“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion.” — Noam Chomsky
They marched under one banner—No Kings—across over two thousand U.S. cities. The chants echoed: Democracy, not dynasty. People over billionaires.
And for a moment, it felt like something real. Unity. Purpose. A mass of people moving as one. That matters.
But here’s the thing: marches don’t dethrone kings—votes do. Not the kind fed to us by billionaire media or corporate-funded parties. But the kind we carve out ourselves, with calloused hands and clear eyes.
Because if the system crowns kings disguised as candidates—red tie or blue tie—then we haven’t abolished royalty. We’ve just rebranded it.
Let’s be clear: this isn’t about shaming the other half of the working class. The ones who didn’t show up. The ones who don’t trust any of it.
They aren’t the enemy. They’re the evidence.
Evidence of a rigged system that leaves most Americans disillusioned, exhausted, and priced out of participation.
“Transparency is for those who carry out public duties… Privacy is for everyone else.” — Glenn Greenwald
Then here’s the catch: protest is ignition, not the engine. Activism fades. If you’re not moving toward real political power, the system just waits you out.
“A system unable to stop this must be very sick indeed.” — Matt Taibbi
We’ve seen this before. In Occupy, in anti–Iraq War protests, in the George Floyd uprisings. They all said something important—but without sustained, organized follow-through, the system waited us out.
Protest is the ignition. Organization is the engine.
This moment is only a spark—unless we stop waiting for permission to lead ourselves. No kings. No puppets. No more billionaires pulling the strings.
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Wisdom is Resistance
🎬 Scroll-Friendly Version This article was reimagined as a visual essay — watch the reel below.
Protesting is better than nothing. But it’s not enough. Not anymore. Real change doesn’t come from chants alone. It comes from organized labor, grassroots movements, and political power built outside a two-party system that’s fully captured by billionaires and the military-industrial complex. No kings. No puppets. No excuses. #NoKings#GeneralStrike#BeyondTheBallot#fyp#currentevents#ProtestArt
The playbook hasn’t changed. The targets just keep getting poorer.
This time, it’s Los Angeles.
June 2025. Trump bypassed the state and federalized the National Guard, sending them into LA under the guise of “public safety.” The mission? Remove unhoused people from public land. Sweep the evidence of systemic failure under armed boots and branding slogans.
They called it a cleanup. They called it necessary. They always do.
We’ve seen this before.
New Orleans after Katrina. Standing Rock. Ferguson. Every time the system collapses under its own weight, it turns violent—
Not against the cause of the collapse, but against those left standing in the rubble.
This is Disaster Capitalism 101:
Exploit a crisis.
Militarize the response.
Clear the land.
Sell it to developers.
Repeat.
It’s not governance. It’s asset management—by force.
You can’t police away poverty. You can’t evict despair. But you can train the public to see poverty as a threat, and sell the solution as “safety.”
Language is a weapon. So is silence.
This isn’t public service. This is class war.
Wrapped in press briefings. Backed by rifles. Packaged for voters. Profitable for real estate.
What’s happening in LA isn’t new. It’s just the next move.
Displacement ≠ Safety Militarization ≠ Care Silence ≠ Neutrality
anarchyjc.com | Anarchy Journal Constitutional
Wisdom is Resistance
🎬 Scroll-Friendly Version This article was reimagined as a visual essay — watch the reel below.
I thought I had to wait until I was ready. But the truth is, readiness comes after the return — not before.
The act of beginning again is itself the practice — not a flaw in the process, but the process. We tend to think of starting over as something reserved for mistakes or failures, as if it’s a sign we’ve strayed off course. But what if beginning again is actually the most honest course we can take?
Every breath is a reset. Every day we wake up alive is a quiet invitation to try once more — this time with a little more clarity, a little more compassion, a little less ego. We are not meant to stay in motion uninterrupted. We are meant to pause, to question, to recommit. To begin again is not weakness. It’s wisdom.
This idea — that beginning again is not a detour but the path itself — is something the Stoics understood deeply. To them, each moment was a fresh opportunity to align with reason, virtue, and the present.
“You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think.” — Marcus Aurelius
The urgency here isn’t morbid — it’s motivational. It’s a call to reset with intention, without needing a grand reason. Just the present moment is reason enough. Focusing on what I have control over, in the present moment, and then taking action with a sense of urgency is a balanced approach to life that Stoicism has brought to my attention many times.
Where Stoicism urges us to meet the moment with discipline, Taoism invites us to meet it with ease. If the Stoics offer a firm hand on the tiller, the Tao offers an open palm to the wind.
“Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.” — Lao Tzu
There’s wisdom in allowing our return — our beginning again — to unfold naturally, like water finding its path downhill. Taoism helps to take the weight off our backs and reduce the pressure we put on ourselves.
Taoism teaches us to flow, but Buddhism teaches us to see. To see the moment clearly, without clinging or resistance. In the Buddhist view, every beginning is just part of the great cycle of arising and passing away. The breath in. The breath out. There is no need to carry the weight of yesterday when the present is already enough.
“Each morning we are born again. What we do today is what matters most.” — Buddha
These ancient philosophies of nature and simplicity feel more vital than ever in a world shaped by constant productivity, curated identities, and hustle culture. Internally and externally, we’re pressured to do more, be more, and prove our worth through performance.
That pressure often leads to stagnation, analysis paralysis, and burnout. But revisiting these timeless teachings — ones that predate democracy and capitalism — offers calming reassurance. It reminds us that what we’re feeling isn’t failure. It’s human. And it makes beginning again feel not only acceptable, but natural.
Returning to the present — the Stoic, Taoist, and Buddhist invitation to simply be — also finds support in modern psychology and neuroscience. Where ancient wisdom speaks in metaphors and mantras, contemporary science offers data and neural pathways.
Dr. Andrew Huberman often reminds us that real change begins not with motivation, but with action. Tiny, repeated actions reshape the brain through neuroplasticity. So even when the mind says, “Why bother starting over?” the body can respond, “Because this is how we grow.”
Science may explain how we change, but philosophy still asks us why. Why return to a craft, a calling, a version of yourself you once abandoned?
The answer, I’ve found, is rarely logical. It’s personal. It’s emotional. Because I’m a person and people aren’t logical, we are emotional beings.
Sometimes it’s a whisper — other times a reckoning. But whatever shape it takes, it’s a form of recommitment. Not to some imagined perfection, but to the values and curiosities that make us feel most alive.
“You’re under no obligation to be the same person you were five minutes ago.” — Alan Watts
All of this — the philosophy, the science, the stillness — eventually brought me back to something simple but easy to forget: the quiet power of recommitment. Not a dramatic restart. Not a brand-new version of me. Just a returning.
A choice to keep showing up, to remember what matters most, and to walk toward it again, even if slowly. I’ve realized it’s not about being perfectly consistent. It’s about being consistently willing to try — to give whatever effort you have in you, in the moment.
There will always be reasons to delay the return — doubt, fear, the feeling that we’ve waited too long. But the truth is, we don’t need permission to begin again. Not from others, and not even from our past selves.
The beginner’s mind is the bravest mind. The moment we choose to return — to a habit, a purpose, a part of ourselves — we’re already on the path. Whether it’s through meditation, journaling, movement, or simply pausing to take a breath, there are so many ways to come home to yourself. Whichever path you take, just know this: beginning again doesn’t make you a beginner. It makes you human. It makes you brave.
It can be offputting to hear the concept that the past is nothing more than thoughts in our heads. We know it happened. Often, we have physical proof that it happened. But when it’s over, where does the past exist in the present moment?
For many of us (myself included) our past exists in the present through the stories we tell ourselves in our heads. We turn a singular experience into a defining trait. We do this by repeating a narrative to ourselves and the world, over and over.
“The soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts.” — Marcus Aurelius
Our memory of the past and how we think and feel about ourselves in the present are shaped by the stories we tell ourselves and others about it. For better and for worse, this creates a self-fulfilling prophecy. For many, it creates a vicious circle that, without awareness or action, can become destiny disguised as fate.
“We become what we think about all day long.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
It isn’t the past or even the self-talk stories about the past that are the problem; rather, our attachment to them is the problem. The first time I got a whiff of attachment as the root of all suffering was listening to the audiobook version of A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle. That was about a year or two before I started habitually doing guided meditation practices. I can remember not wanting to get out of my car in my university’s parking lot because I was so mesmerized by what I was hearing.
“The root of suffering is attachment.” — Buddha
Unfortunately, hearing and reading the concept didn’t create a miracle-epiphany-cure all. It danced around in my head for a minute before exiting stage left and being drowned out by habitual thoughts and emotions in the other direction. But I can still remember sitting in that parking lot to this day. So it’s fair to say that at least a seed was planted that day.
Repetition is key to learning. We need to hear, see and do things repeatedly for them to stick. That is why the stories in our heads become our destiny. We repeat them more times than we could ever possibly count. It is also how we let go of the old stories and define ourselves by what we do in each present moment. Repetition.
I had to hear and read about the concept of attachment as the root of suffering repeatedly but also phrased differently. I’ve gravitated to Stoicism, Buddhism, and Taoism over the years because I feel that many of their core principles overlap. Amor Fati and Wu Wei. Letting go of attachment and choosing to focus on what is within your control. I feel like before I learned these principles my life was all yin and no yang or vice versa.
Journaling can create mental space. It does this by getting our thoughts, emotions, and self-talk onto paper. We can use meditation to cultivate awareness. We can also tap into the wisdom of ancient philosophies and spiritual practices. They have helped people with our issues for thousands of years. A gratitude practice can help us habitually think positively. It can also boost our mood and beliefs.
With enough consistent, focused execution we can create new narratives for ourselves because we will be living new lives. Maybe externally everything may look the same. But our experience of the world is from the inside out.
I have had to challenge myself constantly to journal, to be more mindful, and to be more grateful. To shift focus from the external to the internal. From the past to the present. From the negative to the positive. And it is a challenge, but it is a challenge worth undertaking. Why? Because habitualizing these practices allows us to begin again infinitely.
“When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change”- Max Planck
An open mind can seem like a vague term. Yet closed-minded is very succinct and easy to understand. It can be confusing to learn that openness to the world is the key to finding what we seek in life. But it is straightforward that being closed-minded towards the world is to live a limited, suffocated life.
“The mind is everything. What you think you become.” — Buddha
I find myself in a battle against being closed-minded regularly. Some practices that help me keep my mind more open than closed are:
Reading philosophy
Meditating
Studying humanism
Journaling
Practicing yoga
I have cultivated enough awareness to at least know the concepts of open vs closed-mindedness which I am grateful for. I still have much work to do to keep myself open-minded in moments of test and choice, but then again, who doesn’t?
“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.” — Albert Einstein
Having an open mind generally involves curiosity, willingness to learn, and embracing new experiences. For me, I find having an open mind correlates with positivity, productivity, or at the very least neutrality regarding thought, perception, emotion, and action. Day to day if/when I find myself slipping into negative or detrimental thoughts, perceptions, emotions, or actions; there is a good chance I’ve concurrently slipped into closed-mindedness.
I feel like being closed-minded is the default setting in our human nature. Hard-wired into us as a survival mechanism from caveman times. It also seems like we are becoming more closed-minded in the algorithm-dominated modern world of digital echo chambers and rage-bait. An open mind is a rich soil for evolution and growth. A closed mind is a rich soil for egocentric withering.
“The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
Thankfully, fostering an open mind is simple, easy, and completely within our ability to control. This is nice because living can be complex, difficult, and at the mercy of external situations enough as it is.
Mindful breathing exercises
Guided meditation
Journaling
Getting out into nature
The above list are some of my go-to’s that have been very helpful and enriching for me. But in the name of micro-tasking, start by just trying any small, simple new thing or by doing something you already do just a little bit differently.
Starting with our existing routines and habits, even the most mundane ones, is a practical way to open our minds. Try holding items with a different hand, eating breakfast for dinner, taking a different route to work, or watching a foreign film with subtitles. These small modifications can be surprisingly effective first steps toward a more open-minded perspective.
“Change the way you look at things and the things you look at change.” — Wayne Dyer
We need to be more open-minded. The world needs more open-minded people. Being open-minded is the foundational paradigm for learning, connecting with people, discovering new opportunities, and living a fulfilling and meaningful life.
It’s simple but not easy because we are going against the grain of human nature. It’s natural to be closed-minded when we already have what we need to survive. But we don’t want to just survive, we want to thrive. Regardless of our definition of what thriving is to us individually, the first step on our path there, begins with having an open mind.
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