“Just because it looks like we’re going in the wrong direction doesn’t mean that’s the direction we are going.”
– U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright, April 14, 2026
Now there’s a quote all leaders ought to keep in their back pocket for moments where institutionalized gaslighting is opportune. You can’t make this kind of stuff up. “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!” quoth the Wizard of Oz.
I’ve always loved quotations because they can capture so much zeitgeist in so little space. This spirit of the times, as I’ll demonstrate, the United States endured once before at the turn of the 19th Century.
I often quote Battlestar Gallactica’s haunting refrain, “All of this has happened before, and all of this will happen again,” an expansion of Santayana’s “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
In this article, I’ll remind you of some past you may not remember. History is only boring if you don’t see how it applies right now, and it definitely does.
At the turn of the twentieth century, something shifted in the United States that was not immediately visible as a single event but unmistakable as a change in atmosphere. The country was rapidly industrialized following the Civil War, railroads stretched across the continent, and cities swelled.
But in the final years of the nineteenth century, the scale tipped. Systems that had been growing became dominant, information that had been local became national, and power that was formerly distributed began to concentrate.
Newspapers multiplied and then consolidated, the telegraph compressed distance, and news cycles accelerated. For the first time, large portions of the population were not simply living their hyper-local lives, but participating in a shared, rapidly updating narrative about what was happening everywhere else. The result was agitation. Sensationalism increased, stories were framed for impact rather than accuracy (to sell papers), and public emotion began to move in waves.
Is any of this sounding familiar yet?
At the same time, economic structures hardened. Industrial giants like steel, oil, and rail did not merely compete, but absorbed, coordinated, and dominated. The power of scale operated in unprecedented ways, consolidating wealth. Efficiency improved, but so did with fragility. When the system worked, it worked spectacularly. When it faltered, it did so in ways that cascaded. The Panic of 1907, triggered by a failed attempt to corner the copper market, did not arise in isolation; it revealed a system already stretched to its limits. The NYSE lost 50% of its value and J.P. Morgan himself used his own capital to prevent a total collapse.
Political life followed suit. Populist movements (political approaches based in antagonism, “us vs. them” dynamics, and leaders dubiously claiming to represent the “will of the people”) gained traction, not as fringe reactions but as responses to a serious imbalance between concentrated power and distributed consequence.
Labor unrest intensified and the first unions were created in response to dangerous working conditions and the absurdity of standardized 72-hour work weeks. The language of “the people” versus “the system” began to crystallize. Trust in institutions did not vanish, but it became highly conditional. Pressure built for reform, but reform lagged in part because the rich and powerful didn’t experience the same need for change. It was fashionable for the nouveau riche to flaunt their wealth and they partied hard.What is striking, in retrospect, is not any single development but the pattern.
Communication accelerated and destabilized the emotional tone of the public. Economic power concentrated faster than it could be regulated. Identity became more reactive and more collective at the same time. The system did not collapse, but it entered a state in which it was clearly no longer operating at a stable equilibrium. It required adjustment, but the mechanisms of adjustment were not yet fully formed.
Now consider the present.
Over the past decade, the United States has undergone a shift that is often described in technological or political terms, but those descriptions tend to miss the underlying structure. Social media platforms did not simply add new channels of communication; they transformed the communication layer into the dominant driver of social reality. Information now moves instantly, globally, and with minimal filtration. The boundary between private perception and public narrative has collapsed.
As in the earlier period, the result is volatility. Emotional tone fluctuates rapidly. Outrage cycles form and dissolve within hours. Misinformation spreads not because it is persuasive in a traditional sense, but because it is compatible with the dynamics of amplification. The system rewards engagement, and engagement is driven by intensity.
Economic concentration has followed a parallel trajectory. A small number of technology companies now mediate vast portions of communication, commerce, and attention.
Their reach exceeds that of the industrial monopolies of the past, not only in scale but in scope. They do not simply control production or distribution; they shape perception itself. As before, efficiency has increased, and so has systemic risk. Failures propagate quickly, and corrections lag behind innovation. AI, for example, is a serious existential threat to humanity (if not at least our ability to think critically) and is failing to be regulated. Governments are just now beginning to enact laws that limit children’s access to social media.
Political life again reflects these pressures. Populist movements have re-emerged, cutting across traditional alignments. Institutional trust has eroded, not as a singular collapse but as a gradual withdrawal of confidence. Public discourse has become more polarized, not only because of ideological differences but because the structure of communication amplifies division. Identity is negotiated in real-time, often in opposition to perceived threats, and the speed of that negotiation leaves little room for stabilization.
The parallels are difficult to ignore. In both periods, the communication layer expands and accelerates, outpacing the system’s ability to regulate it. In both periods, economic power concentrates, creating efficiencies alongside vulnerabilities. In both periods, political and social identity become more reactive, more collective, and more unstable. In both periods, the system enters a state of heightened activity without corresponding coherence.
There are differences, of course, but ones that disfavor our current situation. The current cycle operates at a far higher velocity. Information moves not at the speed of telegraph lines but at the speed of global fiber and satellite networks. Participation is not limited to publishers and institutions; it is distributed across billions of individuals. Feedback loops are tighter, more immediate, and more difficult to interrupt. What took months or years to unfold in the earlier period can now occur in days or even hours. A meme created (especially by a president) in minutes can travel the world and be seen by a billion people in the same amount of time.
Yet the underlying pattern is the same as in the previous period. A layer of the system that governs how information is shared and processed becomes amplified beyond its previous limits. That amplification destabilizes the mechanisms by which collective experience is regulated. The system adapts, but not immediately. It oscillates and produces both innovation and distortion. It moves toward a new equilibrium, but only after passing through a phase in which the old equilibrium breaks down.
Most explanations of these periods focus on proximate causes. In the earlier era, the narrative centers on industrialization, monopolies, and reform movements. In the present, it centers on technology, globalization, and political polarization. These accounts are partial and describe what is happening without fully accounting for why similar patterns emerge at different points in time.
One way to make sense of this recurrence is to look not at the surface events but at the underlying structure of timing. If one takes the widely used Vedic Astrology chart for the United States and applies its timing system, a pattern appears. The period from the late nineteenth century into the early twentieth falls within a major period infamously associated with amplification, destabilization, and boundary-crossing. The current period, which began in 2015, is its return.
This does not explain the events in a deterministic sense, but it does provide a fascinating framework for understanding why similar dynamics might emerge at different historical moments. The same structural function is being activated under different material conditions. In one case, it expresses through telegraphs and newspapers; in the other, through digital networks. The technologies differ, but the underlying pattern (amplification of the communication layer, destabilization of regulation, and delayed systemic correction) remains consistent.
Seen this way, the present is not an anomaly but a recurrence. The system is again operating under conditions that increase its capacity while simultaneously challenging its ability to maintain coherence. The outcome is not predetermined. In the earlier period, the response included regulatory reform, institutional adaptation, and a gradual rebalancing of power. Whether a similar adjustment will occur now depends not only on the forces driving change, but on the system’s capacity to recognize the pattern it is in and respond before instability becomes collapse.
That’s where you come in, because you are part of this system.
If the pattern is real, then the practical question is not how to stop it, but how to operate inside it without being organized by it.
In periods like this, the primary distortion is not only external. It is internalized via the communication layer. The system amplifies signal, and individuals begin to live inside that amplification. Attention fragments, emotional tone destabilizes, and reaction replaces response. The environment does not need to be controlled for this to happen. It only needs to be consumed.
The first step is therefore structural, not moral: reduce exposure to unfiltered amplification. This does not mean disengaging from reality. It means recognizing that the dominant frequency of reality in this period is not neutral. It is designed to intensify, accelerate, and fragment. Without intervention, it will set the baseline for your internal state. Limiting frequency, constraining input windows, and selecting sources deliberately are not acts of avoidance. They are necessary acts of regulation.
The second step is to separate detection from reaction. In an amplified environment, you will notice more. Subtle misalignments, inconsistencies, and distortions become visible more quickly. This can create the impression that something must be done immediately, whether that’s true or not. The ability to register a signal without collapsing it into interpretation or action is critical. If you act at the speed of the system, you will replicate its instability. If you allow signals to repeat and clarify, you begin to distinguish between noise and pattern.
The third is to restore domain integrity. One of the defining features of these periods is boundary erosion. Personal, professional, and collective domains bleed into one another through constant connectivity. The result is that everything feels equally urgent and equally relevant when they are not. Deliberately re-establishing boundaries (what belongs to your direct responsibility, what belongs to your work, what belongs to the broader system) reduces unnecessary load. Without this separation, the system attempts to process everything at once, overwhelms, and fails.
The fourth is to identify your primary compensations. Under pressure, you will default to the functions that are most available to you. For some, this is analysis; for others, control, relational smoothing, or withdrawal. These strategies work (to some degree), which is why they are used. They also maintain the imbalance that produces suffering. The task is not to eliminate them, but to see when they are being used to avoid developing a weaker function. When the system reaches for what is easy, that is often the point at which development is being bypassed.
The fifth is to tolerate instability without immediately resolving it. This is the most difficult and the most important. The current environment conditions you to seek rapid closure. Every question demands an answer, every ambiguity a position. Development now requires the opposite. It requires the capacity to remain in contact with what is not yet resolved without collapsing into premature certainty. This is not passivity, but rather the condition under which more accurate alignment becomes possible.
Finally, recognize that not all activity is progress. Periods of amplification create the illusion that constant engagement is necessary. It is not. Much of what is happening is the system working through its own imbalance. Your task is not to match its pace, but to maintain your own coherence within it. That coherence is built through selective attention, disciplined engagement, and the deliberate development of functions that are not yet stable.
The pattern will run its course. The question is whether you will be organized by it or whether you will use it as an opportunity for development. Those are our choices.