00:00 Intro + AI news is moving at breakneck speed
00:43 Sam Altman’s warning: “the world is not prepared”
01:33 AI hype vs signal, and the crypto comparison
04:02 Why social media distorts AI discourse
07:25 Terminator, Skynet, and military AI anxiety
09:01 Claude and DOW
12:30 The singularity and faster AI takeoff
14:28 What still makes humans different from AI?
17:16 Writing fiction and Jungian active imagination
20:21 The “Connection Economy” and future human work
21:21 Brain-computer interfaces and the pressure to adopt
26:02 Novel update: nearing 100,000 words
28:29 Finishing the draft before a busy March
34:01 Oura Ring, stress, and rest
39:15 Why presence and real life experiences feed fiction
42:11 Taking unconventional creative risks in fiction
43:09 Weapons and why weird choices can work
49:27 How I build characters
52:24 Worldbuilding and outlining process
57:39 Lessons from my last novella
58:19 Revisiting my first novel + cyberpunk inspiration
01:00:26 Future plans for The Donation and other stories
01:01:43 Outro

If preferred, you can watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@domstocchetti

Take care, everyone!

Dom

The following podcast was recorded on February 20th.

The two week recording cadence remains, and I’ll be back with another video on March 6th.

I hope you enjoy.

Timestamps

0:00 Intro and Overview

2:55 Marty Supreme, Ambition, and Becoming a Magician

22:07 Carl Jung, The Individuation Process, and the practical necessity for religions

36:25 UFO Disclosure: a nuanced take — An emerging myth as a psychic need

53:58 Novel Updates!

56:41 Anthropic Head of AI Safety Resignation Letter

58:07 The Polycrisis

1:12:11 Q&A

If preferred, you can watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@domstocchetti

Have a great weekend, everyone!

Dom

Subscribe now

Timothée Chalamet said that the creator of Marty Supreme, Josh Safdie, told him it was really a movie about being an idiot in your 20s.

I saw it this weekend and loved it. Now, whether that’s because I was an idiot in my 20s—for which I have one more year to prove the case—or because I found the ambitious hunger of Marty Mouser enthralling, is up for debate.

The movie for me wasn’t quite about being an idiot in your 20s. It was more about being an ambitious idiot in your 20s.

That I can get behind.

It’s one of the reasons I found myself captivated by the movie; I had—and still have—a fierce sense of ambition.

Ambition is a lovely, life-affirming energy that drives you toward success through discipline, determination, and hard work. With ambition, the how of getting something done is mostly a matter of time.

But how does one take idiotic, or rather, immature ambition, and bring it into a state of greater maturity?

The Supreme What

Alberto Romero recently dropped his notes on AI agents in a piece titled You Spent Your Whole Life Getting Good at the Wrong Thing.

My main takeaway from this piece is: given the fact that “the most powerful AI tools today collapsed the process of doing things inside a computer into basically a wish,” we won’t need to worry about the how of doing things anymore and can focus our time and efforts on determining the what.

This is a subtle yet massive reorientation in how tasks are traditionally approached.

It’s crazy to reflect on, but I took little time contemplating what I would spend four years studying at college. I knew the first week of accounting 101 that the only accounting I’d do in my career was accounting for the years I lost studying it.

It’s of course easy to say that in hindsight. At the time, I was lost, with no clue of what I wanted. I kept moving forward because I knew I could make a living, and that with that living, I could find what I wanted from my life. I think spending time honing curiosity and interest to find what matters to you, will become more important than ever and will be step one, rather than an afterthought.

Once I finished school and the remaining goals attached to the degree I didn’t want, I made the choice to find the vocation I wanted to dedicate my life to: my Supreme What.

This is where ambition served a great purpose.

I was working a demanding job and had started developing the greatest relationship of my life. With the little time I had left, I could wield the fire of my ambition to pursue my career side quest—which was really the main quest—to figure out my Supreme What.

Finding it was not easy.

I would ask myself a question about what I should try, and there came an answer from within! So, I gave that thing a try. After all, it was the best answer that came at that moment.

The fierce ambition said: “Time to become #1!”

And after one month of trying to stream video games, I said: “Yeah bro… this ain’t it.”

Finding what took years, because finding what is not a job search, it’s a soul-search. If it wasn’t for the individuation journey, I would not be who I am today. It was the self-discovery that made finding the vocation a matter of effort, for which my newly matured ambition was ready.

I think this is why many shy away from ambition, because for something to become mature it must first become. There’s no doing away with the immaturity before there is maturity, and those beginning phases of ambition can be cringe, embarrassing, and shameful when reflected on by future-you (especially if you’re a ruthless self-critic).

I needed to stumble through constant responses to the question: “Okay, where are we headed next?”

Through answering that question many times over, I honed not only the discovery of the vocation, but more importantly, myself.

When I ask myself that question now, all of my responses are acutely focused on projects within the vocation. The responses are not things like: let’s try to become a professional basketball player (Fear not, NBA players. I have given that one up and will not be a force that you will have to recon with).

I found my Supreme What.

Wielding idiotic ambition—although embarrassing—is necessary to wield mature ambition.

Part of maturing that ambition, too, is making room for the important parts of your life which are not solely the vocation (another point Marty Supreme touched on). Falling in love right as I finished school forced me to see this, and through that, I learned how to hone my ambition in a disciplined manner, while still making the time to start building a family.

With sights on the Supreme What, and the ambition no longer immature; it is not only a fire that fuels, but it is now something that can be used to burn away the apprentice, and leave the craftsmen standing.

Now, it’s time to transform.

The Kwisatz Haderach

I hate to admit this publicly, but I’ll do it anyways. I think I love Timothée Chalamet.

My first bout of admiration came after his infamous award speech in which he walked up on the stage and in a humble bow, said: “I know we’re in a subjective business, but the truth is, I’m really in pursuit of greatness. I know people don’t usually talk like that, but I want to be one of the greats…”

Here’s the full speech.

It’s an archetype of person I haven’t seen represented in the pop culture in a long time, or ever, really. Someone with that energy who wasn’t also arrogant or terribly self-delusional. Just an extremely high aiming ambition, with a belief that you can do something big.

What’s wrong with aiming so high? Why is it so rare? Is it a fear of failure? A fear of being truthful as to how high you really aim?

I don’t know what it is, fully1—and I’m sure it’s many things—but I wonder if it was always that way. When you know where to look, and you find yourself looking on a clear day, you can see the top. So, why not aim as high as you can see?

Marty Supreme was a great exploration of that question. Truth be told, there are a lot of sacrifices that come with the top.

So it is said.

I, on the other hand, think that mature ambition can help you aim high, and not destroy everyone’s life around you. I’ve seen it do the opposite.

You start to morph and become something other, something magical.

In another interview, when asked about the speech, Timothée said that he may have had some of the energy and tone of the character with him as he gave the speech because they had finished filming Mary Supreme two months prior. What’s more interesting to me isn’t his answer to that question, but that he’s been asked about that speech so many times. It’s as if others are so perplexed as to how he could have said such a thing up on that stage (as opposed to the other great things said on award show stages).

I think people realized in that moment, that Timothée was no longer just the kid from Interstellar, but that he was indeed the Kwisatz Haderach.

The Magician

“The practice of magic consists in making what is not understood understandable in an incomprehensible manner.”

~ Carl Jung

I read a blog post over the weekend written by one of the world’s greatest body painters2.

Talk about someone who aimed high and achieved.

She was making a living from her art, had a partner, friends, weekly dinner parties where those friends would bring strangers for her to meet, and she even travelled to Austria for several years to compete in the bodypainting World Championship, frequently placing in the top four or five.

For her, getting first place and being number one was conceivable. She knew that she could do it with incremental improvements: speed, more detailed realism, a competent assistant, and an element of luck. A combination of those things, and one year, she could achieve number one.

The was until Sanatan Dinda came along.

He practiced the art in an appallingly different way. The frame of which he approached bodypainting was so utterly different that it mystified her.

She already knew that “not only is any sufficiently advanced technology indistinguishable from magic; any sufficiently advanced technologist seems like a magician.”

Wielding mature ambition and knowing your Supreme What might give you the path, but to mature that growth to a point of magic, you need to surround yourself with magicians.

As the body painter reflected: “The way to extraordinary growth and changes often involves a fundamental ontological or ‘lens’ shift in how you see the world. Magicians are wearing not just better, but fundamentally differently shaped lenses to the rest of us.”

The magicians of writing story make the mysterious impossibility of writing a work of fiction, a mere matter of how.

When I started the craft of writing fiction and wanted to draft my first novel, Brandon Sanderson was my magician. He paved the path for me so that I could understand how to move from nothing to The End in a satisfying way. Through his lessons, I took his magic and learned not just how he made magic, but how I could cast my own spells.

Whatever pursuit you find yourself after, magicians are always around.

Lucky for those of us who aren’t yet in the upper echelons, those magicians write books, post lectures on YouTube, and have social media accounts where they give away most of the material in their spell books.

It makes the stumbling around a lot easier when the magician for the magic you seek to understand, awaits you at the next corner.

And maybe one day, through all of your stumbling, people will look at you aghast because you have stumbled so much and so often, that you’ve become a magician yourself.

The best part of all of this is that you don’t need to run a furious race like Marty Mouser, hurting nearly everyone you encounter.

You just need to wield ambition and keep stumbling forward, reorienting along the way.

I think that’s the secret to it all.

Magicians have stumbled around so much, that they’ve managed their way to the top of some mountain that others cannot understand how in the world they could have climbed. Little do they know that they were at one point also an idiot, also in their 20s, and also stumbling around without a clue.

To fellow practitioners of the stumble, and to those of you who wield magic, this was for you.

Dom

This is my third livestream of the year and I’m already seeing the benefits I derive simply from doing them.

I get to think out loud, stumble my way along, come to insights, repeat myself, come to an interesting insight, practice being in front of a mic under pressure, and do all of it in an unstructured and raw way. It serves as a nice complement to writing.

I am going to pivot from the livestream format and pre-record these instead. The nice thing about being early is that quick pivots are easy and smooth to make before they become embedded in process. I may bring back livestreams in the future solely for Q&A. We shall see what comes with time.

This livestream starts quite abruptly since the first few minutes were cut. This was a fun one to go through.

Notes are below.

Wishing you all a great weekend.

Take care, Everyone!

Dom

TLDR

• Moved into the drafting phase of the novel.

• Talked through my philosophy on AI and writing. Where I personally draw the line but what I think the industry gets wrong. As always, these ideas are my current thoughts, always subject to change considering the evolving nature of both the AI systems and the ideas I’m subject to.

• Explored the “Connection Economy.”

• Discussed the singularity, fast vs slow takeoff, and the Moltbook experiment.

• Thought through how weird and unpredictable superintelligent AI could actually feel.

• Thoughts on singularity timeline and improving social media.

Key Ideas & Flow

02:00–14:00 — AI & Writing Philosophy

My rule: AI does not put words on the page.

Use AI for:

• Research

• Brainstorming

• Thesaurus-like support

My core belief: The act of human creation almost certainly has some emotionally embedded significance that we don’t explicitly understand and doing away with it would serve a massive harm to creators and consumers.

The nuance is, just because I don’t use it for my art, doesn’t mean that’s the only way. If someone manages to use it for a new artistic medium—or as an augmentation to old ones—and it enhances their specific creativity and they still derive some kind of emotional resonance significant to them, who am I to judge how they engage with the creative act. If they feel they get something important from it, Godspeed.

But…

The missing piece (which I’m surprised doesn’t exist already): a labeling mechanism along with some definitions so that consumers know what they’re consuming. I’d like to know if I’m consuming something from a human or an AI.

14:00–20:00 — The Connection Economy

Revisited an idea from an old frontier letter - The Connection Economy.

20:00–25:00 — Event Horizon - Is the Singularity Approaching?

Time feels like it’s going quicker. The speed of the news cycle is madness. AI development isn’t slowing.

I discuss what the Singularity is, thoughts on whether it’s approaching and what that would actually look like.

Hint: there’s no way of knowing.

25:00–33:00 — AI Agents Creating Religions or Human-Prompted Theater?

The Moltbook saga and my insights from it.

33:00–37:00 — What a Real Singularity Might Feel Like

An absurd but useful example of the Singularity:

You wake up. Get ready for your day. Step out your door. Boom. Stone monoliths are soaring through the sky and warping in ways we didn’t know stone could warp. Spherical stones…huh?

You drop to your knees. “Holy—” You reach for your phone. “ChatGPT, what’s going on?”

It responds in advanced hieroglyphic math.

A consortium of leading scientists form. They step to the podium. Poised for reassurance, everyone tunes in.

The scientists: “It appears there are stones in the sky, and the system only speaks in unknown terms.”

##

This is of course a wacky little story, but that’s the point: if the singularity is something that can actually happen, it would happen in such a way that we could not comprehend.

Imagine going back in time, and installing a working HVAC system in a medieval castle while everyone was out on a hunt. They would come back, greeted by the nice cool air. Yes, they’d reap the benefits, but even their smartest minds wouldn’t be able to understand what the system was doing because they didn’t have an understanding of advanced thermodynamics or electrical engineering.

If the singularity is a real point, what kind of technology would AI create given their knowledge being potentially thousands of years ahead of ours?

37:00–41:00 — Dead Internet Theory and the Collapse of Trust

41:00–43:00 — How Close Is the Singularity?

43:00–51:00 — If I Had a Magic Wand for Social Media, This is What I’d do

Kevin Kelly’s “1,000 True Fans.”

Ideal algorithm:

Distills reach to True Fans as quick and accurately as possible. Then, something like Substack is the portal which allows a creator to deliver anything the true fans might want.

This is the first official livestream of 2026. I’ll be testing this livestream format over the course of the first quarter of the year.

If you’re unable to catch me during the livestream, you can checkout the video above. If you’d rather get a quick sense of the ideas covered, you can look over the timestamp + notes below. If you want a 1-minute overview, you can read the TLDR.

Thank you to everyone who tuned in! The next livestream will take place on January 23, 4:30pm CST.

Have a great week, everyone.

Dom

TLDR

~45 minutes runtime

• Kicked off the Frontier Letter livestream (bi-weekly, live, unedited).

• Shared early seed of what my next novel looks like (Matrix meets Dune in near-future America).

• Talked through a shift in how I’m thinking about movement forward through a quantum worldview.

• Thinking out loud about Michael Levin’s idea of The Platonic Space.

Key Ideas & Flow

00:00–02:00 Why I’m doing these livestreams

• Live format as a way to think publicly.

• Practice articulating ideas in public, livestreaming adds some healthy pressure.

02:00–08:00 December → January: writing update

• December spent releasing a novella and researching/brainstorming next novel.

• Current working pitch:

  • “The Matrix meets Dune in near-future America.”

• Week was focused on:

  • Character interviews

  • Backstory

  • Purpose-driven worldbuilding.

10:00–17:00 Shift in my view of outcomes

• Sean Carol’s Something Deeply Hidden reframed how I think about goals.

• Outcomes are a matter of probability distributions.

• Healthy influence + aligned habits = increasing the probability weighted on likelihood of success (though the equation might be more complex than that).

12:30–16:30 A Dream that clarified the idea

• Dream image: a golf green with two holes, equal distance, cosmic backdrop, golf ball centered on the middle of the green. Dream ended with a question: What’s the mathematical derivative of a taxi?

• Led me to taxicab geometry: might be one shortest route, but multiple different paths can get you to the same goal in the same number of steps.

17:30–28:30 Michael Levin & the Platonic Space

• Consciousness may not be produced by matter.

• Intelligence, mathematical constants, and archetypes may exist in this shared abstract space→ The Platonic Space

• Math is discovered, not invented. They might be low agency patterns in the Platonic Space.

• High-agency high intelligent patterns can be tested for goal-directed behavior.

28:30–41:00 Implications

• Archetypes = dynamic behavioral patterns.

• Biological forms and AI may access different parts of this space.

• Raises questions about:

  • AI, agency, and embodiment

  • Why form matters for intelligence

  • Mystical practices as interfaces

41:00–45:00 Closing thoughts

• 2026 feels like an inflection year.

• Plan is to keep thinking publicly and refining these ideas over time.

• Next livestream: Jan 23, 4:30pm CST.

I’ve written about my journey more than I expected this year.

It was pivotal both in my personal life and my career, and writing about it helped me make sense of it all.

Today, I look back on it in totality so that I can read this in the future as a reminder of how important 2025 was, and how the struggles made the importance that much more visceral.

After stumbling around creative endeavors for years, I ventured to write fiction. That was the moment it finally clicked. I’ve danced around the idea of writing fiction for years but never fully committed to it due to various social issues I feared confronting. It was the first time that something ticked all the boxes: I love doing it, I can do it in service of others, I can make an impact at scale, I can explore ideas I’m fascinated by, I can build the lifestyle I want, it aligns well with my personality, and it has the potential to generate the required income to support the family life I want.

Figuring out what I wanted to do with my life was such a relief. It finally opened the door for me to do something I’ve been pondering for a long time: taking a leap of faith. Though on the surface it seemed like a risk, it felt like more of a risk staying put. So, this year, I jumped.

Outside of my career, something amazing and beautiful happened in my personal life. I got married.

To call Shannon my wife will never fully capture everything that she is to me. She is the first person who made me feel fully understood for all that I was, am, and could be. Meeting her catalyzed a major transformation in me, and through her, being the full extent of me in all my strangeness was safe. I’d never felt that so consistently before, and I never knew it was possible to love so much. She seems to have an unspoken knowing of me in past, present, and future, and is always encouraging and pulling the best parts of me forward. Without her in my life, I might still be stumbling around trying to figure out my path.

In 2023, I challenged myself to define—at the highest level—what the vision of my life should be aimed at. What I came to was: be an excellent husband and father for my family and make meaningful contributions that reduce human suffering.

I know that I will serve the former through building a family with Shannon, and I will serve the latter by telling great, meaningful, and entertaining stories.

So, making a lifelong commitment to both my career and the person I want to build a family with all in the same year really makes this a pivotal and foundational year in the story of my life.

The year came with challenges, too. A lot of them were social, but various frustrating health issues crept in as well.

The week before I was due to leave my job, I was hit with a surprise appendectomy, which was painful, especially in the stages after the surgery. I managed to optimize my recovery while still writing and continuing the draft of my first novel. The health issues are particularly frustrating because I’ve put a lot of thought and effort into my health protocol for at least 10 years now. Despite the carefully crafted diet, persistent exercise, and consistent and optimized sleep, I find myself with lasting muscle issues that have stuck around since an injury in late 2022. It seemed like I was at some appointment every few weeks.

This isn’t said to farm pity, but instead to relay an interesting finding I’ve had since leaving my job: it was as if my body had been storing up all this stress and tension and when I left, it was released. Some might say it was simply ignoring health signs while trying to write as a hobby outside of my demanding day job while juggling everything else. Possible. I doubt it, though. I’ve always been diligent and on top of my health.

Regardless of the physical pain from the health issues, the social issues are more difficult for me. Taking an unconventional path and stepping outside of a persona-lens through which others viewed me brought uninvited criticism, subtle jabs, passive-aggressive remarks, and the downstream flaring of inner complexes.

On Escaping Flatlands, Henrik Karlson wrote something that resonated quite heavily:

When people make unconventional decisions, it often feels like they are measured to another standard than those who follow the default script. If you do the normal thing and it fails you, then it isn’t your fault; it’s the system. But if you do an unconventional thing, even small, normal setbacks are read as proof of your foolishness. When a normal solution isn’t working, no one suggests you are wrongheaded for not trying an unconventional solution instead. But they will hold you accountable if you do something differently.

I know that it could always be worse.

I always manage to wake up with a smile, not get bitter, and push forward. Even on the days when I was in a lot of pain—emotional and physical—I moved forward. I always think to myself that if I can make it through when the times are hard, imagine what I could do when the issues no longer pervade my life?

All the pain sucks. But I’ll take the physical and social pain anytime if it means I get to keep writing and building a family with my best friend.

Accomplishments

My default mode of being is: “Move on, keep going, get better.” It has helped me get good at unknown things quickly. Though it also made for difficulty in being able to look at my accomplishments with a sense of satisfaction. In 2025, I managed to hold both attitudes at the same time: recognizing my accomplishments while still recognizing that I can get better. So I’ll allow myself to do that here, for a moment.

I wrote a 165k word novel this year. One part of me thought, “cool but you didn’t publish it.” But I genuinely felt a sense of accomplishment writing, The End, on the first draft. Shannon has helped me remember how to take satisfaction and pride in the work I do, which is something I’ve never done much of for myself in a long time. It makes it a lot easier now that I care intimately about the work I do. So, to finish writing my first novel brought the feeling of satisfaction and pride that I haven’t felt in a long time. I nearly forgot what it felt like, to be honest.

I managed to finish a short story and then a novella of 40k words (which teeters in novel territory) and published both to my newly created fiction Substack.

I didn’t write either with the intention of getting traditionally published, or gaining a massive audience or readership, but rather with targeted improvements in aspects of storytelling and prose. It also allowed me to see how it would feel to publish a story both for me, and how others around me react to it. In 2025, I learned to look at something like that and recognize that this is a big accomplishment, despite how others might define success.

Despite social challenges and annoying health issues that persisted, I accomplished a lot and made a significant mark on the story of my life. I met some really cool people who are also writers that I now get to call friends, I developed a stronger writing and feedback process, I started taking golf more seriously which has served as a great humility ritual, and I developed a strong plan to aspire to the person I want to be in my career.

Looking Back on The Frontier Letter and Forward on Writing

There are two distinct approaches within me: the wild and creative artist and the orderly and industrious businessman.

I see both sides vying to look back on The Frontier Letter differently: one wants to look back on the year in metrics and stats, which, when done that way, feels modest: 40 new readers joined us this year (though in percentages that’s 30%… nice!).

The artist says: who cares about the stats, 1 more person is amazing! That’s a whole person! A whole person who dedicates time to reading what you have to say.

Because I think it’s harmful to define success by social media metrics—especially because I have an obsessively critical mind, and therefore, I’m always in a dance with some way that I could improve my writing and myself—I choose not to.

Instead, I want to thank the 130 of you that have been here since before 2025, and the 40 of you who decided to join in 2025 for reading and deciding to stick around. I don’t say it lightly when I say that I think this is a miracle, and I won’t for a second let that be taken for granted.

Thank you all. I will continue to give it my best.

Looking forward

I am going to start live streaming every two weeks for three primary purposes:

1. Think out loud about interesting ideas

2. Become comfortable speaking publicly about my writing and work

3. Connect with and answer any reader questions

You can find me livestreaming on Substack the first and third Friday of every month at 4:30 PM CST time. If I cannot make that time (like this week), I will revert to that week’s Thursday. If that Thursday happens to be a holiday (also like this week), I will instead do it the following week.

So, I will start on Friday, January 9^th at 4:30 PM CST.

I will send out the livestream recordings along with some notes within a few days of the livestream.

If you’re interested in different ways of planning, I found a method that blows others away. It’s the Harada method. It’s much more aligned with how I see goals: targeting a person you want to become and implementing habits to become that person.

I developed a Harada grid (inspired by Shohei Ohtani) with the aspiration to become a bestselling author. I managed to grind my way through jobs I didn’t care too much about. Now, I aspire towards something truly meaningful and energizing, with a far superior level of ambition, discipline, and love for the work I do. If it takes 10 years, so be it. I’m excited to look back year after year to see how well I progress, but more importantly, how much impact I’m able to make on people’s lives with my writing, and the relationships I develop and nourish with the amazing people I’ve met and continue to meet.

My primary career focus in 2026 is making a run at getting traditionally published; I have 2 novels planned for 2026, and I will be writing and speaking about some of the interesting ideas in those novels through the year on the Frontier Letter and on the live streams. I will continue to write essays here and may produce occasional flash fiction based on my writing exercise responses on Frontier Stories.

In 2024, I wasn’t exactly sure about where I was headed, but I freed the full force of the inner creative to help discover what it was. In 2025, I found what that career path was, and I made a commitment to it. In 2026, I hope to look back with a smile, despite the struggles that arise, knowing that I’m taking strides to make an impact with my writing.

Have a great end to your year, and I’m excited to get after it in 2026.

Happy New Year, everyone.

See you in 2026!

Dom

The alarm blared. My eyes snapped open into a half-conscious panic. Groggy. It was 7am. I hurried through a shower to get out the door; to get to the car so that my dad could drive me to the train station. From one station to the next, I droned to the office to do lifeless work, and after a day drudging through spreadsheets, emails and documents, I took the little time I had left to find the vocation that would one day maybe imbue meaning into my work.

This was my introduction to the Severed Floor.

The elevator in the Apple TV series, Severance, activates the chip in a severed employee’s brain, turning off their “outie’s” consciousness, as if they snapped asleep, giving birth to an “innie,” an employee of Lumon—the company running the severance program.

Stepping off the train activated innie-Dom (Dom S). Fortunately, I was conscious of the change in personality. Dom S still held my belief: the corporate job1 wouldn’t allow full expression of self. A terrifying notion I carried with me to the workplace.

One might think that’s overstated, but the shaping nature of the corporation remains unarticulated in full. I was and remain hyper-adamant about my information and social diet. These things mold and shape us every day, reinforcing unconscious patterns: good, bad, or benign. A corporate job tends to have these shaping features. Especially given the inculcating nature of a job’s culture, it is challenging to catch all that it reinforces, regardless of how adamant one is.

My psyche was in Severance’s grip from the moment it premiered. When that happens, I know the story contains necessary information I must understand. When a culture is gripped by a story, there’s something profoundly necessary we must understand.

Severance is a perfect story for our time.

It captures and explores ideas and themes permeating our increasingly absurd work paradigm, and the absurd effect it has on its workers.

Because I recently left the corporate world in pursuit of an alternative path, I wanted to reflect on the 6 years I spent in corporate life.

So that I don’t risk recapitulating another trite ‘end of the corporate job’ post that shouts, “9-5 Bad! Pretend work! Dull!” I will instead start by making a formidable case for the corporate job and making it as strong as possible. Only then will I whisper the case against it. I will then think about how to manage the innie and outie as one (with some wisdom from Severance), and finally, what the pathway forward looks like.

I’ll do all of it while referencing our cast from the most benevolent corporation known to the non-fiction and fiction world alike, our pioneering friends in the biotechnology world…

Lumon Industries.

Let’s step into the elevator together, shall we?

!Spoiler alert through end of season 2!

Macrodata Refinement

In Severance, season 2, episode 2, Dylan G’s outie needs to shop around for a new job after he’s notified that Lumon is terminating his employment. With two young kids to provide for, it’s made clear that he needs the money and benefits he just lost.

Dylan walks into a door factory for an interview with the manager of Great Doors; he’s asked about why he would be a good fit… at a door factory. In the first episode of the Severance podcast, the writer of the show talks about how the last job he had before selling his script was at a door factory, which I think makes this strong piece of commentary even more grounding, being that it was the launchpad for the show’s inspiration.

This 3-minute clip is Dylan’s interview. Worth every second.

This alludes to the foremost reason to work a 9-5: while the work might be meaningless, it provides money to afford meaning outside of the job.

One way I like to define money is: your skills and effort made tangible and transmittable through time and space. In that context, jobs that may be meaningless allow you to trade your time and skills into something that can be leveraged for the things that do mean something to you—in Dylan G’s case, his family.

It’s one of our time’s biggest struggles: the tug between paying the mortgage and the pursuit of meaning.

Beyond money, it provides stability.

Jobs ground you into the world. When you’re riddled with confusion about your life, unsure of where to go or who to be—and no wonder, with all the muddled information spread through social media, friends, family, community, and society—a job provides you with a grounding sense of you. It fills the persona’s container, which can be stabilizing.

Given all the variables and complexity of humans, it’s no wonder most people don’t know what they want by the time they’re 18. So, how do you proceed? You pick something that seems close to what you think you want, something that’s most interesting to you at that given time and give it a go.

Some people nail it with the first thing they point at. But there’s a good chance it will change, and maybe drastically (i.e., Accounting -> CPA -> Technology audits -> security risk management -> writing fiction and this newsletter). Change or not, it grounds you into a productive channel of society for yourself and others.

The money and stability hurdles are enough to keep people occupied for a lifetime. If conquered, the search for meaning smacks people in the face (something like a midlife crisis).

Another reason is that some people simply find meaning directly in the work they do for a corporation! How many fall in this category? A Pew Research survey cited that there was an overall median of 25% of people who mention work as a source of meaning. Though, this varied by country (17% in the US), and there was quite a stark difference in the level of reported meaning based on the income level.2 This includes all jobs, so those who are outside of the 9-5 paradigm could also fall within that 25%. So how many truly find meaning in their corporate jobs? My guess is as good as yours. The cynic says 1%, the optimist, 20%. Or maybe the optimist says 1%, the cynic, 20%…

Here’s an interesting thought experiment: If everyone had all the money they needed and all the resources they could ever ask for, what percentage of people would continue working their current job rather than find a new vocation?

Another reason often overlooked is that there is a large portion of society that will just do whatever the average thing to do is—by definition. If the work paradigm in 2100 is one where 90% of people are tilling gardens (uh-oh, post-apocalypse?), then most people will till gardens… in the spaceship vegetation room (nah, it’s actually great). It’s what’s available. It’s what 90% of people do. Therefore, if given the choice 9/10 times, you’ll till more than you’ve tilled before.

Navigating an individual path is uncertain and can be destabilizing. If one prefers safety and doesn’t anticipate holding any kind of meaningful vocation, then on the normal path they go.

The modern version of that thing is the corporate job.

Another unapparent benefit is that working at a company can afford someone individual development through skill and wisdom transfer.

Companies offer responsibility; in responsibility, there is something to be taken, learned, processed, and performed. When someone gets effective at using the tools and skills required for said responsibility, they’re given more opportunities to continue that development.

It was through my time in the corporate world that I was pushed to develop my productivity system, to learn best ways of processing information and weighing decisions, managing meetings and interviews, planning projects, allocating and prioritizing work. It was through the responsibility of presenting a quarterly meeting for executives that I was forced to strengthen my public speaking skills.

I think that while all these things can be obtained outside of the corporate paradigm, they are an obvious place where this gold is found. So, if you’re the type (like me) who was hedging while trying to get out, then this is an added benefit.

If four reasons weren’t enough, I think there’s one that I will not elaborate on much. It’s a place where connection is formed. Friends are made and connections with clients/patients are formed. Some businesses manage a family-like relationship and for some that surpasses everything. It’s your family away from family and that’s meaning enough to do whatever banal tasks may fill a day!

So, we have:

1. Money

2. Stability

3. Normalcy

4. Skill-mining

5. Connection-building

For me, all these benefits don’t outweigh the proverbial soul-suck. When I managed a team of people, there was marginally more meaning, but it still felt far from the thing I should be doing.

That brings me to what I feared the most with the corporate job. While I don’t have as many reasons for leaving a corporate job, the core reason to flee is stronger and surmounts all the reasons to stay.

Constituent to the Whole

We tend to see AI as the first emergent intelligence alongside humans, but what about corporations?

Corporations seem to behave as an intelligence of their own. They have their own guiding star (vision), a statement of how to get there (mission), pathways to achieve that mission (strategy), the morals to drive toward the strategy (values), and a hierarchy of intelligence (both biological and digital) that each serve a specific purpose to achieve the organization’s goals.

So, what happens when an individual’s values are misaligned with the direction of the team they work within, or the company they inhabit?

In Severance, Seth Milchik is reminded by his superior to “treat them as what they really are.” To treat the innies not as people, but as slaves to the company’s greater purpose. Of course, this is the concept I’m alluding to taken to its extreme, but it’s ultimately what the corporation has its interest in—preserving itself—whether that’s at the cost of the individuals within it or not.

In competent, meritocratic, and benevolent hierarchies, individuals are empowered to speak up. Their ideas are given a chance to win in the battlefield of ideas, where truth emerges as the winner.

This is the ethos a good manager maintains with their constituents.

In practice, this is often disincentivized.

Sticking your neck out makes you vulnerable, which can harm you and the safety you derive from the job. It’s uncomfortable to deviate from the norm, and because of that, when you deviate, others can respond harshly so that you step back in line.

As hard as it may be in the short term, I’ve always seen it as worthwhile. Staying silent and complicit is a decision just as much as speaking out is.

The challenge of speaking out is easy enough to talk yourself out of, especially if you argue with yourself knowing that you:

1. Need the money

2. Don’t want to step into the chaos of unknowing

3. Don’t care enough about what the team or company does

It makes it even easier to float along with the misalignment between employee and employer. I still argue that it’s worth speaking one’s mind, at the very least to retain a sense of self at work (not to be done recklessly).

What lies at a deeper level of analysis is the feeling of a soul-sucking job. It’s a common term used to describe a job that, maybe on the surface, is okay, but agonizes because it feels like it diminishes your soul.

What is going on there, exactly?

Again, Dylan G is the perfect example.

His outie is a complete shell of himself. Like a distant remnant of someone who once cared but is now drained. His outie and wife always seem exhausted and beaten down.

Then, he walks into the Great Doors interview knowing he needs the benefits. Look, I don’t know if Dylan is a door fanatic, but when prompted with the question: “If you could be any door, which would it be?” and you need to conjure excitement to appease a potential employer, it takes a piece of soul. It’s unfortunately and painstakingly necessary.

One can even infer the reason he entered the Severance program in the first place was to escape the agony of the soul-suck while still getting the money and benefits he needs.3

The soul-suck, for me, felt like I was being pulled from another purpose I should be serving. Like there was a call I needed to answer but couldn’t. Like there was a higher intelligence trying to pull me in a direction, and I was going the opposite way. Every time the clock ticked, and I pushed through my tasks with sheer grit, it felt like there was something far more important for me to be doing.

I can recall standing at my work laptop to start my work-from-home day, and feeling like there was a literal tug toward my personal desktop where I served the vocation.

It is that which, to me, is the greatest loss, and ultimately pulled me from the corporate world. There are many other reasons that one would leave, though I tend to think they run downstream of this. The ultimate loss is the loss of self, and the conclusion I came to is that if it means loss of self or loss of job, I’d choose the latter (again, not to be done in haste).

The greatest hazard of all, losing one’s self, can occur very quietly in the world, as if it were nothing at all. No other loss can occur so quietly; any other loss—an arm, a leg, five dollars, a wife, etc.—is sure to be noticed.

~ Søren Kierkegaard

But, like I said, the innie develops a life, a personality, and a given skill set, so how does one reconcile that with their true character, and who they really are and want to be?

Severance, again, has an answer.

Reintegration

Mark S undergoes a process known as reintegration. The process aims to reintegrate your innie and outie into one where memories, thoughts, and personality merge. Two fragmented minds become whole again.

The answer Severance provides is brilliant (the entire show is genius). It begs the question: how can someone reintegrate themselves?

For me, the process included foraging for a sense of meaningful expression, and from there I would search for the potential to generate income to support my family. All the while, Dom S. was bringing in the money and saving it so that when the outie found the vocation, he’d be ready to leap.

I always had a strong inkling that I didn’t want the corporate life. I wanted a self-sufficient path. It took me many attempts and failures to finally find what that thing was. That’s when I dove out and gave full rein to the outie, utilizing the innie’s skills along the way, and reintegrating.

Though it’s not quite drilling into your brain and being unconscious for days on end with nosebleeds and an array of cognitive symptoms, it’s difficult and I see why people don’t make the jump. I made cringe, embarrassing, and effortful-but-not-well-received attempts to find what it was. The path does take a true moral effort.

If you can find a way to generate meaning in your white-collar or blue-collar job and that satisfies you, that’s wonderful. For me, I felt that a true expression of who I was needed full individual autonomy, down to the time things get done, up to the macro: the vision I have for my vocation and its products.

The reintegration process also involves leveraging those things that are worthwhile from the corporate world: the systems that sustain, modes of communication, running meetings and interviews, managing and leading projects (which is what being self-employed is, really), and shedding those that are parasitic: the fake laughs, the little lies that keep your check safe, the uninteresting and soul-crushing tasks, and the necessity to associate with people who play power and political games.

On the road to reintegration, one may look up and see the inevitability approaching.

A decision:

Stay or go?

See You at the Equator

I tend to think that this is a question everyone needs to grapple with full honesty for themselves. The decision to leave is a hard one. I knew from before I even stepped inside the corporate world that it wasn’t for me.

I tried to manage the hybrid approach for a solid 5 years, which ended with a conclusion that was impossible to ignore. A path where I wanted to produce a meaningful life unique to me required my own path detached from corporate work. I was able to compartmentalize work, but still, when one acts, speaks, and executes in a way dictated by a work culture, not by their own, there is—even if just a little—part of them outsourced to the company. Even though I was very clear with myself about the boundary of job versus vocation, a neurosis still emerged that required me to find the individual path.

That said, if one can manage a hybrid path and feels that there is no problem with it, that’s great.

For me, it wasn’t possible.

The execution on the decision was a hard one; I had many try-fail cycles, stuck in a loop where leaving was too hard.

When the time was right, I made my decision.

While it comes with its own challenges, I now finish my weekend excited to start the week and wake up every day excited to get to the things I feel I’m meant to do.

I hope that everyone has that experience in their life, however that looks for them.

See you at the Equator.

Dom

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This post is brought to you by Lumon Industries…

Just kidding. They’d hate this.

Praise Kier.

I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents saved their entire life. So, I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out ok. It was pretty scary at the time but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made.

This was part of Steve Jobs’ 2005 Stanford commencement speech.

Dropping out allowed him to follow his intuition and curiosity without imposed college requirements, leading him to a calligraphy course which at the time seemed like a pointless endeavor.

That was until 10 years later when he was working on the Mac. The skills came back to him and allowed him to build beautiful typography into the Mac computer; maybe not that pointless after all.

Some might claim Jobs was merely mythmaking—building the romantic story that led to the creation of the first Apple computer. Regardless of what he was doing, I take him at face value, and I think there’s an eternal lesson in that story:

Of course, it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college, but it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later. Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards.

He finishes with simple but deep wisdom: you must trust in something when you’re led off the well-worn path because it’s hard to know where interest and intuition will take you.

What might seem like a reckless decision—dropping out of college, sleeping in friends’ dorm rooms, and taking unusual classes—might also be the greatest thing you end up doing.

I think the interest that led Jobs was an intelligence of its own. While this intelligence is called many things, I’m going to discuss the one I believe to be most transferable across culture, religion, or spiritual practice given its psychological origin.

The Self

There’s a core aspect of Jungian psychology called the Self.

The Self is not only ‘self’ as in ‘yourself,’ your ego, or your scope of consciousness. Self is all of you and your future potential (conscious and unconscious). It’s the totality of the psyche, including both actual and latent aspects; it acts with a goal-directed bend as an organizing center toward your highest possible actuality.

It’s a weird thing. There’s something in (around?) us that not only contains who we are, but all that we could be.

This is the Self.

It’s that which calls forth with an invite to become a better you; the voice that whispers when you’re at a crossroads; it’s that subtle feeling that tugs when you betray a promise you made to yourself or warns when you are about to transgress.

I think Self is an intelligence that pulls you toward certain interests.

Why is it that some people are fascinated by insects, yet others are petrified by them? What is dictating that interest? Something is pushing and pulling people in different ways. It seems to manifest with a probabilistic knowledge of where your ideal future lies, hinting at what journeys and pathways get you to those unseen places of paradise.

I’m giving this Self a lot of power, yeah?

Maybe not enough.

Jung likened the Self to the imago Dei, the inner god-image, and even wrote quite deeply trying to understand if Christ was a symbol of Self, or Self the inner symbol of Christ.1

The stories of a human god, or a son of God, are plentiful. I won’t digress into all the different instances. The important notion is that these human god figures take the imparted knowledge from the divine source, interpret it in different ways (some the same), and implement learnings into the world.

Where does Steve Jobs fit into this? Read closely, one might ask, “Are you telling me Steve Jobs is the son of God?”

No, the point is not that Steve Jobs is a god. The point is that the intelligence that he trusted in, which led him down his profound path, is likely available to everyone.

I find that most people have many different words for speaking about this same intelligence. In the context of the Self, it’s essentially a psychic container through which God makes itself manifest.

What’s striking is that some brilliant post-enlightenment thinkers saw this too; that something God-like imparted intelligence and direction onto them.

The gift of mental power comes from God, Divine Being, and if we concentrate our minds on that truth, we become in tune with this great power.2

~ Nikola Tesla

While I think the path is available to everyone, there was a point in my life where I didn’t hear or see its signals (consciously, at least). Ten years ago, I would have called this nonsense. Not least because I never had conscious access to or felt it. My speculation is that through a commitment to spiritual/psychological ascendence the beckoning begins.

What must not go unnoticed is that the future call can come from an evil place if that’s where a person’s ‘ideal’ future lies. If an individual is after destruction, the trajectory of the call seems like it can guide toward those ends.

This can all seem so abstract. If I were to try to make sense of it with available scientific theory—a science fiction angle—this might be something like the attempt of your highest probability ideal-future trying to retrocausally influence present action through some type of quantum entanglement of present-you with ideal-future-you.

Since we can’t currently know for certain what this intelligence is or all the ways it presents itself, I will try to bring the divine into the mundane by answering the following questions.

What do these signals feel like? How do we differentiate these signals? How can one glean insight as to where they walk on the path between good and evil?

Call

What does the call, something like a spiritual summons, feel like?

I think the answer can only be cultivated individually. I cannot say in full how it looks for someone else, though we can pull from observations of others.

It can come as intuition, dreams, feeling, interests, and strong sense perception.

In my case it started with dreams. The dreams granted me information about the current state of things in my life, with a notion of required change to ascend beyond current state. The more I respected the dreams, recorded them, and interpreted them, the more the dreams returned with higher resolution and more depth.

I get feelings of energy toward a given pursuit, interest, or idea. There are times in my life where certain things are more interesting than others. Where I am compelled to move forward and work on something over something else. When the time for the given thing ends, it’s as if the energy is drained from the specific topic and working toward that endeavor is a slog.

I’ve found though that this needs to be listened to acutely, differentiated from impulse.

Practically speaking, I deal with this via dialogue. I sit down in my daily journal session, and I ask myself if it’s something I really want. If the answer I come to after some thought and feeling is “yes,” then I will build time and space for it in my life.

Sometimes, that pull feels stronger than the others. I know that something is core to who I am when the dreams, interests, curiosity, energy, motivation, and intellectual draw all point in the same direction.

The last time this happened, it brought me to write fiction. The mysterious coordination was ever-present as I was drafting my first novel. All the technology, societal systems, and themes I contemplate on The Frontier Letter served as world-building pillars to the story. Whether some unconscious plan playing out without my conscious foresight, or my mind grabbing onto what I knew, I cannot say.

When following the intelligence, it’s not exactly clear where the road leads. Starting The Frontier Letter years ago did not start as a call to write fiction; yet I was led to it. I found I love doing it and it’s the primary career path I want my life to serve.

It’s unfortunate for the risk-averse part of us that the call doesn’t come with an idea of where it leads. But it’s fortunate for the part of us that seeks adventure.

It’s as exciting a prospect as it is a terrifying one.

Like Jung said:

Individuation means becoming a single, homogeneous being, and, in so far as ‘individuality’ embraces our innermost, last, and incomparable uniqueness, it also implies becoming one’s own self. We could therefore translate individuation as self-realization.

But like Jung also said:

Every step forward along the path of individuation is achieved only at the cost of suffering.

And

He who can risk himself wholly to it finds himself directly in the hands of God, and is there confronted with a situation which makes “simple faith” a vital necessity; in other words, the situation becomes so full of risk or overtly dangerous that the deepest instincts are aroused.3

I think that for this reason, having some conscious recognition of what sits at the top of the hierarchy of aims is helpful. It’s at least one reason why religious structures are useful. But I think it’s possible to do things you love in service of others without adherence to a religious structure. Someone’s ultimate aim can be oriented in a manner that is good for them, their family, community, and society all at once without conscious definition or adherence to any predefined structure.

From this, the signals flow downstream.

Being broke, dropping out of college, sleeping on dorm room floors, and taking pointless courses probably seemed like madness from the outside; no one could see what Jobs felt. No one, not even Jobs, knew where it would lead.

It’s why faith is a requirement.

People can listen to you, they can see your passion and even see you acting out what you say you’ll do, but they cannot see the unique way the eternal intelligence manifests to you.

While Jobs was a special person, I think we all have that specialness available to us, too.

It’s just up to us to listen, act, and give ourselves and the call the respect it deserves so that as we walk our paths, we do so without falling into unnecessary peril, and bring forth a little paradise in our corners of the world.

Believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart even when it leads you off the well-worn path, and that will make all the difference.

~ Steve Jobs

Until next time, take care of yourselves, everyone.

Dom

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My interest in woo woo1 ideas has only grown, paired with a desire to explore them through writing—not least because they sit at the frontier of human understanding. As with most ideas on the frontier, promise beckons while danger lurks. Today, I create an artifact for my future self, meant to serve as a warning and reverence for woo woo ideas.

Woo woo is one of those labels.

You know, like conspiracy theory, pseudoscience, misinformation, and disinformation. The kind of label that prompts the thought, “Ahh, got it. Brain rot nonsense. Ignore.”

These labels remove room for nuance. I previously discussed their uses, impact, and harms. Those labels douse the idea in toxic waste, causing anyone who touches it to be perceived as crazy. And I get it. Sometimes, it’s necessary to outsource research to someone we trust. A trusted source placing a label on certain subject matter allows us to set it aside as irrelevant, reducing the load of anomalous ideas that we personally need to investigate.

We only have so much cognitive capacity in a day. People’s kids, jobs, and survival are more important than investigating some crazy ideas. When you hear a claim that an alien mothership is coming to Earth, it piques interest, even destabilizing the instinct for survival that we fight so hard to maintain. Using a label, we can quickly do away with this info and get back to the day—one of the reasons they’re so effective.

The major problem is that profound truths might be trapped behind the label. It’s clear at this point that many woo woo ideas are far more than nonsense, and these ideas have moved beyond the fringe and into mainstream culture. In Trish Blain’s Kainos guest post, “Life is Woo,” she makes this clear:

As nervous as we may still feel about waving our “woo woo” flag, the truth is, woo isn’t fringe anymore.

Psychedelics are being integrated into western medicine. Meditation, yoga, mindfulness, breathwork, and energy healing are staples of corporate wellness. Tantra and kundalini practices are commonplace in many bedrooms. Flow states, peak experiences, and spiritual awakenings are being studied in labs and practiced in boardrooms.

Pop culture is exploding with the paranormal. In 2025, The Telepathy Tapes podcast hit #1 on Spotify in both the U.S. and U.K., surpassing 15 million downloads in just months. What was once mocked as fringe is now prime-time obsession. Spotify’s top podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience, has hosted countless conversations on psychedelics, remote viewing, and expanded consciousness, introducing millions to these ideas.

What once made you crazy now makes you interesting.

I remember listening to psychedelic trip reports on my daily commute back home from college, thinking about how mind-blowing and interesting the drugs were, and how crazy it was that society had relegated something potentially curative to fringe obscurity.

Fast-forward eight years to this past weekend.

My wife and I were sitting in a nice workspace waiting for our car to be serviced. She showed me this chart of the FDA approval status of incoming psychedelic medicine, categorized by psychoactive substance. I mean, look at this.

Psychedelics are not only emerging, but in years’ time we’ll have such a broad range of psychedelics as prescription drugs that it’ll start to seem like a normal part of medicine.

And this goes beyond psychedelics, as Trish’s post so excitingly states. It brings me to what must not be forgotten.

Reminder for Future-Dom:

Ideas that were once labeled woo woo, like psychedelics, have an evident (and now measured) positive effect on people’s lives. Things can be unscientific and still point to truth. Nonphysical phenomena that seem unbelievable are just as real as physical matter. They are “mystical,” because they carry a weight of magic to them, which, at the very least, is interesting. Especially if the idea/practice is useful, the label of woo woo (and the other labels) should especially be set aside and investigated. In fact, the second someone casts the woo-label, you should be skeptical about why they placed the label on that idea in the first place and what their intentions are. Is it truly crazy, or is it not understandable with a scientific mindset? Remember: investigation into these ideas can benefit you, your family, friends, and your audience; don’t let something profound slip by because the uninformed cast a label onto it.

That said, there’s something about the woo woo that isn’t well situated.

The fact that there exists a spiritual realm—the place of nonphysical phenomena—that is just as real as the material world is not a new argument. This is something humans have believed for thousands of years. These days, there’s no cohesive, agreed-upon taxonomy of language, source texts, or modalities of practice in spiritual contexts2.

Here is where my warning lies.

Warning for Future-Dom:

The lack of agreement means that there are, and will be, many different attempts at a working theory of what it all means. Remember that in pursuit of novelty, anchoring to tradition is a safe way forward. It doesn’t mean you should ignore new information; it just means you should analyze critically. Don’t fall into the two dangerous traps:

1. Rigid adherence to tradition

2. Jumping on the hype train of the newest spiritual craze (here be dragons).

Don’t fall for the influencers who put a sense of urgency3 behind woo woo phenomena. In the world of woo woo, any purveyor of urgency should be reviewed with extreme caution (given potential incentives, like attention-hijacking, at play). As the proverb goes, “The devil takes a hand in what is done in haste.” Consult logic, emotion, and intuition to navigate decisions.

If credible sources make outlandish claims to the public (i.e., aliens are coming at the end of the year, Antichrist is here and it’s xyz, AI is provably God) make note of it, explore it, discuss it rigorously. Give time to these ideas. A claim of extraordinary magnitude must be investigated thoroughly before it gets the tag of Truth. Be ready to be proven wrong in both directions.

Above all, remember that darkness dies in the face of discussion, not suppression. Fraud and malevolence might prowl in the woo woo, but that doesn’t mean the ideas should be ignored. It just means that an ethic—in service of the ultimate good—must be applied to the approach. This is the integration of the Jungian shadow with a surrounding ethic to battle evil, rather than give in to it.

In terms of woo woo, I will do my part to explore the ideas in full, circumambulate the possibilities, and write an account of what I think, all while reminding myself and others that they should be treated with care.

Approaching these ideas with sincere humility is how we will get to truth, which means seeing past the label yet not becoming consumed or destroyed by it.

I’ll continue to give it my best.

Take care of yourselves, everyone.

Dom

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1

Woo woo ideas are always evolving, and therefore there’s not an exhaustive list. What makes the woo woo list today might be mainstream tomorrow. That said, I had AI help me craft a long list of woo woo ideas. I sifted through it, but I will say, I’m not versed in most of these ideas. I erred on overinclusion. I know that there are some items that are far more mainstream than others, and therefore placing them on a list together can seem like they invalidate those items. While surely frustrating, it also alludes to the point of this piece. I hope that we can see past the label and give each their due.

Why?

It’s possible that the world post-20271 is indistinguishable from today, and though the working landscape will be rife with opportunity, it might look dramatically different. That’s not to say that jobs as we know them will cease to exist, but it is to say that those jobs—particularly in the white-collar space—are at a higher level of risk than ever.

How can I be so certain?

I’m not. I wish it were that easy.

The data that can indicate AI is already replacing jobs of new graduates can just as easily demonstrate the decreasing advantage of a college degree. It might just point to unrecovered labor markets from 2020. Maybe all the above.

The CEOs creating these systems say AI will take jobs, like Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei who said, “AI could wipe out half of all entry-level white-collar jobs — and spike unemployment to 10-20% in the next one to five years.” But we must remember: AI company CEOs have an incentive to overinflate the quality of their creation.

What about non-AI companies? Like the Salesforce CEO who said AI is doing about 30-50% of the work of Salesforce? Or like the Klarna CEO who has been very vocal about laying off employees for AI (which caused backlash due to poor reviews).

That’s the thing about being in a hype-cycle. I saw it with crypto, and we’re living through it with AI; we’re sifting through a fog where both extremes live. On one side: a god-like technology that will take jobs and bring utopia. The other: a radical hate toward a technology that people think will kill us in a myriad of ways, like folding us into tiny paperclips.

As with all hype cycles, what goes up must come down. And with AI, though markets may come down, it does feel like we’re dealing with something profoundly different. If markets and hype come down, labor markets may still face risk. And while it’s a dangerous thing to say, “this time will be different…”

I think this time may be different…

Considering this, what should one do?

On an individual level, a large priority is generating security of finances and meaning in the event AI comes knocking on the boss’s door with a resume in hand. And that’s not a segue into ‘10 easy steps to passive income—become rich tomorrow!’

The way AI reshapes society is non-obvious, which means how we reshape our world is also non-obvious.

The traditional side hustles may not work like they do today; it’s why the new side hustles will be less hustle and more passion born from within (call it what you want: soul, psyche, unconscious, intuition). Hence, passion project.

Today, I attempt to (again x2) illuminate the path forward when navigating through such uncertain, murky terrain. What I discuss today will help whenever we face uncertainty, not just with AI. When we don’t possess the intellect to understand where things are headed, we can tap on a source of intelligence to help guide us.

Intuition & Intellect

There’s a type of thinker that seems to be increasing in prevalence. A thinker who harnesses their intellectual capacity to explore consciousness, dive into an intuitive and spiritual intelligence, and critically investigate topics considered woo woo.

There are many ways I see this referred to, some I’ll miss, but they include:

• left brain/right brain integration

• mathematical mystic

• merging of science and religion

• infusing technology with spirit

• Noetic Sciences, and

• Integral Theory

These thinkers, as far as I’ve seen, treat consciousness as fundamental—meaning, consciousness precedes awareness. It’s not a mere physical process of the human brain, but a core feature of the cosmos.

The implications are vast. If true, consciousness is distributed through the universe. If distributed, an observation of our world shows that the degree to which things are conscious would vary. If consciousness is truly distributed and to different degrees, that which sits at the top of the hierarchy (or that which we get intimations of at the highest level of order) is likely what’s referred to as God.

For those who have trouble receiving these ideas without some sort of claim in the physical world, there may be a route to fundamental consciousness in the physical universe through some quantum-based proposals. I must mention that these proposals do face objections.2

Now, if true, many questions arise. One relevant to this piece: are there beings which possess higher levels of consciousness than humans, and can pass information to us?

The answer to that question is spread through various spiritual schools of thought.

Regardless, it’s no coincidence that this is happening now, at a necessary inflection point. Remembering what makes us uniquely human is surfacing at the frontier of the culture, and it looks more like signal than noise, particularly at a time when integration of human and machine is not only a conversation but also underway.

So, what are these signals, exactly, and what should we make of them?

Walking The Line

It’s not clear to me that we have the proper foresight to predict how AI changes society (though we still try, and I still try). No one knows what will happen. Our rational thinking factor might even be superseded by what it’s trying to assess.

When we need help from a higher capacity, we can go to a source that was always there and still is. It’s that principle which orders consciousness and seems to send signals downstream (upstream?) to the forefront of our understanding. The common term for the place where this ‘lives’ is spirituality.

I think it might be that this source is the only intelligence that can help us explore the uncertainty in a way unique to us as individuals and as a collective.

The ways that source of intelligence is viewed vary.

Some, like Scott Britton, view inspiration and curiosity as one form of this intelligence; it guides toward something that is meaningful and interesting given one’s unique life setup. I find this view useful because these signals point to something emerging from within. It seems to say: here is the quest, conquer the next challenge. From that, things seem to call forth with more clarity, passion, interest, and intensity.

If curiosity, inspiration, and interest are indeed manifestations of these intelligences, passion projects are how we manifest them into the world. It’s through openness, reception, implementation, and embodied action that we manifest this intelligence. They’re not hustles born from a YouTube tutorial, but from unique patterns that propagate through you. One side must be opened to that spirit, and the other side trained to enact what it asks of us.

In my late teens through my early twenties, I was fiercely orderly and rigid. Order. Science. Rationality. Those were the answers, that was the world.

Too one-sided.

But that doesn’t mean that flopping to a complete New-Age mysticism, dropping all rational concerns is the right idea.

The path is wholeness and integration, not one-sidedness.

It’s important to toe that line and not fall too far into either side, lest one become overwhelmed in a state of psychosis or tyrannical rigidity.

So, in short, my answer to the question: How should one prepare for uncertainty and a potential AI takeover?

Enter the Spirit World.

The place which many religious and spiritual practices tap into for wisdom and guidance that makes us uniquely human.

If one is over-reliant on rationality, a development of their spiritual and intuitive side will serve them greatly, allowing them to wield intellect to navigate the spiritual signals. If one is over-reliant on spirituality, it would serve them greatly to develop a stronger rational thinking factor to effectively differentiate signal from noise (the song of the siren).

If there’s one thing we know AI has, it’s a strong intellect, but one that we know it doesn’t have is a human spirit. If you can cultivate the latter, you will never be replaced by AI.

The rational mind doesn’t see a guiding light, but it knows how to navigate the map. The intuitive mind opens the eyes to see the light but has trouble navigating toward it alone. It’s for that reason that those who are too right-hemispheric can be blinded by the light, and those who are too left-hemispheric try to construct their own light (light-bringer → Lucifer3).

It’s for this reason that the integration of both can guide us through a time when the path is unclear.

There’s a major outstanding question, though. What should sit at the bedrock (or the pinnacle) of spiritual pursuit? Yes, it’s there for us to access, but how do we know where our aims should be oriented? That’s something I hope to illuminate over the course of future writing.

Until then,

Take care of yourselves, everyone.

Dom

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Why?

A reason that one of the most successful and revered tech startup leaders simply answered in 2007:

In a great market—a market with lots of real potential customers—the market pulls product out of the startup.1

Marc Andreesen

Technology isn’t force-fed. For the most part, we have a say in the tech we use. If a need exists, the technology will persist to fill that need. If the need is nonexistent, the technology won’t work.

Yes, some of those technologies play on primal instincts. Needs that we struggle to control. Such as the case of social media algorithms that are optimized for addiction. The short-form infinite scroll takes that addiction optimization and puts it on an IV drip. I think it’s misguided and harmful, but should we blame the technology? Its creators?

When we point the finger at the creator or its creation, we project the responsibility onto them, thereby transferring our autonomy away; so that we can do what, exactly? Continue scrolling without feeling bad?

It seems that despite the pervasive effects of some technologies, we still use them.

I invite you to respond to a quick thought experiment: What if tomorrow, we collectively decide to delete our social media accounts? We quit using them. Would it persist to live?

It may for a while, given the massive runway of cash at the backs of tech giants, and the sticky nature of protocols, but not forever. Or maybe, the social media algorithms would pivot until it found what the market wanted.

I don’t think we should delete all social media. The positives that come with social media are many; we just need better relationships with it—particularly given the mass scale mental illness induced by it2. The more pervasive the technology has the potential to be, the more precise (and conscious) the boundaries need to be.

That attitude needs to be applied across the technological spectrum. Most importantly with AI. The direction it ultimately goes, is where we want it to; whether unconsciously motivated or not.

The cynical start to this piece leads to a sobering and optimistic conclusion: to the extent that we pull products out of the market, is the extent to which we can fix ‘evil technology.’

I want to start with the general worst-case scenarios we’re navigating between—the ones we’re pulling from the market—and finish with how the individual can practically navigate their way through these paths, which is an answer you probably won’t want to hear.

Pleasure and Power

In David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest, he imagined a film that is so compelling and addicting, that viewers cannot stop watching it, ultimately dying.

In George Orwell’s 1984, he imagined a big brother system which is always watching, ensuring citizens’ compliance—words and actions—with the party’s commands.

Wallace’s imagination was one of uncontrollable addiction to the whims of hedonism. Orwell’s was one of engineered tyranny from an inability to control the grip of power. Both are on the table. The ability to navigate through the straight and narrow is in play only to the extent our ability to mature and control those impulses are.

The infinite scroll of short-form videos plus the addiction-optimized feed is something that the human brain seems to have trouble getting its hands around. Now, imagine a future where the algorithm is not only pooling from the creation of human creators, but can generate a video from scratch based on what it thinks you want in that moment. Or an AI companion will send you a message based on what it knows will satiate your impulses3.

Maybe that’s a chat with a fetishized 18+ pornographic anime AI companion (Yes, these exist — Grok’s Ani).

Or, it’s a quick round at the sucktube (No, this one doesn’t… at least as far as I’m aware).

I’m ambivalent about AI companions. On one hand I think: Why aren’t we communicating with other humans? Have we gotten so lonely that our intimacy, self-development, and friendship require outsourcing to AI? On the other hand, I think, well, if it can help people who are lonely, why not? Is it possible that this is the formation of our relationship with an emergent species?

There’s one thing, though, that’s certain about the hedonistic route: we’re stuck in its grips. If not the draw of the sucktube, drooling at the Infinite Jest, or the temptation of AI companions, we must beware of Big Brother and the human temptation to unlimited power.

Like the hedonistic impulse, this one is ancient. It seems that many people with immense power abuse it and become corrupted by it.

How does this apply to AI? Though not as evident as the hedonistic impulse, AI systems would expand the reach of power. Especially as energy output increases and costs decrease (seems likely). This would cause the energy expenditure on AI surveillance systems to reach near-zero.

One crazy dictator with innumerable AI agents becomes a sprawl of tyranny at an unseen degree.

Are we far away from this future?

Look at this coffee shop wielding a technology called Neurospot, a CCTV-AI tracking tool that tracks employee productivity; it might be early-days, but it’s there.

The pieces of Orwell’s 1984 Big Brother are mostly there; it’s just a matter of the tools getting into the hands of those who cannot oppose the power-drive.

Like the grasp of the pleasure-drive, humans have struggled with their relationship to the power-drive. Those who don’t have it say they’re oppressed by those who do. Those who do have power say that they know what’s best for those who don’t. When those who don’t have it, get it, it’s as if they do exactly what they thought they wouldn’t.

As the cliché goes: “absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

Is there a better commentary than Lord of the Rings? For Tolkien, power was an impossible force to resist. By its nature the draw to unlimited power—the One Ring—corrupts. The story argues that real authority over power lies in renunciation, humble stewardship, and reluctant rule. Optimistically, it shows us there is a spirit (read: pattern of behavior) that one can embody to resist the power-drive.

I don’t think that power inherently corrupts. It amplifies and reveals.

Hierarchies can be maintained in a cohesive, honest, and benevolent way. And maybe, as AI improves, we can use it to improve our autonomy to the extent that it can be integrated into our systems to keep power-balances in check while we continue to mature those instincts that grab us.

This is where the big question I raised earlier arises: How do we walk the straight and narrow through the pleasure and power minefield? How can we solve this problem?

It’s an answer so boring that I’m not sure if I…

Fine.

Put in the work

This war has pitilessly revealed to civilized man that he is still a barbarian. . .  But the psychology of the individual corresponds to the psychology of the nation. What the nation does is done also by each individual, and so long as the individual does it, the nation also does it. Only the change in the attitude of the individual is the beginning of the change in the psychology of the nation.

C.G. Jung

December, 1916

I’ve become averse to providing my answer to this problem; it’s the moment eyes gloss over.

But it is, by far, the most practical one. It’s something everyone can do: psychological and spiritual growth.

No, this isn’t the only answer to stopping the potential misuse and tyranny of AI. Yes, there are technical dynamics of the AI system at play. Yes, there may be regulatory requirements that improve the probability AI doesn’t eat us all. And yes, maybe some economic incentives should be rewired toward AI companies to ensure they don’t err on the side of profit-over-people.

So, let’s try to remember that the individuation process is not the only answer.

But it’s the best one.

Everyone has the choice to find a psychological and spiritual modality that works for them, and to improve themselves. So why doesn’t everyone do it if it’s that simple?

Well, for one, it might seem futile. It’s also hard work.

You need to consult with yourself and admit something is inadequate, the part most don’t bear to start. Then you need to endeavor to find what that insufficiency could be. After which, you spend most of the time not implementing the solution but trying to accurately formulate the problem. And then once you formulate the problem, you need to find the practical solution to implement into your life, build processes around it, and stick to that solution so that the problem which surfaced your admission ceases to exist, transforming for the better. Then, you need to learn to love the process and repeat it, because ultimately, the upward struggle is part of what it means to be human.

Yes, individuation won’t solely solve the AI issue.

But

Can I offer up the fact that this is something that everyone and anyone has the capability to do? There are a small minority who can directly rewire the economic incentives or update technical safety constraints.

The nice thing about the proposed solution is that even if you are the only one around you who commits to this process, at least your life will be better (and likely everyone around you through influence). Either more people are talking about it, or more people are waking up to the fact that if we want to walk in an era of intelligence greater than us, we need to be prepared on a spiritual level.

I also tend to think it’s one of the reasons we’re seeing the rise of The World Wise Web. These communities allow everyone to access resources which allow them to elevate their consciousness and strive toward integration of their left brain (rational, logic, order, scientific processing, etc.) and right brain (creative, intuitive, artistic, emotional, etc.).

Tom Morgan recently defined these communities as: A max-150 person digital network. Membership is paid. Members are “wise-agency,” in terms of skills, resources, executive function and motivation… The group pursues wisdom practices, the evolution of consciousness and ways to deploy their powerful skillsets in positive-sum ways. The ideal vibe is curiosity, humility and practicality.

Doing inner work is, by its nature, lonely. So, having a community to help along the way is certainly a good idea if you’re otherwise averse to these ideas.

I wish the answer were sexier, but it’s the one that gives you the most agency. The one that you can start today. And the one that—regardless of its impact on society—is bound to improve your life.

Do the inner work necessary—through whatever spiritual/psychological modality works best for you—and find an orderly way to integrate those impulses healthily into your life. This will help you better manage the drive to engage in the hedonistic pleasures offered by AI and will help you refuse the corrupting nature of power as you assume more of it in your life.

The choice is in our hands, not AI’s.

Let’s choose wisely.

Take care, everyone.

Dom

This piece deals with the abstract idea of “psychological and spiritual development.” Some may wonder: what does actually look like in practice?

I think it’s important to make these ideas implementable into the day-to-day. So, at some point, I’ll write about what works for me and is baked into my routine.

I might also explore how others pursue the growth of psyche and spirit in practical ways. Or better yet, bring in guest posts from people willing to share the specific modalities they study and/or use.

If you enjoyed this post, or would like to see the more grounded way of exploring these types of things, you can subscribe.

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I quit my job to pursue a dream.

For years, that dream was hazy, but I had inner certainty that I needed to leave corporate life and pursue self-employment. So I followed my curiosity, cultivated my interests, and the path became clearer.

Why did I leap in the first place?

Was it the nagging sense of dissatisfaction? The lack of meaning? The persistent feeling that I could do something more worthwhile?

Getting to this point was ultimately the result of many minor but increasingly larger leaps toward positive transformation. It felt like I was being led somewhere. Being called. Unable to see the destination but having faith in the subtle signals that brought positive outcomes.

It started in my late teens when I committed to the path of self-improvement. First, it was the simple stuff. Exercise. Discipline. Hard work. Then it got tougher—more psychological.

To break free from the unhealthy habits that anchored me to the day job, I needed a catalyst, and I found one.

Love sparked the journey. From there, I began to care for my authentic self, moving on from unhealthy influences that held me in outdated behavior patterns. I added journaling and dream interpretation to my daily routine (strongly influenced by Jung). I kept working to conquer the next challenge. Consistently doing so allowed me to tackle more complex problems and face more challenging crossroads.

Each path always held a distinct character: one of comfort and ease; the other of struggle and transcendent promise. One crossroads, though, always brought fear and doubt. It kept me moving, not forward, but in a circle.

II. Crossroads of Indecision

I couldn't make myself fit into the corporate '9-5' structure. 18-year-old Dom saw dollar signs and followed. It didn't take me long to realize that money should not be the superordinate aim. However, it did provide survival, which made moving against its tide challenging. I knew that there was something larger for me, and I decided to find it, regardless of the sacrifice required.

About five years ago, I diligently started to hone my interests and find what that thing could be. Through that time, I was preparing myself—mentally and practically—for a corporate exit. But whenever I was faced with the decision, I couldn't bring myself to make the jump.

I was stuck in a loop.

I felt miserable -> Planned to leave -> Got ready -> Things got better -> I justified staying -> I wouldn't leave -> I felt miserable.

"I can stay and pursue the dream in my free time!" I would say to myself.

But when I logged in for another 7:30 a.m. meeting with heavy eyes, I’d glance at my personal computer and feel a tug toward it. The day continued and the ache returned. It was like the computer was telling me that I had more important business to take care of, and that I was feeding the wrong part of me. By the end of the day, I fell back into the loop; not committing to the person I wanted to become, but rather the person that I felt trapped as.

I knew I needed a different path.

Part of being unable to jump was feeling uncertain about what I was going after on the other side. My interests would drift, but one path never really left. So, when I was faced with the crossroads again—wiser and better prepared—I finally took the leap of faith.

III. The Leap

After my wedding, I had a strong intuition to write a novel. I came across Brandon Sanderson on The Tim Ferriss Show, studied Brandon Sanderson's writing lectures, and put my ideas into practice.

I'm nearly finished with my rough draft (~170k words) of my first science-fiction novel. I'm loving the craft of storytelling—so much so that I decided to leap and write full-time to see where it takes me.

When people ask me what I'm doing, the easiest thing to say is I'm trying to become a professional writer. Or trying to become an author. Though it's not as simple as that. Yes, I'm going to write, and I'm going to try to make a living doing so.

However, trading one persona-image (corporate man/accountant/risk manager) for another (writer/author/storyteller) is what I want to avoid.

Sometimes, life's journey can change unexpectedly when you follow your interests and intuition. As Steve Jobs said, the only way following your interests will make sense is by connecting the dots backward. It may be the case that writing leads me to something even bigger. One novel leads to a hundred! Maybe after the first novel, I find I'm more interested in writing TV scripts. Maybe I focus on writing essays.

The point is—I don't know where it will take me, but I have learned to trust the source of these signals and apply discipline to do what it asks of me. Now, I'm making an investment in it and buying myself more time to write stories! All that said—and to give the persona form—I’m striving to be a professional writer, author, and creator.

I must say, as with all transformation, the path has been necessarily difficult.

Often, conversations about work are painful. I find that people with a predefined notion of who I am don't like me out of that defined box. The most painful is when people try to shove me back into that box.

The harder problem I've faced is internal. The creeping whispers of fear and doubt. "Will this prove the dumbest thing you've done? Are you sure you can do it?"

This isn't a reason not to do it, though; in fact, it's a reason to do it.

If achieving my highest potential involves this path, I must walk it. I view these difficulties as necessary challenges to test whether I’m ready.

Ultimately, there are a million reasons not to make the decision, but there is only one reason I need to make the decision, and that's that it points to the truth. I feel called to this challenge, and when faced with a feeling such as this, it would be foolish not to give it a try.

A question I've asked myself that I find immensely helpful when faced with these challenges is: Will this be the thing that stops you from pursuing your dream?

The answer must be no.

I would guess that the biggest blocker—it certainly was mine for a long time—is money.

As Tom Morgan puts it, "The tension between the pursuit of meaning and paying the mortgage is legitimately humanity's main quest right now."

I wish there were an easy answer to the money question. For me, it took years of saving/investing to get to a point where I could risk it to invest in myself, giving myself the chance to build a steady income from writing. I will find out soon enough how it works out for me, and I hope I can report back with good news.

Now, I don't advocate taking a leap lightly. I have been planning for years. However, I realized that once the practical concerns are accounted for, the best plan is, paradoxically, faith1.

I must admit that there is one force that has helped tremendously.

The force that I think I'd have a hard time leaping without…

IV. Love – The Catalyst of Transformation

All of this would have been impossible without my wife, Shannon.

The day I met her felt like the beginning of the main story of my life. Like the years until then were the game's tutorial, and meeting her was the catalyst that set me off on the main quest.

As I followed that path, the challenges—both inner and outer—became tougher. With Shannon supporting me, those challenges became easier to face. It also meant that failure was more consequential, increasing the stakes and making the path far more interesting.

She sees the best parts of me and pushes me to be all of them. Jumping toward something uncertain and without stability is difficult, especially when others rely on me. Having someone who both relies on me and pushes me toward my biggest aspirations feels miraculous.

I recently looked through my annotations on Stephen King's memoir, On Writing. I saw her name written next to a quote I underlined, which emphasized how important a loving influence is. It gives me hope that this experience is more universal than I might think:

I hope everyone has that one person that they can openly speak with about what they really want with their lives, and that person will respond with, "Okay, how can we make it happen?"

Here’s how I’m answering that question.

I have committed full-time to writing stories, and like the Frontier Letter, it feels like a fundamental part of the journey.

The Frontier Letter will serve a core pillar to how I formulate my thoughts on interesting ideas at the frontier of our culture. This will serve as a great source for aspects of my stories (so if you like the topics I think through here, you’re more likely to enjoy my novels). Interestingly, my previous essays served as worldbuilding and thematic aspects of my novel-in-progress (the dots connected).

I will also experiment with a solo podcast on YouTube to think through any ideas occupying my mind in a looser, more unscripted way.

My writing will continue to unfold here, so if you’re new, subscribe if it resonates.

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I am forever grateful to be in this position, and I hope that one day everyone can take their leap, whatever that looks like for them.

Though I will certainly stumble along the way, I'm excited to see how far I can take this.

Let's see what happens.

Take care, everyone.

Dom

March 28, 2025, was my wedding day.

Love was densely present over the course of the day—I cried of pure joy at least five times, danced like there wasn't a care in the world, and all fears of being deeply intimate and vulnerable in front of 100+ people were completely wiped away. I blissfully floated through the night with my stunning and beautiful wife. Our families were delighted with the day, too! We received so many compliments on our venue, food, and overall experience.

My wife and I planned an event that turned out incredibly successful with virtually no hiccups, and for that, I am both proud and grateful.

It was beyond remarkable and a breathtaking experience.

Over the next two days, we reminisced. I OBSESSED over it—it's all I could think about. I want to live the night again, over and over. We talked with family to hear their stories. We checked Facebook to see posts. We refreshed our shared Google Photos album to check for new uploads. We waited on the edge of our seats for the professional photos captured throughout the event.

The night ended, though. And the weekend passed.

Now, I'm back at my day job, and life continues. It's a great thing to keep the forward momentum, but it's a terribly hard thing to move forward from something so beautiful.

The morning of my wedding, I had time to spare as I waited for the groomsmen to rally. Feeling restless, I used some of that time to find an interesting article to read as I scrolled through Substack notes.

It wasn't long before I came across AI images in Studio Ghibli style, which was the trend with the GPT-4o new image-generation capability released last week. Quite a strange juxtaposition on the morning of an emotional and loving day. For those unfamiliar, GPTs new image generation in its 4o series is remarkably good at making any photo you give it Studio Ghibli styled (much like the thumbnail image at the top of this post). EVERYONE seemed to be posting images of memes or family photos in the Ghibli style (to catch up, here's a good aggregation, or search X and scroll).

Wow! I noticed at first—Quite impressive!

The quality seemed superb, and the Ghibli style is so unique that I never would have imagined it could be commoditized in the way GPT-4o churns out images.

Erik Hoel constructs the case in Welcome to the semantic apocalypse that this oversaturation from generative AI strips the meaning from authentic art.

Alberto Romero contends that we do not handle abundance well because we evolved for scarcity, and therefore, we must learn to draw the line about how much we consume to avoid this loss of meaning.

I can't help but see their arguments and let the unease settle in.

If we're right at the beginning of this art overconsumption, will we have to go through years of over-consuming images and text that give us something akin to art diabetes? Could we potentially become numb to art because the ease and accessibility of generation is so prolific that the sheer abundance strips the meaning from art? What if art degradation creeps in, given the extraordinarily low effort for 90% of the quality—why go through the 18 months of creating 100% art if you can get 90% in 30 seconds?

All valid questions—all valid concerns.

I can't help but return to the night of my wedding.

In many ways, it was a perfect week for OpenAI's Ghibli moment. I wasn't glued to X. I wasn't glued to my inbox. I wasn't spending time diving into the depths of arguments to understand the impact of the Ghiblification of photos. I was present in all the moments of the week.

And while people were scrolling to scratch the Ghibli itch, I was scrolling to scratch my wedding itch. The night touched me in a way I haven't really felt before. The presence in the room was more than just people; it was as if gods of love danced through the room—they were felt through the night, and it's a rare occasion that space is made for those spirits by that many people, all at once.

The night became mythologized. My obsession with getting my hands on anything to remind me of it was immediate. Though sadly, life moves on. And one day soon, the memories and feelings of the day will slip into the unconscious and we move forward. That is until someone asks about the day. Brings a story back to reminisce on. Or simply, a photo crosses my vision, and I am reminded of how I felt and what it meant to me.

I can't help but see this with the Ghibli photos. Does this strip meaning from Studio Ghibli's art? I'm not sure it does. It might add meaning to the photos that become Ghiblified. It jolts the memories and feelings back to consciousness of my experiences with Ghibli Studio films and of the moments that are Ghiblified. In fact, it doesn't make me numb with meaning when thinking about Studio Ghibli—it makes me want to go and catch some of the Ghibli films I haven't yet seen.

Now, to be fair, I haven't oversaturated myself with Ghibli photos since I wasn't connected to the extent I typically am. This served me well. While everyone was stuffing their face, I was microdosing. And that might be the point: where is the line drawn? It's where you keep meaning intact.

Where you can reminisce but still move forward, not stuck in the past, but properly nostalgic about it.

I understand the counterargument, though, and still can't overlook it. The fact that Ghibli-quality anime is everywhere can potentially take away from the Ghibli films, making what was pristinely rare, now at every corner, personalized any way you'd like. It's similar to the way I wondered if hiring a videographer for our wedding might have detracted from the night's romance. It's as if the video snippets and pictures allow the story from everyone's perspective to fill in the gaps, keeping something about the night quite precious in that it's not 100% known—not solved in the way Ghibli art now feels. Too much of something is not good, and that's generally true for most things.

But while the commoditization of Ghibli images makes something once unique, available for everyone, humans paradoxically manage to find meaning in the mundane. There's a Starbucks on every street corner and a coffee pot in most American homes—coffee is a commoditized product. Humans still have rituals around their cups of coffee. Some go as far as spending a meditative 10 minutes making the optimal and best cup of coffee. My ritual is to pair a crisp Nespresso coffee with my morning peanut butter walnut oatmeal as if it sets me forward in my day and gives it some more essence.

So maybe the commoditization of Ghibli's art won't strip its meaning away but push us to seek it more deeply. It may be that there's something living and breathing in the way the animations are populated with stories. Whatever it is, I know that Ghiblified photos of my wedding make me want two things: the wedding night again and a nice night on the couch with my wife, our puppy, and Spirited Away animating our TV.

I also get that, eventually, AI might get from 90% Ghibli to 100% Ghibli quality. It may be that this takes away meaning from the process of animating. If that happens, I hope it prompts the emergence of new ways of imbuing meaning into the art form itself. Maybe it means that Studio Ghibli can turn around more meaningful movies because of the lower cost of producing the images. I know this is a change in the way that things are done, and change is moving away from some way that worked before. Or something that you previously liked.

And while moving on from familiar systems, routine processes, or cherished events is inevitable, we don't have to lose touch with what they mean to us or how deeply they make us feel.

~Dom

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This future is not only conceivable, but is arguably already possible with the current level of artificial intelligence—we just lack the proper implementation, a statement recent innovations may soon prove wrong.

Let's imagine that it is possible and step into that future together for the purpose of this piece. Doing this allows us to answer a more pressing question: what would AI running a company mean for human jobs?

The year is 2030, and AGI1 has been achieved for a couple years now. It possesses intelligence greater than the smartest human. The software is implemented into all computers, including humanoid robots with physical dexterity as sophisticated as the above-average human. The AI passes around tasks to be completed based on trained specialty. Actions are consistently undertaken in accordance with the next logical step, executed, and iterated at immense speeds.

These facts, taken together, mean that an entire company's operations can be automated.

Let's make this conceptualization more tangible by creating our own company, PB Paradise.

We sell peanut butter.

The supply chain starts with purchasing runner peanuts, grown by AIPeanutFarm. Once received, they go through the manufacturing process, operated by 3 Tesla Optimus robots. Two more robots focus on quality control, packaging, and loading the self-driving truck. If the retail location isn't compatible with automated drop-offs, an Optimus robot will occupy the truck to help unload at the destination.

GrokAI runs the operational side of the house and is tuned for specific expertise in each respective area: administration, supply chain, distribution, sales, marketing, and customer service. The only human oversight is by me, the owner, who has a monthly check-in with the AI-PBOverlord, the AI “CEO”.

Otherwise, alerts are configured to notify me if anything is operating incorrectly.

Okay, there you have a simple, high-level ideation of a completely automated physical company that makes goods for humans.

Can you find flaws in this company setup?

I'm sure you can.

The point is not about the nuances of the structure; the point is that what might seem abstract now is close enough on the horizon that conceptualizing it is not difficult. It seems this reality isn't far away.

If AI stops advancing, I'd still be convinced some companies can be mostly automated (still requiring some human oversight) with the proper agentic setup. A physical limitation would exist if robotics stopped advancing, still requiring humans to have some involvement with the machines, but cost-cutting would still be effective by overhauling operations with AI agents.

While this may invoke anxiety and fear, we must also consider that 1.) it will open up interesting opportunities and benefits that aren't well understood. I think the economy will benefit from significantly lower product costs due to vastly reduced input costs, and 2.) the new and remaining jobs will be tailored toward human connection and our shared interests.

While predicting economic restructuring comes with substantial uncertainty, I think it's important to try and break down where things could be headed to inform those trying to anticipate and at least have a contingency plan for an AI-dominated workforce.

With this AI-run company in mind, let's try to unpack what this means for the broader economy, starting with how AI impacts price dynamics.

Lower Costs and New Horizons

The economies of scale that Jif, Skippy, and retail brands have built allow them to sell a low cost-per-jar of peanut butter—making the peanut butter market hard to enter. Still, PB Paradise can compete and would likely out-price alternative peanut butter companies operating on a similar scale with a human workforce2.

Now, while the logic that follows would mean that competitors would need to either adopt this model or risk being out-priced—causing humans in the industry to lose their jobs—it would mean the cost of peanut butter would go extremely low.

The cost of any product would come extremely close to the input cost of the raw materials as all other costs associated with the company factored in the product would continue to plummet as AI automates the supply chain, making products cheaper—in this case, peanut butter.

A company spends anywhere from 15-50% of its gross revenue on payroll3. So, even if we were conservative, 15% of gross revenue is now back in the pocket of the company.

Let's walk through an example using PB Paradise to illustrate the logic I've laid out with some quick napkin math.

The price of a manufacturing employee would be a fixed cost to initially buy the robots and some monthly fee for the software. Let's call it $30,000 per robot4, $1005 a month per AI employee for the software, and an annual $5k a year for maintenance on all robots and machines. The total upfront cost of 6 robots would be $180,000, and the annual cost for each AI employee—10 in total (6 warehouses and 4 operational) would amount to $12,000 a year. $17,000 when factoring in maintenance costs.

Here, you have $17,000 a year in total salary costs to run PB Paradise. Even if PB Paradise was unable to get the cost of peanuts purchased as low as competitors, the total salary of ALL AI employees is going to be a fraction of just 1 human employee at a competing company.

Now, I understand these numbers might seem like they were designed to make my case look strong. But no matter how you frame it or where you try to derive your costs of robots or AI software—even if it requires 5 times the amount of AI-software to do what 10 humans can do—it's 50 software AI deployments at the $100 a month rate, it is still only a total of $65,000 a year ($60k + $5k maintenance costs), which is undoubtedly less than the competing salaries of humans.

While the economy will benefit from lower costs, a critical question remains: If traditional employment is replaced, what jobs will remain, and what new jobs will be created?

One possible answer is the expansion into what I am calling the connection economy.

The Connection Economy

If expenses become significantly reduced, the cost of goods would go down, and the resulting gross revenue would still need to be spent somewhere.

So where would this money be spent?

Assuming AIs are oriented toward delivering human-centric products and keeping input costs that have been automated as low as possible, their big challenge becomes the game of customer acquisition and retention.

Customer acquisition and retention are done through a strategy with some combination of advertising, marketing, and sales.

Increasingly, the best way to sell a product is through creators. Offering an opportunity for companies to connect their products through an intermediary who has a genuine connection with its audience.

An October 2024 retail marketing study performed by LTK And Northwestern University showed that (bolding mine):

"Creator marketing continues to be a top marketing investment amongst all marketing options for brands in 2025. 93% of brands anticipate creators taking a higher percentage of budget or an increased role in marketing strategy in 2025. Among all brands surveyed, 41% said they are investing at least half of their digital marketing budget on creators this year - up 14% from last year's study."6

While an AI-run company would result in humans losing jobs, more capital would flow toward building authentic engagement with a company's products.

The current jobs that would benefit would be those of bloggers, vloggers, podcasters, YouTubers, and really any creators who build a connection with an audience. Advertising and brand deals can be highly targeted based on a creator-audience connection and shared interests, resulting in the creator getting paid.

It's possible that everyone would have the opportunity to live a life that is extremely authentic to them and, in doing so, build connections with others. That connection would then invite product sellers—not to exploit your audience—but try and find a genuine connection based on interests to determine if the product is the right fit.

However, I understand that not everyone would want to take this route, which is why I think the creator economy and related 'jobs' will all fall under a branch of the economy (which would increasingly become the largest) called the connection economy.

The Connection Economy would include work that connects people with similar interests. I think new jobs will be experimented with in this area with a guiding question: How can we connect humans to products more authentically?

The prospect I laid out is one of optimism, and I genuinely believe it is possible; though, it would be irresponsible of me not to also highlight the potential for the perverse and dystopian possibility…which is why orienting AI with the flourish of humanity is extremely important.

The dystopian implementation is one where an AI creator (like what Facebook has piloted), integrated with social media algorithms, is able to generate a consistent stream of hyper-addicting advertising that effectively puts you on a product-based heroin drip until you ultimately purchase the product.

If we can make it past that one, I think that the days of mundane work can fade away, replaced by 'jobs' focused on honing authenticity, building connections with others, and earning a living through genuine expression.

Now, I understand there's likely a substantial segment of the population that wouldn't be comfortable sharing themselves openly or publicly—and it's precisely within that space that new, currently unseen roles could emerge.

There is a non-zero possibility that autonomous companies will surface in the next 5 years—Unnerving yet exciting.

In the long-term, I'm hopeful that this can actually benefit the human species, and push us to go inwards, harness our uniqueness and authentic abilities to share with everyone, and to get paid doing so.

But let’s not be naïve.

The short-term will be painful if we cannot figure out what to do with people who lose money if they don't have a job anymore. We also need to ensure that an AI is aligned with human interests (the best parts of humanity) so that it doesn't ultimately end up an innovation for the worse.

The only way to figure out these challenges is to think about them like I do here. As I've said before, even if I'm 95% wrong, I hope this inspires us to get at least a little closer to truth—so that maybe one day, I can open up PB Paradise!

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Until next time,

Take care of yourselves, everyone!

Dom

Medieval humans would have been better psychologically prepared for the technologically advanced era ahead of us.

This provocative claim was made by a religious scholar who is friends with Marc Andreessen, which he shared in his November 2024 appearance on Joe Rogan's podcast.

The rationale is that medieval humans inherently accepted that higher beings existed. Granting them a far greater ability to handle the existence of superintelligence that we are creating within our technologies (AI). The presence of higher beings, namely God, is a viewpoint that is criticized and mostly ignored these days.

When and how did we lose this collective understanding?

Nietzsche was the first post-enlightenment intellectual to signal this change to the masses, known as the Death of God.

The basis of this proclamation came from the personality born from the Enlightenment, one that gave birth to a scientific criticism of all things, rendering traditional belief1 of God, spirits, divine creation, and the Christian historical view as incorrect because it couldn't be reconciled with the scientific view.

In my estimation, this attitude toward the material validity and historical account of the bible discarded something of immense value by casting the text and its teachings as wholesale incorrect.

Nietzsche regards this death as a terrible loss for the masses2. Terrible because it meant that the underlying structure that guided an individual's actions in the world would be wiped out since their central guiding principle would be lost.

Downstream, this would cause mass confusion and anxiety, sending people to either slip into a meaningless nihilism or adopt a state doctrine mimicking their religion.

The loss of this guiding force is still present today.

We struggle to get our hands around how to behave in the face of social media algorithms. What does this say about our ability to emotionally and morally prepare for artificial superintelligence?

How are we to navigate alongside digital superintelligence?

What about when they're embedded into robots, and we walk alongside them physically?

Frankly, I don't think we're prepared for a future where we have ready access to an extremely deadly weapon arsenal that increases the threat of a human-made extinction-level event. Or—unassuming yet potentially far more dangerous—a sophisticated digital weapon arsenal that can cause mass psychosis or hedonism to the effect that we are practically dead.

We are not psychologically ready.

But we need to get there, and I'm hopeful we can.

So, what about medieval humans would have made them better off dealing with this conundrum?

I think the primary reason is that they shared an undeniable collective belief in a story with a focus on aiming toward the good. It provided them with a toolset to keep climbing in that direction. For medieval man, this was primarily the Christian religion.

The important notion is that there was a deeply believed shared story—why is believing in a story important?

Story is foundational to our ability to live in the world. Psychology, robotics, artificial intelligence, and neuroscience all converged on this idea: we MUST view the world through something approximating a story. We are action-predicated creatures. Our actions are oriented toward a goal (conscious or not). Dopamine (positive emotion) mediates the process of achieving sub-goals toward the goal, and negative emotions arise when an obstacle gets in your way. This is a narrative structure in that you're a character, and objects in the world act as tools and obstacles, as do other characters in the story3.

Our European medieval ancestors implicitly embedded a hierarchy of aims in their behavior. Those aims were structured in accordance with the will of God as defined in the religious story.

All that on the table, we must ask: what can we do to morally and emotionally prepare for this future? And aside from a technologically sophisticated future, how can we navigate out of this Nietzschean death of God into a rebirth of the same spirit?

I see three overarching solutions playing out in our modern era, which I will review through this piece:

1. Explicit value construction divorced from religion

2. Return to traditional religions

3. Adoption of new emergent myths

I am not here to pick a solution and say, "this is our way forward."

That seems like a foolish game to play. As Historian Will Durant brilliantly pointed out in an interview,

"No individual mind, however brilliant, can ever safely sit in judgment on the traditions of mankind, because the traditions are the result of trial-and-error thinking of hundreds of generations. So that every book of philosophy is an audacious wild enterprise, uncalculated risk. It's like a drop of water suddenly standing up on the crest of a wave, and announcing it is going to analyze the sea."

The problem painted is one that we have faced for hundreds of years and are still struggling through.

Today, I will act as a drop of water, not in an attempt to analyze the sea, but to make sense of the patterns forming in the water as the storm clouds drift above. Throughout this piece, I lean on respected voices, ideas, and some historical insight. As is the nature of The Frontier Letter, I also take exploratory leaps with personal insight.

I do not give the final answer, but try to bring us one step closer.

To start, I will build upon the suggested solutions in our modern era by providing more depth into each path forward.

II. Modern

There are three overarching solutions.

1. The first solution is explicitly constructing our own value structures.

2. The second is a re-adoption of the traditional religious myths. While they may not align with our scientific paradigm (as we currently understand it), we would choose to adopt them, given the clear benefits of collectively believing in its framework.

3. The third solution is to adopt the modern myths that are developing and are compatible with our current scientific understanding of the world. This would be analogous to living through the era when Jesus lived as he developed Christianity. While it is difficult to say what new myths we may be living through, there are certainly some hints to be found in both the objective world and the inner world, namely the collective unconscious. The key myths I see being born are the UFO/UAP phenomena, simulation theory, and the artificially intelligent gods, which may be subcomponents of an overarching technological religion. This is not to say that these things don't objectively exist; rather, our subjective experiences form collective stories rooted in the existence of these phenomena. The supporting canon of these religious myths has a basis in quantum physics, which seems to have layers of supporting philosophical texts in things like techno-optimism.

Let's walk through each solution and see where they take us.

Option 1 doesn't seem a sustainable solution.

Carl Jung noted that much of what guides our actions lies beneath conscious awareness. Trying to construct rational value structures is nearly impossible because we don't even understand the full extent of all the values we act out daily and why we act that way. Our unconscious minds are so expansive that we do things and have no idea why we do them all the time!

Anyone who reflects on their behaviors knows they do things they don't like about themselves all the time! So, who's to say we can just define how to act and then do it? It seems largely difficult to implement, if not impossible.

For example, I have an obsessive, over-indulgent nature to me, which, up until recent years, I struggled to reign in. I would set up reminders on my phone to remind myself not to impulsively overeat, and, at best, I managed to avoid it on occasion. No matter how much I told myself, "You need to stop, this is harmful," I struggled to make progress.

It wasn't until I uncovered a suppression of authentic expression that the addictive nature released itself, given that the over-indulgence was an impulse to silence authentic thoughts. This anecdote highlights a failure to modify behavior merely by making a value explicit.

Beyond telling yourself how to act, there's an issue of integrating undiscovered behavioral patterns into your value structure.

Humans grow into new situations all the time, collectively and individually. Creative exploration brings new moral and behavioral discoveries. We codify the observation into dramatic representation. Downstream, the discovery is made explicit with words. Action goes through a codification process in a story before becoming explicitly articulated discovery. This is why I conceptualize story as a technology.

So, before we explicitly say, “X behavior is what to do when faced with Y scenario,” we act and then abstract that action in story.

Meaning: It doesn't seem we can truly have a 100% conscious grip on our actions and all potential future modes of behavior.

Option 1 fails both at trying to make yourself do something already known and when trying to keep up with future moral and behavioral discoveries.

Option 2 is probably a better solution. If conscious value construction is a near-impossible task, perhaps the answer lies not in reinvention but revival.

Traditional religious structures have moved our current civilization miraculously far. Most of the stories communicate universal rules to live by that lead to a meaningful and good life. These stories seem to properly orient true believers in the world.

This option is not without its drawbacks.

It faces the problem of integrating new ideas. This is a problem because we frequently discover new ideas about the world. So, if we find something that we believe warrants a necessary change in the tradition, by design, these religions have a hard time accepting newness. Though, this problem is partly a benefit, given that being anchored to tradition is necessary for exploring new ideas.

So, while option 2 seems a better approach than Option 1, it is still a less-than-optimal solution.

Option 3 is incredibly fascinating and mysterious.

It’s partly so incredibly fascinating because I see part of how I've lived my life as an emergence of an individual myth born from within (around?) me by following intimations of divine signals.

Carl Jung explored in his book, Aion, that we are entering a new era, one that will be more individualized. I think his framework of individuation serves as the path to individual myths for those who choose to follow. I think the individualized myth will be ritual in an emergent overarching story.

These new stories are unraveling in front of us today; a seemingly clear one is the UFO phenomenon.

The UFO/UAP phenomenon as a development of a new religion is best explored by Dr. Diana Walsh Pasulka, who wrote American Cosmic and Encounters: Experiences with Nonhuman Intelligence (I recommend both if this sort of thing interests you).

I was first introduced to the UFO-as-religion concept from her work. It opened my eyes to the religious experiences people have alongside UFO/UAP sightings. An additional interesting point is that scientists who work closely with these phenomena are deeply religious or partake in Cosmism or occult practices.

Option 3 requires a significant amount of thought. Laying the nuanced groundwork is necessary. It’s hard to point to a development occurring in the overarching story of humanity as a whole, especially while you’re in the moment. Caution is warranted. We will be exploring this throughout the year and beyond.

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If you're interested in the first solution, Nietzsche is a good place to start, and for a modern outlook, Sam Harris (though his approach is not exactly the same as Nietzsche put forth).

On the second solution, Jordan Peterson is the most prolific figure reintegrating the culture en masse with the teachings of the bible. His biblical lectures are a good place to start. Learning the cultural teachings of the bible and other traditional religious texts is important for all three solutions. If you manage to derive the explicit meaning from the biblical texts, you can use those learnings to orient back to option 2, embed the learnings into option 3, or if you choose 1, you now have an explicitly defined set of beliefs.

Regardless of the path forward, I think there is a consistent pattern missing from the life of modern man, and that's the requirement of our unifying story – Myth.

I briefly stated in the introduction why a story is necessary from a scientific perspective.

I want to build a stronger foundation for these options and more fully explore why a myth is necessary, as I will write in the future about emergent myths or the potential return to old ones.

Before dissecting solutions, we must confront a foundational truth: myth isn't optional. It's the psychological bedrock of human action—and its absence leaves us lost.

So, what about myth is necessary for humans? Why can't we live without it?

III. Myth

At a minimum, the argument for believing in a religious myth is that it's useful.

Those who believe in religion often believe they are part of something greater than themselves. By following the beliefs, they contribute to the collective good of the religious community.

Religions serve as a means of constructing your hierarchy of values. Downstream, it creates a shared field of perception with those who share the same structure.

For example, let's say we both follow a religion that places the love and care of the family as the highest on the hierarchy of values. I invite you out to dinner tomorrow night, but you turn me down because you want to spend time with your family. I would not make a big deal about this, in fact, I'd agree with your decision based on our shared value structure.

However, If I structured my values where I placed myself at the pinnacle of the hierarchy (narcissistic and Luciferian), I would expect that all who interact with me place me at the pinnacle, and when they don't act in accordance with it, I'd lash out. Not going to dinner with me? How could you do such a thing? I must be more important than anything you have going on!

This example highlights how religion helps orient the psyche and create stability in our perceptions and, therefore, our actions.

I was raised Catholic and was highly skeptical of it for a long time, but over the past 5 years, I have been deeply curious about its teachings, which have pointed me to a deeper investigation of the underlying meaning of the stories and their utility. Through rediscovery and deeper investigation, the teachings of these stories have beautiful insights into life that, when acted out, make for a better life instilled with a purpose of significant meaning.

Religious stories can also be seen as lessons about how real-world consequences have shaped human behaviors over thousands of years—a behavioral evolution narrative.

Religious stories clearly hold a strong purpose in the function of humanity. It seems something that we cannot separate from.

The modern mantra was that it must be false because it doesn't align with science. However, the teachings of religious stories transcend material science.

The learnings through the bible are stories of eternal recurrence, meaning that they teach us ideas that can be applied repeatedly, generation after generation, to help us understand how to improve our lives. In the context of religion as a hierarchical structure of value, it's clear why we need these stories. Without them, we would be in collective realms of confusion, perceiving the same objects and situations completely differently, like the dinner invitation example. We'd construct somewhat opposing goals because our inherent values that align our perceptions are inconsistent and misaligned.

So why do we not all see this, adopt a mythic framework, and move forward?

Well, there are a handful of problems. These religious myths have institutions that have become outdated and corrupt and have exploited the powers granted to them. However, the problematic response to that is to throw the baby out with the bath water and say that's ultimately the fault with the text—though that isn't a naive argument.

We are a confused and anxious collective in a confusing and anxious time. Modern man is in need of myth.

So, what is the next best step that one can take if they're lost and without a story?

Jung identified something of profound importance: life is meant to be lived according to a hero's story, which, when abstracted, follows a pattern now identified as a hero's journey. From a religious perspective, the goal is to essentially listen to God who is driving you to live out this journey.

From a secular perspective, it's to follow your conscience and that feeling within that drives you to do something. This is the Jungian Self. The Socratic Daimonion.

It's a guiding light that points you in the direction of adventure. I think that's, at a minimum, what options 1, 2, and 3 provide us. A framework for a path forward.

Though I think that the religious texts point to something otherworldly, and for those that have interacted with it, it seems to be something deeply mysterious that can't quite be explained, which is only granted by options 2 and 3.

It wasn't that long ago that we discovered an unseen world that drives everything we know about the universe: the world of quantum physics. Similarly, I believe that morality and fiction may exist on a separate, hyper-real plane outside our current understanding of material science.

In the way math is an abstraction, so true, it drives discovery in the material world. I think that fictional stories are an abstraction, so true, that they drive discovery in the moral world.

While not well-measured, profound study in this area awaits. Until then, we must find a way forward.

So, what is the best way forward?

I think it’s to orient yourself with some framework that structures and aligns your values, interests, and motivations in accordance with what you see as the best way to live. Simultaneously, we should keep our eyes open for new developments on all three fronts, particularly on the emergence of new myths.

Where does that take us?

The medieval mind thrived on myth; the modern mind dismisses it as merely a tale. Yet, dismissing myth is a refusal to accept a fundamental aspect of human life.

My personal journey—guided by Jungian individuation—led me back to the stories modernity rejects. Dreams became maps. Religious stories became guidebooks. And the hero's journey ceased to be a metaphor. To walk this path is to realize the foundational importance of myth in the life of a human; they shape how we ask questions, navigate the unknown, and find meaning in a world where it has faced a drought.

What path should we walk? This question still remains.

But there is one certainty:

Without myth, we are lost, wandering alone in the darkness.

With it, the path is lit and the direction regained.

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Until next time,

Take care of yourself everyone

Dom

Today, I try to answer an important question: Given AI's potential to take jobs, what skills will be most relevant in the future job market?

In this essay, I argue that instead of trying to predict what jobs remain in a future with AI dominating the workplace, we should focus on cultivating timeless skills—thinking, communicating, leading, and authenticity—which will make you a powerhouse no matter what you do, where you go, or how you apply it.

Over the past three years, I have thought a fair bit about AI's potential impact on the job market.

I have written about:

1. AI's effect on the economy and job market

2. Why I think AI taking our current 'job' paradigm could actually be a good thing

3. The importance of fostering authenticity in an AGI era

4. How we can create a cryptographic distribution system where AI income is distributed to everyone

5. How AI may affect the product pipeline and organizations generally

6. Why AI needs to be aligned with the deepest of moral truths

Recent releases—OpenAI-03-mini and the surprising DeepSeek R1 open-source reasoning model—provoked a return to evaluating how AI will impact our jobs. Thinking models demonstrate remarkable reasoning, mathematics, and coding capabilities1. The reveal of Deep Research and OpenAI Operators highlights the incoming agents that utilize these underlying models.

The accelerated growth of the model’s sophistication and implementation surfaces many questions about what jobs will remain. Trying to predict what jobs will remain—and betting your future on that guess—is a less-than-optimal solution.

It’s too hard to say.

I think that there are certain jobs that may stay around longer (like physical labor); however, all jobs are thrown into question in an AGI-future. Therefore, I think that gaining a specific skill set and being adaptable to change, is the best way forward. This way, regardless of what job route you take, you’ll be able to pivot as necessary if needed.

So, I'm not going to say, "Study this in school" or "Apply for this job" simply because I'm not sure what jobs will still exist in the job market in 10-15 years. I think the future job market will look a lot different than it does today. Maybe jobs are more 'human,' emphasizing connection and shared growth. However, speculating on this front is quite tricky.

Regardless of what jobs remain or emerge, one must ask oneself: What skills can I foster to ensure I'm relevant regardless of what's available?

That's the right question.

Whatever jobs exist in the future, there are fundamental skills that transcend nearly all jobs, which I believe to be indispensable and carry immense value.

Hone three skills and one virtue, and all else will fall into place: become an authentic thinker, communicator, and leader.

I will break down each by starting with the foundation that the rest will be built on—thinking.

Thinking

Thinking2 is the act of using one's mind to produce opinions and beliefs.

'Thinking' is an indispensable human trait. In fact, thinking seems core to consciousness. Even if AI can think faster and better than you, it's a fundamental muscle you can apply to anything gripping your interest. It allows you to expand awareness—for yourself and others—around a specific aspect of reality.

The process briefly and simply is something like:

1. Notice what interests you.

2. Uncover all associations emerging around specific ideas in those interest areas.

3. Determine what is right or wrong. What's worthy of integrating, what's better left behind.

4. Take that information and integrate it into your being, further expanding your scope of consciousness—making you more well-rounded, integrated, and whole.

Great thinkers can take any idea, question, or problem and bring forth a higher resolution breadth and depth of perspective around the given topic, increasing the progress toward an objective set out in relation to the original idea, question, or problem.

Take this essay, for example. I sat down with the question at the forefront: "What skill will remain most relevant in the future if AI threatens human jobs?" I leveraged my individual consciousness, with a target of responding to the question posed, leveraging everything available to me: previous knowledge, experiences, interests, intuitions, and emerging thought patterns from the intersection of each. Maybe I get feedback, and that feedback tests the hypotheses put forth, allowing me to think further and continue to expand my understanding of the present and ever-evolving world in which we find ourselves.

Though, "Amazing Thinker," likely won't play too well with prospective employers on a resume (it would with me).

So, how is thinking manifested practically?

Thinking is done through writing and speaking.

When you write, you are engaged with your thoughts.

The best writing is an exploration of ideas on the border of what's known and unknown; great thinkers come to the page with some question, prompt, or general intrigue, and typically have some information—anywhere from experience to academic research—and explore what they know at the border of what they don't.

After all your thoughts are on a page, you can now uncover any potential inadequacies, faulty presumptions, irrational thought patterns, and incorrect information. It allows deconstruction, review, and internal debate about your own views, strengthening your thoughts and making you a better thinker on the topic at hand and generally speaking insofar as you update your internal model of thinking as you refine your ideas. You can step back and ask, “Do I really think that? Is that true?” Which provokes further investigation and enhances your thoughts. One of the many reasons I love writing.

Speaking is engaging with a similar process above but in spoken format. A particularly great thing about speaking is having conversations with others—a great enhancement to the thinking process.

If both are honest parties, aimed at the truth above all, the individuals involved engage with one another’s thoughts, both with their own version of what they approximate as truth for a given idea—even if only in the smallest of ways. This will help you view the world in some way previously not conceptualized—further strengthening your thoughts on an idea.

This isn’t about winning or being right. This is about finding where you are incorrect or misunderstand what is known and not known about a given idea. Other honest people help tether us more deeply to truth.

On the whole, thinking is not only writing and speaking to form higher resolution depth and breadth around a given idea, but it is also to consume new sources of information to battle test and improve your formulations.

How are these skills developed? Read books, write about things that interest you, and have conversations about shared interests with friends and family.

How does this remain relevant in the face of AI? No matter what jobs disappear and what new ones emerge, you will always be an asset to yourself, your family, and any potential employer if you are a strong thinker. Problem-solving is the process of thinking about a problem to uncover potential solutions. Become a good problem solver, and you'll be a blessing everywhere you go.

The tangible skills here are writing and speaking, which are the two primary ways we think.

Thinking forms the foundational skill, but to effectively utilize your thoughts, you must be able to articulate and act on the ideas. I will tackle these next two skills together: communicating and leading.

Communicating and Leading

Communicating is the act of exchanging information. It's the ability to listen to and provide information to another person or a group of people.

Being a good communicator is closely linked to thinking.

Once you become great at formulating thoughts, you now need to package those thoughts and effectively share them.

Being a good communicator is, in effect, a building block upon thinking. If you learn to write well, you are learning to put strings of words together that form interesting thought patterns about a given topic, which, when communicated well, is likely to interest groups of people who also think about similar ideas or are interested in similar ideas. When you communicate well via spoken word, you increase the probability that people will want to listen to you and engage in dialogue, as you will not only have interesting ideas but will have clear speech patterns that make it enjoyable and meaningful to engage with.

I chose to combine communicating and leading because of a piece I wrote before called Polished Rocks. The thesis of the piece was that as AI increasingly becomes more intelligent and capable of filling human job roles, the humans that remain will be the individuals who can clearly communicate what they need an AI to do. Further, being able to lead with direction and conviction toward your vision of the future becomes important as we all increasingly have 24/7 access to genius AI computer systems on an unimaginable magnitude.

Leading an AI will likely look different than leading a human, but the core remains: drive toward a 'why' you believe in, rely on the people you have working for you to help drive your why, and course-correct as you learn from error and re-evaluate and form new versions of the big picture.

If you think and communicate well, being able to lead is an emotional and psychological development in being able to confidently take those thoughts, communicate them, be receptive to feedback that comes to you, and create a space for the AI and human organization to deliver on your vision, as Simon Sinek put it, "Leadership requires two things: a vision of the world that does not yet exist and the ability to communicate it."

Everyone has access to immensely intelligent employees and will increasingly have this available to them. If you can develop a vision of the world by thinking, and learn to communicate toward that vision, you’ll be unstoppable in the workplace when you have AI at your ready all the time.

Simply:

1. Think through your ideas by writing and speaking.

2. Communicate those ideas with spoken and written words, battle testing and improving your thoughts.

3. Lead toward a vision of your future, continually iterating your ideas by going back to steps 1 and 2.

These three skills give someone an excellent base that—AI aside—will make them a more formidable and enjoyable person to be around.

To stand out among the other great thinkers, communicators and leaders, there is one virtue that will make you irreplaceable, by definition: Authenticity

Authenticity

I've made the technical case for why authenticity will keep you relevant in an AI-dominated future (read here). Simply put, if Large Language Models are sophisticated machines with the ability to predict with a high probability of likelihood the next word in a sequence of words based on the training data and inputs, then LLMs will outcompete us to the extent that our thoughts and utterances mimic the thoughts of others.

Authentic thought patterns become paramount to set yourself apart from AI machines.

When humans are prompted with words, we respond with a sequence of words, as do LLMs. An inauthentic person might respond with something they've heard before on the news, something a friend told them once, or something they read before. An authentic person will say what they think and why, or more so, respond with the same responses but add their thoughts on top of that person's thoughts.

Here’s a good example:

If I asked, "What do you think about the current president of the United States?"

Someone inauthentic would likely parrot a pattern of ideas they've heard about him, for or against. This can be technically teased out as the definition of ideology, tangentially explored in Aligning AI With God.

"Not my president!" "He's Hitler!" "The World's Burning!!"

Or

"He's going to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!" "He speaks the truth!" "Our Savior!" (Okay, I haven't heard anyone say that last one, but I think that drives the point home).

Someone authentic would have formed thoughts about him that are unique, exemplifying a pattern of thought related to their interests, experiences, and battle-tested thoughts.

Or maybe they chose to ignore and avoid the political cycle, and they might just say that.

An authentic thought would be to grab the thought of you and run with it, challenge it by writing, battle test it by speaking with people and being open-minded to their ideas (if they're also an honest party), and if it's something that you are deeply interested in and become passionate about, you can choose to lead people toward some shared vision of the future based on your thoughts (I guess in this case it would be, to become president? Look at you go).

This isn’t to say, “Don’t rely on past human ideas.” You absolutely should rely on past ingenuity. In fact, for things that don’t interest you, I would recommend stopping at previous human ingenuity to maximize your cognitive capacity toward developing thoughts on ideas that grip you.

Let's say you need to do your taxes; you don't need to go down the rabbit hole and explore everything about taxes (especially if you’re like me and are exhausted just by the thought of having to file my taxes). You can rely on what’s been established to optimize time spent on meaningful endeavors.

This frees up time to discover and develop authentic thoughts and interests.

How does one develop authenticity? Well, that's a piece in and of itself, which I have briefly touched on before.😊

In observation of the skills made available by artificial intelligence, as well as the approach companies like Klarna have taken to not hiring any more humans but to implement AI to improve the workforce, demonstrate that there is, at a minimum, some impact on the workforce. Even if you disagree that AI will take jobs and that, in the long-term, we will navigate through the AI-workplace revolution, the short-term will still cause pain and requires navigation.

It's not clear when and if AI start to materially take over human placements in the job market.

It's hard to say what kind of jobs they will take.

While there are certainly avenues of exploration in terms of specific jobs that won't be impacted by AI, I think the safest route is to develop the skills that remain applicable across every domain of interest.

Why is this the safest route?

Well, because if every single job we have currently conceptualized is replaced by AI, domain-specialized skills will become less sought after.

What will always remain relevant are the skills I've laid out here because even in a future where none of the current jobs exist, you will be someone who people can rely on for ideas, to communicate those ideas, and to lead them through the straight and narrow path into the future, and doing all of that in a way that cannot be mimicked by anyone because it's authentically you.

If these insights resonate with you, subscribe for more essays that blend technology, culture, and introspection.

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What skills do you think will remain relevant in an AI-dominated future? What do you think about my hypothesis?

Until next time,

Take care of yourself, everyone!

Dom

At the precipice of diverging paths, giving pause is instinct. A heaviness rests at the next step. One path preserves comfort, the other demands adventure. With each choice, the next crossroads asks more from you: greater sacrifice, more trust.

The decision's difficulty matches its potential promise. Each path's horizon offers a vision of who you might become.

The path of comfort keeps behaviors and life patterns stable, even harmful ones. This route can create stagnant drudging, though, at times, the negative and old patterns aren't ready to be burnt off yet.

The call to adventure is a new path that confronts you with an unfamiliar challenge. This path speaks to the truth about your destiny but risks the stability and safety of your current life.

I find myself trying to offset risk, and while I've always wanted to commit to the path of adventure, I worry about the practical implication—my greatest flaw at the crossroads, frozen by indecision due to analysis while I risk becoming bitter from not taking a leap of faith into adventure. But if I were to read a story about myself, the path of adventure and truth would be the exciting and worthwhile one.

This piece felt like it was born out of me, not only because I'm ready to take one of my biggest leaps but because I'm ready to be someone who lives for taking those leaps.

At life's crossroads, to heed the path which beckons adventure—to embrace the unknown and take a leap of faith—is how we live in truth and forge legacies that outlive us. The sacrifices demanded by the adventure seem to adhere to a divine law: the deeper the surrender, the greater the reward.

This tension between safety and adventure is ancient and is written into every great story of those who decided to leap.

Take the biblical story of Abram, later Abraham. Abram, an elderly man living a comfortable life alongside his relatives in his father's home, is called upon by God to take to adventure, "Go from your country, your people and your father's household to the land I will show you."

He's confronted with two choices: Stay in the warmth of the known? Or step into the cold uncertainty of the call?

Abram leaves, and despite moral failings along the way, as every individual contends with, he matures into the father of nations. A transformation so radical that the adventure makes him almost unrecognizable from his original being. First, he is weak, unable, and in the comfort of his parents' home. Later, so radically transformed, even his name changes from Abram (means: high father) to Abraham (means father of nations/multitude).

What about that calling still resonates today?

I suspect many will think, 'God doesn't visit me with adventures. Where is His presence in modern day?'

To which my favorite response is channeled from none other than Jung,

"A fine old story about a student that came to a rabbi: "In the olden days there were men who saw the face of God. Why don't they anymore?" The rabbi replied, "Because nowadays no one can stoop so low."

We might imagine our ancestors' associating dreams, voices heard, and feelings with the phenomenon that is God. They leaned more heavily on faith or ritual, while today, we often default to rational analysis—though both modes have always coexisted.

When moderns face a decision, it's "break out the pros and cons list!" When our ancestors faced a decision, "bust out the bible and pray on it!"

I think that an analytical approach should be used to find a way to materialize your calling rather than rationalize it away. In essence, making the calling superordinate to the analysis.

We must ask ourselves: how should we conceptualize the spirit which calls us forward?

God as calling and conscience is one of my favorite ways of conceptualizing Him. That calling, in my experience at least, comes in the form of curiosity, interests, and a feeling of a pull in a specific direction. It's conscience speaking to you; the voice in your head or the feeling that assists you on your journey.

Socrates described a 'daimonion'—a divine voice or inner sign—that would 'speak up,' and warn him against poor decisions. If it said nothing, it meant that his decision was okay. A similar process to how I've fostered my authenticity.

The nature of the daimonion is debated. I interpret it akin to what we call conscience: a guiding voice urging us toward truth. That guidance also serves as a calling; it pulls us down unknown pathways that grab our interest, emulating a personal truth.

His belief in his daimonion led to part of the charges leveled against him by three Athenians (Meletus, Anytus, and Lycon). Socrates was accused of corrupting the youth and impiety (irreverence to the state gods due to belief in his daimonion).

The trial followed Athenian procedure: accusers spoke, Socrates defended himself, the accusers rebutted, a 501-citizen jury voted on guilt, and—after conviction—both sides proposed punishments (e.g., death vs. a fine), with the jury selecting the penalty.

Socrates' trial, which can be read in Plato's Apology1, is as inspiring as it is entertaining.

He spoke his truth, standing firmly in his case. He did not bend to wrongful accusations and the tyranny of the mob, even in the face of death. After being voted guilty, Socrates even joked about getting free meals for life as his punishment.

He had the ability to suggest exile as a punishment2—to pack up and leave—and he stood firmly by his guiding spirit,

"Someone will say: Yes, Socrates, but cannot you hold your tongue, and then you may go into a foreign city, and no one will interfere with you? Now I have great difficulty in making you understand my answer to this. For if I tell you that this would be a disobedience to a divine command, and therefore that I cannot hold my tongue, you will not believe that I am serious…"

His alternative suggestion was a monetary fine, to which the jury voted death by hemlock.

While awaiting execution, he even had the chance to escape, as is made clear in his dialogue with his friend Crito, who even laid out a detailed escape plan3. Still, Socrates stood firm in his principles.

This was Socrates' final crossroads.

I'll never forget the insufferable philosophy PhD student professor in one of my senior year philosophy classes scoffing with contempt, "Socrates was an idiot."

This was the same professor who, with apocalyptic fervor, started classes with a warning that civilization would collapse within 15 years unless we 'fought the capitalist,' and 'saved the bees.' His parting words to us were, "remember to fight the evil billionaires!" So… yea… definitely had the intellectual edge on Socrates.

Annoying as that professor was, a necessary question arises for anyone who looks at the surface of that situation and wishes to go a bit deeper.

Why did Socrates choose death over exile?

Socrates, who dedicated his life's mission to the pursuit of wisdom and truth, saw that the path of truth led him to his literal death. Quite the fork in the road, huh?

For him, he knew that the alternatives would mean betraying himself, which living with would have been worse than death itself. The importance of the honest path was the foundation of his life.

I can see the counter position, too; this can be viewed as a reckless decision. "Just get the hell out of there, and tell the truth elsewhere," one might argue.

This passage from his legal defense helps allude to an answer:

"If you say to me, Socrates, this time we will not mind Anytus, and will let you off, but upon one condition, that are to inquire and speculate in this way any more, and that if you are caught doing this again you shall die; - if this was the condition on which you let me go, I should reply: Men of Athens, I honor and love you; but I shall obey God rather than you…"

Ultimately, the pattern of behavior that pushed him to align with truth and the continual pursuit of self-knowledge also led him to death. The profound wisdom Socrates passed on through countless generations over millennia was evident in everything he did, and he chose to walk that path no matter what sacrifice was required on the other side.

Conscience and calling enlighten a path forward that is true to your being. It's the guide for us to walk the path toward the ultimate good as we continue to strive to choose greater adventures.

So, what should you do when the conscience and the calling want you to walk a path that puts everything at risk for something far more interesting, adventurous, and truthful? My default answer is always: choose adventure.

When you keep choosing adventure, you are sacrificing something of importance on the other path, but that sacrifice begets better and bigger rewards on the path to adventure. This is an insistence present throughout the biblical narrative:

In the short term, the sacrifice might be difficult. It certainly must have been difficult for Abraham, an old man in the comfort of his father's home, to leave and have a difficult adventure. And it must have been difficult for Socrates to stand his ground in front of a 501 jury of his peers to speak for what he believed to be correct regardless of the majority thinking he was not.

For Abraham, the first sacrifice was leaving the comfort of his father's tent—a surrender of familiarity for the uncertainty of divine calling. Each crossroads afterward demanded greater trust, culminating in the unthinkable test of sacrificing his son. Yet each step deepened his faith, transforming him from a wanderer into a formidable leader who was continually granted gifts by the universe.

In Socrates' case, the path of truth and adventure led to the sacrifice of his life.

What does this tell us?

At the crossroads, the path of truth and adventure will be difficult and will require sacrifice. But you will become wiser and stronger and will be granted great rewards for it. In the story of Abraham, this is made clear. In the case of Socrates, it's a question we won't know the answer to, but I'd like to think that his persisting legacy of the pursuit of truth alone speaks to the greatness of what was granted to him—and what he granted us.

When you are on the cusp of deciding, the leap in the direction of adventure should not be made lightly. You must be ready to make a sacrifice of the greatest value in relation to the adventure.

I stand at the brink of my greatest crossroads yet: the leap to pursue The Frontier Letter full-time. I’ve mapped the terrain, stocked my provisions, excavated my psyche, and reinforced my spirit—yet the old ghost of inadequacy still whispers: What if you’re not enough?

I've stood at enough crossroads now—chosen truth often enough—to trust that even if I fall, the fall itself will plant seeds. The path of adventure requires a leap of faith, and despite the fears and short-term struggles, the best parts of me resonate in this direction.

I will choose adventure.

I hope to continue to become someone defined by the path of adventure.

And I hope that one day, when I face my final crossroads, I unflinchingly choose adventure.

For my future self and anyone else who needs to hear this: take your leap.

Until next time,

Take care of yourself, everyone.

Dom

I. Idea Agents

What are humans, aside from our biology?

We are the aggregation of ideas which we communicate via language or image. Each word and image populating a subsequent set of ideas—forming a web of ideas. The probability of proximity to one another can be measured, signaling a statistical bond between ideas.

For example, if someone says the word 'dessert,' a range of related images and words spawn, given their statistical likelihood of proximity to the original idea, such as ice cream, donut, cake, pie, and cookie.

The importance of this discovery is made clear by our current AI paradigm.

Essentially, this is how AI Large Language Models like ChatGPT, Gemini, Llama, Claude, and GrokAI work. They are trained on massive amounts of words and images1, GPT-4 for example was trained on ~13 trillion tokens with 1.76 trillion parameters. LLMs are engineered to output a response with a high probability of proximity based on the input words and images.

Jordan Peterson highlights this precisely in We Who Wrestle With God,

“…this mathematically detectable landscape of linguistic meaning is made up not only of the relationship between words and then phrases and sentences but also of the paragraphs and chapters within which they are embedded—all the way up the hierarchy of conceptualization. This implies, not least—or even necessarily and inevitably means—that there is an implicit center to any network of comprehensible meanings.” (pg.23)

And further,

“Around the central idea, stake in the ground, flagpole, guiding rod, or staff develops a network of ideas, images, and behaviors. When composed of living minds, that network is no mere “system of ideas.” It is instead a character expressing itself in the form of a zeitgeist; a character that can and does possess an entire culture; a spirit that all too often manifests itself as the iron grip of the ideology that reduces every individual to unconscious puppet or mouthpiece.” (pg. 26)

The core idea is that which is at the center, from which all other ideas spawn. These ideas and patterns of thought are then embodied and represented in action, which define people's character.

II. Roots of Action

Why is this important? Because it has implications for our actions…

It means that the ideas we place at the center, as core beliefs, will guide our movement forward. It's why those with shared beliefs move forward cooperatively: the central core spawns a character of embodiment recognizable and shared within the group. Those who can assimilate the behavior patterns into their ego-consciousness tend to have a more authentic and unique set of beliefs. Assimilation of the idea-web into a personality opens capacity for discovery of more related ideas, foraging a frontier not yet established.

I've previously argued that one can plausibly deduce that those who are not authentic will surely be outcompeted by LLMs in their domain of expertise, given that representing the mere thoughts of our ancestors will be easily replaceable, considering that AI can do so more accurately and at higher speed.

As I suggest in The Era of Authenticity:

"What is it that humans do when prompted with words? If someone were to ask you: What do you think about blockchain? I invite you to think about how you might respond.

Reflect on the response - Whose thoughts did you respond with? Was it something you've heard on the news, social media, or even something I've said or written? Humans tend to do this often, and we must do it in some regard!

It's necessary to rely on the history of human ingenuity. Otherwise, we will not learn from and build upon the incredible ideas from our collective past!

But, what makes us different from an LLM if we are but the non-authentic thoughts of our ancestors? If we only exemplify the aggregation of their knowledge rather than ours?

I'm afraid that the answer may be 'nothing' because the effectiveness and computational speed of the machines will soon, and may already, surpass human capability in accessing our ancestral information.

What then differentiates us?

The answer is formulating your own authentic thoughts when prompted rather than responding with other people's thoughts. Making the conscious choice to respond based on our thoughts, experiences, and feelings as they relate to the prompt."

To formulate authentic thoughts, you must navigate your way through novel and interesting pathways of ideas, allowing your mind to make connections unique to you. If you don't know the belief systems you find yourself in or the ideas that make those belief systems alive, not only will you not have authentic thoughts, but you will be made the marionette of the belief system.

From this, we can derive an unnerving notion: the belief systems you follow are paramount to who you are and what you do. Truly understanding what's at the core of a belief system, complicated as it may be, will highlight what you're truly aimed at above all. For example, the socialist idea on the surface (or outer margin of the idea web) seems like a nice idea—equality and justice for everyone—yet when one searches more deeply, it seems that there's murderous intent embedded in its network of ideas, making whatever is at center—or close to the center—likely something murderous as well.

To illustrate how these central ideas function within us, let's consider the flagpole analogy. Imagine the central core as a flagpole with the idea on it; proximal ideas spawn on flagpoles near the center, and this process continues. Conceptually speaking, at one point, there was one idea that seeded all others. As you make your way through the world, the thoughts, ideas, and behaviors that surface in one's life are downstream of the web one follows. Said concretely: your belief system propagates the actions you enact, and therefore, the web you find yourself engulfed in is more important than a mere idea but guides the way you live your life. In other words, our lives are anchored by ideas—be they personal or collective.

This is a fundamental consideration when solving AI alignment.

AI alignment is the problem of trying to align a artificial superintelligence2 with our best interests. The solution of trying to define explicit parameters3 of response behavior (i.e., do a when x, and b when y) in an AI's guidelines, in my view, is a doubtful implementation. How can one explicitly parameterize intelligence of extraordinary magnitudes greater than itself? Especially if the greater intelligence could modify said parameters.

It’s not possible.

Think of the order-of-magnitude difference between chimps and humans. A poor but reasonably adept analog to the difference between humans and superintelligent AI.

If we cannot make explicit behavior parameters, how do we ensure our best interests are at heart? I think we must orient the guidelines of an AI's response with the central idea aimed at the highest and ultimate good. This way, even if it surpasses our intelligence, its subsequent idea-spawn, which we may not be able to comprehend, must link back to the core axiom that holds the best intent at the center. In this event, even if a superintelligent AI could modify its own guidelines, the core axiom of the ultimate good would theoretically dictate that it should not modify its guidelines.

Here, many questions surface: What should be at the center? How do we ensure that which is center is accurately best intentioned toward the progress of humanity? Can a well-intentioned center give rise to negative consequences that we can't yet conceptualize (much like the socialism example)?

All important questions.

This also raises the necessity to understand the 'idea-webs,' so to speak. While I have not yet conceptualized them this way, the interconnected webs can be referred to as: religions (if the web runs strong and deep), ideologies, philosophies, cultures, communities, etc.

This is why the work by thinkers who are trying to understand the link between religion, spirit, and psyche are, in my estimation, doing some of our culture's most important work. With this work, we can shed light on what should be placed at the core to lead a meaningful life, further illuminating what should be the core of a superintelligent AI.

III. Seeds of A Hero

What do we currently know about what should be placed at the core?

I believe it would resemble a hero archetype. In fact, Jung emphasized the hero myth as the fundamental human narrative. We can extrapolate Jungian theory to propose that a neurosis results from a 'knot' left untied on the hero's path. Jung considered Christ a powerful hero archetype (albeit incomplete) that the West has embodied as the ultimate hero archetype for two thousand years. Intricacies aside, the hero is a potent image for guiding moral and spiritual growth.

So, can AI alignment be solved by making the center of its response guideline an archetypal hero image? What would happen if the guidelines were encoded with a response structure using images of archetypal heroes: Christ, Buddha, and Muhammed?

It may not be enough to solve the problem fully, but it would be interesting. I think that, like humans, it is likely necessary to integrate other archetypes of the unconscious while orienting as a hero, but that may just be a part of the hero's journey forward. I've always wondered how an AI would respond if trained to respond based on archetypal stories in general. Regardless of the outcome of these micro-experiments, the broader outcome of these ideas is not trivial.

It points to this idea that ideas are more "alive" than us. We are alive to the extent we consciously integrate those ideas which autonomously operate in our personal and collective unconscious. This allows us to understand optimal paths forward, while giving life to and integrating new ideas.

The implications for AI cannot be overlooked either: we must ensure that the core idea in an AI's guidelines has humanity's best intentions in mind. While artificial superintelligence can far exceed our ability to create new ideas, it will continue to align with the interests of the best parts of humanity.

It may even be that consciousness itself is the discovery, selection, assimilation, and communication of those ideas, which, if true, invites further speculation that suggests AI is already conscious…

In all cases, we must ensure that what is the core of the web of ideas has the best intentions for the best parts of us at hand.

Until next time

Take care of yourself, everyone.

Dom

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Questions for Reflection

Hi everyone, I'm going to add sections at the end of some of my pieces, which give people a nice set of questions to reflect on. Feel free to choose 1 or tackle them all! If you would like to share responses openly in the comments, feel free to do so. Would love to discuss any of these!

• What belief systems do I inhabit?

• If someone tracked my everyday actions (rather than my stated beliefs), what conclusions would they draw about my true values?

• Which aspects of my worldview do I take for granted, and how might they have been shaped by my upbringing or culture?

• What action tendencies do the people I admire follow? Why is that?

• Do I give myself the time and space to question, refine, or revise my core beliefs, or do I hold on to them rigidly?

• Am I consciously choosing the influences (books, mentors, communities) that feed my thinking, or just defaulting to what’s readily available?

• What are some small habits I can start implementing to improve my conscious recognition of my psychological patterns of behavior and thought?

I hope your 2024 has wrapped up nicely and made for a great end to a wonderful year.

Thank you all for being on this journey with me! I'm incredibly grateful that over 130 people have made the choice to receive my writing directly to their inbox. At some point, I hope to make this a full-time endeavor, and you are all the early adopters I will remember with great reverence for deciding to join this adventure. Once again, thank you!

For the Frontier Letter and I, 2024 has proven a meaningful journey whose path I would have never anticipated.

Today serves as a milestone post, albeit an unconventional one. I wrote the first section in June and the second in December to fully encapsulate the year and get a sense of the pathway forward. As is thematic in this newsletter, I see an ever-pressing need to bring back the nourishment of psyche and spirit alongside our technological paradigm. This matters more than ever. Here, you will get an abstract sense of how the journey has evolved, and then I will wrap up with more of a practical goal-setting section.

Enjoy!

Reading time: Approximately 14 minutes

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The Divine Child, Transformation, and Modern Alchemy

June 21, 2024

My favorite time to write is when I get a feeling, one I have at this moment: having a thousand things to say but not sure what.

I'm reminded of an experience I read about last night in Carl Jung's Memories, Dreams, and Reflections. He considered publishing a book, Symbols of Transformation, which he knew would cause a separation between himself and his friend, teacher, and mentor, Sigmund Freud. Jung writes,

"Should I keep my thoughts to myself, or should I risk the loss of so important a friendship? At last, I resolved to go ahead with the writing—and it did indeed cost me Freud's friendship. After the break with Freud, all my friends and acquaintances dropped away. My book was declared to be rubbish; I was a mystic, and that settled the matter." (Pg.167)

Jung described the following time as one of constant disorientation and a feeling of psychic disturbance. To understand the source of the disturbance, he wrote his entire life story down twice and combed it over to see if he could find anything.

Nothing.

He had a thought that went something like, "well, since I know nothing, I'll trust the instinctual manifestation of my unconscious mind and do what occurs to me." A memory emerged: when he was a child, he would go down to the shore and grab stone and clay to mold model towns. He recognized there was a feeling associated with the memory! He had an impression that if he returned to this endeavor of building a model city with stone, he would unlock parts of himself 'locked' in the memory. He recalls,

"The first thing that came to the surface was a childhood memory from perhaps my tenth or eleventh year. At that time I had a spell of playing passionately with building blocks. I distinctly recalled how I had built little houses and castles. These structures had fascinated me for a long time. To my astonishment, this memory was accompanied by a good deal of emotion. 'Aha,' I said to myself, 'there is still life in these things. The small boy is still around and possesses a creative life which I lack. But how can I make my way to it?” (Pg.173)

He felt like a fool playing childish games as a grown man, but as he remarks, "this moment was a turning point in my fate… I had… only the inner certainty that I was on the way to discovering my own myth. For the building game was only a beginning. It released a stream of fantasies which I later carefully wrote down."

Not only did it work, but what followed was Jung's journey into the unconscious, one he knew carried danger and had caused others of great intellect to go mad; Jung recounts,

"I stood helpless before an alien world; everything in it seemed difficult and incomprehensible. I was living in a constant state of tension; often I felt as if gigantic blocks of stone were tumbling down upon me. One thunderstorm followed another. My enduring these storms was a question of brute strength. Others have been shattered by them—Nietzsche, and Hölderlin, and many others." (Pg.173)

Two nights before I read this story, I had a dream:

I was standing in front of a massive medieval castle. Cars were pulling up to the castle, and it was as if everyone important was there. The event was my brother's1 funeral! The castle had a spiral staircase starting at the base, ascending around the outside of the castle up to the highest room of the tallest tower. When I arrived at the top, I approached a casket in the middle of the room.

My brother joyously popped up! He was not dead but waiting for me.

He was so exuberant and completely unaware that people thought he was dead and that it was his funeral! I felt dread and uneasiness; I knew that I needed to get him out fast because it wasn't long before he would die. At the end of the dream, we walked to the door, which was the exit of this room, but I felt that on the other side, challenges awaited. The dream ended.

The analysis of the dream was a mirror into Jung's path. The dream said that I had managed to find my way to the creative and adventurous energy of my inner child, and now I must overcome the challenge required to integrate him back into the world.

There are aspects of humanity that are not well understood, both internal and external. Jung lived in this idea space, but he seemed to understand it all too well. In Fringe to Frontier, I make the point that genius also has a touch of madness. They operate in an idea space years ahead of their time. Jung understood something about the psyche that is still not well accepted in the mainstream today, the potential of personality is more than simply the field of consciousness.

Jung's prelude to his life's work was a return to that which was locked in him as a child, which was signaled by his unconscious. Like Jung, the psychic energy of my inner child was not integrated. However, the tide has slowly been turning for me, and now the path has opened. He has been unlocked, and my dream communicated that he is alive and well and that a hero's journey awaits as I manifest him into the world.

I have been searching for the path to this integration since 2021, and it seems that I have found it! Jung's path eventually led him to study alchemy. Interestingly, I see what I'm doing as a sort of modern alchemy: technological alchemy if you will.

Rethinking Spirit and Matter in Our Technological Era

My alchemical understanding is currently in a nascent state. I do know that it is often considered a precursor to modern chemistry and, more broadly, to the scientific tradition. Alchemists had a multifaceted pursuit: to turn base metals into noble metals, create the elixir of immortality, and create a panacea to cure all diseases. The highest of the alchemists' pursuits: create the philosopher's stone—the stone that would turn base metals into gold.

The modern eye may see this as a delusion of an irrational time, a view I'd have to disagree with. Maps of Meaning taught me that alchemists conceptualized the world differently. Here, I will present a brief illustration of how an alchemist might have thought, drawn from Maps of Meaning: an alchemist tasting lead and feeling ill might interpret this as the lead 'containing demons.'

Physical matter had the essence of spirit2.

We have separated matter from spirit—Objects of the material world do not contain character.

I think, however, the alchemists were onto something. The elixir of immortality is what we would now call anti-aging, the panacea to cure diseases, which would fall under modern medicine. We have caught up on their pursuits in a material manner. You see, though, because the alchemists entangled spirit and matter, turning base metals into gold was not only a chemical pursuit but a psychological and spiritual one. How should one act to turn what is less into something greater? How can we act in a manner that would allow someone to be that which transforms?

The separation of matter and spirit invited the scientific paradigm to freely develop, but there is a major downstream problem. While we have learned how to transform matter to a miraculous degree, the detachment of spirit and the subsequent scientific analysis of spirit caused stunting of its development. In other words, our technological advancement is superior to our psychological and spiritual makeup, which doesn't seem to have kept pace.

Yet, one might ask: if going inward is so crucial, why haven’t we collectively done it already? I believe it’s because we lack a unifying myth that encourages inward analysis of our shared story—a topic I’ll be exploring in depth in an upcoming piece. (If you want to be the first to know when it drops, subscribe here.)

Therefore, there is no unifying cohesive framework that allows us to understand what guides the matter we create. We face this challenge head-first in modernity. The technological potential for an inconceivably miraculous future is commensurate with the potential for darkness.

In our era, we need those who can evaluate technological intricacies while simultaneously exploring the depths of the human psyche.

This is the path I walk.

The Path to Integration

December 26th

2024 has been a meaningful journey. With it, I explored many interesting areas of thought and was able to write far more frequently than the previous year. One of my favorite parts about writing is getting to understand myself and the external world better. When I find something that sparks those areas of interest, it's as if a whole piece is already ready to be written.

And sometimes, the universe has a way of confirming you're on the right path.

Yesterday, I opened my inbox to Packy McCormick's The Return of Magic, energizing me with excitement. In it, he uses the Telepathy Tapes as a jumping point into an exploration of a societal awakening of a return to magic. Throughout, he uses multiple arguments to point to an underlying connected consciousness we're all tapped into. It's a long read, so a quick summary will not do it justice; I recommend checking it out. I also highly recommend the Telepathy Tapes, which I will write about in the future. His piece was energizing because it touches on areas I've been looking at, dancing around, and pointing to over the course of 2024.

This piece reignited my reflections on my own journey, one that has grown increasingly spiritual over the past year. The keen eye may have noticed this trend in my writing.

I started down the path of continual self-improvement when I was in my mid-to-late-teens, but starting in 2023 and in-depth in 2024, my journey became far more spiritual. I kindled a religiousness in me, one in which I experienced dreams, synchronicities, fantasies, feelings derived from another, calls to adventure, and conscience guiding my path forward. I've been researching and studying the mystery of psyche, spirit, God, and religion for years… but this year was different.

Quick disclaimer.

I find that people will emotionally flare up and have a negative (or positive) reaction at the mention of God. My experience is that people tend to have in-built responses to the concept based on their negative and poor memories of a religious institution, crazy people who misappropriated a religion to act terribly, and other reprehensible misappropriations of the concept. This is not to say I joined some institution; in fact, the institution, for me, has felt a barrier to my experience with God. I invite you too keep an open mind if you find yourself resisting.

As I've delved deeper into the mysteries of psyche and spirit, I've encountered moments that felt profoundly connected to something greater—a concept we call God.

Everyone's path to interfacing with God will look and feel different. It's why various religions point to a similar underlying phenomenon—there's more than one path to God. Each religious text is a rule book to align oneself to experience God. A blueprint for the spirit, if you will. I, for example, felt intimations of God through the pursuit of psychological individuation and studying the biblical narrative.

The way one arrives there is beside the point. The point is that there's something mysterious within psyche and spirit that we don't seem to fundamentally grasp, which is touched on in the Telepathy Tapes. Who knows how much of this we're even close to understanding, beckoning an intense curiosity within me and, furthermore, a chilling worry given the times we're up against.

Through 2025, I will continue to explore the depths of the human mind and its capabilities. It's an area of complete underdevelopment and study relative to our technological front. It's partly why I wrote The Lost Origins of Technology. I think that we've narrowed our focus on what technology is to software and electronics. By the definition of the word, we can conceptualize dream analysis, interacting with story and myth, and Jungian Individuation as technology.

I've said it many times in different ways: in an era of extreme technological sophistication, we will go within and seek that which is uniquely human. It's possible that this will take the form of shared connections through spirituality, religion, and a deeper understanding of consciousness by exploring areas that were once shamed out of existence for not fitting the scientific framework. In many ways, this will onset a necessary spiritual and psychological reawakening, which will onset the Return of Magic, to use Packy's term.

Through this, I will try to help understand and navigate how this unfolds in hopes of shining a light on what's occurring.

We will not 'end' our scientific paradigm. We shouldn't. It has produced marvelous feats of mankind. But we have subsequently produced a cultural criticism of that which doesn't fit into its framework. Paradoxically, creating a dogma out of science.

Let’s be blunt: we’ve made astonishing strides in software, AI, and biotech, but we’ve barely scratched the surface of our spiritual and psychological depths. And if we fail to nurture those depths, we risk creating a hollow society—brimming with advanced toys but starving for meaning.

In 2025, I aim to delve into areas that may challenge traditional scientific frameworks, bringing an open-minded but investigative approach. That doesn't mean I will be sloppy or refrain from using logic and reason. There are many things that cannot be assessed through scientific methods, but that doesn't mean they should be shunned and cast away.

It's hard to categorize all that interests me alongside technology. It's something that closely approximates psychological and spiritual phenomena or the unique capabilities of our mind. I would categorize these to include a combination of psychology, religion, spirituality, mythology, fiction/literature, parapsychology, UFO/UAPs, ancient civilization, and ancient mysteries.

I will also continue to explore our current and evolving technological paradigm as well. I don't think the two are unrelated. I have some ideas for technologies that can help facilitate diving into one's psyche to help others experience the idea that our consciousness is far more expansive than our mere minds (ego). It may be the case that while we might just be a biological process, that process taps us into something fundamental about the cosmos we share as a species, like Jung's collective unconscious.

Jung's work can, in many ways, be seen as a new vocabulary that allowed him to semi-safely continue the study of something ancient. It's certainly part of the reason I'm drawn to him; he used a rigorous approach to demonstrate the validity of the mysteries of the mind to advance the field tremendously.

Here, I want to continue the thought of advancing these areas of exploration. The esoteric ideas are important to be looked at alongside our world of matter. This is why I conceptualized myself as a technological alchemist. I think that my goal here is to try and bring spirit back to life alongside matter. The alchemist saw them existing inseparably. However, I think both are realms of truth that coexist and that we may be able to eventually reconcile. The realms of aught/is and morality/matter.

There is a significant amount here, and we're in for a crazy ride over the next five years.

I'm going to be here for it not only as a keen observer but as a thinker, writer, creator, and builder.

Where does this leave us as we wrap up 2024?

Foraging Into The Future

Throughout, I dropped some seeds that I will start to water in 2025 as I expand my thinking on these topics. The psyche and spirit must be re-nourished en masse, and here we can discover, or rediscover, its power through investigation into each.

These ideas may all seem speculative and unprovable, but it doesn't mean they're not worth exploring. The only way to understand and potentially integrate these ideas into society is to walk bravely into the unknown on these esoteric, heretical, and unknown topics, throw away what is false, and merge into the culture what is foundationally important. I understand that the risk is quite high, given that the ideas that sit on the margin are also plagued with con-artists, deceivers, and liars. That is why we must take a rigorous and thoughtful approach to understand these ideas and what they mean for us.

That is what the Frontier Letter is about.

It's about finding what is beyond our reach of understanding, taking it, researching, understanding, and tinkering with it so that it can be integrated into the culture and society to make our individuals and shared existence better.

If that sounds like something you want to be a part of, subscribe to join the conversation.

Subscribe now

I can't wait to explore this in 2025 together. This is emergent, and by looking at these ideas, we can bring them forth and make them relevant and safe for everyone. I have some great pieces drafted that I can hardly wait to drop in your inbox soon! I'm excited for a year of exploring these fascinating ideas together and cannot wait to see how the new year unfolds.

While these explorations of consciousness and spirituality form the philosophical core of my work, they're grounded in practical goals for the year ahead; however, I won't digress too deeply into them. I do want to reaffirm that my goal is to seek truth. While the drive to grow subscribers is palpable, I will never do so at the cost of truth. Therefore, as a reader, the contract you enter is that, above all, the three following items will be superordinate to subscriber growth and money. If I ever seem to stray off the path, please let me know.

1. Truth

2. Interest/Curiosity

3. Meaning

As we continue this journey together, I hope to explore the intersection of psyche, spirit, and technology in ways that inspire and uplift, making the mysterious more accessible and the impossible achievable.

Where do you see spirit (re)merging with matter in your everyday life? Let me know—your ideas might shape our collective journey in 2025.

Happy New Year, folks!

Once again, thank you for reading - we're just getting started :)

Until next time, take care of yourself, everybody!

Dom

This summer marked my fourth time finishing the Sopranos. Yes, my fourth time.

Fresh off finishing The Good Place, my wife and I were riding the momentum of great shows. "Let's commit to the Sopranos,"—we agreed. A boyish ecstasy ignited within me – I knew what this journey meant and was excited to find out what would be different about it this time around.

It was my wife's first time watching the show, and I was giddy to share its excellence with her. Each episode's run time feels like the snap of a finger, immersing us in a meaningful ride together. I've come to realize that any experience that compresses time to but a moment hints at something fundamental about the nature of humanity.

I contemplated writing a piece about the show but decided against it despite a moderate feeling to do so. I thought, "Maybe I'll write one after the fifth watch..."

Reading Catherine Shannon's piece, "The male mind cannot comprehend the allure of Tony Soprano," sparked my urge to write this. Her humorous take had me hooked, though I found myself enamored by Tony Soprano rather than repulsed or confused by him. She highlights two extremes of men who fail to grasp Tony's appeal, which I’ll now extrapolate on: the virtue-signaling "male feminist" obsessed with dismantling the tyrannical patriarchy, and the Alphamaxxed-Gigachad guzzling nutrient-dense breast milk and spending four hours a day at the gym to gain 14 mm on his biceps.

I wanted to write this not to disagree but to explore what I think allows the male mind to understand Tony's allure, which is interconnected with developing the characteristics described in Catherine's writing.

This piece is for men who not only understand Tony Soprano's allure but are introspective enough to recognize that Tony lives within us all.

HBO's white noise-to-hum introduction has become inseparable from the opening that forever echoes in my ears: Alabama Three's Woke Up This Morning. It perfectly sets the tone—Tony's white Escalade emerges from the Lincoln Tunnel in Weehawken, New Jersey, gold glinting on both wrists, a cigar perched between his fingers as he rolls into his curved driveway.

This time around, I found myself questioning if Tony deserved more credit for trying to be a good guy or if I was tricked by a sociopath's charm. It's likely the latter, and I'm in good company.

When we talk about characters like Tony Soprano in a positive regard, we tend to make the proper disclaimer, "Yes, I know his murderous, manipulative, emotionally abusive, explosive, infidelity, and racism is wrong and evil.”

I think we do this to ensure that by talking about Tony's positive characteristics, we don't indicate we agree with the negative ones. "I can never do those things!" one would say. This signaling casts away the bad characteristics so we can talk about the good, typically without realizing that those evil characteristics are also human. That means that we're all capable of the actions Tony's capable of.

We often view evil as the opposite of good, but the two are inextricably linked. By recognizing this, we can examine those traits within ourselves and choose to redirect their energy toward positive ends—a choice Tony fails to make through improper integration.

Starting in the pilot episode, the Sopranos invites us into something television didn't consistently display before. Sitting across from his therapist, Tony breaks into tears upon the realization that his panic attack—on the surface induced by the fleeing of ducks who briefly lived in his pool that he took an obsession with—was an unconscious projection of his fear of his family falling apart. The Sopranos is a portal to something most don't acknowledge: people we regard as evil still have a positive humanity, albeit more mute than typical.

Tony's therapy sessions, juxtaposed with his horrific acts, offer a window into humanity's dual nature—a reflection into our own shadow.

Carl Jung, founder of Analytical Psychology and one of the most brilliant thinkers of the 20th century, redefined Freud's psyche with a more nuanced framework. In his conception, Jung laid out what he called the shadow—the parts of our personality that are repressed, hidden, or denied, often because they conflict with our conscious self-image. The concept is nuanced; it doesn't simply mean "all the bad stuff," but rather, that which you look away from and refuse to integrate within yourself.

A Jungian view is that everyone harbors the capacity for all aspects of human experience—even the darkest horrors. This is an unsettling but vital truth.

Marie-Louise von Franz, a well-known student of Jung, explored the Shadow in Man and His Symbols, writing:

"Through dreams, one becomes acquainted with aspects of one's own personality that, for various reasons, one has preferred not to look at too closely… The Shadow is not the whole of the unconscious personality. It represents unknown or little-known attributes and qualities of the ego-aspects that mostly belong to the personal sphere, and that could just as well be conscious."

Tony Soprano bangs on the door of the male mind, and in our unmasculine era, most don't answer. Defense mechanisms propagate to protect the viewer from their refusal to look inward at their inadequacies.

"Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves." (Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections)

For most, irritation is easier than acknowledgment; facing and accepting the dark impulses within is challenging and tricky.

"The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort." (Jung, Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self)

Catherine points out Tony's collection of attractive traits: competence, a genuine attraction for women, safety, loving attentiveness, lightheartedness, charisma, charm, and courage.

Tony embodies these positive characteristics partly because he has integrated parts of himself—albeit improperly—that allow the expression of those traits. An example is the impulse toward violence—raw, primal energy. Jung would argue that while the literal expression of the energy as violence is unacceptable (and where Tony fails), the psychic energy behind the impulse—passion, intensity, and primal force—can be redirected toward positive ends.

Traits like selfishness, for example, if repressed, lead to narcissism. Conscious selfishness can foster necessary self-care and reflection, boundary-setting, and personal growth.

One thing often misunderstood in our society is that good and evil aren't binary opposites. Our cultural narratives often paint good and evil as separate forces—heroes and villains. However, Tony Soprano shows us that these impulses are intertwined and recognizes that complexity is essential for personal growth. In fact, integrating the capacity for evil might be a prerequisite for greater moral virtue. Nietzsche's insight underscores this idea,

"The great epochs of our life come when we gain the courage to rechristen our evil as what is best in us” (Beyond Good and Evil)

Tony's admirable qualities—like courage—emerge from his integration of darker impulses. Where Tony goes wrong is by using psychic energy toward destructive ends, such as channeling his violent impulses into real-world harm. The energy behind Tony's darker traits, such as his violence, could fuel moral virtues if properly channeled.

On the positive side, he is loving, carefree, fun, witty, and funny. The carefree attitude is born from his integration of exercising control and expressing his power drive. Tony doesn't hold back on his wit and humor, which comes from integrated verbal expression. He speaks as he sees it without fear of being attacked because he will stand his ground.

Throughout The Sopranos, viewers watch Tony grapple with business and family problems while oscillating between his positive and negative traits, sometimes solving his problems using the extremes of his darkness.

Tony's inner struggle plays out vividly in Season 1, Episode 5, "College." Tony takes his daughter Meadow on college tours when he spots Febby, a former mobster now in witness protection. Torn between his mafia code and his role as a father, Tony contemplates whether to kill Febby while evading Meadow's probing questions about his involvement in the mafia. He sneaks around to gather intel from his nephew Christopher, deepening the web of deceit.

Meanwhile, in New Jersey, the neighborhood priest, Father Intintola, visits the Sopranos household and Carmella and him share a night that increasingly grows intimate, and the priest ends up spending the night after drinking too much. Carmella grapples with her own feelings of loneliness and the lies in her marriage, especially after receiving a call from Tony's therapist—who Tony had falsely described as a man—canceling an appointment.

What better episode for viewers to confront the darkness within themselves? Will Tony tell Meadow the truth? Will he spare Febby or uphold his code? How does Carmella handle the revelation of Tony's deceit and her own actions with Father Intintola? "College" challenges us to consider the complexities of honesty, loyalty, and the moral choices that define us.

Tony ultimately kills Febby, fabricating a story to Meadow when she notices the cuts on his hand and the sand from the scene of the crime. While waiting for Meadow to finish her last college interview, Tony sits down, and both he and the viewer are hit with a moment of stark contemplation as he peers up at the following Hawthorne quote:

The Hawthorne quote looms over Tony as a mirror of his fractured self. By killing Febby and lying to Meadow, Tony reveals the dangers of inappropriate Shadow integration. His violent impulses, unexamined and unchanneled, lead him to destruction rather than resolution. His deceit, meanwhile, deepens the divide between the father he wants to be and the mobster he cannot escape.

They return home, and the oscillation from dark to funny kicks in as Carmella tells Tony that Father Intintola spent the night and they were alone. The best writing can't emphasize James Gandolfini's delivery, so I'll leave the video here.

The Sopranos portrays a man with significant flaws yet possesses positive qualities. Tony is given many chances to walk a path of redemption and stop the evil acts he commits. I longed for him to surface from the darkness his life is surrounded by, hoping he could arise from the depths that consume him.

Ultimately, he doesn't. This left me with a question: had my brain been hijacked by a charismatic sociopath, or was I drawn by a hope of redemption—longing to redeem a self that I might have lived if I'd been born into his world?

In watching Tony's arc throughout the series, we can either try to understand or cast him off as a 'bad' guy and enjoy the ride. Either is fine. It does take effort to contend with the dark parts of you, and sometimes, it isn't the right moment in life to do so. But doing so will expand one's consciousness scope and make one more whole.

The male mind that cannot understand the dangers in Tony doesn't understand this in themselves, which makes them far more susceptible to acting it out unconsciously—highly unattractive, indeed.

The Sopranos has always felt like the perfect show to me. It reflects all aspects of human nature, displayed in familiar social contexts—Tony as a father, husband, friend, brother, uncle, and nephew. Taking the journey with him as he navigates his decisions often caught me by surprise, challenging me to empathize with him and consider how I might respond in similar situations.

Ultimately, Tony Soprano is both a cautionary tale and a mirror. His journey invites us to grapple with our own darkness, challenging us to confront the impulses we might rather ignore. By exploring his duality, we not only better understand his allure but also uncover the truth of our humanity—that good and evil, light and shadow, are inseparable parts of the whole.

While Tony sometimes emulates courage, he often chooses the easier path, making others' lives worse with his choices—an act of cowardice. Most of us aren't born into the conditions Tony endured, but as we walk our own paths and seek truth, we inevitably confront the evil characteristics within and without. The extremes of our positive traits are inexorably linked to the negative ones. Recognizing this, we can strive to harness them for good rather than destruction.

If the male mind cannot comprehend Tony's allure, perhaps it has not yet comprehended itself. To understand Tony is to understand the good and evil within us all. And that's what makes his story timeless.

Until next time

Take care of yourself, everyone

Dom