Architects of Resilience: Building a Sovereign Life

Power doesn’t always shout; sometimes it withholds. From war zones to welfare offices to prison yards, access to food and essentials becomes a quiet lever that bends behaviour and buys compliance. We connect the dots between historical starvation tactics, modern shutdown brinkmanship, and the everyday pressures of debt, credit, and rising costs that keep so many stuck in survival mode. The pattern is old because it works—meet fewer basic needs independently, and the easier you are to move on a political chessboard.

We don’t stop at analysis. I share a grounded blueprint for becoming a harder target, starting with financial sovereignty: reducing and eliminating debt that dictates choices, diversifying income streams with practical skills, and using both local and digital channels to create optionality. We explore community sovereignty through mutual aid, rotating support, and real relationships that stand whe

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Chapters

• 0:00 Sleepless, News, And A Heavy Heart
• 3:35 Food As Control: A Pattern In History
• 8:50 Drones, Wars, And Media Narratives
• 12:35 Welfare Leverage And Punishing The Poor
• 17:15 The Old Playbook: Starvation Tactics
• 22:40 Bully, Victim, And Moral Paradox
• 27:10 Shutdowns, Prisons, And Power Over Hunger
• 33:20 Maslow, Survival Mode, And Control

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Hi there Lita, goddess of growth, thank you so much for joining me. It's 2054, my eyes are puffy, I am really ready for bed. I've had some long nights, often finishing work after 12, occasionally after 1, starting back again for another long day, working to help keep the wolves away from the door whilst attempting to build my own sovereign business. I took time out this evening to watch the news. I don't watch it frequently. I tend to read the articles online from as many sources as possible. I would say I am dismayed. I remember the young girl within going to school and loving, attending history sessions and observing the atrocities that happened way back when. And it seems I am here to witness it in my own lifetime. What can I say? Across history and into this year 2025. It seems to me those in power consistently use access to food, safety, and economic survival as a tactical tool to control populations, break dissent, and force political compliance. Recognizing this pattern, I believe, is the very first step to building a life that is immune to it. Many, many years ago, well probably not so many years ago, actually, I was having a conversation with a friend that ended up in prison for a short time. And I remember them telling me a story that they were offered food, and uh they were with a couple of others that had entered the penal system at the same time, and he, having experienced fasting, chose not to take it. And I was curious as to why, because often food is something that we share with each other as a way of bonding, connecting, and he explained to me, his instinct told him if he was to take food from anyone, he would end up owing them. And he then broke it down that that could also include sexual favours. He didn't have funds or family support outside to be able to pay for anything that he consumed, so he managed his wants accordingly. And now, when watching the news today, the conversation has been brought home. What can I tell you? The headlines are interesting, the news is interesting, and you know, a memory from being a child of questioning why people are not doing any more is coming almost to haunt me. The news presented a number of articles, one of which I saw with regards to how the war in Ukraine is developing. I saw young people that were apparently using drones as one would see young people playing computer games. I never liked the computer games in the first place. To me, all that gore was unnecessary, but to think that actually people are really using drones in such a way as if it is a game and targeting humans in the process. It's a sight to see. And I understand what we're seeing on the news aren't isolated events. What we're seeing is only a tip off the iceberg. It's the latest chapter in a long, dark history of mankind. I heard and I read this week the US shutdown ended or had signs of being ended. Not before, of course, the threat of food aid and food stamps being withdrawn from people in need. Imagine food for the poor was being used as a political pawn. What's new? In the UK, often the ones that feel it most are the ones that's most vulnerable. When cuts are made, it's the poor, those on benefits, those that can't do much more for themselves that's the first targeted. Because apparently, regardless of the amount of wealth that there is, it's the scroungers of society that's causing the great debts in society, they seem to say. And all I can think of this evening before bed, oh dear, is the history books, the stories that as a young child I could not truly fathom or believe, even though teachers were showing us reels of history in classrooms, images of food being taken from the poor, yeah, Bolkovich style, reading about Waifra and the Volga region, and in our most recent history, watching a documentary about Svebronica and seeing the men hurriedly going to get food and telling us they only had minutes to collect what they wanted to eat. Yeah. And at that time we thought it looked bad, but there was so much more going on behind the scenes. The playbook has not changed. The stories keep changing, but it's as if humanity is not learning, and we keep doing the same and the same and the same. We've got the pattern from the battlefields to the ballot boxes, and I suppose I should not expect anything different because the same people making decisions in politics are the same ones that's going out to war or sending people out to war. The tactic of starving out the opposition is a universal tool of control. We're connecting the dots here. We've got the history of the war in the nineties, right? Nineteen hundreds, nineteen hundreds, the nineteen twenties. I remember watching the video clips of when communism came in and the army was seizing grain to break resistance and seeing grown men, elderly men, grandfathers, great grandfathers on the screen sucking their thumbs, they were so hungry. And then we had a cameraman using the old reel taking pictures. I'm so glad that they did because we wouldn't have had any evidence of it. But we don't have to look that far to see those kinds of acts take place time and time and time again. Modern geopolitical actions using blockades and control of aid in contemporary conflicts. We look at Israel on Palestine, and I don't care who one thinks is right or wrong, there's no one that can look at those images of complete devastation and wiped out of land communities and think that's right. And to me it's so lopsided because we've had a life of being shown images as to what happened in the Second World War. But you know these things we're taught them in our families, in our peer groups, in our schools. It's often the case bullies become or behave as victims, and victims become or behave as bullies. It's cyclical. We sometimes forget who is the bully and who is the victim. The parent that will bully the child eventually, you know, it's like a cyclical behavior pattern. But ultimately, when you're looking on a judgment call is like what is fair and what is right? A colleague of mine many years ago asked me a question and I've never forgotten it. Can what is right ever be wrong? And can what is wrong ever be right? And that would be an ongoing question. I look from the UK at the US shutdown leveraging the poor's need for food, food stamps to force a political vote. And then I reflect back on the Alabama solution, the documentary I watched just a week or two ago. We look at the penal system, and I will tell you what's happening in that prison is happening in a prison worldwide. Worldwide. Show me a country that doesn't have a prison service that has some element of what we saw in the Alabama prison, I would be very surprised. Just like the issue with mental health care is the same worldwide. Or lack of. And the first thing to go, the first thing that was to help divide and conquer was the removal of food. And as hunger struck, that food was used to break the strike, and leaders were put into solitary confinement. This is happening in our family homes. I think of nights where I was under punishment having to hold up my foot, waiting till the morning or as many hours as possible to acknowledge my punishment. This is an issue for humanity that has gotten used to de-humanizing humanity in many ways: parents, fathers, uncles, cousins, family, friends, peers, those that we work with, those that we answer to, many of whom we find have deep insecurities, using our moment of vulnerability to exert some level of power. Why is this so effective? Well, it works because it targets our most primal layer. As a child, I studied sociology, psychology, and even within my degree, it was mentioned, it's come to my attention again as I was sitting down trying to put what I wanted to say into this podcast together. We're going back old school, and for those who know, you know, our most primal layer has been identified many, many years ago as part of Maslow's hierarchy. Our very core need for security and sustenance is being used against us time and time again, decade after decade, century after century. My goodness, it's difficult, isn't it, when our needs are not being met, to actually get that courage and that drive to fight for what might be seen as abstract ideals such as freedoms or our rights, especially when you're concerned about where your next meal will come from, how you will be housed, how you will keep the lights on, keep warm. The strategy has worked so well, it keeps us busy. Busy being busy trying to make sure that our basic needs are met. And they're never truly met because the energy going into working to get those needs met is dismissing the whole structure designed to keep us busy, attempting to fulfill those needs, whilst true freedom remains elusive. The strategy is designed to reduce humans to a survival state. You know, we are here capable of higher level thought and living and coming together as a collective, it does become possible. Until we do that, we will continue to be the pawn in this story, the rich man's philosophy of life, the politician's philosophy of life. This is not a debate about rich or poor. We came onto earth to create, to create according to our greatest desire, not compared to anyone else, but according to how our souls want us to evolve. Until we are free to do so, the poor and the imprisoned continue to be treated as pawns because in these moments their basic needs are more powerful to the politicians than their votes are or their voices. You know, their but their hunger becomes a bargaining chip. As we've seen this week with this US lockdown. Now I am not fully aware of the politics in the US, I will declare that. But the headlines still are stark and shocking. And I think about the many that attempted to use their food stamps whilst stores prevented them from shopping. And who knows how many went without food in this time. I also remember when the pandemic hit in 2020, and I saw that people were afraid to touch money because they thought they was going to get COVID, and I saw how the elderly were going to the store with their coins and cash and being told that they were not able to spend their cash money to buy food. I thought it was just so surreal, and there's a lot of that time that I haven't actually fully processed. The pandemic, I often tell others, didn't really affect me as it did most others. You know, that was the time I managed to sell my home and buy a home, I managed to start working from home. It was quite a good time for me, but that doesn't mean that I wasn't observant of those that were suffering around me. Oh the illusion of freedom, right? How are we different from anyone in a prison other than we have the freedom to open and close our own doors? I have more freedom than most. Some are with family members that's very you know giving so much pressure on the mind physically, emotionally. Because home is the place that we'll all treat as a sanctuary, right? The place to go to to shut out the world. But what if when you go home, even there you have no space to have a free and calm mind? But if you are one that's able to determine the energy in your home, that can make you feel a sense of freedom for sure, can it not? But even this concept on its own it reveals that for many our freedom is conditional. It is conditional on being able to afford even to have a space. Years ago, a friend's mother told me one should always have a room as a minimum that they have a key to, that they can open the door and go in and shut the world out. I didn't fully understand what she meant until many years later. There are some that don't even have a box storage unit to be able to open and just sit down and relax their mind. Our freedom lasts as long as we can afford the rent, mortgage, food, utilities. When access to those basics are politicized, we see that our autonomy is fragile. And isn't autonomy linked to the very freedom that we seek or believe that we have? How autonomous are the lives that we are living? How are they? How free are they? But in truth, we are in a modern prison of our creation, and we easily say the West has it better than wherever else. But I know some people in so-called third world countries that have freer lives than many in the West. I know people in the West that own land and house, they do not pay a lease, the freehold is fully theirs, all they need is a little bit of money for food and basic utilities. Whereas we would need to be here and work many hours for similar privilege and still not own anything. I remember watching someone on a social media and they spoke about their whole journey of wanting to go to the US. They were living in Africa, quite a middle class family, and when they got to America they couldn't understand how the majority of the houses that they were staying in by friends and family, yes, they had mortgages on them, they didn't own them. So people were going to work just to lease, rent, the accommodation, their cars that they were in. It's a shift in thinking for sure. So our freedom lasts only as long as we can afford to purchase the items around us, particularly in the West. And for those that have, a lot of them have not in other areas. The flexibility of finding an income to help them create the life that they would like to create in this lifetime. We live in a system where credit, low wages, and debt can become our jailers. I've spoken before about this idea of the median salary, the median income. I've never seen it personally. And there's many in society that never experienced the median salary that they mention, but we're here surviving. The doors might be open, but if you can't afford to step outside, are you truly free? I used to hear of America and desire to be there. That was the land of opportunity. I cannot remember exactly which age it was that my mind changed. And I know many people are spending so much money getting them involvedselves involved in all kinds of things to get to the UK. And I wonder if they understand that when they arrive, life is not what they think it's going to be. The time that they make any of the money that they think they'll be able to make, it will not be able to live the life that they came here to live. Mind you, there are people in houses that have the house but have no money for food, and there's no government or service to provide for them. So maybe on that basis, even arriving and staying in a hotel or in a six a room of six other people and families, you're being fed, so it's better than nothing. Desperation, not freedom. So the sovereign response? How do we opt out of this game? Well, you know what? Evidently, centuries upon centuries, life isn't changing, right? We keep making the same mistake. We cannot always change the system's tactics, but you know, we can make ourselves harder targets. We need to think about how we can start building independently and collectively. We need an antidote. We need to think about what strategic independence is all about. No more concerned about what the government is going to give to us. Because there's definitely strings attached, right? We're looking at financial sovereignty, diversifying our income. And when we talk about diversifying our income, finding things in our home, finding things locally that we're able to barter and provide, like the old days when people exchange services. But we've got the digital age now, so if you're not able to connect locally, you can connect nationally and hopefully internationally. We're looking at diversifying our income, building skills that are in demand. My personal journey at this time is to reduce and eliminate debt. I do believe, especially in the West, debt reduction, debt elimination is the key to freedom. It makes us less vulnerable to economic blackmail from all those above. We're looking at community sovereignty, building real local, and digital communities. We're looking at having systems in place which offer mutual aid and support, so no one is solely reliant on a fickle and ever-changing state. And it starts with the small things being in a position to provide one-to-one services, being in the position to guide others based on past experience, and having an open mind to try new things. There's many that's getting left behind in the digital age because they refuse to use mobile phones, computers, and so. Not everybody has the mind for it, but if you have the mind, For it, and you've never done so, test it out now. I spoke the other day of an article which mentioned the honest box using a QR code for people to pay that way. There are ways that we can adapt the things that we do to better suit this age. Food sovereignty is important. My own body at the moment is still quite inflamed, my choices being the wrong choices, and I think when you're short on funds, that can be a reason as well to just kind of do the wrong thing. My downfall was reintroducing milk into my diet. I think a little milk is okay, but the way my face is swollen at the moment, I have actually had to eliminate it again. Um yeah, but small steps, growing herbs, supporting local farms, all of these activities can reconnect us to the source of our sustenance, and you know, we'll be able to manage our allergies as well. Make sure that we're not just reliant on industrial systems. Many years ago I was travelling in from Brumley to Lewisham or Catford, and I noticed the bus was stalling. I was on the bus, and what had happened was all the power had gone out for that stretch. And I remember the shops had basically closed. People were not able to go in and shop because the shopkeepers, I suppose, were afraid that they didn't have their CCTV or their tills that they could use to take money and sew. And it made me wonder what happens if there's like a complete blackout? Does that mean that we don't get any food? We can't shop. They're not something that our politicians can use as political bargaining tools. Our empowerment is our own ability to decide how best we are going to thrive. Our ultimate goal is to be free enough to choose our politicians not from our wants and needs, or best shall I say, not from our needs, but from our wants. Now listen, we are having a choice, right? We can continue to be the perpetual victims of all of these cycles in life, or we can choose to become architects of our own resilient lives. History will look back at 2025 and see the same patterns. Are you seeing it? The question it will ask, What did you do when you saw it? Our answer can be we stopped being pawns. We built our board, we secured our own food, our own income, our own community, and we chose sovereignty. Join me. You'll be listening to Lita. Bye bye.