I’m a centrist. Not a centrist in the way many self-proclaimed “enlightened centrist” think of themselves…because I refuse to let the status quo define what “centrist” is and should be.

I reject the idea that the status quo gets to define the center…but that’s exactly what’s happened. The “center” has been colonized by the brain rotted power structures that have become massively distrusted in our society. And I’ll explain how and why the current “centrist” are irrational extremists.

The irrational centrist holds profit as the first principle. Not just in economics, but in morality. They think they’re against greed, they will even say as such, but how do they often define success? A good job? A house? “freedom”? Think about your average “not really political” influencer…every one of their goals has been preselected by a structure whose only commandment is accumulation. More vacations. More cars. More homes. More businesses. More crypto rug pulls. More selfish profit seeking. More, more, more!

They sell you hope by trying to get you to imagine an irrational future...

“the promise of the better future is the foundation of the capitalist structure, the basis for all three economic areas—production, distribution, and consumption. If we examine only the field of consumption, universal commodification seems to hold the key, whereas if we confine ourselves to the field of production, the imperative to accumulate appears foundational. In the field of distribution, it is the idea of speed: one must move commodities to market in the least amount of time possible. If we look at what these three fields have in common, however, the answer is the promise of the future. One buys the commodity to discover a potentially satisfying pleasure, one accumulates more capital to some day have enough, and one speeds up the distribution process to increase one’s future profit. Any sense of satisfaction with one’s present condition would have a paralyzing effect on each of these regions of the capitalist economy,” Capitalism and Desire by Todd McGowan.

This is how irrational hope for the future gets reproduced…and then sold back to you as if it were progress. But it’s not a rational future. The data we have makes that clear…it’s a manufactured hope built on false premises.

The centrist “influencer” that I mentioned is part of the irrational center that does PR for this rotted status quo. This irrational center doesn’t need these influencers to be greedy…it just needs them to believe that greed is ambition. We are told ambition is striving. Hustling. Building a personal brand. Getting a seat at the table. But what is the goal of this ambition? Solve homelessness? Reform healthcare? No, no, no…of course not. These are the ideas of irrational extremists, right?!?! The goal is some narcissistic drive to win. To be seen winning. “I’m not greedy…you are just envious of my ambition to keep winning.” So, the “winners” of the irrational center buy another watch, a Tesla, or they sell you another course on passive income to teach you how to grow passive income.

“I’ll teach you how to be a winning little cuck! Buy my course on how I continually push off my inevitable psychosis by being a naughty winner.”

“I’m selling you the dream...where you to can be part of the great center…see the results of my ambition you irrational outsider.”1

Just check out their podcast, see their verified checkmark, consume them winning…consume their ambition.

These are the symbols for the irrational center and how they try to sell you their internal rot as something enlightened and true…and I’ll show you why.

So, I’m a new centrist. A more true centrist.

But not in the sanitized, smug sense that self-proclaimed “enlightened centrists” often mean. Not in the way mainstream culture defines it either, which is usually a euphemism for passivity while they pretend to be rational and balanced.

What the “enlightened centrist” (EC) really means is they’re tired. I mean…go listen to a Lex Fridman interview on Youtube...he claims to be one of these EC’s...he is what it is to be mentally tired and lazy personified. He looks tired. He thinks tired. The EC is tired of being yelled at by both sides, tired of ideological purity tests, tired of feeling like none of this is working. I agree…it is tiring…but your complicity doesn’t make you rational, nor does it mean you’re ambitious. So, you call yourself an EC, as if that weren’t just a brand like anything else in our algorithmic based consumption.2

The current “center” isn’t a midpoint between two extremes. It’s no longer any form of compromise. It has become a passive endorsement of the status quo: a system in which human life is valued only insofar as it can generate profit, attention, or content. The center holds, because it’s held in place by us…our scrolling, our purchasing, and our silence. We keep the machine running, and then we call that active moderation.

How should the rational middle ground be formed? It should probably operate with some principles around moderation, compromise, and thoughtfulness…virtues many would claim to hold and desire. But…what has this center become in practice? It’s become a manufactured midpoint between two wings of a political machine that share a foundational premise...that profit comes before people. Corpo donors over the average voter!

“Oh another anti-capitalist post trying to claim themselves to be above it all and a free thinker.”

You can agree with many of the ideas around Capitalism and still agree with what I’m saying. I’m saying that our power structures have manufactured an extremist “middle ground” of cultural and political rot. It’s pressured us into complicity. It’s an extremism that has been on hyperdrive trying to convince us that it’s in favor of our future.

A true centrist wouldn’t ask, “how do we balance the budget?” No. We should be asking “why do we have a budget that treats feeding children as optional and enriching shareholders as mandatory?” The center, the real rational position, should reject the binary of left and right and recognize it as a controlled opposition designed to simulate choice without threatening power. But this kind of rationality isn’t rewarded. It’s punished. It can’t be monetized.

How would Lex Fridman be able to bring on Elon Musk for an interview if he dared question why his net worth continues to rise while millions of Americans can buy less with their dollar, millions cannot afford to buy a home, millions are one medical bill away from extreme poverty or homelessness. Are these not rational concerns? Are these not data driven concerns that someone like Elon plays an essential role in perpetuating?

The true centrist isn’t overly fixated on a political position…they should be holding something epistemological. It’s a position that refuses to lie to itself about what the system is, what we are within it, and should move towards knowing what we’re actually willing to sacrifice to change and maintain something more rational and centered.

Yes, the leftist purity tests are a psyop, and so is the brain-rotted “based” right-wing crowd. But this idea that “the system never changes” because Zohran Mamdani made a political compromise and endorsed Hakeem Jeffries? That tells me more about your need to cling to hopelessness than it does about his integrity. You’re more of a sellout for the centrist ideology I’m criticizing than Zohran Mamdani is some secretly corrupt operative for the liberal elite.

What does a truer centrism look like?

Well…Gen Z appears to be moving towards it. A recent poll conducted by the Harvard Institute of Politics released a survey of Americans under 30. It demonstrates that our next generation is under “profound strain” and distrust in the current status quo.

57% believe the U.S. is on the “wrong track” while only 13% say things are generally on the right track. Trust in institutions (government, media, corporations) has fully collapsed. Economic anxiety and uncertainty about the future is the primary driver, with the GenZers claiming their inability to afford basic “milestones” (housing and family) despite working full-time. They’ve realized that the system runs on the promise that if you simply sacrifice now, you can enjoy later is…by all metrics…a fucking lie. They are working (the sacrifice) but the reward (the stable housing, healthcare, and family) is mathematically impossible. Their “mistrust”…their recognition that the status quo is an irrational and incoherent structure…is not cynicism, it’s not some doomer mindset…it is a rationally based empirical observation based in their material reality.

We are moving away from traditional party loyalty entirely. The “center” often claims that taxing the rich is “class warfare” or some extreme lefty position that is “divisive.” The reality is that refusing to tax the rich is the divisive position. The rational majority…the new center…understands that extreme wealth concentration is a market failure, not a market virtue, and a consequence of a corrupt rot proliferating at the status quo.

Here...some data that should enlighten you with a more rational and centered position. In a comprehensive aggregation of polls from late 2024 showed that taxing the ultra-wealthy is one of the few issues with true bipartisan support. It’s the centrist position. A majority support for a Billionaire income tax includes…”on average, two out of three (67 percent) Americans supported the tax including 84 percent of Democrats, 64 percent of Independents, and 51 percent of Republicans.”

When asked about a wealth tax…”more than three out of five Americans supported the tax including 78 percent of Democrats, 62 percent of Independents, and 51 percent of Republicans.”

Healthcare...a major poll found that “lowering healthcare costs” has surpassed inflation, jobs, and immigration as the #1 priority for voters across all parties. And 72% of voters (bipartisan) support “radical” measures like reducing the role of middlemen (bs insurance companies) and having the government set limits on prices. “Regardless of where you live, your income, your type of insurance, or your politics — nearly every American believes unreasonable health care costs are an urgent issue for Congress and the President to take on,” said Anthony Wright, Executive Director of Families USA.

In the 2024 election, we saw a massive disconnect between party identity and policy preference. Voters in deep-red states like Missouri, Alaska, and Nebraska (states that overwhelmingly supported Donald Trump) simultaneously passed ballot measures that the establishment calls “progressive.” Missouri and Alaska voted to raise the minimum wage to $15 hour and mandate paid sick leave. And Nebraska voted to repeal school voucher programs (a favorite of the conservative establishment) because they recognized it drained public resources. These voters aren’t some irrational radical extremists…they are working people who think it is rational that a job should pay enough to live on and that you shouldn’t lose your home if you come down with an illness and can’t work. The “Center” or the “EC” (a position held by both party establishments) is out of touch with reality…they’re rotted and irrational extremists. The people…the average voter…is operating at a more true center position.

The irrational center, those who promote propaganda for the corporate extremists and defend the incoherent status quo…tells us that universal healthcare and living wages are expensive fantasies. But the American people—from the youth in our cities to the workers in our red states—know the truth: The real fantasy is thinking we can continue to bail out banks and starve our children without the society collapsing. I am a Centrist because I stand with this rational majority, not the extremist minority in Washington who think corporate profits are more sacred than human life.

What’s the conclusion? There isn’t one. Not because it’s hopeless, but because hope itself is now a consumer product, “the shareholders just need one more bailout…then you will feel how great our economy is” or “your town will see the trickle down economic boom from the data center that we definitely promise will not poison your water supply”…the hope gets sold back to you as “personal development” or “civic engagement” or “posting.” Hope distracts you from the harsh reality because it wants you to imagine a future change that the irrational status quo center is imagining for you. A better hope is found in the harsh truth at the center of our material reality…one that is in need of constant compromise, consideration, and evaluation. This is the compromise required to be a true centrist. We should take on radical understanding with moments of hope, but currently we have radical hope with moments of understanding almost completely lost.

The true center doesn’t believe in end states or conclusions, it only looks to consider problems we are facing, understand those problems, and then consider compromises that can solve them.

Desire is endless…but we can change how it’s directed. A good starting points is to focus on improving conditions for those who engage with the world through a more rational and materially grounded lens…those grounded in an awareness of our collective experience. This is where we focus on needs and by consequence we will allow more freedom to drive our desire…in other words, we should look to the expressed needs of the vast majority who actually occupy and interact with the true center of society and every day life.

But who am I to tell you what to do? You might think I’m just one of those crazy radical extremists. I’ll tell you what I know…I’m a centrist trying to sell you a new vision of the future…one that is full of harsh truths, and once is centered, can provide a more grounded, rational, and true hope for the future.

The murder of Charlie Kirk isn’t just another act of political violence…it’s something more. It has a function. It performs. It means something. It tells you more about the people consuming it than about the act itself.

And it illuminates a dynamic within postmodern conservatism that we’d be foolish to ignore.

Did you notice how quickly the narrative was written? In the immediate aftermath Kirk was instantly declared a martyr, the victim of some left wing progressive hatred. This was all before the shooter was even identified or in custody. No facts necessary! Because facts are beyond the point. The narrative is the point…a story further reinforcing the myth that conservatives are under attack.

So, before the killer was even in custody…the narrative was already locked, packaged, and pre-sold for their believers consumption.

Moved to be sold. Moved to be consumed. No thought…just reflex…and consume FOLLOWERS!!

The “truth” you were told to defend had already been preselected for you. Because for the postmodern conservative, truth is disposable. What matters is not coherence, but the feeling of being under attack…a kind of necessary evil that allows them to maintain belief in an ideology that contradicts itself on every level.

But in order to understand this…we need to understand the postmodern conservative more deeply.

describes postmodern conservatism as a pastiche identity: it combines contradictory identities…Nationalist, Christian, Western, anti-globalist…and holds them together with resentment toward the Other (liberals, immigrants, “cultural Marxists,” trans people, ect.). The antagonists are vague, much like their pastiche ideology, shifting endlessly to fit the victimhood narrative required for the moment. They don’t need to be consistent because consistency isn’t what’s being sold.

These pastiche identities require stabilization through enemy construction—myth making, and narratives of victimhood.

"Post-modern conservatism emerged as a reaction to the dynamics of post-modern culture and neoliberal society. It vulgarised earlier conservative appeals to traditional social identity by affiliating with group identities and values they felt were being disrupted by a vague host of antagonists. The identities the post-modern conservative appeals to are varied, and includes the nostalgic quality which is highly characteristic of post-modern culture. Many of the affiliated identities overlap or contradict each other when examined at the level of ideological and historical consistency. The pastiche can include a national identity as an authentic Pole or American, a religious identity such as being a member of Christian society, or a civilisational identity, such as being a part of the Western as opposed to the Islamic world. The antagonists of the post-modern conservative are similarly connoted in a pastiche-like way. They can include liberal and left-wing elites, globalists, urbanities, “cultural Marxists,” and so on, and affiliated but less powerful groups such as immigrants, minorities, vulnerable populations, and so on. These antagonists are seen as disrupting a naturalised social hierarchy, where the identity and values the post-modern conservative affiliates with were once dominant." —McManus, The Rise of Postmodern Conservatism

The postmodern conservative is a symptom. And one of its primary enablers is the digital age itself. We live in the era of fragments: hyper-targeted information bubbles, algorithmic niches, and endless identity playgrounds. And what happens when you become dozens of fragmented digitized selves? You must centralize and unite them! You try to bring those fractured online identities into material reality.

Tyler Robinson is an example outside the conservative mind (i’m not claiming he was right or left, it’s not the point) because he brought shitposting into reality. His own, less political, pastiche identity, built in the digital cesspool of irony, dog whistles, and meme-speak, was carried intact into the material. It was etched in the bullets…”Hey, fascist, Catch,” “bella ciao”, and “if you read this you are gay LMAO.” Was it a joke? A critique? A shitpost? Was the focus political? It’s uncertain, much like these pastiche identities being formulated in schizo boundary digital spaces. The meme-culture expression of identity no longer stops at something digital, it is now quite literally inscribed on the ammunition in our true reality.

But I’m focussing on postmodern conservatism. What defines it?

"Postmodern conservatives differ substantially from other forms of twentieth- century conservatism—particularly neoliberals—in framing politics as a zero-sum match where socio-political power operates along vertical lines and the goal is always to be at the top." McManus, The Rise of Postmodern Conservatism

With an ideology built on a viewpoint of zero-sum…you inevitably need an us vs them mentality, so you often need some level of victimhood to represent your in-group and out-group. Why does victimhood work? Because it dramatizes loss. It personalizes instability. If the conservative admitted the real destabilizer (economic and global structures), then their victimhood would collapse, because then everyone is destabilized, not just them. And worse: if some neoliberal order is the villain, then their entire myth of a stolen golden age would be a lie.

If that’s true then…their victimhood evaporates…their rage becomes misplaced…their ideology, incoherent…their hate, invalidated.

The era they long for never was…that paradise was never real. So, the fantasy requires an external enemy, an Other who stole it from them, and can keep them distracted from the lie that is the narrative and identity itself.

So what do they do? They reach for symbols.

They meme their way into reality. The meme becomes the new scripture—imprecise…elusive, yet viscerally potent. The meme refuses to be pinned down…and so, too, does their ideology. This is by design. Their incoherence is a shield against interrogation. They detach from truth and embrace the Zizekian disavowal.

And for Zizek this disavowal is the psychological maneuver where the subject knows very well that something is true (on some level), but behaves as though it isn’t.

This is why Trump is a perfect symbol for the postmodern conservative. He isn’t a lier, he is a bullshitter. He disavows truth altogether. He doesn’t believe in facts, he believes in performance, in producing reality through repetition. And his followers live inside that same disavowal: I know this isn’t true, but i’ll act as if it is. They know very well that a substantial portion of Trump’s belief isn’t true…but nevertheless…

This is what meme culture has been weaponized into. Pepe and Groypers are connected to a side of the internet that falls back on “it’s just a joke.” The joke is the perfect alibi and becomes symbolized by the internet meme, where this allows you to express belief without admitting you truly believe. It becomes a form of expressed resentment and nostalgia in something external and something seemingly cartoonish in form, so you can deny responsibility with a wave of “it’s just irony…why are you taking me serious?”

It’s this ambiguity that acts as the glue holding fragmented pastiche identities together…and the postmodern conservative umbrella is working on overdrive to hold these identities in place.

It’s like some level of schizo-splitting: “I know, but I don’t know know, you know?”

In a way these cultures have become emotionally real even if it’s semanticaly void. These identities held together by memes and dog whistles disavow belief itself while still fueling ideological unity. It permits contradiction. It allows you to embrace conflicting myths without shattering under the weight of your inconsistency…the weight that is your growing distance from truth and reality itself.

And so, the postmodern conservative cannot blame capitalism or fixate on our global economic structure. Because to do so would be to admit that there is no stolen paradise to reclaim…only a system that never offered stability to begin with. The myth of victimhood, propped up by disavowal, for many…is the only thing keeping the fragile self from collapse.

Thus, the real underlying structure remains mostly hidden from their gaze…unexamined. Because to look there would mean facing the unbearable return to truth: that the fragmented pastiche ideology they’ve formed is actually a participant in the very system that hollowed them out. And then they become a true victim like the rest of us, joining those same people they called enemies.

Stay curious.

There’s something happening on Twitter.

I know the place has basically made itself irrelevant, but it still manages to influence our discourse—online and in real life. Twitter reveals something…weird…about us. About algorithms. About what we actually care about, yet don’t want to admit we care about.

Twitter has become a perfect little incubator for witnessing how our worst instincts get fed back to us.

On there, you’ve got far-right takes, trad nostalgia, fascism, racism…all getting clicks. It’s become an echo chamber for ideologically captured consumers. The user base is shrinking, and now consists of a group of people performing dog whistles for their micro-audiences…digital priests speaking in code to the already converted (cc my essay on Priest vs Wise guy).

The Priest thrives in this environment. They're rewarded for reinforcing your existing worldview, for narrating your anxieties back to you in a way that feels…profound. They're rewarded for doubling down, escalating, becoming more extreme…not out of conviction, but because the audience (their congregation) demands it.

And the congregation? They're not passive victims. They're participants. They're complicit in their own radicalization, because they keep showing up for the sermon.

Getting you to doubt your truth is a harder sell than getting you outraged at the people who doubt it.

So, what’s my point?

Elon took over. He claimed to remove censorship, but still censors people who critique him. At the same time, he promotes these edgy right-wing viewpoints (example below). And in a strange way…it proves that even those of us skeptical of censorship (myself included)…still desire some form of filtration on platforms. We don't want everything in the feed because we can't trust our desire.

Here's why: with these algorithms, attention is the currency. And there’s no moral distinction between attention as support and attention as outrage. Algorithms reward both. So creators start inching toward certain views…not necessarily because they believe them, but because those views provoke clicks, attention, and followers. Slowly, they start to conflate reaction with truth. Clicks become validation. Anger becomes validation. So they double down. They escalate.

First it's performative bait. Then the performance becomes a bit. Then the bit becomes a doctrine of belief.

The performance into some level of belief happens…not because it’s true, but because they got attention. They felt seen. This is how problematic or even hateful ideas become ambient, normalized, and strangely emboldened. Truth is slow. Outrage is instant.

Do you know what's crazy?! If you ask almost anyone…"does attention equal truth?"…almost everyone will answer…"no, of course not." Yet, we act as though attention does equal truth, because the structure rewards you for doing so. Over time, the distinction collapses, and desire itself becomes an algorithmically-shaped commodity. This is why we can't trust our desire…because our "wants" are increasingly the product of the very systems that profit from manipulating them.

Algorithms—and platforms like Twitter—don't just show you what you want…they train you how to want. It isn't just that people perform outrage for clicks…it's that the performance rewires the desire of the performer and consumer.

Desire is increasingly outsourced, so we confuse reaction with truth because we've been trained to crave reaction as the proof of truth.

So yes, Twitter is an interesting case study in how radicalization works. It’s not inherent. It’s not necessarily lying to you. It’s pushing you to embrace your worst instincts. It radicalizes people by offering attention—because it makes them feel seen and validated.

If the platforms won’t regulate you, then regulate yourself. Be suspicious of your own desire and hunger to be seen. Ask yourself: are you consuming people who are trying to find something true, or people who just want attention?

Because the algorithm doesn't care which one it is. And the more you mistake attention for truth, the easier it becomes for performance to control your desire and capture your attention.

Stay curious.

This recent note sent me down a rabbit hole regarding the ‘make Christian Orthodoxy great again’ shtick proliferating the internet (I’m also putting trad Christianity under this umbrella for this essay). I’ve developed more ranty thoughts on this than I care to admit, so here we are.

A post.

Most of this isn’t really about God…or at least not the God you’re supposed to find and feel on Sundays. It’s about the desire for moral clarity in a culture that can’t give you anything but the illusion of options and choice. It’s about the fantasy of finding a system so total…so ready-made…that you don’t have to invent yourself anymore. A system that allows you to embrace the restrictions on your choice…and then pronounce it to be moral virtue.

The trad turn isn’t new…it isn’t some coming spiritual revolution…it’s nostalgia for authority disguised as enlightenment.

So, to them I say…you want the aesthetic of conviction because our modern culture has made conviction look dangerous and rare. Is there a better way to package your submission? With this package… you become an identity performing conviction that allows you to feel rebellious, dangerous, moral, and something totalized.

The problem: I think you clearly have a hunger for a moral system that operates in more of a totality but are too lazy to read Kant (same though). And to be fair Kant is probably not as memetically sexy to quote as some of the wild and fantastical biblical text we have (so fair I guess).1

But to keep this post somewhat relevant to the Note…

1 The Maslow Stuff

First, the note misses the entire point of Maslow's hierarchy of needs (MHN)2. At least from a sociological perspective. The MHN pyramid is not a blueprint for self-actualization through comfort…it's a brutal reminder that actualization is a privilege, one that depends on shelter, food, safety…not in theory, but in the material conditions of daily life. These aren't aspirational bullet points…they're the foundation…of living. To suggest otherwise is like telling someone drowning that they should really focus on their breathing technique.

"The saints found God in starvation, in exile, in prison, and even in death.”3

Yeah, and i've been high on some psychedelic brew, I saw something like God. My suffering was self inflicted…a controlled incubator for me to suffer on a cushiony floor mat, with the relative hope that the other people in the room will keep me alive in the process. I found the experience valuable, sure. But it was a choice…and one built to be a controlled incubator for me to suffer and be kept safe so that I could LARP an expression of spiritual awarness.4

Now, credit to the priest or the monk. Their self-inflicted suffering often serves a higher purpose, a deliberate confrontation with the raw edges of existence. This is good. The priest chooses the desert…not because the starving peasant was already in Eden, but because the peasant had been violently exiled from it…so the priest descends, not to bypass MHN, but to scream from that desolate place, demanding a world where we do not ignore the bodies of those crushed by conditions they did not choose. The monk’s emaciated form isn't an advertisement for enlightenment-through-starvation…it's a living indictment of a world that allows said starvation.

So yeah…the Note i'm addressing is profoundly wrong. The priest or monk who renounces food is not an argument against MHN…they are a theatrical, often desperate, reminder of it. The priest is meant to bring attention, to force our gaze towards the pain of those who do not have the luxury to choose between need and some spiritual transcendence. You are not called to reject the hierarchy…you are called to ask…who is systematically denied the chance to even start climbing said hierarchy? And why? What structures are holding them down?

To be fair…the soul may require communion to flourish. But the body requires sustenance to survive. And for those who cannot secure the proper sustenance…I can assure you…they're not thinking about some proximity to God for some new philosophical realization…they're trying to acquire their anesthesia for the systemic abandonment they're experiencing. Their most fervent prayer is for the next meal, not the next mystical insight.

2 New Age Christian BS

I have no proof of this…only what I've observed. But there's this growing trend of edgy women on Twitter and Substack who have this whole philosophical Christian Orthodoxy/Catholicism thing going. And it’s definitely making a mark on Substack. Now, do not be fooled: this is not about theology in the traditional sense. I consider this more of a direct example of Gen Z hyper-irony collapsing in on itself…in a way it started off as insincere and has turned into something almost sincere.

They perform the aesthetics of a Christian philosophical perspective…and you can’t help but wonder: when they consume their own thoughts on the matter, do they really believe it, or are they just trying to convince themselves that they do? There’s a digital barrier—a curated feed—that seems to help these 'creators' let their irony fold in on itself until it becomes belief. Or at least…a very marketable image of belief.

I’m sure Baudrillard would have some words on this simulation. What I’m critiquing is not the return to religion, but the simulacrum of religion. It’s not even faith…it’s a ritualized copy of the aesthetic of faith…now endlessly self-replicating on platforms optimized for spectacle. The irony folds in on itself until it pretends to be Truth.5

“Is it about aesthetics then?”

Probably. When isn’t it? We’re talking about internet culture, where the map not only precedes the territory…it is the territory.

Anyway, this return to Trad Christianity isn’t really a return to tradition—or even a genuine desire for tradition. It’s a simulation of conviction. You’re not seeking belief…you’re seeking the feeling of having once believed. When the self fragments, nostalgia become your narcotic.

It’s a craving for the feeling and aesthetic of conviction. When everything feels uncertain—when truth itself seems to have crumbled in an endless fragmentation with infinite pathways—how do you find conviction? You seek out nostalgia…a powerful opiate for the terminally online. And that nostalgia gives you attention, which in turn lets you perform conviction, with all the trappings of tradition, because it hits people’s feelings and desire for their own nostalgia.

It’s a self-reinforcing loop. You think you’re rejecting consumption by embracing some denial of worldly pleasure, but what you’re really doing is consuming aesthetics of that denial. Even your “tradness” is content, meticulously curated for the feed. Consume! Consume! Consume the restraint of others!

Your desire for nostalgia wishes to take your soul.

Okay…so I’m not calling these types grifters or Christian LARPERS, but I’m also not about to say they have real (whatever is real? topic for another day) conviction. Maybe they’re just auditioning for the role, hoping that if they wear the costume long enough, it’ll start to feel like skin.

“You’re reading a lot into their psychology from one note.”

I’m reading into the fantasy I’ve constructed in my brain about these types over months. It’s not a perfectly accurate image…but it’s definitely touching on something raw and true. You should judge me. This whole rant is its own performance, isn’t it? My catharsis as content. Do not find me wise when I could be another priest!

Now, let me continue to critique the simplified image I’ve created.6

3 Morality

So, you desire moral clarity? You think Christian Orthodoxy will provide it? Let’s stop pretending this is about theology. You’re not becoming Orthodox because you had a spiritual awakening. You’re becoming Orthodox because you’ve realized the neoliberal order has no idea what to do with your soul. It promised freedom…but gave you choice without meaning. It promised liberation…but delivered you into an algorithm that auto-fills your identity.

So…you don’t want to obey God because you love Him or something. You want to obey God because the algorithm made you hate your own reflection (or it made you hate that it made you overly aware of your reflection).

Here’s a psychoanalytic layer: the nostalgia for God becomes the return of the superego Other. The Other that was lost from having to constantly see the reflection of yourself.7

Modern neoliberalism sells you infinite choice…then accuses you of picking wrong. You thought freedom meant fulfillment. You crave the rules…not because you love them…but because you can hide behind them.

You don’t want order. You don’t even want moral clarity. You want a pretext for obedience, a reprieve from the crushing weight of self-authorship. You retreat to tradition, to Orthodoxy, to patriarchy, to piety…not because you believe, not because these systems are inherently better, but because they don’t ask you to invent yourself. Because they precede you. Because they feel like something outside the market.

Which sounds better: “I’m obedient to God’s moral system,” or “God’s word made my path clear”? The latter sounds like divine guidance; the former, like a conscious choice to submit.

Both achieve the same end…the outsourcing of difficult thought and the comforting illusion of certainty. Your embrace of “trad” becomes the fantasy of meaning without freedom.

You’re tired of consuming and the inevitable resenting that your choice in consumption leads. The fragmented self, a product of modern liberalism’s demand to be anything and everything, all of the time…discovers the endless cycle of resentment. But do not worry—there’s a product to consume that will help you get over that resentment(for a time). You only have to choose.8

But think about it…if Christianity is “The Truth”, then you don’t have to ask further questions…about sex, about ambition, about God, about the child you don’t have and the purpose you don’t feel. You want the rules. You desire them. You want them not necessarily to follow with integrity, but to hide behind. They become a shield against the terrifying void of self-responsibility. The return to religion, to moral absolutism, to “based” truth…this is not a spiritual revolution. It’s nostalgia for repression. A deep, unconscious wish that someone would take your freedom away so you no longer have to feel guilty for wasting it.

I wish I could believe you…not really. I’m just saying that to sound more humble and wise. My arrogance knows no bounds. Truthfully, I don’t think any of these online Christian philosophers or anti-West lifestyle types care about the truth. You care about finding a system that looks like it knows what it’s doing. This is why you seek nostalgia, why you seek old systems. It gets attention. It gets clicks. It gives you another reason to become obedient to that system. You want God’s authority because you hate how narcissistic the liberal God of “be your best self” made us. Again, I don’t blame you. But it doesn’t make you truthful. It makes you a priest that presents the aesthetic of certainty.

4 Liberal Overload

This is the core of it, isn’t it? The “liberal system overload.”

The subject becomes paralyzed by too much self-awareness, too many mirrors, too many possible selves. It’s exhausting. It’s not just that liberalism dangled the carrot of freedom, liberation, and choice…it beat us with the stick of mandatory self-creation. You must be unique. You must have a personal brand. You must optimize every facet of your existence—from your gut biome to your political takes—all while performing for an invisible, ever-judging audience. All the while the stick that kept hitting you was the invisible hand guiding your every choice…and your perception of what it is to be free and liberated.9

The promise was liberation. The lived experience, for many, is a low-grade, persistent anxiety attack fueled by comparison and the terror of irrelevance. And the only escape from the pending rent payment is further consumption or an even more dreadful work-life balance.

But here’s the part no one wants to admit: You didn’t reject liberalism because it was too permissive. You rejected it because it colonized your desire. Every ad, every feed, every ideology told you what kind of person you should want to be, what kind of sex to have, what kind of relationship to pursue, what kind of ambition to cultivate—and, worst of all, what it meant to be free. You didn’t feel liberated. You felt curated. It taught you to desire, then accused you of wanting the wrong things (Choice meet stick).

The sheer volume of information, the cacophony of competing narratives, have shredded any shared sense of reality. In this epistemic fog, the appeal of a system that claims singular, unchanging Truth becomes almost irresistible. It’s a lighthouse in a sea of mental fragmentation. We have endless fragmentation! Why do you think the schizo genre of content has become more common place? We relate to the endless fragmentation and desire to become centralized again.

Liberalism, in its modern guise, often dissolves the very communal bonds that provide meaning, leaving individuals adrift. So of course, a ready-made community with the nostalgic backing of tradition looks like another opportunity for liberation.

You are not rejecting liberalism! You’re fulfilling it. You’re taking the logic of personal branding, moral performance, and commodified identity to its late stage: total self-erasure and submission to the status quo…and then claiming your lack and your lie as something profoundly True.10

Then there’s the burnout—the relentless pressure to produce, to become. The idea of surrendering, of simply being within a preordained structure…it must feel like an incredible exhalation.

“Just tell me what to do, what to believe, and I’ll do it. I’m tired.”

But here’s the problem: your desire was already stolen. And now your rebellion is too. Even your nostalgia is manufactured. You think you’re escaping liberalism, but you’ve just become a different kind of liberal subject: one who chooses discipline over defiance, hierarchy over the uncertain, and an unending desire to see yourself through the digital screen.

This turn to Tradition, or any other all-encompassing system, isn’t necessarily a deep spiritual awakening.11 It’s often a symptom of postmodern despair…a symptom of liberal society’s discontents…a desperate search for guardrails in a world that feels like it’s spinning off its axis. It’s a desire for the perceived solidity of the past, an escape from the uncertain, demanding, and often deeply alienating…present.

The tragic irony?

This “escape” is often just another lifestyle choice, another identity consumed and performed within the very liberal, market-driven framework it purports to reject. The algorithm doesn’t care if you’re selling crystals, courses, or slop content…it just wants your engagement. And it will get it.

You’re not rejecting the liberal order. You’re begging to be rescued from it—not because it’s too permissive, but because it left you alone with your own hollow, pre-programmed desire.

Or maybe worse…it began to show you how pre-programmed your desire actually is…

So here we are, endlessly circling the drain of self-discovery and self-abandonment, desperate for a system…any system…that will finally deliver us from the anxiety of being both the author and the audience of our own lives. The irony is suffocating: in our search for meaning, we become even more entangled in the machinery that first made us feel so lost. Maybe that’s the real revelation. Not that New Age Christianity, or some trad Christian aesthetic, or any “return” to order, will save us, but that the desire to be saved is itself the most all consuming product of a culture that can only market escape as another form of capture.

So, what now? Do we double down on tradition? Do we drape ourselves in the symbols of borrowed certainty? Or do we face the potential reality that there is no exit? Maybe the only honest move is to sit with the discomfort, to admit that the DESIRE for someone else’s rules is just the ghost of our own uncertainty…our own lack. In a culture built to sell you every answer, perhaps liberation is learning to live without one.

Psychiatry has been scrutinized more as a mechanism of control than recognized as a tool for healing. Why is this? Are psychiatrists trying to heal those mentally unwell? Many of them (almost all of them even), yes. But psychiatry, as a symbol, has been weaponized into a blunt instrument of ideological enforcement. Let me explain.

"Sluggish schizophrenia"—a phrase coined by the Soviet Union—was their preferred phrasing instead of the more commonly understood "paranoid schizophrenia." This was a diagnosis used by the Soviets as a mechanism of control, one that masqueraded as care. Those who could not contort their identities into the state-prescribed reality were no longer simply wrong…they were considered schizophrenic. The disorder was fabricated to brand political opposition as pathological. No delusions, no hallucinations—just an unfiltered dose of independent thought. Some of these patients may have demonstrated schizo tendencies, but schizop…

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This is another character for you to consume.

Some of you will find me a bit insane, full of myself, maybe a bit schizo, blind to my own ignorance...and to those I say, good, you should. Run with that thought. Destroy the small symbol of me by maintaining your idea of me and what that represents for you.

What I'm trying to say is...this is not going to be a place of neatly packaged conclusions or universal truths. If anything, I wish to avoid those conclusions...forever. I'll let other people delve into that more definitive, conclusion-driven style. Personally, I find it limiting—it demands a kind of certainty I don’t naturally gravitate toward. Some people excel at that; their minds are wired to make everything concise and wrapped up, but for me, it feels disingenuous. I need ambiguity for the sake of my own sanity.

"Such would be the successive phases of the image:

it is the reflection of a profound reality; it masks and denatures a profound reality; it masks the absence of a profound reality; it has no relation to any reality whatsoever; it is its own pure simulacrum." -- Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation

Society's Shared Psychosis

So, let's start with society and branch off from that foundation.

Society, at its core, thrives on a delicate balance between conformity and controlled deviation. The deviation is the accepted level of neurosis where society will not call you psychotic. It requires people to give themselves to authority at some level to function—to accept its norms, rules, and boundaries, even as those norms are constantly shifting. Society runs on what could be called the "accepted formulations of psychosis," a shared illusion of order and coherence that allows it to perpetuate itself.

What do the structures of society truly hate? They hate when too many people reach high levels of neurosis—when individuals become unpredictable, chaotic, or ungovernable. These people, through their deviation, challenge the shared psychosis. They become vectors of change, disrupting the carefully curated narratives that keep the majority in line.

Take identity, for example. When society fails to accept our sense of identity, we begin falling into neurotic states, seeking outlets to express these various states of being. Society says, "Be gay if you want, but don’t be too gay." You can express your femininity, but not so far outside the norm that it destabilizes the boundaries of gender expectations. You can embody your manhood as you wish, but still represent what it means to be "a man" within the limits society has constructed. You can follow any religion you choose, but our laws and public life can’t deviate too far from the dominant faith.

This is the negotiation of truth—where individual expression exists only within the confines of what the collective psyche can tolerate. The moment expression or deviation crosses an invisible line, it threatens the system’s stability. It’s not outright rebellion that society fears most, but the slow, creeping realization that its constructs aren’t as immutable as they seem. Too much neurosis disrupts the shared psychosis, the illusion of order, and forces the system to confront its own fragility.

But why is society fragile? Because beyond the illusion is the harsh reality that society will always rely on a shared form of psychosis...and to confront this is to acknowledge that societal structures will always become psychotic, as they rebel against the likely schizophrenic nature of the universe.

This negotiation plays out in every realm of life. It’s why systems simultaneously allow and limit rebellion. Express your individuality, but not to the point where it undermines the very idea of individuality as society has defined it. Follow your desires, but don’t question too deeply where those desires come from or how they’re shaped. Accept the negotiation, or you risk being cast as a threat, an agent of chaos, a vector of the schizophrenic nature of the universe.

This tension is where the possibility of real change resides. Society doesn’t crumble when a few people rebel. It crumbles when too many people step outside the prescribed formulations—when neurosis spreads and individuals begin to see the psychosis for what it is: a construct. That’s when the negotiation breaks down, and new truths, new structures, and new shared illusions emerge.

"The risk of madness is gauged by the very appeal of the identifications on which man stakes both his truth and his being." -- Lacan.

Internet as Projection

Okay, enough of that...let's bring my reductive formulation of the universe back to a cultural moment: the internet.

The internet is in its age of projection. QAnon has replaced reality for many, as its adherents interpret real-world events as evidence of their hyperreal framework. This reinforces their belief in its existence, often making them more willing to question reality itself rather than their digital construct. Cryptocurrency, though controversial—I know many crypto enthusiasts will dislike my framing—relies on a shared belief system, speculative narratives, and conceptual constructs. Its value is symbolic, much like the American dollar, which now depends on global belief in U.S. economic power rather than being tied to the once-sensationalized gold standard.

I'm saying that the internet now plays a fundamental role in the speculation and negotiation of what is real.

Let me start with a core piece of my thought: the recognition that the internet has pushed us into a hyperreal space, where even baseless conspiracy theories or half-formed ideas are presented with an authoritative veneer. Our online spaces have become a fractured territory that was once more dominantly held by real events and ideas. But what if we step outside that space?

Because conspiracy theories, at some level, can provide interesting thoughts, perspectives, and ways of thinking. But what is often the problem with them? Maybe we can say they are a distraction from real issues, which has some truth. Or maybe it is that people who fully embrace those conspiracies are seeking some authoritative gap to fill, so they dismiss reason and become overly reductionist in their conclusions, making a conspiracy theory the pillar they will die on.

I say this because you should not see me as an authority. I'm someone filled with doubt and trying to escape that doubt (but not really escape...only for moments).

This side of my project will be developing, but at some vague level, it is about those in-between spaces—the exploration of the liminal spaces—where ideas can exist without being flattened into sound bites or algorithms.

And I want to touch on that flattened point. I'm not in the business of building pillars of knowledge; I'm more interested in the map and understanding how one comes into various forms of thought and perspectives based on where they enter the map, if that makes sense?

I suppose my desire is to explore the multiplicity of realities, a labyrinth that only flows into another labyrinth. I think much of our current world, at some foundational level, no longer sees truth as singular or authoritative but instead as a negotiation of excess realities.

I think the negotiation of reality has always occurred....it's just that our current moment is leaning more towards an excess of negotiated realties.

Maps Without Territory

Okay, but what the fuck does this look like?

At some point, I wish to bring this underground experiment away from the curated confines of the internet, back into external reality. The real world. But that will be a discussion for a later date.

To accomplish what I've mentioned so far, we must turn our attention inward and outward—examining the layers of society and ourselves. These layers are intertwined in a way that cannot be escaped, as the self and society co-create each other in an ongoing feedback loop. But what’s most fascinating, and perhaps most elusive, is the space between these two things: the liminal space where self and society meet, clash, merge, and transform.

Why focus on this space? Because it holds the greatest influence over us—shaping who we are, how we act, and how we perceive reality. Yet it’s a space we cannot inhabit fully or consistently. The moment we try to pin it down, the moment we fully recognize or define it, it changes into something else. It ceases to be the in-between, the undefined, and becomes part of the known, the structured. And so, this elusive space continues to evade us even as it defines us.

"Ah, this is a bunch of mumbo jumbo word vomit."

Yes, yes it is. If you are here, you're probably into theory at some level—philosophical bases like Deleuze or maybe Žižek, or perhaps you enjoy psychoanalysis...like Lacan or you see Freud's insights as getting at something beyond the literal. Now, if this is you, you have probably heard people say about these various thinkers, "Ah, they are confusing, they just produce word vomit, they're vague, they are not saying anything; they just string some pretty words together."

They do have a point. But that doesn’t mean it’s for them—and that’s okay. It doesn’t make those who are interested in these areas wrong either. I’ve come to accept that these subjects and ideas will always remain niche to some extent. Society seems to require a level of universality, a shared foundation of truth to maintain coherence. Yet, it’s often those who venture outside of these boundaries—who challenge and chip away at these universal truths—that begin to reshape and reformulate what we understand as truth.

Engaging with this realm means embracing a certain degree of neurosis. It comes with the risk of cultivating your own unique form of psychosis, one that diverges from the collectively sanctioned, socially constructed psychosis we all operate within.

Take someone like Freud. He fundamentally altered how we view psychopathology and the mind. He obviously was not right about everything, but his ability to move outside of the established universal truth chipped away at a piece of some universal understanding that society held. He did this even though, when people refer to him, they will comment on the Oedipus complex in a literal sense or say that Freud is no longer followed. But the spaces in between his thought, his meaningful writings, his many ideas, were something that fractured a universal truth that society held. He opened a doorway to the psyche. He provided a map that held uncharted territory.

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I.

I admit it: I’m an overconfident writer—arrogant, even. I revel in experimenting with my prose, convinced there’s a unique style that defines my voice. Yet, this audacity comes with a cost in the digital creator space. Experimentation in writing is about chasing the unproven, often veering away from the trendy and the safe. Recently, I created a chapter for my “Red Book” that transforms a dream or “vision” into a narrative—a reflective dive into my thoughts, emotions, and research from that moment in time. It’s an exercise in introspection, a playground for my experimental style and performative writing. Or so I hope.

I love sharing my work, but I’m acutely aware of the backlash. The digital artist space is harsh, unforgiving.

“Oh, you think you’re Carl Jung? You’re not that smart.”

Well, of course I’m not Jung—I’m not trying to be. I’m trying to explore myself and the relationship of self with the external. I’m not trying to be anybody. I’m just trying …

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I.

I think the most devoted followers of Christ or God essentially—though this may be a rather provocative way of putting it—have a fetishization of certainty and maintain a fear based detachment from humanity.

Allow me to explain…

Below is context.

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A not so subliminal question that encapsulates this letter: what does the bull in a China shop do when you hold up a mirror?

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I’ve been delving deeper into my concept of The Priest and developing more analyses around it. I’ve been reading Fanged Noumena by Nick Land and it has offered some intriguing insights in this area. However, it’s important to note (I guess…because some need me to state the obvious) that I don’t endorse many of his current positions. That said, his observations in some of his older writings are particularly poignant given today’s political landscape and climate.

Okay, I got that out of the way…

"This is Nietzsche as a fanged poet at war with the philosophers (with the new priests), a thinker who seeks to make life more problematic." — Fanged Noumena, Nick Land

Maybe the modern philosopher is simply those that wish to make life more problematic. We will destroy your priest! Shatter your priestly illusions! No one shall inherit the earth! Or something like that.

“Nihilist.”

No, you wish I were though. I can feel it. Oh, you want to dismiss the potential penetration of the psyche as mere sy…

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I.

So, we’ve observed a significant rise in the new right, as well as a more extreme right. It’s fitting to describe these movement as populist and reactionary.

A prime example is Marine Le Pen’s National Rally party, which is a nationalist and right-wing populist group in France.

Here's a graph from the Financial Times that illustrates this shift:

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I.

I stumbled on a clip from Law Roach (celebrity fashion designer for other celebrities such as Zendaya) that offered their candid and vulnerable perspective on romantic relationships.

Anyway, I found this clip a perfect frame for discussing some thoughts I’ve been having on identity…

Here’s the clip:

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This essay is porn.

I’m writing this with rage and feeling anxious, and I hope it makes you anxious too. Anxiety is a fundamental aspect of our humanity—it’s your humanity shouting back at you. Your anxiety stems from your ideals, the very ideals that create the anxiety in the first place. The same can be said about rage.

Your anxiety is what your ideals deny because the ideals are the Thing that creates the anxiety. It’s the Thing that creates the voice of your anxiety—and rage.

Shelving that though…

PRIESTS

Before we explore the role of priests, let’s consider the broader landscape of religion. Religion, in its many forms, isn’t confined to ancient texts or traditional worship spaces. It extends into modern groups and internet communities, where it serves as a framework for collective belief and behavior. This phenomenon begs the question: Do we wish to adopt the prevalent modes of thinking? Well…the most widely known modes of thought will be simplified for mass consumption. Always.

T…

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There’s this JoJo Siwa clip circulating (everything I know about her, I know against my will), a child reality TV star from Teen Moms (I think). Throughout her late teens, she acted under the disguise of a child, an act that has now taken a particular turn (she keeps talking about the drastic switch she's taking…). And now she’s 20, so the act went from weird, to creepy weird, so instead of masquerading as a 10-year-old, she’s a 20-year-old playing the role of…well, a 20-year-old (rebel?).

A rebel that believes they are inventing…gay pop…

Anyway, I couldn’t help but marvel at the extent of her egoism and narcissism, which is blatantly built from pressure to become a product, thus she has become an identity mimicking a product. This has her living in a special kind of delu delu town, surrounded by residents who only know the word ‘yes’.

JoJo has become a representation of life that replaces direct experiences with mere images and appearances. She grew up under the spotlight and pressures…

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"The only hope of our recognizing the truth of our predicament, becoming part of as well as being able to influence our reality, lies, I believe, in our making the transition from object to subject. For most of us this is a far from painless process, and many never even dream of its possibility. Paradoxically, it is in our 'symptoms' of anxiety, distress and malaise that encouraging signs are to be found of the insistence of the subject on being recognized. It is thus in our capacity to be disturbed by the false objectivity of our world that the greatest hope lies for our being able to do something about it." — Illusion and Reality: The Meaning of Anxiety, David Smail

***

"You're not taught what to want, but how to want, the modern innovation is to let you think you came up with you on your own." — Sadly, Porn… Edward Teach

***

"In the sunset of dissolution, everything is illuminated by the aura of nostalgia, even the guillotine." — The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera

"We c…

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I almost skipped commenting on this Andrew Huberman mess from New York Magazine. Why? Because it’s overly sensationalized gossip dressed as news. ‘Oh, the recently rich and famous Phd self-optimization guru that’s on TRT and who has never been married has multiple girlfriends?’ Damn, that’s so crazy I would have never guessed.

For those who don’t know here’s NY synopsis of him…

“Today, Andrew Huberman is a stiff, jacked 48-year-old associate professor of neurology and ophthalmology at the Stanford University School of Medicine. He is given to delivering three-hour lectures on subjects such as “the health of our dopaminergic neurons.” His podcast is revelatory largely because it does not condescend, which has not been the way of public-health information in our time. He does not give the impression of someone diluting science to universally applicable sound bites for the slobbering masses.”

And digging up someone’s dirt for the world to see? It’s an approach I find…unnecessary, nor is i…

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I've got a personal story for this essay. I was still in university. There was this woman (I'll call her A). We became good friends. She was kind-hearted, yet outspoken and assertive in her expression. She had an infectious laugh. She had an uncanny ability to see through the veil of people and sense their emotional state. She would listen with her entire being, and as the years have passed I've realized this is something rare. It's rare to find people who leave you feeling understood and validated, 'A' did that for me, and I hope I managed to offer her something similar in return.

"The specificity of the subject's desire is hence confounding, making it impossible for it to understand why it falls in love with a particular person rather than some other, or why, once in love, it finds it difficult to transfer its affections elsewhere...."

"Conversely, it may well be that the subject is intrigued by objects it experiences as somehow opaque or impenetrable because such objects provide a pe…

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Sam Harris recently had a clip of him discussing free will and consciousness going around Twitter. I wanted to comment on some of those claims.

Sam Harris:

So, consciousness is just the ground truth, and yet it's very hard to operationalize and study neuroscientifically or in any other way, right? And, and it's, you know, there are reasons why that's the case, and they're interesting, but it's, it's just, so, that's consciousness. Free will is a very different case.

I think free will is, is an incoherent idea. I mean, I very much agree with Sapolsky that it's, we know that it doesn't exist, and we know that what people think they have is an illusion.

And, it just doesn't make any sense no matter how you construe causality in this universe, whether you think it's determined, everything's determined, or you think there's some bit of randomness thrown in, and, you know, there's quantum indeterminism, some stochastic process added to the clockwork, or it's all clockwork, you know, however y…

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