Progressive Politics

I couldn’t think, I couldn’t engage creatively, I couldn’t demonstrate effectively, my empathy went right out the window. I just stood there, fuming and stun-locked. And that was one guy. It’s not like me, and I didn’t used to be like this.

You are beautiful and smarter than you probably even think for recognizing and understanding this. We are ALL vulnerable to the conditions they created.

We are being poisoned, and yeah it's pretty well set-in at this point because it's been ramping up for decades, but it's not natural. It's not just some consequence of division and politics, this cloud over our ability to engage is manufactured by very powerful systems and groups. They are all around us online, they are pushing our emotional buttons, they are stripping away our attention spans, they are feeding our brains narratives against our will and better reasoning. They do it on the left and right, they take the worst sides of every issue and make us unable to think clearly. It's strategic exploitation of our human vulnerabilities and tools like AI are going to make it vastly more efficient.

We can't get the right to understand this is happening, they don't have minds that work with abstractions and larger issues than what's in front of them, but we CAN learn to recognize our own feelings and reinforce our sovereignty and use our better minds to change their feelings.

As tired as the analogy is, there is a very real "waking up from the matrix" feeling to realizing how our own brains and feelings have been altered by forces outside of ourselves.