QUICK LINKS
CHAPTER 5
Introducing the Surveillance State
The Rolling Stones - Sympathy For The Devil (Official Lyric Video)
Live Not By Lies | Rod Dreher | EP 268
The Restrict Act! Totalitarianism is Good For You
Apple's Vision Pro Is Worse Than You Think
History of Surveillance States
The opposite of individual freedom is centralised control and surveillance. The history and etymology of the word surveillance are watch committees which sit above and monitor suspected people. As Klaus Schwab says, control does not always need to come from the government, but can be wielded through ‘surveillance capitalism’. Governments can outsource authoritarianism to private organisations and corporations. Often private enterprise is far more effective and competent at tasks than government - even if those tasks are morally questionable and dystopian.
In order to gain a glimpse into a surveillance future, we should ask the question ‘Has anyone been down the centralised control path before?’ The answer is 'yes'. In recent times examples includes the USSR (Soviet Russia), Communist China and Nazi Germany. One hundred years ago, Russia went through the Bolshevik revolution which led to 70 years of Soviet Communism and the genocide of millions. 50 years ago China when through a cultural revolution under Chairman Mao which also led to the death of nearly 50 million. Of course, we recognise the well documented Jewish holocaust who were murdered by Nazi Germany. But these genocides are not alone, and the West also pushes genocidal policies.
Today, Israel is a leading surveillance state. They use AI facial recognition to detect people's 'emotional states'. Their Pegasus and Predator spyware secretly and remotely turns on phone cameras, microphones, and reads emails and detonate devices all without the users knowledge. And A.I. makes 'mistakes' as seen with the WCK bombings in Gaza. With the current revolutionary winds, expanding surveillance technology does not bode well for not repeating history.
Learning from Soviet Russia
I recently finished the book 'Live Not By Lies - A Manual for the Christian Dissident' by Rod Druher. It was a fascinating read about the struggles of Christians living under Soviet control in Russia. The book discusses how technology can enable social control. Soviet Christianity went underground meeting in small groups as public gatherings were forbidden. The state was supreme and any other allegiance was ruthlessly exterminated.
Using communist and marxist ideology, the state also implemented price and food controls under the ownership of the centralised government. The result was that areas that had previously been the world's most productive became barren wastelands. In the early 1930's over 20 million people were starving, 5 million of whom perished. And the press largely covered it up.
Many post Soviet citizens who survived, migrated to the West. Today, those same survivors express horror that the West is heading straight back into the type of system which they escaped. Elena Gorokhova grew up under Soviet rule in 1960’s Leningrad. In her book, A Mountain of Crumbs, she describes the strange arrangement the people arrived at under their authoritarian regime.
“The rules are simple: they lie to us, we know they're lying, they know we know they're lying, but they keep lying to us, and we keep pretending to believe them.”
The anti-human consequences of marxism is the elephant in the room. Few are willing to point this Abilene Paradox out. But in God's grace, the iron curtain fell and the Soviet states dissolved. Elena’s quote is still apt as this world continues to spout lies and deception.
Learning from Communist China
In 2018, I visited China. I was impressed. I travelled over 3,000kms on their high speed train network and saw their vast infrastructure as I flew past at 200km per hour. On that trip I realised that it was only a matter of when, not if, China replaces the USA. So given that China is becoming a world superpower we would do well to learn about their values.
China become communist in 1948 when in the aftermath of World War II, a new marxist ideology swept the Far East. In 1958, the Chinese Communist Party implemented its 5 year plan known as the Great Leap Forward. The goal was forced agricultural collectivisation. The result was 45 million people starving in just 3 years. But large scale revolutionary plans continued. In 1966, Mao Zedong introduced the 10 year Great Proteltarian Cultural Revolution to round up anyone who was thought to have a differing ideology. They were sent to re-education camps and 2 million dissidents were murdered.
Today, the Chinese Communist Party surveils all their citizens. China spends more surveilling their own citizens than they do on their entire military expenditure. China uses that surveillance to persecute religious minorities -Uighurs, Falun Gong and Christians. TikTok and other social media companies are under the control of the Chinese Communist Party. Even the US company Apple restricts its AirDrop function at the request of the CCP so that it can surveillance and quell protests.
Any and all segments of society that hold an allegiance or sympathy to something other than the all powerful state are targeted. Those who don’t comply, disappear. Hope and trust belongs to the state alone and dissidents are persecuted.
China is well advances with its social credit system. This system also utilised artificial intelligence (AI) to identify those 'likely' to commit crimes and arrest them before an offence has occurred. China has the most extreme love of 'lockdowns'. Australia is not far behind and is piloting its own version of China's system called the Points Based Activity System.
Still God builds his church in China - even underground. While not acknowledged or approved by the CCP, there are hundreds of millions of faithful Chinese Christians. America may represent 4% of the world's population. In real numbers there are likely more Christians in China than the USA. Persecution is not easy, but God's work continues in spite of it.
Learning from Nazi Germany
In 2018, I visited the Jerusalem Holocaust Remembrance Centre. The 1930s Europe Exhibit graphically showed how the marginalisation of 'groups' progresses. Minorities were required to show their papers for entry and suspected groups were restricted and demonised. The 1930's feels eerily similar to our current progression towards socialism. The term Nazi originates as a shortened version of 'National Socialists’. While they hailed lofty ambitions of building a new nation dubbed the Third Reich, their methods of doing so forged a dark and tyrannical path.
IBM supplied the Nazis with punch cards which Hitler used to identify, track and marginalise groups - including the Jews. The technology also enabled him to identify minority groups upon whom they could perform forced medical experiments. The de-humanising of people formed a justification that resulted in murdering millions of dissidents in gas chambers and camps. Technology and authoritarianism do not have a good relationship. Yet, Hitler could have only dreamed of having today’s surveillance technology at his fingertips. So when considering pograms and holocausts, it is worth considering that in the lead up to atrocities, society became okay with squashing freedom of conscience.
“First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.”
Martin Niemöller (1892–1984) - German Lutheran pastor.
Most evangelicals Christians praise those who resisted Nazi orders. Yet they criticise similar resistance convictions today. Resistance may not necessarily come from bad ethics. Rather it may result from a recognition of the degree of comity that has been broken. Jeff Durbin and Doug Wilson make a case for today's Christians to resist 'new mandates'. In the Bible, believers were commended for defying bad government orders or being deceptive. (e.g. Pharaohs’ midwives, Rahab, Samuel with Saul). I am reviewing my ethics related to deception and when to use it. As the meme says,
“If you ever wondered whether you would have complied during 1930’s Germany, now you know.”
Praise the Lord that the Nazis were not successful in taking over the world. But bad ideologies do not die, and often the sad truth is often those who have been yesterday’s victims can become tomorrow’s victimisers. We must be carefule to learn from the villains of the the past and guard against becoming the villains of the future.
Surveillance States in the Middle East
In the wake of WW2, a new world order was established. The United Nations was birthed and redrew the map of conquered lands - particularly across the middle east. In particular, a group push called Zionism successfully pushed for the creation of a new nation state of Israel. Politically, the time was right to establish a religiously Jewish state as a post WW2 safe-have. Militarily, western governments saw great benefits in having an outpost located at the cross-roads of several continents. Theologically, many Jews and US Christians interpreted this new state as prophetic progress based on the Old Testament Scriptural promises. The 'Devine Right' to the 'Promised Land' for an 'exceptional people' was taking shaping physically. Yet, 80 years later, the fruit of this project is just more human brutality and genocide.
Darryl Cooper is a US navy veteran, historian and podcaster. In 2024, he was denounced as a 'Holocaust denier' and Hitler apologist by the US government for these three comments that challenged the one-sided Western narrative:
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Winston Churchill was also a WW2 villain because he provoked and escalated the conflict with the Nazis into a global war - including carpet bombing civilians in Dresden and starving millions of Bengalis'.
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Initially, the Nazis did not intend to gas the Jews, but did so as they were running out of food to feed them. The Germans were running short of food because the Allies had enacted food blockage on the Germans.
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WW2 has become the load bearding narrative that is used to justify the current US military domination of the world.
In his Fear and Loathing podcast, Cooper spends hours detailing the horrors of the Holocaust and says that even in the most generous interpretation of his research into Germans role in WW2, they are still guilty of the mass murder of Jews. So the question must be asked, ‘Why was there such a visceral and bad faith reaction to noting that in WW2, genocidal actions occurred from both sides.?' The reason is this: Cooper’s observations come just as the US military and IDF were:
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Carpet bombing Gaza in response to the October 7th terrorists attacks and funding and provoking wars in Ukraine.
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Israeli extremists are starving the Palestinian population by withholding food and destroying aid trucks.
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The US and Israel are using their military to seize and occupy foreign countries.
""The biggest insult to the memory of the Holocaust is not denying it,
but using it as an excuse to justify the genocide of the Palestinian people."
Norman Finkelstein
At it’s heart, the middle east conflict is a Holy War. As a religion, Judaism seeks to usher in its salvation through the restoration of their O.T. Land (with Greater Israel boundaries), rather than the finished work of Jesus. This false prophetic narrative drives the political alliance between the US and Israel. Prior to WW2, political Zionism was in its embryonic form, but was birthed when the UN reviving Israel in 1948. The key question is this: Was 1948 a work of God or work of Man?
For many Jewish and Christian Zionists, the 1948 boundaries were not the end of the Zionist project, but the beginning. The OT promise of Greater Israel boundaries given to Abraham are the end goal. And when those land boundaries are defined as a modern day Devine Right given to a superior group of people, then a moral justification can be made for surveillance and atrocities. None of this excuses or defends the murderous actions of Palestinian terrorists, but it is the Israeli machine that has developed apartheid policies, censorship legislation, surveillance weapons, and nuclear bombs.
Censorship and Free Speech
Governments don't assert control in a vacuum. They co-opt a willing 'media' as their propaganda arm - cloaked in goal of 'policing trusted information. While I did not like Donald Trump’s mean tweets and thought they did more harm than good, I even more objected to removing his social media accounts. If they can censor the POTUS and take him out, they can do the same to you - and they are. Big Tech uses undefined and ever evolving ‘community standards’ which in practice are more like ‘communist standards’.
The US government have secretive portals through which they instruct Big Tech and the media what they can publish and what they must censor. YouTube has suspended Sky News and WION. The WEF wants A.I. 'fact checkers' to prevent what they deem as misinformation. The Restrict Act will censor and imprison anyone the government designates as an adversary. It will ban VPNs and surveil what you read, what you think, and how you use your digital money.
Western media has become state controlled propaganda that is every bit as bad as Russian media. In some ways it is worse, when accounting for the scope of the West's ever expanding list of sanctions and unilateral asset seizures. Consider this: 400 people were arrested in Russia for posting offensive social media posts. At the same time, 3,500 were arrested in the UK for the same behaviour. Who is the communist and oppressive regime again?
More than top-down censorship, people are self-censoring themselves because they know the list of politically incorrect words, thoughts and ideology are growing. People don’t want to be accused of spreading ‘misinformation’ or hate speech. But as the saying goes, “Truth sounds like hate, when you hate the truth". Today's elites hate truth and delight in evil. Yet, in order to promote good, we must also speak up against evil.
"Let those who love the Lord hate evil"
Psalm 97:10
There is no difference between freedom of speech and freedom of thought.
There is a rise in 'news articles' citing anonymous sources as 'experts'. The moment I read a headline that uses the word 'Expert, Bombshell, Shocking, or some other click-bait hyperbole', I immediately dismiss the content as propaganda. I want the facts, not being told what to think or how to feel. Yet, the government wants laws to determine 'misinformation'
It is hard to trust any single platform or publication. Because the media don't report the full picture, I tend to find my news from aggregator sites like https://www.realclearworld.com This site does its best to not be US centric and include reports from publications that lean both left and right. John Anderson recommends that we 'triangulate' to help increase the accuracy of what we consume. On major issues, I will listen to WION (India), SkyNews (Australia), and often a 3rd local news source before I begin to have confidence. Still it is very hard knowing what to believe or trust.
Surveillance Comes to the West
In the wake of WW2, the US military industrial complex became aware of its massive power. General Dwight D Eisenhower was Allied Commander in the European theatre. He subsequently became the president of the US. On his exit from the presidency, he concluded that dropping the nuclear bomb on Japan was unnecessary and warned the American people of the dangers of the growth of the US military industrial complex. Eisenhower’s successor, John F Kennedy sought to restrict the global aggression of the US military, and he was assassinated. Since then, the only other two US presidents to face assassination, Reagan and Trump, also sought to restrain the US war machine.
In the wake of the September 11th 2001 terrorist attacks, the USA re-tooled its 'intelligence agencies’ with mass data gathering initiatives both abroad and at home. The misnomered 'Patriot Act', enabled the US government to eaves drop on potential terrorists. That sounds okay, until you realise that the government defines who is a potential 'terrorist'.
"Intelligence without wisdom is destructive"
Eckhart Tolle
As the culture of the West becomes more depraved, surveillance becomes a big problem. Now the US government is calling parents domestic terrorists for speaking out against teachers promoting transgenderism to their kids at school.
Edward Snowden exposed how the US weaponised the Patriot Act to spy on its citizens. I supported America when it was ‘the land of the free and home of the brave’. But today, Wikileaks and the Twitter files prove that it has become the land of fascism and the home of corporatism. America changed, not me. I no longer see the US as the defender of freedom, but as just another surveillance state in history's long litany of beastly empires. As Bret Weinstein points out, the elietes are building a turn-key totalitarian state, and most people will only become aware when the key is turned. And it is not just the USA, but also its 5 eyes allies of Canada, U.K., Australia and New Zealand.
So now, the question is, 'What are the 5 eyes surveilling?' The answer is you and me. Future digital money will give the government complete control over our lives. And when the news 'reports' the West vs China/Russia, I don't view nations through a lens of 'goodies vs. baddies'. Rather I see them all as equally dangerous.
Already the US has dismembered 70 millions babies through abortion. The green agenda puts millions at risk of starvation. The FBI has arrested peaceful pro-life citizens. Canada is euthanising minors without parental consent and using ‘Emergency Powers’ to freeze bank accounts. In many respects, the West as a greater threat to freedom as this is where I live. Like prior surveillance states, the West is morphing into the next totalitarian empire, possibly in time for 2030.
Death of Trust
I’ve stopped respecting all institutions who spread lies - including the media and the government. The elites have stated that they want to move 'beyond objectivity'. Konstantin Kisin perfectly explains why scepticism is strong in his ‘5 year tweet-thread’. The elites have earned every ounce of their lack of trust. When our elites repeatedly don’t follow their own rules, why should anyone to trust or obey them? So the way I rank information is by using the following trust scale:
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The Bible - God’s Word - 100% confidence and trust
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My personal observations - high level of confidence and trust
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Daylight
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Everything else (mainstream media and conspiracies) - default skepticism.
This scale does not mean that everything in category 4 is false and lies. But I require those sources to prove themselves over time before I trust them. I will not automatically or blindly believe anything that anyone tells me, including priests, prophets, politicians and self-proclaimed experts. The first question I ask when reading the news is 'What are the media marketing to me today? Journalism is dead, replaced by propaganda. Many people prefer to live in denial than consider that they are being 'gaslit'. However, once you see this,, then you are set free to see how deep this deception runs.
“Whenever you watch the news, remember that it is a well orchestrated PR campaign designed to play with your emotions”
E B Tucker
‘News’ is often ‘sponsored’ by large corporations with conflicts of interest. Celebrities dominate the headlines seeking to shape and make the news than report the facts. For me, the media and government earned their zero credibility ranking. Therefore, they will never be my single source of truth. I’m not disappointed that the government and media are spewing lies. That has been the pattern of history. What is disappointing is how many people - even in the church - are eager to swallow and propagate those same lies. Consider the following journey of a society they listens to lies..
“If you think that women have penises, I won’t believe a single word you say about anything else. Because if you will lie about something so obvious, I will assume you lie about everything.”
Sall Grover
"If everybody always lies to you, the consequences are not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything, any longer. A people that can no longer believe anything, cannot make up its mind.”
Hannah Arendt
“If you tell a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed.”
Adolf Hitler
“A lie told often enough becomes the truth.”
Vladimir Lenin
Rise of the Authoritarian
If the ‘elite’ are unable to convince people through persuasion, they either give up or revert to authoritarianism. Recent debates about lockdowns, mandates and the resulting protests across Europe and Australia are early skirmishes in the invasion of authoritarianism into the West. French President Emmanual Macron said he creates restrictions to piss off the unvaccinated. British police even arrested a veteran because he posted a variation of a pride meme which caused someone else 'anxiety'.
Authoritarians are local too. To fight climate change, Oxfordshire voted to implement 15 minute zones in 2024. The city will be divided into 6 neighbourhoods and travel managed by digital permits. The media spin this initiative as 'traffic filters' and label the pushback as climate lockdown conspiracy. But this is pure dishonesty from the elites - that is how they roll. All those 'red light cameras' and digital parking signs are not just about revenue raising, but are necessary infrastructure for the authoritarian 'smart city'. The term 'Smart City' is better interpreted as 'Surveillance City'. The move to retrofit 'Smart Meters' on every electrical boxes will enable power to be rationed and centrally turned off at will.
Make no mistake, we are living in a seminal moment regarding our values of individual freedom of speech, movement and thought. If our freedom is lost, then what is the difference between Communist China and the West? A pandemic is a significant but not unprecedented event. Giving away the values and freedoms our grandfathers died to win is even more serious. The COVID panic may have waned, but the emergence of tyranny remains - even if we now acknowledge the hysterical overreaction after the fact.
“All tyrannies rule through fraud, (fear), and force,
but once fraud is exposed, they must rely exclusively on force.”
George Orwell
Dependence and Lack of Resistance
Universal Basic Income (UBI) is a philosophy that ‘everyone’ deserves a regular minimum payment. Its justification is that meaningful well paying jobs are disappearing because of automation and lockdowns. It is hard to argue against the moral imperative of governments to compensate people when they make it illegal to go to work to earn a living.
Governments should never have been so eager to shut down the economy. Many businesses won't survive. Already 1/3rd of small businesses can't pay their rent. But maybe small business destruction is the goal? Businesses that survive will have lost many of their most important assets - workers. Once the masses accept a living wage without working, then there will be a 'jobs crisis'. This gels with both the statistics and my personal experience of not being able to fill open jobs. People have decided en masse to become dependent on government handouts rather than return to work.
"The perfect dictatorship would have the appearance of a democracy, but would basically be a prison without walls in which the prisoners would not even dream of escaping. It would essentially be a system
of slavery where through consumption and entertainment, the slaves would love their servitudes."
- Aldous Huxley
When dependency is established, then resistance becomes futile. If it is impossible to find regular food, having convictions that are different to the approved narrative becomes a luxury one can't afford. A progressively disarmed population also assists in preventing mass resistance.
Australia leads the world with UBI. In 2020, it established Jobkeeper and Centrelink disaster payments for those who lost work due to lockdowns. But handouts have strings attached. The ‘No Jab, No Entry’ policy morphed into the ‘No Jab, No Job policy - with no dole for the unvaccinated. Manipulation is a tactic of devilish beauty - a subtle tactic that has not changed since Genesis. But UBI is not just temporary compensation. It will morph into incentivization for 'approved lifestyles'. Already the city of Palm Springs, California has UBI programs, but only for those who are willing to identify as transgender and non-binary. San Francisco has launched their GIFT Program (Guaranteed Income for Transgenders)
Critical Thinking and Centralised Control
In all that we consume, whether from the media, friends or our own research, we should hone the skill of critical thinking. Don’t blindly trust me or anyone else for that matter. There is wisdom in having an a la carte view of the ‘sources’ we consume. Eat the chicken and spit out the bones. Digest well. Pray. Publications may contain both truth and error.
We should resist the notion that we are limited to either/or choices. Two things can also be true at the same time. Don’t fall for unnecessary two-choice trick when there are 3rd options that the presenter does not want you to consider. Seeking and finding truth is not about balancing two opposing views and finding middle ground, but it does recognise that - apart from God - no one is infallible or free from error.
We are already being told what to think by woke computer algorithms. BuzzFeed have confessed they used ChatGPT to produce content for news articles. Products like Apple's Vision Pro will created an all encompassing alternative reality. However, all truth is God's truth and it will not contradict what He has revealed in His Word. Truth is not always popular or determined by a vote, poll or survey. But John 14:6 tells us truth does exist. Without truth, there can be no salvation.
They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved.
2 Thessalonians 2:10
It is important to look at the bigger picture, not just the individual crisis that dominates the headlines. In doing so, we see the bigger play behind each issue and whether it gives elites more power and the individual less freedom. Centralised control is a great danger. Conversely, localism is liberating. We often rightly consider this in the forms of governments. But the de-humanising threat from centralised control also exists in corporate workplaces, party politics and even in church denominations.
Engaging with Technology
We should proactively and practically respond to these emerging surveillance trends so that we can maintain accountability and privacy along with convenience and freedom. Here are 4 guiding principles to help deliberately minimise your technology interaction.
Four Guiding Principles
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Prioritise People over Technology. Spend chunks of time away from technology. Use technology to enhance face to face interactions. Use the phone for conversation for more nuanced communication.
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Diversify as a Hedge: Never become so dependent on any one technology provider that my life would fall apart if its availability ceased. Censorship resistant.
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Adoption and Impacts: Pragmatically consider the benefits vs. costs before deciding to acquire a new piece of technology (hardware, app, temptations, etc). Recognise that while technology is not intrinsically good or evil, technology use has emotionally, mental and spiritual effects. Use helpful time and content restrictions and controls.
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Consider Contexts: Technology at Home, Work, and Wearable/Injectable, and Location.
Jesus prioritised people. He also lived in an age when authoritarianism and deceit was rife. Yet he did not stray from the truth. Jesus’ life was frequently under threat which is why He often spoke truth through parables. As a marked man, who was considered a revolutionary, Jesus prayed for wisdom at the right time.
“In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act”
George Orwell
Parables, memes, satire, and non-direct communication have a two fold purpose. They both reveal truth to those who want to understand while hiding truth from those who don’t want to see or who have ulterior motives. That second purpose may seem somewhat counterintuitive, but there is great wisdom in not casting pearls before swine.
For better or worse, social media has become the way we have a voice in society, culture, politics and evangelise. Like in the Matrix movies, the question is posed, If we die online, do we die in reality? It is a deep question. Just as we take prudent steps to not put ourselves in harm's way physically, it is prudent to take steps to not put ourselves in harm's way digitally.
Big Tech is increasingly banning the distribution of what they deem as ‘hate speech’ either physically or digitally. This is equivalent to book burning from 500 years ago. If such policies continue, it is only a matter of time before the Bible is banned because it is no longer politically correct. With everything being digital, Bibles can be removed instantly. Christians could find overnight they no longer have access to God’s Word. It is worth keeping hardcopy resources of true wisdom.
Finally, we should consider our mental health. One of the biggest challenges of managing technology is that it changes so rapidly. God created each of us as finite creatures with limited brain capacity to process things. Taking regular time to focus and not be distracted is meditation - which is a healthy spiritual discipline. Choosing to say 'no' to good and even helpful additions may be the correct decision when considering our human capacity. I will refuse any brain enhanced technology implant such as neuralink. We should guard against being ‘spread too thin’ and be aware of our limitations.