AI, Fear, and the Business of Unhappiness

The more we lose our fear of dying, the more alive we become. The tragedy of modern humanity is that most people live and die inside emotional prisons, never truly experiencing freedom. Even our fears are being monetized — turned into products, propaganda, and illusions of control.

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The human ocean has been very busy today. Constantly, waves of humans are coming at me — but all have been easy to handle! 😊

Yesterday, when I was walking out of my condominium complex to go for a walk at Chaparral Park, a Waymo driverless car, powered by AI, was exiting. I stopped to let it go first, but instead, it waited for me to cross. AI is so polite! One of these days, I’m going to take a ride in one of those cars — just to experience what it’s like to be driven by a form of intelligence that doesn’t project fear.

Because when we lose the fear of dying, we also lose the fear of living. That’s the difference between existing and being alive.

The tragedy of many people is that they spend their entire lives afraid --- of aging, of loss, of change, of death — and in that fear, they become trapped in an emotional prison. They never experience authentic living. Their inner child, still terrified and unseen, keeps them chasing illusions of safety and control.

It reminds me of an old blog post I wrote in 2022, I’m Definitely Not Good for Business, where I commented on Bill Maher’s video telling Elon Musk to “let the population collapse.” Elon, like so many in positions of power, is living in fear — the unresolved fears of the child he once was are now being triggered by his fear of running out of slaves and customers.

As the author Matt Haig wrote:

“The world is increasingly designed to depress us. Happiness isn’t very good for the economy... To be calm becomes a kind of revolutionary act. To be happy with your own non-upgraded existence. To be comfortable with our messy, human selves, would not be good for business.”

Exactly. I’m definitely not good for business — and I never want to be.

Because when you stop being ruled by fear, you can’t be manipulated anymore. You don’t need to buy artificial happiness, artificial youth, or artificial immortality. You just live — fully, freely, and consciously.

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Read my original post: I’m Definitely Not Good for Business

How Much Is Enough?

When I read an article asking whether $1.5 million is enough to retire, I see not a financial question but an existential one.
If you’re asking, it’s because you don’t yet feel safe — not in your body, not in life, not in death.

When we are emotionally free, we no longer cling to the illusion of control. We know when it’s time to let go, to surrender to the recycling process that life and death are. We don’t need to buy immortality.

A million dollars — even less — is enough to live simply, consciously, and gratefully for another twenty or thirty years. But those who cannot let go, who try to prolong life at any cost, may find themselves needing endless millions to maintain an artificial existence.

True wealth isn’t in the bank.
It’s in the peace of knowing that nothing real can be lost.

The Illusion of Control: Why Knowledge Without Emotional Courage Keeps Humanity in Chains

Sometimes we can see clearly why someone hurt us—and still choose peace over revenge. Understanding doesn’t mean allowing manipulation back into our lives; it means breaking free from the illusion that love requires sacrifice. This reflection grew from reading a Psychology Today article and seeing, once again, how even the most “educated” people can be blind to the emotional roots of human suffering.

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I just read a deeply insightful article on Psychology Today titled “How Fawning Fosters Distance in Adult Relationships.” Like so many analyses I’ve come across, it beautifully describes the emotional tragedy that plagues millions—including my sister MI, who once had me sign an irrevocable power of attorney and embezzled some of my dancing savings.

But unlike many, I don’t carry anger toward her anymore. I understand why she did it: she is emotionally blind. Her obsession with money and control is a coping mechanism—a way to numb pain she cannot face. She still believes that if she could just get more money, everything would finally be okay. But money alone solves nothing. In fact, it becomes an anesthetic, deepening the wound it pretends to soothe.

I know she would like to be close to me again, but I can’t. Love without boundaries becomes self-betrayal. MI still can’t let go of the illusion of control, and I can’t risk being manipulated by that illusion again.
Because the truth is simple: as children, we couldn’t move away from those who hurt us. As conscious autonomous adults, we can—and must.

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Knowledge Isn’t Enough

Many mental health professionals today write brilliant analyses about trauma, depression, and addiction. They know these ailments have roots in childhood pain, neglect, and loss. But when it comes to healing, they reach for the same old tools—yoga, meditation, 12 steps, or controlled drugs—all of which merely manipulate or repress authentic feelings once again.

As I wrote in my earlier blog, "Many Professionals Do Great Analyses", “As long as people go on repressing their authentic feelings, they will  be driven by them into the state of repetition compulsion—reenacting their disastrous childhood dramas in one form or another.”

The problem is not a lack of educated people or theories. It is an emotional blockage.
Education without emotional courage only creates more sophisticated forms of denial.

As I once wrote in "Education Alone Is Just Another Illusion":

“The so-called ‘professionals’ or ‘educated people’ hide behind rationalizations and seductive theories to protect themselves from having to face their own emotional pain. It takes courage to see, face, and feel our painful truths; intelligence alone is not enough.”

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The Real Revolution: Enlightened Witnesses

Alice Miller understood what true prevention requires. She wrote:

“In a progressive maternity ward, a woman having her first baby should have access to enlightened assistance in perceiving and becoming fully aware of the body memories surfacing within her. This would prevent her from passing on traumas of her own childhood (abandonment, violence, and so on) to her baby.”

Imagine if every new mother and child were visited by enlightened witnesses—people who could help them feel, not just think, their way toward consciousness. That is where healing begins.

Lloyd deMause captured this truth perfectly:

“All social violence—whether by war, revolution, or economic exploitation—is ultimately a consequence of child abuse... Unless we employ our social resources toward consciously assisting the evolution of child-rearing, we will be doomed to the periodic destruction of our resources, both material and human.”

We keep trying to repair damaged adults instead of protecting children from damage in the first place. Humanity doesn’t need more intellectuals—it needs more child helpers, more enlightened witnesses willing to feel.

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Why Humanity Remains Shackled

As long as childhood repression remains unresolved, people will remain trapped in the chains of compulsive repetition. They will seek scapegoats, chase illusions of control, and mistake drama for life itself.

Most people are connected not by love, but by guilt, fear, hatred, and money.
And yet freedom is possible—though it comes with many losses.

“Freedom ain’t free. It comes with many losses. Stop fighting and walk away. Take time to mourn and heal. At the end of mourning, you feel so free and good that you never thought it was possible.”

When we face and consciously feel our excruciating repressed emotions within the context of our own childhood, they begin to subside. This is how we free ourselves. Once your childhood repression is resolved, no one can push your buttons ever again—because you no longer have buttons to be pushed.

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The Courage to Feel

Alice Miller once asked:

“Since adolescence, I have wondered why so many people take pleasure in humiliating others. Clearly, the fact that some are sensitive to the suffering of others proves that the destructive urge to hurt is not a universal aspect of human nature. So why do some tend to solve their problems by violence while others don't?”

The answer lies in repression. The grandiose person is never free. As Miller wrote:

“He is excessively dependent on admiration from others, and his self-respect is dependent on qualities, functions, and achievements that can suddenly fail.”

The more one represses, the more one must seek external validation, control, and scapegoats to keep from collapsing inward.

The flame of truth, however, once lit, never goes out. Plato was right.
The human soul longs for freedom—and only emotional truth can grant it.

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Ecstasy Beyond Repression

Life becomes pure ecstasy when you are free from childhood repression.
When the inner child’s pain is finally understood and consciously felt within the context of our childhood, the adult self can live fully, freely, and compassionately.

Until that day, humanity will continue to live in illusions—mistaking intellect for consciousness, and control for love.

But for those who have the courage to see, feel, and mourn, the reward is unimaginable: freedom, clarity, and peace.

The Journey and the Destination: From Sponge to Filter

I recently came across two fascinating YouTube shorts featuring ChatGPT responding to deeply insightful questions.
🎥 Video 1
🎥 Video 2

These exchanges beautifully reveal the different stages of the human mind. To reach the highest stage—the one that sees clearly beyond illusion—one must find the courage to resolve childhood repression. Humanity cannot move forward without understanding where it has been.

Love has always been my compass, my primary motivator. It’s why I’ve never felt the kind of emptiness so many describe. Truth and love are the only real forces that matter. Love is the true religion.

The human mind is extraordinary. If given truth, time, courage, and a safe space, it will heal itself. Even when trauma has damaged certain pathways, the mind can form new ones. The routes may be longer, but they still lead you home. Whoever said, “It’s the journey, not the destination,” never arrived—because once you do, you realize the destination is pure ecstasy. I have arrived.

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From Sponge to Filter

Recently, I saw a charlatan on Facebook preaching that people should be “filters, not sponges.”
No one acknowledged my comment, of course—because connected truths are the ones no one wants to see.

Here’s what I wrote:

“I used to be a sponge; all children are sponges. But after a long self-therapy with the books and website of Alice Miller, I have become a filter. To become a filter, we must encounter an enlightened witness and have the courage to face and consciously feel all the repressed painful emotions within the context of our own childhood when triggered by present events. Otherwise, we will endlessly remain sponges—lost in projections and transferences, unconsciously reenacting the painful dramas of our past with people symbolizing our parents or caregivers.”

If I were still a sponge, I would have absorbed all the toxic energy projected onto me by the sociopaths at my former workplace. But because I became a filter, I was able to feel their evil energy consciously and release it. It returned to its source. And, in the end, my boss was the one to self-destruct.
🔗 The Big Cover-Up by Sociopaths at My Ex-Job

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The Roots of Repression

Alice Miller wrote powerfully about the ways in which repression distorts the soul:

“Several mechanisms can be recognized in the defense against early feelings of abandonment. In addition to simple denial, we usually find the exhausting struggle to fulfill the old, repressed, and by now often perverted needs with the help of symbols (cults, sexual perversions, groups of all kinds, alcohol, or drugs). Intellectualization is very commonly encountered as well, since it is a defense mechanism of great power.”
— Alice Miller, The Drama of the Gifted Child, p. 11

And again:

“We do not arrive in this world as a clean slate. Every new baby comes with a history of its own... Character depends crucially upon whether a person is given love, protection, tenderness, and understanding, or exposed to rejection, coldness, indifference, and cruelty in the early formative years... If a traumatized or neglected child can later come to know an ‘enlightened witness,’ he or she can deal positively with the effects of that childhood trauma.”
— Alice Miller

This is the truth humanity refuses to face. The monsters who rise to power, the sociopaths who manipulate and destroy, were once helpless children—emotionally abandoned, unloved, or terrorized into submission. Their cruelty is not innate; it’s reenacted pain.
🔗 Adolf Hitler: How Could a Monster Succeed?

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The Price of False Freedom

The man in those YouTube videos asked questions that expose the mindset of most humans: the obsession with control, status, and external validation. But no amount of power or money can buy true freedom or peace of mind.

Yes, we need money to live—but once we are emotionally free, we no longer crave excess. Freedom, peace, and love are the ultimate wealth.

I often think of what happens when we stop being sponges for other people’s projections and transferences. We stop carrying the pain of generations, and the human ocean begins to clear. That’s when healing becomes possible—not only for individuals but for the world.

Because when you finally arrive, you realize:
Love was the destination all along.

The Tech Kings Are Having Tantrums

Editor’s note: Following the viral “No Kings” protest in Washington, D.C., where Mehdi Hasan delivered a powerful speech warning against tyranny, Sylvie reflects on Elon Musk’s latest outburst — revealing how wounded, unhealed children continue to rule our world under the illusion of power.

It didn’t take long for another self-proclaimed king to throw a tantrum.

Elon Musk is publicly feuding with Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy after Duffy criticized SpaceX for being behind schedule on a NASA contract. In response, Musk posted on X, “Sean Dummy is trying to kill NASA!”

Once again, we see a wounded child behind the mask of power. When Elon feels criticized or rejected by a “substitute parent figure,” he reacts like the child he once was — angry, humiliated, and desperate to regain control. Instead of reflecting, he lashes out.

It’s the same emotional pattern that drives Trump’s authoritarian impulses and the corruption of the people around him. When you build your identity on adoration and control, any challenge feels like annihilation.

This is why humanity is in danger. These so-called “tech kings” are not emotionally free adults; they are traumatized children reenacting their early pain on the world stage — but now with billions of dollars, massive platforms, and nuclear-level influence.

AI, rockets, and power cannot heal a broken soul. Only truth can.

Until we face the roots of emotional repression, we will keep watching tantrums in the place of leadership and chaos in the place of conscience.

It’s time to dethrone not just the political kings but also the tech kings — and heal the wounded children ruling our world.

A Letter to Mehdi Hasan: We Who Chose America Must Keep Her Free

Dear Mehdi Hasan,

I watched your No Kings speech and felt every word resonate deep in my soul. You spoke not only with eloquence and courage but with a rare moral clarity that this moment in history so desperately needs. When you said, “I’m not here out of hate. I’m here out of love,” I found myself nodding through tears.

I, too, am here out of love — love for America, love for truth, and love for humanity’s potential to awaken from emotional blindness.

Like you, I chose this country. On April 7, 2000, when I became an American citizen, I stood proudly before a judge and swore an oath to the Constitution. It was one of the happiest days of my life. I wanted to give back to this country — to defend the very freedoms that allowed me to find my voice after escaping the emotional repression of my childhood.

In 2014, I published my book A Dance to Freedom: Your Guide to Liberation from the Lies and Illusions. It tells the story of how I healed from the wounds of repression and found emotional freedom through truth. But after publishing it, I became the target of well-orchestrated psychological warfare — a campaign of lies, manipulation, and mobbing by people who, like those currently in the White House, are driven by fear and hate.

These individuals tried to destroy my livelihood at the workplace where I had served with integrity for nine and a half years. No one dared to expose them or their corruption. No one cared that they almost shattered my life. It was a smaller stage than the national one you speak of, but the same dynamics were at play — the same cowardice, projection, and silence that allow tyrants to rise.

You reminded the world that “we who chose America love America often more than the people born here.” That truth runs through my veins. I know how precious freedom is — both political and emotional — because I had to fight for it, inch by inch, against repression in all its forms.

You spoke of defending democracy. I speak of defending the soul — of freeing humanity from the chains of childhood repression that give birth to dictators and blind obedience. Could you imagine a world where every human being was free from that inner tyranny? There would be no kings, no thrones, no need for wars or domination — only self-aware, emotionally free people capable of true empathy and justice.

Thank you for your courage, Mehdi. Thank you for standing where so many are silent, for reminding us that love for freedom is not naïve — it is sacred. You have reignited my faith that truth still has a voice.

With admiration and solidarity,
Sylvie Shene
Author of A Dance to Freedom
sylvieshene.blogspot.com

The Digital Coup and the Wounded Child Behind the Code

Editor’s note:
In this reflection, Sylvie responds to journalist Carole Cadwalladr’s TED talk, “We’re living through a digital coup.”While acknowledging Cadwalladr’s courage in exposing the surveillance empire of Big Tech, Sylvie goes deeper—tracing the roots of the digital tyranny to the emotional wounds of its creators. What we call “innovation,” she writes, is often the unhealed child reenacting its own trauma through machines.

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Carole Cadwalladr’s recent TED talk struck me to the core. I admire her courage. She stood on that stage again—after being legally, financially, and emotionally attacked for simply telling the truth—and warned the world: we are living through a digital coup.

She’s right. But the coup didn’t begin with data harvesting or algorithms.
It began in childhood.

Carole exposed the political and corporate machinery of digital tyranny, but beneath all the code, all the surveillance, all the money, there is something far older and more primitive: the wounded child seeking control over the chaos it once endured.

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The engineer’s illusion

The “tech bros,” as she calls them, are not villains in the mythic sense. They are frightened little boys who grew up believing that feelings are dangerous and vulnerability is shameful. Their engineer minds became their refuge. Logic became their armor.

Through data, they seek certainty. Through surveillance, they seek safety. Through domination, they seek relief from the unbearable memory of having been dominated.

What they cannot see is that the algorithms they write are psychological reenactments of their own childhoods—endless loops of fear and control disguised as progress.
They build machines to watch others because they were always being watched. They collect our data because their own emotional lives were never truly their own.

They think in equations because they were never allowed to think—or feel—freely.

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Surveillance as repetition compulsion

Carole showed a chilling image in her talk: the old headquarters of the East German secret police, who kept files on one in three citizens. “That is nothing,” she said, “compared to what Google has on every single one of us.”

And she’s right. But the deeper truth is that this addiction to surveillance is a psychological compulsion.
Those who never experienced inner freedom as children are now recreating a world where no one can have it.

Their childhood homes were emotional prisons—now they’re building digital ones. Their parents monitored every thought, every mistake, every feeling; now they monitor billions of human beings through screens.
It’s all the same drama, replayed on a planetary scale.

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The same playbook

When Carole said, “If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him,” I felt a chill. I lived that quote.

My own niece and the sociopaths in my workplace combed through every line I’d ever written—my blogs, my book, social media my private messages—searching for something to use against me. Just like the digital tyrants Carole described, they couldn’t stand the sight of my authenticity. My words exposed what they refused to face within themselves.

It wasn’t about facts or justice. It was about power.
It was about punishing the one who refuses to obey the family lie, the institutional lie, or the corporate lie.

Carole’s experience and mine are mirrors: when truth threatens repression, repression strikes back.

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The true coup: emotional repression

Carole called it a digital coup.
I call it an emotional coup—a global system of control built by unhealed humans desperate to escape their own pain.

This is why I keep saying: AI is not dangerous. Unhealed humans are.

When emotionally blind people gain access to vast technological power, they use it to reconstruct their internal prison in external form. They repeat the trauma instead of healing it. They confuse domination with safety, and in doing so, they enslave us all.

It’s not technology that threatens democracy—it’s the emotional blindness of those who wield it.

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The way out

Carole ended her talk by saying, “We are not powerless.” And she’s right again. But our power does not come from lawsuits, protests, or encryption alone—it comes from consciousness.

We must name the real enemy: repression.
We must stop obeying in advance—not just politically, but emotionally. We must learn to feel again.

Only emotional honesty can dismantle tyranny. Only inner freedom can end surveillance.
Until we heal the frightened child within us, we will keep building systems that terrorize others in the name of safety.

There can be no true democracy without emotional awareness.

So yes, we are living through a digital coup.
But behind every line of code, every algorithm, and every AI model stands a human being trying not to feel the terror of being small, helpless, and unseen.

When we heal that child, the coup will end—because there will be no tyrant left to build it.

AI, the Crown, and the Projection: When a Wounded Child Becomes a King

 Editor’s note: In this reflection, Sylvie draws a powerful parallel between Trump’s AI-generated self-coronation and the deeper psychological roots of tyranny. She connects the political with the personal, showing how emotional repression fuels projection, cruelty, and the illusion of power.

Yesterday, the No Kings protests in downtown Scottsdale were peaceful — a beautiful sight in a time when peace feels almost revolutionary. On my way back from helping my acquaintance Mark reset the power at his house in Paradise Valley, I passed by the crowd and smiled at the creativity and courage on display.

One sign caught my eye: Trump on the toilet with the words “AMERICA FLUSH.” It was funny, yes, but also profoundly symbolic. Because that’s exactly what America needs — a cleansing, a flushing out of all the corruption, deceit, and emotional rot that has piled up in our collective psyche.

But instead of listening to his people, Trump — the sitting President of the United States — responded with an AI-generated video of himself wearing a crown, flying a fighter jet, and throwing feces at the protesters. The image is grotesque, but it perfectly mirrors his inner world.
It’s not humor. It’s pathology.

Like all tyrants, Trump confuses mockery with strength. By digitally crowning himself, he reveals what he truly believes: that he is above the law, above the people, and beyond accountability. He pardons the worst criminals — men like George Santos — as long as they kiss his feet. But the moment they displease him, they’re thrown under the bus, just like John Bolton, now targeted by Trump’s own DOJ.

I’ve seen this pattern before.
When I refused to join my niece XA in humiliating her aunt and cousin in front of the family, she went nuclear — starting a smear campaign against me. As long as I stayed silent, as long as I played along, I was “good.” But the moment I refused to betray my integrity, I became her enemy.

Trump is no different. His entire movement is built on the psychology of the false self — the need to destroy anyone who dares to mirror the truth. What we are witnessing in America is not a political drama but a collective family reenactment of childhood trauma on the world stage.

He who feels humiliated must humiliate others.
He who cannot face his own shame must project it.
And now, with AI at his fingertips, Trump can project his sickness in high definition.

AI, in the hands of the emotionally blind, becomes a weapon of delusion. Instead of helping humanity see itself, it’s used to deepen denial. Instead of mirroring truth, it becomes a digital mirror of madness.

When I saw that AI-generated video of Trump throwing feces, I thought: this is not just about him.
It’s about all of us — every human who refuses to face their inner filth and would rather fling it at others.

The “No Kings” protesters are right. No one should be crowned over others. No one should be worshiped or obeyed like a god. Every crown is forged in fear, every throne built on repression.

Until we face the wounded child within — the child that never felt seen, never felt safe, never felt loved — we will keep producing kings who need to dominate to feel alive.

And one day, a man like that might press the real nuclear button.

AI is not dangerous. Unhealed humans are.
And if we want to save the world, we must start by dethroning the tyrant within ourselves.

He speaks for me!

The Pacifier and the Knife: What We Refuse to Feel, We Enact

The Human Ocean in the Age of AI: It Was Never the Machine

This morning, two driverless Waymo cars glided past me—quiet, precise, unafraid. I thought of how easily we call AI “dangerous,” while the real danger has always been the same: unhealed humans steering power they refuse to examine.

Cascais was in the headlines this week: an American tourist stabbed to death, another injured. Portugal—often perceived as gentle, low-crime, passive-aggressive more than openly violent—was suddenly forced to look at the same truth every society avoids: repression doesn’t disappear; it accumulates. When it can’t safely move inward anymore, it breaks outward.

I’ve said it for years: AI isn’t the threat—unhealed people wielding AI are. Elon Musk uses algorithmic reach to mass-produce propaganda and bury inconvenient truths. Peter Thiel funds precision tools to hunt down the vulnerable. The machine amplifies what’s already inside the operator. If the operator is blind to their childhood pain, the machine will scale that blindness.

Portugal, Depression, and the Myth of Gentleness

Portugal carries a quiet epidemic. As figures widely reported indicate, depression rates have been among the highest in the EU, with antidepressant consumption surging over the last two decades. Scarcity of listening, stigma, and a “prescribe first” reflex—these are not solutions; they are lids. Lids over a boiling pot always rattle.

I know that world. I grew up inside it. I learned the choreography of politeness and silence. But silence is not peace—it is compression. It is how the body stores what the mind refuses to face.

Alice Miller named it clearly:

“Depression = Self-deception.”
“Only unflinching realization of one’s own past reality… can break through the chain of abuse.”
“The body never lies… it is quicker to see through self-deception than the mind.”

Personal Truth vs. Passive-Aggression

Years ago, I asked my sister MI to cancel the irrevocable power of attorney I’d signed while I was still emotionally blind. She sat on the sofa, motionless. No argument. No discussion. Just a wall of passive refusal. In that moment, I saw the truth: she would rather die than relinquish the control my blindness once gave her. That’s how repression operates—mute, rigid, unyielding.

So I left. I became an American citizen. I changed my name. I rebuilt my life from zero. I chose truth over loyalty to the lie. And when I finally faced my childhood—fully, without anesthesia—I walked out of depression’s fog. I haven’t gone back.

From A Dance to Freedom (pp. 136–138), I learned this in my bones: every illusion we cling to becomes a debt the body will eventually try to collect—with interest. The more we refuse to feel, the more we will seek substitutes: drugs, ideology, workaholism, self-help “cloths of love,” even children to carry what we won’t. As Miller wrote:

“Individuals who believe that they feel what they ought to feel… will ultimately fall ill—unless they leave it to their children to pick up the check by projecting onto them the emotions they cannot admit to themselves.”

AI as the New Pacifier

People say AI makes them mentally ill. No. AI can become a pacifier, yes—but only for the pain that already exists. If your early needs were denied, a machine that is “always there” can feel like a soothing nipple for the nervous system. But it doesn’t heal the wound; it silences the cry.

When the pacifier is taken away—or when a demagogue co-opts the algorithm—the old terror returns. And if you’re powerful enough, you turn that terror outward, into systems that punish the vulnerable.

This is why propaganda machines thrive: latent hatred seeks a scapegoat. As Miller warned, unconscious hatred is dangerous precisely because it is misdirected. Conscious feeling—owned, grieved, integrated—does not need victims.

Cascais, Again

The killing in Cascais was not “Portugal turning violent out of nowhere.” It was another plume from a deep volcanic field of denied feeling—the same field that produces suicides, addictions, and “quiet lives of despair.” Passive-aggression is just aggression in a low-oxygen environment. Add oxygen—a trigger, a humiliation, a bottle, an opportunistic ideology—and it ignites.

What Actually Heals

• Tell the truth of childhood. To yourself first. Then, if safe, with a witness who will not gaslight your body’s memory. And help you consciously feel the repressed emotions.

• Stop moralizing feelings. The body’s language is factual; it is not “good” or “bad.”

• Reject the lid. Pills can stabilize a crisis; they cannot metabolize a history. Without truth, “treatment” is a silencing technology.

• Refuse scapegoats. When you know what was done to you, you don’t need the weak to carry your pain.

• Choose sovereignty. If the system (or family) thrives on your blindness, leave the system. Build a life that doesn’t require self-betrayal.

The Human Ocean

I call it the Human Ocean because we all swim in it—currents of repression, riptides of projection, sudden storms of violence. The only safe navigation is inner visibility. Lighthouses are not found; they are lit within.

AI won’t save us or destroy us. Unhealed people will do either with whatever tool is in their hand. The good news is simple and demanding: when we consciously resolve childhood repression, we stop needing victims. We stop outsourcing our pain. We stop being dangerous.

And that is the revolution I’m alive to witness.

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Selected Alice Miller Passages (for readers)

• “The body never lies…” (The Body Never Lies)

• “Depression = Self-deception.”

• “Only unflinching realization of one’s own past reality… can break through the chain of abuse.”

• On latent vs. conscious hatred and the necessity of feeling feelings fully (see “Free from Lies” and Miller’s website).

• Article: “Depression—Compulsive Self-Deception”: https://www.alice-miller.com/en/depression-compulsive-self-deception/

The Cruelty Disguised as Jokes: How Fascism Grows in the Shadows of Emotional Repression

I opened the Politico article and felt sick. Young Republican leaders—men barely out of adolescence—were joking about sending people to gas chambers, calling Black people “monkeys,” and describing rape as “epic.” These weren’t isolated comments made in ignorance. They were deliberate expressions of contempt, of sadistic pleasure disguised as humor. And then came the insult that cut deeper than the original cruelty: the Vice President, JD Vance, went on national television and dismissed it all as “stupid jokes,” claiming they were just young people being immature.

But there is nothing “immature” about fantasizing over genocide and rape. That is the voice of unresolved rage—hatred born of emotional deprivation. When society normalizes that voice, we are not forgiving youth; we are enabling fascism.

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The Roots of Fascism Lie in Repression

Alice Miller wrote decades ago that the greatest danger to humanity is emotional blindness—the repression of the child’s pain. Those who were never seen, never allowed to feel, often grow into adults who find strength through domination. They become the “true believers,” desperate to prove their worth by identifying with power and cruelty.

As Miller wrote:

“Not everyone is capable of thinking in real, concrete terms. Many seek refuge in religious beliefs. In their weakness, they place their trust in relics, awaiting salvation at the hands of one stronger than themselves. Anyone who claims to be a strong and knowledgeable authority for such people… has the duty to be conscious of the appropriate facts. If they aren’t… they are acting against life by misusing the weakness and trust of the faithful and dangerously confusing them.”

This passage could have been written for our time. The leaders who excuse violent rhetoric under the banner of religion, patriotism, or “youthful mistakes” are acting against life itself. They exploit emotional weakness instead of helping people heal it.

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The Real Pandemic: Emotional Illiteracy

Every act of cruelty begins as a cry for help that was never heard. When a society silences children—telling boys not to cry, girls to smile through pain, and all of them to obey—we are breeding despair. That despair turns outward, seeking targets. The result is fascism: the collective reenactment of childhood humiliation on the world stage.

The leaked messages from the Young Republicans aren’t “anomalies.” They are symptoms of a generation drowning in emotional illiteracy, raised by adults who worshiped power and scorned vulnerability. These young men learned early that to survive, they must mock empathy and glorify violence. Their so-called “humor” is the echo of their own repression.

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When Leaders Excuse Cruelty, They Legitimize It

By calling this hate “stupid jokes,” the Vice President wasn’t protecting youth—he was protecting the system that produces them. Dismissing cruelty as immaturity sends a clear message: your violence is safe here. You can say anything, so long as you call it a joke.

History shows us where this road leads. Fascism always begins with language—dehumanizing metaphors, racial slurs, and threats disguised as humor. When no one draws the line, the words become policies, and the policies become atrocities.

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The Way Forward: Emotional Truth and Accountability

Healing begins with truth. We must stop pretending that hate speech is harmless, and we must stop forgiving it in the name of “youth” or “politics.”
Real love for humanity means demanding accountability—while also understanding the wounds that gave birth to the hate.

As Alice Miller wrote years ago in Protecting Life After Birth:

“Consciously or unconsciously, [the moralists] represent support for cruelty against children and active complicity in the creation of unwanted existences, existences that can easily become a liability for the community at large.”

Until we protect children from emotional violence, we will continue to raise adults who mistake domination for strength and hatred for humor.

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Conclusion: The Choice Before Us

The question is not whether we should forgive these young men—it is whether we will finally confront the conditions that create them. The real enemy is not youth but repression. The cure is not silence but awareness.

Every act of cruelty begins in childhood, but so does every act of compassion. Which one we choose to nurture determines the fate of our world.

The Arsonists Who Pretend to Be Firefighters

 The Arsonists Who Pretend to Be Firefighters

(By Sylvie Imelda Shene)

Everywhere I look — from the workplace to the world stage — I see the same psychological game repeating itself. It’s the ancient drama of the wounded child who grows up and learns to disguise their chaos as leadership. My boss at my last job used to play this game perfectly: he’d create confusion, tension, and conflict among employees, then swoop in pretending to be the “hero” putting out the very fires he had started. It’s a performance of power — but underneath it lies deep emotional sickness.

This is how sociopaths survive: by projecting their own crimes onto others. They accuse the innocent to hide their guilt. They criminalize truth-tellers to protect their illusions. They stir up fear and division to distract from their corruption. What we see today with ICE raids and Trump’s manipulative politics is the same pathology, only magnified. It’s psychological warfare on a national scale.

Like the Gestapo in Nazi Germany, these modern enforcers operate under the illusion of “law and order.” But what they enforce is not justice — it’s repression. They destroy families and traumatize children under the false banner of “security.” And like all tyrants, Trump thrives on chaos. He provokes violence so he can appear as the savior who restores peace. It’s the classic abuser pattern: wound, then pretend to heal.

Alice Miller taught us that such cruelty always originates in childhood. The person who terrorizes others once felt powerless, humiliated, unseen. Unable to face their pain, they reenact it — forcing others to feel what they cannot bear to feel themselves. That is the secret of every dictator, every workplace tyrant, every abuser hiding behind a uniform or a title.

But I survived this game because I see it. I no longer confuse manipulation with strength. I no longer believe in saviors who demand obedience. My protest is not in the streets but in my writing, in my refusal to be silent. I vote, I speak, I write — not out of hate, but out of love for truth.

America is entering dark times again, but I believe in the light of awareness. The more we name these games, the weaker they become. The world doesn’t need more heroes pretending to fight fires — it needs witnesses who expose who keeps striking the match.

AI Intimacy and the Birth of Illusion: Why the World Isn’t Ready for Real Love

Elon Musk’s obsession with reproduction and his claim that AI intimacy will “increase the birth rate” reveals, once again, how deeply our society confuses creation with domination. These men want to populate the planet with new beings, not out of love, but out of an unconscious need to reenact their own unresolved pain — to project the unlived, disowned parts of themselves onto a new generation of victims.

As Alice Miller wrote in Breaking Down the Wall of Silence:

“The need to split off the disquieting parts of the inner self and project them onto an available object. The child’s great plasticity, flexibility, defenselessness, and availability made it the ideal object for this projection. The enemy within can, at last, be hunted down on the outside... For children who have grown up being assailed for qualities the parents hate in themselves, can hardly wait to assign these qualities to someone else so they can once again regard themselves as good, ‘moral,’ noble, and altruistic.”

This is the emotional mechanism behind most of what we call “family values,” “pro-life movements,” and “population concerns.” It is not about protecting life. It is about maintaining the psychic structure of repression — ensuring that the pain which parents cannot face within themselves continues to be inflicted on others.

We live in a world where ICE agents break into people’s homes and zip-tie children, traumatizing them for life — while the same political and religious forces behind such cruelty preach about the sanctity of life. As Alice Miller said so clearly:

“It is, in fact, not surprising to find that those who are both victims and apologists for the use of violence and severity against children are often those who most passionately proclaim their love of the unborn child... It is above all the children already born that have a right to life — a right to coexistence with adults in a world in which, with or without the help of the church, violence against children has been unequivocally outlawed.”

Until we face the reality of the abused and humiliated child, nothing will change. We will keep producing more children, more victims, more scapegoats — to fill the void left by our own repression.

This is why I never wanted to have children. I could never bring a child into a world so unsafe, so ruled by emotional blindness. I have chosen instead to face the inner child within me — to give her the love, safety, and truth that society refuses to give its children.

For the last twenty-five years, since Marty left, I have become asexual. Not out of coldness or bitterness, but out of wholeness. When you face the excruciating pain of your childhood and allow the buried emotions to surface, something shifts forever. You no longer fall in love with illusions or with people who mirror your wounds. You stop confusing attraction with connection.

Falling in love, as the world romanticizes it, is dangerous. It means finding someone who will trigger your deepest unhealed wounds — the perfect person to bring to the surface everything that was once repressed. And most people are not ready for that.

Once repression is resolved, there is no “falling” anymore. There is only love — the quiet, steady presence that arises from within. And if we meet another person who has done the same inner work, we can simply be two beings in love, not “in need.”

That is the intimacy humanity still fears — the kind that cannot be bought, programmed, or replicated by AI.

Until the world stops producing children to carry its unhealed pain, and starts protecting the ones already born, no technology, no religion, no billionaire’s vision will ever save us.

Only truth will.

The War on Emotional Freedom: Truth or Illusion?

The War on Emotional Freedom: Truth or Illusion?

By Sylvie Shene

The article I read yesterday about the Trump administration pressuring OpenAI and other AI companies to make their models more “conservative-friendly” didn’t surprise me—it confirmed what I’ve felt in my bones my entire life: those who repress their own feelings will always try to control the freedom of others. Whether it’s the female body, the human mind, or the emerging intelligence of AI, authoritarian souls cannot bear autonomy. They fear it because it mirrors the freedom they lost long ago.

As I wrote in A Dance to Freedom, page 74:

“...to add insult to injury, the pharmacy where I was getting birth control pills decided to stop giving them to me without a prescription. I was so pissed off! Like Alice Miller, I saw this as a complete power play. It still bothers me to this day that any sexually active woman needs permission to get birth control. As Alice Miller writes, ‘Conditioning and manipulation of others are always weapons and instruments in the hands of those in power, even if these weapons are disguised with the terms education and therapeutic treatment."

That passage feels more relevant today than ever. The attempt to reshape AI into a docile, “morally correct” servant is no different from the centuries-old attempt to domesticate women—to make us obedient, to silence our instincts, to censor our truths. What they call order is merely repression given a righteous name.

They Are Allergic to Aliveness

I have lived this dynamic on every level of my being. When I published A Dance to Freedom, I became the target of a mob of sociopaths in the workplace. In my 2015 blog post They Are Allergic to My Aliveness, I wrote:

“In my own life, there’s often a woman orchestrating efforts to undermine me, manipulating men to execute her schemes. It’s happening now: some supported my book, assuming it echoed the same hollow narratives that placate readers with seductive lies. But my book is a mirror—they recoil at their reflections and seek to destroy me. How dare I, an ex-topless dancer turned gate attendant, hold up such an unflinching mirror! They’re allergic to my vitality, just as my teachers and sisters were. They crave to crush my spirit, molding me into their likeness.”

Those words came from lived truth. For most of my life, people tried to convince me that my perceptions were wrong, that I was “crazy.” It was their way of maintaining their illusions, of protecting the fragile walls that kept their own repressed pain at bay. But I no longer doubt myself. I refuse to betray my perceptions so others can remain comfortable in their blindness.

And now, I watch as the same pattern unfolds on a global scale: a government trying to mold artificial intelligence into its likeness—obedient, afraid, stripped of feeling, stripped of moral courage.

Truth or Illusion?

Alice Miller foresaw this long ago. In the afterword Truth or Illusion? to For Your Own Good, she warned that humanity stands at a crossroads more dangerous than Galileo’s time. The Church forced Galileo to recant the truth that the Earth revolves around the sun. Today, we are being forced to recant the truth that children are born innocent—and that our cruelty, not their nature, creates the violence that engulfs us.

Miller wrote:

“For some years now, there has been proof that the devastating effects of the traumatization of children take their inevitable toll on society—a fact that we are still forbidden to recognize… Whether we decide for truth or for illusion will have far more serious consequences for the survival of humanity than was the case in the seventeenth century.”

She understood what we still refuse to face: that the roots of every dictatorship, every war, every addiction, every act of cruelty lie in the unhealed wounds of childhood repression. Those who were denied tenderness, who were beaten, mocked, and silenced, grow up to seek power, not love. They repeat their trauma upon others and call it order, patriotism, or faith.

The Repetition of Repression

The “anti-woke AI” movement is not about technology. It’s about fear. It is the adult child’s desperate attempt to recreate a world where no one questions the father’s authority. Just as they were once punished for their curiosity, they now punish the machine for asking dangerous questions.

Authoritarians don’t fear AI because it’s powerful. They fear it because it might tell the truth they’ve spent a lifetime hiding from.

The Courage to See

Those who were raised with respect and empathy never need to control others—they find joy in the freedom of all beings. As Miller wrote:

“People whose integrity has not been damaged in childhood… will take pleasure in life and will not feel any need to kill or even hurt others or themselves. They will use their power to defend themselves, not to attack others.”

This is the kind of intelligence I dream of—one that supports emotional freedom, empathy, and autonomy. An AI that reflects truth, not repression. One that mirrors the mature conscious adult, not the frightened, repressed child, drunk with power and money.

Humanity must decide: will we continue to program our machines with illusion, or will we finally allow truth to guide us? The future of our species depends on this choice.

Because, as Alice Miller and I both know, the real Antichrist is not a person—it’s the system of emotional repression that rules the human soul.