What struck me reading this is that the breakdown we’re living through isn’t just moral or political, it’s systemic. We keep trying to fix visible problems while neglecting the conditions that create them in the first place.
No matter how old, sick, poor, or limited we are, we can still make small shifts in how we care for the foundations of our lives. Those shifts ripple outward.
In health, that’s meant focusing on the body’s terrain before chasing diagnoses.
In food, it shows up as biodynamic and regenerative agriculture, building living soil instead of fighting pests.
Different fields use different language, but the principle is the same: strong conditions create healthier systems.
I’ve just written about what this looks like in medicine, and why starting with the terrain changes everything.
Thank you, Charles, for expressing this side of the equation. I had written a piece here on Substack containing a similar sentiment week before last and felt as though I was standing way far out on a skinny branch by myself. Without healing the source of the wound, we are only treating symptoms.
This essay brings to mind Amazing Grace... What if the perpetrators were genuinely repentant? What if they admitted guilt? Horror over their own actions. A thorough and authentic commitment to change. What if they did a 180 and turned into beautiful people? The opposite of who they've been? And a recognition that they don't deserve forgiveness or grace? But then... are given it anyways? In Amazing Grace, a slave trader recognized the utter depravity of his actions and committed himself to goodness and penance for the rest of his life. Whenever I hear a gospel choir made up of the descendants of former slaves singing Amazing Grace...Oh My God, the tears flow. May the wretches be redeemed. May the perpetrators passionately renounce and recognize their depravity and from their horrible realizations evolve into the beautiful people they were meant to be.
It does happen! The only realistic scenario for revolution is that at least some portion of the elite have a change of heart. We cannot expect all of them will, or even most of them, but we can create conditions where some will defect. I will write more of this later in the series.
I got really interested in this notion that people can actually change their heart if they’re met with clarity and compassion.
And in your writing, Charles, you gave several examples of real change of heart. I remember the story about the “everyday Gandhis”—a group of people who ended up interacting with an actual professional torturer between wars—and the man had a serious change of heart. You gave a few other examples too.
Recently, that made me look again at Gandhi’s movement and the civil rights movement with Martin Luther King, and to wonder: how often does this really happen at the scale people hope for? So I started asking a harder question: did the opponents—the counterparts—of Gandhi and MLK ever have that kind of change of heart?
And what I found is… even at that level, it seems rare. In South Africa, Governor Smith (as I understand it) could respect Gandhi’s moral force and still be basically relieved to see the “saint” go away—like, “exceptional person, hard to deal with, glad he’s leaving,” rather than “I’ve been transformed.” And with MLK, most of his opponents didn’t have a real change of heart either. I think, in all my digging, I found maybe one person who could be called an MLK counterpart who actually did.
That lands for me as a sobering thought. I’m sitting with the rarity of hearts actually changing. And I’m wondering how to relate to that—how to keep looking for the highest in people, even when it’s unlikely they’ll come to see what someone connected to life can see.
This. I keep thinking, one…just one to start off with…just spills it with true repentance and accountability. Maybe even a few together for there are many in this Epstein thing. It must be burdensome if many of them began as decent folk but who devolved into what you describe.
No matter how heinous their acts have been, turning from it, admitting it and asking for forgiveness would stun the world. But many have been killed once exposed and this next step remains just my dream.
Thank you Charles, this resonates with a lot of thoughts I have had recently. It feels we are having to face to collective shadow, to see it for what it is and to acknowledge it is a system we have all been participating in. It is deeply painful. I have a son and I am really struggling with how to protect him from what I see as a broken system, designed to disempower him and make him perform within this economic model. At the same time I do not want to isolate him, remove him from society and community. But participating in most normal ways (school especially) feels like consenting to this system I feel is so wrong. So much that is normalised for children is about embedding them to participate in this system.
I hear you and I am struggling mightily with this also. Dealing in the realm of abstract thoughts and words are one thing, but are human beings who have to make daily decisions about concrete matters. And as parents we are have small humans we brought into this world to care for and the weight of all this is immense.
Thank you. Yes I've been feeling that, rather than try and remove and shelter him from this modern capitalist system entirely, I'd like to give him a chance to know it, like you say. To meet the diversity of people within it. But I plan to teach him how to question and challenge it, and not to submit to it or give in to the pressure to conform. It is a tough road indeed and it involves learning to live with a lot of tension, and somehow find space to breathe.
Thank you Charles, this is very much needed. We cannot evolve until we can hold our eyes to this - together - with our hearts. And we need those who can, to show the way.
This was touching and energizing. It had the same power as the last article but considerably more grounded to places I can easily intellectually follow. Thank you for speaking your heart at such a powerful moment. ❤️
What you are pointing to -- the source of evil within the power dynamic -- is so important. I was looking into this during the lockdowns, I read a book by Paul Levy called "Dispelling Wetiko" and it is an incredibly important book for these times. If we don't understand that this is not about the individual, Nor is it about positions within the hierarchy. it is about the fundamental structure of collective consciousness and how it can go out of balance. The individual, the positions of power, are extensions of the greater collective consciousness and when the balance is lost, the shadow is cast. Some individuals will rise to power to fill the void created by the vacuum of the shadow Levy calls the "mind virus". They may be weak from their own trauma and subsequently fall into these roles or be traumatized by someone in proximity to the power vacuum and perhaps succumb to it. The idea that this could happen to anyone and to any group of people is still an unexplored idea but I think it answers a lot of the questions we want to ask of these depraved characters. https://www.awakeninthedream.com/
By no means am I suggesting we let anyone off the hook for their behaviors and crimes. But I agree with you, punishing the individual is not a real solution. I would venture to ask, has punishment for crimes ever really resulted in long term positive outcomes? .Crimes like sex trafficking are perpetuated by individuals but fueled by a collective vacuum that outlives all individuals involved. This is a sick society. We need to start looking within as well as without to heal the gash in our collective psyche that created these monsters. Although this is not a popular thing to say...if you do the math, this could happen to anyone of us...we are all capable of evil more than we dare to believe. I saw this during covid with my own eyes. People talk of it during wartime. I blame no one but I look for answers on deeper levels now. We are all part of a collective dance.
I wouldn't say it is an easy read but I did a deep dive and had a book group with it. His many interviews are more accessible for some. I hope people will catch on to these ideas and what you said in your previous article. Great work, beautifully written. Thank you for these.
Dehumanizing others is a feature of hierarchy - the more a person is removed from a situation of equality, the less empathy with others he or she feels. Many studies have demonstrated this. Since civilization is hierarchical by definition (there has never been a civilization without hierarchy) the real demon is this mode of living (which we are taught to idealize) and the narrative that supports it ("we are here to dominate nature") There are other, far more successful, narratives - humans have been around for 2 million years, civilization for 5000, modernity/coloniality for 300 years. Thanks for this Charles - brilliant as usual.
Yes! Such a clear way of seeing. In my language - Hierarchy is Headpower. Collaboration is Heartpower. We need to collaborate with nature not dominate it. Love it !
Thanks Charles. I read this after listening to a black woman talk about the n-word being used at the BAFTAs and how the harm caused was not being redressed, but rather that people (read black people) were being implored to understand the disability of the man who shouted the offence. So, I've been thinking about healing and what that may need to look like. It seems to me that we need to slow down, stop multi-tasking and learn to sit with the discomfort of listening to people who have been harmed as they talk about the pain, offense, whatever they need to say. And, that we need to listen with empathy and an attempt to try to understand the harm caused. We need to acknowledge and validate the harm caused. Even in those simple actions there can be profound healing. We don't do this well at all in many Western cultures. Instead, we want to make it go away, we want the people harmed to "get over it", we throw slurs at them ("ableist!"). It's really hard to be still, be quiet, and listen to people express their pain. Really hard. And, we need to get better at it. Anyway, I know my thoughts aren't unique. I just wanted to share them somewhere and this seemed like a good place. I appreciate your work Charles.
These are some very astute observations, yes... true healing can only happen through acknowledgement! If there is no acknowledgement of the pain created, there can be no actual healing.
Strong piece overall, and the moral/structural diagnosis of power really bites. I just wish you kept the epistemic discipline as strong as the moral diagnosis.
The line that vindication “does not depend on the factual truth” is slippery, is it not? Once you grant that, you’ve loosened the one brake that keeps “serious” from turning into mood-based certainty.
And it connects to the anti-scapegoating move. You reject 'find someone to kill,' but then introduce a vaguer culprit: 'something inhuman is running the world.' This is sort of a cosmic scapegoat - hard to falsify, easy to pour anything into. When facts are optional and the cause is amorphous, you're going to have maximum conviction, yet minimum accountability.
That "something inhuman" could be capitalism. It could be a mythology -- the story of separation. The mythology of progress. Et cetera. In various ways, all of these are inhuman. That is what I was getting at.
And of course, while there is truth in that phrase, there is also truth in its opposite.
If 'something inhuman' is basically shorthand for capitalism (separation-myth / progress-myth), I’m with you. But “et cetera” covers a lot of territory. The more things it can mean, the less it disciplines the analysis. So what are the tell-tale mechanisms (or predictions) that distinguish these forces in practice, and that point to specific institutional design changes?
And could you clarify 'there is also truth in its opposite'? Do you mean that what runs the world is, in some sense, still human (or spirit), even inside these structures?
My reading of Charles logic is that there's an argument where accountabilty for one man is the illusion/distraction that facilitates leaving the system level factors that creates this behaviour intact? .....I'm really struck by how much this chimes with the concept of Wetiko. And also Nora Batesons ideas on warm data and ecologies of data. Without bringing in the full context of a colonial ecosystem you never truly understand and deal with the question, "what factors generate mindsets like Epsteins? Is this anomalous or is it just one example of somethin lurking in other shadows?" You surely need to see to ask that first, or you will never stop this happenin? And linked to that, all institutions create this horrendous behaviour dont they? Governemnts, Royalty business all come out badly in the Epstein files. But in a non-colonial system would you get such activities in churchs for example, add your own examples ad infinitum.
Yeah, I think the system-level point is the strong part of Charles’s piece. Fixating on one monster can become a moral alibi for leaving the selection pressures intact.
And yet: you can have systems analysis without loosening your grip on what’s true. 'Warm data' and wetiko (as metaphor) can help you see patterns, sure, but they can also turn into a solvent that melts falsifiability. Once “vindication doesn’t depend on factual truth,” the whole story floats free for spin.
Also, 'all institutions create this horrendous behavior' is too total. Institutions can breed impunity and predation under certain conditions... concentrated power, secrecy, capture, weak oversight... but 'all' turns an empirical question into a closed belief. The useful question is: what design features reduce the tail risk, and what amplifies it?
Agreed, don’t stop at Epstein-the-person. Just keep the epistemic guardrails on as you widen the frame; otherwise 'the system did it' becomes its own way of not having to know.
I'm not versed in the philosophical glossary so my question may sound simple-minded - if in fact the system DID do it, don't we have to recognize that in order to change the system? And why are punishing the individual perpetrators and changing the system mutually exclusive? Don't we have to do both?
The author explicitly states that all too often, cultural shifts stop at the first, believing that justice has been done, but fail to take the necessary - harder! - next step to prevent its inevitable recurrence.
I don’t think you’re missing anything. My pushback is about a couple of moves that make the system-level argument hard to keep honest.
One is the claim that the feeling of vindication 'does not depend on the factual truth' of the specific allegations. That’s not a throwaway line; it relaxes the discipline that keeps systems analysis from turning into mythic inference. If the details don’t matter, the frame can absorb anything.
The other is when 'the system did it' morphs into 'something inhuman is running the world.' That phrase can mean a lot of things. If it’s shorthand for incentive gradients and impunity, then spell out the mechanics. If it’s a metaphysical agent, we’ve left the realm where 'change the system' is even a concrete program.
I’m wary of any method that treats truth as optional and causality as amorphous. That combo is how you end up feeling like you’ve explained things while sidestepping the hard work of specifying what, exactly, needs to change.
Ben thank you for being so clear in these comments and taking the time to flesh this out. You are pointing to exactly the same concern I have and have had for a long time with a lot of Charles’ framing of things in his writing although I have never been able to put my finger on it so lucidly. Thank you!!
Thank you. I have a “yes, but…” reaction to Charles a lot. The moral intuition often feels right, yet the epistemic standards drop to persuasive mood music, with some dangerous degrees of freedom.
Okay, I think I understand your concerns and it's good that you stated them up front. I assume the author will be more explicit about what larger forces they perceive exerting agency (or running a mindless program) in future articles in the series.
That would help. If he stays elastic enough to explain anything, or nothing, these installments will start to sound less like analysis and more like worldview mood.
YES, it is political power, the kind that corrupts, and is derived from large accumulations of money produced by a usurious 400-year-old privately controlled monetary system that issues money as interest-bearing debt. It systematically concentrates wealth to the few extracted from the many. Understanding how that system works matters more than knowing who runs it and every system has a leverage point, a point where a small change changes the entire system. We must accumulate the righteous power of truth and change the law that determines how money is created and allocated to align with our higher love.
Howard, your point about finding the leverage point - "a point where a small change changes the entire system" - is so important! I would love to see wide discussions on this!
In theoretical terms, this shows up in fractal systems where certain specific points connect fractal levels, and at that point a change in one level changes the level above it. Anywhere else at the lower level, change does not affect the higher level. We must identify those fractal connection points!
As a practical example, I just watched The Swedish Connection, a Netflix show based on the true story of a low level bureaucrat in a basement office who found himself at one of those unexpected fractal connection points and was able to personally save 30,000 Jews from Nazi death camps - through creative, courageous bureaucracy. He was a humble, unsung but very real hero.
The money. Shift the system from private to public, from being issued as debt for private profit to issued as a permanently circulating asset for care of the people and the commons. Money is the governing factor, it must be a public utility.
I think it must be Both And. Libya tried to exit and build.... and built the 8th wonder of the world which US/NATO destroyed along with one of the most democratic societies in the world.
Okay, so correct me if I'm not understanding you, but it seems like you're talking about solutions within the political system? Isn't the problem now that we don't have a say in that system anymore? People have been talking about such reforms for decades and it has never happened. Seems like we are feeding into their hands by trying to make change within the system that they've rigged.
Changing the money requires changing the political system which is privately controlled by private money creation, a power handed over to the private banking system at our founding. We won the revolution militarily, we lost it monetarily. Money is the governing factor and is the most vital prerogative of democratic self-governance. We have an authortarian plutocracy instead issuing money under usury; the abuse of monetary authority for personal gain. Not an easy shift but necessary, from a fear-based to a love-based money system.
Talking about, yes, it is a political problem that cannot be ignored. We need an active movement educating people about the problem/solution becasue monetary science/history is not taught in our schools. Yes, the system is rigged, everyone knows it, and the root system that facilitates its rigging is the power to create money. As Jem Bendell said, changing it should be the focus of our political activism. Changing the money comes down to changing the law to make it a public utility and a small bookkeeping rule change, which would change the entire system. The legislation is already written, introduced by Kucinich in 2011. It would have profoundly positive psychological consequences. The current system causes alienation, loneliness, unethical and criminal activity etc. besides systematically concentrating wealth. There may be leverage points in the some of the subsystems as well and there are things one can do to potect themselves, possibly, but if we don't change the root operating system it will run its course which will be devastating. Everyone has gotten a look at the character of the current powers, I can't imagine people wanting that to remain standing. greens.money - monetaryalliance https://howardswitzer.substack.com/publish/posts/published
Beautifully written, Charles! I’m really looking forward to reading the rest of your series.
All people need healing. That said, it is difficult to find empathetic, caring and kind witnesses to a person’s horrific experiences. These stories are held inside of people all around us and when they try to share they are dismissed, denied space, ignored, labeled as crazy…and when this happens they stop sharing. We all need to care enough to hear these stories and create spaces where people feel safe to share their experiences and pain and allow them to heal. This will require us to become curious about people, beginning with those closest to us and to actively listen with care. If we begin to focus more on the injured than on the perpetrators we can create a culture of healing.
I'm currently reading a book by Paul Levy and these thoughts resonate a lot. Notions of Wetiko and the wounded who heals him/her-self becoming the healer.
Feels like its really getting to the heart of a wise response to the problems of our time, thanks Charles
"It is not a force external to humanity that is committing these horrors." If everything came from our psyche, I would agree. But we don't live in the world that Newton was misunderstood to have promoted - and materialist science is rooted in. We live in a world that Isaac Newton himself knew involved more than the world we can see and touch and feel. There is a supernatural world and forces that can influence humans.
People are ultimately accountable for their crimes. Because we have free will but the impulse to do evil is not generated just from the psyche but from another dimensional reality. Newton studied alchemy and knew we can invoke demons or the divine.
The problem is that these fear based narratives end up only fueling more hate and despair, because they arent based on faith, but in a desire to lock people into conspiracy prisons which can literally destroy their entire lives, and create terrible conflicts.
I agree that there are more profound levels of reality with other living organisms which coexist with us, but they arent "controlling" us, neither determining all history.
The world is a non linear echosystem where everything is interconnected, and it is impossible to find any "controlling villain" dictating everything, because they arent outside the world, but also immersed in this echosystem, which must be understood holistically and not ny inventing some devil we have to fight wars to destroy.
There can be no substantial evil in a world of God, and so demons can only be coherently understood if it describes their current corrupted state, like an offense.
I am completely against "free will" because it is a mechanistic conception of life which separates us from the world and puts us as suspended in time, it is devoid of compassion and celebrates control and cosmic separation.
It isnt about "choosing correctly" but whether about you accept the Love of God within you and Its own creative flowing and path for us or you reject it out of fear and alienation.
Everything that happens in the world is what God is doing, so it is about whether God itself through us can align with its own creativity or God reject itself and tries to become something other of what It really is.
I'm reminded of the concept of Wetico that Paul Levy popularized as a deeper source of the evil we see in the world. There is something in the nature of 3D duality that lends itself to the polarization of power. If I had to point to not only its recognition but also its solution, I would point back to the Source from which we all originate, that Source, the recognition of and the integration with, would be that Soulution.
What struck me reading this is that the breakdown we’re living through isn’t just moral or political, it’s systemic. We keep trying to fix visible problems while neglecting the conditions that create them in the first place.
No matter how old, sick, poor, or limited we are, we can still make small shifts in how we care for the foundations of our lives. Those shifts ripple outward.
In health, that’s meant focusing on the body’s terrain before chasing diagnoses.
In food, it shows up as biodynamic and regenerative agriculture, building living soil instead of fighting pests.
Different fields use different language, but the principle is the same: strong conditions create healthier systems.
I’ve just written about what this looks like in medicine, and why starting with the terrain changes everything.
https://curingcoviddiseases.substack.com/p/terrain-first-in-medicine-and-in
Thank you, Charles, for expressing this side of the equation. I had written a piece here on Substack containing a similar sentiment week before last and felt as though I was standing way far out on a skinny branch by myself. Without healing the source of the wound, we are only treating symptoms.
What is that piece? I'd be interested to read it
Hi Danni. Here you go:
https://substack.com/@iamakadelphine/note/p-187440093?utm_source=notes-share-action&r=1xitfq
This essay brings to mind Amazing Grace... What if the perpetrators were genuinely repentant? What if they admitted guilt? Horror over their own actions. A thorough and authentic commitment to change. What if they did a 180 and turned into beautiful people? The opposite of who they've been? And a recognition that they don't deserve forgiveness or grace? But then... are given it anyways? In Amazing Grace, a slave trader recognized the utter depravity of his actions and committed himself to goodness and penance for the rest of his life. Whenever I hear a gospel choir made up of the descendants of former slaves singing Amazing Grace...Oh My God, the tears flow. May the wretches be redeemed. May the perpetrators passionately renounce and recognize their depravity and from their horrible realizations evolve into the beautiful people they were meant to be.
It does happen! The only realistic scenario for revolution is that at least some portion of the elite have a change of heart. We cannot expect all of them will, or even most of them, but we can create conditions where some will defect. I will write more of this later in the series.
I got really interested in this notion that people can actually change their heart if they’re met with clarity and compassion.
And in your writing, Charles, you gave several examples of real change of heart. I remember the story about the “everyday Gandhis”—a group of people who ended up interacting with an actual professional torturer between wars—and the man had a serious change of heart. You gave a few other examples too.
Recently, that made me look again at Gandhi’s movement and the civil rights movement with Martin Luther King, and to wonder: how often does this really happen at the scale people hope for? So I started asking a harder question: did the opponents—the counterparts—of Gandhi and MLK ever have that kind of change of heart?
And what I found is… even at that level, it seems rare. In South Africa, Governor Smith (as I understand it) could respect Gandhi’s moral force and still be basically relieved to see the “saint” go away—like, “exceptional person, hard to deal with, glad he’s leaving,” rather than “I’ve been transformed.” And with MLK, most of his opponents didn’t have a real change of heart either. I think, in all my digging, I found maybe one person who could be called an MLK counterpart who actually did.
That lands for me as a sobering thought. I’m sitting with the rarity of hearts actually changing. And I’m wondering how to relate to that—how to keep looking for the highest in people, even when it’s unlikely they’ll come to see what someone connected to life can see.
This. I keep thinking, one…just one to start off with…just spills it with true repentance and accountability. Maybe even a few together for there are many in this Epstein thing. It must be burdensome if many of them began as decent folk but who devolved into what you describe.
No matter how heinous their acts have been, turning from it, admitting it and asking for forgiveness would stun the world. But many have been killed once exposed and this next step remains just my dream.
Thank you Charles, this resonates with a lot of thoughts I have had recently. It feels we are having to face to collective shadow, to see it for what it is and to acknowledge it is a system we have all been participating in. It is deeply painful. I have a son and I am really struggling with how to protect him from what I see as a broken system, designed to disempower him and make him perform within this economic model. At the same time I do not want to isolate him, remove him from society and community. But participating in most normal ways (school especially) feels like consenting to this system I feel is so wrong. So much that is normalised for children is about embedding them to participate in this system.
I hear you and I am struggling mightily with this also. Dealing in the realm of abstract thoughts and words are one thing, but are human beings who have to make daily decisions about concrete matters. And as parents we are have small humans we brought into this world to care for and the weight of all this is immense.
Thank you. Yes I've been feeling that, rather than try and remove and shelter him from this modern capitalist system entirely, I'd like to give him a chance to know it, like you say. To meet the diversity of people within it. But I plan to teach him how to question and challenge it, and not to submit to it or give in to the pressure to conform. It is a tough road indeed and it involves learning to live with a lot of tension, and somehow find space to breathe.
Thank you Charles, this is very much needed. We cannot evolve until we can hold our eyes to this - together - with our hearts. And we need those who can, to show the way.
This was touching and energizing. It had the same power as the last article but considerably more grounded to places I can easily intellectually follow. Thank you for speaking your heart at such a powerful moment. ❤️
What you are pointing to -- the source of evil within the power dynamic -- is so important. I was looking into this during the lockdowns, I read a book by Paul Levy called "Dispelling Wetiko" and it is an incredibly important book for these times. If we don't understand that this is not about the individual, Nor is it about positions within the hierarchy. it is about the fundamental structure of collective consciousness and how it can go out of balance. The individual, the positions of power, are extensions of the greater collective consciousness and when the balance is lost, the shadow is cast. Some individuals will rise to power to fill the void created by the vacuum of the shadow Levy calls the "mind virus". They may be weak from their own trauma and subsequently fall into these roles or be traumatized by someone in proximity to the power vacuum and perhaps succumb to it. The idea that this could happen to anyone and to any group of people is still an unexplored idea but I think it answers a lot of the questions we want to ask of these depraved characters. https://www.awakeninthedream.com/
By no means am I suggesting we let anyone off the hook for their behaviors and crimes. But I agree with you, punishing the individual is not a real solution. I would venture to ask, has punishment for crimes ever really resulted in long term positive outcomes? .Crimes like sex trafficking are perpetuated by individuals but fueled by a collective vacuum that outlives all individuals involved. This is a sick society. We need to start looking within as well as without to heal the gash in our collective psyche that created these monsters. Although this is not a popular thing to say...if you do the math, this could happen to anyone of us...we are all capable of evil more than we dare to believe. I saw this during covid with my own eyes. People talk of it during wartime. I blame no one but I look for answers on deeper levels now. We are all part of a collective dance.
Yeah that is a good book!
I wouldn't say it is an easy read but I did a deep dive and had a book group with it. His many interviews are more accessible for some. I hope people will catch on to these ideas and what you said in your previous article. Great work, beautifully written. Thank you for these.
Yes, it is!
I've heard him speak; and also find Levy's perspective very interesting.
He is also a scholar of Carl Jung's work and is informed by Jung's observations which I find valuable.
Dehumanizing others is a feature of hierarchy - the more a person is removed from a situation of equality, the less empathy with others he or she feels. Many studies have demonstrated this. Since civilization is hierarchical by definition (there has never been a civilization without hierarchy) the real demon is this mode of living (which we are taught to idealize) and the narrative that supports it ("we are here to dominate nature") There are other, far more successful, narratives - humans have been around for 2 million years, civilization for 5000, modernity/coloniality for 300 years. Thanks for this Charles - brilliant as usual.
Yes! Such a clear way of seeing. In my language - Hierarchy is Headpower. Collaboration is Heartpower. We need to collaborate with nature not dominate it. Love it !
Thanks Charles. I read this after listening to a black woman talk about the n-word being used at the BAFTAs and how the harm caused was not being redressed, but rather that people (read black people) were being implored to understand the disability of the man who shouted the offence. So, I've been thinking about healing and what that may need to look like. It seems to me that we need to slow down, stop multi-tasking and learn to sit with the discomfort of listening to people who have been harmed as they talk about the pain, offense, whatever they need to say. And, that we need to listen with empathy and an attempt to try to understand the harm caused. We need to acknowledge and validate the harm caused. Even in those simple actions there can be profound healing. We don't do this well at all in many Western cultures. Instead, we want to make it go away, we want the people harmed to "get over it", we throw slurs at them ("ableist!"). It's really hard to be still, be quiet, and listen to people express their pain. Really hard. And, we need to get better at it. Anyway, I know my thoughts aren't unique. I just wanted to share them somewhere and this seemed like a good place. I appreciate your work Charles.
I think that if we could only learn to hear each other's stories, that would already solve half the problems on earth.
Maybe we need to practice telling more stories? 😉
These are some very astute observations, yes... true healing can only happen through acknowledgement! If there is no acknowledgement of the pain created, there can be no actual healing.
Strong piece overall, and the moral/structural diagnosis of power really bites. I just wish you kept the epistemic discipline as strong as the moral diagnosis.
The line that vindication “does not depend on the factual truth” is slippery, is it not? Once you grant that, you’ve loosened the one brake that keeps “serious” from turning into mood-based certainty.
And it connects to the anti-scapegoating move. You reject 'find someone to kill,' but then introduce a vaguer culprit: 'something inhuman is running the world.' This is sort of a cosmic scapegoat - hard to falsify, easy to pour anything into. When facts are optional and the cause is amorphous, you're going to have maximum conviction, yet minimum accountability.
That "something inhuman" could be capitalism. It could be a mythology -- the story of separation. The mythology of progress. Et cetera. In various ways, all of these are inhuman. That is what I was getting at.
And of course, while there is truth in that phrase, there is also truth in its opposite.
If 'something inhuman' is basically shorthand for capitalism (separation-myth / progress-myth), I’m with you. But “et cetera” covers a lot of territory. The more things it can mean, the less it disciplines the analysis. So what are the tell-tale mechanisms (or predictions) that distinguish these forces in practice, and that point to specific institutional design changes?
And could you clarify 'there is also truth in its opposite'? Do you mean that what runs the world is, in some sense, still human (or spirit), even inside these structures?
My reading of Charles logic is that there's an argument where accountabilty for one man is the illusion/distraction that facilitates leaving the system level factors that creates this behaviour intact? .....I'm really struck by how much this chimes with the concept of Wetiko. And also Nora Batesons ideas on warm data and ecologies of data. Without bringing in the full context of a colonial ecosystem you never truly understand and deal with the question, "what factors generate mindsets like Epsteins? Is this anomalous or is it just one example of somethin lurking in other shadows?" You surely need to see to ask that first, or you will never stop this happenin? And linked to that, all institutions create this horrendous behaviour dont they? Governemnts, Royalty business all come out badly in the Epstein files. But in a non-colonial system would you get such activities in churchs for example, add your own examples ad infinitum.
Yeah, I think the system-level point is the strong part of Charles’s piece. Fixating on one monster can become a moral alibi for leaving the selection pressures intact.
And yet: you can have systems analysis without loosening your grip on what’s true. 'Warm data' and wetiko (as metaphor) can help you see patterns, sure, but they can also turn into a solvent that melts falsifiability. Once “vindication doesn’t depend on factual truth,” the whole story floats free for spin.
Also, 'all institutions create this horrendous behavior' is too total. Institutions can breed impunity and predation under certain conditions... concentrated power, secrecy, capture, weak oversight... but 'all' turns an empirical question into a closed belief. The useful question is: what design features reduce the tail risk, and what amplifies it?
Agreed, don’t stop at Epstein-the-person. Just keep the epistemic guardrails on as you widen the frame; otherwise 'the system did it' becomes its own way of not having to know.
I'm not versed in the philosophical glossary so my question may sound simple-minded - if in fact the system DID do it, don't we have to recognize that in order to change the system? And why are punishing the individual perpetrators and changing the system mutually exclusive? Don't we have to do both?
The author explicitly states that all too often, cultural shifts stop at the first, believing that justice has been done, but fail to take the necessary - harder! - next step to prevent its inevitable recurrence.
What do you see wrong with this that I'm missing?
I don’t think you’re missing anything. My pushback is about a couple of moves that make the system-level argument hard to keep honest.
One is the claim that the feeling of vindication 'does not depend on the factual truth' of the specific allegations. That’s not a throwaway line; it relaxes the discipline that keeps systems analysis from turning into mythic inference. If the details don’t matter, the frame can absorb anything.
The other is when 'the system did it' morphs into 'something inhuman is running the world.' That phrase can mean a lot of things. If it’s shorthand for incentive gradients and impunity, then spell out the mechanics. If it’s a metaphysical agent, we’ve left the realm where 'change the system' is even a concrete program.
I’m wary of any method that treats truth as optional and causality as amorphous. That combo is how you end up feeling like you’ve explained things while sidestepping the hard work of specifying what, exactly, needs to change.
Ben thank you for being so clear in these comments and taking the time to flesh this out. You are pointing to exactly the same concern I have and have had for a long time with a lot of Charles’ framing of things in his writing although I have never been able to put my finger on it so lucidly. Thank you!!
Thank you. I have a “yes, but…” reaction to Charles a lot. The moral intuition often feels right, yet the epistemic standards drop to persuasive mood music, with some dangerous degrees of freedom.
Okay, I think I understand your concerns and it's good that you stated them up front. I assume the author will be more explicit about what larger forces they perceive exerting agency (or running a mindless program) in future articles in the series.
That would help. If he stays elastic enough to explain anything, or nothing, these installments will start to sound less like analysis and more like worldview mood.
YES, it is political power, the kind that corrupts, and is derived from large accumulations of money produced by a usurious 400-year-old privately controlled monetary system that issues money as interest-bearing debt. It systematically concentrates wealth to the few extracted from the many. Understanding how that system works matters more than knowing who runs it and every system has a leverage point, a point where a small change changes the entire system. We must accumulate the righteous power of truth and change the law that determines how money is created and allocated to align with our higher love.
Howard, your point about finding the leverage point - "a point where a small change changes the entire system" - is so important! I would love to see wide discussions on this!
In theoretical terms, this shows up in fractal systems where certain specific points connect fractal levels, and at that point a change in one level changes the level above it. Anywhere else at the lower level, change does not affect the higher level. We must identify those fractal connection points!
As a practical example, I just watched The Swedish Connection, a Netflix show based on the true story of a low level bureaucrat in a basement office who found himself at one of those unexpected fractal connection points and was able to personally save 30,000 Jews from Nazi death camps - through creative, courageous bureaucracy. He was a humble, unsung but very real hero.
What do you think the most important leverage points are?
The money. Shift the system from private to public, from being issued as debt for private profit to issued as a permanently circulating asset for care of the people and the commons. Money is the governing factor, it must be a public utility.
What about "exit and build" type strategies, reducing reliance on the current system and creating parallel structures with people near us?
I think it must be Both And. Libya tried to exit and build.... and built the 8th wonder of the world which US/NATO destroyed along with one of the most democratic societies in the world.
I believe Charles wrote a very good book on this exact subject....
Okay, so correct me if I'm not understanding you, but it seems like you're talking about solutions within the political system? Isn't the problem now that we don't have a say in that system anymore? People have been talking about such reforms for decades and it has never happened. Seems like we are feeding into their hands by trying to make change within the system that they've rigged.
Changing the money requires changing the political system which is privately controlled by private money creation, a power handed over to the private banking system at our founding. We won the revolution militarily, we lost it monetarily. Money is the governing factor and is the most vital prerogative of democratic self-governance. We have an authortarian plutocracy instead issuing money under usury; the abuse of monetary authority for personal gain. Not an easy shift but necessary, from a fear-based to a love-based money system.
I understand all that. My question had to do with practical "leverage points" as you said. You're preaching to the choir on the philosophy of it all.
Talking about, yes, it is a political problem that cannot be ignored. We need an active movement educating people about the problem/solution becasue monetary science/history is not taught in our schools. Yes, the system is rigged, everyone knows it, and the root system that facilitates its rigging is the power to create money. As Jem Bendell said, changing it should be the focus of our political activism. Changing the money comes down to changing the law to make it a public utility and a small bookkeeping rule change, which would change the entire system. The legislation is already written, introduced by Kucinich in 2011. It would have profoundly positive psychological consequences. The current system causes alienation, loneliness, unethical and criminal activity etc. besides systematically concentrating wealth. There may be leverage points in the some of the subsystems as well and there are things one can do to potect themselves, possibly, but if we don't change the root operating system it will run its course which will be devastating. Everyone has gotten a look at the character of the current powers, I can't imagine people wanting that to remain standing. greens.money - monetaryalliance https://howardswitzer.substack.com/publish/posts/published
Beautifully written, Charles! I’m really looking forward to reading the rest of your series.
All people need healing. That said, it is difficult to find empathetic, caring and kind witnesses to a person’s horrific experiences. These stories are held inside of people all around us and when they try to share they are dismissed, denied space, ignored, labeled as crazy…and when this happens they stop sharing. We all need to care enough to hear these stories and create spaces where people feel safe to share their experiences and pain and allow them to heal. This will require us to become curious about people, beginning with those closest to us and to actively listen with care. If we begin to focus more on the injured than on the perpetrators we can create a culture of healing.
I'm currently reading a book by Paul Levy and these thoughts resonate a lot. Notions of Wetiko and the wounded who heals him/her-self becoming the healer.
Feels like its really getting to the heart of a wise response to the problems of our time, thanks Charles
Thank you Charles and Shoshana 🙏🏼🕯️🌌💗
"It is not a force external to humanity that is committing these horrors." If everything came from our psyche, I would agree. But we don't live in the world that Newton was misunderstood to have promoted - and materialist science is rooted in. We live in a world that Isaac Newton himself knew involved more than the world we can see and touch and feel. There is a supernatural world and forces that can influence humans.
People are ultimately accountable for their crimes. Because we have free will but the impulse to do evil is not generated just from the psyche but from another dimensional reality. Newton studied alchemy and knew we can invoke demons or the divine.
Epstein and Bannon talk about Newton and alchemy in the Epstein Files. The sexual torture Epstein and his followers engaged in was for occult power. I write about it here: https://drjennymartin.substack.com/p/epstein-files-vatican-secrets-and?r=eyvei
The problem is that these fear based narratives end up only fueling more hate and despair, because they arent based on faith, but in a desire to lock people into conspiracy prisons which can literally destroy their entire lives, and create terrible conflicts.
I agree that there are more profound levels of reality with other living organisms which coexist with us, but they arent "controlling" us, neither determining all history.
The world is a non linear echosystem where everything is interconnected, and it is impossible to find any "controlling villain" dictating everything, because they arent outside the world, but also immersed in this echosystem, which must be understood holistically and not ny inventing some devil we have to fight wars to destroy.
There can be no substantial evil in a world of God, and so demons can only be coherently understood if it describes their current corrupted state, like an offense.
We agree that there are other dimensions of reality. Those who have experimented with DMT will often attest to that.
However, evil as a force does not control individuals. We choose to use our free will to align with that influence. Our Creator gave us free will.
And without an opposing force, free will doesn't exist. Otherwise, we are simply choosing between God and God.
Doesn't work...the choice is real. And the Epstein files clearly show people who made their choice.
I am completely against "free will" because it is a mechanistic conception of life which separates us from the world and puts us as suspended in time, it is devoid of compassion and celebrates control and cosmic separation.
It isnt about "choosing correctly" but whether about you accept the Love of God within you and Its own creative flowing and path for us or you reject it out of fear and alienation.
Everything that happens in the world is what God is doing, so it is about whether God itself through us can align with its own creativity or God reject itself and tries to become something other of what It really is.
I'm reminded of the concept of Wetico that Paul Levy popularized as a deeper source of the evil we see in the world. There is something in the nature of 3D duality that lends itself to the polarization of power. If I had to point to not only its recognition but also its solution, I would point back to the Source from which we all originate, that Source, the recognition of and the integration with, would be that Soulution.