It’d be strange if it weren’t so universal.

Feeling lonely in a crowd – that might be something we’ve all felt sometimes.

It’s easy to guess how this might be. If people are around but they’re not seeing you – the real you – then that can be worse than being alone.

Now let’s flip that around.

Because maybe what’s really making you feel lonely isn’t that no one is seeing the real you…

… but you aren’t seeing anyone else for who they are.

Getting stuck in your own head is a lonely experience. It leaves you alone in the universe, surrounded by meat puppets who make a lot of noise but don’t say anything worth hearing.

That’s a bleak way to live.

You can do better.

You can learn to experience more of a human connection with anyone you meet.

This isn’t free. Doing this shakes your beliefs – every single one, given enough time. Nothing disrupts an opinion more than seeing how smart, educated and compassionate folks can disagree with you on it.

That’s good, assuming your goal is to have good opinions. But it’s not without its painful moments.

It also means being careful with what you expose yourself to. Some folks live in self-inflicted misery while barfing their manure all over the internet. You’ll learn to feel their pain. You’ll also have to learn how to do that without buying into their narratives.

Just because your heart breaks for them, that doesn’t mean your brain has to too. That’s why the fifth step I teach in the Sentience Seminar is so important. It returns you to who you are and resets you, insulating you from the raw fire of other folks’ neuroses.

Still, you can’t carelessly wade through NervousTikTok anymore – not without feeling a lot of intense but ill-serving feelings.

It might break your heart when you realise how much everyone is suffering.

But at least knowing that, you can do something about it.

Folks like it when you can see their secret pain. It might be the ultimate influence technique – respect their struggles and acknowledge their virtues.

Doing that is easy when you remember how. It’s the quintessential human skill.

But, like all skills, it sits on a bell curve. And most of us could be a lot better with the right training.

Like the training I deliver in the Sentience Seminar.

I don’t guarantee anything, because you might choose to play on your phone instead of listen to me. But if you show up, pay attention and intend to apply what you learn, you’ll likely find it coming easily and naturally to you.

After that, you’ll understand others like never before. From there, everything changes.

See for yourself how here:

antipater.page/sentience

I’m not a licensed psychologist, medical professional or anything like that. This is a general observation – it’s definitely not advice to you or anyone.

Consider this a general observation – nay, a hypothesis – which doesn’t apply to you.

(You’ll know it doesn’t apply to you because you have excellent reasons for being divisive. You’re not part of the problem at all, you precious little angel. I’m obviously talking about other, problematic people.)

And as a general observation, have you ever noticed how unhappy the armchair political commentators can get?

Not all of them. Plenty of folks I see on social media are living great lives, smiling and looking great as they talk about the latest outrages from the culture war.

But – and maybe this is selection bias from my part – none of the happy ones demonise other people. They might call out their behaviour and maybe even call them idiots, but they don’t call them evil.

That’s a clear line. You might not see it, but it’s there. Cross it and suddenly things start going wrong. You grow unhappy, unhealthy and unattractive.

I don’t think I’m reaching here. Hate is poisonous. It corrodes you. That’s not an original observation – you’ve heard this before, you’ve seen how it ruins other people…

So what do you do about it?

How do you move past this, and stop undermining your attractiveness, your influence and your happiness?

A key step is to stop caricaturing others. The person in front of you is unique and intelligent – and worthy of respect. How do you know they’re not, especially if they’re a stranger?

“They’re unique, intelligent and worthy of respect.” That humble sentence would unite the world if folks remembered to believe that again.

And if your urge is to drag me into the culture wars and politely explain that, actually, your enemies aren’t any of those, then you’re part of the problem. Not them. You.

Talking about that humble sentence doesn’t do much, though. You can intellectually believe that everyone is decent, deep down, but if you have an intense flash of anger around red- or blue-voters, then that doesn’t help you much.

So you need to not just recall it, but grok it. You need to get this idea into your bones, your emotions and your instincts.

That’s where the Sentience Seminar comes in.

By the end of the two hours, you’ll have the foundations of a new habit. This habit will force you to see things from the perspectives of others – how they really are, not some strawman stereotype you enjoy yelling at in your mind while showering.

Nurture that and it’ll become part of how you see the world.

Everything becomes a lot more pleasant after that.

But to get all of that, you need to complete the first step and register here:

antipater.page/sentience

Let’s talk about solipsism – the philosophical hypothesis that you’re the only person who exists.

It’s an intriguing idea because it seems ridiculous but it can’t be disproven. You know you exist but you don’t know that I do. I could be a figment of your imagination. You might be dreaming this. The world might be an elaborate VR simulation built to test, appease or challenge you.

There’s no real proof either way. If I tell you that I exist… well, I’ve had folks in my dreams tell me that too and they weren’t real. For that matter, NPCs in games talk like real people – at least the good ones do.

Is reality what you think it is?

Do other folks even exist?

Who knows?

It’s a cute thought experiment.

At least, it is until you start acting like it’s true.

Then you start thinking that your opinions are true and everyone else’s are wrong. And that folks who disagree are ignorant, evil or both. That things would be better if people just listened to you, because you have a lot of answers.

Because then you think that complex problems have simple answers – answers that you know.

You stop wondering what others can teach you about your failures.

This isn’t an unusual opinion. If anything, it’s the default these days.

Have you ever been persuaded by a stranger yelling at you on Twitter? No? Then why do you yell at strangers? Why do you think you’re correct enough to justify yelling in the first place?

This is a Failure of Sentience – an inability to see things from the perspectives of others.

And it’s a real problem.

Western civilisation is tearing at its own foundations. Tiny differences amplify into screaming matches. Reasoned debate, rationality and communication should be easier now, given the tools in our hands. So why is there so much defeatism and anger?

I have my theories, but it barely matters why.

What matters is what to do about it.

Take a little empathy, humility and a willingness to listen, and suddenly those problems vanish.

The Sentience Seminar, widely applied, could lessen the problem of Failures of Sentience. They’re not the only threat to Western civilisation, so the Seminar alone can’t save it, but it could help.

You can either help defend your civilisation or you can watch other nations roll back the progress and freedoms people have fought so hard for.

Yes, I’m sure enough of myself to say that attending the Sentience Seminar is a selfless act. Not a heroic one because it’s easy and requiring little sacrifice, but it’ll make a difference.

It’s not all service, though. There are countless benefits to sharpening up your sentience. It’s the quintessential human skill, after all. If something in your life involves other people – say, your relationships, career, sales and happiness – then this seminar will probably help.

Register for it here:

antipater.page/sentience

The sage can learn from the fool, but the fool can’t learn from the sage.

Is that wise or pretentious? Probably both. But it’s true – anyone wise will know they don’t know everything and everyone has something to teach them.

Try saying that in what passes for discourse today.

“What? EvEn fAsCisTs???”

Yes, princess, even the folks you call fascists.

Especially them. Just as how unexplored continents have all the new spices, unexplored ways of thinking.

And before you drool on yourself while saying you don’t want to learn anything from people lacking basic compassion… you’ve written off half the population as irredeemably evil based on hallucinations, misinterpretation and slight differences in opinions on policies no one fully understands.

That doesn’t sound very compassionate to me.

Look, you’re free to hate whoever you want. That’s your right. But you can still learn from folks you’d never agree with.

“We’re all human, we’re all broken and we’re all trying.” That’s the beginning of wisdom. Compassion, too. The brokenness of others should break your heart, not boil your blood.

As for happiness and influence?

You’ll be a miserable, lonely and ineffective individual if you’re so full of hostility. Bitter should be a flavour, not an outlook. It makes you unpleasant to be around, so good luck living a nice life like that.

I cover all this in Your Story Isn’t About You – my free guide on Failures of Sentience. Overcome those failures and the world makes a lot more sense… and it’s a nicer place to live in, too.

The Sentience Seminar takes those ideas further.

Rather than presenting it as knowledge, it delivers it right into your mindset, installing this outlook as a habit.

With a bit of application, this will seem so natural and obvious to you. It’ll lighten your load, too.

You can register for the seminar here:

antipater.page/sentience

My upcoming Sentience Seminar teaches you how to overcome Failures of Sentience.

Nay, it doesn’t teach that. By the end of the two hours, all you’ll need to do is intend to use what you learn and it’ll naturally happen.

This isn’t a technical skill. It’s a mindset – and mindsets can change fast.

But here’s the rub:

The process you’ll learn as a habit involves five steps. In time, those five steps will be so fast that you don’t even notice you’re doing it.

The first step, though?

It’s triggering for a certain type of person.

That’s a strange thing. That controversial step isn’t unethical – in fact, it’s more ethical than how most folks stagger blindly through life. It’s not cruel – people literally crave for you to treat them like this.

But some folks will accuse me of enabling the worst in human behaviour.

They’ll pretzel themselves until what I say is inside-out and back-to-front.

Then, based on what they hallucinate, they’ll think I’m saying you should go hug a narcissist – and give them your bank account details while they’re at it.

No.

There’s no need to tolerate or even forgive bad behaviour of any kind. And I never say you should.

But that’s how they’ll choose to interpret it.

And that’s on me. As a communicator with an important message to share, it’s my fault if you misinterpret it. So I’ll do my best to make what I mean clear. It won’t be enough for everyone, though, so I’m warning you now:

If you like thinking of yourself as the victim, the Sentience Seminar isn’t for you. The first step is the hardest and most important. Get that wrong and the other four steps will only make you stupider and more ignorant.

It requires a level of emotional maturity that the typical NervousTikTok user doesn’t have.

Without curiosity, empathy and humility – or, at least, the willingness to try to have those – you won’t get far.

Which is a shame. Social media would be like the early naïve visions of the internet – a free exchange of ideas and opinions, with the best rising to the surface – without Failures of Sentience polluting the information pool.

Well, maybe not that sublime. But it would be a lot closer to it.

If you want greater success, more compassion and less misery over the state of the world, you’ll want to register for it here:

antipater.page/sentience

Understatement time:

There’s a lot to unpack from Christ’s Sermon on the Mount.

I did some quick Wikipedia skimming – apparently, there are eight types of ways to interpret the message. Not eight ways – eight categories you can clump those ways together.

Any rich text is open to interpretation, but that’s still wild.

I’ll leave the philosophising to the theologians. I’m a student of the psychology of influence and – brace yourself for another understatement – Jesus was quite good at that.

He’s doing more than just saying nice words. He’s rewriting how people see themselves and the world.

Like the message, the persuasion principles (if I dare call them that) have many layers to them. I’m sure I could study the sermon for a decade and not uncover all the clever ways He invites people to be better versions of themselves.

But I do know some of it.

There’s one principle that’s subtle, makes folks feel amazing and can only be used ethically.

It’s also one of the more powerful tools of persuasion.

So imagine my delight when I realised the Sentience Seminar instils this principle as a habit. I didn’t intend to teach it but it’s almost a side effect of what I cover.

You won’t have to think about using this principle. It’ll come to you automatically, whether you intend to or not.

That could make it dangerous, if not for the built-in morality. You can only use this to make people better.

So if your goals involve making people better, then you’re in luck.

If not…?

Well, you have no business learning persuasion of any kind.

But if you offer a valuable service, are a good person to date and have ideas that’ll improve the word, then it would be unethical to hold back on your influence game.

We’re all crying out for more authenticity, vision and leadership. Why do you think folks are so obsessed with Elon despite his eccentricities? It’s hard to stay neutral in the face of someone like that.

The Sentience Seminar probably won’t turn you into Elon.

It definitely won’t turn you into Jesus.

But it’ll make you kinder, wiser and – yes – more influential.

If that’s something you want for yourself, you can register for it here:

antipater.page/sentience

A cute claim I’ve seen a lot recently:

Women claiming that all women are empaths, carrying the emotional burdens of the world on their slender shoulders.

I get why this myth exists. I’ve known a few genuine empaths in my time – folks who feel the suffering of others as if they were suffering – and most of them were women. But even if all of them were women, that doesn’t prove anything.

It’s one of those all cats are mammals but not all mammals are cats situations.

Because it’s easily disproven. If all – or even most – women were natural empaths, you’d expect things to look like this:

Female sociopolitical views would make no references to demographics. Empaths see each person as a minority of one – a unique and special person in their own right. Yeah, different groups tend to have different issues, but no empath would assume anything about someone based on the skin shade.

And no empath could feel compassion for everyone except straight white men. If you can turn it off like that, you’re not an empath.

Speaking of straight men, they’d never get ghosted in a world filled with empathic women. Unless the guy is imminently dangerous, an empath would always send a message saying they weren’t interested and why. They’d be honest, hoping to give the guy closure.

No empathic woman would go on NervousTikTok, blasting her husband to millions of strangers just for a few likes. They’d feel bad about shaming an enemy to such a rabid, psychotic audience, let alone someone they love and share their lives with.

I know this because the empaths I know feel horror at stuff like this.

And yet, this bull manure abounds. A woman can clump all minorities into one group in her mind, ghost a guy for misusing commas, say that all white people are racist, tell a stranger she should divorce her “abusive, toxic” husband based on a six-second video – all in one day – and still think she’s a delicate empath carrying the world’s hurt in her heart. That’s not even unusual for a woman to do. You could call her “normal” for that.

Every human experience carries the Dunning-Kruger effect near and dear – this is no exception. Everyone thinks they’re better at empathy than they are.

“Men are no better!”

Yeah and that’s my point. Both men and women engage in this bad behaviour. The real division here isn’t men versus women – it’s empaths versus non-empaths.

Because it’s almost as if empathy is a learned skill. It’s almost as if it’s something you have to cultivate and sharpen before you can choose to use it.

I suppose I’m an empath, even if I wouldn’t use that word to describe myself. But I can see how smart, compassionate folks can believe different things from me – including extreme beliefs that make me sick to my stomach, heart and brain.

My political views revolve around everyone having unique requirements, so freedom and empowerment are central. What demographic groups someone belongs to interests me less than who they are, what makes them special and what they can offer the world.

I’ve blocked people on social media, but not lightly. It was never down to I don’t want to talk with them – instead, it was because I couldn’t talk with them for my own well-being. (Trivial example: the guy who kept demanding free stuff in between complaining about how bad my stuff is.) And if I had any respect for the person, I’d explain why.

As for NervousTikTok?

I’m not on that app. But if I was, I’d soon grow tired from wondering what context is missing and what the other side of the story is.

Fair warning:

Like I alluded to earlier, I can’t switch this off. I have contempt for creationism and communism, but I can clearly see how smart, educated and compassionate folks can support those. Same with every philosophy and opinion I’ve heard people belief.

And by the end of the Sentience Seminar, it’ll be automatic for you too.

I’m not just sharing knowledge here. This instils this skill and mindset as a habit, so you can’t help but see the world this way.

Register for it and gain eight billion new perspectives here:

antipater.page/sentience