The other day I was talking with the universe about the geoengineering and toxicity that’s been amping up where I live, and about the “dimming of the sun” experiments proposed in the UK, and how misguided humanity is to devise and tolerate these obvious disservices to itself and the planet.
The moment I began this sort of prayer for humanity / moving meditation, I passed a church whose sign said “The Old Order — Revelation 21:4.”
I am not religious, but I am very spiritual and moved by signs and synchronicity. I knew there would be insight in that passage about the futility of the collapsing system’s attempts at maintaining dominance.
I looked the passage up and it reads:
“He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”
The sickness that has plagued humanity for thousands of years is not just dying. It’s dead.
Anyone, any force (collective consciousness or otherwise) trying to keep that old sickness alive will not triumph. Nor can the new order that’s trying to animate from the corpse of the old order like the limp limbs of Frankenstein’s monster. That order is based in fear, disconnection, unawareness, greed, coercion, and all the misguided depravity that necessitated the death of the old system.
Hanging in the balance as the dead system slowly realizes it’s dead is different every day. Sometimes I wish we could experience a healthy new society in our lifetimes. Other times I realize it exists already in the consciousnesses of those of us who know there are better ways.
We have to leverage that knowledge, that awareness, that gnosis and catapult the better ways into practice in every institution. So many people around the world are doing so — in holistic healthcare, transformational education, regenerative farming, humanist architecture, art, communications, etc. It’s not obvious, and it is daunting because the pain and the hideousness and the ghost of the old order still predominate the outer world — and will continue to do so until we realize we can drive it out with the better ways.
Those of us with intuition and gnosis are all creating change in our own manners — particularly when we purposefully and regularly banish hopelessness, cynicism, and contempt — because we’ve always known that there is so much more potential for flourishing on this beautiful planet than recorded history has ever seen.
I just came across a trivial example of a serious problem with big tech. I’ve noticed this with Google since at least 2010 when I was an SEO writer. It has gotten much worse in the last five years, particularly (as we’ve all observed) since Google started producing “AI Overviews.”
As much as Google censors information, erases facts, sanitizes truth, and disseminates propaganda, it creates false information.
In this relatively innocuous example, its “AI” claims Mod Pizza’s cauliflower crust is not gluten free — and goes so far as to assert on Mod’s behalf that Mod doesn’t recommend its own crust options for gluten-sensitive people. It goes even further to say “Mod Pizza recommends that people with Celiac Disease or gluten allergies avoid their restaurant.”
Go to Google’s “reference” links on Mod’s site and you find that Mod’s cauliflower crust is gluten free, and of course it recommends its own GF options. On one of the reference links, Mod says the opposite of “avoid our restaurant.” It says, “Picky Eaters Rejoice! There’s a Pizza for Everyone.”
Google’s misinformation is not jeopardizing lives in this case, but it could harm Mod’s business. Say people read Google’s twaddle, decide not to eat at Mod, and tell their gluten-free friends that Mod doesn’t even recommend its own GF options. Those friends tell their friends, and eventually you have a widely spread false rumor that many people believe to be true about a company that actually does a good job of offering a variety ofoptions and relatively simple ingredients. (Is it a coincidence that Google suggests bigger chains “offer gluten-free crust options, such as Domino’s, Papa John’s, and Pizza Pizza”?)
Every time I Google something, whether I already know the answer or not (I often test it), it yields misleading information or contradictory nonsense.
More perilous than pizza
Examples like this are reminders to cultivate discernment and critical thinking. Much more dangerous than mindless, made-up information about pizza is the news that gets churned out by big tech, corporate media, etc.
Recently, a trans woman in the National Guard, Jo Ellis, was said to have piloted a helicopter that crashed into a plane and killed everyone involved. It turned out that Jo was not one of the three pilots.
Why was this news initially misrepresented? Hasty humans and big tech bots drew false conclusions and spewed nonsense with the discernment of a mob of gossip columnists. Slipshod conjecture spread like a game of telephone, and according to The Guardian, some X posts got “hundreds of thousands of views.”
As Jo relates it, she’d just written an article and done a podcast when “the timing of that put me in a nice, delicious algorithm of ‘trans Black Hawk pilot Virginia.'” Apparently, X’s chatbot Grok in particular reported an erroneous surmise about the identity of the third pilot, saying it was Jo and implying she had died and contributed to 67 deaths.
Hats off to the Daily Mail for calling Jo’s cellphone and actually verifying that she’s alive. The much-spurned tabloid did better journalism that day than any fossil of formerly respected news outlets.
Ironically, the word grok, which comes from Robert A. Heinlein’s novel A Stranger in a Strange Land, means “to understand profoundly and intuitively,” as Merriam-Webster puts it.
False reporting happens countless times a day around the world when inchoate bots and sloppy journalists who don’t check references end up belching bullshit — on every groove along the political spectrum.
News that’s confused
Sometimes false and misleading news comes from public service organizations. The Oregon Department of Agriculture misled the public in December last year when it proclaimed it was “confident” that raw food had caused a cat’s avian flu. It asserted: “This cat was strictly an indoor cat; it was not exposed to the virus in its environment.”
But as Truth About Pet Food shows, vet Dr. Laurie Coger filed a Freedom of Information Act request and found that according to the department’s initial report, the cat in question was in the habit of going out on a leash, engaged with “grass outdoors,” and had a “possible exposure” to “waterfowl.”
One of the most invigorating thinkers of our time, psychologist Mattias Desmet, noted recently that a Belgian newspaper reported that Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. crushed live mice and birds for his falcons in a blender. This sensational news apparently came from his cousin Caroline Kennedy in her letter to a senate committee, opposing his nomination as Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Nowhere in her letter does she say the mice were alive when she’d seen them having been blended (for hawks) over 40 years ago. I can only guess that the provocative adjective “live” was assumed by someone at the newspaper, and no editor throughout the publication process thought to question or verify it. As Desmet put it, the newspaper should rewrite its article and title it “Robert Kennedy Had the Habit of Feeding His Falcons.”
(Or “Hawks.” The newspaper would have to ask Kennedy himself to verify which. Or barring the practice of directly interviewing involved parties to ascertain details, “Raptors” would be an apt choice since it covers both hawks and falcons.)
Survival tools
If we want sanity in our society, it’s crucial to harmonize the qualities that make us human. Two of our capacities, often considered opposites, are actually complementary and are particularly important at this time of heightened misrepresentation, division, and volatility.
The first is the authentic intuition that speaks to us from the core of our being. Not over-emotionalism or defensive gut reactions (which can be mistaken for intuition), but the deep knowing that can spot bullshit and lies instantly. Even when they seem to provide an answer, viewpoint, or solution we need.
The second is critical perception — taking a critical view of everything we see and hear online and on TV. (Follow links. Read source materials!!! Do as Plato and Einstein did and question everything.) Because more often than not, whatever a person, company, or organization’s political affiliations are, their chronicles and conclusions are too frequently ill-founded.
And every incidence of recklessness or deception wreaks collateral damage, major or minor.
I believe this phenomenon is partly unconscious (individuals and organizations that dispatch false “facts” and witless slander are often unaware of their errors when they make them without intention, thoroughness, or wisdom, but they’re still accountable for them and should apologize for and correct them). For example, one believes that RFK, Jr. is such a barbaric “predator” (Caroline’s word) that of course he would grind mice and chicks while they’re alive — the descriptor seems logical and there’s literally no question.
There’s also ample evidence that falsehoods, manipulation, and politically driven, Ministry of Truth-style censorship, slander, and pseudo-fact-checking are more often intentional than many people realize, though none of these particular examples seem to be (I even think the bird-flu one could have been a result of oversight). Fairly often, distortions are mostly due to sloppiness, injudiciousness, panic, a need to seem swiftly definitive and in control, ignorant artificial “intelligence,” and/or the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing. That said, we should aim to triumph over both conscious and unconscious drives to distort and divide.
Which means that as crazy as it is online and in the world, info police will never help. More constructive is taking responsibility for our own thinking, cultivating immunity to inflammatory headlines that imply what to think, and drawing our own measured conclusions.
Part of that involves freeing ourselves from the destructive belief that vigilantly watching or reading the news is the responsibility of intelligent people. In fact, we all know that the 24/7 (usually flawed or manipulative) reports of horrors across the planet are noxious mentally, emotionally, and physically. Most advertising is also manipulative, and the mega corporations that advertise fund the news and politicians. Making a sharp distinction between staying informed (through well-grounded sources) and constantly absorbing bad news can help restore humanity because, as the observer effect in quantum physics shows, our perceptions and observations influence reality. This doesn’t mean ignoring what’s happening. It means recognizing the horror, doing what we can to help individually and together with others, living the best lives we can, and shifting the mind from horror to focus on creation rather than destruction.
Typing -ai (note the minus sign) after a search term in Google is helpful too because it reduces the amount of off-the-wall results.
One of the most useful survival tools in the crucible we’re undergoing, which demands tectonic societal evolution, is seeing and being resilient to half-truths, plain lies, obtuse errors, and especially the emotional manipulation that pervades the media from all directions. In terms of what gets pumped out on right, left, and centrist channels, there’s both unconscious shaping and deliberate exploitation of the fact that shock and fear sell products, page views, TV ratings, and ideas.
We need to be open not to the drivel that makes us half-informed, reactive, and polarized, but to the complex nature of our world as we realize there’s more to a thing than AI or our media — both of which are manifestations of our collective mind — are currently capable of accurately conveying.
(Irony: I chose WordPress’s “Generate a featured image with AI” option. It created the image of the disbelieving woman on the computer. Also out of curiosity, I let WordPress’s AI create this post’s title. Originally I had “Every Time I Google Something, It Yields Misleading Information or Contradictory Nonsense.”)
Tonight, on election night, I’m building a fire, and on top of the logs I’m burning one stick for each thing I vote against in the world, such as:
War, corruption, manipulation, deception, double-dealing, propaganda, malfeasance, slander, libel, mudslinging, disillusionment, horror, gaslighting, insanity, hysteria, death threats, fear mongering, coercion, money laundering, fraud, genocide, infringements against sovereignty, medical disasters, conscious or unconscious ethical violations, iron grips, cruelty, arms manufacture, irresponsibility, untrustworthiness, laziness, doublethink, groupthink, Newspeak, disconnection, authoritarianism, greed, inauthenticity, close-mindedness, etc.
Then I’m telling the universe what I value and elect more of in the world, such as:
Love, peace, wisdom, sanity, sovereignty, truth, choice, life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, care, wellbeing, safety, security, respect, service, kindness, humanity, decency, expanded awareness, spiritual connection, person-to-person connection, fairness, cooperation, open-mindedness, independence, creativity, beauty, honor, generosity, symbiosis, authenticity, tranquility, civility, courtesy, compassion, manners, grace, health, prosperity, patience, resilience, responsibility, free thought, free speech, freedom to love in your way, freedom to worship (or not) in your way, freedom from want, freedom from fear, etc.
This is how our ancestors did it. Wherever we come from. For some groups, practices like this stopped thousands of years ago. For others, it was more recent. At some point, all our ancestors worked with nature to call and release what does and does not belong in a healthy society.
What qualities are you voting in and out of your world?
Some (hopefully) seed-planting words I posted on Facebook:
“So where’d you get your information from, huh?” is a little line from this classic song that I sing every day.
The amount of censorship, cancel culture, defaming, disrespect, close-mindedness, “fact checking,” deplatforming, and thinkpol I’ve seen in the last two years toward scientists doing science and critical thinkers doing critical thinking is disgraceful. My last straw with LinkedIn occurred last week when a rational physician was deplatformed on that site.
I’m excited to be closing my Facebook account soon when I’m done collecting my photos. I look forward to seeing you on a sane new platform in the future. Haven’t looked for one yet, but I’m confident that if it doesn’t exist now, it will within the next couple years. Hopefully many will, and we’ll be beyond monopolies.
Our world is rife with insane turbulence, and the legacy media and social platforms are a colossal part of it.
But I believe that we each have opportunities to invoke and embody more acceptance, fairness, curiosity, progressiveness, open-mindedness, solidarity, and authentic humanitarianism than we’ve ever seen in our lifetimes.
Psychology professor Mattias Desmet is one of many brilliant people these days who shows us ways we can do that. May his insight help save the world.
I’ve spent years doing personal and family healing with many different modalities, and years writing for companies whose work is about teaching people how to stay calm in a crisis and how to create a beautiful world that works for all.
This combo of personal work and career work has equipped me with a lot of tools, and I feel called to share a few. I hope you find my Top 4 Anti-Anxiety Tips for These Crazy Times handy:
1. Limit your media intake.
Make a sharp distinction between staying informed and constantly absorbing bad news. Every single time it makes sense to do so, turn the statistics and reports off and focus on shit that lifts you up. It’s not about not knowing what’s going on — it’s about honoring the fact that fear lowers immunity and love raises it.
2. Do Qigong or kundalini yoga.
Both are about moving old, painful energy out of your body and bringing fresh, healthy energy in. Search for people like this on YouTube: Lee Holden, Austin Goh, Daisy Lee, Roger Jahnke, Mingtong Gu, Gurutej Kaur.
3. Do 4-4-4 breathing.
This works best when you’ve made a practice of the two things above. It will help now even if you haven’t started doing those things yet.
Close your eyes and note in your mind this intention: “Every breath I take in contains peace.” Then note this: “Anxiety releases from my body every time I exhale.” Breathe in for a count of four. Hold your breath for a count of four. Exhale through your mouth for a count of four. After a few rounds of 4-4-4 breathing this way, start exhaling through your nose. Exhaling through your mouth at first is really great for releasing excess shit.
4. Reframe your thinking.
I’m really lucky that (actually this isn’t luck — I’ve carefully cultivated this) my friends are kind, loving, exceptionally intelligent people who care about the earth, the arts, humanity, our fellow animals, and all the things that matter.
With that caring, people often feel overwhelmed, powerless, and sometimes hopeless given all the insanity that’s been rampant for let’s face it — our entire lives.
It’s natural to think “Oh god what’s happening to the koalas/the icecaps/the Amazon/this country?” (In whatever country you live in.)
I urge you to replace thoughts of “those poor koalas” and “what if I get infected” and “that orange-haired asshole” with thoughts of WHAT YOU REALLY WANT for our world and your life. Train yourself to recognize thoughts of lack and anxiety when you think them, and to replace them with thoughts about your highest desires — the reasons why you’re alive.
As you likely know, this is not just a crazy time, it’s a crucial fucking time.
Across the entire planet we (and others) are going to be restructuring every system we’ve had in place: health, political, work, food, financial, education, transportation, everything. All those systems were broken in different ways. Crisis is an opportunity. Do all you can to usher change from a place where fear is minimized and your best intentions rule. ️
Erin Harris 