Yeah, That’s Me.
“This is, after all, a philosophy blog” is more than an opening line. It is an ontological confession—a recognition that I am within the thing I am writing about, that I cannot speak from some pretextual, objective vantage point outside of meaning itself.
It is an act of self-situating. Acknowledging that I am in the Circus, in the Song, in the dance of meaning-making, and that my writing is not an external commentary but an active note within the composition.
Many philosopher’s—and scientists, quite frankly—pretend to be observers from a position of neutrality. Above the system they describe. I refuse this illusion. I am in this. This philosophy is not a removed critique—it is an embodied act.
Until recently, I was a tech executive—helping build Cash App, among other things. But I've harbored a not-so-secret-secret my entire professional life: an obsession with reading, thought, and intellectual debate far outside my day job. My wife will roll her eyes if you ask her about it. I love the intellectual pursuits. I think it made me a pretty damned good engineer.
Funny thing about speaking truth to power: the recruiters stop calling. Terrified, I suppose, of upsetting the new regime. That's its own commentary. So here I am, apparently a philosopher now. I guess when the tech world decides you're radioactive, all those years of midnight reading finally become your profession by default.
If the circus is where we must stand, then let us stand together. Let us tether ourselves to something real, however small, however fragile. Let us refuse the abyss—not by denying its existence, but by rejecting its claim to be the only reality.
Because meaning is not given.
But it can be made.
I share with you now, my observations such as they are. These, My Notes from the Circus.
And so here I am. A naturalist. A postmodernist. A liberal. A civic republican. An atheist. In a foxhole, it would seem. At least, in a manner of speaking …
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