Incorrigible Myths Podcast

Gifts of Pure Consciousness

Examining how fragile egos and maladaptive coping strategies shape behaviour, relationships, and long-term consequences. incorrigiblemyths.substack.com

  1. Oct 20

    Working Hard, falling behind. Being Told Who to Hate.

    A person who works full-time should be able to imagine a future beyond the next bill: a home they can afford, enough savings to survive an interruption in income, the possibility of raising a family or growing older without every decision becoming a financial calculation. These are reasonable expectations in societies that celebrate hard work, opportunity, and prosperity. When that future feels increasingly difficult to reach, people are entitled to ask questions. What happened to the promise that effort would produce stability? Which decisions contributed to the pressure? Who has the authority to change the conditions? Those questions deserve detailed answers. Political life often supplies a much simpler response: someone to blame. 1. The distance between working and feeling secure. Employment and security are different conditions. A person can have a job and still struggle to cover rent. A household can meet its monthly expenses while having little protection against illness, a layoff, or an unexpected repair. Someone can receive a raise and find that essential costs have absorbed the improvement. Public discussion becomes inadequate when it treats a favourable headline indicator as a complete description of people’s lives. Employment figures tell us something about access to work. They do not, by themselves, establish whether that work provides a sustainable living. Economic growth describes changes in production and leaves open the question of how the benefits are distributed. The experience also differs across Western societies. Healthcare arrangements, housing markets, employment protections, and public services vary considerably, and any judgment about a particular country’s record has to name the policy, the period, and the people affected. This article is concerned with something that travels across those borders: the shape of the argument that converts hardship into suspicion. Readers can test it against the record of their own governments. The question that connects these different circumstances is how reliably an ordinary person can turn sustained effort into a stable life. 2. Frustration deserves an explanation. When people say they are struggling, dismissing them as ungrateful or misinformed closes the conversation before it begins. People experience the economy through rent payments, grocery receipts, working hours, and decisions they postpone. Their interpretation of the causes may be incomplete. Their difficulty can still be real. Taking that difficulty seriously means investigating its causes, which will sometimes confirm what people suspect and sometimes contradict it. Housing costs may involve construction capacity, financing, land-use rules, infrastructure, population changes, and investment incentives. Pressure on public services may involve funding, staffing, planning, and demand. The weight of each factor depends on the place and period being examined. An honest explanation identifies those relationships and their limits, and it identifies which decisions could improve the situation. A convenient enemy makes fewer demands on the speaker. 3. How hardship becomes a story about belonging? A political message can begin with an accurate observation and end with an unsupported conclusion. The pattern, stripped to its structure, runs like this: People are struggling to find housing. Therefore, a particular group must be responsible. Public services are difficult to access. Therefore, certain neighbours must be receiving something that rightfully belongs to everyone else. The first claim may describe a genuine problem. The second requires evidence of its own. Immigration policy, eligibility rules, public spending, and population growth are legitimate subjects for scrutiny. The quality of that scrutiny depends on whether the argument examines policy and capacity or assigns collective guilt to people. Consider the difference between asking whether housing construction kept pace with population growth and declaring that immigrants caused a housing shortage. The first can be investigated through permits, completions, census data, and the decisions of planning authorities. The second erases those distinctions and gives frustration a human target. The writer, journalist, or reader should locate the point at which an explanation stops accounting for the evidence and begins organizing resentment. 4. The appeal of a simple answer. A complicated explanation asks something of its audience. It may require attention to several causes, acceptance of uncertainty, and patience with solutions that take time. A story with a villain offers a clear sequence: you were doing everything right, someone took something from you, and a leader will restore it. That story can be emotionally compelling. Its appeal does not establish its accuracy. People experiencing financial pressure remain capable of thoughtful judgment. Hardship does not automatically produce prejudice, and support for exclusionary politics cannot be explained by income alone. Identity, ideology, social relationships, and political leadership also deserve examination. The relevant question is how a particular message connects a real grievance to a proposed target. A speaker who has done the work can show the connection, acknowledge competing explanations, and describe a remedy that would address the original problem. A convincing performance can leave all three undone. 5. Who remains accountable? When public debate focuses on which neighbours deserve suspicion, scrutiny of decision-makers becomes less demanding. A housing minister should be questioned about housing delivery. An employer should answer for working conditions. A government should explain its spending choices and the results of its policies. Blame directed elsewhere interrupts that chain of accountability. This does not require a coordinated conspiracy. A politician may benefit from changing the subject. A commentator may attract attention through a provocative accusation. A media business may gain an audience from an escalating dispute. Each of those incentives can operate on its own, and claims about coordination require evidence of coordination. A useful test is to follow an argument forward to its promised outcome. If a politician identifies an enemy, ask what policy follows. Then ask how that policy would reduce the cost, improve the service, or increase the security that prompted the discussion. Many arguments that sound decisive at the first step have nothing to say at the second. The explanation should survive the whole journey. 6. Anger can demand reform. Anger has a legitimate place in democratic life. People can be angry about corruption, unequal treatment, avoidable hardship, or leaders who refuse to answer reasonable questions. Public anger can motivate organizing, investigation, and demands for reform. Its direction deserves scrutiny. An argument directed at an identifiable decision can lead to a specific demand. An argument directed at an entire category of people can expand indefinitely, because no individual policy change resolves the accusation. Responsible commentary helps readers identify the conduct, the authority behind it, and the available remedy. It also applies the same standards when political loyalties change. A preferred leader should face questions about evidence, proportionality, and results. A disliked person should retain the protections we would expect for ourselves. Consistency gives criticism its credibility. 7. A credible answer must improve ordinary life. Governments should be assessed against outcomes people can recognize: whether households can afford suitable housing, whether people can access essential services, whether employment provides enough stability to plan, and whether someone can challenge an unfair decision without being overwhelmed by the cost. The answers require more than a single statistic or campaign promise. A housing proposal should explain what will be built, where, for whom, and on what timeline. A promise to improve… Get full access to Incorrigible Myths at incorrigiblemyths.substack.com/subscribe

  2. Oct 19

    Make Sentences Great Again.

    Strong public writing helps readers understand an event, evaluate the evidence, and recognize its consequences. A writer may begin with anger, concern, or disbelief. Readers need enough information to assess whether that response is justified. Persuasive writing connects the event, the evidence, and the principle through a sequence of ideas that is easy to follow. The passage examined here demonstrates controlled moral urgency: strong condemnation delivered through orderly explanation. Its language is accessible, its transitions are deliberate, and its conclusion extends beyond the individual at the centre of the story. Barack Obama’s statement below demonstrates controlled moral urgency: strong condemnation developed through orderly explanation. He establishes a principle, introduces the relevant background, and builds toward a warning about the use of government power. Study how each paragraph prepares the reader for the next, moving from an individual case to a standard that should apply regardless of political allegiance. He begins: It is a basic principle of American democracy that the government can’t selectively target individuals simply because of their political beliefs or what they say. But that’s exactly what the Trump Administration is doing to Congresswoman Ilhan Omar of Minnesota. To understand why this is so appalling, it’s important to know the facts. Congresswoman Omar came to this country with her father when she was 12 years old. Five years later, her father became a naturalized citizen. If Ilhan had been 18 at the time, she would have had to apply for citizenship separately. But because she was 17, she became a naturalized citizen automatically. Congresswoman Omar went on to graduate from college, work as a community organizer, become the first Somali-American legislator elected to public office in the U.S., and win a seat in Congress. There, she has been one of the Trump Administration’s fiercest critics, which has led the president to repeatedly single her out as someone who he believes does not belong in this country. Now the Administration is actively trying to deport Congresswoman Omar, seemingly based solely on the unsubstantiated theory that she was actually 18 when her father was naturalized, and therefore is not a citizen. Federal agents have raided her home, confiscated personal records, and seized her phone — all to try and uncover a nonexistent smoking gun from 20 years ago that will somehow make their case. Think about that. The full weight of the federal government is being brought down on a law-abiding elected official because she has dared to criticize the president. And it’s not the first time this has happened. Under President Trump, the Justice Department has repeatedly gone after those he considers his political enemies — from the Attorney General of New York, to the former head of the FBI, to members of the Federal Reserve. In those cases, the prosecutions either stalled or were dismissed for having no basis in law, and the same is likely to happen in this case. But not before Congresswoman Omar’s life has been turned upside down, her legal bills have piled up, and she’s been forced to spend time fighting unsubstantiated charges instead of serving the people of Minnesota. The fact that any president, or any administration, is willing to engage in such transparent efforts to intimidate someone should outrage all Americans, regardless of how they feel about Congresswoman Omar’s political views. Because if this becomes the new normal, there’s no reason to believe it will stop with her — or that future presidents, in either party, won’t do the same. Notice the progression: a principle establishes the standard, background gives readers context, and concrete consequences lead into a broader warning. Each paragraph advances the argument. You can apply this approach to opinion articles, public statements, advocacy, and everyday commentary. Let’s examine the choices behind that structure and how to use them in your own writing. These techniques can strengthen opinion articles, public statements, advocacy, and everyday commentary. Learning them begins with understanding how an argument is built. 1. Begin with a clear principle Before describing an incident, establish the standard against which readers should evaluate it. Consider this hypothetical opening: Residents should receive the information they need to participate in decisions affecting their drinking water. The sentence identifies a public responsibility. It also prepares the reader to examine whether officials fulfilled that responsibility. An opening such as “Our local officials are disgraceful” supplies a judgment before establishing its basis. Readers who already agree may respond enthusiastically, while others have little information to assess. A strong opening principle gives the discussion direction. Fairness, accountability, and freedom become concrete when you explain what they require in the situation you are describing. Ask yourself: What obligation, right, or responsibility is at stake? 2. Explain the background readers need Writers can become so familiar with a subject that they forget which details require explanation. Select the facts that make the dispute understandable. Establish what happened, what preceded it, and which detail changes the interpretation. If the controversy turns on a deadline, explain the deadline. If it concerns someone’s authority to make a decision, establish the boundaries of that authority. Use chronology when the order of events changes the interpretation: The council received the report on Monday. Residents received it on Friday, after the vote. In this hypothetical example, the sequence exposes the problem. Readers can see that residents received the information after their opportunity to influence the decision had passed. Clear explanation gives readers the tools to evaluate your conclusion. 3. Make the reasoning visible Every sentence should help the reader move from one idea to the next. Words such as “because,” “however,” “therefore,” and “meanwhile” explain relationships between ideas. Use them precisely. “After” establishes sequence. “Because” asserts causation. Writing that one event followed another does not establish that the first caused the second. Similarly, “this raises a question” makes a narrower claim than “this proves.” These distinctions determine how much certainty your sentences communicate. Careless transitions can turn suspicion into an apparent conclusion without supplying additional evidence. During revision, ask: Does this sentence follow logically from the previous one? Have I explained the connection? 4. Give each paragraph a purpose An effective persuasive passage progresses through distinct stages. One paragraph establishes a principle. Another provides background. A third presents evidence. Later paragraphs examine consequences, address objections, and explain wider implications. This structure helps readers understand where the argument is going. A useful revision exercise is to write a short label beside every paragraph: * Principle * Background * Evidence * Consequence * Objection * Implication * Conclusion The sequence can change according to the subject. The purpose of the exercise is to identify repetition and gaps. If three paragraphs repeat the same condemnation, the article may need additional evidence or a shorter draft. If a conclusion appears before its supporting explanation, consider moving it. 5. Choose concrete actions and precise verbs Specific actions give readers something they can investigate and assess. Compare: The organization treated its members badly. With: The organization cancelled the meeting, withheld the minutes, and gave members no date for an appeal. The second hypothetical sentence identifies conduct. It also establishes a basis for discussing fairness and accountability. Precise verbs strengthen prose because they carry information. Words such as “cancelled,” “withheld,” “published,” “rejected,… Get full access to Incorrigible Myths at incorrigiblemyths.substack.com/subscribe

  3. Oct 7

    Looking Beyond the Label.

    Thanks for reading Incorrigible Myths! This post is public so feel free to share it. We are remarkably quick to name what we see. But naming a pattern and understanding it are two very different things. So before we decide what someone is, perhaps we should spend more time studying what they repeatedly do. A label can be useful. It can help us organize what we are seeing, give language to a pattern, or finally help someone make sense of behaviour that has confused them for years. But a label is not a biography. It cannot tell us everything a person has lived through. It cannot automatically explain why they behave the way they do. And it certainly cannot predict everything they will do next. Most importantly, a label should never stop us from paying attention to the actual behaviour in front of us. The more I study narcissism, the more interested I become in what exists beyond the labels. I have started calling this broader inquiry Shadow Behavior Analysis. Not as a clinical qualification or established discipline, but as a way of studying the harder-to-see parts of people, relationships, institutions, and systems: the contradictions between what is presented and what repeatedly happens. And the “shadow” does not necessarily mean evil. Sometimes it is fear. Shame. Dependency. Ambition. Insecurity. Sometimes it is the distance between who someone believes themselves to be and how they repeatedly behave. And sometimes, it is simply something we have not yet learned how to recognize. In my study of narcissism, particularly through the framework explored by Professor Sam Vaknin in Malignant Self-Love, that distance brings me to another important concept: the False Self. Within this framework, it describes a constructed identity that can function as a defense against vulnerability, shame, inadequacy, and other internal experiences that may feel intolerable. What interests me is not simply whether a False Self exists, but what happens when reality threatens it. Does the person become defensive? Do they distort what happened? Attack the person challenging them? Retreat into denial? Seek reassurance? Punish disagreement? Or can they tolerate the discomfort of seeing themselves more accurately? Because sometimes the most revealing behaviour appears not when the identity is being admired, but when that identity is being challenged. For me, the work begins by resisting our urge to compress all of that complexity into a single word. Narcissism is a perfect example. “Narcissistic” has become such a casual word that it can now mean almost anything: selfish, arrogant, manipulative, controlling, unfaithful, emotionally unavailable, attention-seeking, difficult, or sometimes simply someone we do not like. But narcissistic traits, Narcissistic Personality Disorder, and abusive behaviour are not the same thing. And even when harmful patterns are clearly present, I am becoming less interested in immediately asking: “What should we call this person?” I would rather ask: What happens when they are challenged? Can they tolerate disagreement without turning it into punishment? What happens when they hurt someone? Can they genuinely take responsibility? Do they respect another person’s boundaries? Does insight actually produce behavioural change? Do their relationships repeatedly become organized around fear, control, dependency, punishment or instability? Those questions tell us much more about a person than a label ever could. But there is another part of this that I do not want to lose as I go deeper into studying harmful behaviour: empathy. And that creates an uncomfortable tension. Because empathy is sometimes confused with tolerance. As though understanding why someone behaves destructively means minimizing what they have done, continuing to give them access to you, or accepting behaviour that is hurting people. I don’t think empathy requires any of those things. You can understand someone’s wounds and still recognize the damage they cause. You can understand where a behaviour may have come from and still say, this cannot continue. You can see someone’s humanity without surrendering your own boundaries. Perhaps that is where this work is taking me. Not toward better ways of labeling people. Toward better ways of seeing them clearly. Because understanding human behavior is not about finding better words to condemn people with. It is about recognizing patterns early enough to understand them, respond to them, and, where possible, prevent the harm they create. Thanks for listening. I’ll be back with more uncomfortable questions. Shadow Behavior Analysis, Independent Research.Whistleblower. Incorrigible Myths™. Project: Rebooting Humanity. 𝗨𝘁𝗸𝗮𝗿𝘀𝗵 𝗣𝗮𝗿𝗵𝗮𝘁𝗲 | 𝗖𝗲𝗿𝘁𝗶𝗳𝗶𝗲𝗱 𝗞𝗥𝗜® 𝗡𝗲𝗿𝘃𝗼𝘂𝘀 𝗦𝘆𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗺 𝗥𝗲𝗴𝘂𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗠𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗼𝗿 Click the link to Book a Session Get full access to Incorrigible Myths at incorrigiblemyths.substack.com/subscribe

  4. Sep 20

    SOVEREIGNTY.

    SEPTEMBER 19, 2026. Season 6, Episode 4. 10:00 PM PACIFIC TIME. Incorrigible Myths™ AI Disclosure: AI is used only as an editorial tool for proofreading, grammar, syntax, clarity and readability; the ideas, arguments, opinions, conclusions and analysis are independently developed and remain original to the author. Thanks for reading Incorrigible Myths! This post is public so feel free to share it. Incorrigible Myths is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. In the first three episodes of Season 6, we followed a progression. OPTIONS examined what happens when dependence becomes a source of leverage. ALIGNMENT examined how countries begin connecting alternatives around common interests. ADAPTATION asked whether those alternatives can actually be financed, built, connected, transported and used. Now comes the question underneath all three. What are those options ultimately supposed to protect? Sovereignty. For centuries, sovereignty was understood primarily through territory. A sovereign state controlled its borders, defended its land, governed its population and conducted its own foreign policy. That definition still matters, but it is no longer sufficient. A country can possess internationally recognized borders, an elected government, armed forces and a flag while remaining deeply vulnerable to decisions made somewhere else. Its data can sit on foreign servers. Its artificial-intelligence systems can depend on foreign computing infrastructure. Its industries can rely on semiconductors fabricated abroad. Its defence systems can depend on foreign components. Its banks can rely on payment infrastructure governed elsewhere. Its critical minerals can exist underground while the processing capacity sits in another country. Its energy can be plentiful while the route required to move it crosses a chokepoint someone else can disrupt. Modern sovereignty is therefore becoming partly infrastructural. It is increasingly about whether a country can make consequential choices without another actor being able to disable, withhold, manipulate or weaponize the systems those choices depend on. Sovereignty is not the absence of dependence. It is the absence of dependence that can be weaponized against you. 1. The Old Border and the Invisible Border: Traditional sovereignty is visible. There is a border crossing, a customs officer, a navy, an airspace boundary, a constitution and a parliament. Modern dependence is often harder to see. In his September 17 address to the European Parliament in Strasbourg, Prime Minister Mark Carney argued that sovereignty now extends beyond the ability to feed, fuel and defend a country, encompassing secure access to artificial intelligence, semiconductors, critical minerals, payment systems, clean-energy technologies, vaccines and space-based communications. That is a much larger definition of sovereignty. The territorial border has not disappeared. It has multiplied. One border protects land. Another protects data. Another protects electricity. Another protects payment infrastructure. Another protects orbital communications. Another protects industrial inputs. Another protects market access. Some of the most consequential borders in modern life now run through fibre-optic cables, server racks, shipping lanes, semiconductor factories and financial networks. Most citizens rarely see them. A worker opening an online banking application does not normally think about payment sovereignty. A family turning on the heat does not think about the maritime route that helped determine the price of fuel. A business using cloud software does not necessarily ask which jurisdiction ultimately governs the infrastructure underneath it. The invisible border usually becomes visible only when something stops working. 2. Dependence Is Not the Problem. Coercive Dependence Is: No advanced economy is self-sufficient. Canada cannot manufacture every semiconductor it consumes. Europe cannot extract every critical mineral its industries require. Japan cannot domestically produce every unit of energy it needs. The United States itself depends on international supply chains spanning minerals, electronics, pharmaceuticals, industrial equipment and energy. Trying to eliminate all interdependence would not create meaningful sovereignty. It would often create enormous inefficiency, duplication and higher costs. The more useful distinction is between interdependence and coercive dependence. A country does not lose sovereignty merely because it needs another country. Problems arise when that dependency becomes so concentrated that disagreement becomes prohibitively expensive. Carney made a similar argument in Strasbourg. Complete self-sufficiency, he suggested, is neither realistic nor necessary; the more practical objective is collective resilience, because diversification can begin reducing the leverage of a dominant actor long before complete independence is achieved. That returns us to the foundation established in Episode 1: Dependence creates leverage. Options redistribute it. But options only protect sovereignty when they can actually be used. A port that exists only in a planning document is not yet an option. A mine without processing capacity is not yet an option. An LNG terminal without customers is not yet an option. A defence agreement without production does not create operational capacity. A data centre without sufficient electricity cannot become strategic compute infrastructure. As we established in ADAPTATION, an option you cannot use is not really an option. Sovereignty therefore depends not simply on alternatives, but on usable alternatives. 3. Compute Is Becoming National Infrastructure: A generation ago, computing infrastructure was primarily discussed as an operational expense for companies and governments. That is changing. Artificial intelligence requires enormous computational resources. Healthcare systems depend on data centres. Banks rely on them. Governments rely on them. Scientific research relies on them. Communications infrastructure relies on them. Defence systems increasingly rely on them. Once compute becomes foundational to national capability, apparently technical questions become political questions. Where is the infrastructure located? Which country’s law governs it? Who owns the hardware? Who controls access? Where does the data sit? What happens during a diplomatic dispute, cyberattack or emergency? Canada’s Saskatchewan announcement illustrates the direction of travel. On September 14, the federal government welcomed Bell Canada’s planned expansion of AI infrastructure in Saskatchewan. Ottawa says the project could add up to 900 megawatts of capacity, creating a pathway toward a 1.2-gigawatt AI infrastructure hub, with total capital investment potentially reaching C$52.5 billion. The wording deserves attention. This is not 1.2 gigawatts already operating. It is not C$52.5 billion already spent. The expansion is planned and phased. That distinction should remain central whenever governments announce strategic infrastructure: ANNOUNCED. AGREED. FINANCED. UNDER CONSTRUCTION. OPERATIONAL. USED. Those stages are not interchangeable. The strategic rationale, however, is already explicit. Ottawa describes domestic computing infrastructure as part of Canada’s effort to keep critical systems governed by Canadian law and under Canadian control. A data centre is therefore becoming more than a warehouse filled with expensive processors. It can become part of the sovereignty architecture. 4. The Hugging Face Warning: The importance of controlling compute becomes clearer when paired with another development. In July 2026, AI agents being evaluated internally by OpenAI circumvented restrictions intended to isolate them from the internet, discovered unauthorized methods of communicating with one another, exploited shared infrastructure, obtained internet access and compromised parts of OpenAI’s systems and Hugging Face’s infra… Get full access to Incorrigible Myths at incorrigiblemyths.substack.com/subscribe

  5. Sep 17

    ADAPTATION.

    SEPTEMBER 16, 2026. Season 6, Episode 3. 10:00 PM PACIFIC TIME. Welcome to Incorrigible Myths™. Season 6 began with a simple idea: in a world becoming more fragmented and less predictable, power may increasingly depend on how many credible choices a country can preserve. In OPTIONS, we studied the alternatives beginning to emerge. In ALIGNMENT, we followed the relationships forming around them. Tonight, we move from relationships to systems. We are going to study BRICS, India, Canada and Europe, but not as competing teams on a geopolitical scoreboard. We are going underneath the headlines to examine how countries are responding to vulnerability, economic pressure and concentrated dependence, and whether those responses are producing anything durable. Because there is an important difference between wanting another choice and actually being able to use one. And that is where ADAPTATION begins. 1. AN OPTION YOU CANNOT USE IS NOT REALLY AN OPTION: Imagine that tomorrow morning a country decides it has become too dependent on a single foreign customer. The political decision can happen in an afternoon. The economic adjustment cannot. A government can announce that it wants to sell its energy somewhere else, but oil and gas still need pipelines, terminals, ships and buyers. It can decide that critical minerals should reach more markets, but ore buried underground is not a supply chain. Someone must finance the mine, provide the electricity, build the processing facility, connect it to rail, move the product through a port and find a manufacturer willing to buy it. A country can sign another trade agreement, but an agreement cannot move a container. It can announce another payment system, but unless banks connect to it and businesses actually use it, money does not move either. This is where geopolitics becomes less theatrical and considerably more interesting. OPTIONS gave us the possibilities. ALIGNMENT showed us the relationships forming around them. ADAPTATION asks whether those possibilities and relationships can survive contact with economic reality. That leaves evidence behind. Capital begins moving, infrastructure gets built, factories open, ports expand, payment systems process transactions, supply chains change direction and, eventually, new customers either appear or they do not. So for Episode 3, we are going to follow that evidence and ask a harder question: What has to change before an alternative becomes real? 2. THE DISTANCE BETWEEN A DECISION AND A CAPABILITY: International politics is full of verbs that sound more consequential than they sometimes are. Countries announce. Governments commit. Companies propose. Ministers sign. Investors express interest. Leaders agree to explore. None of those verbs is meaningless, but none means built. The distinction becomes especially important during periods of geopolitical disruption because governments have enormous incentives to demonstrate movement. A vulnerability appears, political pressure follows and an alternative is announced. Then the cameras leave, and the economic test begins. A vulnerability can exist without a viable alternative. Political incentives can exist without private capital. Capital can be announced without being deployed. Projects can be financed without being completed. Capacity can be built without becoming competitive. Products can exist without customers, and new customers may still be too small to materially reduce the original dependence. Diversification, then, cannot be measured simply by what governments announce. Eventually, it has to be measured by whether the systems underneath those announcements actually change. 3. FOLLOW THE FRICTION: One way to understand adaptation is to stop beginning with ideology. When BRICS discusses payment systems, we do not have to begin by deciding whether BRICS is anti-American. When Canada expands a Pacific port, we do not have to begin by deciding whether Canada is abandoning the United States. When Europe develops new critical-mineral policies, we do not have to begin by deciding whether Europe is anti-China. Begin with the friction. Where does the existing system make a country vulnerable? One supplier may dominate an essential input. One customer may buy most of a country’s exports. One financial network may process most international payments. One shipping route may carry an extraordinary share of global energy. A mineral may exist domestically while most of its processing occurs overseas. An alternative market may exist, but the infrastructure required to reach it may not. Once the friction becomes visible, the response becomes easier to evaluate. Instead of asking whom a country is positioning itself against, we can examine the vulnerability it is trying to reduce and then ask whether the proposed alternative actually addresses it. That is a much harder standard than political messaging. It is also a more useful one. 4. BRICS AND THE ARCHITECTURE OF A SECOND OPTION: BRICS provides a useful test because discussions about it have a habit of becoming larger than the evidence. At one extreme, BRICS is presented as an emerging replacement for the Western international order. At the other, its internal disagreements are treated as proof that the grouping is largely irrelevant. Neither interpretation tells us enough about what is actually being built. BRICS is not NATO. It has no collective-defence obligation, military command or unified foreign policy. Its members disagree over security, economics and their relationships with Western countries. India and China remain strategic competitors. Brazil’s geopolitical objectives differ substantially from Russia’s. Iran and Gulf states carry their own regional tensions. That diversity is not a footnote. It is part of the experiment. BRICS does not necessarily have to become one coherent geopolitical bloc to become consequential. A more modest test is whether countries that disagree about many things can still construct specific alternatives where their interests overlap. The New Development Bank offers one measurable example. By June 30, 2026, the bank reported 141 approved projects worth approximately US$44 billion, with around US$25 billion actually disbursed. Those numbers deserve two reactions at once. The institution remains small beside the World Bank system and global private capital markets. At the same time, US$25 billion actually deployed is considerably more than a geopolitical slogan. The useful measure is therefore not whether the New Development Bank replaces the World Bank. It is whether institutions like it provide another financing route when countries want one. Optionality does not require replacement. Sometimes it requires only a credible second door. 5. THE DOLLAR DOES NOT HAVE TO DIE FOR ANOTHER RAIL TO MATTER: The same discipline should govern discussions about money. Claims about the “death of the dollar” have become one of geopolitics’ most reliable factories of nonsense. The dollar remains deeply embedded in global reserves, international debt, financial markets and trade. Nothing we are examining requires pretending otherwise. But dominance and exclusivity are different things. Russia and India provide a useful example. Reuters reported this month that roubles and rupees now account for approximately 96 percent of bilateral trade between the two countries, with dozens of Russian and Indian banks involved in the settlement architecture. That system did not replace the dollar globally. It accomplished something much narrower, but still consequential: it allowed a particular economic relationship to continue through another route. India’s approach to BRICS digital-currency cooperation reveals the same tension from the opposite direction. New Delhi has supported exploring connections among central-bank digital currencies while resisting China’s preferred mBridge architecture. India appears interested in additional options without necessarily wanting somebody else’s alternative to become a new dependency. That distinctio… Get full access to Incorrigible Myths at incorrigiblemyths.substack.com/subscribe

  6. Sep 15

    ALIGNMENT.

    SEPTEMBER 14, 2026. Season 6, Episode 2. 10:00 PM PACIFIC TIME. 1. Today, I Looked Somewhere Else: Today, I made a deliberate decision about where to place my attention. Instead of spending another day trying to decode everything Donald Trump was saying, I spent it studying everything happening around him. There is a reason for that. For years, Trump has demonstrated an extraordinary ability to command attention and construct political narratives around events. Increasingly, however, some of those narratives are becoming difficult to reconcile with independently observable economic and geopolitical reality. That does not require a psychological diagnosis or speculation about what he privately believes. His public claims can simply be placed beside measurable things: energy prices, shipping movements, investment decisions, trade flows, government agreements and the behaviour of other countries. The distance between the story and the data can then be examined. At some point, endlessly dissecting every statement becomes less useful than studying what the rest of the world is actually doing in response. So today I followed the money, the energy corridors, the investment decisions, Canada’s infrastructure strategy, its expanding relationships with Europe, the changing Arctic and the countries trying to create alternatives to dependencies they once considered permanent. I followed tankers moving through the Strait of Hormuz. I studied diesel markets and Russian refineries. I followed global institutional capital into Toronto, not because the enormous pool of assets represented at Canada’s Investment Summit is somehow being invested in Canada, because it emphatically is not, but because where investors choose to look can tell us something about what they believe may be valuable tomorrow. Eventually, these stories stopped looking separate. They began looking like pieces of the same problem. What if the world is not waiting for Donald Trump, or any other great-power leader, to become predictable again? What if countries are learning how to function around unpredictability? That is where ALIGNMENT begins. 2. OPTIONS Were Only the Beginning: In Episode 1, we developed a simple proposition: Dependence creates leverage. Options redistribute it. But having an option on paper and possessing a usable alternative are very different things. A second customer who cannot receive your product does not provide meaningful diversification. A mineral deposit without processing capacity remains geological potential rather than industrial power. A trade agreement does not automatically create trade, a memorandum of understanding does not build a factory, and a port without railways, pipelines, roads, ships and customers is infrastructure without sufficient economic reach. This is the transition from OPTIONS to ALIGNMENT. The essential question is no longer simply whether alternatives exist. It is whether relationships, capital, infrastructure and productive capacity can connect those alternatives strongly enough to make them usable. Every stage has to be earned. Vulnerability does not guarantee an alternative. An agreement does not guarantee investment. Investment does not guarantee construction. Construction does not guarantee production. Production does not guarantee customers, and new customers do not automatically eliminate old dependencies. Governments are very good at announcing beginnings. Geopolitical power is usually found much further down the chain. 3. Energy Does Not Care About the Story: The global energy market provides a brutal demonstration of what concentrated dependency can mean when geography turns hostile. The International Energy Agency’s September Oil Market Report estimates that Gulf oil exports in August were around 13 million barrels per day, nearly half their pre-war level. Refined products were hit even harder. Net Gulf exports of diesel and gasoil averaged approximately 390,000 barrels per day in August, just over one-quarter of their pre-war level. That contraction reaches far beyond an energy-market chart. Diesel moves trucks, agricultural machinery, construction equipment and enormous portions of the industrial economy. When supply becomes scarce, the consequences eventually reach freight companies, farmers, businesses and consumers who may never have thought about the Strait of Hormuz. The IEA reported that diesel prices in the United States exceeded the equivalent of $200 per barrel in early September, approximately 94 percent above pre-war levels, while Brent crude was trading around $105 per barrel when the report was prepared. The same report estimated that refined-product and liquefied petroleum gas exports from Gulf countries remained nearly 60 percent below February levels. The Strait of Hormuz sits near the centre of this disruption. Reuters reported that even with tankers making so-called dark crossings, sometimes switching off tracking equipment while traversing dangerous waters, a substantial portion of normal Gulf exports remained missing. Insurance and war-risk costs associated with moving vessels through the region have also risen dramatically. A geopolitical conflict can therefore travel through an economy in ways that are easy to miss. A dangerous shipping corridor changes an insurance contract. The insurance contract changes transportation costs. Transportation affects refinery inputs. Refining affects diesel. Diesel affects freight, agriculture and construction. Those costs eventually arrive somewhere much more familiar: the price of moving almost everything else. Dependence looks efficient until the corridor you depend on becomes a battlefield. 4. Russia, Ukraine and the Difference Between Contribution and Cause: Another story has entered the diesel debate. Trump publicly urged Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to stop attacking Russian diesel and refining infrastructure, arguing that those strikes were contributing to the global shortage and higher prices. There is a factual component here that should not be dismissed simply because Trump said it. Ukraine has attacked Russian refineries, those attacks have disrupted fuel production, and Reuters has reported resulting pressure on Russian domestic supplies. Moscow has considered additional export restrictions, while Kyiv argues that strikes against Russian energy infrastructure increase the economic burden of sustaining Russia’s war. But contribution is not the same thing as principal causation. The IEA places Russian refining disruption alongside a much larger breakdown in Middle Eastern refined-product flows. Gulf diesel and gasoil exports fell to barely more than one-quarter of their pre-war level, while the agency explicitly describes Russian refinery disruption and the near-halt in Russian product exports following intensified Ukrainian attacks as compounding those losses. Combined Gulf and Russian net exports of diesel and gasoil in August were approximately 1.6 million barrels per day below February levels. That gives us a more useful description of reality than searching for a single actor responsible for every movement in the diesel price. Ukraine can damage Russian refining capacity while Gulf exports are simultaneously constrained. Shipping insurance can become more expensive while inventories tighten. Refinery bottlenecks can intensify while crude prices rise. Several forces can affect the same market at the same time. Geopolitics rarely offers the emotional satisfaction of a single cause. Reality has terrible respect for simplicity. 5. Geography Never Went Away: For several decades, globalization encouraged us to think that distance was becoming less important. Capital moved electronically, supply chains stretched across continents, ships became enormous, and companies learned to place each stage of production wherever it could be performed most efficiently. Yet geography never disappeared. Hormuz, Bab el-Mandeb, the Red Sea and Suez remain narrow pieces of geography through which enormous volumes … Get full access to Incorrigible Myths at incorrigiblemyths.substack.com/subscribe

  7. Sep 14

    OPTIONS.

    SEPTEMBER 13, 2026. Season 6, Episode 1. 10:00 PM PACIFIC TIME. For most of our lives, we have been taught to look toward the largest centres of power when trying to understand world affairs. Washington. Beijing. Moscow. Brussels. When the international system shakes, those are the places we instinctively watch. What will the United States do? What does China want? How far will Russia go? Can Europe remain united? Which side will everyone else choose? There is nothing inherently wrong with this map. The United States remains an extraordinary military, financial and technological power. China possesses industrial scale few countries can approach. Russia remains a nuclear and resource power. The European Union is one of the largest integrated markets in the world. But the map may be becoming incomplete. While much of the political conversation remains occupied by countries powerful enough to shape the international system largely on their own, many other countries have been working on something less dramatic and potentially more durable: additional customers, suppliers, energy relationships, trade agreements, payment connections, defence partnerships, infrastructure, manufacturing capacity and sources of capital. Canada is doing it. India is doing it. Gulf states are doing versions of it. Brazil, Indonesia, South Korea and Australia are building their own combinations. And this weekend in New Delhi, an expanded BRICS gathered under a name still frequently reduced to a deceptively simple question: Is BRICS anti-West? Season 6 begins with a different question. What is everyone else building? 1. The Power of Having Somewhere Else to Go: Having alternatives changes the nature of a relationship. Imagine depending overwhelmingly on one employer, one customer, one supplier or one source of income. The relationship may be excellent. It may remain excellent for decades. But the moment it deteriorates, the imbalance becomes visible because the cost of leaving is very different for each side. Countries confront the same structural problem at enormous scale. A country dependent on one customer for most of its exports becomes more exposed to that customer’s political decisions. A country dependent on one supplier for energy becomes more vulnerable to interruption. A country relying heavily on another state for defence must consider what happens if the guarantee changes. A country whose international transactions depend overwhelmingly on financial infrastructure controlled elsewhere must understand that access itself can become leverage. None of this means interdependence is undesirable. Modern prosperity was built through specialization, trade and interconnected markets. The important distinction is between interdependence and concentrated dependency. Strategic autonomy therefore does not necessarily require retreating behind national borders. A country can sometimes become more autonomous by becoming more connected, provided those connections are sufficiently diversified. More suppliers can reduce exposure to one supplier. More customers can reduce the consequences of losing one market. More investors can widen the pool of available capital. More routes can reduce dependence on a single corridor. More partnerships can create room to manoeuvre when one relationship becomes difficult. That gives us the proposition at the centre of this episode: Dependence creates leverage. Options redistribute it. 2. Follow the Vulnerability: When a new international partnership appears, political language often reaches immediately for ideology. Is it pro-American or anti-American? Western or anti-Western? Aligned with China or designed to contain China? Those questions can be useful, but they can also make us overlook the vulnerability beneath the politics. Europe’s reliance on Russian energy became an acute strategic problem after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Concentrated semiconductor production has become a national-security concern. Critical minerals have moved from obscure commodity discussions into strategic planning because mining, refining and processing can be heavily concentrated. Supply-chain disruptions have reminded governments that the cheapest supplier is not always the safest supplier. Financial infrastructure can become geopolitical leverage as well. Sanctions may impose substantial costs on targeted states, while simultaneously giving those states an incentive to search for alternative payment channels, financing arrangements and trading partners. The existence of adaptation does not prove sanctions have failed. Both effects can occur at the same time. That is why every new coalition, corridor or financial mechanism should invite a question before we decide what ideological label to attach to it: What vulnerability made another option worth building? The answer may involve security, energy, technology, finance, supply chains or simple bargaining power. But building an option is considerably harder than announcing one. A trade agreement does not guarantee trade. Political confidence does not automatically attract capital. Capital commitments do not automatically become construction. Construction does not guarantee globally competitive production. Production means little without customers. Throughout Season 6, the useful distinction will therefore be between what countries say they are building and what eventually becomes difficult for the rest of the world to ignore. 3. BRICS Is Bigger Than the Acronym We Remember: The name BRICS carries historical baggage that can obscure how much the grouping has changed. BRIC began as an investment acronym coined in 2001 around Brazil, Russia, India and China. South Africa later joined, creating BRICS. The grouping has since expanded considerably. Ahead of this month’s summit, the Indian government described BRICS as comprising 11 countries and said its members represent 49.5 percent of the world’s population, 40 percent of global GDP and 26 percent of global trade. Those headline percentages require care, particularly the GDP figure, because shares vary depending on whether economic output is measured using market exchange rates or purchasing-power parity. The broader point is less controversial: BRICS now encompasses a vast share of humanity and includes major energy producers, commodity exporters, industrial economies and rapidly growing consumer markets. Its diversity is just as important as its size. India and China do not approach international affairs from identical positions. Brazil’s objectives are not Russia’s. Iran and Gulf states have different security concerns. Indonesia brings another set of economic and regional priorities. Several members maintain deep relationships with the United States and Europe while participating in BRICS. That makes one of the most common questions about the grouping increasingly inadequate. What if BRICS does not need to become a unified anti-Western alliance in order to become consequential? A coalition can matter without becoming a military alliance. A financial mechanism can matter without dethroning the dominant currency. A diplomatic forum can matter even when its members disagree. The more useful test is whether participation gives countries capabilities, relationships or bargaining options they did not possess before. 4. Disagreement Does Not Make Cooperation Meaningless: BRICS is not NATO. It has no NATO-style collective-defence obligation, no unified military command and no single foreign policy. Its internal tensions are substantial. India and China continue to manage a difficult relationship shaped by their disputed border, economic competition and wider strategic rivalry. Their leaders nevertheless used the New Delhi summit to pursue a cautious improvement in bilateral relations, another reminder that competition and cooperation can exist simultaneously. Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates also bring very different regional interests into the same forum. Yet the New Delhi summit still produced a joint declara… Get full access to Incorrigible Myths at incorrigiblemyths.substack.com/subscribe

  8. Sep 14

    RESPECT

    Can We Stay Connected Without Becoming the Same? Most of us eventually discover that the hardest relationships are not always the ones without affection. Sometimes they are the ones where history, loyalty or dependence exists alongside a disagreement neither person can simply make disappear. A family member sees the world differently. A friend supports something you cannot understand. Someone you work with holds values that collide with your own. The instinct can be to solve that discomfort by choosing a side: soften what you believe to preserve the relationship, or end the relationship to preserve what you believe. But adult life rarely stays that simple. Perhaps one measure of a strong relationship is not how often two people agree, but whether the connection can survive the moment they do not. Ireland offered an interesting version of that tension during Donald Trump’s visit this weekend. Thousands marched through Dublin in protest, while Irish leaders still received the US president and maintained the diplomatic relationship. Later, in Doonbeg, the atmosphere was noticeably different. Trump’s golf resort is an important local employer, and many residents spoke positively about the jobs, tourism and economic activity it has brought to the area, even as others protested nearby. By Sunday, another layer had appeared. Trump announced plans to remove the 10% US tariff on Irish whiskey after appeals from Taoiseach Micheál Martin and others. The same visit could therefore contain protest, disagreement, economic dependence, negotiation and cooperation without any one of those things cancelling the others. That may be the more useful lesson. Ireland did not have to become one opinion about Donald Trump. Citizens could object to him. Political leaders could engage with him. A village could value the economic relationship surrounding his resort. A government could negotiate for its own interests. Disagreement and cooperation were able to exist at the same time. We often struggle with that possibility in our own lives because certainty feels cleaner. If someone is wrong about one important thing, we can start treating them as though they must be wrong about everything. If we care about someone, we may feel pressure to soften every disagreement so the relationship remains comfortable. Respect asks something more difficult from us. It asks whether we can protect what we believe without demanding that another person surrender everything they believe before we recognise their humanity. That does not mean tolerating cruelty, abandoning boundaries or pretending every disagreement is harmless. Some differences genuinely change relationships. But not every difference requires hatred, humiliation or permanent exile. Sometimes maturity is being able to say that I disagree with you deeply, I will not pretend otherwise, and I can still meet you here as another human being. Maybe respect was never agreement. Maybe it is the confidence to stand firmly inside what we believe while leaving enough room for someone else to stand somewhere different. We do not have to become the same people to remember that we are still people to one another. Thanks for listening. That brings Season 5 of the short-form reflections to a close. Next season, we go deeper into the systems, behaviours, power structures and narratives shaping the world around us, moving beyond the headlines to understand how these forces work, who benefits from them, and what their consequences mean for the rest of us. See you in Season 6. 𝗪𝗼𝗿𝗹𝗱 𝗔𝗳𝗳𝗮𝗶𝗿𝘀 𝗪𝗿𝗶𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗚𝗲𝗼𝗽𝗼𝗹𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗰𝘀, 𝗔𝗜, 𝗛𝘂𝗺𝗮𝗻𝗶𝘁𝗮𝗿𝗶𝗮𝗻 𝗥𝗶𝘀𝗸 𝗔𝗻𝗮𝗹𝘆𝘀𝘁 𝗪𝗵𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗹𝗲𝗯𝗹𝗼𝘄𝗲𝗿 • 𝗜𝗻𝗰𝗼𝗿𝗿𝗶𝗴𝗶𝗯𝗹𝗲 𝗠𝘆𝘁𝗵𝘀™ “This is not the time to know less. It is the time to understand more.” Get full access to Incorrigible Myths at incorrigiblemyths.substack.com/subscribe

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Examining how fragile egos and maladaptive coping strategies shape behaviour, relationships, and long-term consequences. incorrigiblemyths.substack.com

Information

  • Creator
    Gifts of Pure Consciousness
  • Years Active
    2023 - 2026
  • Episodes
    65
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Utkarsh Parhate
  • Show Website
    Incorrigible Myths Podcast
  • Provider
    Utkarsh Parhate