Sometimes there are too many lines to read between
Most systems of knowledge fail in the way temples collapse: beautiful ornamentation but lacking structure.
Teachings tend to accumulate a certain vapid excess. Terminology is memorized in slogans, metaphors get mistaken for statements of fact, authority ossifies where curiosity once thrived. Eventually what was a system survives only as ritual performance, no longer a working instrument for understanding the world, or more importantly oneself.
This newsletter exists to test what still works.
We don’t preserve tradition for tradition’s sake, but we won't destroy it for provocateur’s sport. We disassemble ideas down to their load-bearing beams to see which ones still hold weight: biology, psychology, economics, power, time, the ethics of how we treat other people.
The systems of old too often created a tribalism that relied upon the precept that outsiders deserved less than you because they weren’t similar enough.
Refuse the ornamentation. No promises of transcendence here. No guarantees on salvation. We aren't keepers of the magic words that let you bypass the effort of attention. We refuse those frameworks that would require you to suspend skepticism.