You Don’t Have a Political Problem. You Have a Foundational Problem.
Most people outsource their agency and opinions. Real change starts by reclaiming your life, building a foundation, and taking ownership layer by layer.
I’ve recently left a comment on a Substack note, ending up in it’s own mini chat, and felt the need to write a post. So, here you go, enjoy. The original link to the Substack notes threads can be found here.
Every time someone says, “we’re supposed to elect the best of us, not the worst of us,” I see the same thing. Not morality, not civic virtue, not even politics. I see someone who has never built a foundation for themselves and is desperately outsourcing responsibility to a system that could not care less about them. They stand on nothing. They have no leverage. They have no authorship. They are parrots repeating other people’s words and expecting the world to bend to their illusions. This isn’t about Trump, Kamala, or any election. It’s about where agency actually lives, and most people have placed it everywhere except where it belongs.
The obsession with the “lesser evil” is moral theater designed to train people to feel righteous while remaining structurally passive. They tell themselves they are participating, that they are influencing outcomes, but they have no control over the inputs that actually determine those outcomes. They care about elections while their lives are structured so that losing a phone, a job, or internet access would collapse everything. They try to fix the outer world while being fully owned in the inner layers that shape their experience. Because no one has ever told them that sovereignty is a layered structure, they don’t even know why they feel powerless or why the world makes no sense.
The question, “Okay, so what do you suggest doing?” comes next—if someone even dares to ask. It’s not asked from curiosity; it’s asked from desperation, because the person has nothing to stand on. If voting doesn’t fix it, if representation doesn’t save them, if leaders aren’t coming, then what are they supposed to stand on? The answer is simple and brutal: you don’t stand on anything because you never built a foundation. You tried to have opinions before authorship. You tried to change the world before governing yourself. You tried to fix layer seven while being owned in layers one through five. Of course you’re angry. Of course you’re reactive. Of course you’re parroting someone else’s language. The system doesn’t need to silence people who don’t know who they are; it just keeps them busy talking.
Where Agency Actually Begins
Agency is not a belief, a vote, or a value (layer 1). It is structural leverage, and it has an order. Miss the order and everything upstream becomes noise. First, internal signal. Can you tolerate boredom? Sit in silence? Think without being paced by feeds, notifications, and algorithmic outrage cycles? If not, you are not thinking—you are being thought through. Attention is your primary currency. Without it, you are already owned.
Next comes the body (layer 2). Sleep, movement, sensory contact, friction with reality. If your body is dysregulated, everything you feel, believe, or assert is already compromised. Immediate dependencies follow (layer 3): housing, debt, transport, tools. If losing your phone, your job, or your apartment collapses your life, you are not free enough to speak clearly. Ownership here is practical, not ideological. It’s not about owning a mansion or a car; it’s about not being leveraged by external forces.
Digital surface area is the next layer (4): accounts, devices, data footprints. If your memory, communication, income, and identity exist on platforms you do not control, your voice is borrowed. Every assertion online is contingent, not sovereign. Free services are not free. You are paying in predictability. Layer five is economic interface. Who pays you, under what conditions, and how fast could it be cut off? If your survival depends on alignment with external narratives, your opinions will drift toward safety, not truth.
Layer six is the small, real-world trust network. Not followers, not internet friends, not people who agree with you. People who can act. One to three humans you can rely on physically. That’s it. Everything else is decoration. Only after these layers can you meaningfully engage with abstract systems (layers 7 and up): politics, ideology, global narratives. Most people start at the outermost layer and wonder why they are lost. They try to change the world without changing themselves, and the world has no interest in pretending otherwise.
Practical Sovereignty
You don’t need better opinions; you need fewer dependencies. You need actions that return agency to your life, layer by layer. This is how it starts. Reduce forced upgrade cycles. Choose boredom over stimulation. Minimize accounts instead of optimizing them. Rent strategically instead of mortgaging your identity. Localize trust instead of scaling an audience. Learn to function offline. Make decisions that cost convenience but restore authorship.
These are not glamorous. They don’t perform well on social media. They don’t signal virtue either. However, what they do allow for is the return of agency to your body, your mind, and your immediate life. I do this myself: I rent instead of owning. I use a twenty-year-old Nokia without a touchscreen. I own almost nothing digitally, beyond what I control on my personal server (e.g., a cheap SBC). I walk barefoot—the brand, as well as literally. I cultivate boredom. I collect books I can actually touch, carry, and read. I even hug a fucking tree when I feel for it. These actions are small, but they teach authorship. They restore clarity. They stabilize the internal system so that when everything else collapses, you still stand—and strong!
Reflective Questions
Ask yourself these questions. There are many more you could ask yourself, of course, but if you can’t answer at least ones these ones, then that’s the point: you have no foundation.
What would collapse in my life if the internet disappeared for thirty days?
Which purchases were responses to pressure rather than need?
Who could I rely on physically, not emotionally?
How many decisions have I made that I cannot reverse?
Where have I traded authorship for convenience?
What would actually break if I stopped outsourcing my boredom?
Most people avoid these questions because the answers are terrifying. If almost everything in your life depends on systems you do not control, you are not sovereign, and your opinions do not matter. You are a spectator, being acted upon, and pretending it isn’t happening.
Brutal Truth
If you don’t know who you are, you will borrow opinions. If you don’t govern yourself, you will look for rulers. If you outsource every layer of survival, you cannot be surprised when you have no leverage. This is not anti-democracy. It is post-naïveté. If you want real change, stop looking for better rulers and start removing the structures that rule you. Stop borrowing opinions, stop performing morality through symbolic compliance, stop pretending that electing a “better” leader will solve what you have not even begun to stabilize inside. Everything else is noise. Everything else is derivative. Build your foundation. Claim your life. Take your agency back.
Closing Thoughts
I’m genuinely interested in the answers you’ll give for the reflective questions. Share them in the comments if you want, or don’t—either is fine. Even summarizing your take on all the questions together is fine. I’m curious about what people notice, what patterns they see in themselves, and how they begin to relate to their own layers of agency.
Writing this doesn’t mean I have everything figured out. I’m not perfect, nor is that the intention. I’m actively going through the same process I’m describing. I’ve been working across the layers I outlined. I know exactly what I share, what I hold private, and what I control. Economic dependencies? I’m actively working on them. Layer seven—the abstract systems? I engage selectively, from a place of inner stability, not as a solution to missing foundations.
This is a process. Some layers are stronger than others, but that doesn’t invalidate the approach. Awareness and deliberate action are what matter. The only way to build agency and reclaim your life is by actually doing it. Observing, reflecting, experimenting, failing, and adjusting. That’s the reality.
I’m also curious about how you, the reader, are engaging with these layers. These reflective questions are just a starting point. But reading or liking this post alone is minimal execution. True growth comes from sharing, discussing, and being transparent with your process. Silence keeps you in the dark. Collective exploration, even with a few people, accelerates understanding and stabilizes action.
For those of you subscribing from Germany, I’ll be relocating to Berlin in mid-January 2026. I’m very open to connecting with people in person, exploring these ideas further, and seeing if we can do something together in a more proactive way. There’s no obligation, no expectation—just an open invitation. If you’re interested in engaging, experimenting, or collaborating in any form, I’d be more than happy to make that happen. This is where things actually begin—by taking action together, rather than only reflecting individually.
Crossing the Threshold
On January 18th, from 19:00 to 20:30 CET, we’re hosting our first webinar: Crossing the Threshold. It’s about moving beyond the familiar 3D script into a grounded, autonomous way of living—how to truly hold yourself in that space.
We won’t dissect this article directly, but the themes overlap. If this piece resonated, this session will take it deeper. Tickets are available at TheNexusFormula.com
See you there!