I took my sons up into the Serra de Sintra today. We went because the land was alive after weeks of rain, and because the day was cold and crisp, and the air was fresh. We went because it felt good to move in a place like that, to feel the wind, to walk, to be awake inside our bodies. The Atlantic wind was moving fast, shouldering the clouds across the ridge, breaking light open and sealing it again. Everything was green in that deep, saturated way that only comes after weeks of rain. The stone was dark. The air was sharp. It demanded attention. Everywhere along the path, small transient streams were forming, draining away the rain from the weeks before. Water ran quickly over stone, clear and cold, cutting narrow channels before disappearing downslope. Despite all that rain, the ground was not muddy. We were high enough that the water never sat. It moved on, as it should. We climbed toward the Ermida de São Saturnino, above the Santuário da Peninha, with the weather changing minute by minute. Cold enough to feel in the fingers. Clean enough to wake the lungs. The kind of day that reminds a boy, without words, that the world is bigger than comfort. Along the way we passed trees that had been taken down by the wind. Some were so large it would have taken four of me, arm to arm, to circle the trunk. They lay where they fell, roots torn from the ground. It was good for the boys to see the force that had done that, and the aftermath it leaves behind. Not far off the path, two small wild horses grazed on the mountainside. We watched them for a while and wondered aloud what it would have been like to live that way, exposed to the wind and rain, needing to find shelter and food through attentiveness and cunning. Survival was no longer an idea. It was standing in front of us. At the top we entered the Ermida de São Saturnino, a small mountain church close to a thousand years old by local reckoning. We walked through it slowly. Its condition had worsened since the last time I had been there. What had once shown traces of plaster and painted walls had peeled away, leaving stone and decay behind. I spoke with my sons about the care required to preserve beautiful things, and about what is lost when a people forget where they came from and allow their inheritance to crumble. When we stepped back outside, the views opened wide in every direction. Massive rounded boulders lay scattered across the mountainside, some the size of a car, others as large as a small house. I pointed them out and explained how they had been carried and shaped tens of thousands of years ago by enormous ice sheets that once pushed across Europe, grinding stone smooth and depositing it here near the edge of their advance. I asked my oldest to imagine a wall of ice thirty or forty meters high, moving slowly but relentlessly toward us. To imagine standing in front of it as a Stone Age human, watching the world you knew disappear under cold and silence. For the people who lived through that time, it would have felt like the end of the world. In many ways, it nearly was. Most life was wiped away. Much of Europe was emptied. And yet we survived. Humanity endured generations of winter, ice, and scarcity. Standing there, above the forests and stone, that fact carried weight. If our ancestors could endure that, we can endure the ordinary difficulties that meet us in our own lives. That matters. Why places like this matter to children Children do not primarily learn from what we explain. They learn from what we show them. Before a principle can be understood, it has to be lived. A child needs to feel the wind, the distance, the effort, the weight of the world pressing back. Only after that does the mind open to the deeper questions of why things are the way they are. You demonstrate first. You let them experience it. Then, later, words can land. A dramatic landscape teaches proportion. Wind teaches resistance. Cold teaches presence. Distance teaches effort. None of this is abstract to a child. It enters through the body first, and only afterward settles into understanding. A principle offered without experience has nothing to attach to. It remains hollow. We are not built to understand what we have not encountered. When a boy walks uphill in weather that does not bend for him, something aligns. He learns that the world is real, that his father is competent inside it, and that effort has meaning. You do not need a lecture for that. You need to go. Fatherhood is lived out in the world Modern fatherhood has become dangerously compressed. Too much time inside. Too much talking. Too much management of feelings detached from reality. Men sense that something is missing, but often cannot put their finger on it. What is missing is shared exposure to the real world, terrain that cannot be negotiated, weather that cannot be reasoned with, paths that must simply be walked. When a father takes his children into real places, he is doing more than spending time with them. He is saying, without announcing it: “This is the world. I am at home in it. You will be too. ” That message lands deeper than reassurance ever could. Why I build memory, not entertainment I am not trying to entertain my sons. I am trying to form them into men. Years from now, they will not remember every conversation we had, but they will remember days like this. They hiked the entire way, up and down, across loose, fist-sized rock, without complaint. They sang. They smiled. They enjoyed the cold air and the wide views. Halfway up we stopped briefly for a simple snack: bread, butter, and water. Food meant to answer hunger on a long walk, nothing more. They will remember who they were when they were with me. Cold hands. Fast clouds. Stone walls. A steady pace. A father who knew where he was going. Those memories become internal landmarks. They are recalled later, often unconsciously, when life becomes uncertain. A man who has been led well through real terrain carries that map inside himself. This is where 52 Letters to My Son comes from Experiences like this are not separate from my work. They are the source of it. 52 Letters to My Son exists because fatherhood deserves structure, not improvisation. Most men love their children deeply. Few men have been given a clear framework for translating that love into long-term formation. The program does not replace moments like this. It anchors them. Each week, fathers slow down long enough to ask: What did this mean? What did my child see in me? What do I want them to understand later, when I am no longer beside them on the path? Then they write. One letter at a time. Calm. Deliberate. Grounded in lived experience, not theory. Over time, those letters become something powerful: a written map of a father’s mind, values, and steady presence. An invitation You do not need to hike in Sintra. You do not need ancient stone or Atlantic wind. What matters is leaving the house and living with your children. Life is not formed by sitting indoors all day. Children do not grow strong, capable, or grounded through screens and simulated worlds. They grow by moving, by going somewhere real, by sharing experience with a father who is present and engaged. Your children are forming whether you are deliberate or not. The only question is whether you are willing to father on purpose. That is what 52 Letters to My Son is for. Not to make you perfect or a uniform clone of some ideal of fatherhood. But to help you become the kind of father whose presence your children will carry with them, long after the walk is over. Find 52 Letters to My Son at http://themetafather.com

Refusing power does not reduce harm if someone worse takes your place.

We built courts, laws, and due process for a reason: to move internal conflict out of the realm of physical violence and into peaceful, procedural resolution. Instead of settling disputes with force, we settled them with evidence, rules, and impartial judgment. When the court system fails, especially when the government admits it lacks the resources or capacity to enforce the law, something dangerous happens. The peaceful alternative disappears. History is clear on this: Problems that cannot be resolved through law do not remain unresolved. They are resolved through power, coercion, or violence. That isn’t a threat. It’s a pattern. A warning. Watching the legal system admit it has lost the ability to function at a scale necessary to deal with organized government corruption is one of the most concerning developments of the last year.

Imagine stepping into a century-old Hall of Ancestors with your cousins, the air thick with history and quiet reverence. Sunlight streams through arched windows, casting golden glows on rows of marble busts and bronze statues, your great-great-grandparents, aunts, uncles, and forebears from generations past. Their faces, captured in eternal stone and metal, smile down at you with knowing eyes, as if whispering secrets of resilience and triumph across the years. You realize these weren't just names in a family tree; they were real people who lived boldly, farmers who tamed wild lands, inventors who sparked revolutions, mothers who nurtured dreams through hardships, warriors who fought for freedom. They cared so deeply about the future that they left behind these tangible records: portraits that speak volumes without words, inscriptions of their deeds, artifacts from their lives. It's a bridge across time, a testament that says, "We were here, we struggled and soared, and now it's your turn." As you stand there, you spot familiar echoes in their faces, your grandmother's determined jaw in yours, your cousin's mischievous grin mirrored in a long-lost uncle. It's like seeing fragments of yourself woven into this grand tapestry, reminding you that you're not alone; you're the continuation of a story that's still unfolding. How could you not feel inspired? That rush of motivation to seize every moment, to build something lasting, to live with purpose so that one day, your own likeness joins them, smiling down at the next generation, urging them onward. In a world of fleeting digital memories, what if we all created something enduring like this? Who's with me in honoring our roots and forging legacies that inspire?

We’re playing social whack‑a‑mole, and it’s exhausting by design. For decades, the pattern has been the same. The left will openly promote communist ideas, abolition of private property in practice, zero-sum class or identity struggle, redistribution without reciprocal obligation, while simultaneously denying that it is communist. It fights the label, calls the accusation paranoia, and insists critics are hysterical or malicious. Then, once the word communism becomes politically toxic, the ideology doesn’t disappear, it simply changes costumes. Communists become socialists. Then democratic socialists. Then social democrats. Then progressives. Then equity advocates. The name changes every time the old one becomes indefensible. And we keep falling for it. We argue about labels. We argue about symbols. We argue about whether this version is “really” the same as that version. Meanwhile, the underlying program marches forward untouched. That’s the trick. Regular rebranding of their poisonous ideas forces opponents into endless semantic fights while the actual mechanism keeps advancing. If you focus on names, aesthetics, or declared identities, you will always be late, always tired, and always reacting. The solution isn’t more suppression of groups or labels. That just resets the cycle. The solution is to identify the modus operandi instead of the brand. Ask questions like: – Does the ideology frame society as a zero-sum struggle between oppressors and oppressed? – Does it demand redistribution or power without reciprocal responsibility? – Does it rely on lies, emotional manipulation, or selective truth to gain support? – Does it excuse failure by claiming the system simply wasn’t applied hard enough? – Does it seek control of institutions first, language second, and enforcement last? If the answer is yes, the label doesn’t matter. Bad ideas don’t die. They just rebrand themselves. If we want to stop playing whack‑a‑mole, we have to stop aiming at the moles and start smashing the machine that keeps launching them.

Do you feel stuck in life? Most people do at some point, but not always for the same reasons. Some people are stuck because they don’t see reality clearly. Some are stuck because they won’t accept responsibility. Some know exactly what to do… but don’t believe they can act. Others want everything and can’t choose. Others choose, but don’t know how to decide. And some know all of that… and still don’t act. Being “stuck” isn’t one problem. It’s a sequence problem. Here’s the short list, in order: 1) Reality – Do you accept that life has constraints, tradeoffs, and costs? 2) Responsibility – Do you accept that your outcomes are on you? 3) Agency – Do you believe your actions can change your future? 4) Values – Have you chosen what actually matters (and what doesn’t)? 5) Decision Method – Do you have a way to choose between options? 6) Action – Do you act, get feedback, and adjust? If you fail at #1, advice won’t help you. Only painful collision with reality does. If you fail at #2, coaching won’t help you. You’ll outsource blame. If you fail at #3, you’ll feel paralyzed. If you fail at #4, you’ll be torn in every direction. If you fail at #5, you’ll overthink forever. If you fail at #6, nothing becomes real. Most people try to fix the last step without checking the first broken one. If you feel stuck, don’t ask “What should I do?” Ask instead: Where in the sequence did I stop moving forward? That’s where the real work begins.

What Do We Do With Outliers? This is a legitimate and important question, and it’s one every society must answer if it wants to remain adaptive without dissolving itself. The good news is that the problem is easy to solve once we stop treating it as a matter of norms, identities, or tolerance, and instead apply the principles of Natural Law. When framed correctly, the question of outliers is not moral, political, or aesthetic at all, it is a problem of behavior, cost, and surplus over time. Outliers themselvese are not the issue. Every advancing society depends on people who explore beyond the edges of the map. The issue is how societies sort, constrain, and insure deviation without either suppressing adaptation or subsidizing collapse. 1. The Core Clarification: It’s Not About People, It’s About Behavior The first correction that needs to be made is this: Societies should not suppress or promote people, identities, or types. They should suppress or promote behaviors, based on their measurable effects. To measure by Natural Law one does not ask "who you say you are". We ask: - What do you do? - What does your behavior cost others over time? - Who bears those costs? - Does your behavior produce surplus, or does it require subsidy, protection, or deception to persist? Once we shift from sorting people to sorting behaviors, the problem becomes decidable rather than ideological. 2. Positive and Negative Deviation Are About Externalities, Not Norms What we casually call “outliers” are simply people expressing uncommon behavioral strategies. The relevant distinction is not normal versus abnormal, but cost-imposing versus surplus-producing behavior. Positive deviation consists of behaviors that: - Produce net surplus - Pay their own costs - Reduce long-run coordination or enforcement burdens - Can be voluntarily patronized by others Negative deviation consists of behaviors that: - Impose net costs on others - Require tolerance, subsidy, or narrative protection - Increase enforcement, policing, or coordination costs - Depend on deception, impulse failure, or externalized risk The same individual can express both kinds of behavior at different times. Nothing here is a permanent label. The objective is to get less negative behaviours and more positive behaviours. 3. Why Some Societies Stagnate and Others Flourish Societies fail when they make one of two symmetric errors: a) Suppressing all deviation indiscriminately, including surplus-producing behavior b) Failing to suppress cost-imposing behavior, and instead moralizing or celebrating it Successful societies distinguish between the two. Historically, adaptive civilizations including the west and European diaspora did not celebrate deviation. Instead they discriminated: They suppressed cost-imposing behaviors, through criminalization, exclusion, execution, liability, or removal from the commons. They patronized surplus-producing behaviors, through investment, protection from rent-seeking, and conditional tolerance. This asymmetric treatment is what allowed exploration without collapse. 4. Suppression Is Protective, Not Punitive Suppressing negative behavior is not about cruelty or conformity. It is about protecting the cooperative substrate that everyone, including innovators, depends on. Cost-imposing behaviors, if left unsuppressed, do three things: 1) They consume surplus that could fund exploration 2) They raise enforcement and coordination costs for everyone 3) They crowd out positive deviation by exhausting social tolerance Suppressing such behavior is therefore not hostile to progress. It is a precondition for it. 5. Patronage Is the Missing Half of the Equation Positive deviation does not survive on tolerance alone. Exploration is costly, risky, and fragile. Societies that advance do not normalize innovation or demand that everyone imitate it. Instead, they: - Patronize it - Insure it - Hold it to higher standards of truth and performance, not lower ones Celebration detaches behavior from cost and creates negative externalities. Patronage is conditional, revocable, and disciplined bringing net value in return. 6. Guidance for Outliers Themselves For those who find themselves outside the norm, this framework is clarifying rather than condemning: - You are not obligated to conform - Society is not obligated to carry your costs - Your place is determined by whether your behavior produces surplus or imposes costs - If your deviation creates value others voluntarily support, you will find patrons. - If it creates costs others must bear, you should expect constraint or exclusion. 7. The Governing Principle Civilization advances by suppressing parasitic behavior and insuring surplus-producing behavior, wherever they appear. People are free to vary. Behaviors are not free to impose costs. When societies confuse tolerance with virtue, or deviation with value, they either stagnate or dissolve. When they govern behavior by consequences, they remain adaptive without becoming tyrannical.

When I was about ten years old, my dad bought an antique motorboat. It was not a big boat, maybe eighteen feet long, wooden, with a decrepit old Johnson outboard motor. I do not think there was anything fundamentally wrong with the motor, but those old engines are finicky. One of the first days we took it out, the weather was perfect. Sunny, warm, almost no wind. We were out exploring islands in Georgian Bay. On the way back, the engine suddenly stalled for no apparent reason. We still had plenty of fuel, well over half a tank. My dad could not get it started. We stopped for a moment to think about what to do. We had paddles and could paddle back, but it would have taken hours. As we were thinking, we noticed a massive storm brewing in the distance. It looked far away, like it was still hours off. Unfortunately, it was not. Within half an hour, the rain started. Around that time, we saw a newer motorboat heading toward us, coming from the direction of the storm. If you kept going the way they were headed, you would reach the docks where we were going. If I remember correctly, it was someone we knew. They slowed down beside us and said we had two seconds to decide. Either jump in with them and abandon our boat, or stay behind. A terrible storm was coming. My dad thought about it and said no. He believed he could get the motor restarted. The other boat took off at full speed toward shore, and we went back to trying to start the engine. Pull after pull, it would not start. It was not flooded. It had fuel. Everything looked right. We had no idea why it refused to run. Then a massive waterspout formed behind us, right at the edge of the storm. It was maybe five or six hundred feet away, about two football fields. It made a horrible sound as it sucked water up from the lake. It looked like something out of a movie. Then the rain came hard. It was not just water. Small fish were coming down in the rain, sucked up from the lake and falling back down on us. Finally, my dad got the engine started. The boat was not fast to begin with, but he pushed it as hard as it would go, partly because higher throttle made it less likely to stall again. We headed straight for shore. As we ran for the docks, the storm and the waterspout followed behind us, getting closer and closer. We came into the docks at full speed, which you are not supposed to do. We jumped out, tied the boat, and ran. By the time we reached the docks, the waterspout was maybe a hundred feet behind us. I had a lot of adventures as a kid. Many of the most dangerous ones were on the water. Freshwater lakes, especially Canadian lakes, are incredibly treacherous. They are cold. You can have a beautiful sunny day and an hour later face a storm of the century. When the waves come, they do not roll like ocean waves. They come close together and relentlessly pound whatever they hit. At the same time, it is some of the most beautiful country God ever made. Clear water. That day, the water was so clear we saw a massive bass, the biggest I have ever seen, about thirty feet down. You could see every scale on its body at that depth. The water was as clear as glass. I suppose the point of the story is this. I take risks in order to enjoy life. And when you take enough real risks as a child, you become more resistant to unnecessary fear responses as an adult. (The boat in the image is very close to what we had.)

Do you ever feel like a rubber band that’s been stretched too far? Do you ever feel overworked and lazy at the same time? Do you find yourself exhausted, yet still judging yourself for not doing enough? If so, there’s a good chance you’re a high‑conscientiousness person. View article →

One of the clearest indicators of a dysfunctional marriage is not the presence of conflict, but the absence of a workable method for resolving it. Conflict is inevitable in any marriage. What determines stability is whether disagreements can be processed productively rather than allowed to accumulate. Couples with even very serious problems, money, sex, extended family, parenting, can remain highly stable if they have a reliable way to resolve conflict. Over time, issues get addressed, renegotiated, or adapted to, and alignment is restored. By contrast, couples who begin highly aligned but lack conflict-resolution capacity tend to deteriorate. Each unresolved disagreement adds friction; resentment accumulates; communication degrades; and eventually the couple deviates so far from one another that the marriage breaks down. This is why, in practice, no substantive marital issue can be solved before conflict resolution is solved. Chores, finances, and life logistics are unsolvable if a couple cannot even have a structured disagreement without escalation or withdrawal. Until conflict becomes productive, every problem threatens the relationship itself rather than contributing to its improvement.

A lot of what we are calling 'mental health issues' are immaturity issues that society has pathologized for profit.

Far too many men end up as servants in their own household. Life is far too short to spend it being your wife's houseboy.

My wife and I went out to dinner. We came home, sent the babysitter off, and my youngest boy, Henry, walks up to me: “Daddy!” He hugs me and presses his face so hard against mine to kiss me. He confuses the strength of his hug and kiss with how intensely he feels about you, so he presses so hard it hurts, because he is just so happy we returned. He is clapping his hands, jumping up and down, absolutely thrilled. His brother, on the other hand, did not say much, he has a flu, half-awake and half-asleep. But Henry always makes you feel so happy to come home.

Almost every marriage that's on the rocks could be saved if the couple would just have more and better sex. As little as 2x or 3x a week would restore the relationship.

“I feel like I never get a break. The cooking, the cleaning, the laundry, the kids needing something every minute, it never ends. I am always on duty, and no one sees how constant it is.” “I am tired of carrying everything for the family. Working long hours, paying every bill, fixing what breaks, keeping the house and yard in shape, handling the decisions and the pressure, it is relentless. I wake up knowing there is always another task waiting.” Women often express frustration about the repetitive nature of child care and domestic work, just as some men express frustration about the constant demands of providing, protecting, and leading. Both sets of complaints treat the cyclical nature of these roles as if repetition itself were a flaw. A healthier framing is that these responsibilities are privileges, not burdens. They are the core expressions of being a wife, a husband, a mother, or a father. Parenting is not endless. The period in which children need us daily is brief. They grow, they become independent, and the direct responsibilities fade far sooner than most people expect. The very tasks that feel monotonous are part of a short, irreplaceable window in which parents have maximum influence. To resent that window is to misunderstand its value. Far better to treasure it while it exists. Similarly, the care spouses provide to one another is not unilateral sacrifice. It is reciprocal exchange based on comparative strengths. Each person gives what he or she is naturally better at giving and receives what is needed in return. When understood properly, that exchange is not a drain but a source of stability, intimacy, and cooperation. The problem is not the work itself but the framing. Treating repeating duties as “endless drudgery” blinds people to the meaning embedded in them. Seeing those duties as privileges clarifies their purpose: a chance to build a family, support a spouse, shape children, and create continuity. The work repeats, but it does not imprison; it enriches us.

"Why can groups of masculine men cooperate and form effective teams far easier than effeminate men, women or mixed groups?" - Question from a reader. Revoy’s Law: “Given sufficient time, truthful feedback from reality, and personal responsibility for consequences, honest masculine men will tend to converge on the same general conclusions about reality and the institutional conditions for sustainable human cooperation, regardless of their initial beliefs.” Revoy’s Corollary: “Under survival pressure, disparate men converge rapidly on masculine norms of hierarchy, enforcement, and direct coordination, because these are the only strategies that minimize death and maximize group success.” Short version: “Under threat, reality and responsibility, honest men converge.”

I was seventeen. At a dance. I met a girl with very short hair. Otherwise she was stunning. Black hair. Crystal blue eyes. Very light skin. French. I asked her to dance. Half way through the song I asked why her hair was so short. She said, I am going to die in six months or so. It did not click at first. She looked healthy. I did not understand what that had to do with her hair. We kept dancing. Over and over. I think two thirds of my dances that night were with her. I enjoyed her company. She was charming. Soft. Gentle. Beautiful. Kind. Sweet. French Canadian. There was a small language barrier. It did not matter. Her warmth came through. I met a few of her friends that night. I kept in touch with them for a couple of years. She had told the truth. She died a little over a year later. Cancer. Her hair was short because she had been through chemo. She was in that in-between period. Recovering. A little hair had grown back. I think about her from time to time, grateful for the few moments we enjoyed together. As hard as life can feel, we are still alive. She could have sat in sorrow complaining about her life. Instead, she chose a night with friends. A fancy dress party. Dancing. Being sweet. Being herself. She faced death with a stoic calm that puts many men to shame. She spoke of it as if it were nothing. No big deal. There is a lesson in that. It is hard to enjoy life if you focus on complaints. No matter how bad it gets, choose time with loved ones. Choose small joys. Choose what matters. Do that, and you will not only enjoy your life. However short it is, it will mean something.

>Write a clear thesis. Give it to the LLM. >Command it to clarify and steelman your claim. >Then command it to critique the claim. >Repeat the cycle until the idea survives attack. You will obtain the best results when you restrict the LLM to a defined grammar, domain, and standard of judgment.

When People Lack Skill, They Mistake Causality for Luck Many people assume outcomes are governed by luck because their understanding, skill, and capacity are too limited to perceive the causal forces at work. When we cannot see the steps and principles governing life, we imagine it is largely up to chance. Every domain has an underlying structure. Experts navigate that structure intentionally, applying knowledge, judgment, and timing to get the results they want. Novices, unable to detect those patterns, watch the same actions and interpret them as luck or fortune. This is a feature of human cognition: low competence reduces our resolution of causal detail. When the details become a blur, events feel unpredictable. We label that uncertainty as "luck" because it is the easiest explanation. The more skill we build, the more we see how outcomes emerge from choices, habits, preparation, and discipline. What once looked like chance becomes transparent, understandable. What once felt arbitrary now becomes controllable. When skill replaces superstition. Understanding replaces luck and capability replaces guesswork. People who cultivate mastery do not rely on luck. At the same time, we must acknowledge that chance is real. Life contains uncertainty, and not every variable is under our command. But the more we believe that our decisions matter, and the more capable we become at making and executing on those decisions, the more we expand the sphere of our control. Agency is the ability to turn our intentions into outcomes of our choosing. In difficult environments, where threats are high and opportunities scarce, only those with highly developed agency can consistently move forward. When life is hard, it is not luck that separates people. It is the degree of control they cultivate over themselves and their choices. I will teach you how to develop your agency.

This is what I call a spirtually gay marriage. This dude wants another dude to split his bills with and not a wife to have children and start a family with. He missed the whole point of marriage. Married men, do not treat you wife like she is a man.