‘Youthful Folly’
‘While your busy making viral videos, we’re busy making money.’
There is something I need to say before we go any further.
The company I built did not come from a viral moment. It did not come from a trend. It did not come from optimizing an algorithm. It came from a temperament shaped in a very different field than the one you grew up in.
Not better. Not worse. Different.
I grew up alone more often than supervised. After school meant an empty house, a refrigerator, and a few hours of unstructured time. If something broke, you figured it out. If you were bored, you built something or you went outside. If you embarrassed yourself, maybe ten people saw it. By the next week, it was gone.
Information was slow. You waited for answers. You lived inside the friction of delay.
That friction did something.
It trained patience without anyone announcing that patience was being trained. It trained problem-solving without calling it resilience. It trained a kind of internal dialogue because there was no external feed narrating your identity back to you.
That was my Prakriti — the field of conditions I was handed. Body. Era. Technology level. Cultural pressure. It shaped the way I think. It shaped the way I build. It shaped the way I see risk and noise.
And now I look at you.
You did not inherit that field.
You inherited something far stranger.
You inherited permanent audience.
You inherited infinite stimulation.
You inherited what I’ve called before a kind of simulated telepathy — a network where thought travels instantly, reaction is immediate, and identity is continuously mirrored back to you through metrics.
The internet is not evil. Social media is not demonic. But it is powerful.
It is artificial light for the mind.
Just as artificial light can stimulate plant growth, digital connection stimulates cognitive evolution. But it is not the sun. It is not the natural rhythm of interior formation. It accelerates before stabilization.
That matters.
When I was forming an identity, silence was normal. When you are forming one, silence is rare. When I made mistakes, they faded. When you make mistakes, they archive. When I disagreed with someone, the disagreement lived locally. When you disagree, it becomes content.
That is a radically different field of conditions.
You are not weak because you feel overwhelmed. You are not fragile because you crave validation. You are not broken because your attention fractures under constant stimulus.
You are shaped.
But shaping is not destiny.
This is where I need to be clear about something.
I do not fully understand your lived experience.
I can analyze it. I can observe it. I can measure its psychological effects. But I did not grow up inside it. I did not form under constant exposure. I did not build a sense of self while being rated in real time.
So I am not speaking down to you.
I am speaking from a different ridge of the mountain.
And from where I stand, the terrain you are walking through is dangerous.
Not because technology exists. Not because connection is wrong. But because identity is forming before interior stability has time to anchor.
When feedback arrives before reflection, you begin outsourcing your self-concept.
When approval becomes ambient, silence feels like rejection.
When algorithms anticipate your preferences before you articulate them, your ability to think independently weakens without you noticing.
This is not condemnation.
This is diagnosis.
There is a difference.
If I ever have children, I will not teach them what to think.
I will teach them how to think.
That is my Dharma.
Dharma is not morality. It is not a code imposed from outside. It is your inner orientation acting in alignment with itself. Mine, as I see it, is to act as a guide in unstable terrain. Not loudly. Not theatrically. But soberly.
A sober person can navigate confusion.
And we are in confusion.
We are in what the I Ching calls Youthful Folly — not stupidity, but immaturity of stage. A phase where instruction is needed because conditions have changed faster than wisdom.
When a civilization invents artificial telepathy before it has mastered interior silence, it produces anxiety. When attention is monetized before discernment matures, it produces fragmentation. When identity is performed before it is understood, it produces exhaustion.
I am not here to shame you for participating.
We all participate.
But I am here to remind you that your field is influencing you more than you think.
The reason I build slowly instead of chasing virality is not moral superiority. It is temperament forged in delay. The reason I distrust instant validation is because I grew up in its absence. The reason I think long-term is because my formative years rewarded patience, not reaction.
That is Prakriti at work.
Different fields produce different instincts.
You have instincts I do not. You navigate fluidly across platforms. You detect shifts in tone instantly. You process information at a speed that would have overwhelmed my generation at your age.
But speed is not stability.
And stability is the foundation of agency.
The most dangerous thing about simulated telepathy is not misinformation. It is premature identity solidification. When you begin defining yourself through reaction cycles, you lock into personas before you understand who is doing the performing.
This is where the gentle warning enters.
External validation feels like connection. Sometimes it is. But when it becomes the primary mirror, it distorts. You begin optimizing for applause instead of truth. You begin curating instead of confronting. You begin reacting instead of reasoning.
You do not notice it happening.
That is why sobriety matters.
Sobriety does not mean withdrawal from technology. It means interior anchoring before expression. It means thinking before posting. It means asking, “Is this me, or is this performance?”
You do not need to abandon your field.
You need to master it.
The internet is a transitional organ. It is humanity experimenting with collective cognition. It is clumsy. It is loud. It is adolescent. But it is not final form. Just as artificial light does not replace the sun, digital connectivity does not replace direct consciousness.
We are practicing.
But practice without guidance produces chaos.
That is where someone my age has a responsibility.
I cannot fully inhabit your field, but I can offer something you may not have had enough of: modeling internal restraint. Modeling depth over noise. Modeling patience over impulse. Modeling thought before broadcast.
Not because I am enlightened.
Because I was formed differently.
And I see the cost of constant exposure.
You are living inside a field where identity is marketable. That is unprecedented. Every gesture can be monetized. Every opinion can be amplified. Every vulnerability can be harvested.
If you are exhausted, that makes sense.
If you are anxious, that makes sense.
If you sometimes feel hollow after performing connection all day, that makes sense.
You are not defective.
You are overexposed.
And overexposure without internal ballast creates drift.
The drift is subtle. You begin adjusting your beliefs slightly to maintain belonging. You begin curating tone to avoid backlash. You begin shaping thought to anticipate reaction.
Gradually, thinking becomes secondary to positioning.
That is the quiet danger.
I built what I built not because I am smarter, but because I grew up in an environment where thinking privately was normal. Where boredom forced imagination. Where confusion did not instantly demand commentary.
That environment trained depth.
Your environment trains speed.
Speed is not wrong. But speed without depth creates fragility.
So here is the encouragement.
You are not broken because you feel the strain of your field. You are not weak because silence feels uncomfortable. You are not shallow because you grew up inside metrics.
You are shaped.
But you can strengthen.
You can deliberately cultivate interior space. You can practice delayed response. You can build thoughts offline before releasing them. You can learn to sit with uncertainty without narrating it.
This is not regression.
This is integration.
Your Dharma will not look like mine. Your field is not mine. You may build things I cannot imagine. You may solve problems my generation created.
But do not confuse visibility with clarity.
Build internal stability before external expression.
Stabilize before you broadcast.
Think before you declare.
Anchor before you amplify.
This is not anti-technology.
It is pro-sovereignty.
A sovereign mind can use tools without being used by them. A sober thinker can enter confusion without drowning. A grounded person can navigate artificial telepathy without mistaking it for intimacy.
That is the father energy I feel rising in me.
Not biological. Archetypal.
Quiet. Observant. Protective without controlling.
If I ever teach a child, I will teach them to reason, to pause, to question themselves before they question the world. I will teach them that applause is not evidence. I will teach them that silence is not emptiness. I will teach them that clarity requires friction.
And I offer that same lesson to you.
You are living through Youthful Folly at civilizational scale. That is not shameful. It is developmental.
But development requires intention.
Prakriti sets the conditions. It does not set the outcome.
You inherited a hyperconnected world.
Now decide whether you will be shaped unconsciously by it, or consciously shape yourself within it.
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(written with the assistance of ChatGPT)
