What I believe
This is what I've come to believe, starting at the biggest picture there is and working down to how I try to live on an ordinary Tuesday. The short version: nurture life, love and beauty, bring order out of chaos, and push back against everything that would let it all fall apart.
The big picture · Our pale blue dot · Where it comes from · Virtue · Questions worth asking
Still looking for my ka-tet.
The biggest picture
Left alone, everything runs down. Stars burn out, heat spreads thin, and order falls apart into nothing. Physicists call it entropy. Life is the one thing we know of that pushes the other way: order that arose from chaos and keeps building more of it.
Intelligent life, to me, is the best thing the universe has produced so far. Like Roland in Stephen King's The Gunslinger, the last of the line of Eld, I'd rather stand with the light than watch the world move on and fall apart.
In the spirit of Star Trek: explore, find new life, protect it, enable it, and help new life be created, or create itself, and thrive. If I'm lucky enough to live a long time, that's what I'd want to spend it on.
If we evolve far enough, maybe we can even reverse entropy. That might be the longest shot there is. It's still the right direction to face.
“Do not go gentle into that good night.”
Dylan Thomas
That's us, as a species and as life itself. We don't accept the dark quietly. We build, we protect, and we push back, even knowing how big the dark is.
Closer to home
The big picture starts right here. For now, the only life we know of is on one small planet, so the job in front of us is to be good stewards of it: humans, and all the other life we share it with.
That’s us
Earth, the tiny dot below Saturn's rings, photographed by NASA's Cassini spacecraft on July 19, 2013. Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute.
Carl Sagan made this idea famous. In 1990 he pushed to have Voyager 1 turn its camera back toward home from about 3.7 billion miles away. Earth showed up as a fraction of a pixel. He called it a pale blue dot and wrote, “That's here. That's home. That's us.”
Watching Cosmos as a kid did something to me. So did every nature show about where all of this came from. Every person and every living thing we've ever known is on that dot. It's a gift, and it's worth taking care of.
Start with the closest circle: my kids, then my community, my country, and then humanity.
I oppose destruction for its own sake. I'll accept creative destruction when it builds something better.
rebel Financial is the vehicle that funds and builds a movement. Darevia is the moonshot engine that lets it go further.
Roots
None of this came out of nowhere. These are the people and ideas that shaped it.
Integrity, honor, justice and hard work. I learned them at home first, then had them drilled in at West Point and in the military.
Carl Sagan's Cosmos, the nature shows, and later Neil deGrasse Tyson and Michio Kaku. They showed me how beautiful the universe is and made me want to understand what's behind it.
Hundreds of audiobooks, from philosophy to physics to a whole lot of science fiction. See the shelf →
West Point, around 2000.
Army field training, around 2001.
Ratcliff Farms. Stewardship starts at home.
The Stoics
Stoicism started in Athens around 300 BC, when Zeno of Citium began teaching on the Stoa Poikile, the painted porch, which is where the name comes from. It was carried forward by Epictetus, who was born enslaved; Seneca, a Roman statesman; and Marcus Aurelius, an emperor whose private notes to himself we now read as Meditations. A slave, a senator and an emperor all landed in the same place, and it's still the best operating manual I've found.
Put your effort into your own choices and actions. Accept the rest with as much grace as you can manage.
Money, status and comfort are nice, but they aren't what makes a life good. Virtue is.
Wisdom, courage, justice and temperance. I add integrity, hard work and love. Below is how they fit together.
Virtue
Put integrity, courage, wisdom, justice, temperance and hard work together and you get what I mean by virtue: what good actually is. But any one of them, pushed hard enough without love, can turn monstrous. An arch is just a pile of stones until the keystone goes in. Then every stone holds every other one up. Love is that keystone, and it's my logo.
Integrity · Courage · Wisdom · Love · Justice · Temperance · Hard work
Stone
Being the same person in every room and doing what I said I'd do. I won't compromise my own conduct out of loyalty.
Stone
When I'm sure and it matters, I speak up: in the room, right away, to the people who need to hear it.
Stone
When I'm not sure, I get curious. Humility to question myself, conviction to act once I know.
Keystone
People count as they are. Love locks the other six together and keeps them from turning cold or cruel.
Stone
Treating people fairly and fighting real injustice. The law is the floor, not the definition of right.
Stone
A leash on my strengths, so they serve the mission instead of eating the people around me.
Stone
Persistence. Outlasting the problem and showing up again tomorrow, for a mission worth what it costs.
We aren't just here to exist for a while, experience a few things, and then be gone. Life has meaning, and every person has meaning. People find it in different ways. For me, living these virtues in service of life, its beauty and everything it could become is the meaning, even with all the ugliness, destruction and entropy pulling the other way.
Look at the arch in the corner of this site: seven stones on two pillars. The outer stones are deep green, the next pair purple, the next pair green, and the keystone at the top is red. That's this picture, shrunk down: six virtues held in place by love.
A big mission can justify almost anything if you let it. Love is the check. Every person counts as they are, and love still holds everyone, me included, to the standard.
Questions worth asking
This is where the big ideas get practical. Each card is a question I've had to answer for myself. Take a second, decide what you'd say, then open it to see how I answer it. You won't always agree with me, and that's the point.
01 · Courage
Think about your answer first.
See how I answer it +
Right away, in the room, to the people who need to hear it.
Waiting until later, or saying it to someone else, is how small problems become big ones. That's courage.
02 · Wisdom
Think about your answer first.
See how I answer it +
To find out. When I'm not sure, I get curious: I ask questions and argue the other side to test my own view.
Humility to question myself, conviction to act once I know. For me, courage and wisdom are one habit, and one question decides which applies: am I sure, and does it matter?
03 · Integrity
Think about your answer first.
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I respect your freedom, but I keep my integrity. You can do what's legal. I won't compromise my own conduct out of loyalty.
I take it in order: 1. Talk it through. 2. Offer another route. 3. Step aside.
04 · Justice
Think about your answer first.
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No. The law is the floor, not the definition of right.
Keep laws light so people stay free, and rely on a shared moral sense for the rest, with humility and compromise when views collide.
05 · Justice
Think about your answer first.
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I sort it into three tiers.
Tier 1: different values, no real harm. Leave it alone. Not everything I disagree with is my business.
Tier 2: legal, but harmful. Compete. Build the better alternative and let people choose. That's exactly why rebel Financial and 4Advisors exist.
Tier 3: true injustice, unchecked. Take up the paladin's mantle and fight, whatever it costs.
06 · Freedom and order
Think about your answer first.
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I don't think so.
Chaos: no shared rules; the strong take from the weak. Forced order: rules held up by fear; it looks solid but breaks under pressure. Chosen order: free people cooperating by choice, the highest and most elegant form of order.
07 · Freedom and order
Think about your answer first.
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Where it destroys someone else's. That's the one limit.
08 · Hard work
Think about your answer first.
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Mine is persistence. I'll outlast almost anyone and keep going through pain long after most would stop.
I'll be honest: that's also a compulsion. So I give it a mission worth what it costs.
09 · Temperance
Think about your answer first.
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One test: does this serve the mission? If yes, give it everything. If no, it waits.
Virtue serves the mission and makes the people around you stronger. Addiction serves itself and eats the people around you.
10 · Love
Think about your answer first.
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Family isn't a sacrifice I make for the mission. Loving them well is the mission, at its most basic level.
11 · Love
Think about your answer first.
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No. A big mission can justify almost anything if you let it. Love is the check.
If the plan treats people as fuel for the goal, the plan is wrong.
12 · Love
Think about your answer first.
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No. People count as they are, not for what they achieve, earn or produce.
It's the lesson of stories like Moulin Rouge and Forrest Gump: the people who love without conditions are the ones who get it right.
13 · Love
Think about your answer first.
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The opposite. Loving someone means holding them to the standard, my own kids included.
The only exception is when the rule itself is unjust. Then the rule is what has to change.
14 · Leadership
Think about your answer first.
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Rarely. I'd rather lead by example and persuasion.
I only take control when there's real injustice going unchecked. The goal is to stop the power-hungry, not to become the destroyer.
15 · Accountability
Think about your answer first.
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A partner close enough to see the whole picture. A few trusted people, no invitation needed. This page, because writing my values down in public means anyone can hold me to them. AI, as one honest second opinion among several, never the main one.
From values to action
Values only mean something if they change what you do. Here's where I've put them to work.
How I'd fix government, the law, healthcare, defense and taxes, and which value drives each idea.
See the platformI mean it. Questions and pushback make the ideas better — and they keep me honest.
Tell me where I'm wrong