Patreon Preview | Losing My Religion + Is Social Media Radicalizing Us?

The main feed of the pod is on hold indefinitely, but solo episodes continue rolling out over on Patreon. In this one-off drop, Candice offers a summary of recent content, sharing why she's taking sides in the upcoming U.S. general election and offering perspective re: the cognitive dissonance that reluctant-yet-resigned MAGA voters are likely experiencing in the final weeks leading up to Nov 5th.

And then, politics aside, you'll hear last week's unscripted drop from over on Patreon, where she shares more personally about:

• New age apostasy - the liberating (and terrifying) feeling of life without dogma; and why 'healing' from moral injuries is never really done.
• Spiritual high-talk - it's moving into the mainstream & despite the sugar-coated lip service, is it demonstration of true unity? Not so much.
• The power-player problem - it won't be remedied with whack-a-mole focus on leadership alone; we've got to re-invent the systems that breed them.
• Is Social Media radicalizing us? - Candice shares how she's been losing agency to the high-demand influence of her smartphone & what she plans to do about it.

Patrons of The Deeper Pulse have unlimited access to over 70 hours of bonus content in exchange for their support of the podcast. Patreon donations help keep the main feed of this pod ad-free. Sliding-scale membership starts at just $5 month.

Referenced In This Episode:

• I Will Vote - confirm &/or register to vote
• WCDHT episode with Dr. Mariel Buqué
• Zadie Smith on The Ezra Klein Show

Transcript

Candice Schutter: 0:02

Hey, welcome to The Deeper Pulse. This is a one-off episode that features content that I recorded for patrons of the podcast. I have been off the main feed for a little over three months now. Took a little bit of a break and then began rolling out unscripted solo episodes over on Patreon, as promised to supporters of the podcast. So today, a little bit of a sneak peek of what's been going on since I took a break from the main feed of the pod. Hey, it's good to be back here with you. I am here today to share with you a recent recording that I created for supporters of The Deeper Pulse over on Patreon. Which, you can become a supporter for as little as$5 a month, have access to what used to be bonus content and now is really the only content that I'm creating for The Deeper Pulse. It's unscripted solo episodes; although I will have a few guests coming up shortly. And it's mostly me speaking off the cuff around how the content of the podcast is relevant to current events, specifically U.S. politics, and also new age cult recovery. So I started dropping monthly episodes back in July. And then I've, kind of, picked up the pace a little bit in the last few weeks, so it's looking like about two episodes a month. And I'm not doing a sampler this time around, because it is a little bit more labor intensive. So instead, just to give you a sense of topics that have been covered. I've spoken about the difference between dialogue and discourse as it relates to the political climate that we find ourselves in here in the U.S. How is it that we have created so much polarity? And what can we do to get ourselves out of it? Now, of course, I don't have answers to any of these questions, but I'm just kind of exploring the questions themselves and dipping into some research that I did when I was part of a graduate program in Social Impact. I also have been talking politics. I've been going there. And let it be known here on the main feed as well that I wholeheartedly endorse Kamala Harris. Even as I have taken a critical look at not policies per se, but at having to make a binary choice. Which to me feels like a no brainer given the two options that we've been given and the ramifications of a Trump administration being, in my mind, absolutely out of the question. And so I've shared a little bit about that. I took a critical look at the DNC, spoke about some of the best and worst moments. I spoke about high-arousal states and when it comes to politics, how they can both be a really motivating and positive force and how they can also dumb us down and keep us from thinking critically when we need to be holding our leaders to account. And really what I hope is that the episodes over on Patreon are offering a bit of nuance, a space where we can offer criticism without cruelty. Where we can be unflinching in our critiques of power players and the people who support them without losing a sense of humanity. Where we are using our full capacity to address issues in their complexity rather than spiritually bypass or attack. And a space where I get to practice, alongside others, what it's like to not be derailed or silenced by hyper-liberal ideals and the need to get it right, or do our activism perfectly. The need for nuance and complexity is at an all time high. The race is extremely tight, and it could really go either way. I'm no longer blindly optimistic when I look towards the future, but nor will I resign myself to defeat. And I'm really hoping that, if you're listening to this and you are a U.S. citizen, that you are registered to vote and that you have double-checked your voter registration. I will provide a link in the show notes where you can do that, just to make sure. There've been some shady antics going on in a lot of states. And especially if you're in a swing state, you're going to want to double, triple, and maybe quadruple check your voter registration. And, please vote. It's just beyond important in this election. And I am taking sides, not because I agree with every policy proposal. But because I have a strong suspicion, as do many of us that a Trump presidency is not something that our nation can survive. I spoke in one of the episodes on Patreon about remembering everything that I learned, that really well-intentioned, good-hearted people, they turn a blind eye to what from the outside seem like glaring contradictions to the values that they prescribe to. I have never been a Trump supporter, but I know what it's like to not be able to see the evidence that's right in front of you. Because you know, back when I was an all-in new ageist, I regularly rejected rational information that challenged my beliefs. I relied on thought-terminating cliches and pseudoscientific"evidence" to confirm my myopic worldview that was really blind to a lot of things. And I did this not because I was stupid or ignorant or naive. I did it because, if I were to allow that high-vibe house of cards to fold in on itself, it would have felt devastating. Instead I let it go a little bit at a time. Because it wasn't just about admitting that I was wrong about this thing and that thing. It was about shedding a practiced ideology that I had, through repetition, carved into my very body and being. And not only that, letting it go came at a high cost. It meant losing a livelihood, friendships, an identity, belonging, and easy-button relief from fear and uncertainty. You know, a lot of the folks we see out there who seem to understand that Trump is not a great guy and don't agree with the way that he presents himself. And say, it's the policies that I agree with. You know, a lot of those folks are in echo chambers of misinformation. And I'm not here to make excuses for people who are engaging in shitty behaviors. Not at all. I'm talking about all the people around them who seem to not notice or care. Cognitive dissonance is a hell of a current to kick against. It's not always willful ignorance that's keeping us from seeing what's right in front of our faces. Doubling down on the delulu is sometimes less painful than giving up the lie. I've said a lot more about the political stuff over on Patreon if you're interested. But today's episode isn't really about politics. It's about what it's like to be a new age apostate, so to speak. To lose my religion and to make meaning on the other side of the'cult'ure series. So I'm just gonna let the content speak for itself. This is me, unscripted on a Saturday morning just sharing kind of where things have landed for me. Here goes. Hi, y'all. Welcome to another episode on Patreon of The Deeper Pulse. This is very impromptu. Today I woke up, I took a walk outside. And I got back to my computer and I sat down to make another attempt at working on the book,"the book" that's supposed to come out of the'cult'ure series podcast. And when I say supposed to I'm referring to the story I've been telling myself for a long time now. And when it came time to really look at the content, the task before me felt daunting. And not just that, but I think what I'm realizing this morning as I went into once again attempt to try to work on this project that I've decidedly devoted myself to for these next few months, that something felt off about pushing that forward. And I'm still in it, I guess is what I want to say. I'm still in the process of metabolizing and integrating everything that's gone on these past few years. And this is what healing I can look like. Um, this morning on the trail, I was listening to a podcast. And they were interviewing a woman by the name of Mariel Buqué. And Dr. Buqué is an expert in intergenerational trauma. And I'm not going to go into all that today, but what I want to underscore is something that she said that I thought was really, really interesting and really pointed to the lead into where I want to go today. She was answering a question from Abby. Abby Wambach, who's one of the hosts of We Can Do Hard Things, was asking a question about bringing her own conditioning per her family around the expression of affection. Bringing that conditioning and that sort of imprint into the family that she's in now with Glennon and Glennon's children and their children. Being a stepmother and expressing affection and how it feels like she can feel the tension, because in her family they didn't express affection in the same ways as they do in the family she's in now. And she can feel this tension each time she sort of defies her conditioning and does differently. And the question was like, is there a point at which this is going to go away, this tension and it's just going to become natural? And you know, we can debate whether or not that's something that can happen. Maybe it's happened in your experience. Maybe it hasn't. But one of the things that I really love that Dr. Buqué said was that we have this misconception about healing. And that we're healed when we've, we've reached this place that's just sort of like a clean slate. Like, oh, I'm done with that. No more of that. When in reality healing is getting to the place where we understand our wounds and our conditioning, and we're responding to it in real time. That that is what it is to be healed. That is healing. And maybe it's not about, again, this like penultimate place we get to, this ideal place where we no longer have wounds and conditioning, like that's a sort of superhuman place where we've transcended all that or integrated all that. Maybe it's a process of being able to walk alongside ourselves while we're in that. And that is what healing is. And I feel like that's kind of where I am right now. And I need time to not be, you know, producing and sharing. And I'm happy to be here sharing with you, but like creating, like taking my experience and turning it into something of value for other people, that's sort of what the podcast content was was for. It was like these two, two legs of one body. One moving forward saying, this is me needing to express these things in order to understand them and learn out loud. And then the second leg is in order to potentially create support for other people, whether it's a platform for them to speak on or stories that they can relate to. And so I decided to step back from that. And then what? I'm going to turn immediately and try to write a book, doing that very thing in written form without giving myself the time and the space to integrate and metabolize everything that came before. And I'm just learning to be a different person. I don't know who I am now that I'm not creating the work in a way. Like that's a little extreme, of course I know who I am. But there is a sense of purpose lost. And part of the culture of wellness is to continually be in service to. Whether it's in service to one's own healing or in service to the world. And I find myself feeling this vacuous space of what if I'm not trying to fix myself or anything around me? What else is there? And that's kind of new for me. That's kind of new for me. And I think that it connects to this word I've been kind of pondering this morning, which is apostasy. I looked it up on Wikipedia so we would have the official definition."Apostasy is the formal disaffiliation from, abandonment of, or renunciation of a religion by a person. It can also be defined within the broader context of embracing an opinion that is contrary to one's previous religious beliefs. It's also used by sociologists, this term apostasy, to mean the renunciation and criticism of, or opposition to, a person's former religion." So I'm thinking about this being an apostate and, you know, renouncing my religion. And looking back at my own past and then engaging on and off with the new ageist movement in Sedona. New ageism is a religion. And it can be a religion in a fundamentalist sense. And so I have renounced this religion. And I have been criticizing it and standing in opposition to it and speaking out about that. That's something I've had to make my peace with, especially because part of the ideology that I'm coming from, as you know, is in new ageism, like to negate anything is itself a form of heresy, right? It's a, the land of positive thinking and positive reframes and everything needs to be included in this, this, and that way. And if you use transcendent enough language, you can avoid conflict and a sense of this is wrong and this is right. Like there's, there's sort of this vastly gray and inclusive area, which I think has some merit; but it makes it so that it becomes impossible to debate and criticize anything. So on one hand, I've been navigating that. And I feel like I've gotten more comfortable with that. Like I'm okay with that. Um. What's been harder is the fact that that negation and rejection of my religion has resulted in what I'm calling a psychoactive state of discomfort when I hear certain language that is now becoming mainstreamed. Or that is being used in a really constructive, positive ways, but for me, it's super loaded and contaminated. I was listening to a female activist being interviewed, someone that I really admire. And in the context of sharing about things that I completely resonate with, she was using language around freedom and self-love and connection to the divine. And there were these certain words that when I hear them, they just sort of ping in me. And it's not really a trigger; it's more of like a, hmm, that's like a loaded term for me, because of the way it got twisted and distorted in my experience. So, um, freedom. If I look at the culture of the anti-vaxxer movement in Sedona and RFK Jr supporters. And the use of the word sovereignty, which is a word that I used to use quite often that I've since sort of retired because of how it's been misappropriated. This idea of like physical sovereignty and that there's no way that I should have to make any sacrifices in my own body and my own being for the sake of other people; this sort of selfish sort of narcissistic approach to sovereignty and approach to freedom. Naive notions around freedom where it's all about individual freedom. It's, you know, this neoliberal overcorrection. And the word divine, how it no longer carries a positive resonance for me. And I'm listening to this interview and all of this language is being received really wonderfully by the folks interviewing her. And I'm thinking, they have an innocence and a belief in a sort of purity around these ideas and these ideals that I lost, that I no longer have. That everything for me has become nuanced and complex. And I can't lean into these simple reassurances that. I'm not accusing anyone of being simple-minded. I'm not. I'm saying, for me, it's no longer simple to think and talk about quote unquote, the divine or source or spirit or God or any of that. That everything sort of starts to sound like a thought-terminating cliche, unless it's a larger conversation that's really nuanced. And so I just, I just have such a hard time when communications around unity and connection become flattened in that way. Like they lose dimension and depth when it's like, if we just all connect to the divine or this, that, and the other. And I don't, I'm not saying that's what this speaker was saying. It's just, this is what comes up for me. I'm sure if I had a long conversation with this particular activist who's using this language, we would probably land in a really similar place. It's just the way in which we use this kind of language has become it's own sort of problem for me, if that makes sense. Because I think it does lend itself to a sort of spiritual bypassing. Because if, for somebody like me, I want to be able to connect with a social movement. And I feel connected when people share their stories and we find common humanity in our stories even though we've had really different backgrounds and experiences and when our values align and when we're wanting for the same things. And yeah, we understand there's a lot of different ways to get there, but we're going to come together and find ways to achieve our values together. Like all of that is so moving to me. And I feel so connected to the movements. And I feel so engaged. And then somebody brings in high talk of some kind. We need to connect to the divine in ourselves or whatever. And to me, it's just another form of religion imposing itself upon something that, to me, doesn't have to be religious. It doesn't have to be quote unquote spiritual. Can't it be that we connect to each other without that language? And I get that people want that language and they lean into it and that's beautiful. I'm speaking for those of us who don't. To say, my moral injuries aside, the fact that I think the projection can sometimes be, oh, the reason why you're not resonating with the language is cause you don't under, you're not connected to the true meaning of what spiritual or divine or source or whatever, spirituality means. And if you just really connected to it, like I have, then you would get it. And I guess I'm here to say, maybe that's not true for all of us. Maybe the mythology of religion and spirituality, that there is a knowable order to this world, maybe that doesn't resonate. And so, it's not so much that my version of spirituality got distorted and warped. It's that spirituality doesn't have to mean assuming that there is a universal understanding that if we could just get to the pulse of it, then everybody would be on the same page. Like, what if that's not true? And what if there's other things we could be focusing on than that? And yes, in your own spaces, community spaces, and in your own home, like do what you feel is true to you and praise whoever you want to praise and be a part of any religious ideology or perhaps for you it feels like something much deeper than that. I, I, I'm fine with that. It's the sort of indirect proselytizing. And maybe that's not what it is. I mean, maybe I'm completely missing the mark. Because the truth is, is that I was involved in a worldview where I did think that I knew better and that I knew best. And that any time I was sharing and speaking about what I thought and felt, there was an undercurrent of proselytizing. There was a sense of, I've awakened in this particular way and I'm sharing this to help others awaken. Which is just another form of recruiting people into a way of thinking and being. But because I was so entrenched in that. So if I'm communicating with someone I'm demonstrating how to do it. How to keep things positive. How to high-vibe your way out of a situation. Imposing that onto other people without even being conscious of the fact that I'm imposing it. And so maybe my presumption is that when people talk about their beliefs, they are doing the same thing. Again, not intentionally. I don't know. Just something I'm thinking about. But there's a real hollow sensation when you don't have a tangible concrete ideology to lean into. Not hollow. It's, it's that vacuous sense of living in a universe that doesn't have bounds. As far as we know the universe we live in extends infinitely, whatever that even means. So there's no bounds. And so when we don't have our, our beliefs and our ideologies to create containment and containers, It can feel very vast and echoey, and holy shit. We need beliefs and ideologies to tether us. And I have beliefs and ideologies, obviously, in many different things. Um, some of which have come through in the last few episodes here in terms of my politics and whatnot. But it's not the same sensation as having a belief in something unseen and mysterious. Because you can't trust politics, you can't trust other humans ultimately to save you from the one inevitability, which is death. And I know this sounds really heavy, but it's just at the core of this. It's the deeper pulse of all the pulses. No matter who you love and who loves you, none of us gets out of here alive; and we all leave alone. So no wonder we want to believe in something, that can hold us in that. And I'm not here to say that that's something doesn't exist. I'm just sharing that when you don't know what that thing might be, or if it exists, it's liberating in a certain way. Because I don't feel I'm bound by certain rules of engagement in order to gain access to that particular invisible energy. But it's also really overwhelming. And, uh, finally grappling with and reckoning with my moral injuries and sharing my stories and really pulling all of that apart, and then being in the stillness that follows. I'm just really feeling that. That innocence lost. And that grief, I guess. Yeah. I came across this Audre Lorde quote that I really love. She says."The true focus of revolutionary change is never merely the oppressive situation which we seek to escape. But that piece of the oppressor, which is planted deep within each of us." I've been thinking a lot about this. And, you know, something I had considered and spoke to a little bit on the podcast before of like, you know, how the call's coming from inside the house. The cult leader lives in our own mind. And it's sort of patterning itself and mimicking the leadership that we've experienced throughout our life. And I think that that's all true. And I've also really been considering it in the context of, in this larger macro context of the systems themselves. So the oppressor isn't an individual, it's a system. It's a system of behavior. It's a system of influence. It's a system of belief. And it's a system of social consequences. Like how we engage with one another and how interpersonal dynamics tend to function. In the process of really trying to figure out what's next for me, I started to look into, like, what would it be like to teach at the collegiate level? Something that I've kind of always been interested in at some point doing. And realizing that the master's degree that I have does not provide me with sufficient credentials. It's an online master's that I got during the pandemic. And as such, it's not enough to qualify me to teach in a higher education setting. So I was thinking on that, and I was like, oh, well maybe I'll explore getting another master's degree in a program that would provide me with those credentials. And I'm here in Arizona indefinitely, because we care for my mother-in-law. And there's really limited resources in terms of where I could go. And the really the only college that's within a doable driving distance, it's about a little over an hour from here. And so I decided to explore their program. And I found this applied sociology program and was super stoked about it. Asked for information. Set up a time to go to the university on Monday of this week to sit in on some classes within the program and to figure out if it was something I wanted to do. Keeping in mind that my MO is to like, go all in and get super excited and attached to the idea which I had done prior to going. So I'm thinking this is something I'm definitely going to do. This is just a technicality, just to go feel it out, right. So I went to feel it out and turns out It wasn't an all the way yes, so it's a no. So I'm not going to do the program. But it was an interesting experience to be there. And there was a seminar that I went to where the first-year graduate students were meeting with the second-year graduate students. And then there was the professor there who was there to facilitate the discussion. And the idea was that these first-year students who had only been enrolled into the program for like four weeks would be able to ask the second-year students questions about their experience and advice and this, that, and the other. So it was kind of an exchange back and forth. And again, the professor was facilitating it. Well, towards the end, she said to the group, there was about 20 minutes left and she said, I'm going to leave the room so that you all can have a candid conversation and you can ask the questions that you really want to ask without me being present. And I thought what a great change-up. The professor sort of actively acknowledging the power imbalance and the fact that there's no way that the questions are going to be as candid with her present. And so she stepped out. And of course the conversation got a little bit more candid. And I learned some things that really helped me in terms of making my decision. And it was kind of a both and thing though. Cause it was like, oh, like, isn't that great that she stepped out? And that she, as an individual, was demonstrating a form of leadership that understood and was conscious of... that's healing, right? She hasn't fixed the power imbalance, but she's conscious of it, and so she's trying to do right by these students around it. So she left. But then in the conversation I learned the system itself, of course, has some issues in terms of taking care of the students. And, um, there was a woman who shared about an experience that she had where a few of the professors showed up for her but overall, the program wasn't really supporting her in terms of her activism, for example. And it just really kind of underscored for me, like how much work it's going to take for us to shift these paradigms. And one of the grad students, uh, one of the first-year grad students asked the second-year of grad students, how do you navigate the power structure that exists within the institution itself. Like what, what's come up for you around the institution itself and how power functions. And this is, she's probably like 22 years old. These are the kinds of questions that this generation is asking. And I love it. But of course, the answer wasn't oh yeah, that's been addressed and we're good to go now. The answer was, this is a difficult challenge and despite lip service things aren't changing as fast as we want them to. Because the oppressor is planted deep within each of us, not just as individuals but systemically in the way we engage with each other. I listened to an episode of the Ezra Klein show. I've really been enjoying his podcast. And I'll link to this episode with one of my longtime favorite authors Zadie Smith. I love her work so much. And he was interviewing her about a book that she just recently released, another novel. And she spoke about a lot of things and it was a really great interview all around. I highly recommend it. Speaking about sort of what's going on politically here in the U.S. She's a British, Black author who lives in London. And she started talking about social media. And I really have noticed, obviously for a long time, the way that social media impacts my psychology. And there's been times in past years where I've taken social media fasts, breaks, detoxes, whatever you want to call it. Uh, loaded words, talk about loaded words. Where I've stopped, engaging on social media for like 30 days to see what it's like. And it's been amazing. And then I ended up back on it eventually. And I have times where it's like a reflex, and I pick up my phone and I'm looking at it. And I'm in one of those times, because I'm so rudderless, I pick up my phone and I look at it all the fucking time. And it's ridiculous. The way that it feels like it's uh, it's almost like another appendage. And I'm constantly checking it for what, I don't know. Looking at Facebook, looking at Instagram. Those are really the only two I'm on. I was on TikTok, but I got banned for reasons I don't fully understand. So I have really been in that. And I've been saying to myself, not only is it annoyingly addictive. I'm noticing how it shaped my ideas of people. And it, that I've sort of fallen into this camp of like creating characatures of people. RFK Jr supporter. Sedona person. Trump person. Harris supporter. And again, it's not conscious. It's just, this is what these people are like, this is what these people are like. And it's not because I, in any way, believe that we can reduce people to these kinds of labels, but because social media reinforces those labels by showing me certain kinds of content, it's really easy to fall into that. And Zadie Smith was sort of talking about that in this episode. And she said some things that I just was really like, oh, what a great way of describing that and what an opportunity to practice empathy towards ourselves. So Zadie Smith is not on social media and she does not have a smartphone. And Ezra was marveling at this and asking her questions around that, like why that is. And she was describing how social media is different than any other technology that's come on the scene. Because people have always pointed to technologies like, the radio's destroying the youth. The TVs destroying the you-. The thing that's different about the internet is that, as she described it, it's totalist. It's everywhere and you're all the way in it. She was talking about how smartphones are essentially behavior modification devices. And, you know, uh, the documentary from long ago, The Social Dilemma, talks about this in depth, if you're not familiar with those kinds of discussions. But like literally the algorithms are built to encourage our engagement. And to encourage us to become more simple-minded in our thinking, because the algorithms direct us into certain portals. And they encourage and reward moral outrage. And she was talking about witnessing people from the outside who engage on the internet and how much compassion she has for the fact that she can have somebody in her life that she knows is a good, kind, and honest person. And then she'll learn about their behavior online. And rather than, and this is something that I'm guilty of, rather than thinking: how the hell does this person who I know to be, or I thought to be really kind and altruistic and considerate, behave like that? Maybe, I don't know that person as well as I thought I did. And she was sort of making the argument that, no, this person is being manipulated into being like that. And that recognition and understanding that they're a victim of this behavior modification system gives us a sense of empathy and understanding. The system itself is sort of an indoctrinating and radicalizing system because of the way the algorithms work. And because of the way it, very much by design, deliberately creates us-and-them conflicts. Sometimes I see stuff and I'm like, wow, this is really pissing me off. Why is this on my feed? That's why it's on my feed. Because I'm more likely to react and engage and crawl down that rabbit hole over and over again, because of the feeling that it gives me. We get the dopamine high of the, yay, people liked myself! We crave that. But we also crave the activation, I don't know what the hormones are, I'm no neuroscientist. But whatever it is that happens when we feel outrage, when we feel disgust, when we feel contempt, that's also fed to us. And there was something about her describing it as a behavior modification system, and me doing all this work on like cult dynamics and pushing back against these systems and calling them out and dah, dah, dah. And then catching myself, looking at my phone every few minutes, realizing, oh my God, I'm under the influence of this fucking piece of plastic. Wow. Like, I don't know. It seems really obvious now. But it's been really helpful. And so what I've been doing is logging off of my social media accounts. This is me healing that addiction in a way. Like if I want to go on and look, I have to push the log on button. There's an extra step that keeps me from doing it. So I'll open it to reflexively look at it. And then I'm like, oh wait, I'm logged off. Oh, right. I'm not looking at this. And I will be taking a complete break from it at some point. This is me easing myself into that. Because stopping it cold turkey completely just adds to that vacuous, echo-y, terrifying feeling that I have of: now what do I do with all of this space and this uncertainty? It's, it's a bit too much for me to be off of it completely, so I'm just trying to just check it like once a day for now. And then I'll probably ween down to once every two or three days. And then once a week. And then I'll take a long break from it. Because I think that Zadie Smith is, is spot on in her description of this. And the way that I sort of act like um, a Pavlovian dog around my social media accounts sometimes is a problem. And I'm not okay with it. And I want to change that. And oh, I wanted to share with you one thing that she said when Ezra was asking her, how do you navigate in this world without a smartphone? And she shared a story where she and her husband, who also use to not have a smartphone, how they were at a party. And it was really late at night and they got in a situation where they needed a lift, and they had to walk like, I don't know, three or four miles because they weren't able to call for a ride, because it was late at night. And she was describing that situation, she said, yeah, things like that happen. She was admitting that that's an inconvenience. Yes, absolutely. And then she said:"But is it as bad as having my very consciousness colonized every single day?" That one hit me like a gut punch. Because it's ideology in digital form being fed to us. And the more we consume, the more specific it gets. The more catered to what we already think and believe and the further it entrenches us in that. And it is a colonization in a commercial sense for sure. Because it's all toward a specific capitalist end. So, yeah, a little lighthearted commentary on social media. The point is, is that I think I'm going to take a break from the socials very soon. And, um, it feels kind of like a lonely endeavor. But it means I'm going to have to seek out connection in other ways and that's probably going to be better for me in the long run, even though it'll feel really awkward. And I'm inching my way there. So, yeah. So, I guess the point of pressing record today was to meander all over the place. But to sort of land in the place of, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know what's next. I don't know what happens in the process of having regained agency. We have to figure out where to take and guide ourselves without maps that have been drawn by someone else. I'm in that. I'm also in that middle-aged space of looking back on my past and wishing that I had done certain things differently. Taking inventory around my regrets and what I've learned and what it meant at the time and what it means now. And maybe there is no meaning to it. It's just a mess and that's okay. And what am I going to do about the years that I lost, but also gained in wellness space. And now feel like I don't have a career path to forge. Feeling a sense of frustration that at age 49, I do feel a sense of dependency on my partner, a situation I promised myself I would never get in, but I'm in it. And how do I save myself from dependency? Do I need to? Is that necessary? Just all the narratives that have guided my life are in question right now. And, uh, I'm sharing this in case some of you can relate out there. And I'm sharing this because I have a Patreon community that I've promised to provide content to, that I frankly don't feel like I'm in a place to give value to right now. Not because I'm devaluing myself, or I'm not trying to be self-deprecating, I'm just saying. I don't know what the hell I'm doing. So I'm just like sharing my musing and my thoughts out loud. And I'm putting it here because I told you that I would. And I wish I had something really beautifully outlined and drawn out for you; stories that I've drafted and I'm sharing. But that's just not where I'm at right now. And in the past, I just would go invisible and silent in these kinds of moments. And I'm trying something different just to see what it feels like. So, thanks so much for tuning into this. Again, if you have an idea that you want to chat with me about here on Patreon or even behind the scenes, let me know. I do get very lonely doing these solo episodes, because I feel a little bit stuck in my own self-awareness. And it's just so much more interesting to hear more than one perspective, isn't it? That's, those are my thoughts. So it's also why I have a hard time working on the book. Because it's just so much about me and my head, which is a very busy place. And I need company. So if you want to be a part of that, reach out. Again, you don't have to sit with me in front of the camera, which I would love for some of you to do. Um, you can, you know, get the fire burning behind the scenes and I can, I can chat about what we unearthed together. So it's an idea. I do have one conversation on the books for October, I'm hoping, with a guest that's connected to the'cult'ure series in a really intimate way that we'll be rolling out here. So that is going to be happening. And I'll have that on the schedule soon. So you can look forward to that really great interview and a story that sort of connects to a lot of what we've covered so far and takes it in a whole new direction. So look forward to sharing that with you. All right. I'm going to sign off now and I will see you next time. Bye. Thanks for listening. All right, that's the most recent update from the other side of the'cult'ure series. If you're interested in hearing more, consider joining us over on patreon.com/thedeeperpulse. If like me you're not looking for another rabbit hole to fall into, keep in mind that when you join as a patron of the podcast you receive an email every time there's a new episode and you can listen direct without engaging in any way. So it's essentially another way to access podcast content, and it functions really similarly to however you listen now. It's just an option if you want to keep your finger on the deeper pulse with me as we move through these next few, what are sure to be, crazy months. And um, maybe I'll be back here at some point, maybe I won't. But thank you either way for listening, for supporting the podcast. And again, more information at patreon.com/thedeeperpulse. If you want to reach me directly, thedeeperpulse.com/share. Take care y'all and uh, thanks for listening.