Read History Not Headlines

In this day and age, especially if you spend any time on social media or watching the news cycle, it’s easy to fall into the belief that things have never been this bad. If you live in the U.S., it can feel like the country is unraveling, that this isn’t the place you thought you knew. Everything seems to be falling apart. People are persecuted. We no longer seem to be working toward a shared goal. The narrative is always us versus them. Perpetual conflict. Relentless bad news.

The yogi philosophers warned about this exact state of mind. As Yogi Ramacharaka wrote, “You must learn to distinguish between the transient forms of manifestation and the underlying Reality, which remains unchanged amid all change.” In that view, civilizations move in cycles just as nature does; periods of conflict, corruption, and division are not signs of final collapse but stages in a larger evolutionary rhythm. When you mistake the loudest moments for the whole of reality, despair feels permanent.

News do what they have always done. Amplify what is alarming, divisive, and infuriating because that’s how attention is captured and money is made. That’s their nature. Outrage is the business model. The result is a constant state of mental agitation, a narrowing of perspective, and the belief that hopelessness is the natural condition of the world.