Be aware of online echo chambers and confirmation bias, and be humble enough to understand that these things affect you.

Caitlin Johnstone

August 18, 2025

4 minutes

advice, life, living

Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):

 

Pay attention to the mainstream media, but only so you’re aware what the bastards want you to think. The western press are plutocrat-controlled propaganda services for the US-centralized capitalist empire, and they frame their output accordingly. Don’t trust them.

Be aware of online echo chambers and confirmation bias, and be humble enough to understand that these things affect you. Make sure you’re getting information from a variety of sources, including ones you disagree with ideologically. It’s easy to spin off into erroneous perspectives if you don’t have any other feedback keeping you in check.

Ignore our society’s ideas about what an ideal or successful life looks like. This is a sick civilization whose madness is driving us all into dystopia and disaster. Blaze your own path, and set your own standards for what a good and worthy life would look like.

Make a practice of noticing beauty everywhere. Everything has beauty, even the ugliest things you can imagine. If you can’t see the beauty in what you are perceiving in a given moment, the failure is in the eye of the beholder. Beauty is just the experience of having truly seen something.

Feel your feelings fully and courageously, all the way through. If you have forgotten how to cry, re-learn. Don’t repress your feelings, but don’t make them anyone else’s problem either. Feelings are meant to be felt. That’s all.

Face your inner demons and heal them. Don’t hurt anyone else with them. If you have children, make this a priority of the most urgent order, because you will pass your woundedness onto them if you don’t. You can’t heal all that’s wrong in the world, but you can heal all that’s wrong in you.

Put love before everything in life. No one ever went to their grave wishing they had loved less, or had placed their career or ambition above their children or their partner. Love with everything in you; hold nothing back. Loss is inevitable in a mortal life, but love anyway, because it’s the only thing that makes a mortal incarnation worth it in the first place.

Learn to love yourself. This looks like bringing a passionate, unconditional “YES” to everything that shows up inside you — all your thoughts, feelings, sensations etc, even the ones you don’t like very much right now. If you feel resistance to this, bring a “YES” to that resistance. Keep YESing all the resistances until you work your way in. You can only love others to the extent that you love yourself.

Hold no loyalties to the collective delusions of your family, your social circle, or your culture. If you know they’re wrong or ridiculous about something, there’s no reason to protect it or act like it’s legitimate. Be free from the psychological shackles of conformism. Life is too short for that shit.

Open yourself up to new music, films and art, and increase your capacity for appreciating and enjoying culture outside your comfort zone. Learning how to appreciate more things will make life more enjoyable for you.

Be discerning about what you put into your body. A system of food production and distribution which is guided entirely by the pursuit of profit will not have your health interests at heart in the options it presents you with.

Be kind to people who struggle with neuroses, but try your best to free yourself from your own. Certain segments of our society have become far too glorifying of psychological dysfunction and far too encouraging of learned helplessness and irresponsibility. Be a mature adult and heal everything you are capable of healing, and for everything else try to find adaptations and strategies to get by.

Cultivate a serene mind. If you feel called to, pursue spiritual enlightenment. It’s entirely achievable and readily available.

Do as much as you can to make the world a better place, and be content with your efforts regardless of whether or not they are successful. You’ll never be able to save the world single-handedly no matter what you can do; all you can do is make one person’s worth of effort. Make peace with that.

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