Author’s note: I use the phrase “People are nuts” in this piece not to dismiss or pathologise, but to reflect a common cultural shorthand, one that deserves examination. The real crisis isn’t madness, but disconnection. This essay is a call to empathy, not judgement.
[Verse 1: Peter Cetera, with bandmates]
“Everybody needs a little time away”
I heard her say, from each other
It’s hard for me to say I’m sorry
I have a few best friends. Not many. The list narrows with time and with clarity.
Some of us found each other in high school. A few in college, and a few more through the wreckage of adulthood; through illness, motherhood, grief, burnout, trauma bonds. Through it all, what we share isn’t just memory. It’s worldview. And honestly, I don’t know how you stay close to someone once that fractures.
These days, our conversations about world politics, healthcare, climate collapse, the slow-motion death of democracy… almost always end the same way. Someone exhales deeply – more than a sigh- stares into their drink, and says it:
“I just don’t know anymore. People are nuts.”
We say it with a laugh, but the laugh is tired. It’s not really a joke. It’s a deep hum of bewilderment.
Because we’re not talking about disagreements on marginal tax rates. We’re talking about people who believe the government is seeding the air with mind-control chemtrails. That the food supply is laced with nanobots. That red blood cells have been replaced with synthetic parasites by unnamed puppet masters.
You can’t argue with someone who thinks they’re being colonized from the inside out. You can’t have a shared conversation about schools or medicine or even love if you’re not living in the same reality.
And this is the National Crisis. Not just the fragmentation of belief, but the fragmentation of reality itself.
We are no longer a society divided by values. We are a society divided by ontologies: by incompatible understandings of what is real, what is knowable, and who gets to decide.
You mention climate change and those shaped by mistrust and misinformation bring up deep-state snow machines.
You talk about universal lunch programs and those turning to shadow narratives say it’s a cover for indoctrination.
You cite peer-reviewed science and you get a TikTok from a “whistleblower” in a lab coat whose only credential is being permanently banned from Instagram.
You can’t fact-check that. Because it’s not about facts. It’s about fear.
We’re living in a time of collective psychological freefall. Where uncertainty breeds paranoia, and paranoia breeds entire worlds: self-sealed, self-justifying, and utterly disconnected from shared reality. Conspiracies offer certainty. Villains. Stories where you are the only one awake.
But the cost? It’s staggering.
Conspiracies cost trust.
They cost friendship.
They cost the infrastructure of a future we could be building together. Right now.
And tech platforms know it. They don’t just allow this, they incentivise it. The more extreme the claim, the more engagement. One click, and you’re on a carousel of curated delusion.
It’s no longer just an echo chamber, it’s a complete alternate universe.
Two people can share a sidewalk and breathe the same air and one thinks they’re walking their dog and the other thinks they’re being hunted by globalist drones.
And yes, it’s tempting to write this off as a fringe issue. A tech problem. A mental health crisis. But it’s older than that.
We live inside what the cultural historian Riane Eisler calls a domination culture: a system maintained not by mutual respect but by hierarchy, control, and fear masquerading as order. In this system, ‘respect’ flows one way: upward. Violence is normalised. Masculinity is measured by dominance. Empathy is treated like weakness.
Forget Eisler, and you forget the plot. You forget this system wasn’t inevitable. It was built, and it can be unbuilt.
Eisler’s work matters now more than ever because it reminds us there were other ways. Cultures rooted in partnership: mutuality, care, relational power, not perfect, but balanced, built on interdependence.
Revisiting her work today matters because what we’re facing isn’t just political collapse. It’s relational collapse. Institutional failure isn’t just a headline, it’s personal. Flint. COVID. Student debt. Credit debt. Billionaire hoarding. The list is long. We’ve all earned our collective distrust.
But when trust dies, someone steps in. Always.
The influencer.
The YouTube prophet.
The man in the lab coat who swears only he can save you.
And sometimes, the person listening is someone you used to love. And maybe you still do love that person.
So how do we manage our relationships in a world of chaos and alternate realities?
We start small. We build micro-worlds rooted in reality, relationship, and repair. We refuse to cede truth to the Hucksterble moralists of the world, in their expensive sweaters with rot at their core.
We rebuild belonging, not through perfect consensus, but through shared commitment.
We stay curious. We set boundaries. We fight like the dickens to keep empathy from being drowned out by conspiracy.
Because Truth isn’t just data. It’s a relationship. It’s the warmth of a hand holding yours that says:
“I don’t know the truth either, but I’m here. And I trust you enough to find out the truth together.”
People are nuts.
But they’re also so scared.
And the future, if livable, will be built by the people who stayed tethered to each other, even when the world kept slipping.
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