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The System is Rigged to Favour the Most Aggressive Among Us

The world we live in today is structured in such a way that the most aggressive among us always end up on top. According to Darwin, this is the natural order of things. Survival for the fittest. From politics to business to geopolitics to the workplace, the people who are willing to do anything to get ahead are the ones who ultimately end up winning. The ones who are the most relentless, persistent, aggressive, ruthless, cunning, willing to lie, cheat and bribe in pursuit of a goal are the ones who end up on top. The world rewards such behaviour. But if you think about it, is this the ultimate way for our world to be structured? Because let’s face it, who among us are the ones most likely to thrive in such an environment? Who are the most aggressive people among us? It’s the psychopaths! They are the ones who have no boundaries, no limits to what they’re willing to do, no pesky conscience to bother them in the pursuit of their goals and no empathy or guilt to prevent them from destroying anything or anyone who stands in their way.

Who are the most aggressive people among us? It’s the psychopaths! They are the ones who have no boundaries, no limits to what they’re willing to do, no pesky conscience to bother them in the pursuit of their goals and no empathy or guilt to prevent them from destroying anything or anyone who stands in their way.

When we hear the word psychopath, most of us immediately think of is the Ted Bundys and the Hitlers of this world i.e., murderers, rapists and the criminals of society. But today we know that psychopaths can be very high functioning individuals and can live their entire lives without being detected or called out for who they are. They are masters at creating convincing façades that hide the truth of who they are. While they spend most of their days dishing out emotional and psychological trauma to the people around them, they will nonetheless keep their psychopathy hidden behind charming personas and the image of success. Unfortunately, we have been conditioned to admire outward displays of success to the point that if someone is successful, we believe that they are worthy of admiration and emulation. And psychopaths can be among the most successful people due to their driven nature and single-minded focus on getting ahead. They are well represented among CEOs, politicians, lawyers, surgeons and business owners. You will also find them in professions we have been taught to revere such as policemen, the military and believe it or not, church leaders. Hence the kind of abuses you hear about in churches for example the paedophilia in the catholic church or the abuse of children in the Canadian residential schools.

How did we end up having a system that is rigged to favour psychopaths without us even being aware of it? First and foremost, psychopaths are the ones who have been writing the rule book. It is said that history is written by the winners and if the winners are psychopaths, then they will manipulate the narrative to suit themselves. So, for example, the imperialists who go out and conquer faraway lands and subdue people through brutal force become our heroes. The countries that take all the resources on the planet and leave everyone else starving and poor become the admired countries while the poorer countries are despised and blamed for the condition they are in. The billionaires who siphon all the wealth leaving everyone else to make do with the little that is left over are held up as the models of success that we should all strive to emulate.

Secondly, psychopathy is a condition that hides in plain sight because we are not trained to see it. Psychopaths have an outward, superficial charm that easily deceives most people. They are the people who tell the funniest and best stories and are fun to be around. But when you spend enough time with them, you start noticing that they are not really who they say they are. You will notice that their behaviour is not aligned with the way they portray themselves. You may notice how they bully people and emotionally abuse people and how they seem to induce fear in those working close to them. Psychopaths have an uncanny ability to abuse without the object of the abuse being aware that they are being abused. They may make you feel that you are special to them but suddenly turn on you and attack you. This causes your mind to go into denial because you cannot believe that the person you’ve come to trust could turn on you so ruthlessly. Psychopaths are also pathological liars. They will say one thing today and later completely change the story. They lie so much and change the story so much that they are not even able to keep up with the lies themselves. And so, their reality just keeps changing to become whatever is most convenient at the time. If confronted, they will just create a new version of events and the new version becomes the new reality. You can never win with them because their version of the story is the truth and that’s the end of the story.

Below are some ways in which psychopaths have managed to infiltrate the system and rig it in their favour allowing them to dominate the planet to the detriment of us all:

Politics

The political systems in most parts of the world are designed to favour the most aggressive, rewarding them for their ability to do whatever it takes to win, their ability to eliminate the competition, their ability to mount aggressive campaigns, their willingness to bribe voters, etc. Even in countries with so-called ‘mature’ democracies, the most aggressive people still manage to find their way in and rig the system in their favour. Money talks in politics and those who have the most of it can influence the outcome of elections. You end up with situations where people are manipulated into seeing themselves as being on one side of the divide in opposition to those on the other side. What they don’t see is that it doesn’t matter which side wins, the elites ultimately end up winning and everyone else loses. Voters are manipulated into thinking there are only two options and they must choose the lesser of two evils. We are manipulated into thinking that the obscure candidate who represents the kind of qualities we want is a loser not worth wasting our vote on. And so, we continue voting in the same aggressive types because we don’t see any other option. I think it would be better to abstain from voting than to vote for someone you don’t want just because they represent the lesser evil.

Business

Does profit have to be the only motive in business? We have been taught that profit and maximizing shareholder value is the only motive for business, but is this a sound idea? What is the result of this ideology? It’s what we see today, businesses mindlessly pursuing profits at the expense of integrity, the environment and their employees. People are viewed not as human beings but as human resources. Have you ever wondered where that idea came from? If you put human beings at the same level as capital or land and you see them as resources, then you have a right to treat them as a resource and not as human beings. You have a right to ruthlessly cut down on staff whenever the need arises to save on costs. You have a right to pay them as little as possible because it is none of your concern how they survive on the little you pay them. Your greatest concern is keeping as much as possible for the owners of the business. You don’t need to be concerned about what happens when they fall sick because you don’t need to think of a resource in such terms. You don’t need to concern yourself with what happens when they give birth. You don’t need to concern yourself with how they manage to get to work at 8 am every day and how they get home when they leave at 5 pm. You don’t need to care for them, you just need them to work and deliver the results you need. You view them as workers, not partners. But if you think about it, is it possible for a company to achieve anything without every employee doing whatever it is they are supposed to do? From the top person to the lowest-ranked person, everyone has to play their part for the business to run smoothly. If the cleaner doesn’t clean the office, can we work? Employees should be seen as partners, not as resources that are there to serve the owners who see themselves as the important ones.

Workplace

Starting from the point of recruitment, the system is completely rigged to favour the most aggressive. When we recruit, especially for leadership positions, we look for the most confident, outgoing personalities and we overlook the more gentle, reserved people as if they have less to offer. The person who can express himself or herself with confidence and charm easily finds their way into leadership positions. What about career advancement, who is the most advantaged? It’s the most aggressive and assertive people. The more willing you are to show off your achievements, flaunt your credentials and take credit for other people’s work, the more likely you are to climb up the corporate ladder. So, the system ends up supporting the most aggressive people and by the time you reach the top of the ladder, you find narcissists and psychopaths being very well represented. I think it should be possible to weed out narcissists and psychopaths from the very beginning of the recruitment process. There are psychological tests that are designed to detect these traits and these should be administered at the point of recruitment. Then you select out the most aggressive before they even come in through the door. Our processes for promoting staff should also be more discerning, not just looking for the most outspoken people and assuming they are the only ones capable of leading. Even that very soft-spoken, timid person given a chance and the right training would surprise everyone with just how capable they are to lead teams and add value to the organisation.

I think it should be possible to weed out narcissists and psychopaths from the very beginning of the recruitment process. There are psychological tests that are designed to detect these traits and these should be administered at the point of recruitment. Then you select out the most aggressive before they even come in through the door.

Geopolitics

The world is structured in such a way that some countries are extremely wealthy while others wallow in poverty. And it is accepted that this is just the way the world is and it can be no other way. The ones with the biggest weapons have a right to take all the resources on the planet and leave everyone else to scramble for the few remaining crumbs. The most developed countries have a right to forcefully change regimes and foment wars in the name of bringing democracy to the people. They have a right to do this while loudly condemning others for human rights abuses. They have a right to bomb other countries and call these ‘righteous strikes’ because everything they do can only be righteous. They have placed themselves in positions whereby they judge everyone else’s actions but no one can judge their actions. They have given themselves the monopoly of violence in the name of maintaining world order. Does it seem hypocritical that western nations consider it acceptable to have ever-increasing numbers of nuclear weapons but consider it a crisis when countries like Iran or North Korea acquire these weapons? What makes it okay for them to have nuclear weapons while everyone else is not allowed to have them? Is it because they are the most responsible and unlikely to start nuclear wars? No, the opposite is true; they are the ones continually starting wars in different parts of the world and therefore they are the last people anyone would want to have nuclear weapons. The hypocrisy is simply mind-boggling.

Mainstream Media

What is the role of the mainstream media in rigging the system? It is to normalize all this. It is to report on all these things as if they are normal and that is just the way the world is. The media teaches us to be observers of events, not participants. We are taught to be passive consumers of news, never really looking too closely at what is happening or questioning what we are told or analysing things too deeply. We are given a certain worldview in which there are people out there who are the experts, who know what is happening and who are the deciders of what happens. The media divides the world into those who make the news happen and the rest of us who are the consumers of news. So, if for example, war breaks out somewhere, we are supposed to just assume someone somewhere had a good reason for deciding that the war should start. We don’t question this. We don’t ask what are the issues, why isn’t diplomacy being used, why do some countries have the power to veto things at the UN? This is the role of the media, to help you accept that the world created by psychopaths is normal and there is absolutely nothing to see here, just go back to your daily grind and let the important people make decisions on your behalf. The media also keeps us distracted while important things are happening on the world stage. They distract us with sports, entertainment, celebrity news, etc. We become the proles who concern ourselves with mundane things while big brother manages world affairs.

Education

Our education systems teach us from a very tender age that life is a competition and we should view others as our competitors. We are taught from a young age to see ourselves as competing with other people and this is done through exams and ranking systems and reward systems, etc. Our education systems program us to accept the idea that the person who wins is somehow better than everyone else and therefore deserves to be rewarded. This is called meritocracy, whereby you need to prove yourself worthy of the good things in life. In other words, just the fact that you are a human being does not qualify you to enjoy the good things in life. You have to prove your worth. Instead of education systems being places where our creativity is allowed to flow in whichever direction it wants to flow, we make it places where we have to prove our worth as human beings. So, we learn to aggressively pursue academic excellence as this is what guarantees that we will have the best lives afterwards. Instead of each person seeking to discover what makes them tick, what they enjoy doing, what they excel at, we have this competitive spirit out of which the most aggressive emerge as the best people. Everyone else then has to make do with second class lives because the system is already separating and weeding out the weak and rewarding the strong. Is this Darwin at work or is the system deliberately rigged to work this way? Is it survival for the fittest or is it the most aggressive creating a system in which they are the most likely to thrive? We need to question some of these very deeply held ideas and ask ourselves whether they are true or whether they have been made true by the ones who make the rules.

Hollywood

Hollywood plays a very important role in creating a reality in which the most aggressive people are the most admirable people. They portray an upside-down world in which the guy who goes shooting everyone in pursuit of something is to be admired. The cop who turns the city upside down, destroying property and killing people to catch the ‘bad guy’ is an admirable person. Soldiers who go to fight wars are heroes. The idea that we should thank soldiers for their service and give up our seats for them is presented as a valid idea. So, we learn to view things in an upside-down way, where wrong becomes right and right becomes wrong. Those who refuse to fight wars are cowards and wanting peace is a cowardly thing. And what about all the dystopian movies they keep churning out? Have you ever noticed that Hollywood never imagines a future in which the world is in a utopian state? It is always a future in which the world has been destroyed by some catastrophic event. It’s always a future where some people wallow in poverty while others exist in some technologically advanced state. Hollywood never seems capable of imagining a good future for humanity, it is always the worst possible vision of a dystopia that no one would ever want to exist in.

Could our world possibly be structured differently such that the system favours the majority who are just normal people trying to live their lives? I believe this is possible when we start to understand how the system is rigged against us by the minority. We need to reject the idea that human beings are inherently aggressive beings and that competing with each other is a normal state for us to be in. We can cooperate and create a world in which everyone thrives. There should be no need for anyone to have to prove their worth. If we could just see through the programming and change our mindset regarding how we exist with other people, then, we could surely end up in a world where the most aggressive could not possibly dominate and enslave the rest of us.

The Agony of Being a Mother in a Hostile Planet

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As soon as I started writing this article, something interesting happened. When I wrote down the word mother in the heading, the auto-correct function immediately kicked in and underlined the word. When I checked to see what the error was, I was surprised to find that auto-correct didn’t want me to capitalize the word mother. Apparently, it’s supposed to be in small letters, even in the heading. The same rule doesn’t apply to the word father, I was surprised to note. So, it’s okay to capitalize the word father but not the word mother. That alone tells me exactly how mothers are regarded on this planet. They are less. They don’t even deserve the honour of being capitalized in an article in which they are the main topic. Need I say more, or should I just rest my case on this bleak note?

The coronavirus pandemic brought into sharp focus the agony of being a mother on this planet. Suddenly, what has always been known but denied or simply ignored was pushed into the public consciousness in a way that was impossible to ignore. We’ve always known what a raw deal it is to be a mother on this planet but it’s almost as if the universe had had enough of this state of affairs and was trying to tell us look, people! There’s a serious problem here! Sort it out!

How mothers have been surviving going to work, taking care of their children, taking care of husbands, taking care of extended family, running their homes and remaining sane is a complete mystery. When the pandemic started, mothers were expected to quietly take on additional roles while still working full-time from home or at the workplace for those who couldn’t work from home. We were expected to become teachers to our children while gladly taking on the extra duties, not to mention the expense, that comes with having the family home all day. All this while being shamed for wanting schools to reopen faster. You don’t love your kids! You’re spoilt! You don’t want to take care of your children; you’d rather ship them off to school for someone else to care of. It’s about time you experienced what it’s like to take care of your kids. That was the narrative at the time. If you wanted schools to reopen, it was because you couldn’t stand to be with your kids.

How mothers have been surviving going to work, taking care of their children, taking care of husbands, taking care of extended family, running their homes and remaining sane is a complete mystery.

Well, we all know how that turned out. After a few months out of school, girls started getting pregnant, some of them after being defiled by relatives. Some were married off as they were no longer in the protective environment provided by the school. Children who used to get a meal in school were no longer getting that much-needed meal, which was a problem in both the developed and developing world, from America to India to Africa. In some parts of the world, girls were circumcised, a practice that being in school protects them from. Education systems that had been steadily progressing over decades were set back to levels last seen ages ago. Will this decline be reversed? What about the lives that were ruined, the children who will never go back to school once the pandemic is over, who cares about them? What about what is happening in countries like Uganda where the education system came to a standstill, who cares about that? But when mothers were crying for their children to go back to school, we were mocked and made to feel that we were being spoilt. What a cruel, uncaring world we live in.

It’s ironic if you think about it, the pressure women experience to become mothers, almost as if it’s the most wonderful thing one could ever experience. Before you become a mother, motherhood is packaged as something desirable, something to look forward to, a role you have been preparing for since you were born. Any delays in starting to bear children once you reach marriageable and childbearing age is regarded with disapproval and outright hostility. Why aren’t you having children yet, the world snarls at you? Is there something wrong with you? What are you still waiting for? Your biological clock is ticking, get on with it. And we comply, most of us do. We joyfully and eagerly become mothers, little suspecting what awaits us on the other side. Once we have children, the same world that passive-aggressively urged us to do so suddenly changes tact and starts sending subtle, unspoken messages about who we are now that we are mothers. We are no longer desirable. We are no longer attractive. We are no longer marketable. We are no longer competent. We are no longer people but unpeople who should exist behind the scenes, seen but not heard. We no longer deserve to take care of ourselves, dress well or spend money on ourselves but all our energy, attention and resources should now go to our children, our families. We should fade into the background, disappear, accept that we no longer play a meaningful role in society as we have fulfilled our primary reason for existing which is to bear children. We have done our duty and we are now dismissed.

Anyone who is a mother knows what I’m talking about. You know how you lose your identity and become mama so and so. You know how you become unseen. You know very well that feeling you get when you have to ask for permission at work for the hundredth time because your child is sick, your child is having a function at school, or the nanny just walked out on you and you can’t leave the children alone. Why don’t you just get your act together? Do you know what your priorities are? Do you want to work or are you just playing around with your job? Did you really take your child to the hospital or did you just want to give yourself a day off? Did you need to spend the whole day with your sick child or could you have come to work after taking them to the hospital? Oh, you want to be leaving work early to pick your kids from school? Are you serious? Oh, you want flexi-time that will allow you to come to work late so that you spend more time with your children? Why don’t you just go ahead and say what you really want? You don’t want to work, do you? You want to be a stay-at-home mum, doing nothing all day, you lazy thing. Oh, and you want a promotion! You want more money! Is that some sick joke?

You know very well that feeling you get when you have to ask for permission at work for the hundredth time because your child is sick, your child is having a function at school, or the nanny just walked out on you and you can’t leave the children alone.

The thing we need to ask ourselves is why the role of mothers isn’t acknowledged or appreciated. What if in future no one wants to be a mother because our consciousness is raised to the point that we begin to ask ourselves, what I’m I doing this for? Why do I need to give up my body as a conduit for the survival of the species only to be despised once I do so? Why do I need this? One day, women are just going to stop and ask themselves, who said I have to be a mother? I don’t need this. There is no support for me from the state, from society or anyone else for that matter. And when no one wants to have babies anymore, maybe we will wake up to the important role mothers play and start treating them better. Look at what’s happening in many European countries. Nobody wants to give birth. And why should they? Look at China. They spent decades making it a crime to be a mother, punishable by forced abortion. Now suddenly they realize that their population won’t sustain itself and they turn around and want women to give birth. They are still under the illusion that motherhood is a switch you can turn on and off at will, but it is proving to be much more complicated than they imagined. How long before this becomes a planet-wide problem where nobody wants to give birth? How short-sighted, to despise the very people upon which the survival of the species depends.

When you become a mother, you quickly realize that you’re on your own. The state doesn’t care about you. There is no help for you. Woe unto you if you are poor and struggle to feed your children. It’s your fault. There is no acknowledgement that what you have just accomplished is an essential service to the country, to the planet. How many women are abandoned by their partners to raise children on their own? In the developed world, at least you have laws that force someone to support their child even if they are not married to the mother, but what about here in the undeveloped world? How many fathers abandon their children with impunity especially when the mothers are too poor or uneducated to know what to do about it? And beyond that, when are we ever as a species going to get to a point where raising children is the responsibility of the state and not the parents? I believe this is the next step we need to take where motherhood is recognized as the essential service it is and thus something the state needs to be responsible for. By this, I mean in terms of providing free education, free child care and a stipend for feeding, clothing and housing the children. This is not an impossible or unreasonable dream. Some of course will scream that this is an impossibility, but it is only because they are not able to see motherhood as a service to the planet that no one should have to be punished for.

Many of us are starting to crack, so heavy has the burden of motherhood become. We can’t do it anymore. We can’t pretend to be superwomen anymore. Many of us are leaving our jobs, not because we don’t need the income but because we can’t hack it anymore. The weight that has been placed on us by an uncaring planet has become too much to bear and we are finally throwing up our hands and giving ourselves up to the universe to do with us as she wants. Let the mothers now be mothered by someone else.

Mainstream Media: The (Broken) Lens Through Which We View Our World

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There’s an interesting series currently airing on Netflix called Midnight Mass which I watched recently and it got me thinking and drawing some parallels between it and the mainstream media. The series is about a sleepy Island whose residents number slightly more than 100 where a series of horrific events unfold, culminating in a macabre scene where most of the island’s residents turn into vampires and go on a murderous rampage. It’s a horror series, but the events unfold so gradually that it’s not until towards the that you start feeling afraid, which is good for people like me who don’t enjoy horrors. The story is a combination of tragedy and comedy – a tramedy if you will – and many are the times I burst out laughing at the ridiculous beliefs the islanders seemed to accept without question. If you have ever wondered how the catholic church came to commit atrocities such as the witch hunts and the inquisitions, then wonder no more. This series will show you step by step how the most bizarre and evil ideas can take root in a group and spread like wildfire, resulting in events that historians and future generations alike will look at in wonder and marvel at how people could be so gullible as to fall for such obvious lies.

In case you’re wondering why I’m talking about a Netflix series about vampires when my article is about the mainstream media, it’s because one of the characters, a lady called Beverly to me personifies how the mainstream media gets us to accept without question ideas that in our normal state of being we would instantly see through and reject. Beverly is an ardent believer, supporter and spreader of the ideas that result in the islanders turning into vampires. She takes a bizarre and evil idea and somehow turns what starts as a laugh-out-loud ridiculous idea into something that is accepted as biblical truth by the gullible islanders. While any rational mind would dismiss as sheer madness the idea that a murderous priest could somehow be acting on God’s behalf, Beverly manages to present this as a normal and rational idea and even finds a way to explain this with the help of bible verses quoted out of context. Within no time, she gains the support of a few people, eventually spreading the madness to the entire island.

If you think about it, isn’t this exactly what the mainstream media does, taking the most outrageous ideas and blasting them into our living rooms twenty-four-seven until even the most abnormal ideas start to seem normal and credible? They take an idea such as war and make it seem normal that a group of people in one part of the world would one day decide to go on a murderous campaign in another part of the world and this is a normal and credible idea. They take an idea like capitalism, a system whereby a few people have billions while everyone else is either poor or just getting by and they make this appear like a normal and desirable thing, while any other system like, God forbid, socialism is portrayed as dangerous and something to be feared and resisted. They make the idea of people living in hunger and poverty in other parts of the world seem like distant events that have nothing to do with us.

If you think about it, isn’t this exactly what the mainstream media does, taking the most outrageous ideas and blasting them into our living rooms twenty-four-seven until even the most abnormal ideas start to seem normal and credible?

The mainstream media tells us how to think about the world we live in and gets us to give up our ability, our responsibility to think, to analyze and to question. George Orwell referred to this as orthodoxy, which he defined as a state in which one does not think, does not need to think. Someone tells you how to think and you accept the reality that is presented without question. We may have assumed that Orwell was talking about some dystopian existence in the future, but he might as well have been referring to our current state, only now it’s the mainstream media, not the government that tells us how to think. We have become unconscious, accepting what is presented to us as reality, as the only way to think about the world we live in. We don’t question because we don’t need to question. We don’t ask ourselves why should this be so? Is this a normal way to exist? Is any other existence possible?

“Orthodoxy means not thinking–not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.”
George Orwell, 1984

How does the mainstream media achieve this?

Normalizing ideas

One of the powerful ways in which the mainstream media affects our worldview is by normalizing ideas. You’ve seen the way news is reported by the mainstream media. They could be talking about a war breaking out somewhere, about bombs being dropped in some distant parts of the world and it’s like the most normal thing is happening. Maybe we get a cereal commercial right afterwards. No big deal. There is no hint in the newscaster’s voice or manner that would suggest that this is an abnormal event. No questions asked. Just report and casually move on to the next news item. What does this do to us? It kills our compassion. It makes us unconscious beings just taking in without question what is being fed to us. The nonchalant manner in which the most insane things are reported lulls us into a false sense that these are normal events and that’s just how our world is. That’s just how it is and that’s how it has always been and that’s how it will always be. No need to question how such a thing could be normal. The thing is, would any normal person one day decide oh, I’m going to kill my next-door neighbour before they get a chance to kill me because I have a feeling, they are planning to one day attack me and take away my freedom? Only psychopaths think like that, which makes one wonder whether our planet is run by psychopaths. Think of the immigrant crisis and the utter insanity of allowing people to drown in the seas rather than give them a haven from whatever it is they are running away from. Is this a normal thing that normal people do, this utter lack of compassion?

Disseminating ideas

One only has to look at the coronavirus pandemic and how it has changed the world in slightly less than two years to understand the power a new idea holds and the power whoever disseminates that idea holds in shaping our worldview. Whoever gets the story out there first determines how we think about a new idea. I remember the almost non-stop coverage by the mainstream media that first month when the pandemic started. I was watching the news almost non-stop and I’ll never forget how anxious that made me feel. It got to a point where I had to stop listening to the news because I felt like I was going to get a panic attack if I continued watching. It was clear that the mainstream media had one agenda and one agenda only, to make us as afraid of the virus as possible in order to get us to comply with the authorities. This idea was projected so strongly and so relentlessly, at some point I started wondering to myself whether the media had ever heard of something called mental health. Is the mainstream media an expert on public health? No, I don’t think so but this didn’t stop them from shaming anyone who questioned their views, including dissenting scientists who were publicly shamed and cancelled. My point is that the mainstream media has the power to disseminate ideas, but what if their worldview is fear-based? How does this affect us as the ones absorbing these ideas twenty-four seven? With such power over the general public, we need to start asking who are the people behind the mainstream media houses, what are their agendas, what are their worldviews and whether we want these people projecting their worldview upon us.

Asking the wrong questions

The mainstream media is notorious for asking the wrong questions and leaving the right questions unasked and therefore unanswered. Take the issue of the so-called nuclear button that the American president has to have close by at all times in case he suddenly needs to start a nuclear war. Now, what kind of questions does the mainstream media ask? Oh, do we want Trump to be the one with the nuclear button? Really? That’s the question you’re going to ask on that issue? How about, oh I don’t know, WHY SHOULD SUCH A BUTTON EXIST IN THE FIRST PLACE? Who thought up this crazy, psychopathic idea? The idea that nuclear war is something that should take a split second to start is the most insane idea ever invented. Only an insane mind could come up with such an idea. Not to mention why nuclear weapons should even exist in the first place. What kind of psychopathic, insane person would want a weapon that could destroy our entire planet in an instant and have that kind of weapon in anybody’s hands? Why doesn’t the mainstream media ask such questions? Maybe because if they did, we would realize that our world is run by psychopaths.

With such power over the general public, we need to start asking who are the people behind the mainstream media houses, what are their agendas, what are their worldviews and whether we want these people projecting their worldview upon us.

Providing “expert” opinions

The mainstream media is very much invested in you feeling that you are not an expert and therefore need to be told how to think about the world we live in. Let’s say you own a media house and you are very much invested in maintaining the capitalist system because it benefits you personally, what kind of economic experts are you going to invite? Obviously, experts who agree with your viewpoint and will not threaten the status quo by giving alternative views on this issue. The same goes for any issue, from climate change to education systems to governance systems. All you need to do is ensure the “wrong” views never see the light of day and instead the “right” views, your views, the ones that support the status quo are the only ones we get to hear. It’s not hard to get an expert to support any viewpoint. For every expert who supports one view, you will find another who supports the opposite view.

So, what conclusion do we arrive at after all is said and done? That the mainstream media is a broken lens and we need a new lens. That new lens is you and me, observing the world we live in and writing what we see and think in our blogs and when enough of us are doing this, then the world will start changing.

Unmasking the Covert Narcissist

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When you think of a narcissist, what is the first thing that comes to mind? For most of us, what comes to mind is the brash, aggressive, loud, confident person who will do anything to attract attention and whose ego walks into the room even before they do. This is the traditional view of the narcissist which many of us are aware of and it’s not incorrect, it’s just that this is nowhere near the full story. The reality is that there is a form of narcissism that is hidden from view, that is hard to detect except to the trained eye and if anything, is even more dangerous than overt narcissism which can be spotted from a mile away. This hidden form of narcissism is what is known as covert narcissism.

A narcissist, whether overt or covert is driven by the compulsion to have certain underlying needs met, which is what leads to their narcissistic, selfish behaviour. We know that narcissists crave attention, and while the overt narcissist will force you to meet this need through aggressive and unreasonable demands, the covert narcissist will use manipulation to get you to meet their needs. They may do this for example through pity plays whereby they portray themselves as the victim of life’s unfairness. The underlying need for attention is the same in both narcissists, it’s just that the strategy for meeting the need is different. We also know that narcissists have an inflated sense of their own importance. While the overt narcissist will openly show their inflated ego by putting down others or trying to outdo them, the covert narcissist will display this in more subtle ways such as through the belief that they are always right, which means they will hardly ever listen to or consider or accept others’ views. Covert narcissists also lack empathy just like overt narcissists do, it’s just that the covert narcissist hides their lack of empathy through the good-guy act. The overt narcissist simply doesn’t care what you think of his behaviour towards you while the covert narcissist is always haunted by the threat of exposure and will therefore go to great lengths to hide their real self. They will sabotage you while pretending to be innocently unaware of what they are doing, maybe even apologizing profusely when you confront them, but this is just an act. At their core, they are not good people and will behave in the same ways over and over again, all the while pretending to be the good guy.

The overt narcissist simply doesn’t care what you think of his behaviour towards you while the covert narcissist is always haunted by the threat of exposure and will therefore go to great lengths to hide their real self.

The interesting thing about covert narcissists is that they genuinely believe they are the good guys. You will find this type of narcissist hidden behind a façade of godliness, family man, best friend, advisor, counsellor, etc. The most dangerous thing about the covert narcissist is that you won’t see them coming. At least with the overt narcissist, once you know how to identify the signs, it becomes very easy to spot them and thus keep your distance. With the covert narcissist, it’s a whole new ball game. This person could be in your life for decades, draining your energy and driving you almost to the point of insanity, but you will never know that you are dealing with a narcissist. Many people in long term relationships with covert narcissists attribute their troubled relationships to normal relationship hiccups that can be resolved if only they are patient enough, put in enough effort or love their partner enough. But despite everything, the relationship never gets better, it only keeps getting worse until eventually after decades of suffering, they may decide to throw in the towel and leave. The irony is that to the outside world, it will always appear as if they were married to the perfect person, the ultimate good guy, and no one will understand why they decided to leave.

What could cause a narcissist to go into stealth mode? In many cases, it may be because the narcissist himself was brought up by a narcissistic parent and they learnt early enough that they had to hide their own narcissism in order to survive their narcissistic parent. They simple learnt other ways of meeting their narcissistic needs without antagonizing their narcissistic parent. It could also be that the narcissist simply developed the most efficient way of meeting his needs in line with his personality. While the overt narcissist will use aggression and force to have his needs met, the covert narcissist simply learnt that he is most likely to have his needs met through manipulation. Therefore, the underlying need is still being met, it’s just that each type of narcissist uses a different strategy to achieve this.

So now that we know that narcissists do not all behave the same, how do we identify the covert narcissist and keep ourselves from falling into their dangerous traps? Well, there are some signs to look out for that could help you identify this type of person but you need to pay close attention as they are subtle and will likely not ring any alarm bells at the beginning of a relationship. If you are already in a long term relationship with a covert narcissist, these signs will help you understand what you are dealing with and why no matter how hard you try your relationship never seems to settle down into an easy, harmonious ride but is always full of bumps.

They are passive-aggressive

A covert narcissist will never confront you head-on; they would rather hide their aggression and fury and passively confront you. For example, they may retreat behind a wall of silence, giving you the silent treatment which may go on for extended periods. By not confronting you directly but rather showing their displeasure in this manner, it enables them to maintain their good-guy image and at the same time manipulate you into wanting to restore the peace. For normal people, the silent treatment is an unbearable punishment that hits you at your very core making you want to do anything to end it, even if it means apologizing and taking the blame for something that was not your fault. The covert narcissist lacking in empathy can employ sustained silent treatments without themselves feeling the pain that a normal person feels. Other forms of passive-aggression they employ include coming late or not showing up for meetings or dates thereby communicating how unimportant you are. They may also embarrass you with other people present knowing that you can do nothing about it, then later behave as if nothing happened or as if it was all innocent fun. If you suspect you may be in a relationship with a covert narcissist, think about all the ways they treat you badly while still maintaining an image of themselves as the good guy. Think of the ways they make it look like they are not really doing anything while you who are on the receiving end know they are doing something and whatever it is they are doing is hurtful.

2. They think of themselves as victims

The covert narcissist always has a sob story from their past that they use to manipulate you into pitying them and giving them the attention they need. They will talk about how their last girlfriend cheated on them, how their parents divorced when they were young and they never got over it, how their boss has it in for them and is making their life miserable, how their colleagues at work are jealous and take all the credit for their achievement, how they were abused as children, how they lost their jobs and can’t find a new one, etc. The thing is, no one is denying that bad things happen to people all the time. The fact is, bad things do happen to everyone, but one way or the other, we learn to cope, we overcome these problems and maybe even learn from them and grow to become better people. We were never meant to remain in the same place years later, blaming all our problems on our parents’ divorce or our cheating spouse. We are supposed to learn our lessons from whatever happened and move on to become better people. The covert narcissist however will not want to move on from whatever happened in the past. They will use this victimhood to paint themselves in a positive light or to make themselves appear like a martyr. They will drain your energy with their constant need for validation and reassurance which goes beyond the normal need for comfort that one experiences immediately after something bad happens to them. The covert narcissist will wear their victimhood like a cloak that is constant and unchanging which therefore means they need to be handled with tender loving care all the time. Mind you meanwhile, they will not be interested in hearing about your suffering but will expect you to provide a listening ear to their woes. It is a constant need for attention that will eventually drain you and drive you up the wall.

3. They lack emotional availability

One hallmark of narcissists is their lack of emotional availability and this is true of the covert narcissist as well. If you’re in a long-term relationship with a covert narcissist, you will feel alone in the relationship. They will be there with you in the physical sense, but you might as well be alone in the relationship for all the emotional support you will get from them. Whereas they will expect you to listen to them and support them in whatever they may be going through, the same courtesy will not be accorded to you. Your issues will be minimized if not dismissed altogether, while their issues will be made to feel life-threatening and all-important. They will suck all your emotional energy until you constantly feel drained, but they will never invest their emotions in you. If you go through difficulties, be it a job loss, difficulties at work, or the loss of a loved one, you will do it alone. While the covert narcissist will be good at making all the right noises e.g., claiming to want to work at the relationship, with time you will realize that that’s all they are, noises, but underneath there is no real interest in making the changes necessary to make the relationship work. If you find yourself feeling as if you are all alone in a relationship, then your partner could be a covert narcissist.

4. They will never compliment you

When you’re in a normal, healthy relationship with a normal, healthy person, you will always find things about each other that you appreciate, that you want to compliment. With a covert narcissist, this will be strangely absent. Due to their inner insecurities or perhaps inflated ego, they will never want to admit that you can do anything good or anything worthy of complimenting. Behind this is also the fact that the narcissist probably envies you for the qualities you have that they will never have. Ironically, these qualities are the same ones that drew the narcissist to you, that made you a target, but once in a relationship with them, they will envy you for your positive qualities and thus you will never hear a compliment come out of their mouths. At the end of the day, a narcissist wants to feel like they are better than you, hence the subtle put-downs you experience from them. They will deny you the satisfaction of feeling good about something you have done or a positive quality you possess. Think of the sullen bully in the playground who feels bad when everyone is happy and having a good time. How likely is it that this kind of person will ever compliment you for the good in you when anything good in you only draws attention away from them?

5. They are empty inside

When you spend enough time with a narcissist, there is one thing that will always gnaw at you at the back of your mind. This person feels empty in a way that you can’t quite put your finger on. With time, you start realizing that you don’t know who this person is however long you have been with them. Whereas with a normal, healthy person, you will always get a sense of who they are in terms of their likes and dislikes, their beliefs, their opinions, their quirks and proclivities, with a covert narcissist you will get the sense almost like they are playing a role. You will almost feel like they don’t know who they are because they are like chameleons that adapt to whatever environment they are in. Sometimes you will feel as if they are taking on your characteristics; for example, if at some point in the past you expressed interest in something, you will hear them later proclaim interest in the same thing without ever mentioning that they got the idea from you. You will also notice that they subtly behave like whoever they happen to be hanging out with at the time. This emptiness is a particular trait of narcissists whereby they adapt to whatever environment they are in and become whoever they need to be in order to have their needs met. With a covert narcissist, this is very subtle and you may not notice it as easily as you will notice it with the overt narcissist who will display his emptiness conspicuously in his eagerness to draw you in. With the covert narcissist, this is, unfortunately, something you may only notice after a long time of being with them. You may experience this almost as a niggling feeling, a question in your mind that surfaces from time to time: who are you?

6. They have troubled relationships

Due to their difficult nature, narcissists have one characteristic in common and that is their troubled relationships. With the overt narcissist, this will not be so difficult to understand as their aggressive, ruthless or openly brutal nature is easy to observe. With the covert narcissist, it will be more subtle. Although they come across as good guys, you will find that they have many troubled relationships at work, at home, with ex-partners, with siblings, parents or even with people who were previously their friends. The reality is, even though they may be able to fool some people with their good guy act, their underlying selfishness will always cause problems in their relationships. Naturally, with their victimhood mentality, they will have various ways to justify these troubled relationships and they may somehow succeed in fooling you. But the longer you stay with them, the more you will start to question whether the problem is the other people or the problem lies with them. It’s normal of course to have one or two troubled relationships, but if you observe this pattern consistently manifest itself in all their relationships, then you need to start questioning the narrative which paints them as the victim. Is it true that they cannot hold a job because all their bosses somehow have it in for them? Is it probable that all their colleagues are jealous of their accomplishments? Is it possible that all their exes are evil, manipulative people? Or is the problem seated right there in front of you in form of the covert narcissist?

7. They feel as if they own you

If you have been with a narcissist for any length of time, you will start having the vague feeling that this person thinks they own you. They will somehow want to curtail your freedoms, they will want to know where you’re going and what you’re doing and who you’re with, they will want to control what you do with your money, how you dress, who your friends are, etc. It is almost as if they see you as an extension of themselves. Rather than seeing you as a human being in your own right with your own personhood, they see you as part of them. With the covert narcissist, this will be done in subtle ways such as going through your phone, using sarcasm to manipulate you into doing what they want, lecturing you about the kind of people you hang out with, etc. While the overt narcissist will aggressively exert their control over you through brutal force, the covert narcissist will manipulate you into doing what he wants for example by questioning your choices, by mocking what you want to do, or by pretending to be concerned about you. In the end, without quite understanding why you will feel that this person thinks they own you and they are convinced of their right to exert their will over you.

While the overt narcissist will aggressively exert their control over you through brutal force, the covert narcissist will manipulate you into doing what he wants for example by questioning your choices, by mocking what you want to do, or by pretending to be concerned about you.

8. They think they know it all / they think they are God

When you spend enough time in a relationship with a covert narcissist, you will realize that the possibility that they could ever be wrong seldom crosses their mind. As far as they are concerned, they are always right and thus it is their way or the highway. It is almost as if they think they are God, so convinced are they of how right they are or how wise their views are. Whatever opinion or view they have seems to them to have come straight from God, thereby affirming their oneness with God. And if they are one with God, aren’t they then God? If God is speaking through them, doesn’t that then mean that when they speak it is the voice of God that is speaking? And if you argue with them, aren’t you arguing with God? If you happen to be with the religious types, they will be firm believers in the ideology that God has placed his mantle of leadership on them and thus they have a God-given right to rule over you. They will firmly believe in the natural hierarchy or order of things whereby God speaks to them and they, in turn, speak God’s word to you. It will never occur to them that God could speak directly to you. So firm is their conviction that we might as well dispense with the necessity of having a God who is separate from them and instead consider them as God Himself in the flesh.

Elon Musk Represents Everything That’s Wrong with Capitalism

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The insanity that is capitalism has become so shocking, so outrageous that everyone by now must surely see that the whole concept is a lie that needs to be overhauled like, yesterday. I mean, here is a system that enables 1% of the population to siphon 50 Trillion from the income of the bottom 90% of the population. And this, in the most powerful nation on the planet. How did we get here? Why is nothing being done about this even though we started hearing about these kinds of statistics almost twenty years ago? It’s absolutely insane that nothing has been done about it all this time. We still continue to stand by, helplessly wringing our hands, while the elites continue to plunder all the resources of the planet. Instead of urgently getting to the bottom of this, using our collective energy and resources to find out how this could urgently be reversed, we continue reading the damning reports and then quickly moving on to the next thing. It’s almost as if we have accepted that nothing can be done about it. During the Covid pandemic, we were again shocked to hear how much the elites were making while everyone else sank deeper into despair. It seems the rich will always get richer, and this is just the way life is. Secretly, we wish we were them. We study them, we want to know what their secrets are, how they became so wealthy, what we need to do to be like them (should we all drop out of college like them, for example), etc. We obsessively keep track of who the richest people are and how much they are worth, instead of seeing the utter insanity of a system that creates this kind of inequality. Please note that I am not trying to blame anyone or to shame anyone for admiring the rich and wanting to be like them. We’ve all been there. All I’m saying is, why can’t we imagine a system that allows all of us to be wealthy, because surely there is enough wealth in this planet to go round, and then we wouldn’t have to spend the rest of our lives wishing for something that will never happen as long as the system remains as it is?

We obsessively keep track of who the richest people are and how much they are worth, instead of seeing the utter insanity of a system that creates this kind of inequality.

Take Elon Musk for example. To me, he embodies everything that is wrong with the system. Recently I read an article about how Elon Musk makes a fortune whenever Tesla meets some set targets. And herein lies the problem. You see, Musk did not personally do the work that led to the achievement of these goals. He’s no doubt a great manager, a great CEO who somehow manages to inspire and motivate and strategize and do whatever else he needs to do in order to meet these targets. But, at the end of the day, the fact still remains he did not do the work himself. The work was done by the many employees of Tesla. So, the question is, why is it that Elon Musk, just one guy in a company of thousands of employees gets to be the only one who is rewarded for the attainment of these objectives? Is it a lack of imagination on the part of the board or what exactly does this mean? Does it mean that the board could not see that Musk did not do the work himself, or is it that it never occurred to them that anyone apart from the CEO deserves to be rewarded for the exceptional performance of the company? Does it mean that the board could not stretch their minds just a little bit and see that all employees of Tesla should have shared equally in the rewards that came from the achievement of the goals?

The problem here, which really is the problem with capitalism itself, is a complete lack of imagination. I mean, it’s stunning that no one even sees anything wrong with this scenario, that it’s reported in the media almost as if it’s the most natural thing in the world that the CEO should enjoy virtually all the fruits of the labour of thousands of people by himself. As far as I’m concerned, all the employees of Tesla should have shared in the rewards. Instead of one billionaire, there should be thousands of millionaires. All the employees, and I mean all of them, from the lowest ranked person in the company to the top ranked person should be able to experience that they work for one of the richest companies in the world. This should reflect in all their paychecks. If a company is doing as well as Tesla is doing, then all the good things that come out of this should be enjoyed by everyone not just the top people in the company. This idea that only the top people deserve to be rewarded handsomely is what has resulted in the 1% phenomenon, pure and simple. It’s because at some point, obviously because of greed, the top people started keeping more and more for themselves, and the more they got away with it, the more ravenous they became. No one questioned why the top people were getting millions while everyone else was getting an annual increment of 3% to their already meager incomes. This was normalized, it was not questioned, we went along with the lie. Because someone is the CEO, because someone came up with an idea, they should forever more be rewarded for this. The people who help bring this idea to life are not partners who should share in the rewards but mere employees who should be thankful just for the fact that they have a job.

Now, I am not in any way saying that Elon Musk is not a smart guy, maybe even a genius for creating successful companies such as Tesla or spaceX or whatever else he has created. All I’m saying is that he may have had the initial idea, but he could never have done it without the people who work for him. Without these people, he could never have achieved what he has achieved. An idea is good, but in itself, it is useless without the people who actually work to make it a reality. So why should the person who came up with the idea continue to be rewarded over and over again ad infinitum for an idea he came up with years ago? Why shouldn’t the people who are collectively putting their energy into the company also equally share in the rewards?

There is an underlying lie that is the foundation of capitalism, and this is what has led to the insane situation we now find ourselves in. The lie is that we are not all created equal, that some of us are more equal than others. Some of us are more deserving than others of the good things that life has to offer. As I said before, capitalism suffers from a serious lack of imagination. We seem to be unable to imagine a situation whereby everyone who puts their energy into the achievement of a goal is considered an integral part of the collective effort and is considered worthy to be rewarded just as much as the person at the top. We are unable to imagine a situation whereby the billions that are earned from these shared efforts are spread out among all the people who put in an effort. We somehow think, or have been taught to think that there is something wrong with equitably sharing the earnings of a company. We have been taught to consider some people’s contribution as lowly, therefore not worthy of being rewarded generously, while it’s okay to be generous with others who are considered more worthy, more deserving of generosity.

There is an underlying lie that is the foundation of capitalism, and this is what has led to the insane situation we now find ourselves in. The lie is that we are not all created equal, that some of us are more equal than others. Some of us are more deserving than others of the good things that life has to offer.

And this is exactly how capitalism has deceived us all, by telling us that only a few people should enjoy the rewards of success, that everyone else should just be grateful to be earning a salary. So, let me ask you this, if the company were to share out the billions equitably among the employees, what would be so wrong with that? Oh, maybe you think that if the cleaner was paid a million dollars a year, they would not know what to do with it, is that it? Or maybe you think the administrator would not be able to spend a million dollars because it is too much for them? Or perhaps the accountant wouldn’t find things to do with a million dollars? Does it make you feel uncomfortable when I talk about the lowest-ranking members of a company being paid handsomely? Do you automatically dismiss it as impossible or unrealistic? If so, then you are the victim of programming. We all are. We have been programmed to think that not everyone is worthy of being paid well, that generosity cannot extend all the way to the bottom of the company and should only remain at the top levels of the company. The idea that some people’s effort is more important than others is a construct we have all come to accept, and maybe it’s time we started questioning it. If you sense this type of programming in yourself, I invite you to pause for a moment and read my article here to learn more about this mindset. Suffice it to say that each and every person deserves to be treated generously by the company they work for, exactly the way the top people are treated generously by the company.

I know I have used Elon Musk as an example, but I hope you can see that this same principle applies to all the elites who enjoy all the fruits of the successes of their companies by themselves. Take Jeff Bezos as another example. During Covid, Amazon made billions which made Bezos the richest person on the planet. Now, I’m pretty sure that Jeff was not personally packing and shipping all those packages to every corner of the planet in the middle of a pandemic. It was the hard-working employees of Amazon who did this. So, why is it that he gets to enjoy the rewards all by himself? Granted, Jeff came up with a great idea in creating Amazon, but does that mean he has to continue enjoying the fruits of the company’s success all alone forever? No! There are thousands of people who are everyday giving their energy to the company, turning Jeff’s idea into reality and they too should get to enjoy the fruits of working for such a successful company.

We need to rethink the whole idea of employee compensation. How do companies come up with their compensation schemes? Well, it’s simple. Most companies use bench-marking, which is whereby they do a comparative analysis of what other companies are paying their staff and from there, decide what they want to pay their own staff. This is one of the factors that has allowed the highest earning companies to get away with paying their staff only a fraction of what they are actually capable of paying. If a company that’s making billions pays the same or a comparable amount as a company that makes much less, then this allows the billion-dollar company to keep much more for themselves, which is exactly what allows the CEOs to pay themselves whatever they want. This whole system needs to be overhauled. Companies should be made to pay a percentage of the company turnover to their employees in recognition of the fact that it is the employees who enabled the company to make that money in the first place. The current practice of bench-marking should not be used to shortchange employees. The more successful a company is, the more the employees should be paid, whether this is a hundred times above the market rate or whatever. This is what has been missing, and this is why inequality is getting worse and worse. No one is looking closely at what portion of a company’s turnover is used on compensation; we are being hoodwinked by being told that the company is the best payer in the market, forgetting that we are comparing billion-dollar companies with companies that are earning much less.

The biggest problem with capitalism is our collective impotence when it comes to dealing with the problem of the 1%. It’s almost as if this problem has no solution, it’s a problem that defies solutions. We talk about taxing the mega-rich more, knowing full well that higher taxes will only benefit the government not the people. In my opinion, it’s not taxing the mega-rich that will lift everyone up, it is forcing the mega-rich to compensate their employees according to how much the company makes. It’s about regulating these companies and not waiting for ‘trickle down economics’ which will never happen. It’s about not paying lip service by telling employees that ‘this could not have been achieved without you’ while actually not rewarding them for their efforts.

We need to stop being over-awed by the Elon Musks and Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerbergs of this world. What we need to realize is that they are ordinary people who came up with extra-ordinary ideas, and who did not bring these ideas into life on their own but utilized the energy and time and attention of the people who work for them. It’s time they stopped enjoying all the benefits by themselves. It’s time for a different approach, a new approach to employee compensation that recognizes and rewards them generously for the role they play in the success of the company.

10 Tips to Avoid Being Ensnared by a Narcissist

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A narcissist is a predator. He’s like a hungry lion searching for prey and if you happen to be among the unaware masses, then watch out. He may be headed your way and he hopes you continue in your ignorance as to his true nature as this serves his purposes quite well. The idea that a human being could prey upon another human being the same way animals in the wild do is something most people will instinctively find hard to accept. But information about narcissists is becoming more wide spread in the collective consciousness and we are starting to wake up to the fact that there is a type of being out there that preys on others for energy. You may have heard the term ‘energy vampire’ mentioned before and you probably thought it was new age nonsense that has nothing to do with real life. Well, now we know that there are indeed human beings out there who prey on others for emotional energy and they may not be as rare as we all thought.

Have you ever spent time with someone and thereafter you were left feeling emotionally drained? Maybe they dumped all their problems on you and kept going on and on about how unfair life is to them and you found yourself comforting and reassuring and soothing and validating and on and on and on until finally you felt utterly exhausted? Or alternatively, have you ever had a conversation with someone that left you feeling bad about yourself or feeling low or anxious or like a failure? Maybe they made some subtle digs at you, gave you some back handed complements, made you feel incompetent, like a loser, etc. Have you noticed that every time you talk to this person, you’re somehow left feeling the same way every single time? It could be a close friend, a colleague, a supervisor, a manager, a family member, etc. This person could very well be an energy vampire or what is more commonly known as a narcissist. A narcissist is simply someone with an inflated sense of self (grandiosity), a need for constant validation and a lack of emotional empathy. A narcissist feeds off other people’s energy by either drawing positive energy from them (validation, praise, flattery etc.) or negative energy (anger, anxiety, fear, shame, etc.) The bad news is that most of us have one or more of such people in our lives. The good news is that there are ways to protect yourself from being ensnared by a narcissist and especially more so as their intimate partner.

A narcissist is simply someone with an inflated sense of self (grandiosity), a need for constant validation and a lack of emotional empathy.

If you’re lucky, then you’ve only ever encountered a narcissist from afar e.g., at work, in school, etc. and it is relatively easy to keep your distance once you know what they are. For some people however, the narcissist somehow manages to snake his way into their life and becomes a significant other such as a spouse, partner, girlfriend or boyfriend. Narcissist commonly show their true colours once the person is safely in their grip and will then unleash horrors such as physical and emotional abuse, manipulations, humiliation, financial ruin, mental torture and so much more. Getting out of these abusive situations proves almost impossible for many victims due to co dependence that comes about from trauma bonding. The easiest way to beat a narcissist is to avoid falling into his trap in the first place.

Narcissists as predators generally go to great lengths to identify their prey and they usually prefer targets with empathetic traits such as kindness, compassion, decency, truthfulness, humility, politeness, caring, etc. Once identified, the narcissist goes all out in his seduction of the unsuspecting target and if unaware, the target won’t stand a chance. Remember: the narcissist does not love you and is actually incapable of love; he only loves what he can get from you. The ten tips below should help you avoid becoming ensnared by one.

Beware of the love bombing

In their haste and eagerness to ‘own’ you, the narcissist will engage in what is commonly known as love bombing. This is whereby the narcissist bombards you with an exaggerated form of seduction which involves taking you out on expensive dates, buying you gifts, declaring his love through poetry, constantly texting you and calling you and visiting you and basically taking you on a whirlwind romance. You will not know where he came from but suddenly, he will be all over your social media, your phone, your house, even your place of work. You will literally be swept off your feet. Now, the average person will most probably never have encountered this type of seduction and will likely find all the attention flattering and irresistible. Unfortunately, this is all a big performance. It is meant to dazzle you and blind you to the narcissist’s true intention which is to get you addicted to him as quickly as possible. Obviously, a seduction of this magnitude cannot be sustained for a long period and thus you need to be acquired as quickly as possible (note: the narcissist sees you as an object to be acquired). If you meet someone who seduces you in this manner, be careful. You just may have fallen into the hands of narcissist.

2. Notice the pushy behaviour

One of the things you will notice about a narcissist is that he is very pushy in the early stages of his seduction. He will want you to spend the night with him after the first date and will push through any resistance you may have. He will tell you he loves you by the second date and will push you to say you love him back. He will want you to move in together after three weeks and will come up with all manner of clever arguments to counter your resistance. You will always feel as if the relationship is moving much faster than you would like it to but your reservations will be cleverly sidestepped as the narcissist takes the love bombing a notch higher. The usual milestones that would normally take a much longer time will be achieved within no time. The narcissist is eager to make you his and not in a good way. Remember, the narcissist sees you as nothing more than a good source of energy even though he may not consciously be aware of this. Such a wonderful source of energy cannot be allowed to get away but must be obtained through any means possible.

3. Observe his lack of respect for your boundaries

Boundaries mean nothing to a narcissist. Due to his self-absorbed nature and lack of emotional empathy, he will not be thinking about you as he carries out his seduction but rather will be thinking about himself and getting his needs met. Any boundary you put up will likely be trampled over and ignored. A narcissist is all about using you for his own pleasure. He sees you as an object and even as he seduces you, this will come across through a lack of respect for your boundaries. He won’t care that you’d rather not do certain things and will keep pushing and pushing until all your resistance is worn out. Narcissists lack empathy and have a sense of entitlement while their victims generally have a natural tendency to be polite and have difficulty saying no. The narcissist will therefore delight in taking more and more and will display a callous disregard for your feelings. If you find yourself with someone who constantly oversteps your boundaries, then it’s likely you are dealing with a narcissist.

4. Is he mirroring you?

Narcissist not only lack emotional empathy, they also lack the positive love-based emotions such as joy, happiness, compassion, generosity, etc. Due to their inability to feel these emotions, they are left with no option but to mirror your emotions back to you in order to make it look like they feel the same way you do. Not only that but they will also mirror your likes and dislikes, your interests, your preferences, etc. This mirroring is quite subtle and if you are caught up in the love bombing you may not actually notice. In effect what is happening is that you are falling in love with yourself. The narcissist being completely empty inside has to come up with a fake persona and you being their target will form the template for this construct. They will in effect become you in order to ensnare you. You need to be wary if someone seems to be oddly similar to you. Before you start rejoicing thinking you have finally found the person of your dreams who shares the same values and interests as you, remember if something seems too good to be true, it probably is.

5. Does he lack respect for those he considers ‘beneath’ him?

One of the well-known characteristics of a narcissist is his or her sense of superiority. He most likely feels superior to you but this side of him will not be coming out any time soon (he will save that for after the seduction). However, he will not be able to hide his disdain when dealing with someone he considers beneath him. When dealing with service staff such as waiters, gardeners, security guards or cleaners, his feelings of superiority will naturally come to the fore. In fact, he may try to impress you by being rude to such people since in his twisted mind it shows how powerful he is. He may treat you like royalty but he won’t be able to refrain from treating other people like trash. This is a dead giveaway that you should not ignore especially when taken together with the other signs.

6. Avoid online dating and chat rooms

The internet must have been one of the happiest inventions as far as narcissists are concerned. Being a predator in need of prey, the internet makes hunting so much easier for him. From the comfort of his home, the narcissist can have a much wider reach than he would ever have hoped for if his only option was face to face interaction. Social media might as well have been created specifically for narcissists as their kind are the ones who are best served by this technology. Online dating sites and chat rooms are especially crawling with narcissists and if you’re using these forums as a way of meeting people and socializing, you are like little red riding hood walking all alone and defenseless in the woods. You are literally swimming with sharks and it won’t be long before you find yourself trapped by one of their kind. There is no accountability in the virtual world which allows them to easily engage in tactics such as catfishing, ghosting, hooking up with multiple people, using fake profiles, the list is endless. Just save yourself the trouble and avoid these forums.

7. Avoid magical thinking

Do you believe in soulmates? Twin flames? Do you believe everyone has that special person they’re supposed to meet at some point in their lives? Do you believe your other half is out there waiting for the day you’ll meet so that they complete you? If you have these kinds of beliefs, then you’re vulnerable to being deceived by a narcissist. These beliefs have their roots in Greek mythology; apparently at some point our soul divided into two and we are destined to spend lifetime after lifetime searching for our other half and we will never truly be happy until we find them. So, when the narcissist comes along and bombards you with his fake love, you’re more likely to fall for his lies since you’re likely to feel that you’ve finally found your soulmate. You are also more likely to hold on to the relationship when things start going south believing that what you have is meant to be. You need to watch out for this kind of magical thinking. You are a whole person, there is no one out there who is coming to complete you.

8. Listen to yourself

How do you feel when you are with the person seducing you? Do you feel uneasy, anxious, as if something is not quite right? This could be your subconscious mind warning you of something your conscious mind is not able to see. Do you feel like you are constantly walking on egg shells when with him? Narcissists are known for their fury which lies just beneath the surface and although this is usually well hidden during the seduction phase, you may well be able to sense it if say you criticize him or go against something he wants. It’s important to listen to yourself and not dismiss your feelings. Those who grew up with narcissistic parents may have a harder time with this as they have been taught to suppress their feelings or that their feelings don’t matter. They are used to behaving contrary to what they feel so they may not be alert to what their feelings are telling them. This is why those who were brought up by narcissistic parents are more likely to end up with narcissistic partners. Their internal defense mechanism is pretty much broken. One of the things you need to do when dating is to listen to yourself, listen to what your body is telling you and honor those feelings. You are under no obligation to get into a relationship if it doesn’t feel right even if this is just a vague feeling that you can’t quite put into words.

9. Don’t fall for future faking

One of the weapons a narcissist wields against his victim is future faking. This is whereby a narcissist will very early on in a relation start talking about your future together e.g., marriage, kids, where you will live, places you will travel to, etc. If you’ve been with someone for a reasonable length of time, maybe a year or so, then it is perfectly acceptable to start talking about your future together. With a narcissist however, this will be done too early, maybe even by the second date or so. The purpose of course is to bind you to him by making you feel as if he is very serious about you. You may be flattered or feel special that he thinks this way about you so soon after meeting you. It changes the way you look at the relationship. The narcissist is cleverly taking advantage of what in most people is a very strong desire. This obviously raises the stakes and makes it much harder for you to leave him. If the person you just started dating starts talking about marriage or how many children you will have and what their names will be, beware. You may well be in the arms of a narcissist.

10. Honor your needs

Narcissist usually target empaths. Why? Because these are the kind hearted, caring, decent human beings who will only be too happy to put everyone else’s needs before their own. Narcissists know that the empath will always be giving and the narcissist is only too happy to always be taking. Not only will he want to take everything you have to offer but it will not be enough for him. One of the things you need to learn to do in order to avoid falling into the trap of a narcissist is to learn how to ask for your needs to be met. Your needs are just as important as anyone else’s and there is no reason why you should always have to sacrifice your needs for someone else. If you’ve just started dating someone, ask for something to gauge their reaction. Ask to be taken to a certain restaurant or some place you’d like to go. A narcissist wants to be in control and will want to be in charge of how the seduction unfolds. Remember, this is all a grand performance on his part. He is not genuinely giving anything to you because giving is not in his nature. His focus is on one thing and one thing only. To make you his. If you start asking for things, he will not want to do it. The charming façade will most likely start slipping. The other side of this coin is if you refuse the narcissist something he really wants. With his sense of entitlement and lack of respect for boundaries, he will not readily accept or respect your refusal to do what he wants. You might find that the seduction will not proceed quite so well if you turn out to be the kind of person who asks for things or refuses him things.

The Objectification of Human Beings by the War Industry

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If there’s one thing human beings have been programmed to believe, it’s that we are not capable of analyzing issues and coming to our own conclusions. Everything has to be broken down for us by experts. Human beings have been taught to believe that we should always wait to be told by authoritative figures how to think about certain issues, be it politics, economics, unfolding events, even what we should eat and how we should live our lives. That’s why whenever we read news articles, we always find references to what the experts have to say about the issue at hand. The idea is basically to tell us how we should think about the issue, thereby eliminating the need for us to think critically and come to our own conclusions. Whenever a newsworthy event happens, we get the panel of experts to chew the facts for us and feed us with the proper way of thinking about the issue. This programming is so deep within us that many of us automatically shy away from thinking deeply about ideas or events that are happening around us and prefer to take at face value whatever the experts are saying.

It is in this context that I originally shied away from writing this article because I thought to myself, well what do I know about war? What do I know apart from what I see in the media about wars breaking out here and there and soldiers being sent to battle in various parts of the world and bombs being dropped in faraway places? I assumed as many people do that military decisions are made by war generals and political leaders who surely know better than any of us what needs to be done. How many times have we seen decorated war generals solemnly and authoritatively declaring that this and that war is being fought for this and that reason and it never even occurs to us to question why this is so and whether this person actually knows what they are talking about? How could anyone question such an authority figure? He is the expert on such issues after all.

Or are they? Maybe that’s just what we’ve been led to believe? If the people who make decisions about whether or not a country should go to war are the experts on such things, then why is the world in such a mess with endless wars being fought everywhere and nothing much ever coming out of these wars? How comes these so-called experts always say that the war will achieve this and that goal, but this is never the case? Doesn’t that surely tell us that these people have no clue what they are talking about? If they did, why do we have situations such as the ones in Afghanistan or Iraq in which wars are fought for decades and end up making the situation even worse than it was before? What about the current wars going on in the world such as in Yemen or Syria or in some African regions? If the decision to fight or intervene in these wars were made by experts, people who supposedly know better than all of us, then why are things so much worse than they were to begin with?

If the people who make decisions about whether or not a country should go to war are the experts on such things, then why is the world in such a mess with endless wars being fought everywhere and nothing much ever coming out of these wars?

Let’s talk about why these wars are even possible in the first place. Where do the weapons come from? Where does the ammunition come from? It is common knowledge today that both sides of a war are usually supplied by governments or corporations that stand to make huge profits from the sale of these war supplies. Sometimes even both sides of a war could be supplied by the same people. The most shocking thing of all is that the developed world that is always quick to condemn countries that go to war are the same ones that supply nearly all the weapons being used in wars around the globe. It doesn’t take an expert to see that war is a huge calamity for humanity as a whole and that anyone who makes the decision to send people to war whether a president or a parliament or an army general is essentially condemning a lot of human beings to death without caring too much about the individual human lives that are going to be lost.

Let’s be clear about one thing: war is the extreme objectification of human beings, because human beings stop being seen as individuals but as objects to be used to achieve whatever objective the decision makers want to achieve. The end thus becomes more important than the human lives that are going to be destroyed by the war. Soldiers are seen as resources to be used in fighting wars, no different from the weapons and the fighter jets and the bombs that are used in war. The humanity of these people is denied and deemed to be secondary to whatever objective the war is supposed to achieve. The people who are killed in wars become nothing more than statistics for us to briefly reflect on during news reports before quickly moving on to other news. The people who are displaced by war, the millions who are forced to emigrate to foreign lands where they are greeted with hostility and hatred are seen not as the human beings they are, but as destabilizing elements that need to be kept out of the clean and civilized societies into which they attempt to enter. We refuse to see their humanity and choose to see them as different from us and as threats to our way of life.

It’s no big secret that the reason war exists is because war is an industry and a very profitable one at that. Profit is the only reason wars are fought. This is pretty much an open secret today. Of course, those who benefit from war will always try to hide this from the population and they will always find ways to justify why this and that war must be fought. What about the massive expenditure by governments on their military? How could this be justified if no wars were being fought, if there were no enemies to fight and protect ourselves from? These huge budgets could be used for the welfare of the people, but instead they are used to prepare for and fight against real and imagined enemies. Why is this still going on? Why do we, the people who are hurt by wars, who don’t benefit in any way, who have everything to lose from war allow this to continue?

It’s because we have been programmed to see the world in this way. We have been programmed to believe that war is a natural part of being human and the idea of a world without war is never even presented as an option, leave alone debated as a serious possibility. But if human beings can envision a world without poverty, if people can envision a world without disease, why can’t we envision a world without war? We’ve also been made to believe that every country must have an army for the sake of self-defense because supposedly we are surrounded by enemies who are just waiting for an opportunity to attack. But did you know there are countries that have no standing armies such as Costa Rica, Mauritius and Panama? How comes no one is attacking them?

A journalist by the name Hannah Arendt who reported on the trial of war criminal Adolf Eichmann, one of the architects of the final solution during the holocaust wrote a book about what she called the ‘banality of evil’. The banality of evil basically means that the reason people commit acts of evil is because they refuse to think for themselves. They mindlessly take on ideologies and follow orders and commit acts that are evil because they do not take time to analyze and think about what they are doing and question what they are told. We are so accustomed to being told how to think about everything that we do not actually take time to think for ourselves. As an example, consider the idea that is aggressively pushed by Hollywood that soldiers who go to fight wars are heroes. We all know the atrocities that are committed during war, so how are these people heroes? Why do we accept this idea? Are these people heroes or are they pawns in a game that is so masterfully played that we have all been fooled by it for far too long? If only every soldier who thinks about joining the military could pause and think for themselves and ask themselves whether it is justified to kill another human being and whether this is something they personally want to do, then maybe we would start seeing a change in terms of people becoming unwilling to subject themselves to this objectification.

We are so accustomed to being told how to think about everything that we do not actually take time to think for ourselves.

Wars are not a necessary or inevitable part of life on this planet. There are people who would prefer that we continue to think about war in this way, that we continue to view war as an integral part of being human, something that can never be eradicated because it is human nature. But we know that it is not in human nature to kill other people, in fact it is so contrary to human nature that even those who are trained to do so end up being severely traumatized by it.

The worst part about war, despite all the propaganda, is that war never achieves the goals that it sets out to achieve. No war ever goes the way it was supposed to go. People who were thought to be weak turn out to be not so weak after all. Armies that were seen as invincible turn out to be not so invincible after all. The one thing that is certain about war is that it results in casualties and death. So essentially, the value of a human life is made secondary to some obscure goals that will in all probability not be achieved. If we viewed the soldiers who go to fight wars and the people who are affected by wars as human beings who have a right to live long and meaningful lives, we would never allow our governments to send anyone to war. It’s time we said no to this objectification of human beings by the war industry.

What is the Fallen Consciousness?

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Recently I watched two documentaries that got me thinking about something that many of us never consciously consider and yet is a major part of the world we live in. One of the documentaries was called ‘Coded Bias’ in which some clever people discover that artificial intelligence which uses data that is gathered from our collective use of the internet has some inbuilt biases for example biases against women and biases against people of colour. The interesting thing about this is that the artificial intelligence uses raw data that is fed into it and it produces a result which is an accurate reflection of the world we live in. The problem of course comes in when we try to use artificial intelligence to carry out tasks such as recruitment or facial recognition or performance evaluations. Then we run into problems because the system naturally perpetuates the biases we already have and makes them even worse. The biases in our society such as the ones mentioned above naturally find their way into the system because the system can only work with the information it is fed. In layman’s terms, this is what is known as garbage in, garbage out. Unfortunately, this is taking place in the world of technology which these days is affecting our lives more and more in ways that we don’t even know yet. The worst part about it is that it took people who are really smart in I.T. and mathematics to notice this problem. In other words, this is something that the average person would never actually be able to notice.

The biases in our society such as the ones mentioned above naturally find their way into the system because the system can only work with the information it is fed. In layman’s terms, this is what is known as garbage in, garbage out.

Which brings me to the title of this article. What is the fallen consciousness? The fallen consciousness is something like the bias that is hidden inside all the raw data that is difficult to perceive, but becomes very clear once the data runs through the system because of the result it produces. Basically, the fallen consciousness is a way of thinking that is very hard to notice or perceive in yourself or in others, but it becomes very clear from the results it produces. How many times have we looked at the world we live in and wondered why is the world is in such a mess? Well, it is because of the garbage in, garbage out phenomenon. We are constantly feeding garbage into the system and then we wonder why the system produces garbage. But what exactly do I mean when I say we are feeding garbage into the system?

Well, this now brings me to the second documentary I watched which is a prime example of how we feed garbage into the system. The documentary is called ‘Inside Job’ and it talks about a topic that many of us are familiar with. The financial collapse of 2008. How did this collapse happen? It happened because of greed. Greed is an example of the fallen consciousness because it is a way of thinking that says I am the most important person; I should be able to have everything I want and everyone else can pretty much go to hell; I am more deserving than anyone else of all the good things life has to offer. Now, if you meet a person with this way of thinking, you would probable not be able to see it in them immediately. They probably don’t even see it in themselves. This way of thinking only becomes clear once it is taken through the system and then it produces a result, which in this case was the global financial collapse. Many of us of course suffer from various degrees of greed, but in this case, it was greed that was taken to the very extreme and it produced an extreme result which then became obvious to everyone.

Another good example of this same way of thinking is clearly emerging from the ongoing covid-19 pandemic and specifically on the issue of vaccines. What is clearly emerging is what is starting to be known as vaccine apartheid, which is whereby the rich countries are grabbing for themselves most of the vaccine supplies in the planet, in many cases much more than they even need, while the rest of the world goes without. One of the features of the fallen consciousness is that it thinks that you can hurt others without actually hurting yourself. What we are seeing with the vaccine apartheid is that as the rich nations grab for themselves all the vaccines, we are giving the virus time to mutate and form other variants that are then going to prolong the pandemic and maybe even eventually render the vaccines we currently have useless. If only we could distribute the vaccines more equitably around the globe, we could significantly slow down the spread of the virus and its ability to mutate.

I hope you are now starting to see what the fallen consciousness is. Its not just one thing, its many things. It’s a way of thinking that says some people are better than others, some people are more deserving than others, there is not enough for everyone, I can hurt others without hurting myself, etc. If you feed enough of this way of thinking into the system, then you end up with the world we live in today. The world we live in is a reflection of the fallen consciousness, it is a reflection of what we have been feeding into the system, knowingly or unknowingly.

The world we live in is a reflection of the fallen consciousness, it is a reflection of what we have been feeding into the system, knowingly or unknowingly.

I want to give a small analogy of how the fallen consciousness basically makes the world hell for everyone who lives in it. Imagine there’s a giant wall and on the other side of the wall is paradise. All humanity needs to do is come together and find a way that will enable everyone to climb over the wall into paradise. Sounds easy enough, right? But as everyone is busy thinking of how we could find a way for everyone to enter into paradise, a rumor begins circulating among the people. The rumor says that actually, there’s not enough room for everyone in paradise. Only some people will be able to go to paradise, not everyone. Now, no one has actually been to paradise, so no one actually knows whether this is true or not. But sooner or later, everyone starts believing that there is not enough room in paradise for everyone. What starts happening is that some people give up on the idea of ever making it to paradise and decide to just make do with what is here on this side. Some people even completely forget that they were trying to get to paradise and they just find other things to do and other ways of distracting themselves. Soon, only half of the population is even trying to get into paradise. This is the first level of the fallen consciousness.

Of the people that are now actively trying to get into paradise, suddenly another rumor starts circulating. It seems that actually not everyone deserves to enter into paradise. This becomes very confusing for many as its not clear exactly what this means. Soon, many criteria start emerging as people try to determine who is worthy of entering into paradise and who is not. Some say only a certain race deserves to enter, some say only a certain religion deserves to enter, some say only a certain gender, only a certain skin color, only a certain profession, only a certain sexual orientation, etc. The criteria is really arbitrary and everyone tries to come up with their own version. This causes a lot of tension as most people believe their criteria to be correct and reject everyone else’s criteria. People start discreetly supporting the criteria they agree with while opposing the criteria they don’t agree with. Soon enough, laws have to be created which subtly and not so subtly support one criterion and then it becomes necessary to brutally enforce these laws because many people violently oppose the laws. The curious thing about this particular level of the fallen consciousness is that many people can clearly see that this is unfair when the criteria works against them, but they are not able to see the unfairness when it works for them. This is the second level of the fallen consciousness and as you can see it is a very chaotic system that keeps everyone very busy fighting and arguing about who is deserving and who is not and everyone tries to prove that they are deserving while at the same time trying to keep out those they consider not deserving to enter paradise.

While everyone is busy trying to sort out the mess, about one percent of the population comes together and says look, it would be nice if all these people could get into paradise, but imagine how much nicer it would be if only we were in paradise. We could basically have it all! We would have so much that we would never again have to lack. So, while everyone is busy fighting each other, why don’t we come up with a system that will allow only us to enter into paradise and leave out all these other dummies that are fighting amongst themselves? The next level of the fallen consciousness is thus created. Of course, this has to be well hidden from everyone else so that no one would know what is happening. The one percent called this level capitalism, which is a clever way of disguising the fallen consciousness of greed (Boris Johnson the PM of the UK very eloquently confirmed this recently). The one percent then got everyone to accept that indeed this is the best system, maybe even the only true system, it is based on meritocracy therefore guarantees that only the truly deserving can actually make it into paradise. Capitalism therefore becomes the dominant way of thinking and everyone is fooled into agreeing that anything else is dangerous and false.

As you can imagine, what was initially a simple task has now been transformed into the most impossible task imaginable. Everyone apart from the one percent is now living in hell on earth and some start blaming god for creating such a messy situation. If god was all powerful and all good they say, then he would never have allowed this to happen. Therefore, the only conclusion is that either god doesn’t exist or he is not all powerful or he is not all good. Of course, what they fail to realize is that god did not create the fallen consciousness that produced the mess. The people themselves created the fallen consciousness and they fed it into the system and the system produced a result. The only way out of the mess is to stop using the fallen consciousness and simply come up with a system that allows everyone to cross over into paradise. Simple enough task, wouldn’t you say?

I hope this article helps you understand what the fallen consciousness is and enables you to see it in yourself and in others. Obviously, the fallen consciousness comes in many shapes and forms but I hope you can now see how it runs through and affects everything in the world we live in. My sincere hope is that we start realizing that the only way out of this mess is to create a just world in which the fallen consciousness has no place.

Harry and Meghan: An Opportunity to Choose Love

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I have been following the unfolding story of Harry and Meghan from afar with a lot of interest. I really shouldn’t care so much what happens to these two people – I’m a Kenyan after all and it has absolutely nothing to do with me. And yet, I find myself fascinated. I keep asking myself, why is there so much hatred directed at this young couple? From all appearances, they seem to be a loving, attractive and well-meaning couple. They seem to genuinely want to do good not just for Britain but for the world at large. By all measures, Britain should be proud of this couple given the goodwill they bring to the country, not to mention the billions of dollars in revenue that flows into the British economy from the world’s fascination with the royal family in general and Harry and Meghan in particular. But inexplicably, Harry and Meghan seem to be getting attacked and vilified from every direction pretty much from day one, while the rest of the country watches in silence. Apart from a few voices of support here and there, most notably from the women MPs who wrote an open letter to Meghan, no one else seems to care about what is happening. It just doesn’t make sense to an outsider. And worse still, apparently they are expected to just take whatever abuse is hurled at them in silence, simply because they are public officers paid from public coffers. In essence, what they are being told is that in exchange for the priviledge of living in a castle, they should expect and accept all kinds of abuse from pretty much anyone who chooses to do so.

It’s not Harry and Meghan they are fighting per se. It is this dangerous idea this couple represents that must be fought at all costs. It is the idea that all human beings are the same, that there is no difference between white, black, yellow, brown, red, etc.

Now, again, I really shouldn’t care how the British people choose to treat their fellow citizens, but for some reason, I feel pain for Harry and Meghan. Maybe it’s because I’ve followed their story ever since they first appeared in public together. Like millions of other people all over the world, I watched their fairy tale wedding and I just couldn’t get over their beauty as a couple, and what they represent.

And herein I think lies the problem. It’s what they represent, this idea that they embody that seems to be so offensive, so repugnant to some people, that they feel the need to come guns blazing, bulging eyes red with fury and hatred. It’s not Harry and Meghan they are fighting per se. It is this dangerous idea this couple represents that must be fought at all costs. It is the idea that all human beings are the same, that there is no difference between white, black, yellow, brown, red, etc. We are all the same. This is the idea Harry and Meghan represent, which must be resisted at all costs. There are people, forces as Harry called them, that cannot stand this idea. Harry and Meghan seem to be telling the world that race and colour mean nothing. Any two people can fall in love and marry and live happily ever after and it doesn’t matter who they are or where they are from. These same forces fought Princess Diana because she represented something else they hate. She was different. Different is dangerous. Different means change and change is threatening to those who want to maintain the status quo. They cannot stand the idea that the world is changing, that people’s consciousness is raising, that we are beginning to see our common humanity, our oneness as human beings. And this is the opportunity Harry and Meghan give to Britain and to the world. Through their love, they are showing us the direction we need to be moving in. Without love for each other, without seeing and acknowledging our common humanity, how do we hope to solve the problems the world is faced with at the moment? The world is in chaos right now, because of our inability to see that there is no difference between us, that when we hurt each other, we hurt ourselves. When you drop a bomb at your neighbour’s doorstep, guess what? You may not see it, but you are hurting yourself. We have to live in this world. We mess it up, we live in the mess. We have an opportunity to say NO to hatred and YES to love. Let’s not just sit back and remain silent and allow the forces of hatred to win. Let’s choose LOVE.

How to Keep Fit in Your Forties – Keep it Simple

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I am turning forty-five this year. What an achievement! You know the way you never actually see yourself growing old when you’re younger? And then suddenly you turn forty and you realize, I’m old! Okay, forty is not exactly old, I can see that now that I’m in my mid-forties, but when I turned forty, I felt old. Over time I’ve managed to change the way I look at aging and now I have a much more positive outlook towards it. Getting older is one of those things you never thought would happen to you but hey, you are now doing it with the best of them! You are aging like a pro! That’s exactly how I look at it now, so I can’t wait to turn forty-five. In fact, I can’t wait to hit my fifties and get that exciting gift that awaits all ladies when they reach this important milestone. No more periods!!

As exciting a period of time as this is, the reality is that with aging comes a few minor inconveniences, such as the weakening of muscles, the buildup of fat in unwanted areas and the depletion of certain hormones that are essential in keeping us looking ‘womanly’. I’m not a doctor so I won’t get into the nitty gritty of what happens inside your body as you age. What I believe is that with a little self-care, we can all have healthy and beautiful bodies that continue serving us optimally well into our golden years.

Exercise

Towards the end of last year, I started a small fitness routine that I’m happily still engaged in up to now. Every once in a while, I get these bursts of vigor and vitality from I don’t even know where and I find myself going to the gym for as many as four continuous months, after which I completely burn out and stay away from the gym for the next two years. I know, this is obviously not the recommended way to exercise, but this is what I am able to do with my busy schedule working full time and caring for my kids. The good news is that those few months of intense physical activity that I engage in are not totally wasted. The next time I get the energy to restart the cycle, I find that it’s much easier to build up my muscles as whatever had been there before is usually not too far underneath the surface. I have come to conclude that this is my natural cycle and so I try to work with it rather than fighting it. When I have the energy, I engage in exercising. When the energy runs out, I stop knowing that sooner or later it will come back.

As a woman in my forties, what I am currently focusing on is strengthening the muscles on my legs, my stomach, my core and my bust. If you like, you could focus on other areas such as your back, your arms, your shoulders, etc.

My routine is very simple. I work out three times a week and do two sets of 15 repetitions each of the following exercises:

As a woman in my forties, what I am currently focusing on is strengthening the muscles on my legs, my stomach, my core and my bust.

Squats
Lunges
Planks
Leg raises
Upright push-ups

Squats and lunges are useful in keeping thighs and butts firm but in my case, I’ve noticed an additional benefit in that I have a tendency to get knee pains every once in a while, and doing squats and lunges seems to work in alleviating the pain and keeping it at bay for long periods of time. A common complaint many people have as they grow older is that the muscles around the knee area start atrophying, leaving the knee looking as if it’s jutting out (this is common in both women and men as they get older). I had started noticing this particular problem myself, but I’m happy to report that after a few weeks of squats and lunges, this is starting to improve.

Planks and leg raises are wonderful for keeping the stomach area toned. I’ve always had this little ‘pouch’ on my lower stomach which I know a lot of women have (and this is made worse by childbirth); by doing planks and leg raises, this has reduced considerably. Planks are also good at strengthening your core, which is important for good posture and balance – very important as we start to age.

The upright push-ups are good for keeping the bust toned, which is obviously a concern for women as they age. If you want more attention on this area, bench presses would be a good idea but you would need to go to a gym for proper equipment. I am currently working out from home and so I prefer the upright push-ups as they are easy to perform and don’t require any equipment.

You can modify this routine to whatever works best for you. You could reduce or increase the number of times per week you work out, you could increase the sets or reduce the reps especially in the beginning when it might be a bit harder to manage. I find though that 15 reps are the best for getting quick results.

Diet

What I find most effective in keeping my weight stable is to eat three meals a day without snacking in between while keeping the last meal of the day as light as possible. I’m not an advocate of dieting because diets are hard to maintain over the long term simply because you are working against your body’s natural desires. You have to keep fighting to avoid eating this or that thing that your body really desires. And we all know that the more you tell your body no, the more it wants that very thing you are trying to deny it. Keeping fit in your forties needs you to have very simple practices that you can maintain over the long term without stressing yourself. I don’t cut out anything from my diet, I just eat in sensible portions, enough to make me feel full and no more. I also tend to eat only when I’m hungry. In other words, I don’t eat lunch just because it’s 1pm. I wait until I feel hungry then eat, whether that’s at 2 or 3 pm. That way, whatever I eat is quickly used up as energy by the body. If you’re able to, eat your last meal of the day early i.e. around 6-7p.m.. Don’t eat late at night as the body burns calories much slower when you’re asleep, meaning whatever you eat late at night will likely end up being stored as fat in the places you don’t want it to be stored. Last but not least, reduce or cut out your alcohol intake and stop smoking if you do. These two are major culprits in making us age much faster than we need to.

I would love to hear what things you do to keep fit in your forties, especially those things that are simple yet work well and would benefit other people as well. Feel free to write back and let me know!