Heads Up: we’ve got two really fun programs coming up you might want to know about, (and that kinda pertain to the topic at hand in this week’s Substack).
Namely, how to step up and take radical responsibility for your life and leadership.
One is an immersive expedition in the canyonlands of Utah that is a guaranteed Top Five lifetime achievement and adventure.
The other is our brand new digital course, AntiFragile You–purpose built to balance personal performance with dynamic leadership and the unfolding dumpster fire polycrisis.
Check em here (canyons) and here (Antifragile) if interested!
Onto the topic at hand–how I think I became conservative, and why you might be too, even (and especially) if you don’t know it yet.
***
First, some setup:
My whole life, I would’ve pegged myself as a radical non-conformist. Zigging where other folks zagged. Instinctively cutting against the grain.
When most idealistic young lads in college identified with Herman Hesse’s Siddhartha, all about a little buddha finding enlightenment (in a van) down by the river.
#bubbasattva
I aligned more with his story Steppenwolf—the “wolf of the steppes.” Too human for the deep wilderness, and too wild to be considered safe by the townsfolk.
In Dungeons and Dragons alignments, I would’ve been Chaotic Neutral.
Definitely wasn’t Lawful.
And didn’t feel like being Lawfully Good(y twoshoes) in a world that didn’t have my back.
So instead, I took a consistently contrarian stance.
Point being, I’m about as far away from an Alex P Keating (or Charlie Kirk) Young Republican as anyone could ever get.
And yet, when I consider the advice I’d offer to my kids or other young and earnest folks these days, I realize that most of what I’d say eschews the hype of the next big thing (whether psychedelics, adventuresome sexuality, gender roles, utopian community plans, spiritual ambition, or NFTs) and instead sounds remarkably basic.
Traditional even.
But weirdly, mine’s not a pearl clutching retrenchment to these positions.
It’s not that I just got old and lost my bottle.
It’s more of an around-the-world full send.
After openly embracing, exploring, studying and writing about many of these topics for several decades, I’ve come back to the beginning and accepted:
there’s nothing new under the sun
shortcuts make long delays
there’s no skipping steps
biology is destiny.
***
Let’s take a few of these and unpack them with examples.
Drugs rarely accomplish what folks hope (and say, and say) they will.
Monogamy is likely your best bet for a happy life. (at least for starters)
Communes are doomed (hell is other people).
Enlightenment is a mirage.
Point One: psychedelics change everything, and they change absolutely. fuck. nothing.
As 5MEO DMT, the uncontested god-molecule, blast you to white light infinity consciousness on the nose cone of a dragon rocket, is on the verge of getting legalized for depression (!!!), we’d do well to ask, what’s all the fuss about?
Clearly, it’s not the pretty lights.
It’s not the flashy visions and “downloads.”
It’s not the weepy catharsis.
It’s not even the now certain knowledge that we are all just starlight dressed up as matter.
(Or maybe even alien starseeds from the Pleiades!).
It’s that rainy morning in February where you have to get, (or keep) your shit together at the office.
Or endure another 3 am wakeup with a colicky kid who just wont settle, no matter how exhausted you are.
Or changing catheters for a dying parent and not weeping into your Cornflakes.
In short, the measure of psychedelics (or any intervention, really) isn’t how high they can get you.
It’s how much you retain.
At your weakest and most vulnerable moments.
As religious scholar Huston Smith used to say, “may our passing illuminations become abiding light.”
If you’re not abiding light, dude, you’re just not doing it right.
So by all means, if you’re curious about Life, the Universe and Everything…
Shoot the moon. Check it out!
God Mode has never been easier, cheaper or more accessible in any human culture at any time, ever.
But once you’ve torn the wrapped off the Everlasting Gopstopper that is human consciousness, remember to suckit sweetly and not choke on those rainbow realizations.
As asymmetrically positive as initial experiences can be (especially in structured, therapeutic settings), there appears to be an equal and opposite asymmetrical drop-off in benefit to subsequent efforts.
Once we look beyond the neurochemistry of the experience, how much of the breakthrough healing is prompted by a new direct sense that there is, in fact, Capital M More to life?
What at first is revelatory and uplifting—i.e., “I don’t have to live a life of suburban confor- mity!” or “I am worthy of love!”—can quickly become existentially overwhelming.
Once I’ve had my Eureka experience, I realize that all of that More still irreducibly contains the human condition within it.
Welcome to the Brotherhood of the Screaming Abyss.
There’s a good reason why most never peer over the Edge.
Sometimes More isn’t always Better. It’s just More. A lot more.
If there’s any option at all, take the fucking Blue Pill. It’s way simpler.
IMPT: this isn’t a moralizing Just Say No argument like a conventional conservative might make, where fringe drugs are villified while booze and prozac are normalized.
Not trying to pathologize getting turnt.
It’s just to say, If so, then what???
Seriously.
Then what?
Point Two: maybe try monogamy first?
All the hottakes, think pieces and podcasts about Ethical Non-Monogamy are well and good, but after this last decade, most folks are stumbling out of the feel-good-fog to realize
a) it’s harder than it looks
b) all the actual drama really takes away from the hypothetical sexytime
c) kids and family align around blood, sweat and tears more than molly and cuddle puddles.
Again, this isn’t a traditional moral argument against such fornicating ways.
It’s the 21st century. You should feel free to shag whomever you’d like in whatever formats and combinations present themselves.
It’s more of a logistical observation.
When learning to juggle, it’s generally advisable to start with three tennis balls, and not five flaming chainsaws while riding a unicycle.
I mean, sure, you could figure out that latter option and it would make one hell of a circus trick!
But you might lose a few fingers and singe a few eyebrows figuring it out.
So instead of diving into a polycule with paramours and seconds and thirds and date nights and breakups and endless processing sessions, how ‘bout trying to treat one lover really well first?
It’s humblingly difficult. And surprisingly rewarding.
One well a thousand feet deep.
Or
A thousand wells a foot deep.
Here’s a simple test for if you’re ready for the polyamorous lifestyle.
Soul mate
Vocation
Children
Poly Lovers
(Pick THREE)
Could you do all four?
Sure!
It’s just in twenty odd years of observing lots of folks in these communities, I’ve never seen it really solidly done across the board.
No kids?
Have at it!
Trust fund or welfare baby? (i.e. no day job)
Easy day.
Divorced and not looking for a dedicated partner?
Get those yayas out!
But if you do want a life mate, have meaningful work in the world that’s yours to bring forth, and have kids that deserve your absolute best…then that might be a glorious and nobly full dance card you’d almost certainly fuck up by fucking too much!
For sure, in the ideal case, we’re undoubtedly meant to love each other freely and without constraint. It’s just that by the time you’re truly ready for polyamory, you probably don’t care about it so much.
Point Three: Communes don’t work.
This one’s kinda obvious and I’ve written about it here “We’ve got to talk about the C word.”
But the bottom line is this: if
Community.
Despite all the hype and enthusiasm surrounding it…
It's a bitch.
You can barely throw a fedora these days without hitting someone "calling in community."
But what is it that these thirty somethings keep nattering on about? And do they know what they’re getting into?
(HINT: exactly what their Boomer parents spent the 60's and 70's exploring, with decidedly mixed results)
Because here's the thing: It's hard but not impossible to work through each other's blind spots and foibles as adults in an intentional community.
Ton of work and maturity required, but doable.
It's impossible to do that when you see their entitled co-dependent, poor attachment style, demon spawn fucking up your own precious kids!
Intergenerational shadow dynamics wreck any good faith between the parents. The gloves come off in a hurry.
And if there's still any bed hopping going on? Forget about it. Way too many relational nodes to map and model in real time.
Especially when kinship ties trump any professed "Soul Family" relations.
Blood is always thicker than ether.
The brutal truth is none of living in community makes a whole lot of sense!
Unless you're too young or too broke to have many other options.
If you've got income and wisdom (and choices), most reasonable people choose to go it alone.
It's so. much. simpler. that way!
There’s a reason folks tend to live in the ‘burbs if they can. Elective proximity (to urban jobs and culture), not forced dependency (up in each others’ business with no escape hatch).
***
History supports this.
We dimly remember those stories in our text books of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when so many rural farm communities started hemorrhaging their young people for a shot at factory jobs in the cities.
It’s a process that’s been slowly repeated all over the world in the past century.
In 1920’s New York the Bowery Boys and Girls gathered. Busting ass in horrible sweatshops by day, but stretching their wings, exercising their modest spending power, exploring post-traditional sexual and social mores by night––it was the beginning of social justice movements, women’s suffrage, sexual revolutions, jazz and a whole lot else.
In other words, these young folks were stoked to live large freed from the confines of straight-jacketed, often repressive, bigoted village mono-cultures.
Back in the day, if you were gay, or “foreign” or agnostic or individualistic, or emo or artistic, or kinky, or creative or…pretty much anything that deviated even slightly from the norms of conventional community, you were marginalized, repressed, or attacked at home.
Yes, those traditional communities were tight, but often because no one had anyplace else to go!
In sum, as the C-word appears to be experiencing a revival, we should be super clear-eyed about what living together, raising families together, navigating romance, governance and business together, actually entails.
Community isn’t one more idealized blank slate we get to project all of our fantasies onto. It’s the ultimate rate-limiter on any and all of our more ambitious and Utopian dreams.
Point Four to bring it all home: Spiritual Questing
Despite the stylized guru Deepak Chopras and Eckhardt Tolles of the world, it’s rare that you see someone who is truly deeply switched on, stable and firing on all cylinders.
Having “spiritual” consciousness turned up to 11 often feels powerful and impressive.
But like the 19th century Indian saint Ramakrishna, who was so blissed out in god consciousness that he would’ve been a street beggar had temple servants not taken him in and looked after his physical needs, it’s a lopsided breakthrough.
We’re all familiar with the endless litany of spiritual teachers with feet of clay. Often possessing legit insights, but lacking deeply in some area of character or ethical development.
So rather than fetishizing non-dual awareness or ego-death or third-eye awakening, or some other romanticized condition, how ‘bout being a switched on, consistently decent, happy helpful effective human being?
Stable downlink to the Mysto, but no buggy browser when surfing the everyday web.
You could go as far as saying that old fashioned enlightenment is out, and 21st century enlightenment is nothing more nor less than the ability to match our neurophysiological state to our task at hand.
Fasting in a cave waiting for the Great Pumpkin to visit? Empty buddha mind is just the ticket.
But get jumped in a bar fight where you have to defend your buddies? “We’re all one and there is only love” isn’t gonna get you very far (unless you can wrap your brother up in a sleeper choke hold)
Or how ‘bout that collicky kid at 3 am (again?) Fractal spaceship entity downloads are far less helpful than conjuring a soothing mammal parent vibe.
“To be ordinary, truly utterly ordinary, is perhaps the most extraordinary thing of all!” said Osho, an infamously clay footed guru with a penchant for the bon mot.
Think about it: if you were choosing which car would you drive across the desert and one of the engines read 120 psi 120 psi 120 psi 120 psi compression
and the other read 120 psi, 215 psi, 110 psi, 110 psi?
Which would you hop in to make the journey?
Sure, the second engine has a whopping great 215 psi in one cylinder!
Impressive!
But you know what that means? Not more horsepower for you. It’s likely gonna throw a rod and leave you stranded by the road sooner than later.
Less compression, more evenly balanced, works a whole lot better, and is a whole lot healthier than spikey pressure that you can’t sustain.
Same with consciousness.
***
So that’s just a few examples of places where, despite considering all the sexier flashier options, it seems that the simple, traditional wisdom is often the safest and most helpful.
Not out of some tut-tut moralizing, or fear of the Unknown.
But instead, out of a longer term perspective, watching all the hype and huff surrounding new different better ways of doing things turn out to be not that much better after all.
To be sure—Don’t Die Wondering!
Shoot the moon and plumb the depths of the Mysto. But also: Never Miss a Monday Morning, and Train Your Brain to Find Your Mind.
And for loving—you get to decide how deeply you want to go. There’s One Well or a Thousand Wells
and Dance with the One That Brung You
(plus you can’t ever unf*ck someone)
Community and Utopian plans almost always end badly.
Start low and go slow. Try Sunday potlucks, shared tool sheds, or a Community Garden. Keep it voluntary and optional as long as possible. Try to avoid like the plague having to re-parent other people’s grown ass children.
Like John Lennon said, “I love humanity, it’s the fucking people I can’t stand!”
And on the spiritual seeking front, remember: you can no more become fully enlightened than you can become full educated.
Take what comes and realize, at the end of all the proverbial days, it’s not that either.
So what’s the So What? of all this?
Not sure, really.
It’s more that I’ve noticed that after seeing hundreds to thousands of these experiments play out, it’s been getting easier to call them sooner, based on their initial conditions.
Despite hype and fervent promises to the contrary, most of these escape hatch fantasies end up in the ditch, and we’re all generally better off taking the long slow steady route if we really care about the destination.
Bottom line: there’s a ton of wisdom in traditional and conservative values wed to open hearted decent humanity.
When progressives give away that solid ground in favor of the new, trendy or transgressive, they often leave it to folks who tout conservatism but are really smuggling in all sorts of retro and rancid values under the covers.
So I guess in some respect, consider this a call to action for progressives to reintegrate their regressive counterpart. For every new shiny shortcut, there’s an enduring traditional truth we’d do well to acknowledge.
As Ecclesiastes reminds us, “there’s nothing new under the sun.”
And as Carl Jung once cautioned, “Beware of unearned wisdom!”
He wasn’t wrong.
Seems like the best path up the Mountain is still one foot in front of the other, in the company of good friends and family.
Same as it ever was.
Same as it ever was.
(and if you want to earn some real wisdom and climb some real mountains check our upcoming courses here (canyons) and here (Antifragile) )
Jamie, I appreciate your candor in naming the failure modes of countercultural experiments—psychedelics without integration, polyamory without depth, communes without resilience, gurus without character. You’re right that critique is needed.
But after forty years of community work, I’ve seen a pattern I call the Ancient Blueprint: early Christian communities of care, Gandhi’s village movement, Dr. Ariyaratne’s Buddhist Sarvodaya Shramadana (5,000 towns in Sri Lanka), and the Parallel Polis of Charter 77 in Czechoslovakia.
These weren’t naive utopias. They were durable, virtue-based experiments that built parallel societies able to outlast empire and ideology.
So I want to press you: do you only want to lament, or will you acknowledge that real models exist? It’s not that “community doesn’t work”—it’s that community without formation, structure, and shared virtue doesn’t work. Where those are present, renewal not only survives but scales.
I’d love to explore whether your critique can evolve into constructive design.
Are you open to a conversation about how these tested blueprints might inform today’s search for resilience?
Jamie, this is so well-considered. After we circumnavigate worlds of novelty and shiny objects, we often find it's the obvious, simple stuff that's most meaningful. Thank you for sharing this wisdom.