This island is for the one who has had a long-felt hunch that the ground on which they stand is not merely Earth ... but something complicatedly busier.

For the one quietly taking their liberation notes.

The classrooms do not teach reading, writing, and arithmetic like they used to ... if they ever did at all. Today they crush wonder, facilitate bullying, and prepare one to be replaced by AI.

When I walk into a pharmacy, I don't see an apothecary filled with concoctions handcrafted by an artisan. What I see are piecemeal solutions manufactured by blankface companies that have no eye-to-eye connection with even their own teams, let alone the customer.

There are people building their entire brand and business on the house of cards known as social media, doing backflips for engagement, attempting to read a room that embodies the essence of transience.

These are the three Fakes.
School, Corporation, and Socials.

Some are squashed by all three, some by just one, but I can count on a single hand those who are touched by none.

And while different in form, the Fakes are cut from the same cloth. All three are black holes where clarity goes to die, and where a person must ... for survival purposes ... engage in the Talk.

The Fakes spark and run the Talk.

A clear mind and a pure heart are, no wonder, some of the hardest things to come by.

Let's talk about the Talk. It is a fictitious mode of communication, driven by the need to gain favour and accumulate reputation. But it is far subtler than that.

Office culture and cafeteria culture are not similar, they are exactly the same. The Corporation is the School, and vice versa.

The skills required to be a social climber are the same skills required to advance as an employee in an organization. The Corporation is the Social, and vice versa.

The problem occurs when a person does not see this, when they enter blind, thinking that all will go smoothly if they just do an effective job. Engineers, CEOs, artists ... they are all vulnerable. Nobody teaches this in School because, well ...

Rare is the one who has mastered the ability to ... independently ... produce something Real. Ironically, it is this person who can truly collaborate and engage in the rare type of communication that does not drain but nourishes.

I realized something early on. Beyond a small bulletproof threshold, the more people I involve myself with for the sake of productivity, the more problems come my way. I'm about hand selection.

This was crystal clear to me when I was 22 years old, working as a software developer employee, in an office in Toronto. I was paid higher than many of my peers simply because of how I performed in the interview. I knew JavaScript and objects and recursion like the back of my hand. I could code well. However, none of that mattered within the Great Wall of Corporation. Their system for "promotion" — I kid you not — was based on peer judgement, not on client satisfaction.

By the way, I must say ... the concept of promotion itself is False ... one rooted deeply in sycophancy. I'm not playing that game. Let me judged by Nature, by the market, by the customer.

People who put on innocent, effective, and genuine performances ... and then expect to be promoted in their organization ... they don't see the Fakes for what they are.

During those early years, it occurred to me that anything even remotely involving the Talk was not in line with my destiny.

The Fakes are fundamentally transient in nature, and they capture those who have nothing Real yet to pour themselves into. I don't make the rules.

On top of this, AI accelerates the iteration of transient form while never touching the invariant ... further confusing the confused. Clarity is thus more critical than ever.