Rules are made to be broken, just not by everyone.
There is a class of men who live by a totally separate set of rules than everyone else, and the common man would not survive without us. We are important, an evolutionary necessity to sustain and improve civilization. Weâre busy creating the regulations and systems that keep the rabble alive and fed (mostly). Some of us are generous, some of us are ruthless. At the end of the day it matters little for us because no matter how good or evil we are, the populace will always hate us because there is nothing more humiliating than needing someone youâll never hold a candle to. We are the oligarchs.
The greater a man becomes, the greater the moral ambiguity in our lifestyle is. Nobody makes the rules or guidelines for a king. Thatâs his job. A king doesnât just get to, he has to. The upper limits of power are uncontainable by anything external, and therefore can only be exercised by self-regulating men, whose extreme rulership of the self qualify them not only keep them from burning from flying too close to the sun, but qualify them for rulership of the rest of mankind.
Most men shouldnât even touch this extreme level of moral ambiguity. But it is my duty to generate the next generation of oligarchs and set them on the correct course. If not me, it will be someone else, probably someone worse. So unless you have an unreasonable confidence in your own judgment and an incorruptible and unpersuadable internal compass, Iâll need to ask you to leave. If you do, have a seat. And if you donât but decided to ignore me and continue anyways, you have taken a small yet crucial first step on your journey to becoming ungovernable.
The Underclasses
There are three relationships to the rules, and your mindset determines your role. Most people spend their entire lives trapped oscillating between obedience and tantrums, never realizing that both are still forms of submission.
Civilians treat rules as gospel, being absolute, unquestionable, there to save them. This childlike faith in procedure is almost touching. Unlike men whoâve read this post, theyâre genuinely shocked when wealthy executives avoid prison and governments quietly exempt themselves from restrictions imposed on ordinary men. Theyâre drawn to fundamentalist religions, and they struggle with ideas like ânobody is coming to save youâ because someone is supposed to. Systems breakdowns arenât even a consideration.
Rebels are the ones who notice that rules can be flexible and immediately become idiots about it. They donât have the discipline to process this correctly, reject rules emotionally, and up being smote for causing problems. They donât just not care about the approval of others, they relish in controversy and being combative. If theyâre not outright hooligans, theyâre often preppers, because theyâre always expecting everything to fall apart, and frequently volunteer to be the cause of it themselves. Theyâre the kind of people who believe that owning a Glock 19 is what keeps the government from driving a tank through their home or some such theatrics. They donât even realize weâd expend far less political capital to just freeze all their accounts and assets and make them legally unemployable. This is why rebels rarely become powerful. They confuse defiance with independence.
Oligarchs are sovereign. Itâs a fine line and often looks like rebellion with money, but the truth is that Oligarchs have both the defiance of rebels with the self-control of the civilians, just only towards our own code. âŠAnd of course with enough power to back up that sovereignty or the sense to know what and when to cede. They comply strategically, not out of principle. The sovereign never ask what is allowed, or what they can get away with. They ask if the consequences are worth the risk.
Rules are Paper-Thin
The first thing most people misunderstand about rules is that they think of them as a list of obligations when they are actually a list of if/then conditionals. Whatâs more, theyâre not even real. Laws of nature are instantaneous and brutal. Rules of man are only on paper, literally.
Take an obvious example: âThou shalt not murder.â Every jurisdiction on the planet has this on the books in some form. So if in my city, thou shalt not murder, what does that mean? If your answer is something like, âIt means youâre not allowed to kill people without reason,â I need you to kindly close the tab and go back to your 9-5 because this article is not for men who require the truth to remain simple for them.
Before I correct you, letâs try one more. In American Football, what is the rule about âholdingâ? A pawn would answer something like, âDefending players are not allowed to grab members of the other team with their hands. They can only use their arms or push.â This is also wildly incorrect. Itâs far more complex: âIf a referee witnesses a defending player grabbing an opponent with his hands, he must call a foul and apply a 5-yard penalty.â This implies two very important things. Itâs simply not true that holding is ânot allowedâ. First, the player first must be caught. Second, if he is caught, there is a prescribed penalty. A player who doesnât get caught can do anything he wants, and even if he does, perhaps the risk is worth it.
Iâve also left out the added layer that a referee is his own individual. He may call a holding penalty without actually witnessing the infraction. Maybe he has been paid off. Maybe heâs grumpy. Then in the meta outside the game, he may be more judicious because the league will expel him for too many poor calls because the profitability of the league relies on its perceived legitimacy. Or if itâs an amateur, his friends may not want to play with him anymore if heâs a shit ref.
This extends to every institution. Everyone selectively enforces rules based on incentives, leverage, and necessity. In fact, this is even by design in the American government, with judges given extreme discretion in all matters they oversee. A regulator may choose to ignore a violation because prosecuting would cripple a company. Putting an oil company out of business might cause a million people to lose power. Is that price really worth paying to stick it to a cheating CEO? You know the answer. And now you know where real power comes from.
This truth is especially offensive to civilians, who want the world to function like a vending machine. But every hierarchy on earth bends around value. Beautiful people receive more forgiveness. Competent men get more slack. Rich clients get better treatment. Powerful nations ignore rules weaker nations would get invaded for violating.
This isnât hypocrisy. It only looks like that if you are just looking at the rules on paper. This is the real system, working exactly as intended. A lot of people just donât like it.
Why We Tell You âNOâ
There are a few categories of rules each used for different purposes and with different reasons to break them. You will pass each of them as you become more autonomous, foolish, or ruthless.
Rules of Preservation
âLook both ways before crossing the street,â isnât a sacred commandment, itâs a rule for children to keep them alive. The street does not care about your philosophy.
Rules of Development
One of the first freedoms most children receive from authority is the ability to regulate their own scheduleâ what time to go to bed, what time to do homework, how late they can stay out. This is authority testing whether the child can begin governing himself. Technically this is already the beginning of making your own rules, you were just given permission to do so. Functional adulthood is the gradual replacement of external regulation with internal regulation. This is your first training ground for doing so.
Rules of Order
These are used to prevent dissension and conflict and keep order. A bucket of crabs is easy to carry because they pull each other down anytime someone tries to break rank. When I tell you to march side by side advancing to the enemy line, it has nothing to do with YOUR safety, itâs to keep the men on your left and right safer so that when you get done half of you might still be alive. Whether the individual soldier understands or agrees with the formation is largely irrelevant to whether the formation survives.
Order is important. It creates efficiency. Efficiency creates optimal results. It makes companies profitable and armies victorious, both of which you rely on. People only argue because theyâre upset that they are a cog rather than a lever.
Rules of Boundaries
The sign says to keep off the grass not because itâs toxic but because I paid good money for it, and if your fat ass leaves muddy divots in it, Iâm going to kick it. Now we can just avoid that unpleasant situation if you respect the guardrails I put up. Good fences make good neighbours.
Polite societies sometimes go soft and can be easy to take advantage of, because populations accustomed to excessive guardrails eventually forget what those guardrails are protecting from. Many rules are pre-negotiated alternatives to violence.
Rules of Power Preservation
Hey, itâs a very exclusive club. Monopolies, land use rights, and resource allocation policies are all very important tools to make sure not just anyone gets a hand on the wheel. Every aristocracy in history has restricted access to power. Unrestricted and unvetted access to critical systems is a poor long-term strategy.
When you know what rules are for and what the potential consequences are, youâll be able to make an informed decision about whether obedience is wisdom, cowardice, or merely administrative convenience.
Rules Are for the Incompetent
Rules are great for starting out, but nobody likes a man who follows all the rules. Not just because heâs a killjoy, but because it signals things about him.
As a child, if I ever asked âwhyâ I had to do what they said, theyâd always tell me what I needed to hear at the time: âBecause I said so.â This, of course was bullshit. But itâs what a 5-year-old needs to think, lest he do the only thing more dangerous than blindly trusting another human: trusting a five-year-old. Kids are the definition of incompetent, and their rules are to keep them from playing in traffic, literally.
Permission structures exist primarily where judgment and discipline are not trusted. If I have to spell out everything for you step-by-step and approve your treatment of every unexpected variable, then what exactly are you besides an adult child needing supervision?
Children ask permission because children are not trusted with consequences. Many adults still maintain this habit, seeking approval from some arbitrary expert or consensus before acting. Competent men act first and adjust afterward.
This is one of the defining differences between civilians and sovereigns, and why theyâre such a pain to employ. Theyâre obsessed with whatâs allowed, while sovereigns evaluate outcomes, risks, and consequences and take action. They understand that institutions are reactive to outcomes, not omniscient. A man incapable of independent judgment will spend his life waiting for stronger men to decide everything for him. Some will do so to take advantage of him, but most of us just donât want to deal with him at all. We donât have time to babysit.
Tiny Tyrants
The drive to rule the world, with or without the responsibility, is immense, probably second only to a manâs drive for sex. Unfortunately, there are only so many empires available, and the competition is fierce. Fortunately, most men donât actually crave power. What they crave is significance. Those two desires are easy to mistake for one another.
As a result, many spend their lives becoming emperors of increasingly insignificant territories that are easier to conquer while convincing themselves they've conquered something important. Theyâll become the president of a fan club, try to run a home ownersâ association, or maybe settle for VP of a small company. These are respectable things and society genuinely benefits from them, but problems arise when they take themselves too seriously while doing it. When becoming shift leader at your local burger joint is the apex of your life accomplishment, thereâs a big temptation to power trip around it and make it to be far more important than it is.
If you avoid the pitfall of giving up after failure, your next trap will be contentment with success that arrives too early and too small. This is self-limiting and self-sabotage. Itâs emotionally safe but dangerous in reality to derive identity from where you are now instead of investing in who you could be in the future. When you do this, growth suddenly becomes threatening. Remaining king of a small kingdom feels safer.
Plus, undersized kingdoms tend to produce oversized egos that are easy to take advantage of. The most effective oligarchs think very highly of themselves but are immune to ego. Thereâs no time for that. Itâs a weakness, and weaknesses keep you from the top.
These urges may seem normal, but theyâre quite childish. Itâs the same thing that happens when a group of boys build a fort and declare âNo girls allowed!â to announce their authority when, in fact, the girls didnât even care to be there in the first place. Their authority over the fort was real. It was the significance of that authority that was almost entirely fictional.
Never waste time or energy on imaginary power, and be careful of those who do. Theyâre the kinds of people who will blow up at you for offending their âdomainâ. Best to avoid them altogether if possible. But you can manipulate them pretty easily by catering to them. âIt must be so hard to collect all those HOA dues. Such a noble calling of you to take the time.â Itâs easy to get on Queen Karenâs good side by telling her what she wants to believe.
Never mistake authority for significance. Itâs a tragedy that many men spend decades defending a position they were meant to outgrow.
Everything is Negotiable
He who has the gold makes the rules. You surely know money is leverage, but it would be irresponsible to skip discussing how in a bit of detail.
Officially, the rules are made by legislators, judges, ethics boards, and other decorative organisms meant to reassure the public that nobody is truly in charge. Very comforting.
âPunishable by fineâ means âlegal for a priceâ. The parking ticket youâre panicking about is just an operating expense to a large corporation. And if thatâs not enough, just buy the manager of the transit authority. Or talk to his boss. Heâs a friend of mine. Roof access may only be for authorized personnel, but those authorized personnel only make $23k/yr so theyâll happily offer a guest pass for a Benjamin.
If you donât have money, you can supplement with skills, access, and knowledge. Whatever you have to offer, itâs well worth your time to become valuable enough that the systems prefer negotiating with you over destroying you.
Absolutely everything is negotiable. You just need to figure out what creative angle to come at a problem from, or circumvent it through. And youâd be surprised what you can get just by asking nicely. Doubly so if you can get on someoneâs good side before you do. A good start is to begin pushing the envelope by asking for forgiveness rather than permission, and then correcting course based on feedback.
Maybe the salesman would rather give you a discount than wait for you to consider longer. Maybe the lawman cares more about your attitude than your compliance. Maybe the âKeep Outâ sign is mostly just for idiots who might hurt themselves, and thatâs definitely not you. If youâre already an engineer, you just need to apply the same creative problem-solving talent to social situations to become a master negotiator. But you have to first understand that âNOâ is not the final word but rather the initial offer.
Ambitious rebels will understand this and dream of becoming a petty criminal. But any drunk can do that. This is why thugs get locked up while crime bosses often get a deal. And if for some reason the thugs donât get locked up, you can bet thereâs a reason why we donât want them to be.
Sovereignty and Self-Governance
Determining to amass enough wealth to enforce oneâs own way in the world is the first mistake most men make after getting a glimpse of the marionette strings that exist to manipulate the world order and decide they want to take hold. Wealth tends to follow the self-mastered, but wealth is not the ultimate source of power nor sovereignty.
The way upward is not wealth, obedience, or rebellion. It is becoming useful, difficult to replace, expensive to punish, and disciplined enough to be trusted with discretion. Civilians tend to imagine sovereign men as reckless creatures driven entirely by appetite and ego, when in reality the opposite is actually true. The higher a man rises, the less external structure exists above him. There is no supervisor standing behind oligarchs with a clipboard. At the upper limits of power, self-governance is no longer a virtue, itâs a survival requirement.
This is why genuine sovereignty is so rare. Freedom sounds glamorous until a man realizes it also means total accountability. No excuses, no guidance, and no procedure to hide behind. Every decision becomes your own, along with every consequence.
This is also why rebels almost never become rulers. They mistake impulsiveness for agency and assume that discipline is unnecessary when the rules are flexible. They then destroy themselves the first time there is nobody there to stop them. And this is, in fact, one of the things that bespoke guardrails exist to prevent. Contrary to what rebels believe, internal regulation is not a weakness. Itâs what allows power to exist safely at all. A king who cannot regulate his appetite becomes a tyrant and then a corpse. History is littered with men who possessed enormous power and freedom but couldnât survive it.
A man incapable of ruling himself has no business ruling anything else, and he will promptly be removed by those who can if he tries. This is why the strongest men often appear calmer than everyone around them. The sovereign is dangerous precisely because he does not require supervision.
Take care when wrestling for the ability to answer to no one but yourself. If you're not careful, you'll overshoot man's restraints on you and begin to wrestle with God. Even those of extreme agency must accept what they cannot change.
Becoming Ungovernable
So now you know how rules work, what theyâre for, and how to weigh the consequences of going around them. Do you have the agency to become an oligarch and rise above? Very few men do.
Most men spend their entire lives waiting for authorization, instruction, or to be certified or hear the consensus. They wait for the confidence fairy to descend from heaven and inform them that they are finally permitted to begin living. The first step towards becoming ungovernable is to stop that. Bureaucratic committees may not reward the man who solves problems before permission is given, but the universe does.
Second, stop asking âAm I allowed to?â and instead ask, âWhat happens if I do?â This transitions your decision making from obedience to judgment. And your judgment will sometimes betray you. Youâll be insufferably contrarian, or price a risk incorrectly and realize you made a bad gamble. But youâll never learn without making some mistakes, so the sooner you start the better. Learn to screw up efficiently.
The next step is to gain competence, which youâll gain from both those failures and successes. Learn from the rules while they are useful for learning from. The competent man receives fewer rules because he requires less supervision. This enables you to explore new territory, which you will also master.
Of course, no willingness to initiate, measurement of risk, and learned competence matter if you donât have leverage. An oligarch without resources is a rebel with better vocabulary. Money matters. Reputation matters. Relationships matter. Influence matters. The more useful, connected, trusted, and difficult to replace you become, the more the world begins negotiating with you instead of ordering you.
But the cornerstone, the key that transcends all four of these is the agency to self-regulate. Give a foolish man power and he becomes a tyrant. Give a greedy man indulgence and he becomes an addict. Give a coward authority and he becomes cruel. True freedom obliterates typical men.
Make your dominion over something of substance and take it exactly as seriously as it warrants. Manage your cravings as you get a taste of the exotic. And for godâs sake, try not to get yourself or others killed. This is how men gradually become too competent, too valuable, too powerful to remain fully containable by rigid systems. This is how oligarchs are made.
If you manage that, then congratulations. Now you have an entirely different set of problems. I guess weâd better talk about your new oligarch life as well.
The View From the Top
Now that youâve got new problems, the first thing youâll notice is that nobody understands them. I've climbed around more smaller power structures than most men, but I can't even pretend to relate to a sitting US president, for example. Oligarchs wouldnât be such if there were a lot of us. Itâs nice in the club, but itâs a bit small. We go to great lengths to filter our company because there arenât a lot of people like us who we can relate to or rely on. It also makes it harder to find anyone to partner with or give you a hand as you seek to make it in.
If youâre reading this in the same decade that I wrote it from my cafe in Warsaw, the social ladder has gotten a bit hourglass-shaped, being extremely broad at the bottom and squeezing the climbers in the middle. That makes it hard to climb, because no man rules alone, and thereâs a limit to how far up or down you can access. Some of this is intentional, but itâs generally healthier for society to see a pyramid. Elite institutions exist to gatekeep the aristocracy, not prevent entry entirely, and pyramids do that much better than hourglasses.
But for those who make the climb, being âabove it allâ provides an exceptional view. You have the ability to decouple your view from not just the perspectives of others, but also the idea that others can control you, at least fully. Weaker men cling to superstitious understandings not merely because they are fools, but because acknowledging that the real world is more complex would mean that itâs out of their control, and thatâs too terrifying to accept. A high viewpoint can allow you to see things more objectively and with more nuance. Just be careful to constantly evaluate yourself. Itâs very easy to become an âenlightened centristâ if youâre not honest with yourself and have too much ego. And nobody who isnât also at the summit with you can reliably point out your mistake.
So the situation isnât getting any better, despite the ever-increasing number of people competing for my time, advice, and companionship. For me personally, the most discomforting part of this is that there are few men who can rightly criticize me. Men who can and want to make me better are the most valuable thing in the world to me. Itâs also extremely difficult to get anything honest from people outside your class. If someone isnât flattering you, heâs surely complaining. Usually itâs one followed by the other, because both are attempts to manipulate.
Everyoneâs a Critic
It's not always about control. Being an Oligarch is morally neutral, and I can already hear you telling yourself you'll be one of the good guys. Through some miracle, you'll secure peace, prosperity, and the American dream for all. And everyone will be happy with you for it, right? That's okay, we were all new and green to this at one point.
If you don't remember the first rule of leadership, that everything is your fault, don't worry because you'll be reminded early and often. Petty problems make petty people. If you work a miracle today, tomorrow it will be an expectation.
âThe people you help the most end up being the most angry with you.â
-US President Henry Truman
Don't expect a confession, but a lot of it boils down to jealousy. Comparison is the theft of joy, and we bring a pretty sharp contrast. Resentment is to be expected. And the only thing worse for an insecure man than feeling lesser than someone else is also being dependent at the same time. Don't be surprised if somehow by some leap of logic your (allegedly) benevolent and generous headship becomes the source of all their problems in their eyes.
Most millionaires aren't well-known. Most oligarchs are hidden behind the curtains while a select few and a number of figureheads stand in public. Hopefully now you understand why. Unless your power comes from fame, there's little benefit to subjecting yourself to more scrutiny from the peanut gallery than necessary.
Allow this fact to liberate you. As men of influence, we are responsible indirectly for the outcome of the lives of those we oversee. But we have zero responsibility for their happiness. You can't make someone happy, you can only offer them ways to be.
Also, since you don't need anyone's approval to be your best, that also means it's okay to be better than people. It's just fine to be smarter, stronger, wiser, richer than people and know it. Just don't be an asshole about it. Or at least, consider that there are usually only negative results for rubbing it on people's faces without warrant. Enough people will already try to make an enemy out of you without you also making more.
Even if you've risen above constant discontent, I recommend treating it as just part of human nature to accept. And besides, it's not like ALL their complaints are unwarranted.
When Kings Miscalculate
The frightening thing about dangerous, powerful men is not that they can choose violence. It is that most days they voluntarily choose not to. You see, from the day mankind learned to farm we learned that keeping men from killing each other is generally more productive and makes everyone wealthier, especially us. Civilization itself is basically a negotiated truce among powerful actors. Peace is profitable.
We live and breathe success. Even if we were to bottom-out, from our experience and talents acquired over time we have the ability to build ourselves back up as many times as necessary. We cannot lose, just experience setbacks. Our only real weakness is one another.
Elite society operates on trust, reputation, and deterrence. Every agreement between us is sealed with little more than a handshake and the understanding that violating it may create more problems than it solves. Among oligarchs, trust becomes a form of currency because there are so few enforceable mechanisms left. The mafia is remarkable not because it is criminal, but because it independently rediscovers the same structures every civilization eventually does.
These principles apply at all scales. During the Cold War, the United States and the USSR spent decades pointing enough nuclear weapons at one another to level the planet several times over. Yet despite the ideological hatred, both invested enormous effort into maintaining communication, treaties, deterrence, and a balance of power, because thereâs no way to win a nuclear apocalypse.
Of course, this arrangement is never perfectly stable. When ambition, ego, greed, paranoia, ideology, or desperation overcome mutual interest, civilizations begin to bleed. Wars, purges, and revolutions are all variations of the same failure of powerful men deciding they would rather risk ruling ashes than share the kingdom.
Even when no rival is challenging, you've never felt the adrenaline course through you until you've realized and internalized that every buck stops with you. If you're concerned that nobody is coming to save you, just wait until everyone is expecting you to save them. Itâs especially rough when you have to save them from themselves, because that never makes anyone happy. But that's often less painful than stepping back and watching people destroy themselves. Which is the right choice? There's no procedure at this height and few to consult. The best answer by necessity is, whatever you think.
On the bright side, when you're rich and powerful, people tend to think you magically know everything. And there's no benefit to correcting them. But boy does this create high expectations. This is why most tiny tyrants stop at some sort of VP position. They know standing next to the throne is much less pressure than sitting on it, and it's one of the best ratios of power to responsibility available. A true oligarch does not get this charge, but the burden of judgment is heavy.
Thereâs no way to always avoid it. We are the top, yet we are still human. Youâll just have to appeal to the stars or God. Because at the end of the day, paper rules are still vapid. And the laws of nature, that being the laws of force, blood and steel, are the only ones that even we cannot break. If that puts the fear of God into you, thatâs good. Because He is the only being we will ever answer to.
Masters of Vice and Virtue
Drugs, alcohol, luxury status symbols, women⊠classic pitfalls that destroy men. Yet from Solomon the Wise to Bill Clinton, kings and presidents are surrounded by them just as much as the crashed-out addicts on the streets. A powerful man eventually reaches a point where almost nothing is truly inaccessible anymore, and that changes people. Ordinary pleasures stop feeling extraordinary when they become permanently available. To a man with millions, a Rolex isnât special, itâs just a fashion choice. With no ceiling, appetite and ambition escalate.
This is one of the reasons elite circles so often drift into dark territory. They are environments where ordinary moral guardrails arenât real anymore, and entire social circles can become self-reinforcing ecosystems where corruption, manipulation, vice, and decadence slowly normalize themselves. Civilians are shocked time and time again when itâs uncovered. They wonder, how does it keep happening? Why is nothing ever done about it? And most of all, how does such hedonism not destroy them?
We donât derive our identity from luxury cars and branded hand bags, nor our joy from drugs, nor our fulfillment from women. Some special men can handle more than one woman, but knows how much he can handle. (I think King Solomon was about 700.) The man who doesnât feel like a man without his Ferrari is a man who almost certainly bought it on credit. My friends know I love watches, but I donât need a Rolex to explain who I am or why Iâm important.
Conventional wisdom for conventional men says to abstain and greed, lust, and gluttony so they donât consume you. And for most people, that is probably wise. But we are silent hypocrites, because our signature trait is that we are not controlled by anything. After all, who really has control of his appetite, the man who hides from his vices forever through abstinence, or the one who has conquered them and tamed them?
Rebels test these waters early while it is usually one of the late tests for civilians, and many of both fail it catastrophically. History is littered with aristocrats who possessed enormous power and freedom but did not have the discipline to survive it.
This is why proven capable men are often found dangerously close to vice without collapsing beneath it. This is why oligarchs circles often appear morally ambiguous from the outside. Whether he partakes or not, a key identifiable characteristic is that he has the ability to remain physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually sober in its presence.
Falling From the Sun
Houston, We've Had a Problem. You're exploring altitudes few other men have ever been before. There is a lot that can go wrong. And there's no mission control to guide you. I hope your friends in high places and your golden parachute are reliable safety nets. Feeling on top of the world is one of the most invigorating experiences to achieve. But goddamn, it's a long way down.
When you fall from extraordinary heights, itâs like getting dropped into a foreign country. Youâll need to make new friends, a new budget, different clothing and different stores, and that will require a whole new playbook about how to live. Millions of people may live comfortably in this new country, but you wonât. Youâll be hurting, disoriented, and tempted to waste time mourning the loss rather than quickly adapting to the new ground under your feet.
The good news is that youâve got things nobody can take from you. Your skills and character will still be there. If you did it once, you can do it again, probably easier the second time. If you're truly talented and didn't just get lucky, you'll rebound. Most millionaires have gone broke three times before their peak. I've gone broke twice, so surely I'm just one catastrophe away from massive success. The things nobody can take from you such as your character and skills will help you rebuild. But that doesn't mean it's not painful.
Fly Anyway
Most people will misunderstand everything Iâve written. Theyâll think Iâm encouraging lawlessness or arguing that might makes right. A few rebels will walk away believing Iâve given them license to become even more obnoxious than they already are. Pastors and politicians alike will tear this apart no matter how much explanation I leave behind. This isnât for everyone. Itâs for a rare few. But the possibility of those few missing out would be too tragic to ignore.
The men Iâm trying to reach are not criminals, nihilists, or professional contrarians. We already have an abundance of those, and most die poor, angry, and convinced the world simply failed to recognize their brilliance. Iâm interested in something far more dangerous: agentic men. Men willing to think for themselves, assume responsibility for consequences, and exercise judgment when no rulebook can help them. And as with everything I write, my goal is to encourage you to reach your maximum potential.
Yes, itâs a hard climb and the summit greets you with a whole new set of hazards, but its reward is immeasurable. You get to stop living someone elseâs life and start truly living your own as you define it. Thatâs very dangerous, and whether you see that danger as a good or a bad thing tells a lot about your level of agency. Without that freedom, you are always going to be living in someone elseâs frame, conforming at least partially due to mental or physical constraints rather than genuine, limitless will of your own.
With that final removal of all limitations, you will be able to love and serve most truly and in greatest capacity, whether your devotion is to fellow man, to a lover, to yourself, or to God. And that is precisely what makes a man great.
This is why the prodigal son went on to become the most devoted and the most beloved.
The world needs more good men, men capable of exercising judgment when no clear answer exists and willing to accept responsibility for difficult decisions. Because the only thing stopping a bad guy in a tuxedo is a good guy in a tuxedo. That means entrusting men with dangerous knowledge, then praying they have the discernment to recognize when theyâve strayed from the narrow path and the courage to keep climbing anyway.
I sin a lot. If I really, truly gave life everything I had every day, Iâd probably sin even more. Ambition creates opportunities for missing the mark just as surely as laziness creates opportunities for regret. Iâm not content to be a one-talent servant, or even a three-talent servant. On judgment day, my goal is to be able to show every time I tried my best and include my mistakes, rather than to show how I barely ever tried and barely ever failed.
At some point youâre going to reach a point where no rulebook has the answer, and I want you to be prepared and face it without fear.
âGod will not have his work made manifest by cowards.â
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
So prepare to launch, my future oligarch. Maybe someday weâll rule the world together. After all, someone has to do it, and no man rules alone. I donât need to tell you itâs dangerous up there, Icarus. Iâm praying for you, and Iâm excited to see how high you fly.
As ever,
Fox