It seems that nearly every bit of information we receive these days is hearsay, or more bluntly, a lie. I think most people do not believe that most things they hear, or read in the news, are out-and-out lies. In fact, a distinction needs to be made between conscious and intentional lies and things that are simply not true. Once we make that distinction, we find that most of what reaches us belongs to the latter category.

That fact changes things only a little bit, but not an awful lot. False information is still false. And the falsity or truth of any information remains the responsibility of the conveyor. If I tell someone something I am not personally certain of, I typically qualify the statement with “I think this is true,” or “this is what I heard,” or “so-and-so said this, not sure if it is true.” Although I must admit that, realistically, I do not say this as often as I should. If I did, I would almost never make an unqualified statement—unless I had literally experienced it: “It is raining outside; I was just out there, and I am soaked.” That’s not hearsay, but if someone I told it to repeated it to someone else, then it would be.

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This might not apply to all sheep-types, but many of the ones I have encountered simply do not care. This could be the reason we can’t seem to get through to them with the facts we are constantly shoving down their throats. Of course, the ones I’ve talked to may just be saying they don’t care to shut me up, but I really don’t think so. They seem pretty sincere.

How could they not care? Now, that is the $64,000 question. People, in general, do not care about things they do not see directly affecting them. They should, but they don’t. People these days, at least, don’t seem very skilled at discerning things that will—if not cared about—eventually bite them in the ass. I think people used to be better at determining such things. They used to see war in a neighbouring country, for example, and say, “Hmmm, if we don’t do something about that, those bloodthirsty marauders may be over here next.” People who thought that way—speculating about a potential ass-bite—actually disappeared a long time ago, if they ever existed at all.

Still, my point stands: if it doesn’t directly affect them in the present moment, they don’t care.

Sorry, I think that is weird.

And, of course, people seem very inconsistent about this. Some things they do care about, and usually those things are not as important as the things they should care about.

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Sad, but true. Since the Covid fiasco I’ve seen the true nature of people—or at least the nature they were willing to show once the fear got turned up and the herd started moving. Most of them are still firmly under the sheep banner, content to graze wherever they’re told. A small handful stand under the shrew banner. Those are the ones I still trust. The shrews. The sheepies? I don’t trust them anymore. Did I ever, really? I thought I did, back when I was younger and still believed most people were basically decent when the chips were down. Turns out that was optimistic.

Lately this loss of trust has had me thinking about the American Wild West. Not the Hollywood version—the real one. Back then, almost every man who wanted to stay alive carried a revolver on his hip. It wasn’t for show. You never knew when some mean-eyed bastard might decide your horse, your money, or your life was worth more to him than it was to you. The sensible ones stayed ready. They watched people. They didn’t assume good intentions just because someone smiled and said howdy. Trust was something you earned slowly, usually after a man had proven he wouldn’t sell you out the first time it became convenient.

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I was recently watching footage of the NATO Summit held July 7–8, 2026, in Ankara, Türkiye. I couldn’t help but notice how similar the gathering looked to the NAMM (National Association of Music Merchants) shows I used to attend while working in the music business in Hollywood. Every year, all of us music nerds would get excited to head to the huge convention center in downtown L.A. to see the newfangled hoopla the music merchants were releasing that year. We gobbled it up, of course.

The NATO event looks like essentially the same thing—a trade show—except the newfangled hoopla is of a different kind. World leaders, all decked out in fine suits (nerds of a special kind), stroll the aisles admiring missiles and tanks engineered for maximum lethality. Billions are spent to make killing more efficient. While societies debate the cost of keeping one person alive in their final months, trillions flow into perfecting the technology of death. People who still think can see the terrible clarity in this inversion: when the soul recedes and the material world reigns, efficiency in killing becomes one of the highest values of our age.

Personally, I don’t think there is a better definition of insanity than the way humans delight in war and death. Yes, there was a time when killing your neighbour because they wouldn’t let you eat an apple growing on their side of the tribal fence made a tiny bit of sense. But what it has evolved into today is pure insanity. Humans are supposed to be capable of compassion. We are supposed to be able to sort out our differences with other tribes. We are supposed to care more about human life than we did in the cave days, when it was all about survival and who would or would not get the apple. What happened to all of that? For any of us to justify wholesale killing the way we do only proves we haven’t gotten anywhere in hundreds of thousands of years.

It is all so screwed up, as is nearly everything. Nothing makes sense anymore. It is crazy to me that, for one small example, Canada can go ga-ga over its health system paying for the last months of a citizen’s life—spending millions if necessary to keep them alive—yet the same government will spend roughly $2.2 million on a single Tomahawk cruise missile, a weapon designed to destroy high-value targets and capable of killing dozens of people (or more) in one strike. This is the kind of arithmetic they are running through their heads while strolling the aisles at their NATO war show: “Now tell me again—how many people will this weapon kill, and how much does it cost? That’s some nice bang for the buck! I’ll take 20 of ‘em!” Insane.

I just read that Canada is deep in debt and running persistent deficits, while Ukraine sits on roughly $4 billion worth of gold reserves. So, Canada (and everyone else that can) keeps giving money to a country that already holds billions in gold, all so more people can be killed. And don’t tell me, “Russia ruthlessly attacked Ukraine! They should pay for it!” Yeah, right. If you are saying that right now, you are, unfortunately, still thinking like an ignorant caveman. That is not the whole story; in fact, it is very little of it. But Russia doesn’t get off the hook either. Grow up, people. Figure this shit out and quit acting like ten-year-olds playing in the backyard with stick guns.

At least the stick guns don’t deplete the treasury and suck the tax-paying population dry. It is astounding to think that most of us work a lifetime just so our country has the resources to kill—or help kill—thousands of other working stiffs who are simply minding their own business and trying to get through life in one piece. Almost no one fighting in these wars has any real inkling why they are out there killing other people. The idea of the apple as something needed to survive is long gone. It is all a game now—not for the people dying from the weapons their leaders are buying, but for the leaders themselves and the oligarchs who own the companies making all this hardware. It is their little game. And they are having a blast.

I’ll say it again, and I’ll keep saying it until I’m blue in the face. It is all a game—a sophisticated 3D chess game. And we, the common useless eaters, are not at the table playing it. In fact, we barely even exist to the real players. Sure, they use us for kill stats. The more of us who die, the more some oligarch or world leader can claim victory and collect his chips.

Look at the actual numbers if you still doubt it. According to the latest available data from SIPRI and the International Institute for Strategic Studies:

The United States leads the world by a wide margin, spending roughly $920–950 billion a year on its military.

China follows at around $250–340 billion.

Russia is third at approximately $186–190 billion (about 7.5% of its GDP).

Germany has surged to over $100–114 billion.

India sits near $90 billion.

The United Kingdom spends close to $90 billion.

Ukraine, despite its size, is now pouring roughly $84 billion into its military—an almost unimaginable 40% of its entire GDP.

Saudi Arabia, France, Japan, and others round out the top tier with tens of billions each.

Canada, after years of lagging, has ramped up significantly and is now spending in the range of $35–40 billion (with recent announcements pushing it higher to meet NATO targets).

These are not abstract figures. These are the concrete resources extracted from ordinary people—through taxes, inflation, and delayed infrastructure, healthcare, and housing—so that a small circle of decision-makers can keep the machinery of death humming. Trillions of dollars every year, worldwide, flow into the business of preparing for, and conducting, the efficient slaughter of other human beings.

And still the game continues. The leaders meet, the contracts are signed, the missiles are ordered, the justifications are written, and the body counts are tallied. The rest of us are expected to cheer for “our side,” wave the correct flag, and never ask why the same people who claim to care so deeply about human life are so eager to spend our money perfecting the art of ending it. And nobody seems to care. As long as their game of pickleball is not disrupted, the leaders they seem to adore so much can continue to play their game to their heart’s content.

I don’t know how much longer this particular round of the game will last. I only know that as long as we keep accepting the premise—that war is inevitable, that leaders know best, that the dead on the other side somehow matter less—the players will keep dealing the cards and raking in the chips. The rest of us will keep paying the price, both in treasure and in blood.

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Humanity is unravelling. In the span of just a few generations—scarcely a century—we have witnessed a precipitous decline in the quality of our shared life. What was once a world of craft, connection, and quiet moral coherence has given way to machine-made uniformity, moral drift, environmental squalor, widespread addiction, and a pervasive spiritual emptiness. The symptoms are everywhere: drugs flooding communities, garbage choking landscapes, ethics treated as quaint relics, families dissolving, and relationships reduced to transactions. Many sense the rot but struggle to name its root. The cause, at bottom, is simple yet profound: we have ceased to value what is real. We have traded conscious relationship with soul for mere stuff.

This is not merely nostalgia for a romanticized past. For most of human history, daily life was saturated with human presence and intention. A child’s hobby horse was not ordered from a warehouse but carved by hand—perhaps by a parent or village craftsman. Houses rose under the skilled hands of bricklayers, carpenters, and masons who brought years of embodied knowledge and personal care to their work. These creations carried something especially potent: the energy of focused attention, love of craft, and a sense of participation in a larger story. Even primitive shelters—the thatched huts of early communities—were built in the context of kinship, mutual reliance, and a felt connection to the living world. Soul flowed visibly through the making.

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Sorry for such a horrific image, but this is exactly how I feel right now!!

You won’t believe this, but the worst possible thing has happened with the new volume of The View of the Shrew!

Long story short, Word screwed up the final version of the book and DELETED ALL ITALICIZED WORDS!!!! WOW!!!!

So what I have uploaded to Amazon was wrong, the Kindle book was wrong, and any other instance where the book could be downloaded was wrong.

Easy fix for most of you . . . just go back to the BookFunnel link and redownload the PDF or ePUB file you originally got. Here is the link:

BOOK FUNNEL FREE BOOK

Now remember, this free offer is for people willing to write a review!!

If you bought the paperback book from Amazon, send me your name and address through this email…

kingshrew@auraboros.com

If you bought the Kindle ebook from Amazon, they will soon be correcting it (replacing your version on your device with the new one…I know, I know, don’t get me started.)

SO SORRY ABOUT ALL THIS!!!

Here’s yet another thing that bugs Dr. Shrew to extinction. Drive through any unassuming suburb and behold the gleaming 10,000-square-foot monuments to excess sprouting like mushrooms after rain—while the rest of us scrape by on fast food and fret over five-cent gas hikes. This glaring disconnect between perceived scarcity and ostentatious plenty whispers of deeper currents: not mere luck or hard work, but an economic shadow realm where the rules of reality bend for some and crush the rest.

I don’t know if this is true where you live—more than likely it is, especially in big-city suburbs such as the Greater Toronto Area where I reside. But the spectacle repeats itself across countless American and Canadian metros. Add to this the proliferation of high-end shopping malls sprouting up nearly everywhere. Rural shopping centres may be spared the worst of it, but in populated regions, the contrast is impossible to ignore.

Who supports all of this? Not just the flagship luxury anchors like Saks Fifth Avenue or Nordstrom, but the hundreds of smaller (yet still premium) retailers such as Lululemon, The Gap (and its sister brands), Anthropologie, Madewell, and Abercrombie & Fitch. These stores don’t typically sell $10,000 handbags, but shoes and women’s purses don’t have to reach that stratosphere to feel expensive. A “nice” pair of designer shoes or a quality leather tote can easily set someone back several hundred dollars—well beyond the reach of many scraping by on stagnant wages.

When I was a kid, the elite who could casually afford a $10,000 watch were few and far between. They may have to shop in exclusive boutique retailers nestled in the good parts of major cities like New York City, Paris or London. Now they seem a dime a dozen. A decent Rolex that might have cost around $3,000 in 1990 now starts at about $10,000 and can climb to $100,000 or more for exotic models. You can walk into a jewelry store in your local mall—sandwiched between a Walmart or Target—and drop $20,000 to $80,000 on a Rolex, Tag Heuer, Breitling, or Cartier. Who in hell does that? How do these high-end businesses thrive, not just in flagship downtown locations but in suburban malls across the country?

I guess the same folks who own the big mansions also visit the malls. They grab a taco at Taco Bell, then stroll over to Neiman Marcus to buy a Hermès Birkin purse for $40,000. Yeah, go, girl.

Who are these people? They are the visible avatars of a bifurcated economy—professionals, executives, and entrepreneurs who have ridden waves of asset inflation, tech booms, finance, and selective opportunity. Many are dual-income households in high-earning fields: tech executives, finance professionals (bankers, investors, hedge fund managers), corporate lawyers, specialized physicians (surgeons, anesthesiologists), real estate developers, successful business owners, and mid-to-senior level managers in lucrative industries like consulting, pharmaceuticals, or energy. A significant portion also includes inheritors or those who benefited from generational wealth transfers, real estate appreciation, or stock market gains over the past two decades.

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In an era where our every word, step, and glance can be archived, summarized, and replayed by sleek little discs pinned to our chests, the ancient archetype of the all-seeing eye has found its modern silicon incarnation. What was once the paranoid whisper of conspiracy has become the marketed convenience of ‘life logging’—yet beneath the promise of perfect memory lies the total erasure of privacy, turning every shrew into a unwitting performer on the surveillance stage.

During a recent three-hour ramble with my sister—one of those wide-ranging, idea-sparking talkathons we’ve shared for years—the little recording device I had just bought, attached to my phone, quietly drank it all in. Every tangent on culture, politics, family, and the state of the world was captured, summarized, and later served back as a tidy slideshow of “highlights.” It auto-suggested calendar entries, pulled up past chats on demand, and generally made itself indispensable. For a moment, I felt the rush: This is the future. No more forgotten details, no more scrambling for notes. Pure magic.

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Dear Shrew,

Tomorrow is the day, July 6, that the second volume of The View of the Shrew gets published and is available in all Amazon regions.

Universal Link to Local Amazon Storefront

You can still get a free copy of the ebook if you are interested in writing a review! (see below)

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE WRITE A REVIEW!!!

If you are a casual reader, and have never paid the subscription price for a paid subscription, this is your chance to thank me for my writing. AND I AM GIFTING YOU A FREE BOOK!

If you HAVE been paying, and participating in the comments section, this is your chance to write a review of my work! AND THIS IS MY CHANCE TO THANK YOU WITH A FREE BOOK!

Since the book goes on sale tomorrow (July 6), you will be able to log in on Amazon and write a review.

PLEASE DO!!!!

GET YOUR FREE BOOK BY CLICKING THE BUTTON BELOW:

Get Your Free Book Now!

Through BookFunnel you will be able to download a PDF, or an ePub file so you can read the book on your Kindle, Kobo, or other popular readers. Or directly on your laptop, desktop, or phone.

This second volume continues the sharp, unflinching exploration of our increasingly chaotic world (over 40 articles). From a fiercely independent “shrew” perspective, I cut through the propaganda, cultural illusions, and collective delusions of 2025, drawing on Jungian depth psychology, philosophy, and clear-eyed observation. It’s a lantern in the fog for those who still value truth and courage.

Thank you for being part of the Shrew pack. It is an honour to share this work with you first.

Warm regards,
Todd Hayen

Hey Shrew Pack!

Yet another interview I did with Jeremy Nell of Jerm Warfare on the popular alt news source UK Column:

UK Column. Jerm Warfare.

This is the description on the UK website:

Jerm and Todd Hayen chat about gay marriage. They distinguish between state vs religious marriage—Todd says he does not care for any state institution and Jerm questions the purpose of marriage.

They then pivot to AI. They debate whether it is just algorithms or if it is something more worrisome. Todd warns about soul-starved dehumanisation if we lose human connection.

They also touch on COVID compliance, mass formation theory, and why some people see through the narratives while others do not.

Watch Now!

Dear Shrew,

I’m excited to invite you — my most valued readers and supporters — to receive an Advance Reader Copy (ARC) of the new book:

The View of the Shrew: Unmasking the Truth in a Confused World 2025
(Book 2 of The View of the Shrew)

An ARC simply means you get a pre-publication PDF copy so you can read it early and, if you feel moved to do so, leave an honest review on Amazon when the book launches.

This second volume continues the sharp, unflinching exploration of our increasingly chaotic world (over 40 articles). From a fiercely independent “shrew” perspective, I cut through the propaganda, cultural illusions, and collective delusions of 2025, drawing on Jungian depth psychology, philosophy, and clear-eyed observation. It’s a lantern in the fog for those who still value truth and courage.

The official release date is July 6, 2026.
The Kindle eBook is already available for pre-order right now: (But remember, if you want to write a review, I am giving you the book for free! Just click the link below to receive it.)

• $1.99 USD on Amazon.com

• $2.82 CAD on Amazon.ca

(if you are in another region, just search for “The View of the Shrew”)

Important: You cannot get the Kindle version yet. I will send you the complete PDF directly for free.

If you’d like to support this work (and it would mean a great deal to me), I’d be very grateful if you pre-order either the eBook or the paperback on Amazon. The eBook price will rise to $6.99 USD after the initial launch period. Please consider buying the paperback! If you don’t already own the first volume (2022-2024), buy them both!

If you would like the ARC PDF, simply click the button below or send a note to:
kingshrew@auraboros.com

Please put “ARC Request” in the subject line. And please include the name you will use for your review on Amazon!

Please Request Free PDF

(Click the button above to receive the free PDF of “The View of the Shrew”

Volume 2 (2025) to review!)

Once the book goes live on July 6, I hope you’ll take a few minutes to post an honest review on Amazon. Reviews in the first few days make an enormous difference in helping new books gain visibility.

Thank you for being part of the Shrew pack. It is an honour to share this work with you first.

Warm regards,
Todd Hayen

If I do a simple search for the definition of bigotry, this is what I get: “Bigotry is the obstinate, unreasonable attachment to one’s own beliefs, resulting in deep prejudice and intolerance toward those who hold different views.” Gee, I didn’t really expect that. I would have thought the definition would have mentioned something about racism, or hatred, or something else along those lines. This definition could apply to quite a bit, don’t you think?

This very definition is exactly what inspired me to write this article. And I came up with the idea before I read this definition. Maybe I am just not the sharpest tool in the shed, and most everyone else reading this is now saying, “so, I always thought that was the definition.” Not me. Duh. So, this is what I was thinking.

I was having one of those ubiquitous conversations with a proverbial “sheep-type” and couldn’t get a foothold at all. The same ol’ story ensued: no matter what I said, there was zero flexibility. It reminded me of racial bigotry: how anyone I mentioned “on this side of the fence,” any doctor, any alt news journalist, any economist, any historian, any other shrew who agreed with me, anyone who did not fit neatly in the mainstream narrative (the “sheep-view”), was immediately shunned, degraded, and clearly not even considered. In fact, a lot of really hateful things were said about them and their views.

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I hear this a lot: “You need a more balanced life. You’re obsessed with certain things—you shouldn’t spend so much time writing (or reading, or travelling, or listening to music, or whatever).” Others hear it about exercise, athletic pursuits, music, art, or work.

Yes, if you focus so intensely on one thing that you forget to eat, bathe, or kiss your wife (or husband, or dog), then balance is worth examining. But there is little in life that deserves more of your attention than your passion. If you have a family, of course, you need to “balance” that to some degree (maybe you shouldn’t have one?). And you may lose a partner if your other priorities interfere with nurturing the relationship. Partners should support each other’s passions, though. That gets dicey, and I won’t dive into it here. Maybe another time.

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I’m sure all reading this can remember the countless sci-fi movies and TV shows (and books too) where the ultra-intelligent being from outer space visits Earth with some profound gift for mankind and is outright rejected, or ultimately killed, due to misunderstanding and fear. Think of classics like the Twilight Zone episode “The Gift,” where a friendly alien offers humanity a cure for all forms of cancer—only to get shot and have his gift destroyed by a panicked mob. Or The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), where the alien Klaatu arrives with a stern warning for peace (and the power to back it up), but is quickly gunned down by fearful humans.

There’s even Stranger from Venus (1954), with its benevolent visitor bringing healing powers and a nuclear warning, only to face human suspicion and hostility. It seems us humans have always been particularly fearful of intelligence. At the same time, we have always venerated it, talking for years about how ETs are smarter, more highly advanced, therefore not as stupid and shortsighted as us lowly humans. We have a kind of “love-hate” relationship with these critters from beyond. On the one hand we are dang certain they want to kill us, on the other hand we expect them to save us from our stupidity.

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I have written about this many times, but I don’t think I have ever written a whole article about it. If I am, indeed, repeating myself, my apologies to my long-time readers. That said, it deserves repeating.

Let me first explain what I mean by “top-down and bottom-up.” I use this phrase often in my psychotherapy work. I believe most therapy is designed to be top-down. This is where symptoms are treated, but not the cause of the symptoms. The first culprit on this list is typical psychiatry, where a 15-minute assessment determines a diagnosis, and a diagnosis determines medication protocol. If this modality of mental illness treatment worked, it would be an effective means of treatment. But like most things in life, determining the efficacy of this approach is not black and white; it actually does work in certain situations, for various reasons, but doesn’t in others.

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Some of the serious mental illnesses, such as psychosis, suicidal depression, and mind-numbing anxiety, treating the symptoms will often quell what is considered pathological about the underlying disease. It still doesn’t cure the cause, but it keeps the person contained, non-violent, so they don’t hurt others, and stable enough that they can proceed with a life that otherwise would be impossible to pursue.

There is also the placebo effect, which very often is the prime reason people seem to get better. Then, of course, there are the people who are taking their prescribed drug and also going to psychotherapy. If they feel better, they will invariably point to the drug as the reason, rather than the therapy—that seems a more scientific approach.

I could go on with this, but I don’t want to crowd the article. Top-down methods are not limited to psychiatry; we see them in regular talk therapy as well. Treating the symptoms rather than the root cause is the primary approach of CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy). To be fair, there are certainly legitimate success stories with this method. However, if we continue feeding the monster (the underlying cause) through our aberrant behaviour, it will continue to wreak havoc. But if we simply stop the symptom (the behaviour) we can, over time, often kill the monster—if it is weak or small enough. So CBT can be successful, but more likely than not, we merely put the monster to sleep, only for it to raise its ugly head again once the CBT tactics cease.

Now I will move out of psychotherapy into the real world of daily cause and effect. We are ensconced in a top-down solution source for nearly every problem we confront in our modern culture. Some top-down solutions, as in mental health, are important to maintain, but even if they work, they don’t get to the core cause of the disfavoured behaviour. Look at simple things like laws: speeding laws, laws against theft, laws against rape, and murder—all things people believe are absolutely necessary in a sane and decent culture. And as things are now (and for the most part always have been) these laws are indeed necessary to keep the community safe and functioning.

But they do nothing at all to cure the indecency, suffering, and drive to commit atrocious crimes. Or even simple crimes. (While overall crime rates in many Western countries have shown long-term declines since the 1990s, certain issues like property crime or localized spikes remain concerns in some areas.)

Now, those are my comments on law, and the only reason I bring it up is because it is the most obvious top-down solution the modern world (as well as the ancient world) has adopted, and for the most part (with some glaring exceptions) it works relatively well—but still, laws do not change the fundamental drive of a criminal.

Just recently, there has been discussion in parts of Canada around tougher penalties for serious crimes against children. I hear so many people saying, “Good for them! That should bring down the rate of child rape!” I doubt if it does. I don’t think people who rape children will stop just because the punishment is severe—and many might actually be indifferent to it. Maybe in some cases criminals avoid committing a crime because of the potential punishment, but they are still driven to do it. I know the reason I don’t steal is not the law, but my own personal sense of decency.

Now, not all laws are about indecency and decency. There are many laws, much more than there should be, that have nothing to do with right or wrong. And these laws are a problem I will not address here. Instead, I think you get my point. But as I just said, top-down solution solving isn’t just about laws. Laws are just a good example of their use and people’s reliance on them.

So, what is a bottom-up solution? Bottom-up work is about building character; it is about creating a person who is at the core decent, caring, and has an innate sense of the difference between right and wrong. Sure, this creates its own set of problems—what is right and what is wrong? I am of the strong belief that the most important distinctions we already know in our hearts. And if we were raised with strong character—or developed it later in life—we would live in a world where people naturally choose not to violate a moral code.

I don’t want to appear naïve here; this idea is not perfect, but I do believe it is a better system than what we have at the moment.

Top-down approaches dominate our institutions: more regulations, more surveillance, more enforcement, more “awareness” campaigns, more top-down mandates from governments, corporations, and experts. We see this in education (standardized testing and zero-tolerance policies instead of fostering genuine curiosity and moral development), in public health (mandates and restrictions rather than empowering personal responsibility and community resilience), and in social policy (welfare systems or DEI initiatives that often address surface-level symptoms while ignoring deeper cultural and familial breakdowns).

Bottom-up solutions require a much harder, slower, and less glamorous path: strong families, meaningful communities, education that builds wisdom and virtue rather than compliance, and a culture that rewards integrity over obedience or performative activism. It means rediscovering archetypal truths about human nature—shadow integration, personal responsibility, the development of a healthy ego in relation to the Self (in Jungian terms)—rather than outsourcing morality to the state or the latest expert consensus.

The tragedy is that our modern world has largely abandoned the bottom-up path in favour of the illusion of control through top-down force. Laws and policies can suppress symptoms temporarily, but without character formation at the individual and communal level, the underlying rot persists and often worsens. We see this in rising cynicism, declining trust, and the persistence of social pathologies despite ever-increasing rules and oversight.

True change comes from within—individually and collectively. It is cultivated in homes, in local communities, in the quiet work of self-reflection and moral courage. Top-down solutions may be necessary Band-Aids in a broken world, but they are no substitute for the real healing that only bottom-up transformation can provide. Until we prioritize the latter, we will continue cycling through the same problems, applying stronger and stronger top-down measures, wondering why nothing ever really gets better.

The shrew’s path is the bottom-up one: clear-eyed, rooted in truth, and committed to inner work that radiates outward. That is where real hope lies.

If you would rather not subscribe at this time, and maybe give a little just for this article, please click the button above and give as much as you feel is comfortable. This helps me immensely in keeping up with my writing! Thank you so much!

In my years as a psychotherapist, I have sat with hundreds of people trying to make sense of their lives, their relationships, and the world around them. Over the past several years, something has changed. Conversations that used to allow room for disagreement now often collapse into anger, rigid certainty, and outright dismissal of any opposing view. I notice it in clients, in family talks, and across the culture: an intense, almost obsessive hatred toward Donald Trump and anyone who supports him, a refusal to consider alternative perspectives, contradictory beliefs held without any apparent awareness, and a growing disconnect from basic logic and common sense. This pattern seems especially strong among those who strongly embraced the mainstream COVID narrative.

We are told this is just politics as usual, or the result of social media echo chambers, or simple cultural divides. Maybe those things play a role. But what if there is a deeper, biological factor at work? A recent medical paper raises serious questions about potential links between the COVID mRNA vaccines and problems with brain function, thinking, and emotional balance. It does not claim to explain everything, but it offers a plausible piece of the puzzle—one that deserves honest consideration rather than automatic rejection.

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A techno death has one thing going for it—it is relatively clean. At least compared to dying in the Victorian age or earlier. Death back then was often downright messy. Today, unless you are hit by a bus (which is unlikely), you will probably die in a hospital on nice clean white sheets with a morphine drip and a team of people working to either keep you alive a little longer or help you die as comfortably as possible. At least that’s how it looks in the movies.

I’m sure reality is different, but isn’t it always?

Of course, you could also die peacefully in bed at home from a nocturnal heart attack or stroke (what most old folks secretly wish for). Or, at the other extreme, in a violent accident or from the ravages of a painful cancer. But even then, it would still be relatively clean. No fleas or other vermin waiting to consume your rotting body. No weird parasites eating away at you while you’re still alive. No black plague, no smallpox, no cholera sweeping through entire communities. Sure, there are still exceptions today—flesh-eating bacteria and the like—but they are far less common than they used to be.

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When I was a kid that was a pretty common phrase I would hear from the adults in my life. To me, it basically meant you couldn’t have something you wanted without also accepting the consequences that came with it. Officially, it is a common idiom meaning you can’t enjoy two mutually exclusive benefits or options at the same time—you must choose one or the other.

The official explanation doesn’t fit the context of this article as clearly as my childhood interpretation. You’ll see what I mean in a minute.

Recently, I was engaged in a deep conversation with an ultra-liberal type. I use the word “type” because I no longer know what “liberal” actually means anymore. The term has been twisted and redefined so many times that it has lost all recognizable shape. We’ve had to invent a new label—“woke”—to describe what used to be called liberals who have now drifted far beyond reason.

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Another admirable human trait that has gone the way of the Dodo. It certainly disappeared from my life early on—if it was ever there to begin with. If I had to pick the number one thing that has gotten in the way of my goals, I’d say it’s the lack of discipline. For me, it hasn’t been a total lack, but it’s right up there at the top of the list.

So, exactly what is discipline? A simplistic way to define it would be this: practicing discipline means consistently doing something that doesn’t bring immediate pleasure, but in the end delivers the goals you actually want. And here comes instant gratification again—that evil little trickster that seems to be Public Enemy Number One these days.

I’m sure you’re all familiar with the marshmallow experiment. Conducted in the late 1960s and early 1970s by psychologist Walter Mischel at Stanford University, it tested delayed gratification in preschool-aged children. A kid was left alone in a room with one marshmallow (or sometimes a cookie or pretzel). They could eat it right away, or wait 15–20 minutes for the researcher to return and get two marshmallows instead. Some kids ate it immediately. Others distracted themselves, covered their eyes, or sang songs to resist.

Follow-up studies over decades showed that the children who waited longer tended to have better life outcomes: higher SAT scores, better educational attainment, lower BMI, and fewer issues with impulsivity or addiction later on. It wasn’t perfect science—later replications questioned how strongly it predicted success—but the core idea holds: the ability to resist immediate temptation for a bigger future reward matters.

The important thing to note is that this was done with children. As adults, we’re supposed to know better—wait, be patient, stay disciplined, and reap greater rewards. Ha ha. I’m sure when I was a kid, I would’ve scarfed the first marshmallow, and now, if they replaced it with cookies, I’d do the exact same thing.

I don’t know if this is even the best example of discipline. It ties in closely, but it’s more about holding off for something better in a one-off situation. Discipline is really about continuous behavior: going to the gym regularly, saving money over time, sticking to a diet to lose weight. Sure, it isn’t completely gone from the culture—I know plenty of people who are very disciplined about working out (that one seems to be the most common example left standing).

Let’s take saving money as a counter-example. Many years ago, there was no such thing as easy “credit.” Department stores pioneered the layaway system: you’d pick out an item, the store would set it aside, and you’d pay for it in installments until it was yours. No debt, just patient saving. Then came installment plans for big purchases like cars, followed by revolving credit accounts in the 1930s–1950s. Credit cards exploded in the 1950s and 1960s (think BankAmericard, later Visa), and 30-year mortgages became the norm, turning homeownership into a lifelong debt arrangement rather than something you saved up for.

Now we live in a world of debt. Debt is taken for granted—everyone’s got it. Just like everyone used to have fleas, now everyone’s got debt. As of recent 2025–2026 data, total U.S. household debt sits around $18.5 trillion. Credit card debt alone exceeds $1.2 trillion, with average balances per cardholder hovering around $5,600–$7,900 depending on the source. The average American with a credit score carries roughly $63,000 in total debt. Mortgages dominate, but consumer debt keeps climbing. We’ve normalized living beyond our means.

This erosion of discipline isn’t just financial. It’s everywhere. We want the six-pack abs without the daily gym grind, the viral Substack success without writing consistently for years, the deep knowledge without the slow, often boring study. Instant gratification culture—fueled by apps, dopamine hits from likes, same-day delivery, and “buy now, pay later”—has us all hooked.

Of course, I see this as part of the bigger picture. Most people seem to follow the path of least resistance because it feels easier, safer, more “normal.” The powers that be love a population chasing quick fixes; it keeps us distracted, indebted, and compliant. Real discipline requires discomfort, delayed reward, and a long view—exactly what the modern world tries to train out of us.

You know me, I am always going to point to the agenda. But this sort of erosion could be natural and only supported by the agenda, like a lot of other things that seem to be going on. The loss of discipline is due to deeper and broader strokes: the loss of self-respect, the loss of meaning and purpose, the focus on consumerism, the focus on materiality, the focus on instant gratification, the focus on safety and the fear of death. I could go on and on, as I have in the hundreds of articles I’ve written so far.

All of this is reversible, of course, but because we are being pushed by external forces to embrace these dysfunctional tendencies, it is and will continue to be very difficult to overcome. I have no direct solutions other than what I always say is best: a return to basics. We need to push away odur obsession with materialism and embrace a more metaphysical worldview of love, peace, family, and nature. We need to develop our desire to find meaning and purpose in our lives—to embrace art and creativity and even more intellectual pursuits. And most importantly, we must again learn that instant gratification and the senseless pursuit of physical comfort should not be at the top of our list of priorities.

Me? I am beginning to get the spiritual and intellectual part down, but I’m still working on the physical discipline. Some days I win the marshmallow battle. Other days I eat the whole bag. But at least I’m aware of the game. That’s half the fight, right? Ha! Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a gym membership I should probably use . . . tomorrow.

Yesterday I was engaged in my typical morning routine. Scanning the internet for interesting stories to read and news to soak in. Reading a few things here and there and watching a couple of videos. I settled in after a bit of this to write an article for my Substack “Shrew Views.” The topic is unimportant—typically something to do with something that caught my fancy during my news scanning, or something someone said to me yesterday about whatever, all mixed in with my learned and experienced knowledge of archetypal psychology. Nothing earth-shattering, mind you, but hopefully an insight some people might find interesting, resonating with their own observations, maybe a bit funny, insightful, whatever. Who really cares.

I consider myself and my ideas interesting. Sometimes informative, sometimes insightful, and nearly always consciously honest and authentic. Not always “right,” mind you, that isn’t possible, of course, but always intended to be truthful. To be honest with you, I don’t really know why I write—at least I don’t know why I write publicly. I just started doing it during the beginnings of the Covid koo-koo-fest, and it seemed a handful of people enjoyed (is that the right word?) what I was writing, so I kept doing it. I have written well over 500 articles as of today, and don’t plan to stop, although at times I have seriously considered it.

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