Less Foolish

Our cat died. The way he did was not pleasant. I won’t relive it here, but I keep reliving it. He had a big presence; it filled our house and our neighbourhood. Everyone knew him. Many things remind me of him, and I keep forgetting he’s not here. I can't wait for him to jump on my chest in the morning, kneading on my neck; petting him half asleep. I can't wait to let him outside, first thing upon waking, starting my day by feeling his felicity for adventure.

“Many men die at age 25, but aren’t buried until they’re 75.” - Benjamin Franklin, attributed I’ve been counselling young men recently, 25 and under, and something came up in each inquiry, which men seem particularly vulnerable to: the timeline. That dreaded, haunting timeline. Put simply, the timeline is a series of accomplishments, skills, and experiences that should be had by a certain age.

Three weeks of no internet. No surfing, scrolling, or delving. No computer, tablet, or smartphone either. Just this: Why? To overcome this1: The Pull. Our greatest threat. It’s subtle, unconscious, and, when capitulated to, potential robbery. I know this, and yet, I made excuses. It does provide some benefits after all. I feel righteously outraged, turned on, and homed in on what makes me feel inadequate on demand.

I’ve written 54 articles on this Substack this year, bringing the total to over 650 since starting in 2020. I’ll highlight the top ten, the ones I enjoyed writing the most or that were significant for me, marking some personal transformation. If you’re new to this Substack, or a casual reader who appreciates the overall vibe and is looking for some holiday reading over the next two weeks, these are for you. My favourite and most personally transformative piece of the year.

Taste. Your ability to recognize beauty. Some people have good taste, bad taste, or so-so taste. To develop better taste, have a simple practice: list cultural artifacts you found tasteful. Doing this on a regular basis will encourage you to engage with more tasteful art throughout the year to populate such lists, and to avoid tasteless slop, the path of least attentional resistance today. That’s the argument from my piece last week, which contained a few amateur theological musings.

“Think of your taste as an ability to recognize what’s beautiful, and your style as the way you apply your taste.” - Marty Neumeier In writing a “Taste 2025” entry, where I list the cultural artifacts that resonated with me this year, I started becoming curious about what taste actually is. This led me to the quote above, which in turn led me to amateurly theologize about beauty itself.

I was called a “Stoic Emo” once, And somehow it felt like home. Like every quiet war inside me Was suddenly something you could know ... I used some techno-magic to create an emo song from a few lyrics I jotted down … Audio playback is not supported on your browser. Please upgrade. Wow. I feel so seen. Super seen. Too seen. How’s this even possible?! “Being seen” = the hyper-cringe, therapy-speak term running wild throughout the modern world.

Adam will present this hard problem better than I can, but one way to look at it is through Kegan’s developmental stages: Even if you disagree with the framing of this model, sense into the truth of the core idea: people have different perspectives on what is and what ought to be, along with different capacities to take on (or “try on”) alternative perspectives. How do we have good-faith dialogue about contentious topics when this gap exists?

C. Thi Nguyen on not playing other people’s games Pay-what-feels-right (you can attend and pay for just one session). The idea: instead of the common teacher–student dynamic where an expert imparts knowledge and grades students at the end, a “steward” proposes a theme—ideally some kind of envisioned new knowledge or skill—and, from a stance of not-knowing, guides the collective intelligence toward greater insights, with the students ultimately “teaching the teacher.” Or at least, that’s the idea.

A new experience from The Stoa just dropped … What is this? It’s an “inverse course” that moves us away from mere “high agency,” understood as accomplishing within complex systems, toward “wise agency”: accomplishing with wisdom, or accomplishing the right thing, in the right way, at the right time, for the right reason, and with the right people.