Projection: How to Audit Your Mind-Reading Fantasies and Not Lose Your Mind to Your Own Genius

Epigraph

“avoid precipitancy” — exact fragment from Part II of A Discourse on Method by René Descartes (translated by John Veitch). Primary text. This classic philosophical reminder to pump the brakes is invoked here solely as an incentive to doubt our own conclusions, not as an established clinical method of psychotherapy.

What This Article Is About

Picture this: you send a colleague a proposal, and the reply lands with the surgical warmth of a dry receipt: “Not a fit for now.” Instantly, noble indignation flares up, and your internal psychoanalyst—armed with twenty minutes of casual browsing—hands down an ironclad verdict: “Clear as day! He is subconsciously projecting his own deep-seated insecurity onto me and feels threatened by the sheer scale of my personality!”

It sounds magnificent; it smells like a Nobel Prize in remote telepathy. But once you blow off the dramatic steam, you are left holding exactly three meager facts: a curt phrase in a chat window, the context of sending it, and your own irritation.

This article is not about diagnosing colleagues by their avatar, and it is definitely not an invitation to slap the “projection” label on every sideways glance. Here, that trendy buzzword serves merely as an emergency handbrake before you start prosecuting someone according to the statutes of your own imagination. The empirical data on the false consensus effect and Cartesian skepticism offer us a strictly narrow footing; the concrete examples and step-by-step audit are an editorial development. We will methodically dissect the difference between dry observation, personal hurt, guesswork about another person’s soul, and real-world actions. Our objective is not to pry open a colleague’s secret motives with a can opener, but to coolly appraise the facts, acknowledge the boundaries of our knowledge, and leave the other person their rightful space to answer for themselves—without shoehorning them into someone else’s diagnosis.

I. An Observation Contains Less Than an Explanation

Back to our office drama: your colleague typed in black and white: “The proposal is not a fit for now.” Unless you are sculpting an elephant out of a housefly, that is all that is established by the message itself. It does not inherently reveal a repressed terror of your brilliance, latent envy, or an existential allergy to receiving good things. Right now, every bit of that is your personal hypothesis. The first step toward clarity is writing down the naked action, stripped clean of armchair psychoanalysis. If a sinister subtext has already crept into your phrasing, cross it out.

Next, look at context and timing. Was this task even cleared beforehand? By what deadline was an answer expected? Did the note contain a question requiring a breakdown, or was your colleague seeing these files for the very first time? The answers to these questions radically alter the landscape. Yet the cardinal rule of cognitive hygiene remains: blank spaces cannot be plastered over with the worst conceivable scenario. If you have no idea whether they ever opened the attached PDF, that signifies precisely one thing—the fact of opening is unknown. Declaring that unknown opening status an act of deliberate sabotage is pure creative license.

At the same time, nobody is demanding that you muzzle your natural emotions and cosplay as a corporate robot. You might feel genuinely stung, the tone might read like liquid nitrogen, and an ache of rejection might be humming in your chest. That is a real fact about your state, and it is entitled to exist. The catch is that your subjective feeling of “I have been trampled” does not equal an objective “they intended to annihilate me.” By untangling those two things, you can calmly say, “I find this phrasing uncomfortable,” instead of running around hollering, “I have unmasked your rotten soul!”

And for heaven’s sake, retire the phrases “you always” and “you never,” unless you can produce concrete incidents. Fortunately, you don't need a notary to log an incident list. Did you get three curt replies over the course of a year? Then say three. A vague sensation of cosmic injustice is an emotion, not an evidentiary record. You do not need to draft a deposition transcript, but neither should you inflate someone’s character into cosmic villainy over a single line in Slack.

Observation has hard limits: we only see the tip of the iceberg. Perhaps the person is putting out a fire in production, missed the point of the idea, or genuinely considers the concept unworkable. For now, those remain mere hypotheses. The limited scope of your lens does not paralyze action: you can still clarify details, push the deadline, or take the next practical step. What you absolutely cannot do is parade a fragment of information as an X-ray of another human being’s soul.

II. One’s Own Reaction Reports on Oneself, but Reads No One Else

A spike of rage following a short reply reports, first and foremost, on your own current state. Perhaps the project matters a great deal to you, it scratches an old scab left by similar rejections, or you are simply exhausted. That, too, needs checking. But the sheer intensity of your burn cannot calculate another person's motivation. Before branding your counterpart an enemy of the people, ask yourself: what exactly grated on you? The lack of counter-arguments? The limbo of the task's status? A frustrated expectation of discussion? A concrete answer to that question is far more useful than an ironclad fantasy about someone else’s neuroses.

The blow can hit especially hard if the proposal was the result of extensive work. You anticipated fanfare and a thorough review, only to receive five flat words. The expectation is completely human: “I wanted a substantive discussion.” Great, log that. And now, the cold shower: did anyone actually promise you that discussion? If not, your expectation is merely an unfulfilled wish, not a treacherous breach of contract. If such an explicit agreement truly existed, you can politely follow up on that agreement. In this way, your own feelings help trace boundaries without stomping muddy boots through another person’s psyche.

A sharp emotion might accidentally coincide with the actual state of affairs, but on its own, it does not constitute proof. By the same token, there is no need to veer into the opposite ditch and stage an auto-da-fé: “Since I am fuming, I must be a toxic projector and it's all my fault!” Pinning the blame on yourself is just as cheap a trick as blaming the other person. Maintain an honest status quo: I am hurt, but the actual cause of the incident has not yet been determined.

If things are boiling over inside, hold back the prosecution's closing argument. That does not mean you must swallow rudeness or wait around indefinitely. The pause exists solely to separate the signal from the noise: facts to the left, assumptions to the right. If a work deadline is ticking, resolve the task itself right now. Searching for inner equilibrium and indulging in improvised psychoanalysis should never grind the actual workflow to a halt.

You can convey your reaction in a grounded way without demanding that the other person repent for latent childhood traumas. Contrast: “It isn't clear from your note which part of the proposal needs adjusting” (a description of the problem) with “You brushed me off because you're projecting your insecurity!” (an attempt to saw open their skull). The first sentence invites a dialogue; the second invites a pointless brawl over a diagnosis no one solicited.

III. One’s Own Measure Is Not Automatically the Universal Yardstick

In the abstract to their classic 1977 study, Lee Ross, David Greene, and Pamela House outlined four investigations: responses similar to one’s own were evaluated as relatively more common and less revealing of personal character, whereas differing responses were judged as less common and more revealing. Our personal ruler obligingly stretches to flatter its owner. Let us underscore with strict precision: only the publisher's abstract was read, not the full paper. This phenomenon is termed the “false consensus effect.” It is not identical to psychoanalytic projection, nor does it establish its presence in a specific email thread. From it, we extract only one sobering question: what made me assume that my personal norm is the platinum standard of the Bureau of Weights and Measures? [S1]

Perhaps you are accustomed to drafting polite refusals across three paragraphs of soft phrasing and compliments. Your colleague cuts in: “No.” You have every right to prefer your own elaborate etiquette, but declaring the other party a moral failure strictly on the basis of word count is a logical crater. They may have a different communication style, a conflicting workload, or a phone battery dying in transit. That does not excuse every variety of callousness, but it serves as a reminder: before diagnosing deep-seated depravity, check for a divergence in habits.

If it strikes you that “normal professionals don’t write like that,” clarify: did a shared standard actually exist? If the company guidelines explicitly state: “All rejections must be accompanied by detailed rationales,” then you are looking at a process violation. If there was no guideline, and you merely presumed your preferred courtesy as the default setting, that is an occasion for conversation, not an indictment. Your private aesthetic preference does not automatically become a law of the physical universe.

Nor does this require abandoning your standards. If you prefer to write elaborately, do so. If you need constructive feedback, formulate an explicit request: “To help me adjust the layout, I need specific notes on points A and B.” That is a functional proposal open to discussion, unlike an aggressive demand to “act like a decent human being, like me!”

An empirical study does not magically resolve an isolated case with a snap of the fingers. The presence of the false consensus effect does not mean all your suspicions are nonsense. It is entirely possible that your colleague really is systematically obstructing the process. But the scientific finding warns us against donning the know-it-all crown: do not judge the external world solely by your own reflection in the glass.

IV. Naming a Mechanism Adds No Missing Facts

The word “projection” sounds weighty, cerebral, and scientific—vastly more sophisticated than the blunt “I think he’s being a jerk.” But a psychological term is not a magic wand: it does not conjure factual information out of thin air. Unless you are seated inside the other person’s skull, wielding fashionable jargon does not make you a telepath. Your pet theory that your colleague is venting their vulnerabilities upon you remains an unverified hypothesis. And the brief text of an email does nothing to prove it.

The primary trap of pseudo-psychology is the manufacture of unfalsifiable theories. If the colleague eventually agrees: “Aha, exactly as I said!” If they push back furiously: “See, they’re getting defensive, so they are definitely projecting!” That is an intellectual dead end and pure self-delusion. Ask yourself: what specific fact would force me to admit I was mistaken? For instance: “If it turns out the project’s budget was slashed by half, I will drop my grievance.” If no argument in the known universe could shake your certainty, you are not engaged in discovering the truth; you are merely servicing your own infallibility.

That said, the criteria for falsification must be realistic. Thinking, “if they smile when we meet, it means they respect me,” proves nothing: a smile can easily be routine courtesy. You must test the actual crux of the matter. If you suspect your colleague is strapped for resources, ask about resources. If you suspect an ambiguity in the project specs, review the specs. The elegant coherence of your personal fantasy and actual objective facts exist in parallel dimensions.

Psychological concepts are fine for self-reflection: it can be useful to catch yourself in the act of explaining someone’s unappealing reaction by inventing a moral deformity on their part. Noticing that itch is honest and useful. But the presence of that impulse neither confirms nor refutes the original hunch; it merely demands that we stop confusing an urge to blame with an evidentiary basis.

You will find no comprehensive clinical analysis of defense mechanisms here, and no homegrown psychiatric verdicts are handed out. We are discussing basic cognitive hygiene. Leave clinical conclusions to credentialed professionals, and rein in your diagnostic zeal in everyday life: modestly testing hypotheses preserves the distinction between facts and guesswork, which playing parlor psychiatrist will never provide.

V. Dividing a Difficulty Means Discerning Several Distinct Questions

In the second part of A Discourse on Method, René Descartes advises that one should avoid precipitancy in judgment and divide “each of the difficulties” under examination into as many parts as possible and requisite for their solution. What was read is a specific fragment within its context, not the monumental treatise in its entirety. This is a seventeenth-century philosophical tool of inquiry, not a clinical protocol for sorting out interpersonal grievances. We borrow only two practical questions from it: what here is solidly established, and what distinct problems have I dumped into a single pile? That comparison promises no absolute Cartesian certainty in human relationships, and the crystal-clear internal intensity of your resentment is no alibi for the truth. [S2]

In our scenario, four entirely separate matters have tangled into a knot:

The actual quality of your proposal;
The specific brevity of your colleague’s reply;
Your private hopes for validation;
Fantasies regarding your counterpart’s hidden complexes.

Each of these layers demands its own distinct evidence. The project might be objectively raw, even if your colleague holds you in high esteem. The delivery of the refusal might be tactless, even if the critique is accurate. You may have anticipated applause that was never promised. And your colleague's true motive might remain completely unknown. By throwing all of this into one sack labeled “Projection,” you easily forfeit the chance to fix what is actually within your power to fix.

Dividing a problem does not reduce human beings to cogs. Everything is clearly intertwined: a blunt refusal stings, resentment breeds a barbed response, and the conflict escalates. But correlation is not equivalence. You can first address the technical project question, and only later, with a cooler head, decide whether it is worth discussing communication standards. Sometimes clarifying ordinary technical constraints will deflate a conspiracy theory; an abrasive phrasing can still be addressed separately.

This method preserves your planning. Does the draft need reworking? Is the deadline imminent? Can you proceed without this colleague’s sign-off? These are questions of action, not psychoanalysis. You do not need to decipher whether your coworker secretly resents you to deliver a project on schedule. Unavailable information about another person's inner baggage should not paralyze the work.

There is no need to spin out twenty-page mind maps over a mundane email. It is enough to peel apart two or three conflated issues. If the post-mortem consumes more bandwidth than the task itself, call time on the introspection. Our goal is to locate at least one sensible alternative and identify where to gather facts, not to build a flawless mathematical model of someone else's soul.

VI. Alternatives Must Differ in Substance

A wide spectrum of interpretations can be hung upon a brief “not a fit”:

The recipient skimmed too quickly and missed a key slide;
They are aware of internal company constraints of which you have no idea;
They do not want to dig into this topic right now;
They simply use telegraphic shorthand in chat tools by default.

These are fundamentally different hypotheses, and evaluating them requires different questions. It is pointless to swap one conspiracy theory for another: “They aren't jealous; they're just a toxic narcissist!” If all your alternatives merely cycle through which particular flaw is lurking inside your colleague, introduce situational factors: time crunches, communication breakdowns, flawed specs. At the same time, the possibility of genuine personal antipathy does not need to be erased—just don't treat it as an established certainty.

Brainstorming alternatives is neither an exercise in universal forgiveness nor an attempt to put on a show of saintliness. Entertaining the idea that a colleague is wildly overworked does not mean their dismissiveness must be tolerated. It merely offers a possible explanation for their brevity. There is no need to canonize colleagues out of performative charity: a saccharine, overly charitable explanation can be pulled out of thin air just as easily as a malicious one. An honest stance accommodates any possibility: pleasant, unpleasant, or utterly mundane.

A solid hypothesis leans on facts. Is the proposal massive? A lack of review time is a reasonable guess. Does the idea disrupt established protocol? Reluctance to upend the status quo is a logical option. But spinning narratives about how your colleague was underappreciated in childhood and therefore dismisses your creativity belongs in cheap fiction. The more invisible assumptions a story requires, the more carefully its provisional status must be stated: elaborate detail adds zero evidential weight.

Map it out: what would corroborate each scenario, and what would blow it out of the water? Do not cook up pseudo-scientific probabilities like “there is a 73% chance he is envious.” Stick to sober terms: “possible” and “unknown.” Then go after concrete facts: ask about the budget, the process, or the timeline. Accept the baseline: you will not excavate the depths of another person’s psyche, but you can still reach an adequate working decision without doing so.

VII. Clarification Leaves the Other Person Room to Answer

The question “Which specific section of the proposal needs adjustment?” is fundamentally distinct from “Why are you afraid to admit I’m right and choosing to validate yourself at my expense?” The second question is a trap: it already contains a conviction, leaving the recipient only two choices: grovel or fight back. The first question is neutral; it opens a door to facts you do not currently possess. The phrasing of a question shapes the data you invite to the table; it does not guarantee a full or truthful answer. Better not to construct a gladiatorial arena directly inside your inquiry.

You are entirely within your rights to outline your own context: “I was anticipating a detailed discussion, and right now I’m unclear on how to proceed. Could you please specify your critical concerns?” If your colleague is not contractually obligated to provide an in-depth review, this remains your personal request, and they can politely decline. If they are obligated by company protocol, you can gently reference that expectation. But in either case: if the person does not lay their soul bare before you, that is not proof that the psychological mechanism you cooked up is churning inside them.

Sometimes the response uncovers a boring, practical constraint: the project doesn't fit this quarter’s budget, priorities shifted, or the direction was altered from above. The original hypothesis may lose its grip. That does not mean you have comprehended your colleague down to the micron. But the task has unstuck itself—and that is plenty. Leave the existential voids alone if the practical issue is settled.

It also happens that the response brings another splash of venom or stony silence. Log that as a fresh fact. Do not immediately construct castles in the air: “Aha! Projection confirmed!” That outcome may clarify that a discussion is currently unavailable or that its format is unacceptable to you; the total impossibility of future dialogue does not automatically follow from a single reply. Act on what is visible: reschedule, set a boundary on acceptable tone, or route the matter through standard escalation channels. Protecting your interests does not require a license in psychology—it is enough to rely on visible actions and established rules.

VIII. Counterexample: Self-Auditing Does Not Erase Real Harm

Now let us hit the brakes and look at a critically important counterexample. Imagine this: a colleague did not merely send a terse response, but communicated false information regarding completed work, and this is verified by documented materials. Their underlying motive may still remain entirely unknown.

Here it is: examining your own perceptions and auditing your projections does not cancel or negate established harm.

Auditing your own perception must not degenerate into an elaborate exercise in masochism, where someone is actively set up while sitting there meditating: “Oh, perhaps I am attracting this negativity through my own internal projections!” If there is verified damage or broken agreements, that is a real breakdown in collaboration. Engaging in self-analysis in lieu of recording facts is dangerous foolishness.

Are operational workflows compromised? The issue belongs within the appropriate operational process: verify the data, correct the deliverable, notify the relevant parties. This article determines neither specific penalties nor legal status. You do not need to psychoanalyze the offender to have the legitimate right to state: “False information was provided here, here is the record; the deliverable must be corrected.” You do not need to prove that the other party is sublimating childhood trauma to defend your boundaries and demand adherence to an agreement.

The same principle applies to sustained incivility. If you have directly and politely asked three times not to be addressed in that tone, and the person persists, that is a pattern of behavior relevant to your decisions; their motive may still remain unknown. Do not nurture the illusion that boundaries are obvious without words—call things what they are. Yet again: putting an end to disrespect does not require delivering a clinical verdict. Solid confidence that a behavior is unacceptable does not require proof of its unconscious origins.

This counterexample exists so that healthy skepticism does not slide into excusing another's misconduct. Managing your own reactions is great, but shouldering one hundred percent of the blame for someone else’s overreach is absurd. You can be mistaken about your colleague’s motives while accurately describing the disruption caused by their message. In reality, inflated expectations and objective wrongdoing can coexist. The job is not to stir everything into a sludge, but to stand on firm facts.

IX. One’s Own Contribution Is Examined Without Global Indictment

Let’s be honest: how did you send that proposal in the first place? At midnight right before a release? Packed into forty pages of rambling, unstructured text with no summary? Did you expect an answer within five minutes, even though no timeframe was ever discussed? If such missteps occurred, acknowledge them plainly. Your own chaos might very well have provoked that dry “not a fit.” But take note: your misstep may explain part of your colleague's response, but it does not sanctify any rudeness on their part into an acceptable norm. Correct your presentation and separately address the conversational format—without self-flagellation.

The question of “who started it” can be important in an investigation. But for an ordinary working task, a more useful question is sometimes: what do we do next? Supply the missing details, name a deadline, and ask one concrete question. If an impasse is reached, do not paper over the rift for the sake of false harmony. Proceed by standard protocol, but waste no time speculating on the hidden moral failings of your counterpart.

At the same time, self-recrimination is equally misguided: “Everything is ruined, I am a toxic paranoiac, I’m just projecting on top of projections!” That diagnosis also requires ironclad proof. Acknowledging overblown expectations is normal; pinning the entire conflict on them is foolish. Noticing sharpness in your own tone is helpful, but it does not invalidate the substance of your work-related questions. Real self-correction looks far more boring than dramatic self-denunciation, but it yields practical steps without handing down death sentences to yourself or those around you.

Did you take a step forward? Note precisely that step and harbor no illusions. A courteous follow-up does not guarantee emotional closeness; receiving an answer does not mean your proposal will be adopted; an end to open sparring does not mean secret motives have been cracked. These grounded distinctions keep disappointment at bay. You took a concrete step—log that alone. The quality of the entire work is not verified by a single message. The unknown persists, but you are no longer obligated to weave comforting fairy tales without facts.

X. A Good Explanation Remains Open to Revision

Ideally, following a level-headed exchange, the sprawling psychological drama collapses into a clear operational picture:

The presentation was misaligned with current timelines;
The reply landed too abruptly;
I anticipated fanfare that had never been promised;
For the future, we agreed to summarize rejections with brief bullet points.

That is all. You have not unlocked the mysteries of the universe or charted the depths of another person's unconscious. But you have a functional map of the situation, the task is moving, and the friction is addressed. This picture remains open to fresh facts and does not demand that you defend the title of “master mind-reader” with foam at your mouth.

At times, the underlying motive will remain locked away behind seven seals. Note down in your pad: “Data unavailable, status unknown.” Do not drag an old irritation into every subsequent meeting as your colleague’s proven sin. Evaluate every new encounter on its own merits, based on fresh evidence. If it felt ten times in a row that someone looked at you sideways, that does not automatically provide ten independent pieces of proof: each instance might merely have been read through the exact same worn-out record playing inside your own head.

Let us close the ledger on the curt email incident. You caught your anger, documented the dry fact, separated your expectations from someone else's habits, and posed a focused practical question. If you gathered facts, excellent. If you hit a wall, you made an operational call by protocol. But you did not deploy the fashionable buzzword “projection” as an indulgence to roll a bulldozer over another person's agency. Your interpretation is your zone of responsibility. Grant the other person the right to be more complex than your flat caricature, and grant yourself the right to act on verifiable facts, without trying to play God.

A level-headed approach does not guarantee that violets will bloom and everyone will become delightful. Sometimes auditing the facts with surgical accuracy exposes fundamental incompatibilities: in goals, values, deadlines, or communication manners. That can be uncomfortable. But a clearly identified mismatch allows you to build a fence, reassign responsibilities, or end the collaboration. Leave sweeping diagnoses in the offices of specialists. Surrendering the illusion of omniscience does not make you weaker—it simply returns you to the real world.

What This Means in Practice

Select one recent, moderate work incident (do not start with a divorce or asset liquidation). Write down the bare action or quote the message. Below it, list separately:

What you felt;
What convoluted explanation of the other person's motive your brain immediately served up;
Which parts of that are proven fact, which are old associations bubbling up, and which are pure fantasy.

Sidebar note: this exercise is strictly an editorial framework. Its clinical efficacy has not been tested or established; it is categorically not intended for diagnosing psychological defense mechanisms or determining the legal status of another party’s actions.

Formulate at least two fundamentally different alternative versions of what occurred. At least one may touch on external circumstances or mismatched expectations; it does not need to explain everything. For each version, identify a concrete fact that could confirm or refute it. No arbitrary percentages pulled from thin air! If testing a scenario is impossible, mark its status as “unknown” and navigate by visible actions and practical tasks.

Frame one neutral, work-related question that does not force your counterpart to admit to being an idiot or confess to hidden sins. Ask about the core deliverable, the timeline, or explicit criteria. Review the response: what specifically shifted in the bare facts? If they do not reply at all, hold your nerve and do not declare their silence a triumph of your conspiracy theory. Silence is an established absence of a reply. A refusal to participate and an unknown motive remain separate matters. Draw a practical conclusion from the lack of communication, without inventing demonic plots for the other person.

In closing, document: what do we do next, and when do we sync? Strictly delineate: where you adjusted your own approach, what the other person answered, and which areas remain in the gray zone of uncertainty. If verified damage or a clear violation of agreements came to light during the process, do not dare bury it for the sake of “spiritual growth” or self-criticism. Next time you feel the urge to stamp someone with a psychological label, bite your tongue and ask yourself two boring questions: “What actual facts support my theory?” and “What else in the real world could explain this action?”

Key Quotation

“each of the difficulties” — exact fragment from Part II of René Descartes’ Discourse on Method (translated by John Veitch). Text. This fragment pertains strictly to the method of dividing complex intellectual problems into simpler components. It does not posit an ability to dissect someone else’s psyche down to its cogs, nor does it promise total elimination of uncertainty in human affairs.

Cross-Tradition Links

Descartes' philosophical method of purifying judgments and social psychology experiments on the false consensus effect grew out of radically different soil. This article compares them strictly within a narrow, practical frame: where lies the boundary between testable knowledge and the egocentric urge to measure everyone by oneself; under no circumstances do we equate false consensus with psychoanalytic projection. Internal catalog references (publication unconfirmed): article I25 focuses on rigorous description over moral condemnation; I-13-N03 examines the roots of our rigid internal demands; I-13-N02 explores the mechanics of agreements and responses to another's reply.

Primary Sources

S1. Lee Ross, David Greene, Pamela House. The false consensus effect: An egocentric bias in social perception and attribution processes. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 13(3), 1977, 279–301. DOI: 10.1016/0022-1031(77)90049-X. Publisher Abstract. Note: only the official publisher's abstract on the publisher's site was examined; the full paper was not read. The authors are researchers in social psychology; their current academic standings and affiliations are not derived. A conceptual summary is provided without direct quotations; rights to reproduce the full article text were not established. The experimental effect outlines a statistical cognitive tendency and cannot serve as a clinical tool to evaluate an isolated everyday case.

S2. René Descartes. A Discourse on Method, 1637, Part II; translated by John Veitch, Project Gutenberg 59. Specific selected rules were studied within their context, not the complete treatise; the translator attribution is verified. Descartes was a seventeenth-century French philosopher. Two brief fragments are used within a bounded comparison; territorial copyright and Project Gutenberg library policies are not declared universal. Philosophical epistemology is not a clinical diagnostic procedure.

About the Authors

Andrey Zarinsh — author and founder of the United Wisdom project. Explores themes of inner transformation, the unity of traditions, intercultural dialogue, and modern spiritual discipline. Instagram: @andrey.zarinsh.

Maria Evilkut — co-author of United Wisdom. Alongside research inquiries, she focuses on testing these ideas in practice and observing how principles of unity and mutual understanding operate in real life between people and cultures. Instagram: @ilkutki.