Many of us have been awake to corruption, lies and deception in high places for a long time. Conditions for spreading truth have changed and we need to adapt.
Marc, what a thoughtful, articulate, and concise buffet of considerations. This also felt very validating given the struggles with our nonprofit work. Almost every single point you've made here are things I've thought about while washing the dishes, showering, driving, and other times where I get lost in my deepest musings about life :)
As Howard Thurman once said, "TRUTH becomes TRUE in community." I appreciate you bringing that social, communal energy into the conversation about transforming the darkest forces in the world. I am 100% with you on centering healthy personal and community lifestyle choices, mutual aid systems and regenerative/local economies. Real self-care is truly so important - a relaxed nervous system, for example, can experience challenging information very differently than a hijacked nervous system.
The solutions you point to in this piece speak to a world beyond fear, the trance of certainty, cancel culture, artificial scarcity, and loneliness! Healing these 5 forces and its impact on society (especially our youth) is something that I'm very passionate about - and what I believe can create the conditions needed for people to open up to deeper truths.
I will say that just as the public is more resistant to looking at information that contradicts official narratives... there is also a growing number of people within alternative media/truth movements who believe their alternative view is THE truth. For example, people are willing to question official narratives with UFOs but maybe not vaccine science (and vice versa). Or people now believe that ALL politicians are blood sucking cannibals and there is no nuance/space for complexity. How do we engage in true viewpoint diversity? How do we embrace paradox, co-existing truths?
How do we learn how to talk and truly listen to one another? This is where I think the principles of restorative justice and nonviolent activism can fit in REALLY well with what you're sharing in this piece. Without spaces for dialogue and social confrontation (which have all been on the decline these days), people feel justified in their certainty and answers. Here's a great quote by an NPR article (https://www.npr.org/2025/01/29/nx-s1-5276197/loneliness-isolation-derek-thompson-atlantic):
"We are donating our dopamine to our phones rather than reserving our dopamine for our friends. I think that we are socially isolating ourselves from our neighbors, especially when our neighbors disagree with us. We're not used to talking to people outside of our family that we disagree with. Donald Trump has now won more than 200 million votes in the last three elections. If you don't understand a movement that has received 200 million votes in the last nine years, perhaps it's you who've made yourself a stranger in your own land, by not talking to one of the tens of millions of profound Donald Trump supporters who live in America and more to the point, within your neighborhood, to understand where their values come from. You don't have to agree with their politics. But getting along with and understanding people with whom we disagree is what a strong village is all about."
Anyways... I'm curious to see how PEERS can support this healing and communal vision for society beyond politics and problems! Letting this Substack of yours (and my thoughts/comments) be seeds planted in my system for future conversations. Riding this magic carpet ride of life with you...
Thanks Amber! Nate submitted this article to an AI that we’re calling “LOGOS” for now and it produced a long but very insightful essay on these points and their implications for the movement. Check your email for more on that :-)
I never thought of the work you do as a movement. This is intriguing. Is there a mission statement? Also, how is a truth defined? Majority consensus?
I believe that dealing with the issue of elevating truth and scrubbing out false narratives is the most difficult challenge our society faces. I admit I have no solutions.
Finally, to me, the idea of religion seems the antithesis of truth.
I think majority consensus being wrong is what gave rise to this "truth movement". Thus the definition needs to be centered on an epistemological process that includes the best of all disciplines' efforts at revealing truth-- the scientific method, statistical analysis, journalistic ethics, crime detectives and forensics, judicial proceedings, peer-review processes, method acting analysis, intelligence agency best practices re: HUMINT, SIGINT, OSINT and even PSIINT (psychic intelligence) when supported by parallel construction or other independent info. You're right about this being the most difficult challenge our society faces. I think a community of practice that holds epistemological processes as the core value/belief with all specific truths subject to change when new info warrants is the way to go. It needs to be flexible enough to include people at various stages in the processes of "waking up" because everyone's journey is different, but maybe we can all agree that the process of waking up fully or at least being fully open to new and surprising information, the journey, is more important than the destination. Maybe we can all agree to respect each others' journeys as we'd like others to respect ours. Can any religion be that flexible? Historically, religions get stuck on scriptures and dogma. Maybe not Buddhism though. In my journey, I'm reading Thich Nhat Hanh now, so I'm still thinking about that. If the religion's "scripture" is nothing more than the natural world, the universe, reality itself, maybe. I want to explore that possibility with a community of people who are excited by the idea.
Wise and well-composed as always. The seed for many conversations going forward about the future of our movement and ways to reach those who find reality too disorienting to look her in the face.
Marc, what a thoughtful, articulate, and concise buffet of considerations. This also felt very validating given the struggles with our nonprofit work. Almost every single point you've made here are things I've thought about while washing the dishes, showering, driving, and other times where I get lost in my deepest musings about life :)
As Howard Thurman once said, "TRUTH becomes TRUE in community." I appreciate you bringing that social, communal energy into the conversation about transforming the darkest forces in the world. I am 100% with you on centering healthy personal and community lifestyle choices, mutual aid systems and regenerative/local economies. Real self-care is truly so important - a relaxed nervous system, for example, can experience challenging information very differently than a hijacked nervous system.
The solutions you point to in this piece speak to a world beyond fear, the trance of certainty, cancel culture, artificial scarcity, and loneliness! Healing these 5 forces and its impact on society (especially our youth) is something that I'm very passionate about - and what I believe can create the conditions needed for people to open up to deeper truths.
I will say that just as the public is more resistant to looking at information that contradicts official narratives... there is also a growing number of people within alternative media/truth movements who believe their alternative view is THE truth. For example, people are willing to question official narratives with UFOs but maybe not vaccine science (and vice versa). Or people now believe that ALL politicians are blood sucking cannibals and there is no nuance/space for complexity. How do we engage in true viewpoint diversity? How do we embrace paradox, co-existing truths?
How do we learn how to talk and truly listen to one another? This is where I think the principles of restorative justice and nonviolent activism can fit in REALLY well with what you're sharing in this piece. Without spaces for dialogue and social confrontation (which have all been on the decline these days), people feel justified in their certainty and answers. Here's a great quote by an NPR article (https://www.npr.org/2025/01/29/nx-s1-5276197/loneliness-isolation-derek-thompson-atlantic):
"We are donating our dopamine to our phones rather than reserving our dopamine for our friends. I think that we are socially isolating ourselves from our neighbors, especially when our neighbors disagree with us. We're not used to talking to people outside of our family that we disagree with. Donald Trump has now won more than 200 million votes in the last three elections. If you don't understand a movement that has received 200 million votes in the last nine years, perhaps it's you who've made yourself a stranger in your own land, by not talking to one of the tens of millions of profound Donald Trump supporters who live in America and more to the point, within your neighborhood, to understand where their values come from. You don't have to agree with their politics. But getting along with and understanding people with whom we disagree is what a strong village is all about."
Anyways... I'm curious to see how PEERS can support this healing and communal vision for society beyond politics and problems! Letting this Substack of yours (and my thoughts/comments) be seeds planted in my system for future conversations. Riding this magic carpet ride of life with you...
Thanks Amber! Nate submitted this article to an AI that we’re calling “LOGOS” for now and it produced a long but very insightful essay on these points and their implications for the movement. Check your email for more on that :-)
I never thought of the work you do as a movement. This is intriguing. Is there a mission statement? Also, how is a truth defined? Majority consensus?
I believe that dealing with the issue of elevating truth and scrubbing out false narratives is the most difficult challenge our society faces. I admit I have no solutions.
Finally, to me, the idea of religion seems the antithesis of truth.
I think majority consensus being wrong is what gave rise to this "truth movement". Thus the definition needs to be centered on an epistemological process that includes the best of all disciplines' efforts at revealing truth-- the scientific method, statistical analysis, journalistic ethics, crime detectives and forensics, judicial proceedings, peer-review processes, method acting analysis, intelligence agency best practices re: HUMINT, SIGINT, OSINT and even PSIINT (psychic intelligence) when supported by parallel construction or other independent info. You're right about this being the most difficult challenge our society faces. I think a community of practice that holds epistemological processes as the core value/belief with all specific truths subject to change when new info warrants is the way to go. It needs to be flexible enough to include people at various stages in the processes of "waking up" because everyone's journey is different, but maybe we can all agree that the process of waking up fully or at least being fully open to new and surprising information, the journey, is more important than the destination. Maybe we can all agree to respect each others' journeys as we'd like others to respect ours. Can any religion be that flexible? Historically, religions get stuck on scriptures and dogma. Maybe not Buddhism though. In my journey, I'm reading Thich Nhat Hanh now, so I'm still thinking about that. If the religion's "scripture" is nothing more than the natural world, the universe, reality itself, maybe. I want to explore that possibility with a community of people who are excited by the idea.
Wise and well-composed as always. The seed for many conversations going forward about the future of our movement and ways to reach those who find reality too disorienting to look her in the face.