At a Global Flashpoint

It seems everything is heating up at once, just when we thought geopolitics and civil unrest couldn’t become any more volatile. ICE scandals erupt in Minnesota. Corruption and outrage spill over simultaneously. Trump maneuvers on the global chessboard, removing Maduro in Venezuela and pursuing Greenland with the casual boldness of empire. Iran is in the throes of a massive revolution. Gaza and Ukraine remain under siege. And Europe, exhausted by years of migrant crisis and cultural whiplash, swings sharply to the right. Everywhere you look, people feel they’ve had enough.

We didn’t arrive at this precipice through random coincidence. These are the predictable results of long standing causes and conditions. Yet not many seem willing to acknowledge their complicit contribution to the atmosphere of conflict and collapse. Patterns keep repeating with mechanical predictability.

1. The Collapse Into Binaries

We have fallen headlong into rigid narratives: Democrats vs Republicans, Israelis vs Palestinians, European citizens vs migrants and Muslims. These divides now feel irreconcilable. The polarization has been many years in the making, and the momentum is accelerating.

Where there is no middle ground, there is no shared humanity.

2. The Illusion of the Moral High Ground

One of the most dangerous illusions of our time is the belief that each side is the moral one. ICE officers believe they are defending the nation from invasion. Anti-ICE protestors believe they are defending the vulnerable. Every side has a coherent moral story that justifies outrage and even violence.

But claiming the moral high ground is not the same as behaving morally.

True morality does not accept that the ends justify the means.
True morality does not rely on outrage or dehumanization.
True morality is consistent with its own tenets.

What we are witnessing instead is widespread moral hypocrisy. Everyone signals virtue while contradicting the ideals they profess. If we were actually living by the ethics we claim, the landscape of human behavior would look very different.

This is not moral relativism. It is people abandoning their own vows under the pressure of righteousness. More concerned with winning than upholding consistent virtue.

3. A New Era of Extremism

Extremism has quietly become normalized. Basic understanding between people has evaporated. The ability to disagree without dehumanizing is gone. Families fracture. Universities censor. Communities polarize.

No one asks what internal value a person is trying to protect or what fear fuels their stance. Every issue has an internally coherent moral logic. Gun advocates believe they protect civil liberties. Gun abolitionists believe they protect lives. Both are motivated by care.

But because mutual goodwill is gone, we cannot see the shared thread of concern beneath disagreement. Without that recognition, there is no basis for dialogue. Without dialogue, violence is the only inevitable outcome that remains.

4. Psychological Warfare in a Digital Age

Technology now amplifies outrage, isolates us in ideological silos, and floods us with incendiary images engineered to trigger fear and rage. Algorithms and AI can manipulate entire populations without their awareness. Throw in deepfakes, and we now have a terrifying sludge, where it may never again be clear what is true or real on the surface of things. 

The real question becomes:

While we are busy hating each other, who profits?
When our nervous systems are hijacked, who gains power?
When we are distracted, who advances their agenda?

This is not a conspiracy. I don't posit an answer to those questions. It is simply acknowledging that fractured populations benefit someone.

5. Astrological and Archetypal Context: Death and Rebirth

Astrologically and archetypally, we are in a civilizational death and rebirth cycle. The old world is dissolving. A new world is forming. Death and rebirth are always chaotic. But does it have to be violent?

Two paths exist:
remain in low vibration and mutual destruction
or
raise consciousness toward creation rather than annihilation

If we choose compassion, extremists on both sides will accuse us of being privileged, weak, or remaining shamefully neutral. But understanding and compassion is not capitulation. It is the only viable long-term path.

Buddhist teachers like His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Geshe Tenzin Zopa embody this perfectly. They do not align with political factions pitted against rivals, nor do they disengage to their mountain hermitages aloof from the world. They insist on love, clarity, humor, and non-harm even amidst devastation.

What We Can Actually Do

Work with Your Own Mind

Turn inward instead of pointing fingers. See your own afflictions and biases. The real enemy in Buddhism is the reification habit that distorts and calcifies perception, triggers afflictive emotions, and fuels the cycles of stress and trauma. Moments of moral outrage can actually help expose the hidden, separate self and its delusions, which must be examined.

Abandon the Crusade Instinct

Everyone believes they are moral. Everyone believes they protect the vulnerable. Trying to convert the other side seems to only deepens conflict. As if there will be no rest, no peace, until everyone is converted to our way of thinking. Instead, create environments where real differences can coexist, without having to agree or destroy one another. 

From a Buddhist cosmological perspective, we are here together forever. We don’t win by conquering the other. We win when we create the conditions for everyone to access their fundamentally good nature.

Counter Extremism with the Middle Way

Train the mind to hold opposing views with some understanding. Not agreement. Not submission. Understanding.

Work with moderate-minded people first, people who can still tolerate nuance and difference without collapse or contempt. Look beneath their actions and try to see their values. This is essential when traveling on pilgrimage, meeting different cultures, or simply coexisting. You don’t need to adopt their beliefs. You just need to understand them.

Unfortunately the center, the meeting ground for moderates to meet, is rapidly hollowing out. Time is running short. Hold the middle sacred from the insurgence of the extremes.

Let the unreceptive be. At least do no harm.

Recognize the Psy Ops Environment

Technology manipulates and indoctrinates. Step away from media when you can. Diversify your feeds so you can see how the subtle mechanisms of propaganda and manipulation underlie every side. Protect your mind from narratives designed to inflame and exhaust you.

Ask yourself:

How is being more informed actually making me feel?
Who is informing me?
To what end?

Your state of open mind and presence deployed locally is often your only real offering to the world.

Choose the Cool Revolution

Now is the time to go inward, cultivate alliances, strengthen energy, and opt out of division. Commit to regeneration from the inside out, not outer conquest.

This is the cool revolution: quiet, compassionate, steady, and rooted in the full embrace of the human condition.