Not to sound all Robert Putnam-esque, but it’s less likely now that we belong to a bowling league, or any other league or club, than it was before Steve Jobs made his famous ‘dent in the universe’ by strongarming through the invention of the smartphone.

Since then, a plethora of idiocies and banalities have competed to fill the vacuum created in the wake of that dent in our universe. Among these is the rise of online gurus, some of whom have reeled in millions of followers. It reminds me of the dynamic between the current U.S. president and his more ardent followers: no matter what their guru says, it is divine decree.

With gurus, even if they blatantly contradict themselves, it can still somehow be spun as pure brilliance, if we as their followers hold the crystal ball under the light in just the right (wrong) angle.

One explanation I’ve heard for the rise of gurus is that we crave certainty. Amid the exponential fragmentation of our world, we like to return to solid ground sometimes. It doesn’t help that we’ve become cyborgs. Literally everyone has grown an appendage on their hand overnight. We can now access billions of brains instantly rather than just our own boring (but still usually trusty) brain. We might remove our bionic limb for a few slots of our day, but only fitfully it seems, and seldom as a clean, surgical break.

The danger is that we are vulnerable to some charismatic guru hacking us. Something about our primordial biology tends to believe information for its own sake, no matter how irrational or ill-founded it might be. If something is said confidently enough, we tend to believe it unless we willfully reverse the inertia of trustingly taking everything in as fact, particularly if it is said in a sleek studio with an army of sound producers and cinematographers working behind the scenes.

And all of which causes one to muse: what, practically, can one do to mitigate the effects of con-men. I remember Kipling’s line in If: “if all people count with you, but none too much.” If some media figure has us eating out of their hand and we tune in to almost all their new content, it just might be a good idea to wrench ourselves away from their orbit occasionally. It has surprised me more than once how a fresh, new take can reframe a situation. We owe it to ourselves to find that new perspective. As Richard Feynman said, “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.” Well, Mr. Feynman, what with the entire body of past and present knowledge at our fingertips, we have less of an excuse now than ever.

I have a proclivity to swallow whole what some charismatic online gurus say. Despite that embarrassing reality, my smug brain wants to whisper that my gurus are more sophisticated and less rabid than other people’s gurus. But that thought is in itself an indictment on how much guru Kool-Aid I’ve drunk. One remedy is to talk back to people on podcasts, literally talk, out loud, as I listen to them on headphones while I cut the grass or jog. It’s surprising how often they suddenly start sounding a lot more foolish, or at least less wise, when I do respond to them. I also like to float what they say to flesh-and-blood humans (novel idea, I know), and notice how they respond, as someone who didn’t get caught in the spell of the technologically advanced media production. I find that people around me who are less invested can be pretty objective, and even ruthless critics, especially my daughters.

That, and also the idea of a True North. A late afternoon plunge in the Irish Sea always has a way of stripping away the BS my mind might have accumulated throughout the day. Beyond blue pills, and beyond red pills, there is our true mother, the sea. I will meet you there. Additionally, the communion service Esther and I have started attending on Wednesday morning anchors us. The priest holds out the wine, uttering the quasi-cannabalist incantation, The blood of Christ, keep you in eternal life, and in every pore of our being, we seek to agree. It’s a bizarre little ritual, but I can tell you it’s been around longer than podcasts, and it is also perhaps the most impregnable defense against overweening gurus that I currently know of.