Today has been a day of feeling under the weather with a considerable amount of fatigue and sadness. So I got my work stuff done, felt things deeply with this beautiful song, and made myself some homemade chai. Then I settled into my bed and watched a few Chris Mortenson's Peak Prosperity videos on Youtube. One of them was a complex and interesting take on Biden's threats to impose restrictions and a windfall profit tax on the oil industry. And that these policies carry concerning implications that aren't being talked about, which might point to plans for government control on our resource and energy usage in the face of increasing scarcity of resources.
Another video I watched was on the FTX collapse, which revealed stark criminality and implications of a massive money laundering operation. What I watched was fascinating, from investigations into Sam Bankman-Fried's family and their political connections, to the funneling of huge amounts of money to Democratic campaigns, to FTX funding of artificial intelligence technologies and $18 million (!) in COVID trials. There's even mention of possible ties between FTX, Epstein, and Robert Maxwell's looted fortune when he mysteriously died back in the 90s. Some of what he talks about is speculation, and it could be nothing much beyond that. Yet some of these political connections are coincidental enough that it might be important that investigations and discussions are happening about these issues. I'm about to dive into more videos on the crypto world. We'll see what happens from there.
I am passionate about understanding all that is corrupt and abusive in our world. Especially anything that has to do with banking, monetary policy, and the economy. Also, the complex and long history that led up to the War on Terror (or any war for that matter), where we continue to be deceived and lied to on shocking and horrific levels in the name of "national security" and "military aid" on both sides of the political aisle. Where millions of people have tragically died, where whole countries have been robbed of opportunities for democracy and economic stability... at the hands of criminals within our own intelligence, government, military, and law enforcement agencies operating in their own fears and interests. I want to cry, like really feel the grief of it all, when thinking about the destruction caused by the pathocracy in our society.
On the other hand, I also feel inspired to stay tuned to what's evolving and unfolding in our world. Ideas, innovations, movements, alternative currency systems, and emergent conversations that are in service to creating a well-functioning society. Yet what is this society designed to do? Meet the basic health and economic needs of all? Heal the personal and collective trauma in our communities? Reimagine democracy and decentralized governance systems? Promote transparency and healthy levels of authority and centralization of power? Clearly it would be a mushrooming of different things. Yet how do we embody and put these visions into real practice and design, so that they don't just feel like intellectual artifacts?
Authentically integrating the light and dark of the world is a challenging and confusing process. The more darkness I see, the more my idealism steps back, feeling totally humbled by the complexity of life and the magnitude of the corruption that most of us are unaware about. And if we're not aware of the darkness in our world, this hinders our ability to think well about what's really going on, which makes it harder for us to make informed decisions. We become so easily to manipulate and deceive. And it's easy for any of us to get stuck in our unconscious thought and belief traps.
I was driving the other day and saw a sign on a business storefront that said "Make sense common again." While I appreciated the gestalt feel of the message, it had me wondering: what is common sense anymore these days? The truth wars playing out everywhere are a clear indicator that things aren't so simple as "common sense" anymore.
As we work together to restore hope to the future, we need to include a new and strange ally—our willingness to be disturbed. Our willingness to have our beliefs and ideas challenged by what others think. No one person or perspective can give us the answers we need to the problems of today. Paradoxically, we can only find those answers by admitting we don’t know. We have to be willing to let go of our certainty and expect ourselves to be confused for a time.
We weren’t trained to admit we don’t know. Most of us were taught to sound certain and confident, to state our opinion as if it were true. We haven’t been rewarded for being confused. Or for asking more questions rather than giving quick answers. We’ve also spent many years listening to others mainly to determine whether we agree with them or not. We don’t have time or interest to sit and listen to those who think differently than we do. But the world now is quite perplexing. We no longer live in those sweet, slow days when life felt predictable, when we actually knew what to do next. We live in a complex world, we often don’t know what’s going on, and we won’t be able to understand its complexity unless we spend more time in not knowing.
It is very difficult to give up our certainties—our positions, our beliefs, our explanations. These help define us; they lie at the heart of our personal identity. Yet I believe we will succeed in changing this world only if we can think and work together in new ways. Curiosity is what we need. We don’t have to let go of what we believe, but we do need to be curious about what someone else believes. We do need to acknowledge that their way of interpreting the world might be essential to our survival.
- Turning to One Another: Simple Conversations to Restore Hope to the Future, Meg Wheatley
Something I'm coming to in my own journey is that it's not about having the answers, or feeling like I've got to the bottom of an issue and therefore have the "truth". Education may be less about facts and data, and more about connecting the dots and building relationships between things. As David Rumelhart says, "all knowledge is in the connections." So how does energy connect to economy? How do those two connect with geopolitics, the environment, social systems? And once we start making these connections across complex and emergent systems, how do we hold and contain all that we're digesting?
I recently discovered a unique news information and education site called The Pulse, where they write on science, consciousness, politics, current events, and solutions while also boldly covering controversial topics like UFOs and vaccine safety concerns. They take a "sense-making" approach along with critical thinking when it comes to the investigative journalism they do. At the top of every article is this:
Pause - set your Pulse...
Take a breath. Release the tension in your body. Place attention on your physical heart. Breathe slowly into the area for 60 seconds, focusing on feeling a sense of ease. Click here to learn why we suggest this.
They emphasize that a sense-making approach is one that honors the importance of self-regulating our emotions when navigating information in our world. That how people consume and synthesize information can make a great impact on how we make meaning of our choices in our lives and society.
Decades of research shows that our hearts send more information to our brains than our brains send to our hearts. When our body’s heart is beating in what is called an ‘incoherent rhythm’, it sends a message to our brains and nervous system that produces suboptimal function that leads to a reduction in our ability to learn, make effective decisions, problem-solve, critically think, and self regulate our emotions.
When our heart is beating in a coherent rhythm, it sends coherent signals to the brain and nervous system that then brings each of these systems into synchronization physiologically. The result is opposite of that of incoherent signals. Research shows an improvement in our ability to think clearly, navigate information, make decisions, remember things, and communicate. All of this can come from as little as 60 – 90 seconds of practices like the one we place at the top of each of our articles. Over time, these practices also helps to build self-awareness which helps us see our own bias’ more clearly.
Culture today is often uncomfortable with uncertainty and thus open inquiry and examination of new evidence has shut off around certain subjects. In our minds, this is causing a very societally impactful sense-making crisis in which we have become divided, distressed, emotional, and unclear as to what is actually going on around us. With this, we are quick to react and are often living on edge. As research shows, when we make decisions within our lives and society based on this state of being, they are often ineffective, suboptimal, and create further disharmony.
Since part of our mission at The Pulse is to observe what is happening in our world from a more neutral point of view, asking what about us and our current human story creates our world, society, ideas, day to day choices, and policies to be the way they are, it was important to us to develop a style that encourages people to be in a state of mind and being where they’re more open to exploring new ideas without bias, cognitive distortions, and immediate resistance.
People can have a spiritual practice or work on personal transformation, but don’t often apply their transformation to questioning or re-imagining things like current events, society, or politics. We are at a critical time in humanity’s history where faith in existing institutions is deteriorating rapidly, typically based on a right intuition people have that these institutions don’t work in their favor. We must begin exploring why our world is in need of change, and at the same time be able to shift our consciousness and thinking enough that we can make societal changes from a new way of thinking and being. When we make this shift, our perception about life, society and what is possible dramatically shifts, and we begin to tap into a new story about humanity and what we want to create.
A New Media Approach For Improved Sense-Making Through Physiological Coherence, The Pulse
Thank you, The Pulse, for bringing me back into mindful, inspired states. Something that I see in myself is I carry a lot of innocence. Hope. Promise for a better, more sane future. And a lot of that has to do with my age. But given who I know myself to be, I think I'll carry this innocence for as long as I'm alive. Yet maybe, with time, I'll have a grounded innocence. Where I can embody greater intellectual sophistication, sense-making, and critical thinking while holding the darkness of the world. And contributing and putting energy into real and constructive conversations and actions as well.
Artist: Roger Peet
