Do you feel like the world is going mad?

I do.

At least here in America, although I suspect a similar thing is happening worldwide.

For most of my adult life, I’ve been on a search to find inner peace. It’s a long road and I have far to go still. But along the way I discovered Buddhist philosophy, and it was life-changing for me. It helped me understood the roots of my unhappiness. It all comes from attachment, desire, and ego. The more I let go, the more peace there is.

Whatever the reason, something is seriously wrong with our cultural moment. Mental health has been taking a nosedive while addiction, suicide, and crime have been on the rise. Political extremism on both sides of the spectrum are entrenching people in idiotic holy wars. Overall, there’s just a tangible feeling of disconnectedness, animosity, and disillusionment.

I see a connection between the wars we rage within ourselves and the conflicts raging outside. The first are expressed through anxiety and depression, and the latter through the culture war. There are powerful forces that benefit from this mass confusion. It’s addicting and it feeds our deep, evolutionary, tribal desires.

Personally, I can’t stand about 90% of the content and the influencers in the realm of health & wellness, self-help, or spirituality. It wanders so easily into dangerous territory: conspiracy thinking, ego inflation, pseudoscience, cults, and general obnoxiousness.

For a long time, I resisted the idea of expressing my thoughts and ideas out of fear of wandering into this territory. But there’s just too much material out there to sit quietly on the sidelines.

This newsletter is my attempt to make sense of all this and provide an alternative. Hope you’ll join me.