So much of our culture and social media atmosphere is about button-pushing, emotional-tugging & tossing, outrage-making. We are all so easily riled up, made cloudy-headed, and gob-smackingly, stupefied. Major media outlets, major broadcast networks, mainstream political parties, bad-actors, conspiracy-mongers, assholes of all stripes, a vast, mutant legion of creeps, spend massive amounts of time and energy, you know, a relentless, fucking 24/7, doing their best to take possession of our heads and FUCK US UP. It is actually a very successful business model, to make the citizenry emotionally broken. Empires have been created on fear, outrage, confusion, general pissed-off-ness. It takes will and courage, and gumption, and discipline, to refuse to take the bait, to tune it all out, to refuse to play their fucking soul-killing game. A bit of space and silence is required. You can step back and observe the monster without being engaged by it. You can watch the Bullshit roll out, you can step around it, refuse to be enveloped by it. You need a little bit of healthy distance & studied alienation. You can observe, watch the soul-killers, liars & fabricators do their thing. Some of them will pretend to be your friend. They are not your friend. You don't have to succumb, give-in, or participate in the charade. You can be aware, alive, awake to another way. No doubt. Level-headed, common sense-ical, feet on the ground, roll up your sleeves, and see the world right in front of your nose as it really, truly is. Breathe-in/breathe-out. Find a sunny clarity and calmness. It's all OK. The world is a beautiful, wondrous, complex and contradictory thing. No rage required.