Start here. Or don’t.

This is what I’m about. This is why I write. This is the cost and the purpose. If you get it, stay.

I think literally one other person reads my essays. I’ve learned not to care. I’m going to give it my all anyway and if nobody wants to receive it, that’s on them.

My “spirituality” is the commitment to reduce suffering and increase wellbeing across all sentient experience, grounded in a rational, post-mythic understanding of consciousness, empathy, and valence - - as the only “ought” worth wanting in a universe that can feel.

I’ve been reading and writing philosophy obsessively for the past few decades, arguing and pushing past the edge to the best of my ability, developing a voice and mastering my craft.

Just when I’m finally ready to compile and publish, suddenly LLMs arrive and what would have stuck out as distinctive, penetrating, novel fusions and cogent, captivating conversation-starters gets blended in with millions of other essays. Some are legit (like Alex’s, Ingrid’s, Ishmael’s, Ellen’s, Peter’s and others I follow) but most are low-effort decoys only made possible thru heavy reliance on GenAI.

So now when I send my stuff to people they often think I’m just another grandiose LLM-hypnotized fool lost in a masturbatory, sycophantic rabbit hole. Friends and family worry about me and cringe. Some even point out the long dashes and the “it’s not X, it’s Y” structure as obvious tells. And then to back up their instinct (because it’s painful to admit that what Stella might have here is genuine, valuable, and tragically unsung, especially since she’s doing it at 4am and between her day jobs, plural) they rig their own LLM to give my work the most uncharitable reading possible and call me up to share the splendid news.

I just have to laugh. It’s a good thing I’m not doing this for praise. Not that I’m above wanting praise for things, but this particular writing is something I’d do anyway, it’s a tic. A compulsion. Even this intro could be the basis for an essay if I just keep going. I’ve reached a sort of zen satori flow but it’ll have to go unnoticed because of the timing. I’m not complaining. I love writing either way. I’ll survive, I’ve done it before.

When I used to do music a similar thing happened: Right when I completed my work at conservatory learning how to score symphonies by hand, a new version of sequencing and notation software dropped that really made the art of scoring and transposing on the fly obsolete.

Sibelius 3 ruined Symphony 4, A minor O63 for me for life. Don’t let that stop you from discovering it. Listen, by all means, and keep in mind it was written in 1911 while Sibelius himself was grappling with cancer and existential dread, which perfectly soundtracked my music “career” in the mid aughts after the launch of Sibelius 3. I was super-young so it wasn’t so much as a disrupted career as a life plan cut short on day one. Life hands you lemons. That’s fine. I can work with that.

Suddenly the world was flooded with “wallpaper” music, making it that much harder to sell my compositions or manuscript chops. And now even those Sibelius-slinging composers are out of work. Turns out AI can write serviceable wallpaper.

And but so* I write for one reason: there’s a lot of unnecessary suffering out there and I believe we can do better.

Even if nobody sees my work, neither writing nor music, I’m trying, and that’s all you and I can do, right?

If you’re also a writer, please help me and the world by writing not just for fun and frivolity, but in a way that makes human traffickers scared. In a way that honors dying egrets. In ways that give low-info boors no quarter. In ways that speak relief to agony. Say it bravely and clearly for those who can’t. Say it in spite of the soundproofed walls.

Every little drop matters.

That’s not some naive sentiment. It’s a metaphysical conviction.

If a tree falls in the woods and nobody hears it, does it make a sound? Maybe not technically.

But it vibrates the air molecules. It spontaneously transforms the universe into one that had a few more vibrating air molecules. Making it factually a different universe.

A baby was born while you were reading that last paragraph.

You and that baby have something in common: you share a universe.

A universe that has things in it that both you and the baby will never see: Ugly things that cause suffering, beautiful things that cause wellbeing, and everything in between.

But every one of those things adds to a very real list of facts about this shared universe.

That list expresses the KIND of universe we all actually live in, whether we know it or not.

You adding a simple moment of kindness, courage, wisdom, even love, to that list, factually changes the entire universe instantly, in that it adds another entry onto the ledger of “things that are the case in this universe.”

Universal re-definition of this kind travels faster than light and its permanent.

Living in a universe that has a little more kindness in it because of you is NOT NOTHING.

The baby may not see it. But you’ll know. Maybe I’ll know.

You’ll have made the universe we actually live in a little kinder.

Doesn’t mean much, except that because of what you felt and wrote, we are all factually in a wiser, kinder universe.

I’m sorry, but I simply refuse to see that as irrelevant.

Never stop. Never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever stop reaching for them in the dust.

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ALSO: everything is essentially electrons. In simple terms, energy.

You, me, rocks, suns, zithers, snow cones, and the substrate that abstract concepts like a=a must lean on in order to exist.

Some of these electrons clump together to form beings that feel empathy and seek to reduce the pain in other sentient electron clumps.

Empathetic Electrons are just a thing that happens given enough stuff and enough time.

Beings made up of light that care about the pain of others and try to reduce it. That’s us.

No mysticism necessary. It’s just a fact. A cool one. Use it. 👼⛓️⛓️‍💥

Be a dear and help me with these chains. We’re in this together. Always.

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