About the Book
De-Weaponize: The Calm Intelligence Framework for the Zero-Latency Age is a long-form attempt to answer a simple, uncomfortable question: what happens to our minds, nervous systems, and relationships when the world no longer gives us time to be human?
Developed over two decades of close observation and a sustained search for coherence, the book synthesizes insights from psychology, philosophy, media theory, and the lived experience of navigating a world that has quietly slipped into a liminal epoch. It traces how acceleration and algorithmic systems reshape our inner rhythm — and how that rhythm can be restored without abandoning modern life.
Rather than asking you to disappear from modern life, De-Weaponize offers a way to move through it at the speed of your own nervous system: rebuilding attention as an ecology, treating the body as intelligence, and using rhythm as a quiet form of resistance.
What you’ll find inside
- How zero-latency living quietly erodes attention, proportion, and presence.
- Why our nervous systems feel “done” even on ordinary days – and why that isn’t a personal failure.
- The algorithmic mirror: how our reactivity is reflected back to us at scale.
- Coherence and Calm Intelligence as practical, embodied responses – not abstract ideals.
Book Release
The first edition of De-Weaponize is currently being prepared for publication on Amazon. A direct purchase link will appear here as soon as the book is live.
For now: you can subscribe below to receive a single email when the book is available, along with the ongoing essays that expand the framework.
The Essays
The essays live alongside the book as a slower, public conversation – exploring nervous systems, acceleration, attention, and the quiet work of rebuilding rhythm in daily life.
They’re written in the same voice as the book: reflective, embodied, and wary of spectacle. No outrage cycles, no hot takes – just an ongoing attempt to describe what it feels like to be human in a world that keeps speeding up.
You can read them – and subscribe to the series – on Substack:
If you subscribe on Substack, you’ll also receive a quiet launch email when the book is released. No funnels. No noise.
Stay in the Loop
If this work resonates, you can subscribe to be notified when De-Weaponize is released. One quiet email when the book is available – nothing more – plus the weekly essays that develop the framework.
Subscribe for the book release + essays
About the Author
Ben Russell
Writing at the pace of the nervous system.
Ben grew up in the English Lake District and spent over a decade working as a photojournalist after completing a BA in Photography at the University of Derby in 2001. His work took him across cultures and continents, observing people in some of their most honest, difficult, and transitional moments.
After leaving journalism, he moved into communications and marketing within the ecological and nonprofit sector, building content systems, organizational narratives, and public-facing strategies. That work — sitting at the intersection of storytelling, technology, and institutional pressure — made one pattern unavoidable: modern systems don’t just distribute information, they shape how we think, feel, and attend.
Through parenthood, environmental work, and his own long encounter with digital acceleration, his focus shifted from images to patterns: how contemporary life compresses attention, how platforms mirror our reactivity back to us, and what it means to stay human inside a world designed for speed.
De-Weaponize is the first articulation of that inquiry – an attempt to give language, structure, and rhythm to experiences many people feel but rarely see described clearly.