One of the defining failures of our time is our inability to compartmentalize facts, events, and ideas once intense emotion takes hold. When identity and worldview fuse with fear, anger, or moral certainty, nuance becomes impossible. Everything is filtered through a single lens, and anything that does not conform is rejected; not on its merits, but on what it threatens.
We saw this clearly during COVID. Legitimate, dissenting viewpoints; some of which later proved accurate, were dismissed alongside objectively false claims and painted with the same broad brush of “misinformation” or “disinformation.” No distinction was made. Nuance was suffocated because it challenged mainstream narratives. And when time revealed that not all dissent was wrong, we moved on without accountability, reflection, or repair.
We saw the same pattern during the trucker protests. We see it daily in the context of global unrest. Complex realities are flattened into caricatures. Right and wrong blur, not because the truth is unknowable, but because acknowledging it would require discomfort, humility, and restraint.
Instead, many resolve their cognitive dissonance by accepting convoluted or disingenuous interpretations that reinforce their existing worldview. This creates a dangerous confidence, a cocksureness rooted not in truth, but in narrative convenience. Identity becomes primary. Truth becomes secondary.
Those who have been marginalized by this phenomenon; or who have simply witnessed it long enough, have come to recognize that we are living in an upside-down world. A world where wrongdoing is justified through language, optics, and intent, while what is right is buried beneath distractions, name-calling, and deliberate mischaracterizations.
Mark Carney’s recent remarks about a “rupture” and the fictional world we’ve been living in were sobering precisely because they came from a figure within the system. At some point, reality demands to be acknowledged. The problem is that too many people are deeply invested in their fiction, having consumed factional narratives for so long that allegiance matters more than accuracy. Flags are waved first; facts are consulted last.
We are entering a dark period where people are slowly being forced to pick sides, adopt cartoonish perspectives, and reduce everything to “us versus them.” There is no room for nuance in such a framework, only loyalty tests. As a result, we lose the voices of the sane and elevate the most polarizing extremists to battle other extremists, each reinforcing the other’s existence.
We also live in a world where one of the most successful and reliable businesses is war and destruction, where profits are reinvested into more war and more destruction. Victims, understandably traumatized, often lose the ability to distinguish between friend and foe, further perpetuating cycles of violence and dehumanization.
Dwight D. Eisenhower warned the American people about this trajectory before leaving office. If you listen closely to his farewell address, you can hear not just caution, but a quiet hopelessness, an awareness that the warning might be acknowledged but not acted upon.
What is needed now is not louder rhetoric, but reflection. A pause. A serious review of what we actually stand for.
I hold the view that behaviour and action ultimately supersede thoughts, words, and identity. What we do matters more than what we claim to believe. We were once under the illusion that humanity had evolved beyond its past, yet our behaviour increasingly resembles that of our medieval or even Neanderthal ancestors. We claim to despise evil, yet have little trouble committing it when we believe our cause justifies the means. Evil is no longer recognized as such; it is dressed in fine language, polished narratives, and moral posturing.
If humanity is to survive, if we are to avoid destroying ourselves at the hands of lunatics, maniacs, and unchecked systems, we must unite under a set of basic, non-negotiable social contracts. We must be willing to revisit right versus wrong without reservation, without factional loyalty, and without fear of standing alone.
Reality does not bend forever. Eventually, it asserts itself. The question is whether we will face it willingly; or be forced to confront it through collapse.
