My Principles in 2025, Part 2

In Part 1, I covered the first twenty principles I’ve laid down for 2025. In this, Part 2, I’ll cover the last twenty-three.

Part 3 will outline the changes in my experience and thinking that led me to make updates in the first place. Part 4 will cover my process for distilling principles from my experience and writing them in aphoristic form, as well as practical advice for creating your own list of principles. And Part 5 will cover brand new principles as I continue to process reflections and outputs from the previous four years.

Thank you for reading - I hope you will enjoy it.

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1. TAKE EMOTIONS SERIOUSLY, NOT LITERALLY

   1. Life comes with a rich tapestry of emotions that are to be savored, cherished, investigated and understood. They contain essential information, insights and intuitions that are indispensable for living.

   2. It’s important to take my emotions seriously, not literally

   3. When appropriate to the present moment and its conditions, emotions are essential for wise understanding and action. Emotions fueled by memories, trauma or anxiety about the future must be welcomed and endured, but never acted on without reflection.

   4. When emotions fueled by the past or future drive my behavior, I rarely get the results I want, and most often end up self-sabotaging or perpetuating a traumatic pattern.

   5. I seem to have stronger emotions than most other people, or perhaps I am more aware of them, as well as a propensity for action, all of which makes for a dangerous combination without good self-mastery. It makes me passionate and dynamic, but can also make me impulsive and dramatic. For this reason, among many others, daily meditation is non-negotiable for me.

2. PLANS ARE USELESS, PLANNING IS INDISPENSABLE

   1. Reality has a surprising amount of detail, and life constantly subverts my expectations.

   2. Two is one, and one is none. Have a backup for backups.

   3. Appropriate planning for reasonable contingencies allows me to respond skillfully to events that I can foresee, and even to events that I couldn’t, because I am better able to stay centered and rational.

   4. Planning, training and preparing in a way increases my general flexibility and readiness is usually superior to investing heavily in preventing specific scenarios, unless those scenarios are likely and catastrophic

   5. Expectations are premeditated resentments, but it’s possible to plan for contingencies and risks and hold them lightly without expecting them.

   6. It’s good to have three months’ worth of emergency supplies and savings on hand.

   7. It’s good to have my vehicle stocked with emergency supplies and supplies for comfort and health

   8. It’s good to teach the people I love how to prepare for risk and difficulty, so that they can assist me, or be okay without me

   9. Keep an eye on the chatter in proven bellwether communities.

3. BE AS CONSISTENT AS NECESSARY

   1. Trust is built on consistency

   2. If I don’t consistently enforce my rules and boundaries, people will not respect me. But if I don’t consistently make wise exceptions to my rules and boundaries, people won’t love me.

   3. Only the very foolish and the very wise are always consistent.

   4. I am not very wise.

4. CONFLICT IS HOLY

   1. Love may be the Ground of Being, but conflict is the principal activity in the realm of the Lord of Death.

   2. One can not serve life without simultaneously serving death.

   3. Conflict must therefore be sanctified with my life, used mindfully and wisely to destroy what is unhealthy and unrighteous, to perpetuate life, to bring justice, to protect those who can’t protect themselves, and to uphold the Dharma

   4. It is almost always better to attempt to solve conflicts peacefully than it is to fight

   5. Don’t attribute to malice what is adequately explained by ignorance.

   6. Don’t attribute to dishonesty what is adequately explained by unconscious defense or character weakness.

   7. In the iterated prisoner’s dilemma, the most successful strategy is the Copy Kitten: Cooperate by default. Forgive one defection. If a person defects twice, never cooperate again.

   8. I don’t have to fight liars and people who are not strong enough to take accountability for their actions. But I shouldn’t cooperate with them, either.

   9. If I have to fight, I should fight to win.

   10. If I have to hurt someone, I should do it quickly and proportionately, without cruelty. Pain is unavoidable but I should avoid causing suffering as much as possible.

   11. If I cause another person to suffer, I will suffer. In addition to harming my own integrity, they will become vengeful, a blight on my reputation, and a future liability, especially as I am now in a public-facing position.

   12. If I am defeated, I need to accept it with all the grace I can muster.

   13. Justice is a necessary social reality. If there are no mediating systems or parties to help deliver it, then all peaceful options must be exhausted before fighting.

   14. If I can’t move another’s heart with my suffering, and a desire for mutual dignity can’t deliver peace and respect between us, then honor may demand vengeance.

   15. Revenge can create and perpetuate cycles of violence, so if I have to resort to it, I need to do so in as quiet, honorable and thorough of a manner as possible, to discourage any further retaliation, and prevent unnecessary fallout in adjacent relationships

5. THINGS FALL APART

   1. Everything but awareness is impermanent, unsatisfying, and only a surface representation of the Great Self.

   2. The world is always in a state of constant flux and change; therefore attachment to any particular configuration of it will hamper my ability to be skillful with it.

   3. Human beings live fleeting lives full of grief and delusion. We are worthy of one another’s compassion

   4. First do nothing; seek wisdom: to understand human behavior, it’s important to first suspend moral judgments long enough to understand the situations, circumstances, environments and systems in which the person is embedded. Once I have the facts I need to feel reasonable and confident in a judgment, I can then make one.

   5. Human relationships are extremely complex and difficult, and require extraordinary amounts of forgiveness and forbearance to work.

   6. My odds of survival over the long-term are directly correlated to my ability to change and adapt.

6. PROTECT AND DEEPLY CARE FOR RELATIONSHIPS

   1. Relationships are the psychic soil from which our self-concepts grow.

   2. I want to conduct myself in relationships with the utmost integrity, so that I honor the infinite image of God in each human being.

   3. A commitment from me is valuable - I shouldn’t waste it on someone who isn’t worthy of it.

   4. Someone must be almost as spiritually tall as me to earn a commitment from me.

   5. Keep friends and lovers separate.

   6. Don’t cheat, and don’t stay with a cheater.

   7. Avoid relationships with possessive people.

   8. If an aspect of a relationship elicits controlling behavior between partners, rather than genuine self-mastery freely given, that aspect is unsustainable as it is co-constructed and will eventually sabotage the relationship.

   9. Relationships persist even after physical presence is over, so the way I end connections will influence the quality, intensity and duration of the grief that I feel, and that others feel.

   10. To end a relationship well - quickly, mercifully, kindly - is an act of great kindness

   11. The only relationship I can be sure I will have until death is my relationship with myself

   12. Everyone dies alone.

7. SEX IS SACRED

   1. Sex, like violence, is inherently Dionysian, an eruption of chaos that creates the conditions for new life and order.

   2. The psychosexual realm in the human mind is inherently chaotic, violent and dangerous to myself and others

   3. Because it is such a vulnerable and destabilizing force, it is a necessarily chthonic force, and needs to be safely mastered and tamed. When not skillfully handled, it inevitably destabilizes individuals, relationships, families and entire communities.

   4. The transcendence that sex offers is not the highest form of transcendence - it is more on par with drugs and medicines than with spirituality. But it is connected to some of the most tender parts of the psyche, so I need to sanctify it and treat it as a sacred relation that honors the interiority of both parties

   5. Life-changing (and life-ending) STIs are real.

   6. Hookups are thin ego gruel that cheapen both participants.

   7. People regularly, carelessly inflict serious damage on one another in the form of sexual assault and abuse, as well as accusation, slander and lies.

   8. Having sex with someone necessarily gives me power over them, and them power over me. Most people are not worth the responsibility of having power over, and are not worthy of the responsibility of having power over you. So it’s important to be choosy about whom I share this with.

8. KNOW WHAT YOU MEAN TO OTHERS

   1. It’s important to be careful with anyone smaller than me, physically or spiritually

   2. My culture expects me to perform equality with many people who are not equal to me. Most people are scarcely aware of this and mostly blind to their entitlement to it. This is annoying but not fully their fault, and the social costs of violating this norm are very high to me, so it is a normal, ritual cost of participating in society

   3. In order to be skillful with others, I need to be aware of how others perceive me, what roles they assign me, and what they expect from me.

   4. If I get close to someone, it’s important to understand the feelings that they transfer onto me, and what dramas and patterns they unconsciously try to re-enact with me

   5. In order to flourish, I require a diversity of environments and relationships in which I can play multiple roles - both student and teacher, both father and son, both friend and enemy.

   6. The more identified with a role I become, the less skillful I am able to execute its responsibilities

   7. If I have no outlet for the shadow that a particular role creates, it will express destructively and unconsciously within the role

   8. No relationship except that between a parent and child should trap me in a static role. This is a form of objectification that is unsustainable between adults.

9. GENEROSITY IS A TOOL

   1. Acts of generosity are one of my most potent tools to be of benefit to a social landscape, as well as to increase my own social status and attractiveness. Generosity can also make me vulnerable to those who envy me.

   2. I should be wise and discerning about displays of generosity, carefully control my giving in a way that benefits the recipient maximally, and be sure not to affect my status in a way that’s disadvantageous within my ecology and web of relationships.

   3. It’s important to take care with the size, context and nature of my giving, so as not to introduce feelings of resentment or inferiority in the recipients of my gifts.

   4. Extravagant gifts can often cause hard feelings in others, but thoughtful gifts rarely do.

   5. I don’t owe any individual, by virtue of my identity characteristics or relative privilege, anything at all. However, I do admire duty, noblesse oblige and gratitude in others.

10. BE A GOOD PARENT

    1. The duties of fatherhood are sacred.

    2. Keep kids safe, secure, well-fed and long on love.

    3. Accept kids for who they are now, who they have been, and who they are becoming. Always, always insist that they do their best.

    4. Be kind but honest, patient but focused, gentle but firm, and model great humanity for them.

    5. Give them the attention they need, and ensure they learn how to enjoy solitude.

    6. Help them come to see failure as a necessary catalyst for growth.

    7. Harshly punish dishonesty, so that they learn to greatly fear compromising their own integrity

    8. Most of what constitutes good health and spiritual growth boils down to parenting one’s self in much the same manner as one parents a child.

    9. Everyone, no matter how mature, will occasionally be childish, or possessed by the violent emotions of childhood wounding. This is normal and sane.

    10. If a person is exceptionally sane, they will often be childlike without being childish.

    11. If I don’t parent myself well, I can’t parent a child well.

11. GOOD FENCES MAKE GOOD SELVES

    1. A boundary is that which, when crossed, necessitates a response. It is by its nature nebulous, porous and impermanent, but must nevertheless be upheld.

    2. A healthy ego expresses genuinely through skillfully practiced constraints - boundaries in the relationship with the self - that generate emotions, desires, thoughts and responses that are well aligned with my highest sense of Quality and the sacred conditions of the present moment

    3. Boundaries create the distance I need to safely love and relate within a given relationship. This distance will change from person to person and over time with the same person, at different seasons of life.

    4. I will always require a measure of solitude, to attend to in myself what my relationships can’t satisfy

    5. Healthy relationships of all varieties are only possible when all parties have good personal boundaries that each and the other respects, as well as mutually agreed upon constraints

    6. Testing boundaries is a normal human behavior. Violating boundaries is an act of aggression that must be met as such.

    7. Those who do not consistently respect personal boundaries are unworthy of a relationship with me.

12. SURROUND YOURSELF WITH THOSE THAT WANT THE BEST FOR YOU

    1. People who want the best for me will:

       1. Treat me with respect

       2. Understand that I have different feelings, opinions, and desires, and will want me to express them honestly.

       3. Want me to set my own priorities and communicate freely about them.

       4. Express myself and my emotions honestly, without attempting to manipulate me

       5. Not withhold connection, attention or affection from me to get what they want

       6. Deal fairly with me, keep their promises and give me what I pay for

       7. Not threaten me - physically, mentally or emotionally

       8. Want me to be happy and healthy