By Julian Websdale

Guest Writer for Wake Up World

Surviving the Matrix

Looking at the global situation from the perspective of fear is counterproductive. We need to look at it from a perspective of concern, and see the opportunity that lies in having the knowledge of the global situation. There are opportunities in all these problems. Many people, when they discover the global situation and discover the truth about the world we live in, they move straight into fear. This does not help alleviate the situation. It’s one thing to be aware of it, but it’s another thing to be working actively to rectify this problem – the problem of government corruption, the problem of corporatism, the problem of commerce being superimposed over the human experience to the point where money and economics is viewed as being more important than people and more important than life. Unfortunately this is the situation we currently face.

Many people in our society have grown quite accepting of this; they believe that if they don’t pay their bills then they should be removed from their houses and cast out onto the street. These bills are all contrived, and the way they are contrived is by superimposing a system of interest-based commerce over the minds of the people. Our money system itself is created by a private bank which charges the government interest on the use of their money, which immediately places everybody who uses money into a state of unofficially manufactured debt. This is a simplistic way of looking at it, and it is actually much worse than that. The banks manufacture the paper that we use as money. Money is in fact created when people take out loans. Because the paper that we use is privately printed, privately owned and privately run, there is a debt attached to using that paper. This has the effect of placing everybody within our society into a state of perpetual self-generating debt, which lasts their entire life and sometimes beyond; thereby passing that debt onto their children. All of this debt is contrived and manufactured, and is completely unnecessary.

Because the worth or value of people in our society is very much based on their economic or social standing (according to the parameters of this society), we tend to readily discard people below us on the social ladder – because we deem them to be of less worth or value than people who have substantial financial interests in the world. This is a programmed, fictional reality – people are quite literally trained to think this way. This is one of the main objectives of the modern education system. The education system has become more and more business-oriented as generations have gone by, and this makes it possible for sections of society to be discarded, one rung at a time, while the people above them on the social ladder never really believe that it could happen to them. However the entire system is designed to slowly move up the social ladder until it has discarded everybody except those who issue the currency. This will effectively create a two-tiered society whereby we will have a ruling elite and a working class.

There are many people who are quite well-off in the world at the moment who believe that they will be safe from this system, but ultimately they won’t. Eventually it will get that high on the social ladder, that everybody who does not control the money supply will be under the control of those who do.

We the people, should we choose to step into our power, can prevent all of this from happening; because it’s all happening due to fictional rules that public trustees have written on paper. It is important for people to bear in mind the uncomfortable truth that if we do not choose to step into our power then the situation just described will occur, because it is the only possible outcome of this money system. This is why this money system has been put in place, to create the two-tiered society separated only by those who perceive they have power between the ‘elite’ and the working class. These people with perceived power will be the police and government officials who sit in the middle. These people will be given small tokens of power to make them feel as though they have authority over people, which of course will serve to give them the confidence they need to oppress the working class.

If you take everybody’s power away from them, reduce people to the point where they are quite literally abject slaves without their knowledge and you start giving small tokens of power to people within the group, then their egos will always take over & they’ll start throwing their weight around. If you watch which people throw their weight around the heaviest, you find the sociopaths within the crowd. Those are the ones that the ‘elite’ elevate to positions of authority, because they know that they have no empathy, and that they are quite happy to harvest energy from the population around them.

By taking people’s inherent power and value from them, you effectively disconnect them from the true energy source of the universe, and the most ready source of energy for these people then becomes the people around them – and that’s where they harvest their energy. This is why people who are so disconnected make the best ‘leaders’ for this system.

The plan is to create a two-tiered society whereby the only separation between the two will be the controlling hand which controls the debt-slaves, all of whom are controlled and do the bidding of those who issue the paper. This process is going to be achieved and is in fact well under way. It is occurring all due to the parameters of a UN directive known as Agenda 21. When looking at Agenda 21, many people understand that it is a depopulation programme; it is a programme designed to corral humankind into manageable portions which will be achieved by placing them within controlled sections of population (concentrated areas), and to ‘return the Earth to nature’ (or at least that’s how it is presented to the world). However, they are not quite sure how it is going to be carried out. The reality is that Agenda 21 is being implemented right now, in a very subtle manner, using means which most people would consider to be completely unrelated, and yet which are all connected.

To see these connections, it is extremely important for people to realize that the money system – money itself – is the glue that is used to hold this control mechanism together. Money connects everything together and is the catalyst for the whole thing. When you look at the system of commerce that has been superimposed over our societies, and how it slowly moves up the rungs of the social ladder, where people are discarded according to their economic worth, you begin to see how the depopulation plan is coming into effect. When looking at concentrated pockets of civilization and ‘returning the Earth to nature’, one might ask, “How is this to be achieved?” Since many people live in rural areas. Well what happens if you destroy the ground-water in rural areas? People who do live in rural areas, who run farms, simply cannot stay there anymore. It simply doesn’t become viable to ship water in all the time. Not to mention the fact that the water that is coming out of the ground is now toxic. Enter coal seam gas mining, or fracking.

We don’t actually need gas as an energy source; there are other means of energy we could have. The Serbian scientist Nikola Tesla was going to give the whole world free energy back at the turn of the last century, and his financers wouldn’t allow him to do it because they realized they were not able to meter his energy device, and so therefore there was no economic gain in doing so. Many of the problems we face as a society, and many of the most pollutive industries on the planet, exist solely to meet our energy needs. Indeed it is the demand for energy which perpetuates these industries, and it is these industries which keep many people working. The demand for energy is one of the things that makes the modern world go round, and if people were to obtain access to free energy then it would most certainly free them from debt-slavery.

We don’t need to be harvesting coal seam gas in order to meet our energy needs – there are far better ways of doing things. So, what is the real purpose of coal seam gas? The only guaranteed outcome from having a gas well somewhere is that it is going to pollute the ground water below the gas well. This can be seen happening everywhere where gas wells have been. Methane is coming up in streams, tap-water has been catching fire and wells are being polluted. This obviously is the real purpose of coal seam gas mining. This is effectively driving people out of the rural areas, away from their traditional farm lands, and forcing them into concentrated pockets of civilization. This will be ongoing; if you watch this over the next few years you’re going to see more and more people moving from their farms, being forced to as it is too toxic to live there anymore. This is how these sections of population are being cleared and forced to move into the cities. It isn’t about returning the rural areas to nature; it is about making those areas available for sustainable resource practices.

Sustainable resource practices are about sustaining the industry for as long as possible – doing whatever you can to make sure you can keep exploiting the area. That is what sustainable development is all about. It is just wrapped up in a package and painted green so that people will think it is ecologically friendly, when it is exactly the opposite.

There are new laws being introduced in the UK which will effectively outlaw homelessness. People are made homeless due to the economic model; homelessness and the discarding of the population is a natural by-product of this corrupt economic system. Couple this with coal seam gas mining and the pollution of the water, and the introduction of GM crops which effectively cause sterility in those who consume them over successive generations. Tests carried out on animals clearly result in sterility by the third generation in all animals that have been tested consuming GM food. All this is Agenda 21 in motion – depopulation.

It is easy to force people into consuming GM foods simply by placing them in positions of poverty, and providing unlabelled GM food at low prices in supermarkets. The low-priced ‘value’ brands are likely GM, and all are designed to de-populate what is perceived to be the lower-classes of society – those who are not economically viable. This system does everything it can to ensure that people remain in a state which is not economically viable. Another way this is done is through a process of total criminalization. The concept of total criminalization is something which is very attractive to governments because if you make everybody a criminal, suddenly everyone becomes uniform in the eyes of the law.

The way they do this is by gradually introducing more and more laws, so that eventually almost everything becomes a crime. This includes all the things you would normally do as a normal, functioning human being. They then attach fines to these breaches of so-called law, again placing economic stress on people. This again leads to homelessness, which eventually leads to prison terms, and of course those in prison are being fed GM foods. So here we see how the introduction of legislation is again contributing towards the UN depopulation programme.

There is something very important to understand about legislation, when looking at why there is so much crime in the world today. The reason there is so much crime is because the government is introducing more and more legislation thereby making almost everything a crime. The more legislation that is enacted, the more crime is created. That is the main purpose of legislation – it isn’t to keep people safe, it is to create crime and thereby create the mechanism by which the wealth of the people may be extracted from them via fines and jail terms.

All of these things are ongoing; they are happening right now. While all of these little, subtle things are happening in society, designed to place people in a state of manufactured financial stress, people aren’t noticing it because they are distracted waiting for a big cataclysm such as a financial crash or the outbreak of World War III. And so people are not paying attention to what is happening all around them right now, and they’re not seeing how it all connects together.

The ‘divide and conquer’ strategy has worked very effectively on our society, and that is the main reason these problems still exist and, no matter what we do, things just keep going along in the same direction. This is because we are attempting to use the parameters of the system to deal with the system, when really we have the potential and the power to step above the system and rain the whole thing in – and hold our public trustees accountable for their actions. We have the power to do this, but it will only be achieved by a united community. That type of unity will only ever be achieved by people who are willing to respect one another.

The solution is as simple as people changing their perspective and their attitude, not only towards the people around them, but also towards themselves. The lack of respect for other people always has its basis in one’s lack of respect for themselves. This is a programmed reality which people are forced to endure simply by operating in the parameters of the system. This is a very clever system and it is designed to completely mess-up the human psyche, and you’ve got to give it 10 points for effectiveness.

However, that being said, the tide is about to turn – things are about to change. It will however require the participation of the people in order for it to happen. I genuinely believe that’s what this time in history is about, and things are indeed about to change. More and more people are beginning to question this reality and question this system. Something people can do, when looking at this whole system – social, economic or government, is to ask themselves if their life is one of comfort and abundance; and if it isn’t, to ask themselves why. Why are you forced to run so hard on the treadmill? Why are you forced to be enslaved to an economic model which is interest-based and designed to place you in scarcity? Why is our system like this? Why are there laws making it illegal to feed homeless people? Why is it that when a supermarket throws food out at the end of the day, they put it in a locked bin and won’t simply give it to poor people? Why are they attempting to bring in laws which may outlaw homelessness? Why do we have a system which was created by mankind to serve mankind’s needs, and yet mankind has become the most expendable thing within its parameters?

When you ask yourself these questions it becomes clear that what has happened to our societies is that we have had a slavery system gradually superimposed over our reality. Thus in the modern world today, virtually everybody is forced to live in a state of perpetual or self-generating debt as soon as they are old enough to work. What we have here is ‘people farming’; we have human trafficking by debt-slavery, whereby every person within this society has been turned into a commodity. Turned into a mechanism by which the criminal, ruling banksters at the top of the food-chain are able to harvest your wealth.

Real wealth is not measured in terms of possessions; it cannot be judged in terms of financial security. Real wealth is your life; your health. What makes you wealthy is if you are a happy, healthy person living in a good environment. The banksters harvest your time, your health and your life – they harvest you.

It is extremely important for people to see the reality of this, and it is very much necessary for people to understand that this is a system that is wholly supported and perpetuated by governments. The reason that governments are able to get away with it is because the people have forgotten what their place in the social hierarchy is. People have forgotten that governments are public servants – public trustees; we actually sit above them in the food-chain. They are in fact our employees. Through the imposition of the government-controlled education system, this knowledge has been gradually educated out of the masses. Meanwhile the bills and laws have been raised and raised, and people have been taught to run faster and faster on the treadmill, so that now they’re running flat-out and they don’t even realize that their running. This means of course that they never really have time to look around them and notice what is going on, and how this system is run.

When you start to see how the system is run, it becomes obvious that we’re being scammed by the very people we employ to manage our infrastructure for us and to keep us safe. These are the very people who we appoint to positions of trust to manage our society in an honest, caring and decent manner. Our public servants are not doing that; they are all in breach of trust, and they are using the power we give them to steal the wealth of all of our nations. It is about time we paid attention to this fact. If we were to pay attention to it, from the perspective of a respectful and therefore empowered community, we could change this situation in a day. There is a real need for us to do this.

When looking at the world today, one must ask the questions: How far are we prepared to go? How much are we prepared to take? Are we prepared to allow our planet to be destroyed and the lives of the people around us to be ruined simply because some people wrote some words down on a piece of paper, and dared to call it law? Is that what it takes to control us? Is that all it takes to decimate the human species – simply writing something down on a piece of paper? Is that all it takes to remove the will of the people, and to force them to comply with their own destruction? Are we so confused as to what reality is that we really believe this fictional paper-based world is real?

People are waking up in vast numbers all around the world, and are beginning to question the fiction. The more a government attempts to lock society down, the more people wake up to the control mechanism. So ultimately the government, and the control system itself, is bringing about its own demise. The system is ramping up the control grid so much now and in such a hurried manner. The people who are doing it are stumbling; they’re making mistakes and making their presence known. More and more people are becoming empowered with the knowledge of who and what they are – and that is truly a beautiful thing. The key word in this control system is ‘fiction’. We can step above the entire thing once we remember who and what we are and choose to stand in our power.

Nobody controls the vessel that you inhabit. The only mind that controls your flesh is yourself. Anybody who claims otherwise is running a slavery system. Once you become aware of it you start to see the way out of the slavery system. It has to be done with respect and in a peaceful manner. Once you understand how the system works, and when you truly understand and respect yourself, then you really don’t see any need to conduct yourself otherwise anyway. Because if you do, really all you’re doing is playing right into their hands. There is a far better way of doing things. The way to conduct yourself in any of these situations is from a perspective of empowerment and respect. It all comes down to the individual, and always has.

There are a lot of movements, currently being waged in the world, against many of the problems that we face. But all too often these organizations are still attempting to use the legal system to find a way of making a stand against the actions of our corrupt governments. By doing this what they are failing to see is that the modern legal system was not constructed to afford people remedy, but rather to tie people up in red tape and to protect the system. The legal system was designed by the system in order to protect itself. So we are never going to find a remedy for our current situation by using the parameters that are given to us by the system. What we need to do is remember or place in the social hierarchy, step above it, and hold our public trustees in breach of trust. This could be done through something like a People’s Mandate. If you could get enough people together in your country to mandate your will to the government and instruct them to carry out that will, then if they wish to maintain the facade of being a democratic and fair system they will have no choice but to comply with the will of the people. Failure to abide by a People’s Mandate, properly delivered to our elected trustees, would mean that the government has abdicated its right to govern – and would be required to step down. Again, this could only happen if people choose to respect each other.

Ultimately, when you look at this situation, the solution to all of the problems we face always comes down to the people themselves. The power to change the world is in the hands of each individual. The key to your own salvation is in your heart, and the key to changing this world is in applying your heart, energy and respect to the people around you and to the world at large. If we do this, we can change things. The question is: What is it going to take for that to happen? Participation is all it would take. There is nobody on the Earth who really has any more power than anybody else. The only power that people perceive they have is the power they are granted from others who choose to give their own power away. Once one becomes aware of the situation, and aware of the fact that these choices do exist, things can be viewed very differently. From the very moment that you wake up to the machinations of this control system, you are given the conscious choice whether to participate in this system or not. Refuse to comply with any piece of legislation which interferes with your moral compass. Ultimately there is only one law on this planet: Do No Harm. Any legislation that contravenes that law is no law, and is entitled to no obedience.

Dismantling the Global Control System

The way to fix all of the problems we face in the world is to remove fear from our consciousness. Something that is very beneficial and helpful in removing that fear is to understand what reality is, and how reality works. By incorporating a right-brain understanding into your perception of reality, you can literally change reality – you can change your personal reality anyway. I have attracted so many different things into my life – people, places, experiences, etc. simply by following the synchronicity in my life that becomes more apparent the more I open up my right brain.

You find that reality wants to interact with you, but you only want to interact with reality. It’s like we feel that our input is all that matters; we don’t consider the input of reality itself. You find that you’re actually part of this ongoing dialogue between you and reality. It’s like a conversation that’s going on between yourself and the Universe, but you’re not listening. It’s like you’re having a conversation with someone but you’re wearing ear-plugs, you can’t hear what is being said to you, and you’re the one who’s doing all the talking. We talk to each other, we might talk to our animals, but we don’t talk to the energy field around us. Well we do talk to it but we don’t listen to what it says back to us – probably because we don’t realize we’re talking to it energetically, when in fact we are.

There is an electromagnetic interaction going on between you and the surrounding energy field all the time, but you simply don’t realize that this is actually a language that you are speaking because you’ve forgotten what the language is, and you don’t have the higher senses active that are required to perceive and comprehend this language. One of the biggest obstacles to you ever accessing these higher senses, and ever understanding this language, is fear. It is the vibration that fear sets up within your body / system / energy field. This is why our entire society, and everything about it, is all based on fear. It is fear-based mind control. They control your mind so that you don’t perceive anything outside of a left-brain reality; the five-sense perception that you have of reality.

When you have this understanding, and you finally comprehend what reality is and how it works, then fear just falls away from you. You begin to see that there really is nothing to fear, and that the only real problem is the vibration of fear itself – that is the problem. I see people in fear about the world that is being created, but really it’s just the propagation of fear. The terrible world that they are so in fear of is only being created because of their failure to face that fear. That fear is the same fear that is in themselves, and that serves to keep them separate from the people around them. You have to break down the fear, and let go of the fear.

To move forward from this point you have to let go of everything that you perceived to be reality, let go of everything that you perceived to be important to you. Of course your family and friends are important to you, but objects and ‘stuff’ that we collect really don’t mean anything, they don’t make us who we are. What makes us who we are is what energy lies within our hearts.

You have to let go of what you believed, what you cared about, what you perceived about yourself and how you perceived others. Let go of everything that has happened in your life up to this point, simply focus on the Now, and the future that we could create if we were to do this. Just let go of all of that stuff that you’ve being carrying around for years. Realize that all of it is a product of this system. All of it is a product of the perception we have been taught to have of what reality is. Let go of judgement, revenge, and all the animosity you feel towards everybody. All of these things are simply mirrors; they are opportunities to address certain emotions that may be raised within yourself. All of these negative emotions are things that you need to experience because all of them are opportunities for healing and change.

If something is making you feel bad, you need to change that. The only way you can change that bad feeling is by embracing it and feeling it; understanding why you feel that feeling – making that feeling one with yourself, and thereby neutralizing it so you can move on to address the next mirror and the next negative emotion that you have. All of these emotions are fear-based, and mostly it’s a fear of looking within and facing that which we see within ourselves.

Any bad feelings you have about anybody else – that’s not them, that’s you, because you are the one creating that feeling. You can feel your body change, your heartbeat raise. Your body chemistry literally changes and you start feeling strange when you’re having these negative feelings around people. This shows that a physical effect is actually caused within your body and it’s not a healthy effect. It’s what makes you sick, and creates illness in your body. That’s what these negative feelings and emotions do, and they only affect you – they don’t affect other people – and they’re all fear-based. You have got to let go of all of this.

Once we can let go of all of these feelings and animosity, and realize that everybody who ever wronged us only did so because of what they had perceived reality to be up to that point, then it’s easy to forgive them. It is easy to forgive anything that anybody has done because now we have an opportunity to welcome them home, to bring the whole human race back to where it should be. This is happening right now, and it is how consciousness will evolve; but people have to choose to do it, to participate, and when they do true enlightenment will happen. That’s how we can change the direction of mankind and all life on this planet. We are currently heading for complete destruction in order to support an economic system which isn’t real. It’s just numbers on a screen, pieces of paper, words and figures that people make up. It has nothing to do with reality, the world or the human race and it doesn’t benefit anybody.

It is remarkable when you really look at humankind, and you see this economic leviathan that we’ve created in order to exploit the resources of the planet and each other. Many people are in such an incredible state of fear should anything ever happen to this system, because if the system were to break down they would feel as though their life had simply decayed before their eyes. And yet the life that they are living, at the hands of this system, and the way people take this system for granted, is what has caused all of the problems that we currently see upon this planet.

On the other side of the spectrum you have people who can see the system for what it is, but they live in a state of fear of what the system is becoming and they speak out about it from a state of fear. Yet on both sides of the fence we find that people still argue with each other; they still have ‘stuff’ with their neighbours. They won’t ever face the fear, within themselves, that perpetuates that which they fear externally. It’s really a remarkable state that human consciousness finds itself in.

I have a feeling that a lot is about to change, and that there are some very big things stirring with the change in energy that’s happening and the shift in consciousness that is occurring. It is still difficult to see people in big cities showing any signs of positive change, but this sort of thing will come later as the world changes around them. I really do feel a huge expansion in human awareness and human consciousness taking place, and I believe that the plan of the ‘elite’ may actually be backfiring as awareness is growing.

People are beginning to see that all of the separate problems they’ve all been addressing are all simply symptoms of the one larger problem, and they are searching for ways to address this one larger problem. I believe the answer lies in knowing who and what you are, and being able to stand in that. People need to stay focused on the actual problem, which is the fact that our servants – the public servants that we call government, the public trustees that we employ to ensure we have a viable future – have left their path and are all acting in breach of trust. That’s the problem and once we establish this we can change the system, and it needs to be done very quickly.

We need to immediately cancel all debt absolutely. Cancel all the debt and that suddenly gets everybody out of this situation of fear-based mind control, and we can work out what sort of a future we would like to create. Work together to create a future that is viable, sustainable, beneficial to mankind, and something that helps support all life upon the earth.

I genuinely believe that consciousness is shifting, and that there is a very big awakening happening all over this planet. However I would suggest that, in order for it to happen effectively, people have to participate. People have to gain a better understanding of what reality is. They need to immerse themselves in their consciousness, and immerse that consciousness into creation. There is no force that is going to ‘flick a switch’ whereby humankind suddenly becomes enlightened. There is no event that is going to suddenly cause your higher senses to activate, unless you choose to participate in your own evolutionary process.

In regards to evolution, I’m not referring to Darwinian evolution. Darwinian evolution doesn’t work – it’s ridiculous, it makes no sense at all. Species do not turn into other species. What evolves is Consciousness – the energy that all is made from. All it takes is for the frequency of this energy to rise, because higher frequency creates a greater complexity of form, of Consciousness; a greater awareness in Consciousness.

We came from the highest source there is. We came ultimately from the mind of the Creator itself, whatever you perceive the Creator to be. All of the levels that people wish to go through are simply different steps on the ladder that leads to home. Everything is a path home; everything we are experiencing is a journey to that ultimate place from which we came. The awakening that is happening is truly more of a remembering, but in order for it to happen you need to participate in reality. You need to apply yourself to what is going on around you, and you need to let go of the baggage that’s preventing you from doing so. Stop holding grudges against people, stop carrying all that stuff around with you, and stop profiting from people. Stop putting a monetary value on everything. Stop buying information from people and stop selling people information. Simply move into your heart and do the right thing in all that you do, stay in that energy and apply it to the world and the people around you. Most importantly, apply it to yourself.

We judge people badly often because we are trained and taught to judge people badly. It’s difficult to justify these feelings because the people who have done the wrong thing by you, or in general, have very often done so because they were never given an even playing field to begin with. People are thrown into the parameters of the psychopathic system and they’re told to make it work, but very often we just can’t make it work. The result is dysfunctional people and dysfunctional society. You really can’t blame people for what they’ve done, because this system is designed to reward sociopathic activity, and it is designed to squash anybody who operates in empathy and compassion.

If people can understand the energetic nature of reality and truly grasp the concept that they are interacting with the field around them, electromagnetically, in everything they do and every emotion that they feel, they will start interacting with each other differently and interacting with the field differently. If we put down all the ‘stuff’ we believe we have with each other, stand together and turn to face this system, then we will make a difference. But if we can’t do that, then we will simply continue down the path towards our own self-destruction – which is where we are being led by our politicians.

There is more to reality than what you may perceive there to be. There is a higher harmonic to all of this, and if we can start changing the way we interact and changing the emotional basis of the interaction that we have with people, then I believe we can create a very different world. But it is up to each of us to understand how this works and to apply it to our own lives.

Ultimately it all really comes down to respect. We have been taught not to respect each other, and this has worked to a large extent because we don’t generally respect ourselves enough. We may in some ways, but we don’t in the truest and real ways. This is mainly because we judge ourselves by fictional parameters. We are given certain parameters by society; we’re told that we need to live up to these economic and social parameters in order to be successful, and if we don’t do so we tend to judge ourselves poorly, and we tend to not respect ourselves. We are always looking for ourselves in that which is external to ourselves – and that’s not where we’re going to find the truth. The truth is only ever going to be found in your own heart; that is where you have to look. When you do, and you apply that to the world around you, that’s when we can really make a difference.

What we have here is the greatest opportunity we’ve ever had for real human freedom. It’s just up to each of us to recognize this opportunity and to embrace it.

Previous articles by Julian Websdale:

About the author:

Julian Websdale is an independent researcher in the fields of esoterica, metaphysics, and mysticism. Born in England, his interest in these subjects began in 1988, at the age of seven. Julian received his education as an engineer from the University of Bolton, has served in a Vaishnava monastery, and has traveled to over 14 countries since 2012 in his ongoing journey for knowledge. His work creates enthusiastic responses from inquiring minds across the world.