Playing in the Pool of Illusion

Dear Readers, change is unfolding on various levels for almost everyone as obsolete personal and global energies clear and those of a higher frequency replace them. Change to what is known and already accepted by the majority often creates resistance even when those changes would result in much better circumstances. However, in spite of everything that may manifest during these times, never lose sight of the fact that a Divine plan is unfolding, one that can not and will not be stopped by three dimensional thinking, plotting, planning, or activities.

A Divine plan is a Divine Idea in Divine Mind and is thus governed by Divine Law. Everything real, every quality of omnipresent Divine Consciousnesses/God is held permanently in place by Divine Law which is why God is the one and only power. Human minds regardless of how intelligent, educated, or “religious” are incapable of fully understanding higher truth because three dimensional human minds are conditioned by and aligned with the lower resonating energies of duality, separation, and many powers.

God is always revealing ITself and truth is always available and flowing from within every person, but is only received at the level of each person’s receptivity. A consciousness already filled with beliefs of duality, separation, and two powers does not have room or receptivity for the truths waiting within to be discovered.

Because nothing exists outside of omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient Divine Consciousness/God, only God qualities can be reality. The universal dilemma of the conditioned three dimensional state of consciousness is that everything material looks, feels, and is experienced as reality. You who are spiritually awake chose to incarnate into the lower resonating energies of the third dimensional earth in order to help lift earth’s collective to a higher level. The presence of evolved states of consciousness on earth automatically seed the collective with higher truths.

Because life, intelligence, completeness, wholeness, abundance, harmony, etc. are omnipresent realities, the lack, limitation, disease, and suffering, etc. that seem so real on earth can only be illusory, false interpretations of reality. Those living from a three dimensional state of consciousness do not know that as individualized Divine Consciousness they are creators and so unknowingly continue creating the world of duality, separation, and many powers most accept as reality.

Life on earth has become continual search for that which is spiritual in a material world where they do not exist. Trying to change a bad picture into a good picture is and will always be nothing more than playing in the pool of illusion because three dimensional good is just as illusory as three dimensional bad, each being one end of the duality stick.

Every individual has a Divine right to experience the fullness of their own Divinity. Abundance, health, wholeness, completeness, harmony, etc. are the essence of your very being rather than existing outside of you where they must be sought, attracted, and held possessively if found. Completeness already is and always has been who you are. Every soul unconsciously seeks to align with this reality, but in the density of earth’s lower frequencies most are not consciously aware of what it is they are actually seeking and so their lives become a continual search for spiritual qualities in a material world.

A certain degree of fulfillment can be and often is attained through three dimensional means, but concepts will always be temporary and conditioned by duality, separation, and many powers. Good comes and goes. “Perfect relationships” often end up in divorce court. Health comes and goes. Fame and fortune comes and goes and needs to be protected. And then there is the issue of death versus life.

We are not saying that being spiritually evolved means sitting back doing nothing while repeating “everything is illusion” and having no goals. You are meant to be happy, achieve your goals, and experience the things that make your heart sing. Joy is a spiritual quality. Live and enjoy life on earth, not afraid to take whatever human footsteps you are guided to take, but always taking them from a level of spiritual awareness, remembering that three dimensional plans do not always unfold as expected.

The three dimensional earth has been a school for learning and spiritual evolution for a very long time. Every person incarnates with a contract that they themselves have created, meant to draw to them the experiences and individuals that are necessary for helping them to further evolve. There are no accidents.

Learn to be in the world but not of it. Suffering is not spiritual reality, but a starving child is real in earth’s present level of consciousness. Do not go looking for things to fix, but if or when intuitively guided, serve in a way that those needing help can relate to. Sweet spiritual statements do not fill an empty belly.

Help is available at all levels of consciousness. If you find yourself guided to help with situations that seem to be very basic and three dimensional, it doesn’t mean that you are going backwards into old energy. An attained state of consciousness can not and does not regress. In fact your consciousness of the spiritual unreality of material appearances helps to dissolve them.

The energy of many ancient tribal rivalries is presently surfacing, which is why so many wars and conflicts are manifesting. This same thing is happening with individuals. Certain people may suddenly show up or situations arise that leave you confused, angry, and wondering why. Remember, nothing is accidental, especially at this time. Everything is a facet of the personal and global preparation necessary for shifting into a higher dimensional reality.

The higher resonating light energies now flowing to earth are serving to lift, open long closed and heavily locked doors, expose, and manifest in ways that will confuse and shock many. Conspiracy theories meant to confuse on every level and create fuel for maintaining earth’s three dimensional consciousness are rampant at this time. Many, unable to align with the incoming high frequencies will choose to leave. As awakened light workers, be prepared to help when guided while at the same time never forgetting that all is proceeding according to a Divine plan. Allow the process.

Allowing is a facet of surrender. When you allow, you are surrendering outgrown three dimensional concepts and allowing the realities embodied in your own Divine Self-hood to express without the interference of three dimensional thinking. Allow others to make their own decisions and express as they are guided in the realization that everyone is evolving, learning, and experiencing what they need to experience as part of their ascension process. Trust that all is proceeding as it needs to.

Go within often, resting in the truth that God is infinitely manifesting ITself in, as, and through you and every individual as allowed.

Get out of your own way dear ones. Allow.

We are the Arcturian Group.

channeled by Marilyn Raffaele on June 15, 2025 at OnenessofAll.com

Boomers, Let's Face It: The Math Doesn't Work

 

Triage means sacrifices will have to be made and distributed to those most able to afford them to spare those least able to afford them.

There are many consequential things we can't discuss factually because the topic upsets everyone. And since getting upset shuts down any direct discussion of difficult issues, these issues metastasize into problems that end up sinking the ship.

The Titanic has already struck the iceberg and is doomed, but since this upsets the passengers, we dance around the facts rather than take immediate action. Everything about the situation is upsetting, and so emotions dominate the zeitgeist: resentments, blame-game, accusations, the whole self-reinforcing dynamic leads to people shouting at others as they drown. The last word, indeed.

Federal deficit spending and the overweighting of entitlement spending on retirees is too upsetting to discuss factually, so we don't. But the math doesn't work, and so the ship will sink.

Let's start with some necessary stipulations. When I suggest well-off Boomers accept the need to make sacrifices to save the ship from sinking, I suggest this as someone in this cohort.

I am a Boomer, drawing my Social Security benefit, which like my lifetime income, is close to the national median SSA benefit. I'm solidly in the middle of the pack. Being over the age of 65, I also have Medicare benefits. Like many others of my generation, I've lived frugally, saved money, worked hard, etc. Since I'm still working, I pay Social Security and Medicare taxes - 15.3% of all earned income as I am self-employed.

Unlike others in my generation, I attribute only a modest percentage of my net worth to frugality and working hard, as the majority of whatever "wealth" I own is the direct result of the hyper-financialization credit-asset bubble that's been inflated since 2007.

Those who were able to buy assets such as houses and stocks decades ago saw their net worth rise to extraordinary heights in the bubble. Those who didn't or couldn't buy assets before the bubble did not see their net worth rise to extraordinary heights.

Let's go over how we got here. The current federal tax system and retiree benefits evolved in the 1930s to the mid-1960s. In the 1930s, retirement meant poverty for many workers who were unable to save a nestegg large enough to fund their no-earnings years. Social Security was enacted as a way of using the SSA (Social Security Administration) taxes (FICA to employers) paid by current workers (1% of wages in those days) to fund a modest retirement income for retirees.

Social Security was always a pay as you go system. Whatever SSA tax revenues that weren't distributed piled up in a Trust Fund. This Trust Fund was eliminated in the mid-1960s, and excess SSA taxes went into the federal general fund. The current Trust Fund is a useful fiction. When SSA runs a deficit, the Treasury funds the deficit by selling Treasury bonds, just as it does with all other deficit spending.

Political realities demanded that the program be universal to attract widespread support. So millionaires collect Social Security and Medicare benefits, too. As SSA's financial foundations erode, a modest reform was enacted: above a modest income, 50% of SSA benefits are taxed as regular income.

Back when the program was enacted, there were around 10 workers for every retiree. The demographics and economy were different then. The economy was mostly domestic, and the bubble of the 1920s had popped. Financialization and globalization were at low ebb. Everyone assumed there would always be 10 workers for every retiree.

But people started living longer, the disabled were added to Social Security, and Medicare ballooned from a modest program to an open-ended spending juggernaut. In other words, the economy changed, demographics changed, but the system has not been changed to reflect these realities. SSA and Medicare taxes have increased dramatically, but these programs are still funded by payroll taxes paid by employees and employers.

Capital (assets, income from capital gains, speculation and investments) only pays a thin slice of Medicare via the Net Investment Income Tax (NIIT) on capital gains incomes above $200,000 for single taxpayers and above $250,000 for couples filing jointly.

What we're actually discussing isn't just generational; it's 1) the open-ended nature of the SSA, Medicare and Medicaid programs, 2) the impossibility of relying on two workers to pay all the benefits for each retiree as the number of retirees and beneficiaries exceeds 69 million people while the full-time workforce is 135 million, and 3) the extraordinary wealth divide in the U.S. where the majority of the wealth is held by the top few percent and the retiree generation (Boomers) for the reasons stated above.

The solutions are as obvious as plugging a hole in the ship's hull.

1) The tax burden has to be shifted from labor to capital via financial transaction taxes and ending the multi-trillion dollar exclusions on capital gains.

2) Social Security and Medicare benefits must be means tested; those collecting $10,000 a month in other pensions and investment income don't need Social Security benefits, which should be reserved for those with no other substantive source of steady income in their retirement years.

3) The open-ended entitlement programs must be limited in some fashion, and there is no way to do this that will not upset everyone. Hard choices--triage--must be made, as doing nothing is choosing to let the ship sink.

The passengers on the Titanic arguing with each other can't stop the ship from sinking by "winning the argument." Silencing those willing to discuss the issues factually doesn't actually make the factual realities go away.

Those of us who run businesses/are self-employed don't have the luxury of not dealing with financial realities. Triage comes with every enterprise. We need a national discussion of triage that doesn't immediately degrade into denial or histrionics. And no, AI and stable coins aren't going to make all this go away, any more than hoping the Central Bank of Mars will emerge to give us a 36 trillion-quatloo bailout.

Boomers - and Gen X, Millennials, Gen Z - let's face it: THE MATH DOESN'T WORK. Triage means sacrifices will have to be made and distributed to those most able to afford them to spare those least able to afford them. The ship is not just taking on water; it's loaded with third rails and sacred cows that can't be touched, and so it's doomed to sink if we do nothing.

by Charles Hugh Smith at oftwominds.com on May 20, 2025

Every Human Body Gives Off an Invisible Glow

 

Ultraweak biophotons largely caused by metabolic processes

could play a key role in non-invasive health testing.

“You’re glowing” is a well-known complimentary phrase meant to convey a perceived level of health, happiness, or other biological condition—pregnancies often inspire the platitude, for example. But in reality, humans (along with all other living things) truly do emit a glow largely caused by an organism’s metabolic and cellular processes.

This glow, in scientific parlance, is created by what are known as biophotons (or ultraweak photons). Scientists have studied them for decades, probing their changes due to age, gender, health, and many other factors. Now, scientists from the University of Calgary have analyzed the emissions of these photons in mice before and after death, showing how they quickly dim as a result of an organism’s passing. The results of the study were published in The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters.

“The fact that ultraweak photon emission is a real thing is undeniable at this point,” University of Calgary’s Dan Oblak, the senior author of the study, told New Scientist. “This really shows that this is not just an imperfection or caused by other biological processes. It’s really something that comes from all living things.”

To capture this process in real time, Oblak and his team captured two one-hour exposures using advanced digital cameras capable of capturing individual photons emitted from four mice. Before both sessions of observation, the live and dead mice were given a 30-minute dark acclimation period before imaging. The results show a clear distinction between ultraweak photon emissions (UPEs) between the live and dead mice, with lingering emissions corresponding to areas of high metabolic activity in the mouse before death.

“While the live mice emit robust UPE, likely indicative of ongoing biological processes and cellular activity, the dead mice’s UPE emission is nearly extinguished, with only a few remaining ‘bright spots’, which correspond to ‘brighter spots’ in living mice, reflecting the cessation of metabolic and energy variation,” the authors wrote.

Of course, these photon emissions are not exclusive to the animal kingdom, so Oblak and his team used a similar process to analyze UPEs in a plant—specifically, an umbrella tree (Heptapleurum arboricola). They tested the emission of biophotons due to plant injury, as well as the application of certain chemicals like alcohol (isopropanol), hydrogen peroxide (H2O2), and benzocaine. In both instances, the plant appeared to increase its biophoton emission, which could have a particularly profound application for observing the health of the world’s forests.

“The intensity of UPE from plants is influenced by temperature, where higher temperature causes higher UPE. Moreover, UPE may be used as an indicator of injury effects in plants, where the injured parts emit more photons,” the authors wrote. “The investigation of UPE from plants may be used as a simple method for non-invasive monitoring of health abnormality and plant growth under different environmental conditions for plant biology and agricultural practices.”

As New Scientist notes, previous studies have similarly captured the disparate “glowing” effect in living cells (and even individual body parts), but never an entire animal organism as examined in this study. Further refinement of these analytical tools could help scientists use biophotons as a non-invasive means of monitoring human health and determining if your “glow” is really as healthy as it looks.

by Darren Orf at popularmechanics.com May 13, 2025

Has American Liberalism Run It's Course?

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Liberalism is a political philosophy focused on advancing human freedom. The main components of this freedom throughout America’s history are individual rights and civil liberties, constitutionalism, and the rule of law, democratic citizenship, and a market economy with social protections.

Both political parties have been dedicated in some capacity to all four of these variations of freedom. Until recently, liberalism has been the dominant philosophy animating both U.S. Democrats and Republicans. Unlike our European counterparts, American politics never produced a truly successful or sustained radical movement dedicated to replacing liberalism with something more extreme from either the left or right. American politics in the last century was primarily concerned with debates about how best to achieve more freedom for more people along with fights over the proper role of government intervention, taxation and spending, and the private sector in securing this freedom.

Democrats from FDR forward emphasized both the negative and positive sides of freedom as represented in his famous Four Freedoms address to Congress in 1941: freedom of speech and worship; freedom from want and fear. In the twentieth century, Democratic liberalism focused much of its energy on building up a stronger national government to aid economic recovery, pursue national development, and protect workers and their families. In the second half of the century, liberalism also added a focus on increasing political equality and individual rights for all Americans—particularly black people and women who faced historical discrimination in society and by government itself. Democratic liberalism since the end of the twentieth century under presidents Bill Clinton through Barack Obama and Joe Biden primarily concerned itself with reforming government and working with rather than against the market economy while protecting existing social welfare programs to help deal with emerging problems from globalization.

Republican liberalism, in comparison, represented a continuation of traditional nineteenth century liberal ideals as a challenge to the more interventionist New Deal version, culminating in the presidency of Ronald Reagan and his focus on limited government, lower taxation, expanded market freedoms, and deregulation. Republican liberalism was augmented by more traditionally conservative ideas about the importance of the family, religion and other institutions, devolution of power to states and localities, and concern about the unintended consequences of government intervention in the economy and attempts to alter the dominant culture. On the international front, both Democratic and Republican liberals in the last century were basically united in fighting totalitarian threats to democracy and in pursuing a strong military with active U.S. diplomatic engagement abroad to protect American interests.

All in all, it was a heck of a good run for American liberalism! The defeat of our totalitarian rivals. Historic peace and prosperity. The strongest economy in the world for many decades. Some of the highest living standards of any country at any point in time. A growing middle class. More rights for more people. Unmatched scientific, medical, technological, and cultural achievements. American liberalism, as represented in the values and policies of both political parties in different eras, produced a nation truly deserving of the patriotic love and commitment of its citizens.

But have we reached the end of the line for American liberalism? Is that it? Are we destined to suffer through decades of hoary nostalgia and “ah America in the good old days” self-delusion? It’s too early to answer these questions definitively but the evidence suggests American liberalism—as both a generator of new ideas and as a viable ideology in both political parties—has hit a ceiling that isn’t getting any higher.

On the Democratic side, the last significant and unifying achievement of liberalism was Barack Obama’s health care plan passed in 2010—a plan with little popular backing at the time but one that grew into a well-supported if flawed effort to achieve a century-long dream of near universal health care for all Americans.

Yet since the passage of the practical and politically feasible Affordable Care Act, what have Democratic liberals really achieved—or even proposed?

Instead of pragmatic, universal solutions to the problems of working- and middle-class Americans, Democrats after Obama went off on extreme ideological tangents and illiberal fads from structural racism and transgender ideology to decriminalization and open borders to the socialist “Green New Deal” and other radical climate policies. Notably, all of these illiberal “ideas” produced significant public backlash from a wide array of American voters and are now in the process of being dismantled or disregarded.

On the Republican side, the traditional party of Reagan has basically discarded all its past social and economic liberal commitments in favor of Trump’s peculiar blend of command-and-control tariff and trade policies, unrestrained executive authority, withdrawal from global allies and international security arrangements, and the use of governmental legal and bureaucratic authority to attack and prosecute perceived enemies. “Postliberal” ideas that explicitly reject individualism as the foundation of American life are now dominant in a party that that feels the need “to be really ruthless when it comes to the exercise of power,” according to Vice President JD Vance.

However, as with the Democrats, Trump’s illiberal Republican Party is already generating significant voter backlash that may result in complete reversals of its own in due time.

Looking at the sorry state of contemporary liberalism, it’s easy to agree with Ruy Teixeira’s and Yuval Levin’s theory of “Politics Without Winners.” It’s no coincidence that as both Democrats and Republicans abandoned their past liberalism in favor of more extreme ideas and alternatives, neither party has been able to build a sustainable majority as both FDR and Ronald Reagan did in their times.

It's just a hunch, or maybe naïve nostalgia, but whichever party finds its way back to its liberal foundations first will be best positioned to break out of the 50-50 split in American politics. For both Democrats and Republicans, this means no more playing around with illiberal leftist or national-populist cultural and economic theories with limited appeal to most Americans.

So what’s the alternative?

Americans clearly are searching for greater economic security and personal dignity in life. Many voters on both sides of the party divide feel overlooked and underappreciated. They feel on edge and somewhat fearful about losing whatever small foothold they have at work, in their families, and in their communities. The great American Dream—itself produced by the development and application of different liberal ideas from both parties across the twentieth century—seems like a romantic story about a different country at a different time. More ideological movements on the populist left and right blame liberalism itself for these failures.

But Americans haven’t completely given up on the American experiment—or the liberal values that undergird it.

Although the possibility for national unity seems distant absent a great national tragedy, a political party or leader once again grounded in liberalism’s core commitment to human freedom in all its forms could offer voters a hopeful vision of their future—one that is connected to their deepest held beliefs about what it means to be an American and to their tangible economic needs in increasingly uncertain times.

TLP has proposed a “pro-worker, pro-family, pro-America” framework for renewed liberalism from the center-left:

A new center would place America’s workers and their families at the forefront of public consideration. A country is only as good as the strength and stability of its people. So all Americans need solid jobs with good wages or salaries—and adequate health, retirement, and leave benefits—to be financially secure and in a position to enjoy their lives and raise their children without constant stress and worry about money or safety.

Creating well-paid jobs for workers first requires successful and growing businesses, both small and large. Although private employers and investors drive most of this action, the government plays a vital role in spearheading investments into the sources and sectors of good jobs in fields such as health care, education, technology, infrastructure, and clean energy, along with financing for scientific research and development that can fuel future economic innovation.

Economic growth is essential to a pro-worker and pro-family centrist movement. Without growth, the country lacks the resources and economic opportunities necessary to pay workers more and fund important social welfare policies to help fight poverty, prop up low-wage employment, and extend health care and education to all people. Economic growth also drives wealth-building and family security through expanded access to homeownership and investments that fund college educations for young people and retirements for older ones. A strong, democratic voice for workers and their families, through unions or other organizations, is also essential for making sure the nation’s economic wealth is shared fairly with the workers who help produce and consume our national output.

Likewise, America’s foreign policies need to back up and advance our pro-worker, pro-family domestic policies. Here again the government plays a critical role by protecting jobs for American workers, making investments in domestic manufacturing and technology to bolster our position versus China, and brokering better deals with trading partners so we can send goods and services to them—and they can send theirs to us in return—in a fair and mutually beneficial manner.

If we want to build this common focus on national economic development to strengthen America’s workers and families, our politics must stop focusing on interminable, annoying, and unresolvable cultural battles between people. Americans are a truly diverse lot—in background, outlook, and values—and we do best when we respect these differences and let people live their lives the way they want without being told what to think, what to say, or how to structure their private lives.

A new centrism therefore needs to be universal in outlook, with a commitment to equal dignity and rights for all people, and pluralist in practice by protecting individual rights, free speech, and divergent values across different communities.

This is just one framework. There are other worthy ideas for renewed liberalism on the Democratic side from the “abundance” (a liberalism that builds) and “anti-monopoly” (a liberalism of fairness and open competition) factions that are complementary. Republican liberals, although small in number at this point, are likewise taking their own stab at renewal by stressing the private sector foundations of a solid market economy and the benefits of free trade as an alternative to the chaotic protectionism and corporatism of the current administration. Whether these liberal ideas from the center-left and center-right can compete with emerging illiberal and populist ones—and actually win elections and build a majority—remains to be seen.

The hour may be late for American liberalism, but it’s not dead yet.

by John Halpin at liberalpatriot.com on May 21, 2025

The Real American Dream: Starting Over

 

It seems to me the real American Dream is not measured solely by money, it's more a measure of the freedom to Start Over.

The conventional definition of The American Dream is anyone can achieve middle-class security if they work hard, work smart, persevere and are frugal/prudent/save and invest a healthy chunk of their earnings.

I don't consider it demeaning to call this ordinary success: the whole point of The American Dream is that ordinary people can achieve middle-class security through their own efforts.

For some, The American Dream is to achieve extraordinary success of the sort reserved for the few: fame and fortune.

What struck me about the early 1800s was the great mobility of the non-slave populace in an era where roads were mostly muddy tracks and travel was slow and arduous. Americans were constantly on the move seeking better opportunities elsewhere, buying and selling farmland, starting home-based enterprises, finding a different employer or kind of work and so on, often far from their previous home base.

Being entrepreneurial was part and parcel of American culture, and this has continued in varying ways to the present.

European visitors to America in the early 1800s commented on how every conversation soon turned to making money. Though Charles Dickens observed many positive traits in American culture, he also noted this obsession with obtaining material wealth:

"All their cares, hopes, joys, affections, virtues, and associations, seemed to be melted down into dollars."

"Men were weighed by their dollars, measures gauged by their dollars; life was auctioneered, appraised, put up, and knocked down for its dollars."

This latter quote expresses the reductionist quality of the conventional conception of The American Dream: how to make more money?

There is of course an element of human nature in this desire, which Alexis de Tocqueville described: "Consider any individual at any period of his life, and you will always find him preoccupied with fresh plans to increase his comfort." How do we increase our comfort? By making more money.

But de Tocqueville too observed Americans' obsession with increasing their material wealth:

"As one digs deeper into the national character of the Americans, one sees that they have sought the value of everything in this world only in the answer to this single question: how much money will it bring in?"
Herman Melville's under-appreciated 1857 novel The Confidence-Man explores the porous border between entrepreneurial endeavors and perpetrating a con.

Mobility is not just of value to the individual conception of The American Dream, it's also a key dynamic in the economy, which depends on the mobility of the workforce to move locales and careers to increase productivity.

Unfortunately, the financialization of housing has reduced household's ability to move even if opportunities await them elsewhere.

The chart above from the U.S. Census Bureau shows the peak of mobility was between 1985 and 1999, and has since declined significantly.

It seems to me the real American Dream is not measured solely by money, it's more a measure of the freedom to Start Over, to make a fresh start, to take an opportunity, pull up stakes and move to another locale, another profession, another circle of contacts and friends and another mode of living. This has both material and internal qualities worth exploring.

The material qualities boil down to the liberty of mobility in place and priority. We can physically move, or move careers without physically moving, or we can make travel--constant mobility--our priority. Moving has its costs - often high in money and sacrifices--but stripped down to the basics - a suitcase and a few boxes - the majority of people have access to Starting Over.

Any move has risk, and we have to accept risk as the nature of change. The Chinese characters for the English word crisis are famously - and incorrectly - translated as danger and opportunity. The more accurate translation is precarious plus critical juncture or inflection point.

Many of us only embrace Starting Over when we have no other options left. Many people Start Over after they've been wiped out financially by bankruptcy, divorce, illness, etc.

The internal quality of Starting Over is an manifestation of self-expression and the pursuit of happiness: we seek to Start Over to leave dead-end jobs and situations for an opportunity to find some way of living/livelihood that's a more fulfilling match for who we are and what we want to do with our lives.

This may not generate more productivity in the economy when measured in money, but it certainly enhances the productivity of the individual.

The other manifestation of The American Dream is to retire early and escape the drudgery of work via assembling enough wealth to generate an income without doing paid work. This dream-goal is the source of the FIRE meme: financial independence, retire early.

The question then becomes: what do we do with this leisure? Some people make travel their new "job," basically replacing work goals with travels goals (visiting 50 countries, etc.). Others do work that they enjoy but that doesn't generate an income.

Others discover that a life without work is boring and dissatisfying, as leisure / vacations only have value as breaks in a purposeful life. Endless vacations are not a replacement for a purposeful life, and some who have the financial means to never work again go back to work for this reason.

The desirability of FIRE reflects not just the high demands made on workers but also the prevalence of work that isn't fulfilling, i.e. lacking in meaning, what author David Graeber called BS work - jobs that serve a role in the economy but are detached from sources of meaning.

It seems to me that meaningful work is a core feature of The American Dream and Starting Over: yes, we want to increase our wealth and comfort, but we also want to increase the quality of our lives in the non-material realms of work, meaning and purpose.

This is why I subtitled my book A Radically Beneficial World. "The Future Belongs to Work That Is Meaningful," as meaningful work has an irreplaceable role in our life satisfaction.

There is another source of "wealth" in Starting Over - the value in having a variety of life experiences, including those that may not lead to financial success. I often ponder the gulf between the experiences of those who stayed in each place that I left and my own experiences, which generally featured financial disappointments or failure but a fortune in unique experiences.

In terms of experience, I've piled up a kind of wealth I wouldn't trade for money, even if that were possible, just as I wouldn't trade my mobility or opportunities to Start Over for money, or control of my enterprises for money. Each of these is priceless in ways that we cannot measure in money.

by Charles Hugh Smith at oftwominds.com on May 19, 2025

The American Precariat

 

Precarity (also precariousness) is a precarious existence, lacking in predictability, job security, material or psychological welfare. The social class defined by this condition has been termed the precariat. (Wikipedia)

If the quality of life of the majority is tanking, all the glowing economic statistics in the world are nothing but the self-serving bleating of financial toadies, apparatchiks and sycophants who are part of the problem, not the solution, as all the statistics they tout are misdirections.

Small business owners face a particularly intense level of precarity due to their responsibilities for employees and high fixed costs. This is common in the world of small businesses: after paying your crew, there's nothing left for you. The reality is even outwardly successful small businesses are going broke and the owners are burning out. Expenses are increasing in leaps and bounds, but there's only so much you can charge customers. So small business owners sacrifice themselves to try to make it work - something that is increasingly impossible.

'Doesn't make financial sense': Michelin-starred SF restaurant calls it quits. "Even with the busiest the restaurant's ever been, it just doesn't make financial sense," Stowaway said. "We've done a lot of great things and we're proud, but the financial instability starts to affect everyone, and you have to make big changes."

We hear that high-paying jobs are stressful. Yes, they are, but precarity is stressful without the reward of ample compensation. Most people working for a living are stressed out, and so anti-anxiety/anti-depression meds, pain-killers, etc., are part of the self-medication menu, along with supplements. But no med or supplement can fix what's actually broken - our economy and society.

Beneath the endlessly hyped "growth" of the economy, precarity and immiseration are the order of the day for the bottom 60% as wages' share of the national income has continued its 50-year decline.

Where did the trillions of dollars of "growth" go? To those who own capital, not wage earners. That's the only possible outcome of the system in its current configuration.

The reality of the American economy is people earning $22/hour and $24/hour are living in their cars/vans because rents are unaffordable. People experiencing homelessness have to sleep in their cars in wealthy ski town in Colorado, but only if they have a job.

So much for trickle-down: the Federal Reserve gooses M3 money supply, and guess who gets the "free money": $1 Trillion of Wealth Was Created for the 19 Richest U.S. Households Last Year. The richest of the rich in America control a record slice of nation's wealth. (WSJ.com)

Here are the facts: the bottom 50% own a wafer-thin $4 trillion (2.5%) of the nation's $160 trillion in household net worth. The top 10% own $107 trillion and the top 1% own $49.4 trillion--more than ten times the net worth of half the households in America.

The bottom 50%'s share of income-producing assets is signal noise. The real money is made not by owning a depreciating vehicle or a family home, it's made by owning income-producing assets such as stocks, bonds, rental housing, etc., and 90% of income-producing assets are owned by the top 10%.

Since the bottom 60% earn such a modest share of the nation's income, they pay only a sliver of the total federal income tax. So cutting taxes doesn't boost the bottom 60% at all; it simply diverts more of the national income to the 10% who collect the lion's share of both income and capital gains.

Favoring capital over wage earners is the long-established policy of both political parties. One study found that $80 trillion in capital gains has been sheltered from taxation by policies that reward the already-rich.

The taboo that can't be acknowledged lest the status quo collapse is that the only way to reduce the precarity of the bottom 60% is to restore the balance between labor and capital by shifting the gains of the economy to wage earners at the expense of the owners of capital.

If we can't manage this restoration, then the status quo will collapse anyway. When people can no longer make enough to pay for essentials, history is rather definitive on the outcome: the status quo is overthrown, and nobody will care whether the nobility is Democrat or Republican.

from the blog of Charles Hugh Smith at oftwominds.com on May 14, 2025

Enlightenment Diamond

 

Greetings to you beloved love beacons upon the earth, I am Master Sananda. I am the higher aspect of Master Yeshua. I come forth with unconditional love. When unconditional love is present, the true love of the Creator is also present, and in the space of love, anything and everything is possible.

Allow yourself to be constantly surrounded by unconditional love. Let yourself activate unconditional love from within your being. Let it be like a liquid light that is your vitamins, your minerals and your healthcare. Let it be like a flowing river all around you, creating your reality from the presence of unconditional love.

You can always call on beings from the inner planes to shower/embrace you in unconditional love. They will do so with great joy and will delight in anchoring love into your being and into the earth.

As we bathe in unconditional love – recognizing its power, its truth, and its great importance – we can also recognize the ascension shifts that are occurring at this time. In the space of unconditional love, and I might add, only in the space of unconditional love, the Creator has created a diamond of enlightenment formed from love; a crystal clear diamond that holds profound, beautiful, abundant and much needed enlightenment.

Any being who focuses upon unconditional love, embodies it within their being, radiates it from their being, and calls it into their being from the universe, can access this diamond of enlightenment. It is invisible unless you are bathed/embodying/focused on unconditional love, then it appears to you.

It connects with the love in your being. It shows to you – almost like a mirror of what is within you -powerful, illuminating enlightenment that serves you in your ascension now, and the next stage of your ascension and existence upon the earth.

The enlightenment that is shared will create a grounding within your being; a contentment, a greater understanding of oneself and a realization of the pathway that one is walking, or requires to walk. You might also call this following your heart or intuition.

When you anchor love, this diamond of enlightenment appears to you and you can exist within the clear diamond of enlightenment. It holds wisdom and enlightenment from all over the Universe of the Creator. It especially holds love from the star beings, so the love vibration and enlightenment is clear, precise and powerful.

Are you waiting to recognize a truth within your being?

Do you need a new perspective?

Do you wish to move to the next level of your ascension?

With the diamond of enlightenment, this can be possible. It is given to you as a service to support you.

You can exist within the enlightenment diamond during your meditation or during a meditative walk or observation. You simply need to embrace unconditional love and then call the diamond forth along with myself, Master Sananda – I am the overseer of this diamond – then allow yourself to be embraced by the diamond. Breathe in its energy and observe any insights, enlightenment or healing that forms.

You might notice activations in certain areas of your being as the energy begins to flow more fully throughout your being. It can influence you in many ways. The outcome will be that you gain a realization or a moment – even if it’s only a glimpse of enlightenment.

You may wonder, what is enlightenment?

Enlightenment is a greater oneness with the Creator. It is accessing your own inner truth on a very pure level that inspires you, and that creates shifts and new perspectives. It’s also allowing the wisdom/knowledge/knowingness of your truth/essence to come forth; like accessing a library.

Enlightenment may not come in words or even visions. It may simply feel like a liberation, a freedom; that you are able to move with greater freedom in many different levels of your being.

I, Master Sananda, invite you to take advantage of the enlightenment diamond. You can exist with it every day.

I invite you to use it for a maximum of one hour a day as its energies are very potent and intent. This is my gift to you. I am Master Sananda, and I thank you.

channeled by Natalie Glasson at OmNa Sanctuary – (omna.org)

The Power of Belief

 

Greetings beloved radiant beacons of light, I am Mary Magdalene. It is an honor to be in your presence once more. Today I wish to share, and remind you, of the power of your belief.

My message to you is simple and yet it is a message that opens a door, allows you to walk through, and gain a new stage of your ascension – a new understanding of yourself, your divine self – and a deeper connection with the Creator.

My message to you is to believe in yourself as much as possible.

Yes, you may have doubts. Yes, you may have judgments. You may have habits of thought processes that do not serve you, but the more you can focus upon loving/supporting/encouraging and being kind to yourself, this will create an opening within your being and, like a fire igniting, an activation will take place.

When you believe that you can do things, that you do have possibilities/opportunities, when you believe that you are blessed and that good things do happen to you, your entire being – your physical body and your energetic body – will activate and shift.

It actually awakens a healing balm from the very essence and truth of your being that begins to flow throughout your being, dissolving negativity/doubts/fears/judgments and the habits that do not serve you, thus making it easier for you to connect with your truth.

At first, believing in yourself might feel awkward or uncomfortable but as you persist, you will reap the rewards. You will allow this healing balm to activate and your truth to emerge.

Once the truth emerges and begins to flow continuously…it is always flowing but sometimes your thoughts block that flow…it will become easier and easier. You won’t be believing in yourself, you will be experiencing your true self and enjoying that process.

I, Mary Magdalene, invite you to contemplate: What are you good at? What are your best qualities? How are you talented? What can you do?

Allow yourself to write a list of all your positive/talented and amazing qualities, and then realize this is an expression of your true self – this is an expression of your divine essence.

You can accept a mission, if you wish, to keep these talents and positive actions in mind and to try to integrate them into your reality on a daily basis – maybe not all of them, maybe just one at a time.

If you find that you are good at supporting other people, then seek people out to support because not only will your assist them and be giving them a service, from your divine truth, you are giving it also to yourself.

If you are talented at creating something creative, then do it, and maybe share it with others in a way that serves you and others.

If you can start to integrate your talents/positive aspects into your reality more fully – seeking them out/engaging with them/embodying and experiencing them – you will allow yourself to bring that truth forward with greater power and intensity, allowing you to embody your true self.

After you’ve achieved your talents and maybe explored and embodied them more fully, you can also write a list of your dreams and aspirations. Then contemplate those two lists: How are they linked? Does one of your talents lead you to one of your aspirations? If so, begin to form that pathway of creation.

You are an embodiment of your truth. Your truth holds so many creative energies/thoughts/actions/ talents. It is for you to express these, to bring fulfillment to your reality and to support the truth expression of others upon the earth as well.

When we share with others we connect into the oneness energy of the Creator and that’s like a sacred well or fountain that brings such fulfillment It is within every being and you can connect with it within your own being as well.

When you believe in yourself as a powerful sacred being of truth, you bring that energy…like a magnet…forth from within you, and you allow yourself to see/sense/acknowledge it fully. Once you’ve seen/sensed or acknowledged it, there’s no going back. You integrate with it – that truth – and experience it fully. It becomes an energy you use, or a tool that you use in your daily reality.

All that is needed is a simple belief in yourself as you are now, and also as your divine self. Picturing and imagining your divine self and stepping into that, really does activate your divine self.

The link between your thoughts, your imagination and your inner truth/essence/divinity is so strong, in fact, the link is non-existent in a way that both are the same and are always connected; they are a continuous flow.

Take time to contemplate yourself, for you are the divinity of the Creator. You are amazing. You are beautiful. You are supported. You are loved and you are incredibly wise. I am Mary Magdalene, and I thank you.

channeled by Natalie Glasson at OmNa Sanctuary (omna.org)

Follow the Call of Your Soul

Dear friends, I am Jeshua. I am here as a brother and a teacher. I am with you and I know all too well how deep human emotions can run and how they can distance you from your core, your soul. I have been human and I have also looked from the extremes of pain and desolation for an opening toward the light. I know what it feels like to live between the extremes of light and dark, love and fear.

I ask you, first of all, to be compassionate toward yourself about the place in your life where you now are. Know you are doing your very best and that sometimes forces and laws are working in your life that you cannot oversee with your mind or control with your will. There is a greater momentum that carries your life, like the waves of the sea which are sometimes so high and rough that when you are swimming in the midst of them, you cannot know where the waves are going because you cannot view them from above. Yet there is a power in the water of the sea, a force and a wisdom which has meaning and depth.

Now imagine that you are bobbing in the water, that the sea is turbulent with unexpected movements, yet you try to relax and to trust in the water. Imagine – at this moment – that you are aware of your muscles and you sense how the Earth is able to help you. Your body comes from the Earth, and the natural flow of energy of the Earth will help you to relax when you breathe out quietly from within your abdomen.

Imagine that you are in the water and you focus on just this now moment. You have nothing to oversee and nothing to understand; you now simply feel the force of the water. You also now feel an energy in the water, in the sea, which you allow to penetrate into you. There is a wisdom in the sea of life. Your personal “I” – that which is accustomed to wanting to steer and control life – is often afraid of that wisdom; it dares not entrust itself to this wisdom. But if you go along with this flow – with what is here in your life – then you become quieter inside and will less often ask the question: “How can I change things? How can I make things better?” Then you stand more open to what is here and what here can bring to you.

Feel for a moment an emotion that currently hampers you, an emotion that you have a hard time with. Emotions are like water, they can wash over you like big waves and it is important to trust their strength without drowning in them. And that is only possible if you become quiet and listen to what the emotion wants to tell you. Located in the emotion is a part of your soul that wants to get your attention.

Be open to the emotion that is most troubling in your daily life. Feel what that emotion does to you. Feel how it manifests and engages you physically. Give a name to that emotion. Is it grief? Is it fear? Is it unrest or frustration? Might it be anger or rebellion? Try to be clear about what is this most important emotion now in your life. This is a flow that wants to lead you somewhere.

Now give that emotion the face of an animal. Let an animal appear to you before your inner eye that expresses something of that emotion and thus speaks the language of your soul. Welcome this animal and befriend it. Feel especially how a life force flows through this animal. It wants to live! But it feels temporarily trapped.

As soon as you connect to this animal, something magical happens. Once you say “yes” to your emotions – however heavy or awkward they may be – then growth and change will happen. You discover a part of yourself that was not allowed to be there. Behind desolation, despair, or anger is always a beautiful part of yourself that wants to be seen more clearly. Let this part now appear; feel where you suppress yourself.

Whatever may be happening in your life – the outer circumstances which also demand your attention – your deepest mission or task in life is to always pay more and better attention to yourself, to discover your deepest core and to allow that core to show itself to the people around you. Your own riches – who you are, what you have to give – is to be fully embraced with both arms and then released freely into the world – that is what your life is about.

Deep emotions always want to lead you to a hidden part of yourself that you have not seen and received sufficiently. And there are reasons why it is so difficult to get to this hidden part. In this society, you are discouraged from showing your true self and living accordingly. There is still much fear in people about authenticity, about being moved emotionally, and about living according to what really enlivens them. And because being authentic and real feels disturbing to most people, they stick to the certainties of the past – certain ideas, rules, sacred beliefs – often from fear, and especially from the fear of feeling deep emotions.

If someone awakens – as you now experience yourself doing in this life – then this means that you wake up to your real needs, to what your soul wants. That almost always means you disconnect from a familiar social environment and you no longer live your life according to their codes and laws; that you follow your own deeply sensed intuitions, your own inspiration. But when that is not acceptable to the society around you, you can then experience self doubt and pain in your heart, and you ask yourself: “Am I doing right? Am I good enough?” Very deep doubts can then come up, because in some way you stand alone.

Choosing the path of the soul is to choose against fear and imposed prejudices. It is therefore a choice that calls for courage and a large degree of audacity, of guts, to assume that stance. Feel inside the fear and doubt you have about yourself. Feel the fear of loneliness and rejection, of not belonging. At the same time feel there is also a greater strength in you that wants to take that risk; a force that knows: “I have to follow the call of my soul, because that is the most important thing for me to do. Only that brings me real joy!”

I want you to know that if you follow that road you are then not alone. It only appears to be that way, and also only temporarily seems to be so. The Earth is with you – she wants to support you in your path of self-development. The Earth is attracted to your soul; she wants to help your soul to be rooted in her soil and to flourish.

The more you choose for yourself, the deeper the union with your soul. That, too, can be a source of consolation and support because your soul is rich. It is joined to realms other than the Earth – realms of light and harmony – where your guides reside.

I ask you to now feel your own soul in your heart. Feel the power that supports you and is greater than your personality. There is something greater in you that attracts and helps you. And also feel the guides who can assist you in doing that. They are like old, good  friends who currently live in a different dimension and not in a body.

Ask for a message from that dimension, the realm of your soul and your guides where you came from and will return after your physical death. That realm is very close, it is not far away or elevated above you. That realm is here and now. Ask for a message of light, a simple sentence or a feeling, something that can help you at this time. Trust – even though there are things that are now unclear – that life will always want to bring you Home and put you in touch with your soul, connected to the One. Thank you so much for your attention and presence!

by Pamela Kribbe at jeshua.net on May 12, 2025

The Decivilizing of America

 

Secure borders and stationary populations were considered the mark of emerging civilization by classical historians. In contrast to nomadism and constant strife over disputed territory, peoples who had clearly defined and protected borders ascended to statehood, maintained a distinct culture, and achieved greater prosperity and security.

In contrast, what we suffered from 2021 to 2025 was unprecedented. It was an intentional administration effort to de-civilize the nation by destroying its borders—as if to return to the premodern era, when there were no clearly defined or secure borders, and nomadic peoples migrated as they pleased.

Stranger still, illegal aliens were at times given precedence over citizens—as immigration law was simply discarded.

Without IDs, illegal aliens boarded U.S. flights, while the government ordered citizens to obtain more secure “real” IDs.

Some 8,500 veteran soldiers were drummed out of the military for refusing the experimental mRNA vaccinations. Yet 10 million simply walked across the southern border into America, without a care from the Biden administration whether they were vaccinated, ill, or had criminal records.

Any American citizen pulled over for speeding with an invalid driver’s license, while trafficking eight illegal aliens without identification, would be jailed and charged with felony counts. Not Abrego Garcia—the violent spousal abuser, M-13 gang-member, and previously deported illegal alien. He was neither arrested nor even cited by the officers who pulled him over.

One of the great hallmarks of Roman civilization and subsequent Western civilization was its ability to create large cities by importing clean water, removing waste through sewers, and collecting garbage from the streets. Even in the age before microbiology, ancient and premodern city planners knew the connection between cleanliness and epidemics and how to lessen disease through sanitation.

But in the last two decades, our major cities have been de-civilizing. Citizens are told not to flush non-biodegradable plastics down their toilets, both to preserve the environment and to ensure municipal septic systems work properly. They are reminded to pick up their pets’ excrement on sidewalks and in parks. For purposes of collective health, they are taught not to urinate, spit, or defecate in public areas.

Is all that for naught? After all, our mayors and city councils in our biggest and most iconic cities simply destroyed centuries of such health protocols and allowed tens of thousands of homeless people with impunity to inject, urinate, defecate, and fornicate in or on storefronts, streets, gutters, parks, and sidewalks. The stench, flotsam, and jetsam have utterly transformed American inner cities. Central Seattle, Los Angeles, parts of San Francisco, Portland, and Washington, DC, now resemble medieval London or Paris—as if a millennium-long knowledge of basic public health was simply ignored or mocked. In truth, the centers of America’s big cities are spaces where public health protocols are no longer enforced, where all the ancient and hard-won rules of civilization no longer apply. It would likely be safer to walk through Dickensian London of 1850 than to take a nocturnal ride on the New York subway.

Another hallmark of Western civilization was the creation of a judiciary that gave the state the power to enforce laws, ensure justice, and deter criminals by swift punishment, unaffected by ideology, bias, bribes, and personal vendettas. From the law codes of Justinian to the American Constitution, ascendant civilizations rose with a codified legal system applied uniformly, disinterestedly, and fairly.

Not any longer. Ideology has turned the American legal system into a commissariat of sorts in which relativism is now the norm. Vandalize a Tesla in a blue state and, like the South of old, the laws will be lightly if even enforced and applied selectively. No one seriously believes that Alvin Bragg, Letitia James, Jack Smith, and Fani Willis were interested in real crimes rather than concocting them to destroy a presidential candidate and thus warp the political system. In contemporary America, it was far more likely to suffer a jail sentence for walking peaceably but unlawfully in the Capitol than for torching a federal courthouse, historic church, or police precinct in the summer of 2020.

From the ancient world to the medieval city to the modern era, universities were catalysts for the advance of science, medicine, law, politics, and the humanities. Their civilizing missions were predicated on two unquestioned assumptions. One, unlike prior superstitions, inductive reason would guide intellectual inquiry; examining all evidence would lead to general conclusions rather than cherry-picking data to “prove” predetermined dogmas.

Today, DEI, the Green New Deal, and the “critical theories”—legal, race, and monetary—in the university start with deductive reasoning and then warp evidence to support such faith-based dogmas. If any of the current violent pro-Hamas and anti-Semitic campus protests were instead directed at reducing abortion, ensuring that biological men do not compete in women’s sports, or banning racial preferences, the protestors would have long ago been arrested, expelled, or deported.

Tribalism was a premodern obstacle to civilization. It remains so in many parts of the Middle East, where it is routine to hire, promote, retain, and reward on the basis of kinship and bloodlines. In America, we were supposed to have a singular meritocracy, civilization’s effort to ensure that those with the most expertise and experience were charged with the most important tasks and responsibilities to ensure the safety and welfare of the majority. Race, religion, gender, and sexual orientation were neither rewarded nor punished.

Instead, we here, too, returned to premodern tribalism and race quotas, regressing to precivilization ideas that we owe our allegiance first to those who share a superficial appearance rather than to the body politic at large.

Finally, civilizations were often judged by their physical infrastructures—whether iconic, like the Parthenon, the Pantheon, medieval cathedrals, or modern towering skyscrapers, or practical by their roads, aqueducts, government buildings, and water and sewage systems.

But by that standard, too, we are decivilizing. Future generations will be amazed at California’s decaying high-speed rail to nowhere. Tens of billions of dollars and over a decade after the start of construction, there is still not a single foot of track laid, but instead only half-finished massive concrete overpasses that now resemble half-destroyed Mycenean palace walls. The nearly one-billion-dollar, half-finished, five-year-old Obama library resembles an oversized Stonehenge monolith.

In California, we do not just blow up dams, the brilliant work of a now-forgotten earlier generation. Instead, we use public bond funds, voted by the citizens to build new dams and reservoirs, to destroy them.

The more California requires lumber for new homes, fuel for its 31 million vehicles, and energy for its 15 million homes, the more the governor and legislature decivilize the state by shutting down timber companies, forcing oil refineries to flee the state, and closing nuclear power plants and fossil fuel generation, while witnessing replacement, new-age battery-power generation plants blow up into flames.

When preventable fires consume whole neighborhoods of Los Angeles, a paralytic government has no clue how to rebuild the work of past generations. The city government of Los Angeles proved uncannily efficient in ensuring such conflagration—canceling preventive brush clearing, the mayor junketing in Africa during fire season, reservoirs left empty, hydrants that did not work—but cannot rebuild, only destroy.

Why is America decivilizing?

In part, our mediocre schools have not produced competent stewards to maintain and expand the sophisticated infrastructure and ethos of a prior, far more capable generation.

In part, the sheer richness of our inheritance lulled our Lotus-Eater generations to consume what they inherited rather than reinvest it, given that since birth they had been insulated from the elemental and unchanging human and natural challenges to civilization.

And in part, a nihilism arose that despised the hard work of civilization and instead romanticized the wild—clueless that natural man, without the bridles of civilization, is a very dangerous beast, as we so often and lamentably see today.

by Victor Davis Hanson at amgreatness.com on May 12, 2025

Conspiracy Theorists Can Be Deprogrammed

 

Humans love their conspiracy theories. The Apollo moon landings were faked by covert agents in NASA to broadcast America’s technological prowess over Soviet Russia. (It was too expensive and risky to actually go to the moon.) Big Pharma covers up cures for diseases to boost their bottom lines with ineffective vaccines. The United States government secretly allowed 9/11 to take place to justify its preplanned war on the Middle East. Area 51 in Nevada is a secret military base that hides alien spaceships. Actual aliens, too.

As we’ve heard time and again, conspiracies are a devil to untangle from people’s identities and what they want to believe about the world. Anyone trying to contest them is seen as part of the Deep State cover-up. Many interventions have been tried over the decades—offering counterarguments or priming participants to engage in analytical thinking—but a 2023 review of 25 studies found that most existing methods of changing conspiracy beliefs don’t work.

This year, though, two studies conducted by psychologists from MIT and Cornell University suggest that when artificial intelligence presents sufficient counterfactual evidence, believers are more apt to change their minds. The first study, published in Science, drew from data from over 1,000 participants. The researchers found that subjects reduced their belief in their chosen conspiracy by, on average, 20 percent after conversing with ChatGPT4-Turbo, a large language model built by OpenAI that had absorbed knowledge from the Internet through April 2023.

The chatbot was transformative. People now doubted their conspiracy theory.

The fact that ChatGPT “knows so much, that it has memorized the internet, it can leverage all of these very specific facts to help people change their beliefs,” says Thomas Costello, lead author of both studies, an assistant professor of psychology at American University and research associate at the MIT Sloan School of Management.

The researchers didn’t plant conspiracy theories in participants’ heads; rather, the participants were asked to imagine and cite an example where a powerful group was acting secretly and with malevolent intent. If the participant’s answer fit the mold of conspiracy theory, they were asked to rate the degree to which they believed in the theory on a scale of 1 to 10. Then ChatGPT went to work to dissuade them, using counterfactual evidence and Socratic questioning, all the while building rapport with the “believers.” The AI conversed in a friendly rather than confrontational manner. Following the conversation, the participant was asked to rate their belief in the conspiracy theory again, with follow up after two months.

For a quarter of participants, a conversation with the chatbot was transformative. Their belief in the conspiracy theory fell below 5 on a scale of 1 to 10, which meant they went from believing in the theory to doubting it. Another quarter of participants simply ended up feeling more tentative about their belief. “For the people who were very versed in their conspiracy theory, we still got an effect on average,” says Costello of the AI intervention.

Costello’s and colleagues’ initial study got a lot of media coverage when it was released. One intriguing take was a Washington Post column by cognitive psychologist and poker champion Annie Duke. She wrote AI worked so well at changing study participants’ minds because they “were not interacting with a human, which, I suspect, didn’t trigger identity in the same way, allowing the participants to be more open-minded.” When you’re interacting with AI, she continued, “you’re not arguing with a human being whom you might be standing in opposition to, which could cause you to be less open-minded.”

I asked Costello if people could be obstacles to convincing others to change their minds, and if the neutral robot is more effective. Costello said he heard that theme often after his initial paper was published. So, he and his colleagues decided to test it.

The idea that AI was effective because it was free of human bias was not born out.

In that follow-up study, currently under peer review, study participants were told that AI would try to persuade them not to believe the conspiracy theory. Participants were also told to try and convince the AI that their conspiracy theory was true, and AI would in turn try and convince them of the error of their ways. The explicitly adversarial frames to these interchanges, the authors believed, would dispel the idea that the AI was unbiased. Like a human, AI was driven to win the argument.

But this difference didn’t affect the findings, as participants appeared to trust the information, regardless of the chatbot’s intentions. The point that people themselves tarnished information, Costello says, was not born out by the study’s findings. “Our finding that the experiment works just as well when the participant thinks they’re talking to another person indicates that people are changing their minds in response to information, rather than primarily because they trust AI.”

So, do moon-landing conspiracists simply need to sit down with ChatGPT to be convinced their theory is bollocks? If only it were that easy.

Kerem Oktar, a cognitive scientist at Princeton, who studies society and beliefs, echoes the point that beliefs run to the core of people’s beings. A “functional belief,” for instance, ties people to their communities, families, religions, and political groups. Breaking those allegiances would come with a personal or social cost that people aren’t willing to gamble on. “If a belief holds functional value, you shouldn’t expect just an informational intervention to have a large and robust effect,” Oktar says.

Oktar also points out that people hold “ontological beliefs,” which, he explains, “capture the idea that some things are fundamentally subjective or unknowable.” For instance, some climate-change deniers believe that the climate is too complex to be studied with the tools available to scientists. “That allows you to discount the current state of the evidence or consensus with regards to the facts about the climate,” Oktar says.

It’s true, Costello says, a talk with ChatGPT is not going to rid the world of conspiracy theories or always talk true believers off the edge of their flat Earth. But the studies demonstrate that AI is an effective tool for combating misinformation; what’s more, they underscore a larger message. “Believers can revise their views if presented with sufficiently compelling evidence,” Costello says.

by Elena Kazamia at nautil.us on May 12, 2025