philosophy
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This Friday, The Architecture of Authenticity Launches
One idea runs underneath almost everything I have written in this book: We receive before we achieve. None of us creates ourselves from nothing. We inherit languages we did not invent, stories we did not begin, communities we did not build, and gifts we did not earn. Even our capacity to become ourselves depends, in… Continue reading
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Two Meanings of Sovereignty
My freedom matters precisely because fidelity cannot be coerced. A promise made under compulsion is not much of a promise. Love extracted by force is not love. A life that can genuinely be given must first, in some meaningful sense, belong to the giver. Continue reading
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Desire: Curated Before Noticed
A person begins forgetting what it feels like to encounter reality without immediately filtering it through visibility, aspiration, anxiety, or comparison. Silence becomes difficult. Boredom becomes intolerable. Ordinary life begins to feel insufficient unless it can be translated into something shareable, admirable, or meaningful to others. Continue reading
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A Preview of “The Architecture of Authenticity”
What follows is a preview of the book I am writing. I will be spending much of the summer of 2026. Sooo… a request: I am dying to hear if you would like to read a book like this. Would you? Continue reading
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A Letter to Western Canadian Readers: On Power, Separation, and the Cost of Exit
When separatism is framed as leverage (“do this or we leave”) it signals a shift away from persuasion and toward coercion. It treats political relationships not as shared projects to be renewed, but as transactional arrangements to be threatened. Continue reading
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Beyond Mastery: Grounded Human Power
The choice between domination and cooperation is therefore not merely political or organizational. It is existential. How we exercise power shapes who we become. Leverage secures obedience but hollows identity. Cooperation demands patience and humility, but it produces belonging. Continue reading
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A Letter to David Brooks
My brother and I have had recent dialogues about the necessity of the death of self. I feel like in much of the conversations surrounding the death of self, many people have meant the complete submission of the individual. But some mystics have understood the death of self to mean the destruction of the false… Continue reading
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Why Everything Feels Worse (And Why That’s Not an Accident)
At first, these systems work well. They serve people. But once we depend on them—once leaving becomes risky or complicated—the priorities shift. The system starts serving itself. Continue reading
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Understanding Sovereignty in Modern Political Discourse
Sovereignty renewed appeal cannot be explained solely by shifts in global power or the breakdown of international institutions. Rather, sovereignty has become inspirational because it mirrors a deeper concern of our age: the struggle for authenticity, i.e. the desire to act from within one’s own values rather than as an instrument of external systems. In… Continue reading
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Sovereignty: The Power Beyond Ownership
” Sovereignty and ownership overlap in everyday speech, but philosophically, linguistically, and practically they point to very different kinds of authority and relation.” Continue reading