The Fritz Letter: December 01, 2024
Seek the Center
Epictetus likened foolishness to blindness.
Some people just don’t see the world clearly.
And that’s okay.
We can do our best to lead, but we should never get angry with people for being foolish.
Also, odds are pretty good we’re all mostly blind to true wisdom.
Western academics are pretty proud of themselves for becoming so “wise,” when what they mostly accomplished was to silo the human soul into “rational” and “irrational” parts that never integrate.
That’s why so many people come out of western education depressed.
They’re systematically taught to bury the emotional and spiritual parts of their souls.
Then, when they realize they’ve gone too far, they swerve drastically in the other direction.
The result is a chaotic, bipolar, unbalanced path through life.
Nothing has changed about the human condition since before Socrates and the Tao Te Ching.
But we sure like to pretend we’re different creatures than the authors of the most ancient compilations of wisdom known to us.
And that’s why we fall prey to the same delusional mob mentality that killed Socrates, Seneca, and Jesus.
That’s why TikTok enslaves us just as effectively as sugar, cocaine, gambling, and sex.
The only way out of this Pendulum of Pain is to seek the center.
Think + Feel = Thrive
Yeehamaste, folks 🤠
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What I’m Working On This Week
Based on last week’s poll and some discussions I’ve had, it sounds like many of you would appreciate if I relaunched my podcast.
I want to do this mindfully, though.
Here’s where I went wrong the first time around:
I saw the podcast purely as a marketing strategy — a way to get other people’s audiences to become my audience
I talked way too much, because I was more interested in sharing my ideas than in getting other people to share theirs
I prioritized getting guests that I knew would likely say yes, because I just wanted to get content out
I didn’t do enough research on my guests before each episode
I let many of the episodes wander a bit too long
I want to do things differently this time.
For this relaunch, I want to focus on learning. That means focusing on guests with deep expertise in areas where I’m ignorant, and it also means I’ll need to do much more prep before each show.
I also want to focus on quality. I’m not particularly tech savvy and have a tight budget, but I want to make this show as tight and professional as I possibly can with quality video, audio, and editing.
Also, I want to get serious about tying the show to revenue so it will be more sustainable. To that end, I’ll likely try to arrange some affiliations and partnerships with products I actually use and appreciate.
I intend to bring creatives, scientists, psychologists, philosophers, historians, entrepreneurs, and more onto the show to share their stories and teach me — and you! — about the hidden things of this universe that we might miss if we aren’t paying attention.
So, I have another quick question for you:
What I’m Listening To This Week
A few months ago, I found a genre that I absolutely love: African desert blues. One of the best groups in the genre is Tinariwen.
This week, I’ve been playing their recent album, and the music has been connecting to something deep in my soul.
Tinariwen’s founder, Ibrahim Ag Alhabib, built his own guitar with a tin can, a stick, and a bicycle brake wire before teaching himself how to play, and the result is a musical style that colors outside of traditional lines and delivers something tangible in a way that the meticulously crafted pop albums of today simply don’t.
If this description has you hooked, I highly recommend you listen to their latest album.
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The Testimony of Jacob Cohen is a cosmic horror story about an archeologist on an Antarctic expedition who discovers a mysterious ziggurat that hides terrifying secrets from a forgotten past.
It draws inspiration from the narrative style of Dracula, the real-life Endurance expedition led by Ernest Shackleton, and Dionysian cult mysticism, along with modern astronomy, astrobiology, and mycology.
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