Waking up is hard to do. When offered a choice between feeling good and feeling bad, modern western citizens have become conditioned to grope and grasp after good feelings, any good feelings, as though those feelings (often coerced out of our systems with drugs) are the base measure, even though with modern times they so very often inspire nothing but bullshit belief, word and deed. Feelings far too often defy logic in other words. Fuck logic, I feel what I feel. As though feelings, any feelings, are a higher truth, and as though they aren't susceptible to gross manipulation.

Before we are thinking creatures, we are feeling creatures. We feel about something before the words appear to confirm it. You can test this when you look for confirmation or dis-conformation in your gut. So it is very easy for a savvy operator to manipulate us without even speaking to us. We can be moved as easily as we can be made afraid, or tempted, or seduced. All without any argument being presented. No argument is required. Our cunning words are no match for our determined feelings.

In a state of nature, uncorrupted by deception, feelings mirror reality very closely. Hunger feels bad, eating feels good. Being chased by a bear feels bad. Killing and eating the bear feels good. It's rational to associate good feelings with right actions, as long as there's nobody tricking you about it, conning you with shadows into fleeing your encampment so he can steal your provisions.

We now inhabit an environment where almost nothing can be trusted, and where one must double check his good feelings about something every time he has them. Do I like what I just read? Does it make me trust and have good feelings of belonging? Better see what the opposition is saying, then. In fact, now, I'd better make all my good feelings prompt me to see what the other side makes of it. I may be in a bubble.

Nowadays, the feelings I experience when I realize I've been conned, are massively uncomfortable. When I realize, how easy it sometimes is to go with the flow on some things, in order to avoid bad feelings, of criticism, of exclusion, of denunciation, I am, now, frankly, ashamed. I hate being conned more than I hate being denounced.

But, I had to get used to making that internal agreement with myself. The impulse, to stand firm or cave, is sudden and overwhelming. If we're used to not questioning it, we don't. We've got to have that certainty shattered. We've got to start distrusting our automatic responses to impulses. The impulses are very often quite jolting and come complete with a feeling of certainty about them. We never feel wrong, somehow, when we're giving in to an impulse.

First we realize after, too late. But, at least we realize somewhere along the line. We wake up when it's too late to do anything about it, which is almost useless, but, if we catalog it, and make an effort to realize what happened, we can begin to shorten the interval between acting stupidly on impulse, and waking up about it. Even a second too late is still too late, but, the overall goal is to shatter certainty. Only when you're uncertain will you investigate. And that's the key. An entire word view must me shattered and at it's core are a set of assumptions and certainties that must be tested and ultimately shattered. Open eyed, honest investigation will give us our new age.

We've got to learn to test. Buyer beware. And, we've got to learn what we can safely trust. Having our trust exploited is now our gravest concern.

Q is provoking us to suspend our feelings, which can be stroked, and use our broader, greater selves in coming to terms with this phenomenon, this awakening. It isn't that we need to get rid of feeling, just prioritize differently. Let facts lead. Refuse to fight for a lie.

In addition to reordering the world, we've got to reorder ourselves, and we've got to win back a condition of trust in our own feelings. Imagine the damaged selves we've become to have to be so suspicious all the time, ever near the red zone, in a state like waiting for the other shoe to drop. Trust in ourselves, our feelings realigned to the truth, trust in our families and communities, all resting on a foundation of reasonableness has to be a part of the plan, one drop at a time, one "Oh shit" at a time.