There’s an old saying: “Treat people like mushrooms – feed them BS and keep them in the dark.”
Never has that felt more relevant than today.
Normally, I try not to get into politics. It’s not my world, and I prefer to focus on healing, growth, and the human spirit. But right now, it’s hard not to—because the choices being made ripple into every part of our lives. No one is untouched.
It doesn’t just feel chaotic here in the UK. It seems crazy all over the world. And the systems that were once set up to protect us, to make sure what’s happening now could never happen, are failing. The truth is, they’ve always failed to protect some groups of people. Victims have often been the ones blamed—subjected to rough justice, scapegoated, silenced. It’s not the people governed by these systems who are broken. It’s the systems themselves. And they have been, for as long as I’ve lived.
All around us, decisions are being made that directly affect our lives. Yet instead of honesty and transparency, we’re served fear-mongering, gaslighting, and secrecy. The message from the top seems to be: people are too stupid to handle the truth.
Like narcissists, those in power appear to imagine themselves superior—more capable, more entitled to knowledge—while the rest of us are expected to obey and endure.
We see it in the way plans are quietly published online but never properly explained. Communities are left to stew in worry and speculation instead of being trusted with open dialogue. We see it in how Keir Starmer carries himself as Prime Minister: playing politics like a courtroom battle he intends to win, keeping his cards close, calculating each move, and treating the public as an opponent rather than those he serves.
From plans for “mass fatalities” to schools training for lockdown, to the silencing of voices through arrests, the pattern is clear: sow distress, provoke outrage, and then step in as if to “restore order.” It feels less like governance and more like design.
As someone who studies trauma, I know how repetition shapes the brain. Repetition is the driver of neuroplasticity—the way our nervous systems adapt and rewire. Keep people in survival mode, and you keep them predictable. Threat after threat, division after division—rights removed from some, given to others—like an abusive parent pitting siblings against each other. It ensures our focus remains exactly where those in power want it: on fear, scarcity, and conflict.
This is where the damage goes deeper and division sets in. People getting angry at others for receiving food or heating support while they themselves are struggling to survive. But anger at another person being fed isn’t the way forward. Everyone deserves food, warmth, and dignity. What we should be upset about is the injustice and inequality of the systems—not each other.
But here’s the truth they don’t want you to see:
What we focus on every day becomes the reality we live.
If we continue to feed on the fear, we will live in fear. If we choose instead to focus on the lives we want to experience—connection, safety, dignity, freedom—we begin to carve those into existence.
And the tools we need to rebuild aren’t secrecy, manipulation, or control. They are empathy, kindness, and compassion. These are what heal broken souls and, by extension, broken systems. Yet those qualities are hardest to access when we’re all pushed into survival mode. When people are fighting to survive, their capacity to extend compassion narrows. And that, perhaps, is the most dangerous design of all.
Circumnavigating absurdities may be the sanest act of resistance right now. Turning our attention toward what heals, what builds, and what uplifts may be the most radical form of freedom we have.
Because mushrooms grow in the dark. But people? People thrive in the light.
This is my perspective, given the life I’ve lived.