclaiming our soul at a societal level.

The MAGA Cult #2: What "Make America Great Again" Really Means

“Make America Great Again.” It’s the anti-social contract and thus Anti-American stale fart rehash from the 1980's rallying cry that launched cringe worthy red hats and even more awkward family dinners. But if you’ve ever tried asking a diehard MAGA cult lemming the two most obvious follow-up questions “When exactly was America great?” and “When did it stop being great?” One will notice a curious thing: suddenly, the room gets real quiet… Or loud. But definitely not historically accurate. Because here’s the thing: the timeline is mysterious, contradictory, and shaped more by vibes than facts. The answer is never 100% clear, but it always smells faintly of lead paint, coal dust, and garment sweatshops for the ladies or meatpacking plants with zero health codes for the fellas.

When pressed, a typical dominionist end times death cult nested in MAGA cult member or low info SLEP cult adjacent enthusiast might mumble something about the 1950s, a time they peaked during or are too young to have experienced but are sure was better because they saw a Chevrolet commercial from that era featuring a guy with a tucked in plaid shirt and big belt buckle. A few might say the 1980s, when men were men, women had beehive hair and wore shoulder pads, and Criptkeeper Thatcher and a literal actor taught America how to golden shower via pretending wealth trickles down. But ask for specifics, and suddenly you’re in the Twilight Zone of selective amnesia. When did America stop being great? Again, answers vary. Some say 2008 when the White House went half black, others say 2020 (COVID and masks and lattes), and a few say 1971, when we went off the gold standard and “everything went downhill”. The common thread? None of the answers involve nuance, data, or books longer than a meme. Here’s the twist no one admits out loud: when MAGA says “great again,” what they really mean is:

“Let’s return to the Gilded Age—a nightmare fuel powered period of time spanning roughly the 1870s to the early 1900s which were the three decades after the civil war. The Gilded Age was a time when, due to massive environmental damage from industrialization caused a tiny sliver small group of monovalent THEY LIVE skull-faced industrialists to amass staggering wealth and power primarily through steel and oil, creating the country's first moguls and monopolies for the monopolists, while laborers endured exploitation, union busting, deadly working conditions, and the weekends, which would eventually be brought to us by organized labor and unions, had yet to exist. 14 hours a day brutal physical labor was the default and that applied to your young kids too. Teenagers or even pre-teens could earn a nickel for over half a day of coal-sifting and they all cried themselves to sleep every night.” If they didn't want to be slaving in factories of bloody horror, dirty, transient, ragamuffin street kids, were picking pockets or robbing at gunpoint. And if the women didn't want to be in the hellscape factories, working in brothels was one of few other options. And for the non-laboring men - public homeless style drunkenness was everywhere.

First, there is the shallow aesthetic. The Gilded Age wasn’t named for golden prosperity but for the superficial glitter covering a period of deep pain inequality. Trumpelstilskin's brand, which is classless trashy rich, has always reveled in tacky gold: gilded walls, gold-plated toilets, and skyscrapers bearing his egomaniacal name in giant, boastful letters. This celebration of ostentatious wealth mirrors the extravagant displays of past ultra monarchists as well as industrial barons whose industries resulted in cities being hidden under dark clouds via thousands of coal smoke stacks. There was little to no middle class, just a slave class that lived in tenement housing if lucky or shanty sheds while dying of dysentery while a couple dozen oligarchs had Versailles style mega mansions. It was a psychopaths wet dream which destroyed rural egalitarianism, not to mention a massive decline in moral values, not to mention its redlining of a spiritual decline.

From decades of doing Cocaine and Adderall and thus having fecal incontinence and thus wearing adult diapers, Gassy Gatsby, and any Nazgul like him, don't directly invoked the Gilded Age in speeches, but channel its spirit wanting to return America to this awful period which they deem as returning a nation to its former glory —valorizing morbid wealth, undermining people, and blurring the line between business and government. Just as Gilded Age tycoons turned politics into an extension of their empires, in a modern sense they turn the White House into a symbol of celebrity griftfesting. In this same modern sense, The Gilded Gaslighter didn’t just echo Gilded Age aesthetics; he tried to revive its political economy, where power is concentrated and wealth is seen as a sign of virtue rather than something to be balanced against social responsibility. From his classless penthouse to his admiration for moguls like Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller, Velveeta Voldemort embodies many of the values of the sociopathic compassionless late 19th century elite from this time who could care less about the suffering of the country's people. Much like Gilded Age tycoons who called in private militias to crush strikes (e.g., the Homestead Strike or Pullman Strike), The Lord of Lies positioned organized labor as an obstacle to “freedom” and economic efficiency. His skill lay in repackaging elite interests in populist language. Just as Gilded Age magnates often posed as “captains of industry” lifting America to greatness, The MAGA Maharaja, always frame their corporate tax cuts and deregulation for business owners and executives as victories for the “little guy” and far too many red cult diaper suckers whose wages remained stagnant gobble it up. In reality, at the time of this writing oligarchic wealth soars to record heights while wealth inequality deepens again to record heights, and the structural concerns of working-class people—stagnant wages, lack of affordable healthcare, insecure jobs—go largely unaddressed again.

In many ways, MAGAism is less a break from American history than a return to a deep and problematic tradition—one where power is gilded, not shared, and where the worker is celebrated at rallies but abandoned in policy. It's not about real prosperity for 99.9% of people—it’s about idolizing a cartoonish version of power and order, where criminal robber barons called “commodores” ran the show and everyone else knew their place (usually at the bottom of the mine). Ultimately, MAGA’s lowest common denominator America is a vague dream featuring anything positive set in a Norman Rockwell painting that omits segregation, union-busting, tuberculosis, and the fact that most people had atrocious lives and then died at 42. So next time someone wears, writes or says “Make America Great Again,” ask, “When, exactly, was that?” Then sit back, pop some popcorn, and watch as they try to reverse-engineer a golden but really gilded age out of coal dust and bootstraps.