Post
#Listening to Who Can You Trust? The opening track of the 5 song EP of the same name by Arden and the Wolves, released in 2018;
https://ardenandthewolves.bandcamp.com/album/who-can-you-trust
Hot take; most provocative album cover ever.
#HatTip to Douglas @Rushkoff for introducing me to this band, by interviewing lead singer Ardern Leigh on his Team Human podcast;
https://www.teamhuman.fm/episodes/343-arden-leigh-chasing-the-hungry-ghosts
"... if you're aiming all your energy toward bitterness, and jealously, and I want to take people down, what does that lead to?"
#ArdenLeigh, 2025
https://www.teamhuman.fm/episodes/343-arden-leigh-chasing-the-hungry-ghosts
That's an insightful question.
(1/?)
It's always been important to me to play win-win games with my life. To push the universe towards the outcomes that makes things better for everyone, from their own point of view, as much as possible.
But I'm human, and fallible, and sometimes I get stuck in fear and anger too. Focused on people I judge as making things worse for most people to take more for themselves, and how I resent that, and want to take their power away.
(2/?)
The problem is, as natural philosopher and alchemist Isaac Newton put it; every action has an equal and opposite reaction. The people I'm hating on are doing what they're doing because they're stuck in fear and anger too.
In fear of having all their power taken from them, and being thrown to the wolves. In revenge for what they felt they had to do, to protect them and theirs.
In anger at the injustice of that, and it *is* injustice. Nobody ought to lose everything for being imperfect.
(3/?)
The only way out of this mutually reinforcing dystopian nightmare is to transcend the emotional kneejerks that give rise to it. To feel the fear and the anger, and then step out of it. Maybe using compassion, or intellect, or a mutually amplifying hybrid of both.
(4/?)
To suspend judgment, understanding that nobody is the villain of their own story (the film Falling Down is a masterclass in understanding this). To work toward a world where everyone has enough power to make life better for those we love, *without* doing it at anyone else's expense (including nonhumans).
Because if you really had the power to do that, why *would* you do it at anyone else's expense? In the answers to that question, are the insights we need to really transform our worlds.
(5/5)
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