Psychological Armageddon

Is Anyone Listening?

I’m offering you something profoundly original. Radical. Countercultural.
And I’m making myself feel lonely doing this.

As if I’m shouting into a canyon
that only echoes my own voice back—
and maybe a few rare, remarkably curious and courageous souls.
Thank you!

My sense? This isn’t landing.

I want to connect. I want to capture your attention.
I want to give something that changes lives and watch it catch fire.

It hasn’t. Not yet.
Not in the way my inner compass tells me it should.
Yes, I said “should.”

So what am I shouting about?

I’m shouting about a shift—one that could change your life, your relationships, your inner world. A shift in the way you use your attention, your language, your emotions. A shift out of confusion and into clarity. Out of performance and into presence. Out of suffering that looks normal but isn’t necessary.
But how do I get your attention?

A wake-up call

Sometimes, when I work with couples—which I’ve done for more than 30 years—I find that insight and empathy aren’t enough. They’re listening, but they’re not hearing. They’re nodding along, but they’re still in the trance.

So, I search for a question—a wake-up question to get their full attention. Most of them are experienced in therapy. They’ve read their share of self-help books. They’ve built an internal vocabulary that sounds insightful. They know how to listen politely. They say the right things before defending themselves.

But, they’re in a kind of trance—telling stories they’ve told before, explaining behaviors they’re not going to change, making promises about how they’ll grow, someday soon. They mean well. I see their potential. I love them.

They say they love each other.
And maybe they do.
But their behavior undermines their own narrative.

There’s tension in their voices. Too many words to know what they’re really saying. Or not enough words.

After a while, when I’ve heard enough—when I’ve watched the repetitive choreography play out—I interrupt. Usually, the man, because he’s the one who thinks he’s in control.

And I ask: “Have you ever hit your wife?”

It lands like a shock.

He looks at me, startled.
“No,” he says. “Of course not.” He wouldn’t do that. He controls himself.

And she jumps in—like clockwork:
“I wouldn’t be with a man who did that.”

They’ve drawn a line. A moral boundary. A clear stance against violence. Good. That boundary matters. But then I keep watching.

I hear stories that supposedly justify poor behavior. I see them formulating responses when they might be better off just listening. A flash of reactivity. A complaint about what did happen a long time ago, or what didn’t happen that “should” have happened.

“I already apologized for that.”

“I know you did, but I just don’t want you to forget.”

“How could I with you continuously reminding me.”

So no, he hasn’t hit her.

But he wounds her. With volume. With timing. With disbelief. With unkept promises.
And she wounds him, too. With retreat. With doubt. With a reminder of what he said but didn’t do.

It’s not physical violence.
It’s psychological wear-and-tear.
Exhaustion by a thousand moments of unconsciousness.

This isn’t an outlier. This is what too many modern relationships look like. Even the ones who go to therapy. Even the ones who read the books and say all the right things.

They’ve outlawed physical violence. But they’ve left the door wide open to emotional erosion.

What’s acceptable and what’s not?

My question serves as a wake-up. They usually realize that they don’t use physical violence because they’ve created a boundary that says it’s unacceptable. They start to consider if they should move some other behaviors from the acceptable column to the unacceptable. They start to see the power and choices they have. They are waking up.

That’s one way to wake someone up.
But what about you?

What can I ask you or say that will help you wake yourself up and realize there is a different way to live? To live without reactivity, defensiveness, blame, and fatigue from carrying the past into the present.

You think that’s unrealistic?

The limits of OS2

If you think living that way is unrealistic, it’s because you’re still in OS2. That’s shorthand for the psychological operating system that we’ve all grown up in.

OS2 is the water we swim in. It’s the language of blame, defense, projection, performance. It rewards cleverness and insight but rarely demands actual change. It tells us to be self-aware, but not self-responsible. It helps us explain our wounds, but not stop living from them.

In OS2, people understand more and change less. They talk about their feelings, but still hold other people responsible for them. They get really good at noticing what their partner is doing wrong and better at making a case for their own behavior. They talk about triggers and trauma and boundaries, but they keep walking the same loops, decade after decade.

I’m not dismissing trauma. Some wounds require special care. Some patterns have deep roots. But the fact that we have been hurt does not mean we must live hurt. Healing doesn’t need to take a lifetime. Some people spend twenty years processing the same pain, not because it’s that deep, but because their operating system doesn’t allow for closure.

There’s another way

It’s called OS3. This is a new psychological operating system.

This is the foundation of SAGE. It’s not a technique. It’s not a diagnosis. It’s a shift in the way you use your mind, your language, your attention. It teaches you how to live without projection. Without blame. Without needing praise. Without mistaking emotional drama for truth.

In OS3, you recognize that every feeling you have is manufactured by you. Not caused. Created. That means you have power. Not the kind that controls others, but the kind that sets you free.

This is not a spiritual bypass. It’s not about suppressing emotion. S.A.G.E. is about becoming fluent in your own experience—so fluent that you stop confusing your story with reality. And once you get that, you stop arguing. You stop defending. You stop looking to other people to make you okay. You know how to do that yourself.

You can learn the basics in a week.
You can get skillful in a month.
Proficient in six.
And you can live the rest of your life in a different state of consciousness.

But most people won’t.

They say they want peace.
But they keep choosing drama.
They say they want growth.
But they keep clinging to the past.
They say they want connection.
But they refuse to give up being right.

There’s a scene from The Newsroom I can’t get out of my head. Season 3, episode 3. A man from the EPA is being interviewed about the climate crisis. The news anchor keeps pushing the man to hear some hopeful message. He wants the guest to tell the public it’s not too late. That we can still fix it.

But the man doesn’t lie.

He calmly explains that we’ve passed the point of no return. That the systems are collapsing. That we waited too long.

When I heard that, I thought: That’s what this feels like to me—trying to share a psychological lifeline while people keep sprinting toward collapse. People seem to be caught in scroll loops, consuming more than reflecting, and clinging to self-help models that feel right—but don’t work.

I’m trying to help people see what they’re doing to themselves, to their relationships, to their children. Causing harm, not with carbon. With language. With reactivity. With projection and judgment and all the unconscious reflexes that OS2 makes seem normal.

Is anyone really listening?

Why do I care? Because it’s the ache of carrying a gift that could ease so much pain. I’m not looking for credit or kudos. I didn’t invent this alternative way of living. Hannah and I inherited it from John and Joyce Weir, two people who spent decades trying to give this away, sharing it with a few thousand people over several decades. When they met us, they thought we were the ones who could carry it forward. For a while, I thought so too.

And now? I’m not sure. I’m not done, but I’m wondering how to get your attention in a world full of noise. If you’re listening, say something.

I’m thinking of cutting back on these SubStack articles. Maybe I’m writing too often, too much, and becoming part of the noise.

If you want to engage with us, we’ll do another call this coming Tuesday that will be broadcast on YouTube. You can ask questions via the chat. We recommend downloading and reading the free S.A.G.E. Blueprint before joining the call.

Click here to download the S.A.G.E. Blueprint.

Click here to join the upcoming call: Tuesday, August 19^th, 9:00 AM Hawaii, 12:00 PM Pacific, 3:00 PM Eastern.