And we have socially accepted this facade to maintain our false morality, this is the normalised vice en-masse. The best possible outcome we could hope for is faking our own kindness and empathy while projecting our flaws onto others. With concealed contempt, we compete, we wage war, and we monger resources, all while collectively pretending we don’t see the rot beneath the floorboards. But you do see it, and you’ve learned to operate within the asylum instead of demanding truth and the renormalisation of our objectivity.

The Semantic Domestication of Vice

To understand how we got here, we must redefine what a “vice” actually is. Society uses the word as a polite cough, a euphemism reserved only for stigmatised anti-social behaviours; the kind we transform into political or social-justice witch hunts (and sometimes, start wars and turn to murder to divert attention away from). We restrict the word to the extremes because we are too embarrassed to admit that the exact same mechanical loop conditions our societal norms, our social roles, and our everyday lives.

Mechanically, a vice is not a moral failing. It is a specific neurological event: a strong reward signal, paired with the hyperbolic discounting of a negative consequence, sealed with the vice-making “mental soft-approval” of our necessary evils.

But because society has semantically imprisoned the word in concrete instantiations, such as: prostitute, paedophile, drug addict, wife basher, or antisemite, admitting to a vice has become acceptance of the judgement, a social death sentence. If I were to raise my hand and say, “I need help with this vice,” the stigma would immediately outcast me from polite social circles, invoke social erasure, lead to smear campaigns and my dis-attribution; all with palpable fervour for the witch hunt in my name. If the mechanic we use to derive our moral superiority over others costs us our objective awareness, we are incapable of dealing with the problem at any layer of our social fabric. We cannot solve drug addiction through the persecution and outcasting of the drug addicted. By making the vice theirs and not an emergence of the society we participate in together, we conveniently scapegoat the addicted and obfuscate the intellectually solvable aspects in a subjective moral fantasy that falls apart if we wanted to truly understand and fix the problem.

Because we do not speak honestly about the underlying mechanical systems of behaviour, we are forced to domesticate them. We hide them, and when behaviours are hidden they go underground. They form a well-socialised, dissonant subculture that we periodically clamp down on in a theatrical and targeted performance to fulfil a political or social agenda. But in general, the subculture is endorsed by our inability to confront or address the issue openly. Look no further than the Epstein Files for a macroscopic example of this anti-social reality that was simultaneously an open secret, protected by our agencies and the pillars of polite society. Our Darwinian social evolution has been selecting for the Epstein class for decades, the harmful mechanical behavioural loop is protected and normalised by a society that can’t solve the underlying mechanic without falling into a witch hunt. The domesticated underground reality selects for anti-social norms that are almost as strong as the memetic but dissonant, agreed-upon norm. We end up living in two realities: the pristine facade we project, and the domesticated harmful pathology we secretly harbour.

The Fate of the Whistleblower

The whistleblower is always destroyed. The moment someone raises their hand to point out the mechanical reality of the subcultured vice, they are not met with curiosity or a desire to heal. They are smeared, canceled, imprisoned, or outcast.

But, since when was a whistleblower actually dangerous and not just a mirror to the truth? Almost certainly never.

They threaten the collective ego. They force society to confront the unbearable cognitive dissonance of its own false, subjective reality. They force agencies to confront their participation within the subculture. We destroy the truth-teller to save society and the subjective social system from having to look at the suffering it was complicit in creating.

Renormalising Objectivity

We cannot solve the problem of vice if we continue to treat it as a moral stain rather than a mechanical reality. We must renormalise objectivity. This requires an awareness upgrade. We must gentrify our social norms by addressing anti-social patterns through a clear, clinical lens. We must create a culture where we can address these behaviours honestly, without turning the individuals exhibiting them into modern-day witches.

This means recognising a fundamental truth: Every problem is a shared, collective wound that can be healed in a healthy way socially.

We should not blame those inside the cycle of pathological behaviour any more than we blame those outside of it. The environment selects for the behaviour, the behaviour is a result of the environment, and we all helped uphold our slavery to the subjective facade that produced the environment; containing ourselves, within the environment where the social problem emerged. Therefore, we are all responsible for shifting the environment each time our collective awareness arrives at a point of comprehension. Our course-correction for civilisation is founded in our awareness and active participation in the realignment of our social-norms and socially adaptive solutions to problems that don’t demonise the afflicted but solve the underlying mechanical loops and repair the damage, upholding our shared, objective morality and humanity.

We must replace the witch hunt with shared accountability, belief in harmony and willingness to understand our most difficult problems with an open mind. We must replace the semantic prison of vice with radical honesty and human ingenuity, the intelligence and problem solving that comes so naturally to us, is only possible if we are working with the truth to begin with. We must strip away the “mental soft-approval” and the domestication of vice at every level, and look at all of our behaviours for what they are: solvable architectural or engineering problems, not irredeemable moral failings of individual participants of the system.

The Wake-Up Call

Once you see the facade, it is impossible to unknow it. Once you recognise the suffering and the mechanical loops that drive it, you cannot go back to sleep.

So, the questions you must ask yourself: Why is it so important to hold the current norm? Why are we really so desperate to ignore the inherent vice within our systems? And, why would we allow this cognitively conditioned trap of polarity, semantic imprisonment and witch hunting to rob us of a future so much more human than this?

We have a choice. We can continue to cling to the memetic nonsense, protecting our egos while the system collapses under the weight of its own cognitive dissonance and false polarities. Or, we can choose to partner with our collective consciousness, bring about a radical step forward that takes us from hopeless facade dwellers to truly engaged in the reintegration of our sense of objective touch, to re-engage in our authentic intelligent existence. We have the full capacity we pretend to have, we just need to start seeing it again. We can choose to prolong, stabilise, and balance our little intelligent subsystem of this universe, establishing a foundation for the future longevity of the biological life we are so profoundly blessed to be a part of.

Is it worth it, or do you just want to ignore the obvious, fight red and blue, and allow the Epstein class make cheap excuses and continue to project their immorality onto you?

It's impossible to describe your experience of miscarriage without collapsing the superposition of it's true impact into language that has no right to describe such a broad and variable cross-section of traumatic experiences for many different people. Each couple's encounter with it can be deeply distressing in nuanced ways. If the miscarriage was particularly traumatising it may not be appropriate, or socially acceptable to share a complete account of it with every friend and member of your family which then leads to misunderstandings and inappropriate expectations about your recovery.

My wife and I had a midterm miscarriage a few years ago, before the birth of our son. It was deeply devastating to me and has left a spiritual imprint that I carry with me to this day. The related events unfolded in the early hours of a Sunday morning in a hectic emergency department packed full of exactly what you'd expect to see on a weekend, after midnight, in an emergency department.

When we made it through to the ward it was like a psychopath circus. Intoxicated and drug affected people slurring abuse and death threats at each other while simultaneously being held down and restrained by groups of police officers. The place was at capacity, each bed with its own sad story and a small cohort of increasingly frustrated companions anxiously awaiting there release, or for progress in some shape or form.

I don't think the state of the emergency department impacted the outcome for us, but it added to the confusion and hopelessness of what we experienced and maybe being in such an overwhelming environment did increase the risk of an involuntary termination. I don't recall seeing a privacy screen anywhere, it was just everything going wrong all at once. Doctors and nurses scrambling around doing way more than they had been paid to do. And us, in the middle of all of this, hoping like crazy someone was going to come and tell us our baby was perfectly safe and everything would be okay.

Before receiving any medical attention, and while waiting for the doctor, my wife needed to use the bathroom. We went together, through the ward finding a bathroom down the hall on the other side. It was in the bathroom that our worst nightmares became a reality. I can safely say this was the most devastating moment of my life, it was viscerally and sensorially horrific losing our baby. You have to make choices in moments like that and even though the choices are probably inconsequential, you just replay them over and over again wondering if it was your fault or if there was some other outcome that could have saved the baby’s life.

We are just standing there. Standing there in the bathroom, seeing ourselves standing there in the mirror. Not able to move, tears streaming down our faces, embracing each other. It felt like we were woven together, locked in pretzel form, and I don't know which are my arms or what is my body or if I have legs or if I'm just a floating head. Not knowing what to say, not knowing what to do, how to walk, how to make a sentence or call for someone, or explain to someone what is going on, what we just experienced, what happened to us, did we do something wrong? Not knowing if a whisper is a whisper or a shout is a shout, is there an appropriate thing to say, an action or behaviour that is the correct choice to make at that juncture? But in that moment, all of our choices were swallowed up. An ending to every dream that was meant to be a new beginning. It was the most vulnerable moment, a simple human experience but also the most dissociated I could ever feel, without exception. The three of us there, time standing still, trying to synthesize our erroneous reality. We were all together, we were racing to the hospital, we were at the hospital, we were doing everything right, help was here, and then it was all gone, and it felt like our fault and our future had evaporated before our eyes.

I don't want to explain it beyond that. It broke our hearts and filled me with fear and confusion. It left deep scars and the emotional toll of what unfolded is not something that can be grown through or grown out of. Time doesn't just heal this wound. It's the sort of healing you need to intentionally and painstakingly work on, it takes so much, so much of you to heal.

Bereavement takes as long as it takes and nobody should be made to feel ashamed of their healing after a traumatic loss of life. The truth is that addressing trauma and recovering from miscarriage can take immense courage, self acceptance and time. It’s sometimes hard to grasp what our friends and family have been through with an early pregnancy termination and the subsequent trauma they might be recovering from and how long that may take. Give yourself that acknowledgement, give others that acknowledgement.

It is common for others to see your healing needs as being disproportional to the event, but they cannot truly know the magnitude of the experience. There is no need to keep up appearances or act a certain way just to make others comfortable. You shouldn't feel obliged to explain yourself to anyone else. They don't have all the information, they don't need all the information. They probably won't comprehend it, even if you told them every little detail. It's okay to distance yourself from unnecessary burdens and other peoples expectations while you recover and heal, and it's okay to take as much time as you and your partner need to grieve and heal from your loss.

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In the product development lifecycle, the Ideation phase is a process of reducing a superset of discordant ideas into a resonant subset of non-competing ideas that can be further harmonized and transcribed into a tangible product or multiple products derived on the same resonant set.

A quality product is the harmony produced by a resonant set of ideas.

The resonant set is an abstraction that can be used to cultivate many varying products without modifying the basis (ideas), like an abstract base or any notion of composition in OOP. It can be further extended by a combination of harmonious supersets , also composition, leading to infinite tangible product transcriptions based on a harmonious collection of resonant idea sets.

None of the ideas in the original superset (the chaos or problem space,) are invalidated when a resonant subset of ideas are ideated. They just don't resonate in harmony with the resultant subset so they aren’t going to produce a quality product. But, they still have potential for other, more nuanced resonant sets.

Each cycle of ideation may refine a subset until it is depended on by a product and at that point the set’s resonance and potential harmonies crystallize into an order (at least until the product is no longer in use). This concept is analogous to order from chaos. Once all the tangible products are obsolete and disused, the resonant subset has nothing to maintain its order and it returns to the chaos of the superset once again.

This cycle produces different results based on standards, norms and technological advancement over time.

This popped into my mind. It may or may not resonate with product designers, but I think it’s a very useful way to decouple the creative mind from its emotional attachment to a specific product design. You can attach yourself to the resonance of ideas and those resonances are always substantial regardless of the products that inherit them.

In late 2023 I got myself into a situation with family where it was crucial to uphold boundaries that I had been learning since my Autism diagnosis in March 2022. This ultimately led to a self-orphaning, a year from hell, and becoming completely estranged from my family, including children to my ex-partner.

The Family Business

Since 2003 I was responsible for producing a small business tool used by my father in the field of warranty management. It's been administered by my father and has been the functional responsibility of his business ever since, he's definitely kept the lights on all these years and that deserves serious credit. I converted the original desktop program to a 'cloud based system' in 2007 which has been used by my father and his customers ever since. About five years later I broadened this system to include some dealership workflow management functionality. In around 2017, I provided dealership management components directly to the same customers and I also produced integration for the cloud based management tools. During that time I had a small business making websites and held jobs in other insurance, real-estate and marketing related businesses sometimes in lead roles but always as a computer programmer. Since 2016 I've offered programming services under the Anycode business name but my focus has shifted away from business software more recently.

Long-running projects, including ones that span 18-year periods, often accumulate technical debt and require continual maintenance in order to keep things stable, particularly as the underlying hardware and operating environments are modernised, the software running on them require maintenance upgrades to keep things functional and to ensure security and performance standards are upheld.

As far as I'm aware my father's business is thriving and operating successfully today, so I won't go into specific details about software for security reasons, but in 2023 the platform met a hard deadline for mandatory hosting infrastructure upgrades that would require application architecture changes and important security enhancements. Along with this, the customer required updates to their dealership management systems but due to the infrastructure changes required and the technology stack used in the legacy systems, there was an inherent dependency deadlock meaning the solution required significant development work in order to meet the customers needs, security and performance expectations and to future-proof the whole system.

It wasn't my job, or direct role, but as the person responsible for the technical design, development and bare-metal maintenance I genuinely wanted to provide help. I don't think I was pressured at all, but I did feel accountable to ensuring the future of the system, and I was enthusiastic about supporting my dad. I still saw the project as my baby, and I wanted my legacy working on it to have a positive end. It would be good for my father's business and I liked the customers, they did a lot for me over the years and I have much respect and appreciation for them, so ensuring the continuity of service and future success of these products meant a lot to me.

The Hyper-fixated Programmer

The boundaries I had learned post diagnosis were useful in managing embedded shame, but not autism-burnout. This was something I'd only just started coming to terms with, and I hadn't really even removed the training wheels on my methods of setting and upholding boundaries which meant the implementation was pretty rough. I wasn't even properly conscious of how seriously burnout affected me or what it meant to operate in a hyper-fixated state, I thought I was just in the flow. I knew enough to know that before embarking on a programming project I needed to set the ground rules and "ask for accommodations" which I did, but in hindsight I was unprepared to take on a new project at this stage because I had still not learned how to break away from the patterns of burnout that had become my modus operandi. These patterns were part of my learned coping strategy for dealing with work and generally getting things done as an undiagnosed Autistic and ADHD'er.

As a self-taught computer programmer, since the age of 12, and with no formal training, I had a level of professional imposter-syndrome. I was not academic and technically I failed high-school with an OP of 19. Programming was really the only thing I was good at. Even my information technology teacher Mr. Fifoot (he's probably quite elderly or being mentioned posthumously at this point), failed my programming assignment because he believed I had copied someone else's work, it was "too good" to be my work. That pretty much broke me as a human being, creating a combination of imposter syndrome with my people-pleasing tendencies, also learned during childhood, and the neurodiversity of autism and ADHD that complicates my cognitive function.

Since these good old days of home, I had definitely developed a highly unsustainable work-life balance where I would work non-stop until a job was complete, then go into a phase of burnout-hibernation and sometimes periods of depression. In burnout, I would spend time anxious and in skill regression, recovering while people around me grew impatient and complained about my "lack of consistency" or "lack of effort". I thought this was just how people got things done and there was something wrong with me because I couldn't keep it up 24/7. I didn't know it was unhealthy and that society effectively abuses people, simultaneously exhausting them, and showing them contempt when they fail to achieve something at maximum capacity. This point is particularly painful because I treated my kids the same way before developing this awareness, because that's how I got work out of myself. I know if I had been given understanding and support as a kid, my own school results would have been so much better. I really wish I had been diagnosed sooner if for no other reason than to ensure my own children received appropriate support and attention and to be more responsive to their needs as human beings no matter what their strengths and weaknesses happen to be. The truth is if you learn how to treat autistic people right, you can apply the same affordance and learning to everybody else and this makes the world a kinder and more genuine place for everybody.

The reason I worked myself into burnout was because I loved programming and wanted to be seen as more than a school dropout and a failure. This was how I was proving myself to the world. I thought I had to burn myself out to get anywhere, and most of all I wanted to be of value to others. I wanted them to see I was good enough, to earn their love because I was ashamed of myself for what I thought was this dark cloud of inadequacies. This was the driver for every project I have ever completed and every job I've ever done. It's worth noting that doing so has earned me very little love and I have a family full of contempt for me, so I can tell you heuristically that the strategy didn't pay off.

The Miscommunication

My family's programming project was urgent. As the deadline approached for the infrastructure upgrades, this was compounded by our customer's need for new features, culminating in my pushing for a 'rebuild' because it was my opinion that with this specific set of circumstances it would be faster to incorporate the customers needs and overcome the dependency deadlock by establishing a tech-stack that was impervious to such deadlocks in the future and easier to maintain and deploy. I had all the knowledge required to do the rebuild and I felt far more confident in working with a clean boilerplate in a framework I was highly capable of using rather than getting tangled up in the time-shifting ramshackle nature of an 18-year legacy system.

I had roughly 30 days to do it and while I made no promises about sticking to 30 days, I think I could have been clearer about the low level of accuracy I was actually placing on the 30-day estimate. I did believe I could complete the project in close to 30 days, setting the expectation with my family that they were to handle the customer interactions and manage the delivery time-wrangling with the customer while I just got stuck in and built the thing, but I know the customer very well, and I know they would be understanding of any honest reason for delay.

I was 100% aware it would take a dedicated development team much longer than 30 days because there is so much more in terms of software development lifecycle, the robustness of systems a team needs in order to achieve anything, the information ecology and knowledge transfer alone would take forever, let alone testing, dev-ops, and no matter how amazing the development methodology is, a team would still probably need 12 months at minimum to complete the scope of the project, but I wanted to prove my value to my family and win their love. To genuinely make a great gesture out of this project for them. If you could see the codebase, the base class in the class hierarchy was named "Gratitude" because I wanted gratitude to be the foundation of the project, to bring good luck to my father and offer gratitude to his and my customers. I guess it was somewhat of a good luck charm, and offering of gratitude to the world.

Retrospectively I can tell you that every Project Manager I've worked with will seriously question my 30-day estimate because they know what I mean when I say it can be done in 30 days. A project manager understands how a programmer thinks. That a programmer offering a timeframe commitment, without a process or methodology, is really just saying we will burn ourselves out living on nothing but Red Bull and micro-naps to stick to this deadline, and as long as you stay out of our way we will get this job done ASAP knowing fully that the timeframe is arbitrary. All project management methodologies will be out the window, this will be a cowboy project, and while we will definitely succeed, it's not going to be done the way you imagine as a non-programmer. There will be no 9-5, there will be nothing normal about this. The programmer is going to be sacrificing everything, every waking moment, their sanity, to get this job done, and it's that simple. I knew that too, I'm not sure if I conveyed it well enough to my father's wife. I have a sense in hindsight she might have considered I was saying the project would take a team 30 days and maybe if she investigated that, because she was doing outsourcing in the Philippians at the time, she might have been given the directive that I was "full of shit"? I don't know that, it's a hunch. But the PM would be right that for their team anything like this would be impossible to be done in 30 days. I had to make sacrifices during this project, I sacrificed irreplaceable things, that I can't get back, ever. And, due to the circumstances it indeed took longer than 30 days.

The Unmasking

2023 was mostly meant to be about completing a year of university while being a stay at home dad to my little one and gently working on understanding autism and whatever this unmasking thing was meant to be. My partner was operating her business, and we were feeling our way through life, trying to make things good but our foundations had been a little rocky. Everything felt turbulent and unstable, but we were holding it together with love and life was progressing along, it was okay. There were things going on in the relationship, caused by both of us, definitely me, my diagnosis, and just us being a complicated neurodivergent family finding ourselves.

The process of forming boundaries and expectations about autism for your partner is not easy. Mine has done amazing things sticking out the ride with me as I've overcome my people pleasing and other toxic habits. Those issues have now been pretty well defragmented, but you just don't know how to do it until you try a bunch of ways and you learn to know. It's sublime to genuinely feel calm, at peace and at home in a relationship of love, in authenticity without fight or flight being the baseline. Coming to terms with Autism and ADHD isn't just a new mask you can wear, it's not just a label or excuse you can affix to your shitty behaviour. It requires honesty and learning that your behaviour wasn't actually shitty, you just needed to upskill. Once you learn "of Autism" you learn "about your Autism", and then a whole-bunch of stuff starts to make sense that you can't un-know afterward, like riding a bike.

A lot of circumstances you've been shamed for in the past you realise you've been wearing that shame so that others didn't have to see themselves in the mirror, I've been carrying my older sister's shame my entire life. Even though things weren't always my fault I had to wear it because the shame was embedded in the mask I was wearing and I didn't realise it didn't belong to me. That taking off really shakes shit up, and you realise you have the power to be free. That is the essence of unmasking, it's not a comfortable thing for anyone around you and that's why it's important to diagnose Autism early so that a bunch of fuckers don't need to go through this.

Unmasking involves the acceptance and recognition of your Autism and learning how to incorporate this knowledge into a life that accommodates the differences you are now aware of. Family members who are unwilling to fully accept your autism can be offended at unmasking and can view unmasking as a personal attack but if they stop and think about it, it's just finding authenticity under the hood. Unmasking is revealing the authentic self, and it hurts if you're not ready to go there.

Self Worth Side Quest

For anyone who feels like they are striving to prove themselves or please others, just know that proving yourself to others all the way into a state of burnout, is not a healthy mode of operation. Please give yourself grace. Please know you are already worthy and inherently constitute everything you see 'out there' ahead of you. You are already all of that as soon as you are surround by the right people. All of that attainment of self-worth you are striving for is already inside you in the presence of the right company. Take a step back and be kind to yourself. See your own true value, and you will find people who see your true worth. It was there all along. I love you!

The Sacrifice

In 2022 I received a Vice Chancellors award for being in the top 2% of all students at my university, so it's not like I'm incapable of academic achievement but when burnout grasps me, my executive function takes flight and just buggers off. When I learned that my father's software needed some urgent work I wanted to put university on the back-burner and felt comfortable making this sacrifice, to pull out of my enrolled units in order to help him. The thing I didn't know was these units would never be offered again and ultimately the degree itself was to be removed from offering. The institution where I was studying dropped the degree and gave me a deadline of 2025 or start a new degree. This had already happened to me during COVID-19 with a prior degree, so I now have two half completed degrees that can't even be frankenstein-ed together to make some sort of funky arts degree because they are both lacking third year subjects.

Because my degree was administered by Open Universities Australia (not recommended), you have to kind of fit a square peg in a round hole when choosing the completion order of units and their prerequisites. If you miss a unit one year, you may need to wait 24 months or longer to start it when it overlaps with something else you need to complete in the same study period, you'll have to do it in a different year. While I did try to complete the degree before 2025 using alternative units and much to and fro with an inbox unit coordinator who had better things to do, I was a bit too emotionally rocked by what happened with family and I ended up dropping out due to burnout (again) which threw my degree into limbo.

On top of this frustrating academic experience, over the time I was working on the project I also needed to sacrifice my role as primary-carer to my baby which hurt a lot, and in my capacity as a father to all of my kids. Hyper-fixation has a way of causing you to neglect everything except a single activity that gets all of your attention. I was aware that the deadline I set for myself meant that this hyper-fixation was a given, and effectively I would be incapacitated until the project was complete and I don't think this is acknowledged or understood by my family as a real thing, I think in their minds I was doing 9-5 and watching netflix at 5.05pm. My eldest son was unfortunately going through a phase of depression and I did usually invest a lot of attention each week to his wellbeing, communicating with him, offering advice and support. My partner mirrored my sacrifices, putting on more staff at work and taking on the primary care role for our baby so that I was able to invest myself fully in the project. She had organised other staff to cover her shifts so that she could be at home full time, I'm just trying to convey how impactful this was for us, it was a big deal, and we were doing something as a couple, lovingly to support my family.

The Calamity

I think God has a way of orchestrating chaos at times, in order to present opportunities for people to choose more meaningful outcomes for their future. Even though my development plan was harebrained by any standard (I'm a cowboy, say what you like), the truth is it was how I got things done. It wasn't impossible. The obvious reasons why it wasn't going to work didn't really apply to me because it was literally how my ADHD and Autism brain worked in the first place, it's how I achieved anything and everything. What we didn't see coming was a situation unfolding at work that coincided with the first week of my 30-day schedule. My partner's staff member had been found leaving the shop with work equipment and supplies and questions needed to be asked. What unfolded, was a situation where the shop's staff either quit or were fired and my partner was required back at work full time. This was insane, we were very upfront about the impact this would have on the project and did everything humanly possible to deliver. I was required in a capacity to help recover from this shop situation too, but I very much felt as though my father's understanding of the impact this had on our lives was minimal and I couldn't really find a way to address that. We were being more and more set back week after week, flying by the seat of our collective pants, grinding ourselves through the dirt.

I was caring for our baby during the shops working hours + travel time, until my partner got home, and she took over everything. Do you know how ridiculous her life was during this time? Our shop was going backwards, our lives were going backwards. I was working on the project every waking hour outside business hours and trying to look after bub exhausted during the day, literally helping with nothing at all, no meal prep or any bedtime/bath-time transitions or duties in the morning and evening. When the kids came on the weekend, I wouldn't see them. The whole situation was a nightmare. This went on for 3 or 4 months while we tried to manage our mental health and cope with this. The situation with family had become strained as they waited for me to deliver on my deliverables, I was being more and more vague about it as I became more and more overwhelmed.

My partner and I were stretched to the end and our relationship reached it's most diabolical point as I struggled to make the project happen, and she struggled to keep the shop running. We couldn't find staff and finding a child-care center for bub was out of the question with 6 month wait times and we were very particular about where he went because of his own behavioural needs. We tried to enroll everywhere, it was just impossible to find something that met our standard and had availability. I am so grateful to my oldest for providing baby sitting while I worked once a week but the whole rhythm of our lives was not compatible with the level of focus and fixation I needed to be in to really make leaps and bounds on the project in a way I usually would. I was in an almost constant state of overwhelm and this was impacting my ability to achieve the much needed hyper-fixated state.

The Embarrassment

No surprises that the project delivery estimates were missed. While I don't know exactly what was conveyed to the customer in way of reasoning, I question if the real-world sacrifices being made and the unavoidable nature of the circumstances my partner and I experienced were communicated factually. My impression of the customer is that they were reasonable and understanding enough to be given the complete truth in absolute confidence, and I am confident the customer would have been happy to wait any amount of time knowing the real circumstances of the project. They were good people to work for, but truthfully, I don't know the kind of pressure they were applying to my father because I was genuinely shielded from that aspect as per my request.

I had specifically asked that we let the customer know the situation and asked for a period of grace. I don't know if the customer was informed or not. They would have been reasonable and grace giving in the face of my predicament. Eventually, I received a call from my father where he told me he was going to give the customer their money back and provide the updates for free because the project was an embarrassment to him. He insisted he would continue to pay for my time but told me the project was just embarrassing, so he would have to pay for it himself. I was deeply offended by this, knowing everything my partner and I had been through and sacrificed for him and I felt as though this was intentional and intended emotional manipulation.

I can't really gauge exactly how upset I became but my eldest son who overheard the conversation told me "my language was pretty colourful". It's certainly not behaviour I'm trying to model, but I admit dysregulation is something that I model as an Autistic dad. I want my kids to be respectful of people and unconditional kindness should be a baseline, although peaks and troughs of ephemeral, emotional states are unavoidable and this is okay to be normalised in an Autistic household. When I'm dysregulated, it has a neurological condition associated with it, and should be treated like any other disability. You don't expect a deaf person to hear perfectly without a hearing-aid, neurological conditions are the same, it just takes a little individual understanding that most people are, quite frankly, too intolerant to grant or accept this for Autistics and ADHDer's.

I needed to sleep on the conversation. At 4am the next morning I woke up to a nightmare, which happened to be a childhood memory of being belted by my father. I realised the significance of the dream and texted him immediately. The text insinuated that I didn't want to feel like a naughty child being belted or whipped and I would complete the project for no further fee, but it would be done in a timeframe respectful of my situation. Based on my father's parental style and what he say's is "how it was done" the belting was not out of the ordinary, and it was a genuine childhood experience that I had every right to bring up. If raising a genuine childhood experience is offensive to him, it's not my job to regulate his emotions about it. I received a message back that I still don't quite understand saying "Why don't you twist the knife" and I've never understood it, it's never been explained, and I've never heard from him since. I was just shocked and astonished, that's all. I went through a period of extreme dysregulation where I would have sent a number of texts, emails, calls at some kind of rapid machine rate followed by a long 3-month period of deep burnout where lying on the floor was literally the only thing I could muster. The rest of 2024 has been a process of moving from paranoid state of fight or flight into getting over it, into realizing that this was actually a gift from God.

Self-Orphaning

My belief is that this was almost certainly a situation of miscommunication, and the result of sweeping the truthful reasons for delayed delivery under the rug was to avoid a perceived reputation hit. This is obviously hypothetical, and I don't know for certain that things were not honestly shared with the customer, but I do know I was not shown compassion for my circumstances and that's super indicative of something being left out in this scenario. Obviously I'm the one missing the punch line, but eventually I'll get it, even If I have to guess. I think my father might have felt the truth was too embarrassing if he saw my Autism as a weakness, a defect, or something to be embarrassed about. Somehow beyond explanation. If this is the case it's beyond sad. I'm not embarrassed, btw, I have a beautiful life now, and I love myself enough already.

Another aspect of this situation relates to the underlying erosion of our relationship over the past 13 years, it was never without conflict but over time I started to notice a lot of cues that suggested he considered I was an unfit father. I brushed it off and didn't consider it was that he actually had this opinion, but in retrospect it correlates to the patterns I'm observing, patterns of emotional manipulation that have been enabled by my family's embarrassment of me. This could have enabled them to fall victim to a specific type of emotional influence. The truth is, I have been put in a state of silent competition for my family's love by my ex-wife over this time, and it's something she made abundantly clear to me that would occur when we separated. History agrees with this account, and I certainly have no family at this point, so it checks out from where I sit. Of course, they could claim I'm insane, and I've done the estrangement to myself, I'm certain they would do if they read this article, but my intuition is pretty sound when it comes to system analysis and design if that counts. I now understand the impact my wife's manipulation has had on the psychological wellbeing of my entire family. I understand coercive control, narcissistic dynamics and toxic enmeshment, how these dynamics have played out in my family, also, how it's affected my kids and how it's affected my family's perception of me. Sure you can say I'm the problem, but I have barely seen anyone for the last 13 years, apart from my father, his wife and my two boys. How am I a problem to people who have nothing to do with me? Anyway that's not my question to answer.

I have experienced this augmentation within my family since my divorce, and really, the outcome of the miscommunication that led to the amazingly helpful decision to self-orphan only really makes sense to me if my fathers perception has been manipulated or his perception of me was always incredibly low, I mean it could be that too. I think it has been a bit low at times, but not like this. I think you need to despise someone a lot to assume they are trying to intentionally twist a knife when you are working together and when in reality the other person is breaking their back to achieve your absolute success. I think their beliefs and feelings and perceptions of me have shifted over this time, perhaps impacted by narcissistic control and emotional enmeshment.

I don't really care that much what they think of me. I just care about the wellbeing of my kids and the fact that elements within my family may have been exposing them to coercive manipulation. I know my playing into that dynamic is more harmful than good and I think it's been crucial to take a step back until the boys can process what has happened and begin their healing journey on their own terms. If this is the case it's actually reprehensible and should be absolutely off-limits to psychologically manipulate a child with respect to their parent or caregiver, it's just beyond evil. I personally don't think people who use kids for anything should be walking free in society let alone be allowed to retain custody.

Don't get me wrong I'm not suggesting this is entirely on my ex-wife. Everyone plays a part in these dynamics and I have obviously had my own role to play as a part of the group that I'm pointing out. If this situation is as I perceive it though, it's something that's played out throughout my life, began with my embarrassing behaviours as a young child, and has been amplified by the addition of my ex-wife into the family dynamic. That dynamic has influenced her, and she has had an influence on it as well. The thing is, I can be a very embarrassing person, and an Autism diagnosis and unmasking just amplifies that x 100, so I can see how people unwilling to embrace change, unwilling to acknowledge my truth, and who are particularly prone to the feelings of embarrassment and humiliation might just feel I'm too much to cope with. That's not my problem though, but I do empathise.

Just because I have intuitions about these dynamics it doesn't mean I'm right. I would love to have the information I'm obviously missing, but I don't, so this is my perspective for now. Also, people grow at their own pace and are entitled to do so and I have nothing but respect for every persons individual growth journey. I loved my family, I forgive them, maybe we will meet again in the future as part of their healing, but I don't care for that so much and it's not something I'm aiming for, I'd rather wish them well and let them enjoy their lives. I'm not burdened by them, and they don't need to be burdened by me, they are welcome to ignore my healing and just go on with their lives. I do need to speak my truth though, that's part of how it works for me. If they don't like it they should just pretend it doesn't exist, and scroll on.

Prayer of Gratitude

Dear Spirit, thank you for this life. Please guide me to be the highest version of myself and to treat people fairly, with respect and dignity. Please guide me to create a legacy of peace and kindness in this world. Amen

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Learning to have boundaries as an adult leads to awareness of the causes for not having developed them as a child. Everyone’s causes will be different but the pattern is the same. Yes, in normal families, kids develop healthy boundaries! (I know it’s shocking if you don’t have any as an adult). As you learn boundaries, you're going to have some realizations and revelations that your family members would prefer you didn't, and kept to yourself and this usually starts with uncovering your overlooked childhood trauma. Unpacking childhood trauma is scary, heartbreaking, and requires professional support. It can lead to growth in unexpected ways, and for me, it gave birth to many new perspectives. Emotional abuses that I was previously unable to heal from were being resolved. I’m so far along this journey that emotional attacks that would have taken months to recover from may only throw me off for a minute or two now (seriously). This is thanks to developing healthy boundaries.

A common theme in late diagnosed autism is losing connection to loved ones because they are unwilling to accept your diagnosis, or previous perceptions of you now require updating, incorporating autism into the model of who they believe you are. It’s hard. Family often cannot tolerate an autistic individuals new self awareness, boundaries or growth and things can blow up in other areas of life that they will be explained as you’re going “insane” or being too difficult, or having a vendetta but these are alternative stories, ways of explaining a situation that arose from an inability to shift perspectives and it’s humiliating to the recently diagnosed Autistic who is working overtime, and at burnout speed to find their feet with this new understanding of self.

This pattern is often the same and is reiterated across many late-diagnosed Autistic’s stories and it stems abstractly from their family’s inability to make a much needed perspective shift. A lot of late diagnosed autistic people face suicidal ideation, depression and burnout and I would ask families of late diagnosed Autistics to approach their loved ones with fresh eyes and open minds as that is what is required. Kindness costs you nothing.

Back to building boundaries; New perspectives bring emotional growth. That emotional growth leads to shifts in your identity, self-perception and self-worth. Doing so gives you a foundation to reassess who or what was responsible for negative outcomes in your life. This insight provides the opportunity to shift your self-perception. It means you can go from a person who felt worthless, unable to speak, under the control of those around you, to being confident and empowered, capable of speaking up and voicing whatever you have on your mind, crushing the baddies, shooting above and beyond those who seek your demise.

Speaking up about personal experiences with living loved ones can be quite dismembering. It can feel like trying too hard to win an imaginary argument with someone that has no awareness they are even being spoken to when the intention isn't even to speak to them. It can also be exhausting trying to share a lived experience without being disrespectful to others who experienced the same individual situations. Firstly they deserve respect and dignity. They may disagree that there was emotional enmeshment, abuse or that they have done anything wrong. Everyone's experience and journey are their own and each person deserves understanding. And secondly, if you're not in that place of emotional growth and being comfortable talking openly, having someone from your past do that could feel utterly embarrassing, humiliating or enraging and this is often what happens when a family member “suddenly becomes Autistic” (or is late diagnosed as Autistic).

Choosing not to speak out of seeking to protect family from their reactions to the truth of the trauma you've experienced is nice but, that's not your job. If you know other family members or loved ones are or will be unwittingly experiencing similar trauma, staying silent does not break the cycle of emotional enmeshment and choosing to speak may be helping others break out before their experience becomes entrenched. If speaking up helps you get past something that is holding you back, then protecting others from the same thing isn't really worth it.

I think it's a personal decision and there may not be a best case scenario. For me personally, I have two adult (almost) children from a previous relationship who are unfortunately caught in the middle of ongoing family dynamics that involve emotional enmeshment and the arduous, lingering effects of my past relationship with their mother (pre-diagnosis). I hate this aspect of talking about anything personal, and it almost always stops me in my tracks. I know the truth cannot be told without hurting others and I don't want to hurt anybody let alone my children who I still love and care about with all of my heart. The dynamic of needing to retain a connection with the kids has been heavily used against me in the past and I have had to let go of attachment to that need (in a buddhist sense) in order to heal from the trauma of emotional enmeshment with a narcissistic codependent family. I now know the trauma was inescapable without cutting off all ties to the group and doing so has lead to spiritual growth and healing that I'm immensely proud of even though I had to make decisions that felt terrifying.

I've come to the conclusion that no matter how hard something is, the truth is always the most fertile seed. I learned the lesson that failing to plant seeds of truth will lead to out of control lies. And subsequently, I learned that sharing the truth with the wrong people, those entangled in codependency, can be equivalent to planting seeds in concrete. The seeds cannot grow unless they are planted in the right place. Essentially now, I find growth in sharing truth publicly, not to make a big deal out of it, but just to plant it in a fertile place where something good can come out of it. Anyone would be welcome to disagree with my truth, but here in the public arena, at least, narcissistic narratives cannot take hold or do their manipulative hidden dirty work. All the shady nonsense is done in darkness, and I'm honored to have been blessed (spiritually) with the courage and confidence to walk away from people who were feeding that darkness. Doing this, teaches others how insidious problems of hidden agendas really are and the small act of truth-telling shines a light on the darkness, to show that walking away from difficult family dynamics can lead to real healing and recovery from emotional trauma and will indeed snuff out false shaming of those who are misunderstood. My hope is that sharing the truth will catalyze positive outcomes for those I love and nothing less.

People in similar situations, may be autistic, maybe they are also the outcast of their family, or the black-sheep. I particularly want my children to know there is hope and that walking away has the potential to be less painful than staying in emotional enmeshment. Maybe my words will resonate in a way that bring awareness, that someone's situation isn't normal and the status-quo that perpetually places them on the bottom rung, far down in the mud, beneath all the lies that they aren't even privileged to hear, is actually trauma and something they need to heal from. They don't have to stay there, and it's the mud they've been pushed through that will be the very thing that causes them to grow further than they can imagine. I know that for anyone in a similar situation to mine, they are a shooting star waiting to blast off and their background, all the shit they've been through, will be their fertile soil, the catalyst for making anything they dream of a reality.

In a toxic enmeshed family you must submit to the dysfunction and be an ally or stand up for yourself and end up an outsider. Autistic people often struggle to conform to social norms which is an inherent part of autism, they aren't just being difficult. This means families with codependent narcissism or any toxic enmeshment often scapegoat an autistic family member because they are not as readily able to conform to the group narrative and the family see this as defection or weakness. I hope all vulnerable and autistic kids learn healthy boundaries and use them with agency and awareness and that they find the self-confidence to speak up about everything they’ve been through regardless of how others around them want to control the narrative of their lives.

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Imagine a squatter comes along and violently strips you of your home, resources and land, forcing you to act in their servitude. You are treated like vermin for centuries, your life is enslaved, your cultural heritage is trashed, burnt up and discarded. You are forced to fight for your children's rights, perpetually, just to reach the bare minimum. You must struggle for equality, for equal say within a system that normalizes your oppression and seeks to control the narrative of your life, past and present.

This squatter appropriates everything you have but also makes you submit fully to their culture. They feed you nothing but the leftover crumbs from loaves baked in your own oven with your own produce. The same oven that was violently taken from you. The oven the squatter never learned to use properly, causing permanent damage to your place, ruining future prospects for all those to come.

I am the squatters' son, a product of your suffering. I grew up in your house, in a colonial squat with my intolerant parents who's own intolerant parents displaced you from your home. Living abundantly on your land at your expense, with no knowledge of who you are, your spirituality or your cultural wealth. Trashing your name and heritage, with a system of violence that protected us from you and your rightful sovereignty and always kept you from seeking your justice.

Educated in my own superiority. I was taught by my public school to reject the true meaning of Indigenous struggle as "the way it was" and "the days of old" and "we've fixed that now", but your oppression never lifted, and the colonial system that refuses to release its choke hold from your necks is still in control. A hateful and the obscene political class scuffle for power, pretending to hold valid authority, labelling you, calling you the problem. But, you are the sovereign custodians of these lands and these squatters who call themselves a government don't belong there, certainly not above your authority or rule which always was and always will be yours.

Colonial systems of government lack the extensibility required to address the needs of first-nations people let alone the flexibility to address the harm caused by colonisation to their territories. If those in colonial power saw the absurdity in this situation, and I think many politicians are not self-aware or insightful enough to do so, but even if they were; can they apply a system of government that produces a narrow colonial mindset deeply amplified into a left and right divide, to adequately respond to the needs of the systemically abused and displaced indigenous peoples who have every right to rule over and orchestrate the system of governance they exist under?

The Venn diagram of issues our government can address doesn't even overlap a charter of needs first-nations people might seek to accommodate. This makes the Westminster system and other colonial systems of government unworkable as a future-proof model for societies seeking to prioritise first-nations sovereignty. Yes, We all have a different viewpoint and this is why continuous reintegration of cultural diversity within our systems is a must, but first nations peoples have never genuinely been given that right. Even when we cannot share consensus with others, we need an appropriate model of government that accommodates its own peoples diversity and sovereignty. I believe this means a new model of government should be developed from the ground up, led and instigated by the first nations peoples and supporting parties, to directly address current inadequacies and to fully rectify the legacy of harm caused by the current system, and it's progenitors.

What that system looks like is not up to me, but I am interested in pushing for its existence. As an immigrant to Australia, I am aware that my citizenship is granted by a colonial body that isn't in agreement, an authentic allegiance to, or acting in the guidance of Australia's first nations aboriginal and indigenous peoples and this is beyond disrespectful. I seek forgiveness from the first nations communities and indigenous people and want them to know that I am their ally and friend in every respect. My highest aspiration for Australia is to see an Indigenous led government whatever form that takes as long as it heals the harm caused by the events of the last 240 years.

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My name is Lee Tagg, I believe is aspirational humanity, unconditional kindness and speaking radical truth.

Thank you for reading.

Gaza appears to be a hellscape of extreme brutality, suffering, devastation and horrendous, unfathomable violence against innocent children, women and men. Of course, I haven't been there, I'm observing this the same way most Australian's are, through social media. Not the news, no, I didn't see anything about the Gaza genocide in Australian news media. Obviously Australian journalists have access to social media and see the same horrors reported by doctors and aid workers on the ground in Gaza, trying to fulfil humanitarian roles, and they have seen all the same videos of starving, sick and dismembered children just as clearly as I have. Not to mention the various live broadcasts of war crimes that have also emerged over the last 415 days, the ICJ and ICC rulings/recommendations and now the arrest warrants for Israeli terrorists Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant. We see Australian news media's silence. Regardless of Australia's willingness to arrest these criminals, the news media fails to report the genocide with integrity. Their silence is clearly the biggest elephant in the room. The unprecedented suffering and destruction of a people is undertaken, observed by the world, intentionally misrepresented by the United States, hidden behind the propaganda machine of capitalism, and an insidious but completely intentional media "screen of silence" throughout the western world including Australian news media.

You may not feel responsible now, but in years to come, you will carry this silence and inaction heavily in your heart. How could you have stood by watching innocent people die? Are you a monster?

This silence must be there to confuse the public, mustn't it? They want to make us feel so uncertain that we cannot act in good faith. Too afraid to speak up, too bewildered to speak out in case we bring ridicule upon ourselves or look foolish in front of our peers. I think what's happening is that the public are being scapegoated. Used by those complicit in the genocide, they hand the public complicity through our silence, spreading the full burden of responsibility across the population who take it on as personal and individual shame in years to come, which makes us unable to accept our role and perceived responsibility, even though it was passed on to us in betrayal. We then run away, instead of tackling it head on, we let them off the hook. Our complicity, stops us from demanding accountability. The government successfully absolves themselves of their co-conspiracy to genocide through the shame of the broader population. Don't you think that's utterly insane?

If your silence today, is going to become your shame tomorrow, it becomes your children's shame, and their children's shame. Don't you want to solve this problem, by breaking the silence and acting with bravery today? Don't be fooled by slick and manipulative rhetoric, or the media smoke-screen. When the violence is finished, the perpetrators are counting on your complicity through your silence. That's their exit strategy, to pass the shame on to you, to diminish their own accountability. You, too, will be running from your accountability and that's exactly what they want. (I'm trying to help you see it before it's too late, don't shoot the messenger)

The truth is, if the media told the truth, our western co-conspiracy to genocide would become evident putting an end to Gaza's destruction because the general population wouldn't stand for it. Your silence shows you're a co-conspirator, that's the truth.

"If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse, and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality." 
- Desmond Tutu

Prayer as a proxy for tangible action

Praying does not constitute action in this context. If you think your prayers somehow absolve your accountability you are still a co-conspirator. Under the circumstance of mass-deception or the circumstance of oppression, don't pray. If you have nothing to voice, you have nothing to pray for, SHARE YOUR VOICE.

If you don't share your voice, you do less than the minimum. The bare minimum you can do is to voice your dissent, support those who suffer even if they live on the other side of a wall, or outside your ring of loyalty. Only once you've shared your voice, then you can pray. After you've been ridiculed, mocked and silenced for your voice... Then you can pray.

I used to think prayer was a useless waste of intention. I blamed people who prayed for their inaction and prayed "they" would somehow wake up to their failure to choose tangible action over mindless, hollow flattering or begging Gods for things they should be doing themselves.

My perspective has shifted when there isn't a useful or meaningful action to pursue other than to wait. In those cases, when waiting, I think it's worthy to at least pray. The bare minimum would be to pray. And if you were in Gaza, where the gag is stuffed so far down your throat that your mouth is filled with blood and shit from the hands of those who oppress you, it's a good idea to pray.

Don't dare you pray if your life consists of all the creature comforts, the heating, air conditioning, your immediate gratification for all the things you extract from the vulnerable world around you. It doesn't matter what brand of coffee you drink. All the giggles and in-group jokes you disingenuously exchange for your sense of family and loyalty, putting superficial union and cohesion before the humanity and life of others, without lifting your voice for fear of being left out in the cold, don't you dare whisper a single prayer. Fuck your silence, fuck your inaction, fuck your lack of integrity, you have nothing to pray for before raising your voice. Speak up and save yourself from the shame that will absolve the perpetrators of atrocities of theirs.

This is your reality check. You are "the oppressor" and you are "the villain" if you do nothing when you could have raised your voice. Wake up and check your fingernails for blood and shit. If you have nothing to voice, you have nothing to pray for. Don't pretend. This is not the time to sell humanity out. Stand on values, the suffering continues unless you raise your voice.

I stand for and believe in radical truth, aspirational humanity and unconditional kindness. I think that's what the world needs. Let's stop hurting one another.

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Word Sensitivity

Sensitivity is key but at some point you have to call a spade a spade. The problem with spades, and what we call them, is that spades trigger people. In that dysregulated limbic state, we can't synthesize information or classify its truthfulness because our capacity is consumed in fight or flight mode and all we have left is our rigid, conditioned notions of spades, and quite frankly, we don't have time to talk about them.

The truth is always kind, even if it hurts. If your intention is to hurt someone, this isn't the same thing. If you have no compassion for them or don't wish to hold space for their pain, then speaking a painful truth is intended to cause them harm or discomfort. If so, you aren't being honest about yourself, and it's truly your inability to hold space for the suffering of others that is the problem. If your goal is seeking togetherness, then truth is kind, even when it hurts, because pain leads to compassion and compassion leads to togetherness. For that reason, it’s a healthy boundary to put kindness first and sensitivity second and to always speak the truth and hold compassionate space and help support people with their negative feelings towards the truth because you know it leads to togetherness and a better future for everyone.

Call the spade what it is. Create the space for togetherness by being compassionate towards the triggered. Their being incensed does not change the truth, but it gives something meaningful to reflect on and work through. Give people time and space to grow. Be sensitive, but never rob people of the opportunity to know the truth if you truly care about them. I believe this is the birthplace of antifragility and respect for all people and living things.

Genocide

This spade is called Genocide.

The Israeli genocide of the Palestinian people is one of the most complicated and contentious issues in the world today according to those who wish to overcomplicate it. Rooted in geopolitics, mostly I assume, because Israel has pre-implicated western political leaders and media organisations in the narrative of the 'conflict'. As a result, the western political class are complicit and contorted by their pre-purchase, unable to escape the corners they've painted themselves in to. The idea pushed by these people, that any and all negative opinion about Israel or Israeli citizen's behaviour automatically constitutes antisemitism is in my opinion racist propaganda. It highlights and denotes their implication in the genocide and I believe the term antisemitism is weaponized to a degree that it is now useless in describing actual religious bigotry. It's plausible that these groups act out of self-preservation and deflecting shame for being bought rather than an actual belief that what they are saying is truthful or warranted. Either way, there is no accountability for the sell-out or bias and vulnerable people are dying as a result of their carelessness and complicity.

It's not even really that complicated either. History is repeating itself with respect to every other displaced indigenous population under settler colonisation and the brutality of an oppressive, invader that has zero desire to understand or hold space for the displaced people. In every case, the complexity of any settler-colonial situation arises from the fact that the colonisers claims to land, resources and governance (monopoly on violence and power) directly contradicts the historical owners rights. If the colonising people cannot integrate the perspective of themselves as an addition to the rightful indigenous owners rather than a replacement for them, it stands to reason that they will desire the destruction of the displaced. This is nothing more than narrow-minded rigidity for an invasive agenda, appropriating the property of indigenous people and wiping out thousands of years of collective wisdom and culture in the process with no regard whatsoever. When one party is unwilling to compromise or acknowledge the perspectives and rights of the other party, it leads to a situation where a resolution is impossible and that is regardless of the cooperation and kindness of the displaced indigenous population. The original inhabitants grace and kindness is meaningless in the face of an agenda that seeks their complete annihilation.

The Holy Land

I'm sure there are many Israelis who genuinely believe they have historical and religious claims to Palestinian land. And that's okay, people can believe they have a claim to something without actually having a claim to it, especially if that's what they've been taught to believe. The truth is, we all have as much right as the dinosaurs did to owning any piece of Earth, regardless of where that is on the globe or at any point in time.

The aim of humanity is ecological balance and sustainability not dominance. Our success, as intelligent life, is determined by our ability to find harmony, to temper mindless extraction that would lead to imbalance, and to overcome our desire to dominate other life through the fulfilment of homeostasis for the whole. The idea of a holy land should only ever be seen as one that is diverse and equally inclusive of all people and living things. Self idealised superiority or any claim of right over another person stems from out of control narrative, not from God. In my perspective, this is the symptom of a civilization-level cancer that has no self-awareness or ability to achieve apoptosis or homeostasis. It becomes all consuming and destroys innocence, beauty and life, including itself, as it propagates.

We exist in an objective, material world and this is the foundation of all truth. Narratives that lead to discrimination and inequality will eventually be lost to objectivity over time. The energy it takes to maintain false narratives can only be sustained temporarily. Even if that temporality is in the centuries, it too will be unsustainable over larger timeframes. The holy land is earth, for all living things from cyanobacteria to whatever we evolve into over many millennia. Let's be objective about that.

It also ignores the geology, the shifting of tectonic plates, the struggles of the dinosaurs and in fact the struggle of all life for the last four billion years. the notion of "God" existed that whole time in the energy of what biological life is. the manifestation of intelligence gives rise to emergent thinking that requires "god" as a tool or mental technology for overcoming problems of incoherence and incompatibility. The whole point behind "god" is to bring people together. The universe has more to offer us than our own self destructive claims to superiority over other life on this planet, it's just an invalid perspective with respect to our emergent purpose as intelligent life.

Subjective narratives are often used as a tool or device to justify the entitlement of one group over another, it's a pattern that we see again and again, from the colonization of indigenous lands to the oppression of marginalized groups within society. Belief systems that are based on kindness, truth and justice will ultimately prevail over those that are built on falsehoods, oppression and a need to displace others or treat innocent people as sub-human or unworthy. When a group of people claim their subjective narrative is more important to achieve than an objective need like "unconditional kindness for all living things", or ecological sustainability, the energy required to propagate the subjective narrative is so onerous that eventually it will be abandoned, especially after genocide, the subjective narrative that manufactured the conditions of genocide, being so culturally important at the time, will be stowed away, no longer relevant, shamefully hidden and buried forever. It's a sobering and humbling reminder that we must always strive to base our beliefs and actions on objective truth and justice, rather than subjective agendas and entitlements.

One True God

Sensitivity is key but at some point we really, truly have to call a spade a spade. We must become grounded in a deep respect for the interconnectedness of all life on Earth, and for the vast and complex history of our planet. The struggles and triumphs of all the species that have come before us are a reminder that we are just one small part of a much larger whole, and that our actions have far-reaching consequences. The concept of "God" or a higher power has evolved over time, from a tool for explaining the mysteries of the universe to a means of bringing people together and transcending our differences. Spiritual people throughout time have intuited that God energy is everywhere, and it permeates our own energy, and the energy of all living things and all matter in the universe. And, it's that, which separates Humanity from God because it suggests God was here, not evolving with life on Earth, but that life on Earth evolved into conscious awareness and a self awareness of itself as God. Representations of God as we conceptualise them, emerged from the evolution of consciousness.

It genuinely doesn't matter how you represent God in your culture. All ideologies and representations of God are interpretations of one energy. Imagine throwing all understandings of God into a God-soup, and using a centrifuge to then extract the constituent ingredients. There are really only two ingredients that can actually be centrifuged from that soup. One being subjective narrative designed to subjugate people (or help people organise under hierarchy), and the other being subjective wisdom based on humanity's highest aspirational intentions, designed to bring about harmony and Earth's homeostasis. In my opinion it's absolutely essential to recompose and modernise our representations of God from the most aspirational wisdom humanity has to offer, the parts that drive Earth's homeostasis. Resynthesizing everything we understand, from ancient wisdom, buried in the Earth's crust and in our DNA as well as philosophy and religious texts from all walks of life, but especially now, resynthesizing the rich and diverse heritage of native and indigenous people, to reincorporate the stone age dreamtime and shared stories, passed down through generations over millennia enabling native and indigenous people to properly care for themselves, the land and sea with highly sustainable practices and kindness, and more conventional aspirational wisdom learned through our greatest feats of scientific and technological achievement in today's technological exponentiality. This resynthesis is key to global harmony and reestablishing the foundations for aspirational humanity. It doesn't mean we all need to believe the same thing, it means we acknowledge the abstract truth and equality of all stories and cultural backgrounds to share in their wisdom, and enjoy them equally in the spirit of their wisdom, energising belief in our capacity to act as one, in all of our diversity and individuality but to be together and an unconditionally kind custodian for many generations to come.

It doesn't matter if you see Humanity as God or God as responsible for Humanity, what matters is that as life on earth, the universe is ours, and we are able to tap into the energy of gratitude giving us the wisdom to show unconditional kindness to all people and to recognise their innate equality and human rights.

Free Palestine

The notion of a single group having exclusive claim to a piece of land based on religious beliefs (subjective narrative) is highly problematic, as it ignores the complex history and realities of the region. Palestine has been home to many different peoples and cultures over the centuries, and it's important to acknowledge and respect the rights and perspectives of all of these groups.

Freeing Palestine is much deeper than simply freeing Palestine. When Palestine is free the west will fall from its self-assigned "humanitarian saviour complex". I think fear of being exposed as fraudulent "humanitarian saviours" is the reality of why the west are supporting the Israeli's destruction of Palestine currently. It's like a last-ditch, narcissistic effort to sweep their bad deeds under the rug and destroy the evidence. Palestine is the razors edge in 2024. All indigenous people are free when Palestine is free. Palestine is a symbol of the broader struggle for native peoples rights and self-determination around the world. The west has often positioned itself as a beacon of human rights and justice, but this position is undercut by its support for the ongoing occupation and oppression of Palestine. It's as if the west is trying to destroy the evidence of its own hypocrisy and wrongdoing, rather than facing up to the consequences of its actions because it knows liberation of Palestine will be a powerful symbolic victory for indigenous peoples everywhere. It would send a message that even the most powerful nations and systems of oppression can be challenged and overcome, and that the rights of indigenous peoples must be respected and protected.

Genocidal Sorry Business

I'm not in favour of an east or west and I don't believe in fighting racism with racism of any kind. I see the Westminster system of democracy as inherently corruptible and I think we should be diverging away from this towards a democratic model (a direct democracy) that empowers First Nations people along their traditional borders, not those established by colonial nation states of today. I think we should embody oneness and togetherness, we should nurture diversity through establishing a single regime of kindness, empowered by radical truth and aspirational humanity that truly embraces traditional culture and wisdom while establishing a global accountability for our shared success. I am in favour of one world that is respectful of indigenous peoples, cultural diversity, humanity and planetary sustainability. This requires all individuals to bring humility upon themselves (bitch be humble) and to participate in authentic sorry business for what has been lost, what has been stolen, and the trail of despair and destruction colonial actions have caused. It's not enough to say I didn't do it, so it's not relevant to me. It's always relevant because the ramifications are all around us, in our blood, and the basis of our shared future and without understanding of the suffering of others, there will be no compassion or togetherness.

Without proper sorry business we fail to recognise the suffering of others, and we risk repeating the same mistakes again and again. I hope all colonizing groups can relinquish hateful dominance over indigenous peoples and return land and governance to the people who for a long time before colonisation, were accountable to their lands, living sustainably and respectfully within the environment. It's their act of doing so which protected and made sustainable the same land colonisers extract from; they essentially externalised the cost of maintenance and hard work onto the native people while committing hateful acts of genocide against them. The atrocities are still relevant, and we need to accept the truth about ourselves to understand that.

Transcending the artificial borders of our nations, cultures and religious divides in favour of our shared humanity and planetary sustainability means challenging existing power structures and ideologies that are based on competition and domination, and working towards a more cooperative and equitable society together. We must approach this work with humility and a willingness to listen to others. By acknowledging our own limitations and blind spots, being honest about our shortcomings, we can learn from each other and build a more diverse and resilient movement for change that recognises we are all part of a complex, interdependent web of life worthy of future success.

A global realization of humility and unconditional kindness could go a long way in moving towards a more just and sustainable world. These values are at the heart of many of the positive changes that we need to make as a society, from addressing climate change to ending poverty and inequality. So while humility and kindness are essential values, we must also be willing to take concrete actions and take our sorry business seriously to bring about the systemic and cultural changes that are necessary to truly realize these values in the world. It requires the breaking of false lines such as political and religious borders and even national borders. What is required is a deeper understanding of who we are. Our religious ideologies, nationality and cultural identities can be nurtured and respected for their representative kindness and the wisdom they impart that leads to our sustainability, but they should never divide us or force us to homogenize or erase another culture.

Exhaustion & Renewal

Challenging deeply ingrained beliefs and narratives can be difficult, especially when they are tied to religious or cultural identities. But it's important to remember that these beliefs and narratives are ultimately human creations, and that we have the power to shape them in ways that are more aligned with our shared values of justice and compassion. Our planetary homeostasis and the sustainability of life on Earth should be our ultimate concern. By working together towards this shared goal, we can transcend the limitations of borders and move towards a more just, equitable, and peaceful world.

This is my Palestine. I hope to find and align with people who share these considerations and values.

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Benefit of Mistakes

Mistakes are chaotic generators of humanity's true potential, an innate part of biological life. Living systems benefit from error in DNA or RNA replication and gene expression because random mutations allow for broader compatibility with a variety of conditions. Living organisms adapt towards environmental suitability through systemic accountability of mistakes. If biological life swept its mistakes under the rug, it would fail to thrive in a variety of conditions and eventually die. It's the making of mistakes which makes life incredibly robust and this is responsible for the continuum of life we belong to.

Kindness and compassion are the products of accepting others suffering. When we see others in pain we naturally want to help them but if we learn their suffering is due to our own actions, it can be hard to acknowledge. We may decide to ignore their suffering or invent narratives about them deserving it. Avoiding our responsibility only serves to deepen the wound. We miss a vital opportunity to discern the truth and this missed opportunity can lead to generational pain, an inaccurate account of history and a departure from our desire for humanity, kindness and compassion.

Mistakes, serve as experimental lenses into the unknown, granting us accountability to integrate knowledge and use that knowledge to survive. Mistakes are the checkpoints for course correction, where we can apply our learning and adapt to unexpected changes in our psychological environments just like biological life adapts to different ecological or chemical environments. Choosing to openly and honestly respond to our mistakes is our greatest capacity as living beings because they allow for compassionate response to suffering. When we ignore our mistakes, we allow inflexibility and infallibility to undermine survival.

It’s ironic that through evolution, we have evolved conscious intelligence with minds that mistakenly believe hiding our errors or lying might be a good idea. Recognising the irony allows us to thrive faced with negative outcomes of our own doing, we can forgive ourselves and expect others to forgive us. Evolution has led to a ~4 billion year continuum that didn't once die out, and we can see that being accountable to mistakes was the only pathway forward. To be delivered a mistake is to be gifted discernment and integrity that leads to our continuation.

At this time when the world seems more broken than ever, western media is a deceptive smokescreen, and we may be on the cusp of total disaster, this is our greatest chance at success, no matter how humiliating or embarrassing that may seem, integrating our mistakes leads to the best chance of survival.

Lost Discernment

Societal systems often have inherent expectations regarding our discernment of certain narratives (social norms) which can be institutional and crucial to the coherence of our group. Sense-making under such conditions becomes such an onerous task that group cohesion is the only valid strategy. If misinformation is normalised in these settings, as it is by western governments, the cognitive dissonance of sense-making leads to the inability of individuals to discern anything. In order to think within that structure we must defer our sense-making to it and negative outcomes produced no longer have the potential to be utilized for growth because mistakes cannot be made without destabilizing the system. This is an abject loss of discernment, and we must find a way to correct this unhealthy and unsustainable control mechanism that defeats our ability to learn from mistakes and their negative consequences.

In childhood, we learn to perceive negative outcomes as growth opportunities. Each time we fall off the bike is crucial in developing our discernment of balance, gyroscopic stability, spacial awareness and coordination. As kids, we dream of peace and prosperity for all. Overcoming adversity and living in global harmony feels nothing more than intuitive and trivial. The inequalities of the world are strangely perplexing because we still view our mistakes as our pathway to success, and I think we mistakenly believe that adults haven't diverged away from that fundamental reality. It's only when the social hierarchy that requires our faultlessness becomes our adult pathway to success that we rob ourselves of our true potential as human beings.

Strong discernment is not based entirely on knowledge acquisition. Information presented to us can be intentionally misleading or emotionally manipulative. Discernment is better established through life experience, acquired through the inherent wisdom of our mistakes. When we are tolerant of our mistakes through truthful acceptance of their negative outcomes, and accept them as inevitable parts of our life, we can learn to love and embrace each mistake as an opportunity leading to beneficial growth and the strengthening of our discernment. The fact that governments and media organizations intentionally cloud the discernment of their populations is a sign of a deeply corrupt system, and we need to act on this to reintroduce radical truth and freedom to make mistakes.

Psyching Up Negative Outcomes

A mistake is a poorly judged or misguided action that leads to a negative outcome. If you intend harm on others and achieve that outcome, it's not a mistake. For a mistake to be a mistake, the negative outcome should be the result of a lack of discernment or poor judgement. Thus, putting the solution to a mistake within our reach. I am not trying to solve evil or malevolence here, I just want accountability for, and to integrate the learning of mistakes (like adaptive survival in an evolutionary sense). In order to do so, we have to be accepting of the negative outcomes we have caused.

Negative outcomes can be described as the results of an action, characterized by the absence of favourable effect. I view negative outcomes as unexpected but useful byproducts, the result of poor discernment and not premeditated or intentional harm. Negative outcomes do not align with our good intentions or wishes and often leave us feeling disappointed and embarrassed. It's understandable that we can sometimes feel ashamed and try to hide them.

The more we reject infallibility by normalizing mistakes and the possibility that we have caused an unintended negative outcome without fear and judgement, the more we normalize negative outcomes as a launchpad for betterment, repair and resolution. Instead of running away, blaming others or trying to deceive others, let us fully and unapologetically embrace negative outcomes and use them for their highest purpose. Take the opportunity to celebrate growth, accept that mistakes are a natural part of life and the negative outcomes we cause are nothing more than the basis for our expanding wisdom and the guiding foundations for a brighter and more sustainable future for all.

The Gift Of Improvement

The answer lies in our perception of mistakes. Imagine a world where making a mistake caused a bell to ring, everybody simultaneously stops what they are doing, claps and cheers. A gift toting concierge steps towards you and presents you with a gift hamper, overflowing with various fruits and cheeses, a spa and massage package to be redeemed immediately, and three free sessions with a therapist to help you integrate the psychological lessons of your mistake to better prepare you for future challenges, develop your discernment, and achieving positive outcomes. In that world, every mistake is a gift of improvement. There is no stigma around making mistakes, and we celebrate the growth opportunities which lead to betterment for everyone. Negative outcomes are merely stepping stones to our collective greatness. Those structures that previously abused their monopoly on truth, (like governments), could become the arbiters of truth accelerating human potential rather than stifling it.

My solution might sound ridiculous if you've never achieved or strived for success before. But, successful people will immediately intuit that this is what their mind does (maybe privately) each time they make a mistake. Successful people intuit their mistakes as gifts of discernment and always, without fail, work with them to build their success. A mistake is a growth opportunity. A mistake is success, it is literally the formula to success. Nation states should be able to do this too, but they are so used to hiding mistakes and achieving success at the expense of others, they have diverged beyond their own sustainable reality and all that is left is the house of cards. Imagine if every successful person hid all of their mistakes and misinformed others in order to grow their success into a huge bundle of misinformation, eventually they would fail, eventually the house of cards comes crashing down. We wouldn't call them successful, they are frauds. So in that respect a mistake that has been blamed on someone else or swept under to rug is a lost opportunity to find real success.

It must be possible to transition from the brink of world war and the collapse of western civilisation to a sustainable planet with global harmony. Not just to ceasefire or temporarily end war around the world, but to put an end to exploitation, extraction and all of our violations and human tragedy. Using the potential of our collective intelligence and shared humane ideologies, it seems intuitively plausible that the willingness to embrace our mistakes can lead to something akin to our highest aspirational visions.

Wrap Up

With our understanding that a mistake is a poorly judged or misguided action that leads to the gift of discernment we can see every negative outcome from the past as a lever of aspirational growth. Every negative outcome no matter how small can be viewed as the platform for our highest aspiration. This leads to radical truth and the importance of maintaining an honest information ecology. My hope here is that even faced with a dishonest and corrupted information ecology we can still develop better powers of discernment simply through accepting and loving our mistakes for what they are and utilising them for their highest potential.

The stigma that perpetuates the cycle of hiding and running from mistakes has to be brought to a close. In reality mistakes are a part of healthy growth and aspirational thinking. The more acceptance of mistakes, the less hiding of our mistakes there can be. The more truth there is, the less deception there can be. The more discernment there is, the more wonderful our world can be.

May you live in peace and kindness for all living things.

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Each person's encounters with cancer are unique, personal, and often confronting. My own story is one of bereavement and may be challenging if you or someone you love is currently undergoing cancer treatment. My wishes, actions and reflections should not alter or impact anyone else's, each of us have our own journey. Wherever you are on that journey, your feelings are entirely valid. I acknowledge the difficulties you face and pray you and your loved ones recover and remain in good health.

My Mum passed away from breast cancer when I was 17. It's a long time ago now. The pain is still omnipresent but my memories of her and our relationship are slowly but surely fading, less structured and reasonably unreliable. I have felt guilty about this in the past and wished I had the maturity to speak with her authentically as an adult before she died, but alas, I was not, and did not.

My Granddad passed away from prostate cancer a few years after. While I'm sure I saw far less of him than I saw of my Mum, I genuinely wear the wisdom he taught me on my sleeve and in my heart. I loved Granddad dearly, his image is etched into my soul and sometimes on my long drives to and from town, I can feel him with me, sitting beside me, coaching me to be the best version of myself. I loved my time with him, I love him, and always will.

The one thing you need to know about my Granddad is his relentless support for the underdog, pursuit of fairness, diplomacy and authenticity. I have never met another person with his ethical standards and while I'm sure he made mistakes, like we all do, it was his role-modelling, positive intentions and willingness to be accountable that really set him apart from any other person I've met. When life is hard, having his purity and good intentions channel into my heart feels like being killed with kindness, but it's okay. I'm projecting here, but my posthumous relationship with him makes me feel like a kid again which has led to a lot of inner work and healing. He's never forceful with his suggestions, and he finds a way to point out where I can do a better job, be kinder, more caring or more helpful often when I want others to feel how I'm feeling, he helps me invest that energy wisely. I walked away from spirituality after my Mum died and while I've given it a few attempts since, I owe my recent spiritual journey and growth in part to Granddad's imaginary companionship. Mum and Granddad (from Dad's family), were also great friends and had a beautiful relationship. I'm sure she felt blessed having him there through her cancer journey and would certainly have passed away with a sense of peace and love due to his care and guidance at the time.

When Mum's cancer had gone metastatic it was a difficult time for the whole family. We had prayer circles where the family would gather to pray. I think this is common in religious families and I apologise in advance if what I'm about to say causes any offence to people who find value in prayer circles. Prayer circles may not respond to the needs of each participant in the same way, and it's best to be aware that not everyone approaches such occasions through the same objective lens. Literally standing around in circles, with heads bowed, taking turns to speak out loud with each member of the group saying things like "God receive this life" felt like wishing my Mother away instead of offering productive and tangible support to her in her time of need. I despised it. It felt like a self-righteous, ceremonious and sanctimonious send-off rather than actually doing something useful. Being seventeen and watching my mother rapidly succumb to cancer, I perceived something deeply wrong with the notion of a family doing nothing more than wishing my Mother away. To me, these get togethers were despicable, verging on evil, it all felt deeply at odds with what well-intentioned people from other families might do in response to such grave circumstances. This turned me off of religion and sanctimonious speech.

I do understand now how disempowered families are in the face of terminal illness and that everyone brings something unique to the table. In homes where prayer is seen as an answer, prayer is a significant coping mechanism and is great for everyone's mental health. My repulsion at the time reflected my helplessness, my attachment and disbelief at what was to come rather than the genuine observation of an ill-intentioned family. I'm grateful for the kindness and love shown to my Mum by my family, and I'm really sorry I took their kindness for inaction. It created some ill-feelings that I've since had to heal from and resolve, It may have impacted others too. I hope they find this useful in some way.

I haven't really felt too much guidance from my Mum posthumously, but occasionally I wake up in the middle of the night singing a song or with a song ringing in my ears. One night I woke up at about 4am with "Love Me Do" by the Beetles and I reached for YouTube Music, found the song and played it. What followed were five or six of my Mum's favourite songs including "Baby Did A Bad Bad Thing" by Chris Isaak and some others that I would have to find in my history to recall, but it was glorious, it felt so much like she was with me. I think it's important to enjoy these little moments and celebrate our loved ones. I am so grateful to my Mum for her love and the kind and gentle spirit she had. I recall she was a soft, generous person, sometimes with a bit of an emotional regulation problem (which gives me some clues about something else) but in her regulated form, her heart was undeniably kind, caring and peace loving. She would be over the moon with my life choices at the moment, everything I've achieved and my future aspirations.

I’m not sure what I would do differently faced with cancer today, this is simply a retrospective on what I’ve grappled with since late childhood and the hidden impact that’s had on some of my family relationships. I prefer to choose tangible action and humane response to adversity. My choice is to pray in memory of loved ones or for guidance rather than towards my direct needs and responsibilities, or in place of being, acting and doing. 

The human in the picture should always be responsible for the action. Our actions should represent what we choose to do and if we want to change the world, it's in our hands to keep physical reality accountable to our inner voice. Ask God for guidance, but don't delegate action to the gods or leave needed actions undone or kept as thoughts, that's simply not how the universe works. There is no action God will take that doesn't also require your courage and bold authentic steps. Prayers are far more meaningful when accompanied by tangible action and your humane, meaningful response.

It is crucial to step back from rumination, pain and suffering by simply sharing feelings and past events truthfully. Releasing them from the clutches of your mind, releasing them from blame and shame and releasing them from any hold they may still have over your life, away, into the public spaces around you to be appropriately reintegrated as truth to replace the darkness of false narratives that fill their rightful places of belonging. Just letting them be what they are, walking away once and for all from the suffering they cause, letting go of all unhealed things.

Unhealed Abuse

I was sexually groomed and abused by older children from the age of four onwards, or at least that's as far back as I can remember. Children plural. I have no doubt in my mind that those children were sexually groomed and abused by other children, and possibly adults. My first experience of intercourse was at the age of six, a person involved in that also introduced me to marijuana at the age of twelve and was my drug dealer at least until I reached fifteen. I witnessed the same older children responsible for the abusive behaviour directed at me, perpetrate abuse towards other younger children. I know my experience is not isolated. I was encouraged by those children to engage in similar behaviour. As an undiagnosed autistic child these behaviours seemed commonplace and normal, it was a big part of forming interpersonal connection and winning the approval of others. The notion of secrecy around these behaviours only emerged as I was apportioned more and more of the guilt and responsibility for them. In my tween years I was on the cusp of understanding the shame and guilt, but I didn't fully take on the blame for it all until I was a teenager, ravaged by fear of God, shameful rumination, self-hatred, the obligatory loss of religion, and all that goes along with being a hurt fueled teenager.

Writing this down is important for me, and I think others' healing, now, as adults. It takes a great overcoming to be able to talk openly about such things and to shed light on them honestly. I have immense gratitude to those who have ostracised and alienated me throughout my life, especially those who've played leading roles in my childhood experiences and those responsible for sweeping the truth under the rug while pushing harmful narratives upon me. Your actions and behaviours didn't kill me. They have led to great healing and the emergence of a kind and loving individual who knows his worth and is literally bullet-proof, I thank you sincerely for the role you played in that.

Unhealed Behavior

Behavior does not describe a person’s character, it describes their life experience and environment. Growing up in a healthy environment with secure attachment is vital for a child's well-being and development of strong interpersonal connections. For kids growing up in an environment without secure attachment the child perceives a lack of safety, security and emotional support which leads to a life in survival mode where you are unable to trust others and lack the emotional safety to develop healthy behaviours and boundaries. This means you attract relationships from people who are only compatible with the insecure attached and unhealed version of you, without boundaries, so the relationship may not be able to meet your needs or withstand your healing and growth over time.

Unhealed Parenting

As parents, we have our own set of life experiences and circumstances that impact the environment we establish for our children including co-parenting. Some circumstances and mistakes are just unavoidable, and for this reason I believe it is healthy to acknowledge our mistakes wholeheartedly to our children with open honesty. If we intentionally acknowledge our mistakes, accept them as a part of life so that our kids understand that we are still worthy of respect, compassion and kindness and that it's safe to make mistakes, they will build secure attachment, develop healthy boundaries and establish fulfilling relationships with safety down the line.

Relationship Trauma

The idea of being in a relationship with someone who cannot be seen as making a mistake, or someone who is manipulating the truth should be a red flag, however this wisdom doesn't emerge without first experiencing its trauma. It should never be okay to role-model and normalise disrespect of a partner, ex-partner, child, parent or any caregiver of a child because no person is a static point in time and no person should be forced to suffer endlessly after making positive changes to their lives. Children pick up covert subversive and disrespectful behaviour that you role-model from eye rolling to bag sessions, exclusion, covert behaviour intended to solidify negative perspectives and outright smearing, slander and acts of evil. They then need to spend time healing from the trauma it seeds as adults. For any relationship, if you need to outright lie, mould the story, tell innocent lies, exaggerate, fake it or orchestrate a PR campaign in order to feel safe and secure (or they need to do this for you), then that relationship is in serious effing trouble. Just do yourself a service and seek therapy and relationship counselling. If you don't your children will need to, and almost certainly their children will have to.

Unhealed Family

It took over 40 years of shame, awkwardness and embarrassment for this reality to set in. I'm a kind and compassionate person who is worthy of love, respect, grace and empathy. If you are unwilling to entertain that reality in good faith then you aren't going to be a part of my life and that is a hard boundary no matter what our relationship was. I am a survivor, a person who overcame adversity and I know my worth. If that's not your impression of me, and you choose to paint a narrative at my expense, peace and love to you, but I'm not here to be your punching bag, that time is done.

Not everything you learn from your family is right. Not everything you're indoctrinated into is right. Not every coping strategy your family dynamic taught you was right. It's not always their fault or yours. If the majority of family members primarily gang up against or blame a single individual in the group for something, but they have never once spoken to the individual, is it the individual's fault or is it the result of an unhealed dynamic? When securely attached people do not emerge from a certain family dynamic it's dysfunctional. Codependency is required to hold the unit together. They don't have the skills and coping mechanisms to grow and evolve and develop wisdom or accept their flawed humanness as a beautiful and celebration-worthy part of life and that results in perpetuating harm on others.

Growth Through Diagnosis

Some people call the combination of ASD-1 + ADHD "AuDHD" and I like that term because it's a single point of reference for what I experience as a whole condition.

My AuDHD combination is a disability. I apologise to those who seek empowerment through perceiving it as a super-ability, but for me, It's not super. I was diagnosed with ASD-1, it presents mostly as cognitive freezes, social difficulties, delayed processing, dyscalculia, some sensory sensitivities and processing problems. I've noticed PDA demand avoidance issues too but that wasn't diagnosed, so maybe I'm just imagining it.

You will not pick up on my Autism or ADHD in the first five minutes of meeting me, I didn't know for 42 years. Others may have noticed something, but saw it as embarrassing or shameful behaviours and that was better off ignored and hidden. Not acknowledging the condition meant that I lacked appropriate support for it throughout my life, and my family really aren't healed enough or capable of recognising it at this stage either.

I've had to go through my autism awareness journey alone (with my partner and children) since my diagnosis in 2022, and it's been heavy. There were long periods of burnout, periods of constant suicidal ideation, behavioural regression, loss of executive function and there was a period of about 18 months when I was having multiple significant crying sessions every day which became so normal that my partner and I would talk about it like I was going to have a shower, or doing some housework. Over that time I pulled out of university in order to help a family member complete an urgent programming project which lead to my complete estrangement from the remaining contactable members of my family. It's heartbreaking. On top of this, even though I did try to re-enrol and complete my degree I have been unable to complete any enrolled subjects and the degree is now impossible to complete by its deadline. At this stage I've spent the last 6 years earning a huge hex debt and no degree to show for it, or to even complete which is a weird feeling.

When you experience my nervous system dysregulation without understanding it, you may be mistaken for thinking I'm pretending or trying to undermine my own purpose (heuristics). I will probably notice my dysregulation after you and not before. The difference is that now I know what's going on, I can manage my situation better and use the tools and skills I've developed over the last years to improve but autistic-burnout is a persistent issue for me.

A particularly pertinent sign of my dysregulation is dyscalculia which is effectively numerical dyslexia. It doesn't affect the accuracy of my work when I'm regulated, but it does cause skill regression when I force myself into situations that lead to nervous system dysregulation and burnout. My aptitude for numbers is almost perfectly in-sync with the hustle and speed of the working environment. This is to a point where I can't perform basic operations on sequences of single digit numbers. If you understand this about me, you will realise I am not suited to the high intensity role of operating a checkout because in that situation I can't add two and two when the pressure builds up. At the same time, In a slow paced setting where speed is not a requirement, I have been confident in game physics, system analysis, programming and designing spreadsheets and financial systems. A big part of managing this disability is in developing boundaries and methods of coping with other peoples expectations, preconceptions of what I should and shouldn't be capable of and subsequently, their projections due to a lack of understanding.

Healed Things

I'm completely done with this era. I've let my family go. If they seek resolution I can help them with that, but it's not my responsibility to do their healing work for them. I'm pursuing authentic goals and dreams. I'm pursuing happiness, genuine human connection, resilience and anti-fragility. I seek aspirational humanity through global harmony. It's more important than anything else. People who must exist in false-narratives only serve to hinder progress towards unity. 

My wish is that all people find their radical truth, let go of their fears and center their actions and behaviors around kindness and compassion, and to authentically strive for aspirational humanity together because that’s what we need most.

I don't remember the year, but I will say it was 2020 when I developed a special interest in a now discontinued community started by David Fuller and Alexander Beiner under the "Rebel Wisdom" moniker. Rebel Wisdom was an insightful media platform focussed on making sense of the world, the exploration and development of ideas that tackle civilizational-decay and societal dysfunction while exploring tangible action towards the problem but also developing community around sense-making and rebuilding civilization in resilient and an anti-fragile way. This was potentially a place where I would find friends and establish relationships with like-minded individuals. It wasn't something I took lightly and I guess I was slightly nervous about creating the right impression.

This interest developed prior to learning of my Autism and ADHD. It was really only post-diagnosis that I became psychosocially aware and even though I had these intuitions that I wanted to make the world a better place, I didn't have the emotional intelligence or skills and mechanisms for communicating well, handling others negative perceptions or criticism.

I lasted in the community for about 10 days before facing my expulsion due to an incident of my outrage and appalling language as a result of dysregulation which is cringe-worthy but funny to write down now. At the time it was a personal catastrophe and I now understand that I entered into a period of autistic burnout as a result. It was really my partner and my workplace that paid the price of my burnout, skill regression, loss of executive function, motivation, direction, and it was just a confusing and derailing time in our lives. How the expulsion went down was that I had started a conversation within the community under a special subsection of their forum designed for "developing healthy conversational debate" fostering balance over bias (or something like that). I chose the unfortunately char-grilled but polarizing “hangry” landscape of ketogenic verses vegan diet choice.

Obviously I was asking to have my ass handed to me with a side of greens, but I wasn't prepared for my own inadequacies under the circumstances. I made an argument for the ketogenic side and anticipated the vegan constituent of the community would balance the discussion and respond with a compelling case which I would eventually reign supreme and defeat with my crystalline common sense. The polarity of the topic wasn't an issue, I was equipped and prepared to chat openly about the scientific, emotional and spiritual aspects of the conversation having studied biology over the previous year and having grown up vegetarian I felt I had a rounded understanding of both sides of the debate.

What actually happened took me by surprise and I came face to face with my own cognitive rigidity. I'm paraphrasing and almost certainly misremembering the nuance but someone mentioned the intelligence of squid and the fact that eating their cells caused the spiritual/emotional trauma of the animal to be ingested and retained within the body of its consumer, and it was equivalent to receiving someone else's bad luck. I mistook their response as a joke or an intentionally argumentative device for derailing the authentic conversation (which I thought was part of the conversational game we were engaged in) and responded back with sarcasm which led to a reprimand for not honoring the spirit of the debate. At this point I basically went into cognitive shutdown because of the misunderstanding and humiliation of being told off like a naughty child in a community I sought belonging. I lost control, and responded in colorized (probably magenta or red), heading font for "everybody in the community to go and fuck themselves!!!". The next morning I deservingly and unsurprisingly woke up to a message from David Fuller telling me my kind of ignorance and manner wasn’t welcome within the community I was to be expelled immediately.

There is no excuse for the way I responded to the forum, but the thing that keeps running through my mind is that expulsion isn't the kindest way to deal with such problems. When we struggle to meet eye to eye on an issue and one party clearly has a problem with dysregulation, expelling them from the community is counter to the spirit of what the community was about. I can't help but see this as a failure of the community to achieve its stated goals.

Conscious beings will always be in various degrees of dysregulation at any given time. It's a matter of inclusivity and cultural anti-fragility to be able to handle the imperfect edges and flaws of the interpersonal experience without winding up at the expulsion of people, identities, cultures, or principles (you get the idea). Perhaps the fragility of our communities is the problem that needs tackling the most. Rather than pointing the finger outwards, we can look at ourselves as a group and see that the exclusion of others truth is a failure to achieve togetherness. Understanding the dysregulation of an individual is an opportunity to become more tolerant and inclusive, it can turn a disruptive negative experience into something healing and beneficial to the community building resilience. Expulsion is a failure of the group to respond to adversity in a healthy, supportive way.

It is important to be compassionate towards others and not automatically assume their dysregulation is a sign of bad character or intentional malice. Concentrating on unconditional kindness and seeking to understand the dynamic of dysregulation helps us establish cultures of anti-fragility and to create inclusive communities that know how to handle unexpected disruptions positively.

I believe in something I made up called “radical honesty” which is actually just honesty. It isn't really radical in its own right, it's only radical because dishonesty is so culturally normalized in the world today. But really, we need to stop lying to one another and ourselves if we want to pass something worthwhile onto our children.

At every moment you must choose how to behave. What you choose is the final choice. The decisions you make, no matter how small will impact the feasibility of every future moment you live, and every future moment of this planet. You are a big deal in that regard. Your truth is like gold, but the lies you tell are like meteor showers destroying the integrity of the information ecology required to achieve togetherness, and our shared dreams all the way up to and beyond world peace and the feasibility of life on Earth.

In order to make decisions you must operate within an information ecology. If the information ecology that you have to work with is full of lies and deception how can you make impactful and meaningful decisions? The same is true for the information ecology you produce. If you can't be honest how can other people act in your best interest and the best interest of the planet?

• Personal Relationships: If you succeed in your relationships by lying about your intentions or values, your whole personal life becomes a mirage. It's fake. When the person in this relationship with you starts to see the cracks in your facade, you have to work ten times harder to prove yourself or prove them wrong and eventually your behaviours lead to pain and suffering for everyone involved.

• Business: If you prosper at business by deceiving your customers about your expertise, virtues, hiding the truth, you will eventually need to back up your inflated claims with real action and tangible results. If you can't do this, you will need to engage in even more deception and lies to support your predicament just to keep your reputation in check. This is unsustainable and obviously a lot of work for no authentic benefit to anyone, not even you.

• Government: If you achieve political supremacy through secret deals, coercive control, manipulation and oppression of your people you may have your glory days or decades, but it will only be a timespan before the true history books will emerge no matter how many times you burn the libraries or annihilate populations. Eventually your power will be removed, and you will have to face your fate and disgrace.

You might disagree with me. It might seem like you're escaping the flames or avoiding capture in these deceptive games and you think, I'm willing to take my chances. But, eventually your lies will catch up with you. It's not just the personal repercussions, deception literally damages the information ecology of every future moment, causing repercussions well beyond your own selfish concerns.

Your deception is embedded in future states, within the order of lies you’ve created. This will eventually return to chaos and your deception will be exposed. Why discount the whole of existence to favour your own deceptive benefit for a short sliver of time? The math doesn't add up, does it?

If you think to yourself "oh, I'll be dead anyway, who cares?", then why was it so important to lie? Just tell the truth, you'll be dead anyway, who cares.

Embracing radical honesty is the only way to heal personal, cultural and societal narcissism. Set healthy boundaries around deceptive behaviour. It's your choice to participate, the more we normalize moving towards radical truth, the less acceptable codependent narcissism becomes. Don't be afraid to tell someone the truth. With the truth we can work together to achieve actual tangible goals. The awkwardness or pain of reality is infinitely more workable and less disruptive to future existence.

Let's do it! You know you can do it! Radical Truth!

Examples of Radical Truth you might ponder:

• “Yes we are aware Israel is committing genocide and pursuing plans to expand the state”

• “Yes we are aware that First Nations peoples have been brutalized by colonialism and they DO actually deserve their property back”

That’s enough to get the ball rolling.

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Accountability

Media organizations that enforce specific narrative responses to the suffering of outside groups are responsible for disrupting the understanding required to make informed, compassionate decisions on behalf of innocent and vulnerable people.

These organizations have access to evidence of grave human suffering, human rights abuses, breaches of international law, and genocide, yet they choose to cast doubt over its legitimacy, refute it, or refuse to report on it. 

This is without question, corrupted, immoral and narcissistic behavior that undermines the legitimacy of the media we consume and the organizations and governments that sponsor it. They are accountable for their lack of action towards the growing human cost and perpetuation of suffering inflicted on innocent lives.

Compassion

Having compassion for others is crucial to creating a fair and equitable world for everybody. Compassion doesn’t just spring up as a narcissistic meme we can hijack and throw around, it actually has to be backed by substance.

An important aspect of compassion is understanding its lifecycle and it’s crucial to understand because the lifecycle gets disrupted by corrupt media sources and this stops the formation of compassion for others.

Lifecycle of Togetherness

In the lifecycle of togetherness, we suffer, we learn from each others suffering, we develop compassion and arrive at togetherness; overcoming the pain we have caused one other with kindness and shared values. 

Suffering is the precursor to compassion and compassion brings us into togetherness. Our togetherness strengthens our resolve for peace, offers warmth and sympathy for our histories, and shares respect for our heritage. 

This lifecycle is a foundation of healthy, evolving civilization.

Disrupted Compassion

The evolution of civilization towards compassionate conflict-resolution and peace while moving away from aggression and war is incongruent with nation states utilizing disharmony to gain additional power and control for their own benefit. For this reason our compassion for one another is intentionally disrupted by those in power as a means of dissolving our capacity to shift towards compassionate conflict resolution which would limit their capture of power. They do this by manipulating the truth, obfuscating and controlling news media to maximize the perception of our pain, and minimize the perception of the outsiders suffering.

In conflict, compassion empowers an alternative path to resolution that avoids retaliation, aggression and violence. Compassionate resolution of conflict aligns with human kindness and desire for peace. It is crucial in overcoming the barriers we face in the world today. 

Measuring Pain

No amount of retaliation heals suffering. You cannot know in a single moment how deeply another person has suffered or how it compares to your own pain. That is not to trivialize adversity or mistreatment, but to say a painful experience resulting in retaliation is never measured exactly enough to reach a justifiable end. 

All efforts exerted in retaliation end up perpetuating suffering in arbitrary increments, back and forth endlessly, often outlasting the lifespan of the original progenitors. Using your suffering as the cause for someone else's suffering fails to heal the wound. It only perpetuates a cycle that will eventually re-offend you and your lineage and this is used as a mechanism of control to keep you engaged in aggression and resolution without compassion.

Disconnecting People

Minimising or distorting people's exposure to others suffering suffocates our ability to feel compassion. We cannot have compassion for others when their suffering is hidden from us, we are made to feel like our compassion is an act of terrorism, their suffering is psychological warfare against us or deepfake generated propaganda. 

Corrupted Media

When we understand this we also understand how instrumental news media is in perpetuating hatred and division around the world when it would otherwise be so easy for us to experience compassionate resolution without media interference. But, reporting on evidence of human suffering may be detrimental to news organizations resulting in loss of funding, government sponsorship or advertising revenue. 

This dynamic means each media organization's existence is dependent on its corruptibility. It can only function in alignment with coercive power structures that sponsor it. 

On top of this, if reporting on human rights abuses, breaches of international law or genocide are simply a decision of political alignment, the callous disregard for human tragedy of such events by media organisations shows they are incapable of compassion for the innocent and vulnerable and this is biased and immoral. 

Reporting on evidence is only done in cases where it makes the media organization or sponsor look good which is narcissistic and indicative of runaway, out-of-control power, incapable of course correction, accepting mistakes or serving society in a way that resonates with an expectation of aspirational humanity. 

Since this is the situation for western media, I am left wondering what combination of corrupt, immoral narcissism undermines our civilization and if there is hope for western media? I wonder what restructure of governance is required to reintroduce a semblance of integrity and authenticity?

Hiding Human Tragedy

There is no hierarchy of suffering, just our desire to create more or less of it. To pick up the vulnerable and care for them, or to crush them into the dirt. Manipulation of the truth and false-narratives exacerbate the hardship and suffering felt by all people. 

The media we consume justifies or hides one form of suffering while condemning another and this cripples the lifecycle of togetherness and is corrupted, immoral and narcissistic. 

Honest journalism and reporting may not eliminate suffering, but it would aid in the development of compassion, leading to togetherness and world peace.

Suffering

In this context, suffering is defined by its association with international conflict, colonial mistreatment, cultural or social prejudice, hardship, injustice, cruelty, discrimination and violence that is systemic, widespread or too complex and ingrained to be dealt with effectively under a single legal system of common law. 

The resolution of suffering has always been to perpetuate a cycle of retaliation or eradication in one direction or another. We know this doesn't work, war does not create peace and if it did, we would already have peace. 

The way we disseminate information today is tightly coupled to power structures that solve problems through retaliation and war rather than seeking to engage in the lifecycle of togetherness that would be more beneficial in solving human suffering.

Love Not War

It's honestly up to you. The good guys have always been characterized by their unconditional kindness, compassion and desire for peace. 

If that's not you, then it's time to consider the legacy you wish to leave for your children. Is it togetherness or war? Hate crimes or good times?

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When someone lies it has a real impact on the world around us. We too eagerly discount the impact without understanding how bad it actually is. The false narratives built by lies must be maintained using continuous human effort and energy. This effort must be applied before our social and cultural integrity, before our humanitarian pursuits and before our peace, kindness and care for others. Objectives that would require less effort and be more meaningful to humanity such as alleviating human suffering, ending poverty and supporting the vulnerable in overcoming hardship are sidelined as we toil with vigorous effort, endlessly applying ourselves to hide our deception and the narratives that would crumble without constant and consistent energetic reinforcement.

Lying affects every relationship around us. Even the smallest lies have the propensity to decimate our human potential. As soon as I share a lie with you, I've irreversibly affected your capacity to do good in the world. Any lie no matter how small, even a simple exaggeration, can impact the information ecology of our personal networks and may destabilize the fabric of our civilization leading to an infinite number of world changing positive actions not being taken, negative social conventions being normalized, and more devastating outcomes like suicide of an individual or genocide of a population due to false propaganda and misinformation campaigns.

We have the foresight to teach our children about the dangers of lying and even so, model despicable behavior that prioritizes deceptive personal benefit over the serene simplicity and authenticity or truth telling. To lie is to rob yourself of the authentic stability you deserve. You are forever thrust into a chaotic future of maintenance and meaninglessness with a critical need to produce further deception to stop the exposure of your artificial reality.

If someone discovers your lie you may need to destroy or discredit that person to protect yourself regardless of their virtues, authenticity, good intentions and good character. Instead of owning up to your lie and repairing the damage you have caused you may find yourself disconnecting from your own virtues, transitioning from a naive, self-serving liar to a reprehensible sociopath known as a narcissist. As a narcissist you will see yourself as infallible and virtuous regardless of the harm you are causing to everybody around you. You will not hesitate to harm others to protect yourself and your falsehood. You may find yourself engaging in the following:

• Slandering someone's name.

• Discrediting a person or seeking to damage a person's reputation.

• Sharing information that would be harmful to the person.

• Spying, Hacking, Stalking and disrupting a person's life in order to gain dirt or to harm them.

• Gas-lighting people into believing this person is insane, a liar, or themselves a sociopath.

• Insisting you are the victim of a person using false frames of reference.

• Causing a person to commit suicide or to otherwise become mentally unstable or incapacitated.

If you are seeing these behaviours around you, or you know someone who is affected by them, it's likely a sign that your personal network is distorted by liars and these behaviours have stemmed directly from someone's need to maintain a false narrative or to preserve the false-integrity of an individual engaged in a form of deception.

I'm sure I won't be able to convince those maintaining lies to stop, but it is my genuine belief that we can live in a world where radical truth telling is normalised and the benefit of such a world is a civilization that meets the expectations of it aspirational vision. I am certain that deception is the root of every problem humanity faces. From toxic codependent family groups to international weapons trade and economic decisions that drive genocide and humanitarian crisis. One by one we can individually commit to radical truth telling and promise those around us that we are standing up against lies, narcissism and flaccid humanitarian policy. By taking the bold and unconventional step of committing to the truth “no matter what”, we create the future our children genuinely deserve.

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A lot of detriment is inflicted on our collective lives simply through needing to maintain narratives of ourselves or our ancestors. Instead of focusing on the most humane act of our present, we turn a blind eye to each other’s real needs and project exaggerated narratives about their malevolence which we must maintain endlessly to absolve our culpability in the atrocities these projections cause and fulfil.

As generations go by suffering and disharmony ensues resulting in our loss of humane substance and our highest potential is reduced to dishonest economic success, endless conflict and a compromised, unsustainable life.

Our hearts must break open and give rise to ‘humane truth’ in our lived experiences. Only when we find our highest ‘humane truth’ and act towards it will we deconstruct senseless factional disputes and the fake-truth that maintains economic advantage. This is a necessity for future generations and our responsibility to break away from self-serving deception.

In a post-deception world, allegiances based on authenticity strive for shared humane purpose. The principle upon which the information ecology is formed is authentic and based in humane action, this filters into our lives and children will no longer need to leave their morals at the door to function in society.

My heart breaks for children’s lives destroyed by war, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and genocide.

I guess this is a little weird, but here is my prayer for Humanity.

Prayer To Humanity

Filled with sorrow, I pray,
that a single lamb might be enough
to keep our self-inflicted darkness at bay. 

In despair and exasperated cries,
we face terrifying brutality and genocide.
Its unanimous tragedy obscured, and unfelt.

Redemption in this grief and torment arrives
by the balancing hand of the truth it brings.
Its absence would be devoid of meaning. 

May we use this catastrophe to end it,
the momentum of our inhumane self-glorification,
willful ignorance, and selective blindness.

May we realize authentic compassion
worthy of the suffering we have caused in  
our complete disdain for moral truthfulness.

I pay gratitude to God, and in spirit,
for this tragic sacrifice of innocence and
the foundation it paves for a more humane, humane.

May we unite as one, together with kindness
and defend the most honorable truth.
Hearts break open, yours can too.