How To Stay Sane When Everyone Is Going F_ckin Crazy

Is the world going absolutely crazy? If you are like most people and many of the people that I talk to and interact with, they are overwhelmed. They are inundated with how much is going on in the world. The kind of craziness of Epstein file releases, war in Iran, the rise of artificial intelligence, the looming threat of it. Basically taking over the economy, the conversations of whether or not the human species will even survive artificial general intelligence. I don't know about you, but it seems like the dial of fear, of paranoia has been amplified. It's been turned up without question. And the truth about the human experience is that we were not designed to hold as much information as much transition, as much fear, as much tension is happening on a daily basis right now. You and I and every single human being on this planet are not meant to be immersed in global affairs constantly. We are not meant to be at the forefront of the conversation of the extinction of our species. And what's happened for a lot of people is that their growing sense of existential panic and anxiety seems to be growing day by day. And so I want to do two things in this video. Number one, I want to make a prediction. And number two, I want to equip you with certain tools or skills that you are going to need to thrive in the next 3 to 5 years, 3 to maybe even 10 years. But the truth is that no one can really know what's going to happen. Nobody knows if a nuke is going to get used in the next year or two. Nobody knows whether or not artificial and general intelligence or ASI is going to wipe us out or help us become interplanetary. Nobody really knows how things are going to unfold. And so my prediction isn't necessarily about what's going to happen with technology or in geopolitics or whatever the case may be. My prediction is going to be about what's going to happen for you and what life is going to be like and continue to be like for you as an average person, as an everyday person in this world. And then the second piece I wanna give you is the things that you will need, the sort of tools for the journey in the new landscape that we are embarking on. So let me set the scene for you, okay? About 1,000 years ago, 500 years ago, 250 years ago, the average human being didn't really know what was happening on the other side of the world, right? We didn't know what the war looked like, you know, if you were living in Scotland, we didn't really know what the war looked like in America. You didn't know what was happening in China. You didn't really know about the geopolitical nonsense. You weren't really aware of impending threats, and we didn't have the kind of existential crisis that seems to be looming in the background and the foreground on a pretty much daily basis. And so the problem that so many human beings are having within our modern culture and society is that they are overwhelmed and inundated with a quality of information that is almost nonsensical and completely disorienting for them. And the quality of that information is information that you can essentially do nothing about. Things like whether or not AI is going to replace the majority of jobs, information like whether or not America is going to use a nuke in Iran, Information like the Epstein files, which nothing's really happened with and seems to be completely swept underneath the rug. And so the average person on a daily basis is consuming content that is showing them information that they basically have no relationship to. And so you're inundated with a kind of data, a kind of information that disrupts your psyche in such a way that stirs up emotions, that stirs up existential anxiety, whether it's about climate fears or political fears or the rise of fascism or the fall of whatever, you know, techno-Marxism. And what that does to the average individual is that they can never actually find a ground of psychological stability. So my prediction is as follows. My prediction is that the majority of people, we are going to see a rise, especially in the West, of higher rates of psychosis as more and more people experiment with psychedelics and psychological-affecting drugs, like really intense versions of THC and marijuana. And the inundation of all of this information, all of this existential dread that people are just swimming around in constantly, we are going to see more and more and more people struggling to be able to identify a coherent sense of reality. Because reality in an objective sense, as we know it, is sort of being torn, it's being tugged at, it's being manipulated, it's being, threatened in a way. And we've entered into a space where, and you can see this with the war in Iran, where there's a kind of battle happening in what's called intersubjective reality. And that's the reality of story, that's the reality of narrative. So there's really three forms of reality that I want you to know about. There's the subjective reality, that's your internal experience, how you think, how you feel, how you relate to things, you know, story of your life, your subjective experience in this moment as you are watching this. And then there's objective reality, and objective reality is out there, right? It's the things that we can measure, we can quantify, we can calculate, right? That's the realm of math. It's the realm of nature. It's the observable realm that we can all interact with. And then there's the realm of intersubjective reality, and that's the realm of narrative, of story, the stories that we hold, the stories that we tell. Now, here's the thing. All 3 of these are very, very important forms of reality. And for your psychological well-being, for the psychological well-being of any human being, you need to have a certain level of coherence within each of these realms. So you need to be able to say, "I understand how I think and what I'm feeling and what's going on inside of me right now in my subjective experience." You also need to be able to look out at the world and say the sky is blue and the grass is green, and we can all agree on that. And there's 2 cows standing over there, or whatever it is that you objectively see. And then we all have a story about those 2 realms. There's the intersubjective realm is kind of the shared story, the agreed-upon story of what's happening in objective reality and sometimes in subjective reality. Now, here's the challenge. Here's the big transition that we are moving through that I think is disrupting so many people and is going to continue to cause more and more forms of psychosis, whether it's AI-induced psychosis, whether it's drug-induced psychosis, whether it's whatever it is that is existential panic-induced psychosis. What's happening more and more is that we're moving through a transition where battles aren't just being fought in a physical, tactile, hot war kind of way. Battles are being fought more and more in the intersubjective realm, in the realm of story. And when that happens, a part of the impact of that is that your relationship with objective reality and subjective reality get attacked. So how you perceive what is objectively true begins to get disrupted. And when that gets disrupted, it is psychologically unnerving. It's psychologically disruptive because how you come to have a subjective sense of self is through an interaction with objective reality, right? So if you can't agree on what's happening objectively, Or if you and I, let's just say, are sharing a space, right? You're in this room with me, we're sitting here, and you all of a sudden say, "Hey, a leprechaun just walked in the room." I'm gonna say, "No, it didn't." I objectively do not see a leprechaun in the room. And that will have been a disruption for you from objective reality. So you will have broken from what is objectively observable and true and there will be a shift in your subjective experiencing of objective reality. And that is what is the grounds of psychosis, that what you subjectively or internally experience within the realm of objective truth and reality and within the realm of story begins to get disrupted, and you start to disconnect from what is objectively true. All right, guys, really quick aside. First off, thank you so much for tuning in to the show and to the channel. If you are wanting to go deeper, if you're a man that's working on himself in some way, shape, or form, you're wanting to be more self-led, you want to trust yourself more, you want to have a deeper level of self-worth, or maybe you're looking to improve your relationship, then I encourage you to check out the Man Talks Alliance. You can go to mantalks.com/alliance. We have over 1,000 men in this incredible community from around the world, men who are just like you, working to better themselves, to be a better husband, a better father, a better leader in your own life. So check it out, mantalks.com/alliance. So we're entering into this time where the rise of AI, the rise of war, the massive changes in geopolitical, spheres are all happening in an intersubjective way. There is a battle happening for the story about what is unfolding in the world today. And you can see this in, for example, the way that the Epstein files were released, right? The Epstein files were released, and there was so many different stories, so many different narratives about it. And what ended up happening in objective reality was largely Nothing. Largely nobody was arrested. Largely nobody suffered any consequences. Um, pretty much nothing happened in the realm of objective reality, but there was a massive campaign in intersubjective reality, in the realm of story, and that's where the real war was fought. And so my big prediction is that more and more and more people are going to become disconnected from objective truth and reality, especially as some ideologies continue to push a disconnection from the things that are objectively true, that we can objectively measure, and those things are going to continue to create psychological disruption, okay? Because the truth is that you as an individual are designed to have subjective coherence where you understand what's happening inside of you and how you're feeling and what you're thinking, but that coherence also needs to be in coherence. Your subjective experience needs to be in coherence with objective reality. Again, if you are experiencing objective reality in a completely different way where you think there are unicorns out in the world flying around and you look at the sky and you think that it's green instead of blue and the grass is red instead of green, but the vast— we can quantify, we can calculate, we can measure we can observe that in fact grass is not that color, et cetera, then you are disconnected from an observable objective form of existence. And that is going to continue to happen more and more for people. And then when you layer on top of that, the fact that you have wars being waged within the realm of story, which is essentially a huge part of how your psyche is defined. Your psyche, the way that you find coherence internally is largely around the story you hold about what's happening inside of you, right? So if you feel sad for whatever reason, and the story is, something's wrong with me because I feel sad, I'm broken because I feel sad, that is going to affect your psyche, your sense of identity, your sense of self. So the stories that we hold internally are very important, but also the stories that we hold externally are also extremely powerful, right? Nations are built on stories. Think about the American dream. That is a story that embodies the kind of persona or identity of a nation. Germany also has a story that has played out over time, Japan, et cetera. So intersubjective reality is extremely important. And unfortunately, because of the rise of AI, what has begun to happen is that story has become fragmented. There's no longer a coherent sense of intersubjective reality, and there is a kind of battle being fought to tell and wield certain stories. Now, that's always happened to a certain degree But for a long time, the stories that we have been told, the stories that we have held, the stories that we have operated in have largely been coherent. Whether they have been true or not is a very different conversation. But the stories that we have inhabited as a species, as a community, as a nation, as a tribe have been largely coherent, but those stories are breaking down. Those stories that hold together into subjective reality are becoming very, very disrupted. And you've likely seen this in people where the story of how they thought life was or how people were, the government was, or whatever it is, has become fragmented. And when you see somebody have their intersubjective reality changed, they have the narrative that they have operated in changed for so long, it creates psychological damage. Disruption. So what has started to happen is that at every single level of reality— subjective reality and truth, objective reality and truth, intersubjective reality and truth— all of those stages or realms of reality have become more fragmented, more fragile, more disrupted. And the impact on the majority of people is more disconnection, more internal psychological disruption, more distraction, more unconsciousness, and more instability. So again, coherence in subjective experiencing creates stability. Coherence with objective reality creates stability. Coherence with a narrative that is true, right? This is like, Myth 101, the reason why mythology is so important is that it holds truths about the human experience and psyche and the world and nature and existence itself that, um, that is extremely important for a certain quality or kind of coherence. But when you create disruptions and fragment those forms of reality, you create dis-coherence, incoherence, And what happens for people is that they are more psychologically fragile, they are more distracted, they are more weak, they are more malleable, they are more open to compliance, they are more open to being told a specific narrative just to provide safety and security. So the more that you can disrupt somebody's psyche, the more likely they are To buy a specific narrative. And this brings me to the tools that you are going to need to not survive necessarily, but to thrive in the coming years, whatever happens, however things unfold in the war in Iran and with the Epstein files and with AI and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So what do you need to know about being a resilient human being in a time of complete And utter disruption, in a time of radical, radical transformation. In alchemy, there's something called the negredo, and the negredo is basically the blackening. It's the decaying, it's the falling apart. It is the alchemical psychological experience of having things that were once stable begin to break down. And we've entered into this negredo years ago. You might say that we entered into the Negredo right around COVID, where the infrastructure of reality, objective reality, intersubjective reality, that was once coherent started to break down, started to fall apart, and more and more and more people have started to move into different silos, different groups or encampments of beliefs and ideology that are so vastly opposing. That you can't find any level of agreement or coherence. And the truth that we all know, and, you know, maybe, maybe you don't know it, and so I'll try and lay it out. The truth is that when disagreement becomes so prominent and agreement is not possible, right? If you and I can't sit down and have some type of discourse and conversation around our disagreements to have a shared agreed-upon version of reality where we can both exist, The end outcome is the use of force. The end outcome when language communication, the attempt to find coherence breaks down, the end outcome of that is the use of force. Because at the end of the day, we are still mammals. And as much as we think that we are smart and intelligent, how we still back up our beliefs, our values, our ideologies If we cannot come to some level of mutual respect and mutual agreement, then how we end up backing it up is through force. We use force to do that. So what has happened more and more in our current culture and society is that a decay has been happening, and it's been a slow and steady decay of intersubjective narratives falling apart, objective reality and truth being sort of attacked and you could say preyed upon in some ways, but infiltrated so that objective reality and truth has become a question mark to some people, not just philosophically, but that the sort of core tenets that have always held together objective truth and reality, right, like biology and whatnot, the things that we can observe, the things that we can measure, those things are sort of not accepted in some ideologies, in some realms. And then the subjective experience, most, the many, many people, and again, the data backs this up, are more mentally unwell than ever before. Suicide rates are up, depression rates are up, anxiety rates are up, existential anxiety and panic is up. Pretty much every observable, measurable marker of mental health is going down. It's failing, right? People are more mentally unwell than they have ever been before. So we've entered collectively into this type of negredo, into this type of breaking down. And as you go through that state, as you individually, whether you're going through an individual negredo or we go through this collective negredo, there are certain qualities and traits that are required in order for you to survive that realm, that territory. Now we in modern culture and Western society especially, we look at the Negredo as a type of hell. We have historically devalued the Negredo, right? And so you look at like the stock market's a perfect example of that. Stock market just go up, we never want it to fail, we never want it to go down. But so we sort of have devalued the experience of having things fall apart, but the truth and the reality of existence, of nature, of the human experience is that things need to decay, things need to fall apart, things need to come apart and then be rebuilt for them to continue on. And so this is a part of the life cycle, right? Even within your body biologically, every 7 years, all of the cells within your body will have died, will have decayed and died off and been replaced by new cells. So even within you, this cycle is going on, this sort of decay and rebirth and ascension, this decay, rebirth, and ascension continues on. And in our culture, we have said that's bad, that's wrong. We are very death-phobic. We don't want to wrap our heads around this notion that this is a very important element, very important part of life and the human species. I personally believe that even though many people are going to go through a very hard time, you're going to see more and more people become emotionally disrupted, psychologically unwell, more depressed, more anxious, more psychosis, more disconnection from truth and reality. More disconnection from what's happening, way more fragile relationally. Disagreement is going to continue to become more and more of a ground that people cannot tolerate. And as you see that, the tools that you will need are going to become more and more important. So here's what you need. Number 1, you need a willingness to enter into the unknown. A lot of people are terrified of entering into unknown territory, but it's how you explore the map more. It's how you understand life, existence, truth, self, objective reality, story. It's how you experience those different realms in a meaningful way. You have to be willing to venture out into the unknown. And when we go through any type of change or transition where the negredo starts, things starts to fall apart, they start to break, The immediate response that most people have is, oh shit, I don't want this to happen. But we have to respond to this time in a very different way because the truth is that things are changing, things are happening, so much of it is out of your individual control, you cannot influence it, and so there's a certain level of acceptance that, okay, this change and transition is happening, let me build a tolerance for the falling apart that is happening. Let me build a tolerance for the unknown territory that we are traversing. So rather than blinding yourself, shutting your eyes, sticking your head into the sand of the change and the transition that is taking place right now in the world, in your life, in your society, in your city, start to see if you can open your eyes more to the change and the transition that's happening. Not from a place of trying to, you know, take as much as you possibly can, but to just build a little bit of tolerance to say, I'm going to stay awake to the change that's happening. I'm going to stay present to the things that are falling apart. This is like when a relationship ends, you kind of have two choices. You can be present to the grief and the sadness of that relationship ending, of the heartbreak that it inevitably brings along with it, Or you can try and numb yourself out. You can try and disconnect from it. And what we know, what you likely know and have witnessed and have experienced and have firsthand proof of is that trying to ignore the truth of the experience when that transition happens, the pain, the sadness, the grief, the anger, the frustration, trying to ignore that produces a way worse result. Than if you stay awake to the pain of the transition, the hardship of it, the sadness, the grief. And so my number one piece is, yes, open yourself to the tolerance of the unknown, but number two, let yourself feel the truth of the transition, whatever it is for you. Maybe it's a tremendous amount of fear. Maybe there's anger and frustration. You see the Epstein files and you're like, what the actual F? How has nobody gone to jail. Maybe you're just really fricking angry. Maybe you're sad about the state of the world. Maybe you're sad about the wars that are taking place, the people who are being killed. Whatever it is, stay true to the truth of your experience. Let yourself feel the truth of what is happening. So that's step number 1. As things decay, you want to stay aware of the falling apart that's happened, the new territory you're entering into, and how you subjectively feel about the decay. So notice I'm talking about the three forms of existence, right? The three forms of reality. You tune into your subjective experience of the decay. You stay aware of the objective changes and the objective, you know, new territory that you're heading into. And then you stay present to the changing stories that are also there. The next tools that you are going to need are pretty simple, but they are going to be subjectively dependent. So they're really going to depend on what your life looks like, the outcomes that you want, the goals that you have, etc. Those two skills are adaptability and regulated resiliency. And I'm going to describe both of these. So number one, when things change, when things fall apart, whether it's in your life, your personal relationship, your marriage ends, a divorce happens, your kids move out, you become an empty nester, your business collapses, you quit a job, when you go through a transition of any kind, resiliency, sorry, adaptability is one of the first skills that you need. So as you enter into the Negredo, things start to fall apart. The old way of doing things does not work any longer. And this is what we see, you know, for example, when Perseus goes to face Medusa, he is in this transition of having to face this monster, having agreed to go and confront this monster that he does not know how to deal with. And he has to be extremely adaptable. He has to adapt his skills. He has to adapt in the moment, real time. And so for you, one of the greatest skills that you can deploy in this time of transition and turmoil is adaptability. And you're going to need to look at every avenue, every part of your life. How can I be more adaptable in my relationship? What do I need to adapt to in my work environment? You know, yesterday I saw that Oracle laid off 30,000 people. 30,000 people, right? 30,000 people who in a heartbeat now have to adapt to a new form of reality, and that is going to continue to happen. Many, many, many people are going to lose their jobs. Many people are going to be pushed out of the, you know, the jobs and the ecosystems that they've been inhabiting for a long time. So you need to be adaptable, and how you are adaptable is yes, by understanding how things are changing externally, understanding how you feel internally, but also being able to and willing to try things quickly and fail. Fail forward, learn from your failures, and let your failures, let the things that are not working inform the path forward. This is a kind of rule to the underworld or a rule to the Negredo. If you are in a period where shit's just hit the fan and everything's falling apart. Maybe your marriage has fallen apart, maybe your relationship, maybe your career, maybe your finances, whatever it is, right? You've been diagnosed with some type of illness and things are just chaos and they've fallen apart. Your ability to adapt to that environment, to try things that are new, And experiment becomes a wildly, wildly successful trait. Why? Because the way you did things before is no longer functional. And the truth of the reality that we are in and entering into is that the ways in which you operated previously, the ways in which our education systems worked, the ways in which our government, our businesses, the way that so many different parts of reality have worked are no longer going to work. So you cannot do things the way that you used to do them and produce the same result. AI is going to ensure that everything changes quite quickly. So adaptability is going to be one of your greatest strengths. And if you can learn to be adaptable, if you can learn to just shift and like Ross and Friends, pivot the couch on the stairway, if you can learn to pivot and have that be a modality for a period of time, maybe for the next 5 to 8 years, and to have adaptability and the ability to shift and change and do that quite quickly in your, in your business, in your career, in how you do your relationships and how you show up on social media, all of those different pieces, you are going to be ahead of the game. You're going to be ahead of most because most people are still operating as if it's 2019. Most people are not in alignment with the truth of the transition that we are in. They are not. They are asleep at the wheel. They do not want to come to grips with the change that is happening. And they're doing that because it is scary. When you listen to people online and you hear people's fear as they talk about certain parts of what's happening with war or Epstein files or whatever it is, the truth is that when you start to see the transitions that are happening and the changes that are happening, it's terrifying for most people, right? You start to think about the existential threats to AI that people talk about. That's terrifying. So most people do not want to come into contact with objective truth and reality or their subjective experience in relationship to it. So part of your adaptability is coming into contact with the truth of your experience as you go through change and transition, as life breaks down, as things become externally more chaotic, and move faster and things change, your ability to stay in tune with the truth of your internal subjective experience is going to be a superpower. And this brings me to the last skill that you will need to build in order to not just survive but to thrive the transition that we are collectively in. And again, you don't have to agree with me that we're in this big collective transition, you can apply this even if you are just in a personal transition of leaving a job or, you know, having a relationship fall apart. All of this is applicable even if you've been listening and you're like, I don't really agree that we're in this major transition. Okay, no worries, don't worry about that. You can still apply these things. The next skill that you will need, the other big skill, is regulated resiliency. My fundamental core belief is that the people that come out on top of this major transition are people that are going to have built the capacity to stay regulated in the face of chaos. This is why my favorite word is equanimity, right? It's groundedness in the face of chaos. It's calmness in the face of chaos. The majority of people would probably agree with the following statement: Reality has become way more chaotic than I remember it to be. Reality has become way more chaotic than I remember it to be. I would say that that is most people's experience right now, and that is a hallmark of transition. When transition happens at a large scale, it feels chaotic. It feels wild and feral. It feels like a firestorm is raging through. And so it's the people that are regulated and grounded and calm and can look at things subjectively and objectively and say, here's what I think we should do, that are going to be the ones that help to support people escape the burning building. And so one of the best things that you can do is start to develop skills, habits, daily practices, routines that allow you to be extremely regulated, that allow you to be calm and grounded in the face of chaos. And you don't need to do that with, you know, big existential things. Start small in your day-to-day. Make sure that you can be grounded and calm with your children. Make sure that you can be grounded and, you know, calm in your relationship with your coworkers, with your boss. With people online who are freaking out or slinging arrows and rocks at you because you've said something that they disagree with. Maintaining that level of coherence and ease as things fall apart is you will become a kind of life raft for people who are panicking, who don't know what to do, And you will hold a quality of truth, a quality of, I almost wanna say salvation, but that sounds too biblical, but you will begin to embody Noah and the Ark if you could use a biblical example, but you'll begin to embody someone that other people can turn to and look to, and you will embody a trait that people need to feel feel, experience, and see in a time where so many people are surrounded by other people who are completely disoriented, who are completely dysregulated, and who cannot find ease and peace in their bodies. And so many people that are out in the world that I see online, that I talk to, they are having a hard time finding ease, finding peace inside of themselves because of the existential dread or panic or worry or uncertainty, the fear of whatever it is that they're afraid of, has really taken a hold on a regular basis. So your work is to have regulated resiliency. So develop a habit every single day of doing something, meditation, breathwork, yoga, working, something that is going to help your system stay calm and grounded and regulated. Outside of that, have mental models and psychological models that are going to help you interpret the world in a way that builds coherence. So here's the big challenge that so many people are going to have with the rise of AI, with the changes in geopolitics, etc., is that the realm— the real war is happening in the realm of intersubjective reality. It's in the realm of story. AI is being used and going to continue to be used to warp and distort reality, specifically through stories. And more and more and more, you are going to go online and you are not going to know what is real and what is true. You're going to see a video and you've probably had this experience where you're like, is this real? Is this AI? That's going to happen more and more and more. And more and more, you are going to interact with people, content, et cetera, that was not produced by a person. My commitment to you is that I will always be me. I will never use AI to produce this content for you. It will always be me. But more and more, people are going to be dysregulated because they are interacting with non-human entities content, etc. And the stories that they tell themselves, the stories that they are immersed in, are fabricated, they are embellished, they are existentially wound up. And so what you need are frameworks for understanding reality, understanding existence. I find the three realms of reality— subjective experience, subjective reality, objective, and intersubjective— a very, very helpful mental model to be able to understand and interact with existence, to be able to create coherence. Because I can break things down. Is this disruptive to my subjective experience? Is it something that I objectively need to understand or look at? Or is this an intersubjective experience? Is this just a story that's being told? And can I question that story? How do I relate to that story? How do I feel about that story? So create some mental models that are going to support you in sense-making during a time of chaos, during a time of disruption, because that's one of the biggest things that is going to come under attack. Many people are going to struggle because they are going to, they are not going to have the cognitive and mental fortitude or frameworks to piece together what is actually happening within the world, within intersubjective reality and objective reality, and even within themselves. So have these mental models. The last piece of regulated resiliency is you have to be willing to hold a vision of the future that, for lack of a better term, is conducive for for the human species that looks at things through, dare I say, a lens of ruthless determination and a slight tinge of optimism. Nihilism and the sort of death cult mentality has really taken over a lot of people's minds. A lot of people really hold the belief that the world would be better without people, that certain people shouldn't be allowed to exist, or they, you know, the world would be better without them. And we have to work against these sort of mind viruses that are suicidal, that are really self-destructive, because here's the other thing about going through the Negredo. When you go through the Nigredo individually or collectively, there is a kind of pull towards death and ultimate self-destruction. Because when you go through this period of time, as I went through in my, you know, in my 20s, I've been through it a couple times, but the big one I went through, what ends up happening is that you start to see the allure of destruction, the allure of things really falling apart. And if you have been somebody who has been so resistant to things decaying and things falling apart, what starts to happen is that that can become a little intoxicating. And it's not something that you consciously are like, "Oh, I wanna blow everything up, I wanna destroy everything," but this notion of maybe it would be better if everything just fell apart. Maybe it would be better if people just didn't exist. Maybe it'd be better if we just destroyed modern society and everything that exists. That mindset takes over, and what it leads to is a lot of death and destruction. Now, you might make a philosophical argument and case for that needing to happen and for that needing to be a part of the Negredo. You kind of have to decide where you stand philosophically, spiritually, psychologically as you go through the Negredo. What I have found to be helpful as I have gone through it many times, as I have brought many people through a negredo, a falling apart, a decaying, a having things fall apart, is that as they go through it, they come into contact with the truth of it. They let themselves feel the grief, the sadness, the extreme frustration, the rage, the whatever it is that they're feeling, but they also hold just a sliver of this is happening for the betterment of myself and others. And as I emerge from this decaying, as I emerge from this falling apart, there is something valuable that will emerge with me. And you don't know what that is in the moment. I don't know what it is right now. I don't know what that looks like collectively. I don't know what things are going to look like on the other side of this falling apart, of this decaying of our institutions and societies and geopolitics, et cetera. I don't know what's going to happen on the other side of it. What I do know is that from an ancient alchemical perspective, all negritos serve a very valuable function. And you never know what it looks like in the moment, but as you start to emerge from it, something beautiful comes along with it. And so we can look at it as like the winter, you know, the winter that leads into the spring, and that we inevitably need to go through this type of winter, this type of decaying and falling apart in order for the new stage of life and reality to emerge. And so if you are somebody that has a hard time looking at the world And you say, "It's hard for me to have hope." That's okay. You don't necessarily need to have hope, but you can find some solace, some ease, maybe some comfort in the knowing that as things fall apart, it is a necessary function of existence. It is an important function of reality on every single plane of existence, psychologically, emotionally, economically, biologically, things need to decay and fall apart in order to continue to expand, to grow, to evolve in some way, shape, or form. And so if you can hold that as a primary function, that can help you to find some level of optimism. The last, last piece of the resiliency, and I'll leave you just with this, is that you determine that you are going to be someone, you decide that you are going to be somebody that moves through this transition individually or collectively in a certain way, that you decide your values, you decide how you're going to move through this to the best of your ability and your capacity. And that you make a choice because the real trickery of the Nigredo, of the falling apart, of these massive transitions is that you get disillusioned and you can very quickly become disoriented by the belief that you have no choice, that nothing is within your control, that nothing— that everything's a lie, everything's a fabrication, everything is— all institutions, all everything is just some bullshit, and it can feel like you are this completely helpless entity floating through space and time and that your choices don't matter and yada, yada, yada. And so my invitation for the last piece of resiliency is choose how you're going to move through this. Choose that you are going to move through this, choose how you are going to move through this, Choose who you are going to be as you move through this and choose who you want to be as you move through this, okay? Stop surrounding yourself with people who, you know, maybe are just toxic, are contributing to the problem, are wanting to destroy everything. Like for me, I just have no tolerance for the extreme nihilism of some people of like, yeah, we're all gonna, die and everything's gonna fall away. It's like, okay, like that's a sad place to be. And I can have empathy and compassion and love for all of those folks, but I'm not going to encourage that. I'm not going to encourage that because again, there is a kind of nihilistic suicidal ideation that shows up, a self-destructive ideation and intoxication that happens. As we move through these times of collapse and decay and negredo. So thank you so much for tuning in. I hope that you enjoyed this one. I'm sure I gave you a good amount to chew on. Because this one is so different from my other episodes, I'd be curious to get your thoughts. Share your comments below. What did you agree with? What do you disagree with? What would you add to this? Would you like to see more of this style of content? And as always, don't forget to man it forward. Until next week, Connor Beaton signing off.