This is a unique time in the history of humankind. We’ve arrived at a the most significant existential inflection point. If it were a film, the ending could go Spielberg or Hitchcock.
You already know the bad news (war, authoritarianism, climate, exploitation, corruption, disease, substance abuse, poverty, etc.). We are seeing and experiencing the fallout every day individually, in our communities, across society, and on the planet. The suffering is real.
What if the metacrisis is merely a symptom of an orchestrated crippling of what it means to be human?
What if that affront involves steering people away from the notion of free will and toward outsourcing thinking, numbing feelings, burying self-worth, and objectifying themselves and each other? What if it is about giving precedence to what’s easy and feels good over what’s right? Any sense of individuality and creativity would naturally shrivel, and eventually, each body would crumple with exhaustion, surrendering its voice and any residue of sovereignty.
That would be a crime of nature.
Yet, it’s under way.
It is a narrative of disempowerment from our true nature, and it’s fueled by deception.
The human ability to discern what is real, accurate and genuine has never been as challenged as it is today — externally in the world and internally within ourselves.
Externally, we are surrounded by forces engineered to disable our agency.
Technology increasingly is limiting our access to information and our ability to think critically to make independent choices. Just think: AI is a tool created by capitalists driven to dominate, and even they admit it lies, cheats, steals, and poses serious danger. On the creative side, sounds and images (still and moving) can represent the contrived as real. Algorithms are fluid and deft at masking the content we seek for whatever click-bait performs best right now. These tools, which pervade our lives, manipulate our ability to know what is real or not.
Media misleads a public for whom media literacy is lacking. Manipulation isn’t limited to tech — people are adept at it, too; particularly corporations and billionaires using their owned traditional media properties to sway policy and public opinion to their personal and professional agendas. The Future of Media Project at Harvard calls this hijacking of the press by self-interested, monopolistic owners coupled with technology, “The great civic dilemma of our time.”
Social media platforms, which are the public square of this era, collectively are both a primary source of news and a prolific offender of ethics and responsibility. An unfortunate yet excellent example is last month’s court-ordered fine of $375 million to Meta for endangering children by allowing underage users to see sexualized content and be targeted by predators. (Meta stopped short of taking accountability, though.)
People of all ages need to be reminded — or trained — to identify the integrity of online content and interactions. If this goes unchecked, they will play into the polarizing playbook of corrupt media and tech magnates. Fake news? Check sources.Optics over integrity. Being consumed with how one is portrayed in the eyes of another is not new, but it’s become ubiquitous in this online age of hyper-exposure. From corporate social responsibility efforts that look good — but reek of greenwashing — to the social media influencer phenomenon (the Kardashian effect), the obsession with how a corporate or personal brand is being perceived by an audience for currency (monetary or otherwise) has stomped all over value. Flash over substance may have peaked, thanks to Gen Z doing things differently, but it’s still rampant. And it’s a sellout of the truth for the false.
Consumerism masked as hedonism masked as desirable. The longtime narrative — about 2,000 years long — is that you are unworthy due to original sin, and happiness can be found outside of yourself. That the promotion to the C-level suite, that fancy car, those Jimmy Choos, and that expensive face cream — and the surgery — will be the on-ramp to desirability, success, happiness. In other words: You must prove your worth. Let us sell you how.
(Author Dan Brown has done an excellent job in “The Da Vinci Code” onwards relating what Jesus and the Gnostics taught: You are worthy. All the divinity, magic and bliss you seek is within, which upholds the ancient Hermetic Principles that we are consciousness experiencing itself and the physical world is a mental construct. More on this to come!)
Similar to optics, this is virtue-signaling but through societal conditioning that if we just do/buy/achieve this thing, all will be well. It begs the question for every undertaking: Am I seeking to do right by others, or to do right by my self? If it’s not the latter, there’s a disconnect. It’s not acting from your own truth.
Internally, we can be blocked from accurate data that informs our beliefs and behaviors.
Mixed (and missed) signals disrupt innate GPS. If we’re getting false data, we’re at risk of moving from the wrong place to the wrong place. We’re born with physical equipment that’s been honed over 300 millennia. Our ability to perceive information, process it, analyze it, and apply it is naturally pretty excellent. (And all conscious beings have a natural ability to perceive information in the energetic field. More on this to come!)
What happens when our ability to identify and process such data gets polluted? You’ll know if you’ve ever had a hangover or couldn’t sleep after doomscrolling in bed or felt sick from eating fast food or too much sugar. The fact is, our environments (EMFs, nanoplastics, exhaust, always-on digital culture) and our bodies (GMO products, fake food and drink, prescription and illegal drugs and alcohol, disrupted circadian rhythms) are polluted, blocking our natural information receptors and disrupting our hormones and nervous systems. How can we navigate accurately from false information?Assumptions over curiosity. Every single person has a unique point of view based on the lens and the filter of their lived experience*. The lens is the culture and community one is born into; it’s not by choice. This system informs how groups’ actions are ordered, and it governs values, rules, ethics and etiquette. The disposition of a white Catholic woman who lives in the city likely differs from that of a Muslim black man in a rural area based simply on this lens. The filter is the witnessed experience of human interaction, which cuts across demographics. It is how we perceive the rules of relating, whether we learn it actively by how we are treated as a child or how we treat others, or passively by how we observe others being treated. Together, the lens and the filter form our sense of truth growing up, along with a third aspect of perception (intuition or innate knowing). More to come on this!
The process of living life — chockful of joyful and painful experiences — may cause us to question our conditioned lens and filter. If the pain is great enough, it may cause one to question the “truth” as taught and experienced through lens and filter. It may beg the question, What is true for ME?
That is the catalyst for a profound and rewarding exploration. Yet in today’s milieu (over-programmed schedules, distracting devices and 24/7 accessibility), the time, place and space to ponder such a question is elusive. It’s easier, quicker and seemingly safer to surrender to the perspective handed to us, rather than be that solo traveler.
Disharmony is a nudge to discover the truth. Pay attention to it.Disconnection is the ultimate falsehood. It takes enormous effort today to connect (and stay connected) with our selves, each other and nature. The demands of modern living usurp our energy to stay grounded and aligned, and to act from that place. (I’m reminded of this every day, when yet another website isn’t satisfied to accept my login with my trusty password and demands sending me a code via text or email; or when my printer decides it’s taking vacation with no prior notice!)
There is a whole economic sector devoted to products and services to regulate the nervous system. That’s how disconnected and traumatized we are individually and collectively. To heal the whole, we must begin within. Each of us must become aware of the signals our mind, body and spirit are sending us. Stress, anxiety, depression, loneliness, illness, and lack of hope are good signs that we don’t feel wholly our own self.
It takes awareness to notice this, and courage to act on it. More on this to come!
Acting on it can be as simple (yet difficult) as being open to sense what does and does not sit well with us. It’s ultimately about observing and allowing one’s true self to be — and to be seen.
There is every chance that what you discover is true for you does not fit within the lens and/or the filter you were taught. And your ability to perceive data intuitively will help you know what is true or faux.
And there is a way to turn on or turn up your natural intuitive ability — it may be on “mute” or the “volume” is too low to detect because the powers that be for two millennia have tried to extinguish it. More to come on this!
The way to strengthen your intuition is to respect and understand that you are a holistic being, and to connect the mind, body and spirit. This can be done either through practices that involve quieting the mind (meditation), being present now (mindfulness) and experiencing joy and/or flow. Flow is when our attention is so rapt — through curiosity, creativity, joy, and challenge — that we lose a sense of time. Often described as being “in the zone,” it’s an altered state of consciousness that athletes and musicians regularly experience. (More on flow via The Guardian.)
Here’s the good news: We can combat all of this by getting back to our true nature.
What is our true nature?
That’s for each of us to experience. Hint: It’s not the stuff of a metacrisis.
“The message is the medium,” as media theorist Marshall McLuhan said. So, I’m bringing my holistic self to my holistic message, which is about discovering and discerning what’s real, genuine and accurate for “Navigating from Truth” for eudaimonia. (Eudaimonia, in short, is living according to one’s highest potential and virtues, with positive impact to one’s self and others.)
My perspective is informed as a journalist covering the mind-body-spirit movement; a researcher investigating shifting beliefs and behaviors; a media entrepreneur and intrapreneur; a digital strategy and strategic communications consultant and mentor; and a lifelong spiritual seeker.
Look forward to facts, stories, perspectives, and approaches — and lots of behind-the scenes reflections — as I go about my work and life. It’s all combined into one experience now. Silos are out. Holism is in.
Next Up: I’ll share what I’ve learned about our true nature through science and direct experience.
*My own theory. More to come on this!