What if you could match up any people in the world to discuss something and just listen?

I tweeted this morning that I wish there were a service for getting interpretations of medical imaging where you could browse any available docs or specialists across the world, book 3-4 of them, and do a live Zoom where they view your MRI results and share their opinions, debate, and discuss.

Besides the value of being on-demand, getting multiple opinions in a single meeting, and having a global marketplace to choose from, another huge value of this approach is the opportunity to hear other people discuss and converse with each other. Being a spectator on a good conversation is an incredible way to learn.

Podcasts have made this more clear than ever, by blowing the doors off the formerly controlled and scripted process of formal interviews. I tune in almost every day to hear two or more people I’ve never met have conversations about stuff. It’s engaging in a way that hearing a speech or reading an article isn’t, and 10x more valuable than formal debates or panels or interviews.

Imagine if you could take the benefits of the podcast format and add some customization based on need, person, and topic? One obvious way to do this is to start a podcast yourself, which allows you to speak with experts you’d never be able to reach without one. You can ask what you want, or even bring on others to ask with you. But it’s a lot of work. If there were more ways to create podcast-like conversations between people of your choosing, it could open amazing possibilities.

I mean hearing different surgeons, docs, and practitioners give their takes on an X-Ray and treatment approach in a real-time multi-party conversation would be so amazing and useful not just to you, but even other people who might want to listen. This is just one application.

It’s kind of like bringing the Socratic teaching method out into the broader world.

Reality has a weight.

Its weight is directly proportionate to ability to perceive it. The more the fish can understand the concept of water, the wetter it feels.

It’s not quite accurate to say life only gets harder, or more complex. These are often true, but even when the simplicity or ease of existence increases, so does the weight. Life gets denser and more real the deeper we go into it. Time and change cause the accretion of reality.

Live long enough and someone close to you will die. That experience alone makes reality heavier in a way that can never be undone. Someone who has suffered or been close to tragedy cannot ever get out from under the increased weight of reality brought by the events.

Maybe that’s the point.

Maybe reality is really, really unimaginably heavy. Maybe that’s inseparable from its beauty, power, and divinity. Maybe the time and sorrows we move through expose us to more of this weight only because they make us able to handle it. Maybe a deeper understanding of sorrow and the possibility of pain is the only thing that equips us to experience more of the fullness of joy and beauty and all the other unnamable facets of reality.

In The Great Divorce C.S. Lewis paints a picture of heaven that is not easy to experience. It hurts to walk on the grass because the new entrants into heaven aren’t dense enough, while heaven is as dense as anything could ever be. They have to become more real to experience the pleasure of grass bending underfoot. They have to increase their weight to not be crushed by the fullness of reality.

I think that’s more than a metaphor, and I think it begins before death.

Death is certainly some kind of doorway, but I suspect the process of embodying our full form, experiencing and uniting with the fullness of reality, or Theosis, as the ancient Christians called it, begins when we do. Coming into the fullness of heaven begins on earth. Reality gets heavier the further we move into it, and without realizing it, we get more capable of moving into more of it.

One of the great challenges is to accept the increasing weight of reality without becoming increasingly somber. To know and experience that weight and allow playfulness and laughter to increase in weight right along with it. The truest joy is solid as steel. Ever increasing reality is an immense load to bear, but an at least sometimes light heart is stronger than an always heavy one.

So the new limited edition book, The Inner Game of Startups, has been proofed.

Got three proofs from the custom printer we’re using, and they really look and feel awesome. Clean, crisp, weighty, and fresh.

Only 100 will ever be made. But first I’ve gotta sell 100 of them! Can’t do the print run until we do.

To date, 54 have been purchased on Canonic, the publishing platform that allowed me to put the entire digital version of the book on the bitcoin blockchain and sell 100 tokens which entitle the owner to access digital versions and redeem a physical version. 46 left!

Grab one here. (If buying with BitcoinSV is too hard, just email me and I can do it via PayPal.)

This has been a fun experience trying to publish in this way as a unique collectible with both digital and physical editions tied to the blockchain. You can be a part of history, as this is only the second book in the world to ever be published this way!

Some pics of the proofs below. (A few small formatting errors and an error in the number of editions, since I changed it from 250 to 100).

 

 

 

 

I’ve had a lot of good feedback already from readers who dove into the digital version of the book. It’s always a little weird to put your writing out there, especially when it’s kinda personal, so knowing people find it valuable is a big boost!

 

PS – Yeah, $50 is a lot. But this is a first class doorstop!

PPS – Don’t worry, if you bought one and I don’t sell all 100 by the end of July, I’ll just buy the rest myself. So you’ll get your copy no matter what!

Today we launched a new FREE service on Product Hunt:

Help your friends get hired!

It’s a fun little tool where you can sign up anyone to receive the Daily Job Hunt newsletter (an incredible bit of info and encouragement on the job hunt) with a custom and somewhat snarky message from you.

As a bonus, today only they get a free 15 minute job hunt coaching call as well.

Please go leave a comment, vote, or share on Product Hunt. And sign up those job seekers you know!

UPDATE: If purchasing the book onchain and getting token for print edition as described below is too daunting, email me at isaac at gmail dot com and I can work out an old-school mechanism to buy with USD.

Yesterday, I released a new book and I’m really excited about it!

This makes book #10 (not that I’m totally counting), and this one is a lot more personal than any of my others. It’s a collection of weekly, private emails over the course of the first year of getting Crash off the ground. It provides a real-time look into all the craziness going through my head as we struggled to define the product, brand, market, raise venture capital, separate from my previous company Praxis, sell Praxis, and my own health crises in the midst of it.

The book is also unique for another reason. I skipped traditional publishers and Amazon self -publishing, and published it directly to the BitcoinSV blockchain. That means the digital version of the book is encrypted onchain, and anyone who purchases it can unencrypt and download it. There is also a physical edition – with a total of 100 that will ever be printed (collectors item!;-), and you can purchase a token that allows you to redeem one.

The book is called, “The Inner Game of Startups” and it’s available in limited supply on Canonic.xyz (or click the book below).

Why publish this way?

I chose to publish on bitcoin for several reasons.

• The book will live forever, doesn’t live on any server, and can’t be removed by any third party
• Purchases instantly send BSV to my wallet and split revenue with the publishers, etc. No delays, bank transfers, etc.
• There are zero fees (well technically near zero – more like 100th of a penny) for purchases
• I love experimenting with new stuff that empowers creators to own and control their content
• It allows for a combo of digital tokens (“NFT”: non-fungible token) which can be bought and even resold to others on secondary market like any digital good, AND a physical book that can be redeemed with the token
• Unlimited digital supply, plus limited physical supply makes it both scarce and non-scarce
• I could work with the printer to do things however I wanted instead of whatever publisher or Amazon gives me
• I believe decentralized data and instant micropayments are the future of the internet, especially for independent creators, and I want to show what’s possible
• The BSV blockchain is an incredible protocol with an exciting ecosystem of apps being built, and I love being a part of networks of people pushing limits and full of energy
• It retains the intimate feel of the original newsletter the book comes from

It has been a really fun experience, and Canonic is an incredible platform. In fact, I’ve uploaded all of my other books and even a few papers there, but this is the first book exclusively on bitcoin and that included an NFT redeemable for a print edition.

How the heck can I buy one if I’ve never used BSV?

BSV is not a typical cryptocurrency that people are buying and selling and trading on crypto exchanges for speculative purposes. There is some of that, but not much. Its primary use is within actual apps. Entrepreneurs are building on it and users are exchanging with it and using it for payments, games, and data storage.

The upside to this is that it has real use and utility. The downside is it’s not well known and it’s not listed on almost any crypto exchanges or Coinbase. (I used to think this was a bad thing, but I’ve come to believe this is a saving grace in the long run. These exchanges are basically casinos at this point, and keeping BSV cognitively separate from pure speculation coins makes the ecosystem stronger and more serious IMO.)

The other downside is it’s not easy to obtain!

Once you obtain it, it’s incredibly easy and fun to use on lots of really cool apps and wallets that work instantly and seamlessly with near-zero fees.

So here’s the easiest way to get it so you can buy my book

• Setup an account on Coinbase if you don’t have one yet
• Buy a few hundred bucks worth of USDC (it’s a token pegged to the US dollar)
• Go to RelayX.com and create a BSV wallet

Good. Now you have a wallet with USDC on Coinbase, and a wallet ready to recieve BSV on RelayX. Then you just need to swap the USDC for BSV.

• Go to coinshuffle.io
• Select USDC to BSV
• Enter the amount you’re swapping, click ‘exchange’
• Paste your RelayX wallet address where you’ll receive the BSV (in your RelayX app, click “receive” then “copy address”; on desktop click “add funds” then copy address)
• Paste your USDC address for refund in case swap goes bad (hit “receive” in Coinbase, and copy)
• Execute the swap
• Now buy the book on Canonic with a single swipe!

Though using BSV is instant and almost free, no other cryptocurrency is. So you’ll have to wait probably ~10 minutes for the swap to execute because Coinbase and USDC are slow, and Coinshuffle will take a fee.

BUT here’s the good news. You’ll now have a few hundred bucks of BSV in your RelayX wallet, which means you can instantly buy the book, AND you can use a whole bunch of other cool apps and games on BSV.

Thanks for being with me on my journey btw

If you’re reading this, I owe you a thanks. I’ve been blogging, podcasting, Tweeting, publishing books, building stuff and sharing crazy ideas for over a decade now, and all along the way I’ve had so many amazing people willing to read, listen, like, comment, and share great feedback and stories with me. I do these things selfishly, but of course I get a massive morale boost when I see evidence of a Remnant out there that appreciates and supports it!

UPDATE: Here’s an in-depth convo with the creator of Canonic about the philosophy behind this approach to publishing and the implications for the world of ideas.

The older I get, and the more routines of family and work get layered on, the more I have to deliberately choose to stay playful.

If I’m not playing around and dabbling with new things, I get stagnant and bored and wonder why I feel that way. When I’ve always got a few things on the periphery that have no direct connection to my work or family, but are fun and interesting and make me feel like a novice, I feel connected to life.

I try to curb the old man cynic that wants to come out when some new fad pops up. It’s too easy to just dismiss things that don’t appeal to me like Clubhouse, or NFTs. But if I can ask around and learn from interesting people what it is that attracts others to these, it usually leads me to some kernel that then leads to a new area to play around in. Usually, the most popular instantiation of an idea isn’t the most interesting, but it can lead you there.

I’m always looking for weird corners of the world to explore and play with.

The natural hierarchy:

God
Individual
Family
Community
Culture
Governance Bodies

Each level down is weaker, and subordinate to the one above it. In the natural structure of reality – the patterns baked into nature – any collective is weaker and subservient to smaller units like communities, which are subservient to individuals. To the extent the lower orders cease to serve the higher orders, they are altered, ignored, or disbanded. The more centralized, the more subservient. The more removed from the individual, the more subservient.

The world is constantly attempting to reverse this hierarchy, which always leads to suffering. Nation states are the particularly hideous form a governance body takes when it attempts to dominate the higher orders. They attempt to use or dictate culture as a subservient propaganda mechanism to control communities, which in turn control families and individuals. Brainwashing, guilt, shame, and naked violence are constantly needed to try to reverse the natural ordering and maintain the upside down structure, but it’s always in a state of chaotic flux.

God is mostly treated as outside the hierarchy. A mental plaything, or an idea to be invoked to justify tyranny. But reality cannot be wished away, and the natural law – the eternal, the source of the universe, the divine – is always the highest thing in the structure. God is not an abstraction to be invoked or imagined, but the most solid thing there is. Reality itself flows from God.

The creation stories and myths always follow the natural hierarchy, and stories of the fall follow the inverted one. God creates individuals, who then form a family, and are given dominion over their local environs, language and culture emerges, and finally interwoven institutions across the whole earth. Power flows downward. All the larger, further removed institutions are servants of the individual.

The stories of corruption begin the reversal. The temptation, though manifested through individuals, is about mankind, and whether humans as a category, the collective humanity, ought to be higher than God. It results in tyrannical governing bodies attempting to occupy the top of the hierarchy, sometimes literally equating themselves with God, sometimes trying to do away with God, and making power flow in reverse of its natural course. The individual is less important than the categories or cultural norms, which are less powerful than the state.

Attempting to maintain this inverted hierarchy is constant pain, death, and confusion. The starting place to right the ship is within each individual, since individuals are the most powerful part of nature under God. If we can reorient our own lives in accordance with the structure of reality, reality itself will begin to return to form.

Hunting for a job is hard and, well, kinda sucks.

Screw that.

Let’s punch the job hunt in the face! (*ripping guitar riff plays in your head)

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The topic of courage keeps coming up everywhere I turn.

I went through a very challenging phase in 2019 where some health issues led me to face the possibility of my own death. Of course we all die, and I had made peace with mortality back in my teens, but the prospect of dying young and leaving a family behind was different. I hadn’t grappled with it.

In the process of doing so, I leaned into a sort of Zen and then Stoic acceptance. I tried to train myself to spiritually release my hold on needing to live, and then practically go about setting up things so that if I should die my family would be best positioned in my absence. The release was the Zen part, and the practical steps were Stoic.

This was useful, and it got me through the early phase. It particularly helped get me through the parts where physical pain and the mystery of what was ailing me were strongest. Not needing an answer or even to survive were a huge release. And it was useful in helping me prioritize things that matter most in terms of time spent with my family. Also it was practically useful in getting some ducks in a row I probably should have any way, like setting up a will.

But it wasn’t enough.

During this time, I kept coming across Gnostic thinkers. There are some really great insights to be found in Gnosticism. The focus on the eternal consciousness or spirit instead of temporary material matters was a valuable and encouraging way to direct my gaze into loftier things. But this wasn’t quite enough either.

I kept thinking about how C.S. Lewis once said that in his journey from atheism to theism then Christianity, he explored all the major religious and philosophical traditions. After searching and testing, he was attracted to Taoism and Christianity the most, but Taoism felt to him to be lacking courage. (I am speaking from memory of something I read many years ago so don’t quote me).

I always sort of got his point on an intuitive level, but couldn’t quite get my fingers around it. I felt the same by Lewis saying that Christianity was like all the great myths – a la Joseph Campbell – except that it also happened to be true. He called it “true myth”, and the combination of those things, as embodied in the form of Jesus as both God and man, was crucial to him. Again, I sort of got it but I couldn’t quite explain it to myself.

Back to the present and how I keep coming across the idea of courage. One reason is probably because I’m re-reading Lewis’ Space Trilogy and it plays a prominent role. But it’s popping up lots of places, and it’s been growing in my mind for quite some time.

I think what the Zen and Stoic and Gnostic approaches were missing for me is the same thing Lewis felt was missing in Taoism and most myths in general. That is, redemption of “the flesh”, or the material.

The true part of true myth; the flesh part of God made flesh. The process of ascension, or what the Orthodox call Theosis, is becoming or realizing your divine nature. It sounds very Gnostic. Except where Gnosticism might reject the flesh and leave the material plane, Theosis is about redeeming the flesh and bringing it with you.

This is very weird. And very bold. And very interesting. It also scratches an itch that I think all humans have. I certainly do.

We don’t want to endure terrestrial life by believing it’s all an illusion. We don’t want to solve the mind-body problem by denying the body exists (or denying the mind exists as materialists might do). We can’t just be perpetually high on DMT, living outside our bodies. Nor can we live well if we despise our bodies as meat-prisons.

I have always lived in my head and my heart. My body has always been a bit of a distraction. Eating sometimes feels like a chore when I just want to work. Health problems are a massive irritation to me. But trying to escape from this by accepting the idea that my body is a mere illusion or a corrupted cask from which I need to ascend feels lacking. It’s demeaning to half the thing that makes a human human. And it seems sort of, well, cowardly.

This is where courage comes in.

I don’t think enlightenment or a full, meaningful life comes from overcoming fear of bodily death and living in some elevated, non-corporeal state. Nor do I think it comes from obsessive efforts to cheat or overcome death and extend material life.

I think it comes from living with courage.

I think this means doing the most uniquely human thing imaginable: fully fusing and integrating the spirit world with the material world – fully god and fully man.

To live with courage is not to deny or ascend beyond fear. Nor is it to live only to avoid danger and difficulty. To live with courage is to walk out into the adventure (even battle if you must) even though you are afraid of it. Fear of pain and death keeps you tethered to the material, temporal part of yourself. Proceeding boldly ahead despite this fear is what keeps you tethered to the spiritual, eternal part of yourself.

It seems to me my task as a human is to live courageously.

Whew. It feels right, but what a thing to face. It’s the tallest of orders. There’s no escapism here, except escape from any beliefs or habits or situations that might tempt me to be less than courageous; to abandon or idolize either the material or the spiritual.

I’m a pretty type-A, anal retentive kind of guy. I setup and maintained this site for years as the definitive, one-stop for all the stuff I created. Every new podcast and podcast episode got a post. All the books I wrote were added. Videos, articles for third party sites, etc.

It got more complicated when I started blogging for Praxis and going on way too many podcasts to track down and repost here, but I tried. Having stuff all over the place splintered my brain. But I had to let that go.

These days, there isn’t a one-stop. I’m a little bit all over the place with content I create or participate in. I’ve forced myself to relax and get more comfy with that. So for the curious, here’s a list of most of the stuff I’m up to lately in various places.

• The Crash blog – This is my main squeeze. I write here nearly every weekday on job-hunt related stuff because it’s in my DNA to create content and Crash is the incorporated embodiment of my life philosophy of “be your own credential”.
• The Isaac Morehouse Podcast – I’ve semi-revived the podcast after a period of dormancy. I say semi because, counter to my type-A nature, I don’t have a regular schedule. I just record whatever I want whenever it seems interesting. And I don’t have anyone editing for me, so episodes have no intro or outro anymore, are totally one-shot unedited, and nothing like sponsors or detailed show notes. The podcast is available on SoundCloud and every podcast platform.
• YouTube – I’ve always preferred podcasts to video, but a few years ago I started occasionally posting conversations about bitcoin with some friends to YouTube. They did pretty well, and though I ended up moving most of those to a different platform (see next), I will occasionally post video versions of podcast episodes to the YouTube channel. It’s super inconsistent when I do, so what you see on YouTube is a lot less than what’s on the podcast, and does not include the vast majority of the bitcoin discussions either.
• Streamanity – I post videos about bitcoin and occasionally other stuff here. I LOVE Streamanity as a creator. It’s so cool to be able to use instant micropayments with revenue splits, etc. It’s the future. The problem at present is that users have to have a wallet with BSV to watch, so I’ve used this mostly as a place for more niche content of interest primarily to bitcoin nerds. Some of the videos here make it into the podcast, and a very few make it to YouTube. There’s a little logic to it in terms of which audiences seem to fit the content, but sometimes it’s just random.

I still go on other people’s podcasts pretty frequently – at least 3-4 times a month, and often more like half a dozen – usually about career related stuff and those are just out there in the ether.

It’s been a challenging but also freeing change of pace for me to kind of force myself to be less systematic and just create stuff with less rigid structure, and put it out wherever it feels best and easiest at the time. I do have occasional OCD moments when my eye twitches because all this stuff is in so many haphazard places, and any of them could get cancelled or memory-holed at any time. But there’s no real reason to be so uptight. I create because it makes me a better version of me. Maintaining a perfect archive really doesn’t contribute to that all that much, so I’m trying to let it go.

This essay can be found at various places on the web in PDF (like here), and below is an audio version.

The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light. But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. (Matt 6:22-23, KJV)

That’s a weird saying of Jesus. It’s wedged between two statements about being generous and not being a slave to money or material fear.

There are two odd metaphors in here about the eye. First, the idea of the eye as a light or lamp. Second, the idea of a “single eye” in contrast to an “evil eye”.

We think of the eye as a passive instrument. It receives light, sends it as images to the brain, and the brain makes sense of it. The world outside of the eye is objective, and the eye simply takes in what is there. If the world being observed by the eye is bright and lovely, it will send those images to the brain and that will likely make our disposition bright and lovely. If what the eye sees is ugly, the opposite is likely.

But Jesus implies something radically different here. It’s not the external world that the eye passively observes. It’s not the external world that shapes our inner selves. Instead, the eye is the light, rather than a receiver of light. Your eye – your consciousness, your attention, your perception, your way of seeing the world – is what determines the kind of person you’ll be. The light of the eye in this verse is illuminating not just the external world, but the inner self.

This is fascinating. I have witnessed and experienced something like this many times. You probably have too. A pessimist and an optimist, for example, may observe the same event and come away believing different things and having different internal states because of it. One has an eye that perceives beauty and goodness, which causes them to shine internally. One has an eye that perceives the opposite. In the context of Jesus’ sermon, he seems to be saying that a scarcity mindset that worries a great deal about money, material possessions, and material status relative to others (what today gets called “equality” in Social Justice circles) – an eye that sees lack instead an eye that sees abundance – will darken the soul.

The second metaphor is about the eye being “single”. Maybe, as some have suggested, Jesus is talking about the “third eye” chakra or Pineal gland and telling everyone to get on some DMT and open the doors of perception. I wouldn’t rule it out and it’s certainly interesting and not really in conflict with the broader context.

But you don’t have to get trippy to understand. The idea of singleness vs duality is repeated a lot in the Old and New Testament, usually with a bodily metaphor. Singleness of heart, singleness of mind (or its opposite, doublemindedness), and singleness of tongue. James talks about the doubleminded man being unstable in all he does, tossed around by every “wind of doctrine”, or new fad or teaching, perhaps the trending hashtags of the day. David asks for an “undivided heart”.

The idea of a single eye – paired with the idea of the eye not just receiving info about the world, but generating it as it illuminates what it sees – implies a lack of inner conflict. An untortured, unthreatened, consistent perception of the world. Jesus says right after this verse that you can’t serve two masters, or you’ll grow to despise one of them (PS – sometimes one of them is you). The idea of singleness is about peace of mind. In my experience, it is the greatest, most freeing thing to be of a single mind, or single eye (perception). It’s having a vision that is clear and consistent.

It takes self knowledge, and especially brutal self-honesty, to clear away conflicting perceptions or desires. You may think you have a vision and start acting on it, while maintaining doubt or conflicting desire. This will tear you apart. Saying yes to things when you really want to say no will do the same (in this same sermon Jesus advises “let your yes be yes and your no be no”). Inner conflict comes from thinking you want one thing, or tricking yourself into believing it, while your gut really wants another. This gives you double vision. You can’t see clearly. Your eye is not single.

I love this odd double metaphor of the eye as a lamp and a unitary tool of perception. It reminds that who we are is determined by how we see ourselves and the world.

A reader emailed me asking how I feel comfortable sharing political views that are widely unpopular. He also asked if I’ve written about this, and I don’t think I have, so here’s my response:

I found that being somewhat radical has a high social price, but being REALLY radical doesn’t. For example, if I were to Tweet about how I don’t like a specific politician, or how I think a specific tax should be lower, I’d probably get a good bit of pushback. But my posts are about how I don’t care about any politician nor do I think any tax is a good idea at all. As such, it’s rather disarming to the political lynch mobs. It’s out of frame, so they don’t really know what to do with it.

I don’t consider myself political at all, and I don’t see things through that lens. I think this makes it easier to say some things, because I don’t speak in the language of trigger words people on the left and right are ready to fight with each other over.

My experience has been that if I am buying in to political narratives and picking a side, there’s a cost to talking about it. If I ignore news and politics and rise above the fray and focus on first principles like non-violence and individual liberty, the price is pretty low.

I also make a point to talk a lot more about positive things like my work, education, entrepreneurship, and other stuff than I do things deemed political.

Daily blogging really helped me get clarity on my thoughts and what I’m willing to share. Especially since nobody reads a personal blog at least for several years if ever.

Remember: you don’t NEED to weigh in and share your opinion. But your are free to. Just be unthreatened and willing to back them up with kindness and honesty.

This essay series I wrote some years ago was going to be published by an organization but ended up not happening. I figured I’ve got the PDF, so might as well post it here for posterity. Forgive the lack of cover design or any formalities.

The Morality of Capitalism PDF

Kindle Edition on Amazon