An Interview With Vale Tudo

And also, randomly, a short story.

Thinker. Navy SEAL. Dispatches on meaning and hardship. Also figs and dogs.

Eruption of volcano. Mykola Yaroshenko. 1898.

Housekeeping

A few updates on the What then? front.

The rise of AI is giving us an insight into the human condition. It is clear no one is prepared for what is coming, not just professionally, but existentially and creatively. My hunch is the writing across the internet that is mostly pulled from LLMs is going to have a very short shelf life. Writing about a process or a methodology with an LLM can be very useful; but writing about existence and meaning with an LLM is as anti-human as arsenic. The beauty is this experiment will be played out, and most likely in the near future. More and more research hints at LLM consumptions effects on the mind—less depth, less curiosity, less autonomy. In a word, and in line with what I write about here, less alive, less meaningful, and less authentic. No LLM will ever touch my writing. I have been told my writing is challenging precisely because the reader feels “challenged.” And not by me, but by my themes—themes no LLM will ever be able to put words to because they will never bleed, fail, suffer, sweat, think, or wonder what the hell we are doing here on this epic adventure.

So I am playing with other ways of discussing these ideas with subscribers—of making What then? more human. I have received many striking comments and ideas from subscribers, ideas that are worth sharing. So maybe a Q&A, or some sort of virtual interaction would be worth a shot. If this is interesting, we can give it a go. If not, the writing will continue to stand for itself.

I have a few essays on deck, but for today’s piece, I wanted to post two things: 1) An interview I did with Chris DeMuth Jr on his Substack Vale Tudo on a range of topics late last year. 2) A short story I took third place in (or “second loser” if we are being honest) in a NYC Midnight writing competition.

We will be back at it with another original essay next week.

On! On!

Vale Tudo Interview

Does implementing Stoicism come naturally or is it something you need to train?

I practiced Stoic principles long before I knew Stoicism as a philosophy existed. Once I started studying Epictetus, I realized he codified lessons that everyone prior to the proliferation of stability, safety, and luxury (i.e. detachment from nature) already lived by. This is the brilliance of Epictetus’ system: how to take command of our own lives and not become lost in a world designed to keep us lost. When I was in the military, it took zero effort. It simply made sense, and it kept us awake and alive. Now, it takes an incredible amount of effort to be “awake”. Without constant reminders, a disciplined way of life, I lose myself in thoughts, desires, cravings, aversions—the list goes on. The fight to remain awake is a worthy fight in itself.

Do you have a favorite time and place in history that inspires you?

All of them are prior to the point in evolutionary time when the State was created. In Europe, that was with the dominance of the Roman Empire. In parts of Africa, it was not until recently the State was created. Any place and time in which people took part in muscular labor and the hunt, lived in tight knit communities and practiced ancient rituals draws me in. None of these culture were perfect—not by a long shot—but they were fundamentally human in ways it is difficult to imagine for anyone who has not spent time with the few pre-state bands that still exist in rainforests or deserts, or with small groups in the State that are somewhat analogous. If I had to pick one time and place, it might be with a group so early we have only one record of their existence: those who painted the cave walls of Lascaux some 20,000 years ago.

Lascaux

What is your favorite dog breed?

My favorite breed is the Shih Tzu, hands down. Its toughness is inversely proportional to its size—the Shih Tzu is tiny but it is a bare knuckle fighter. My family had Shih Tzus for most of my life. One of them, Gertie, still has a hold on my heart even though she passed in 2015. We had her during some of my deployments. I would rotate between a war zone and seeing Gertie, between evil and unimaginable purity, and the worst war got the more I saw the purity and loyalty of soul those little monsters possess. It is true of all dogs, including my current mutt (Carson) of unknown origin, who is so good looking I get stopped on foot trails to be told how handsome he is.

What is something that you know now that you didn’t before your time in the Navy?

When it comes to preparing for selection, I cannot overemphasize visualization enough. I visualized so intensely that by the time I set foot on the sands of Coronado, I had already made it through Hell Week a hundred times. In my mind, I had already done log PT, surf torture, obstacle courses, cold swims, sleepless nights. I made it so hard in my mind that when I did it in reality I found myself thinking “This is it?” Those who went into BUD/S convinced they were tough, strong, and unbreakable—they quit in the first few days.

What are you most grateful for that you got out of your time serving?

It is hard to whittle the list down. The two things that stand out most to me are the men and the mission. It was harder getting out of the military than getting in as a result of the loss of these two factors. Training and combat within a small special operations unit felt ancestral—a small and incredibly tight knit unit with one hyper focused life-or-death mission. I never felt anything before or after that can compare. I am not alone in this feeling, so my brothers and I decided to found a company together so we could work together on the one hand, and have a noble mission on the other. We founded ZeroEyes and have a mission to end mass shootings in America.

The Navy takes the most fun things in the world – jumping, diving, and shooting – and makes them suck. Have you stuck with them?

You nailed it. How they can take diving, skydiving, and shooting, and make them so brutally miserable you swear you will never do them again is actually extraordinary. I’ve stuck with none of them, but for a different reason. Many guys when they transition out try to recreate the thrill by base jumping, or cave diving, or some other extreme sport. But I found that because they are similar but a fraction of the intensity, they never live up to the real thing. So I went the radically opposite direction and found intense engagement in personal studies, reading, writing, and thinking. Paradoxically, this has given me the greatest “thrill” since my time in the Teams.

What is one exercise that you love? Hate?

I love hill sprints. I swear by hill sprints: pure hill sprints, hill sprints coupled with kettlebell swings, maybe on stairs, maybe on a muddy slope or concrete road or crushed rock. I finish almost every workout with them.

I feel great hostility towards burpees and I refuse to do them. It is a crucial skill getting off and on the ground, this is true, but the burpee is a joyless and wretched movement that should not exist.

What do you eat?

I eat an extremely limited diet as a result of autoimmune issues I developed during a deployment overseas. I eat meat and fruit, so there is nothing too strange. One of the foods I can eat is 100% cacao. I have seen some people gag and have to spit it out due to its bitterness, but most people can stomach it and I’ve developed a passion for pure cacao, its various geographic origins, and its subtle flavors.

What metrics matter to you?

It is a perceptive question. I have stripped almost all metrics from my life because I found I was focusing more on the metrics than on the thing being measured. Check out Epictetus 3.26 for an excellent insight on this.

Remember that you are an actor in a play, of such a kind as the author chooses; if short, then in a short one; if long, in a long one. If he wishes you to act the part of a beggar, of a cripple, of a ruler, or of a private person, see that you act it well. For this is your business, to act your role well. That is enough.

- Epictetus 3.26

The only metrics I have right now are time based. One of them is a set number of hours per day for reading and writing. Everything else is allowed to ebb and flow as the day evolves. The mission is to focus more on the process of each moment than on an eventual outcome since the process is within our control while the outcome is not.

How do you recover?

I love recovery now as much as I despised it when I was younger. I use the barrel sauna almost every day, walk at least five miles per day, use short breathing exercises at intervals throughout the day, and have tried to maximize my sleep-to-bed ratio. For example, I restrict sleep until my body adapts to the sleep schedule I want. So if the goal is 7 hours of sleep per night, it is ideal to sleep 6.5-7 hours out of the 7 hours spent actually lying in bed. If you sleep 6 hours but spend 9 hours in bed, the ratio is out of whack.

What’s the best fitness advice you’ve ever received?

There is no such thing as over training, only under recovery.

Do you have a mentor?

My mom is the best mentor I have ever had. All my other mentors were thinkers who left us their wisdom in books, and most are not alive. Eric Hoffer, Epictetus, Ernst Jünger, the list goes on—all of these men have influenced the course of my life in profound ways. Even fictional characters, like Gandalf the Grey, have shaped me since I first read LOTR when I was fourteen and have read it every year of my life since then.

Short Story

For this short story, I had a 1,000 word limit. It had to be a mystery, include a nightlight, and take place in a scrapyard. I called it “A Stegosaurus Nightlight” and the one sentence subtitle was “A detective solves the mysterious murder of his son in a scrapyard.” Enjoy.

I needed to see Dan. The grey polyurethane armrest in my Volvo needed to be replaced, and if any scrapyard in Pennsylvania had a 99’ Volvo S40 rotting in cinnamon colored rust, it was Dan’s. But I didn’t just need an armrest.

I needed a brother.

I drove by a billboard for a kindergarten—that was all it took. I felt like I took a fist to my kidney. Time slowed. My mind’s eye took in my son’s room the morning after. I saw his crumbled little body… Murder. I still couldn’t believe it. I was a cop. I had put a dozen killers behind bars. And my son was murdered. I failed him. Later, a string of boys and girls were murdered in our town, and the sadistic killer’s trademark was unusual. He took one memento from each scene: one of the kids toys. My son had a nightlight. A ridiculous paper mâché Stegosaurus painted green and purple with tiny stars cut into it, casting golden beams of light on the glow-in-the-dark galaxies stickered to his ceiling. Gone, along with the other toys. I remember the pictures. I would stare at them in the precinct: green rubber snake, Little Mermaid with cherry red hair, tiger striped GI Joe, a lavender bunny.

The road came back into focus. Strange how we can be lost in memory and still function. A zombie. I was like one of those ants hijacked by the zombie fungus, Ophiocordyceps unilateralis, that drives the ant’s corpse around black soiled paths in lush rainforests. Dan helped me try to find my boy for the last five years. He stood by me when so many just… didn’t know how to deal with me after that. My son was taken from me, and then my friends left me. Like a fuckin’ zombie. Not Dan. That scrapyard owner was a pillar of the community. Who would have thought? The man all the grieving parents appreciated.

I drove my patrol car over the potholed dirt road into the scrapyard and parked. Dan sat in one of the two Adirondacks outside his office, a case of beer between them. I sat down and opened a beer without a word. None needed. The best listener is the one you never feel the need to talk to.

Little plastic pink flamingoes dotted the lawn in front of the mangled masses of steel in the yard. Demonic looking garden gnomes with carrot colored hats peered out at me from behind bald tractor tires and coils of barbed wire. I found rubber duckies like a Where’s Waldo poster; one impaled on the top of a wire fence, brown and heroically weathered, another on his pickup truck dashboard, a nice clean daffodil yellow. I never understood his fetish, but I admired eccentric characters. They’re not boring. There’re enough boring schmucks in the world. We could use a little eccentricity.

“Yup,” Dan said, apropos of nothing.

I stood up to find the Volvo, savoring the prospect of a silent walk. The kaleidoscopic maze of ancient steel cars was a great way to get tetanus, and thus a great way to pull my mind’s eye off the image of that crumpled body in that dark corner and out onto the world around me.

There it was. An S40. I stuck my head in the shattered window and saw a pristine armrest ripe for the picking. I felt a warm sense of pleasure that at least this went right, at least the gods, this one time, were smiling down upon me before I turned to dust. I remember thinking “For you are dust, And to dust you shall return.” What a line. And what freedom—dust can’t think, dust can’t feel pain, dust can’t remember what a failure it used to be, what a failed protector, what a failed man…

Glancing up I saw Dan’s old 1987 Corvette. Chipped red paint. Flat tires. That thing made him the talk of the town. Good memories flooded out the bad as I remembered driving with him, roof down, under orange and auburn autumn leaves. Simpler times.

Then I saw a lavender colored stuffed animal laying on the ground near the Corvettes trunk. I walked over. A bunny. I wondered how the hell that got there. It didn’t feel right leaving something so vulnerable lying in the mud, something loved by some little girl. I wondered who she was. How old was she now? Did she have kids and think about this bunny? I bent down to pick it up. When I stood back up, I saw a flash of cherry red fuzz sticking out from under the trunk lid, and instinctively I lifted it. Every hair on my body stood on end. I felt like my skin was crawling with a million black widows. A snake. A Little Mermaid. A GI Joe.

A Stegosaurus nightlight.

I vomited.

A fetish for toys.

A brother.

I walked slowly back. Wiped my mouth. Saw Dan in the Adirondack. All I could say was, “Hey, Dan.”

I remember drawing my pistol.

I remember taking aim at the center of his forehead.

I remember the calm words in my head: Slow is smooth, smooth is fast. Front sight focus. Trigger squeeze.

My memory stopped there.

When I regained consciousness, the slide of my pistol was locked to the rear. Empty. I had fourteen bullets in the magazine, one in the chamber. All fifteen were in Dan’s skull. I had somehow shot each one into his cranium as he folded forward onto his lap.

So, in the spirit of a cop who devoted his entire adult life to solving mysteries, I am writing this letter from somewhere in South America. I don’t want my agency wasting their time on this when they could focus on unsolved crimes. I want them to know what happened to me, to Dan, and to all those children whose toys lie in the trunk of a Corvette in a scrapyard.

If you find value in these ideas, please support in whatever way you think is best: restack this essay, share it with others, or become a paid subscriber.

Εἰς μελέτην

For meditation