We Normalized The Unthinkable And Kept Scrolling

We step back from the headlines and look at why 2026 feels disorienting even when we are “fine” on the surface. We talk through how the unthinkable gets normalized and why more people are turning inward to protect their peace and ask better questions.

Transcript

Back After A Long Minute

SPEAKER_00 0:27

Mind State Session. Peace, peace to all my good people out there.

unknown 0:41

Mind State Session.

Zooming Out On The Simulation

When Chaos Starts Feeling Normal

Documents Drop And Nothing Changes

War Online And Money Contradictions

AI Blurs What Is Real

A Quiet Turn Toward Inner Life

Science Reopens Consciousness Questions

Holding The Full Picture At Once

Pay Attention In A Deeper Way

SPEAKER_00 0:43

It's been a minute. I know it, you know it, we all know it. So we don't gotta dwell on the things. But so many things have been happening, taking place, distracting us that um I didn't even know how to like formulate a plan to do this episode. Not just this episode, but every episode to probably come after this, because I'm starting to realize that there is no way to function in 2026 as an adult and have a podcast for fun. This has always been a fun thing for me. It has always been a thing just to, you know, vent per se. And if people dig it, they dig it. And if they don't, they don't, that's cool too. But there's so much stuff that's out here, it's tiring just to figure out what to talk about. So I am going to just talk. I am going to rant, I'm going to roll, I'm just going to speak, and we're gonna see where it goes, and then we'll just go from there. But to start, has anybody actually just stopped and thought about what is happening right now and just looked around in the existence that we call this simulation? Like, not the headlines, not the headlines, not the opinions, not the the synthetic algorithm feeding you the same five hot takes over and over and over again, just the raw shape of how things are right now. Because I did it over the weekend, and I sat there just like staring in the clouds and staring into space and staring into the the universe and not sure what to do with what came up after that, you know. It wasn't even like a panic thing, it wasn't even like oh my gosh, like what is what was going on right now? It wasn't like panic, it wasn't like fear, it was just like confusion, a disorientation of trying to resituate reality to make it make fucking sense. And then I just it's something about the world just doesn't line up the way it used to, and we all feel it in our own individual aspects of how we carry ourselves in the world, like we either hyperpay pay attention to things right now because external societies, whether it's the headlines or it's the water cooler cooler stories or what your family's telling you, we all externally pay attention to shit right now because it's in our face to. And we all just want to go back the way it used to be, where we just did we all collectively didn't give a fuck. Like, just gave a fuck about what you gave a fuck about. And in your world and in your life, and if your family structure or your work like way, like whatever. We all just gave a fuck about that. And now we really can't because there's so much ex other stuff out here. We got wars, we got inflation, we got tariffs, we got sleeper cells, we got planes falling out the sky, we got food that's contaminated and that's recalled, we got cars that's recalled, we've got plants burning up, like industrial chemical plants, because those plants are not giving their people livable wages. But then the news is like covering that shit up because they we don't want you people to get ideas, and we have Congress people going on television saying that he came out of a briefing, a classified briefing, one of those ones that only certain people are even allowed to know about, let alone go in there and hear what they're talking about. And then he said after the briefing, he came out and talked to the the reporters and he said, For the record, I'm not suicidal. And then he just moved on and talked about his talking points. But then the the the host or the reporters, they didn't stop him. They were just like, Yeah, he's not suicidal, and then kept on going with their day, and there was not some big moment about it, no collective pause. We all just moved on and said, Okay, that's Kate, okay. That's like normal now. It's normal now for people to speak when they speak, they say, Hey, what I'm about to say right now might sound crazy, and then they say it, but they also say, I'm not suicidal, because there are instances out here right now where people say shit, and then they just the record states that they were suicidal, or the record would state that their death will be deemed a suicide, but they speak it on record to say, hey, I'm not suicidal at this very moment, and then 24, 48, 72 hours, a month, a year, two years later, they just miraculously all of a sudden are suicidal. But then we just all went about on our days like it was cool. But just think about that for a second. A sitting member of Congress felt the need to say out loud on live television that he intends to stay alive, and that's not even the crazy part about it. It's the crazy part is how normal it all felt. Like we've reached a point where something that should be as shocking or as crazy as that being said, and it just slides back right past us like it's nothing now, that should be noted as a real crazy point that we're at right now. Because what are you even supposed to do with that? At the same time, there are these these other stories that are less talked about, but they're still there if you pay attention, or I should say, if the right is attention is being paid to the right things. A retired general tied to advanced research research disappears under strange circumstances. Another scientist is killed at his home. Multiple people connected to classified aerospace programs, just gone, just in the wind, relative relatively short period of time. And then you got regular people, the the officials saying stuff like, Oh, there's no coincidences in these towns, like not as a joke and not as conspiracy, just as a statement, a fact. There are no coincidences in this town. Why are we in a society of a time of place where when things are said like that, we just move on and it's cool, and somehow all of that exists in the same reality where we're also arguing about trending topics and scrolling through these short videos like nothing's changed. We still go to work. The ones of us that have jobs, we still pay taxes, the ones of us that still have the ability to pay the taxes, and then on the same timeline, you've got millions of pages of documents released about one of the most documented trap trafficking networks in modern history. You have evidence, you have diagrams, you have names, and yet the outcome feels like meh. Like even a mid-grade shrug of the shoulders. Like, so what? Redactions protect protect the powerful, victims are exposed. The people in charge of it say, you know what, we met our obligations, we put it out there, case closed. We didn't say we were gonna do anything about it, we just said we were gonna put it out there, case closed, and everybody sees the fuckery, everybody sees the horrific shit that these motherfuckers do and are doing and will continue to do. Because what is the alternative? Like, what do you do when something that big, that that visible to everybody, that undeniable, doesn't lead to anything resembling accountability. Everyone just keeps going on. You still go to work, you still make dinner, you still scroll. Life still fucking continues. And I'm not even saying anything that, not even saying that as like a criticism. Sometimes we just need the regular shit to go on to stay functional every day. Sometimes we just need to know that, hey, I I can at least know and control that I can get make it home today, and I at least know that I can go home and figure out dinner for the millionth time. Try to anyway. Because I think that's just where we are right now, and that's okay. I'm not criticizing that at all in any fashion because if you zoom out just a little further, it doesn't get any less strange. We're watching war unfold in real time with us right now. On the same devices, we used to watch cooking tutorials and YouTube videos on how to do the things. We're being told that there's no money for certain things like health care and better uh education and safer uh communities. We're told there's no money for these things, but there's unlimited money for other things. Got the money for wars, but can't feed the poor. But they've known this for years. But then again, they've always done it like that. The economy right now feels like a super duper math equation that that stopped making sense a long time ago, and everybody just says, it doesn't matter, we just gonna keep it like the math is just never gonna make sense, it's never gonna math for us, and we're just gonna keep doing it this way. And the internet itself, this thing we're on right now with the podcast, and and and the internet itself, it's changing too. We as a society are it's getting hard to tell what's real and what's not real. Point blank, period. And it just might be me. Other of you all listening might be like, Shay, you know what? You you maybe you're just older, maybe you can't discern what's real and what's fake and what's AI and what's I maybe I can't, maybe that's me. But what was written by a person is so much different from what is now generated by a person. What was used to be filmed by people, like with their their cameras and even with their phones, is now assembled by AI prompts and programs. And I feel like we're adapting way faster than we probably should be. We we are just literally accepting it and it is normal now. If you look at go look in your phones or your whatever you got as a time capsule at this point, because some people, I know for me, if somebody asks me what was I doing in the year 12 2012, I gotta look at my phone, which may be sad to some of y'all, but I have to go look at my phone to see the pictures of what was going on with me in 2012, because that has the way that my memory and all of the things and the Mandela effects and all of the birthdays and all of the tasks and all of all of that shit, the way all of that shit is compacted into my brain right now. 2012 seems like it was 1996 for me. Maybe, maybe not musically, because that's a dope year, but so I say all that to say to bring it back. Go look at your old camera or go look at your old pictures or wherever you you mark time with and see the difference between what was dope technology or super technology or the top tier of things back in a certain time. Look how far or close we are from that. In 2000, the year 2000 was 26 years ago. Since then, we have iPhones, we've had we have Netflix being what it is right now, we have the Amazons being what it is right now, we have the brick and mortar stores that aren't here anymore, we have the malls that were there in 2000 that are barely there in 2026. These are things that some of us, most of us, if not all of us, can put a timestamp on and say, wow, that seemed so long ago, but really, not really. And with all that going on, there's something else happening too. People are getting quiet, and not just like not checked out quiet, not like I don't give a fuck, or defeated quiet. It's like a different type of quiet, it's it's borderline intentional. You see it in small ways at first, like people taking breaks from their phones, spending more time alone, looking for something that just isn't more digital input or input in general, and then you see it at a different or bigger scale. The younger generation, especially, is starting to turn more inward. The mediations, the meditations, the spirituality, the reflections, community, but not the kind driven by performative shit. Like the real shit, the real shit that's like grassroots and generational and stuff that we should have been, some of us should have been learning from our elders. That and our elders could have, should have been learning it from their ancestors, but due to other generational things may not be happening, may couldn't have happened. And I'm not blaming anything in particular for that, but these are reasons. And so now this generation that we have, they're unlocking that, and they're trying to, you know, I would say they're trying to better understand it than maybe my generation or the generation before me probably wanted to or actually could have done. And and it's not because somebody told them to do it either, it's because something in them has hit a limit. And like there's there's a threshold for noise, and it's crossed for them. They're like, okay, this can't be real. There has to be something other than this rigor moreau shit, this nine to five shit, this white picket fence shit, this American pie, American dream, whatever type of somebody else's dream type of shit, because they see that it ain't gonna be for them. We above them, the generation above them, some of us are just now seeing it ain't for us either. But instead of asking for more stimulation, they started looking for whys. And at the exact same time, you've got serious scientists starting to explore ideas that sound a lot like things that people used to call crazy. Questions about consciousness, about whether it's just a byproduct of our brain or something more fundamental. There is research out there suggesting that awareness might not just be simple as neurons firing. That that that observation itself, that like attention, might actually play a role in how reality takes shape at its most smallest levels. And and I'm not saying it's proven, I'm not saying that it's it's a fact or it's settled, but the fact that it's actually just being asked seriously right now is super fucking dope. Because those ideas have probably existed forever, existed forever in philosophy, in in meditation, in spiritual practices, forever, and then they were just brushed off as something other than what it was supposed to be. It was brushed off as, you know, some witchcrafty shit or some unproven shit or something that wasn't above the norm of belief of certain systems. And now in some corners of science, they're actually being looked at again. And and not as as crazy shit, but actually as some type of possibility. So you've got this convergence of happening right now. One side is the political systems, the institutions, the global events that feel increasingly unstable or incomplete. Right. And then you on the other side, you've got uh the cultural shift where people are stepping back and getting quieter and asking the different questions, the real shit questions, the what the fuck is going on questions and what am I here for questions, not the questions of what am I gonna cook for dinner? And not saying those questions aren't important because they definitely are, but just saying the act of just asking different fucking questions is a sign that things are happening, and then on another side of it, science is pushing into territory that starts to overlap with ideas we thought were separate from it. All of this shit is happening at once, same time, same world, same people, and we're experiencing it in pieces, one story at a time, one headline, one clip, one post, but no one really zooms out all the way and just says, This is a fucking lot, and it is it's so much shit to process. It's a lot to hold in your head at the same time, it's a lot to hold in your heart at the same time, it's a lot to hold at your spirit at the same time, and maybe that's why we just don't do that. Maybe that's why we just sit and scroll, and then in the next thing, in the immediate, we just scroll some more, and then we just can we're content with that because that's where that security or safety may or may not be. But the full picture, looking at the full picture of all the shit that's going on right now, is some disorientating shit, and it doesn't even you can't even fix it clean. It doesn't come with a simple explanation or a clear direction or destination on what actually to do with all of this shit that's going on right now, anyway. It just fucking is, and maybe that's the point of it all. Not to convince anybody to do anything, not to push a specific interpretation, just to just to notice this shit is going on all at the same fucking time, and to sit with it for a second longer than you normally do and just to think about it, to acknowledge that this time we're in, this moment that we're in, this simulation that we're in, this whatever, this matrix that we in, whatever it is, it's it's It's not ordinary. This might be the actually the one of the strangest periods to be alive in right now with all of the things we got going on. And not just because of one single event, all of the things. But because how many different conflicting, unresolved things are happening all at the same time, and how quickly we're expected to adjust and adapt to all of them. It feels so fast. So acceleratedly fast. Like something that used to take decades to happen. Like, oh, these these people were beefing with these people, and then this this was signed, and this didn't happen, and then then that would go on for decades. That shit is sometimes now happening like in weeks, months, days, hours. And maybe we don't need to have an answer for why how fast it's happening. Maybe it's enough to know at least that it's happening, it's happening all so fast right now, just for clarity. Without just trying to figure to put it in a box or put it in a category, and without forcing it into a narrative that makes it feel more manageable than what it actually is. Like all of these mental gymnastics of things is just crazy. And the raw, unfiltered version of it is even not worse, but it's just even more crazier. A world where officials say things that would have sounded impossible 10 to 20 years ago. Like, could you imagine um Clinton after he said, I did not have sexual relations with Ad Like, whatever. After he said that, and I am not suicidal. If he would have said that, how many fucking people's tops would have blew up that day? Literally, because why at that time would he have said that? And then the people would have just lost it, because at that time nobody would say anything like that on that type of scale. We live in a world where massive injustices are visible and nothing happens to them every day, where technology is blurring the lines between real and artificial, and where people are quietly starting to turn inward and learning what's going on with them inside and how to protect their peace and their community inward instead of outward. And and where science is starting to ask questions, it used to say, nah, we're not even going to tolerate those kind of questions because that can't be real. Scientists are actually trying to say, oh, okay, well, you know what? It's 2026. Shit is crazy. Your idea might be the thing to do, so let's do it. All of that shit is layered together right now. And if this isn't a strange as fuck moment that we are existing in right now, I don't know what is. But guess what? It doesn't have to be a clean ending for everybody. We're all existing right now as is if it's new, because it is. For us, it's all new for us. Unless whoever someone might be listening right now, this is their second or third time here. And if it is, why are you here again? Are you here to save us? Are you here to help us? If so, if so, I need you to do better. Because if this is your third full trip here in this particular instance, you are glutton for punch punishment, and we need to have a conversation. But no takeaway ties it all together in a way that makes it feel resolved anyway, because somebody is always gonna feel as though they aren't compensated properly. And use the word compensated as you see fit. I'll end it just to say this pay attention, and not just in the reactive way, not in the stay stay updated way, in the deeper sense of it. Notice what's happening and notice how it feels because whatever this is, we are in this together, and it might be worth actually being present for it. Alright, that's enough of my rant for this episode. I appreciate each and every one of you hanging with me, and I hope you all have a great rest of your day. Peace.