You Can Call It Rage. I Call It Prayer.

✍️ A story of civic disobedience, the matrix, and the holiness of sitting under a tree.

Sometimes I craft careful messages with a lot of research.
Other times I just speak my mind—my anger, my love—all in the same breath.

Civic disobedience is key.
Compliance is complicity.

Crazy wisdom. Holy unrest. Divine anger. Call it what you want.
Next time you see God, he may be throwing Molotov cocktails.
Because the world is burning and no one seems to care.

So let’s correct some vocabulary:
A traitor sacrifices the collective for personal interest.
A hero sacrifices personal interest for the collective.
Assange, Snowden, Manning—we see you.
Mandela was labeled a terrorist before they handed him a Nobel Peace Prize.
MLK, The Dalai Lama, Gandhi, they all professed a form of disobedience.
Disobedience is essential when moral values have gone missing.

It’s easy to rearrange furniture on the deck of the Titanic and pretend it’s a contribution. Cat pictures? Breakfast menus? Seven-figure business recipes? TikTok reels? Keep going if you must—but I beg you, forget my contact.
Don’t litter my inbox. Don’t paste on my wall, I want it blank for graffitis.

We are in a dire place.
We don’t know if we’re going to make it.
Probably not.
History isn’t offering much comfort.
Awakening has never been our collective genius.
We sleepwalk to the edge of the abyss.

© Philippe Lopez

But miracles are possible.
Life itself is made of miracles.

So, no—I’m not preparing for doom.
I’m preparing for love.
For celebration.

I’m not demonstrating in the streets.
I’m not sending money to Palestine.
All worthy acts. Please, continue them.

Me, I work like the monk wields the vajra—
cutting through illusion, through darkness,
to help people see through the propaganda,
the bullshit,
the nonsense.

Propaganda doesn’t need our silence.
It doesn’t fear dissent anymore—
it drowns it.
The weapon is overwhelm.
(If I’m right, no one will knock on my door before I press ‘Send.’)

So expect more lies.
More bullshit.
More noise.
Our leaders won’t even pretend anymore.
The strategy now is flooding.
Don’t tell the truth—just saturate the field with garbage.
The internet is perfect for that: no checks, no balances.
It can even tailor the lies to your psychological profile—
because the matrix has been watching you.

So if you get heard, beware:
They’ll bully you—to drain your time and bandwidth.
They’ll tune the algorithm to erase you from the feed.
And that’s just the beginning.
They’ve got armies of trolls, misinformation mercenaries,
and more tools I haven’t even seen yet.

If you’ve followed my writing, you know—
I don’t care for having all details right,
But I track the plot.
The deeper story.

And it’s always the same:
Separation.
There is an ‘Other’—
Another human, another nation, another resource, another planet—
To dominate, manipulate, extract.

Everyone knows we’re one.
Let’s act like it.

I don’t write this from behind a screen like some cyberpunk smartass.
I’ve dragged myself across the terrain for decades.
I’ve seen the horror unfold—
Close.
Personal.

I speak my truth.
Not the truth.
Not your truth.
You’ll have to choose that for yourself.
I’m not here to convince.

Truth doesn’t need defense.
Only opinions do.

You already know.
Or you don’t want to see.

If you knew me personally, I believe you’d trust me.
But you don’t know me.
And you should question what you read.
You should be selective, aware, discerning.

So check me out.
Do your homework.
I’m good with that.

But before anything:
Listen to your gut.
Listen to your heart.
Listen to what you already know.

Trust yourself more than you trust me.

Stop pretending you don’t know.
Stop pretending you’re powerless.
That’s lame.
And it’s not helping.

We all have a role in this game.
We helped shape this reality—through convenience, through fear, through looking away.
Every time we flipped the light switch, turned the ignition key, or opened the faucet for running water. We mistook privilege for birthright.
We assumed comfort without consequence.
And most of the world watched from the outside, uninvited.

And while we looked away, the beast grew.
Now we slay.
Or we die trying.

---

Two men once sat under trees.

2,500 years ago, a privileged man left his palace.
He saw sickness. Aging. Death.
He didn’t start a social media campaign.
He sat beneath a tree and looked illusion in the face.
To this day we remember his name.
You might even have a statue of him at the end of your pool in Beverly Hills.

From a Western lens, he “did nothing.”
No job hustle. No savings account. No castle.
And he changed the world.

500 years later, another man did something similar.
The empire didn’t like his anarchy.
They nailed him for it.
He didn’t scream revenge.
He whispered forgiveness.
Gratitude.
Love.

And we remember him—though here too, we bought and repackaged his legacy for compliance of the masses.

---

So what if we stop?
Right now.
Sit under a tree.
Before they are all gone.
And speak of Love.

All of us.
All at once.

We may not be as powerful as they were,
But we are many more.
We have more money.
More screens.
More bandwidth.

And we have the internet.

This is what we can do.
Step out of the matrix.
We can’t wait for Morpheus.
His ship is full.
We go rogue.

Wake up.
Today. Now.

And tomorrow we say:
Enough.
“I’m not doing this shit anymore.”
“I won’t swallow one more blue pill.”
“From now on, I will only speak the language of Love,
and align my actions with my words.”

---

Yes, I hear you:
Who will pay the rent?
Buy the groceries?
Fuel the car?

Of course.
I get it.

But wait one more year—
there may be no groceries, no gas.
Or maybe just no money at all,
because it’s not even real.
Just digits, blinking on and off
50 times per second.
Which means… half the time, it’s not even there.

And then you’ll say:
“Shit… if I’d known…
I would’ve listened to that weirdo who told me to sit under a tree
And speak of love.
From love.
For love.”

---

Wake up now.
Or hit snooze.
And stay asleep forever.

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PS: “Change Your Story, Change The World” is a storytelling endeavor that looks deeply into the psyche that creates the stories we live by—with the intention to help us shape better stories, both personally and collectively.

Because the stories we tell are not just stories—they are the reality we live.