💌 How to Be a Better Imposter

How’s the book writing going?—people ask me. My left eye twitches as I slowly rotate towards them, inhaling audibly through flared nostrils whilst I discern their countenance for any hint of malice.

But, of course—nay, it’s a genuine question. And so I sigh—perhaps too authentically, too thunderously—releasing the weight of all my pent-up frustration and Weltschmerz upon the naïve querent. In that moment I catch myself, realising that they were probably just being surface-level polite—not necessarily seeking a deep or honest response, but rather: the chipper alacrity of small-talk. And so I rally; deftly pirouetting the topic to brighter things whilst flipping curiosity back unto them.

This works 98% of the time. But I’ve come to a juncture. It’s time—time for a refresh. There’s a book that wants to be written. And my proclivity for instead writing long, long museletters for you isn’t helping.

And so, in this museletter, I reveal My Plans. Surreptitiously, of course.

Additionally, you’ll learn:

1. How to Be A Better Imposter in the mythical “Future of Leadership” —or at least, what I mean when I say this
2. How to Choose Your Ideal Conspirators (that is: who you work with) [edit: I will do this another time lol]

I also share Glimmers Amidst The Dark.

It’s an honour to be read, thank you for subscribing. Shall we?

~~~· How to Be a Better Imposter

In recent years this museletter has ostensibly promised wit, wisdom and wiles to help you be a better imposter within the mythical “future of leadership”.™️

But, hai—what does this mean?

Well; I’m going to break it down for you, so that we can savour the meaningness of each word—and thus better appreciate its reassembled gestalt.

wit

Wit is associative knowledge. You’ll need this if you are to survive These Times.

To be quick/sharp/keen-witted means you are able to swiftly and deftly draw insight from seemingly disparate domains, synthesising them in realtime (with intuitive fluency and fox-like canny).

In other words, you make new and novel connections that are timely, relevant, and apt. Improvisational comedians do this incredibly well; much humour comes from the delight born of unexpected juxtapositions, connections, and inferences. Poets and many artists are also, of course, exemplars of wit.

The thing is—you don’t need to be quick-witted. Just having some proclivity for wit is enough—even if your particular alchemy takes time.

However, you probably don’t want to be dim or dull-witted.* This speaks to a kind of ossification, whereby new connections are difficult to make because one is so habituated to a singular domain.

* If you fear this: imbibe more entropy! And then reflect upon and integrate your experiences. Easy.

There is a danger in being mid-witted, though. This is where we find ourselves betwixt fractal-principles;* missing deeper and more poetic sensibilities by instead overthinking things. The fellow not-philosopher Peter Limberg writes of this elegantly in Midwittery to Humility.

* Fractal-principles are self-similar concepts that manifest consistently across different contexts and orders of complexity. To quote Hanzi Freinacht, “You go from simple black-and-white thinking, to complex and nuanced thinking, and from there to finding new simplicities in the form of underlying, universal, guiding principles: toward what you might call a ‘second simplicity’.” The second simplicity rhymes with the first, and—like a fractal—the nth.

There is a magnetic pull toward mid-wittery, though. It has a higher Total Addressable Market (TAM)—which means that there is immense commercial opportunity available to those who service this group.*

* I don’t believe in IQ or various prefix-quotient diagnostics, btw. But I would generally wish that we all develop and grow in our ability to navigate (and appreciate!) complexity.

My ongoing and active concern is that most organisations keep their leaders within mid-wittery by fostering an implicit intolerance of complexity and ambiguity. “Keeping things simple” turns into “keeping things simplistic”, given time.

Verily, as I often say, we ought rise to meet the complexity of our times (not artificially dumb things down to match our diminished capability). 😤

I’ll write of this more someday—count on it—but, if anything, I’m trying to be less wordy in these museltters. Yet... I suspect I have just reveal my own midwittery. 😅 Moving on!

wisdom

Wisdom is something akin to walking the path of least unnecessary suffering.*

* At least as we perceive it.

Wisdom harbours curiosity and empathy, is inherently qualitative, and operates within wide, open, and infinite boundaries. Wisdom knows that all complicated systems remain nested within infinite unfurling complexity.

Wisdom is consideration and care—which are not “winning” qualities in a world dominated by a “move fast and break things” ideology that incentivises collective harm. Who can afford to be wise, in this economy?

Literally, we have rivalrous dynamics that disincentivise us to care about the bigger picture. Wisdom is thus an existential threat to most business models—which is why we need to be savvy about how we smuggle it in. Worth it, though.

and wiles

Wiles are the ploys, manoeuvres, and schemes we imposters must employ in order to play the infinite game within the context of the finite.

Playing to win is easy enough. But playing to change the game itself (without creating losers)—that takes some canny. Some knack.

I’m not a fan of the categorisation labels of Venkatesh Rao’s Gervais Principle—the imposters I speak of are neither ‘clueless’ nor ‘loser’ nor ‘sociopath’. They’re working in the heart of the egregores of enterprise land. They know how easy it would be for their light to be snuffed; how easy it would be to become a burnt out thrall/husk. Or how easy it would be for them to go full callous mercenary; to give up on more complex/wiser/wider goals and to instead just optimise for selfish gain.

There’s an element of the trickster spirit that such imposters employ, and a subversive leadership that is surreptitiously displayed. The work is subtle, yet profound.

to be a better

Note that this is to be better—not become better. You already harbour these qualities within you; the question is how we might better bring them to the fore.

You’ll also note it’s a better imposter—not the better imposter. You are not in competition with anyone. Betterment is both an individual and collective (and, frankly: non-linear) developmental directionality.

So: you and I might not agree on what betterment quite looks like,* but the conversation about betterment—about meaningful progress—is one of the most important ones we can have.

* For what it’s worth, planetary mutualism conducive to the omni-win complexification and flourishing of all life is what betterment feels like to me.

imposter

Yes, yes. Everyone feels that they have imposter syndrome.*

* Well, nearly everyone. Some are afflicted with a severe deficit, which leads to whatever the opposite of epistemic humility is.

The more you rise within the context of an organisation or profession, the more likely you are to be surrounded by increasingly talented people. And because we compare our inner landscape with their outer projections, it’s natural for us to collectively believe that everyone else is better, that we don’t belong, and that sooner or later we will be discovered for the imposters we are.

How enlivening! I know I don’t belong within the belly of the eldritch egregores we have summoned—the same ones serving Moloch and setting our civilisation upon its all-consuming, self-terminating path. You know you don’t belong, either.

But yet here we are. We are infiltrators, you and I.
This is the kind of imposterism I talk of.

Now, you could simply numb yourself and play along, playing whatever finite games you need to, in order to “win”. But that gets tiring after a while, and some of us are ready for NG+. Here, we play the infinite game from within; accruing influence and subtle powers—so as to steer collective efforts toward a more meaningful kind of progress.

I mean, folks haven’t caught me yet. I write these long and seemingly intellectual museletters to throw the suspicious off my trail. I’ve groomed a corporate-facing persona so that I can better slip past the cognitive gatekeepers of enterprise land—so that I can move quietly and plant things from within.

Being an imposter is wonderful! You are exactly where you need to be to work your magics. What a fun role to play.

within the mythical

I say within because I am not talking of some distant, abstract concept at remove. And I say the mythical for three reasons:

First: myths are stories that are told, and retold, for the sake of their telling (thanks James P. Carse). In a similar vein, there are stories that are told and retold about what “the future of leadership” entails.* Having the “narrative acuity” for where you fit in this is important. In my role as Dr. Fox—archwizard of ambiguity (most fantastic)—I must dance within The Overton Window of what’s acceptable to the warlocks and oligarchs in Enterprise Land. This behooves certain posturing and gesturing. If I were to simply speak within Enterprise Land as I am with you as foxwizard here, much would be deemed too radical, heretical—or even unthinkable. And similarly, for you, this is the context within you which weave and sew new enchantments, and better illusions.

* Most of these stories are perpetuations of The Naïve Progress Narrative (aka The Delusion of Progress), something most of modernity continues to maintain a blind and almost dogmatic faith to.

Second: myths are also conventionally considered to be falsehoods (thanks, mythbusters 🙄). There’s an element of truth to this.

Much of what we discuss in the mythical “future of leadership” is what some might astutely call ‘bullshit’. I don’t say this as if it were a bad thing; quite the contrary—I am more than ever re-warming to the important role that bullshit artists* play in terms of enabling us to make-believe in that which is not-yet-true.

* Note: not mere bullshitters. One must make art of it. As a professional speaker I see this a lot. The academic and complexity practitioner in me knows that whatever the charismatic speaker is saying is, uh, limited in its veracity—but the way it is delivered is nonetheless enchanting and compelling.

To quote from a newsletter that quoted the fantastic paper titled “Bullshit as a Problem of Social Epistemology” in The Journal of Sociological Theory—which, in turn, references this paper by “some guy named Fuller” that explicates a function of bullshit rather aptly:

[...] the bullshitter is an antirealist, treating “reality as inherently risky and under construction,” fraught with a greater degree of uncertainty. [...] Bullshitters engage in “deferred epistemic gratification” by throwing a variety of ideas and claims out there without regard to the weight of the evidence.

So, whilst myths might be clearly denounced as “bullshit”, this is a midwitted take that completely misses the deeper poetics at play. Thus I rather relate to them as the mythologist Dr. Martin Shaw so elegantly posits; myths are beautiful lies that tell a deeper truth. Except here’s the key distinction: bullshit artists are indifferent to truth, whereas those of us with a warming to myth are enamoured by the quest for it (nebulous as it may be).

Which brings me to the third reason I say mythical future of leadership: we live within a time of great significance. Mythic significance.

This has always been the case—but especially now (as ever).

The decisions we make within the next decade will have huge ramifications on our future—from global heating and ecological collapse, to the proliferation of artificial intelligence and ubiquitous corporate surveillance, to geopolitics and mass misinformation and disinformation, to microplastics, genocides, exponential biodiversity loss, extinctions—and more! We are living amidst a metacrisis that is far more grim than you or I could comprehend. And whilst it might feel like we are caught within a nostalgic loop-nexus—the pent up criticality of our interconnected world-systems have gotten to the point where collapse will be exponentially more visceral and evident. (If it isn’t already obvious to you now.)

Thankfully, at the same time, [some of us] are (re-)awakening to what roles we might play in this “time between worlds” (to quote Zachary Stein). To quote from Skymeadow Press (an Institute “committed to promoting the work of thinkers whose work addresses issues of meaning, complexity, and evolution for a world poised between breakdown and breakthrough”)—

The challenges before us are daunting, to be sure, and the path ahead will be hard [...] Still, despite the urgency and seriousness of the moment (or, indeed, because of them), we must move forward not just boldly but joyfully, marching ahead with a post-tragic* perspective that sees the darkness but is not overcome by it. [emphasis mine]

* As of my last musing I am happy to report that I’m now oscillating betwixt tragic and post-tragic. Thank heavens! Too much time in the tragic is tragic.

Which brings me to the final element, dear fellow imposter.

future of leadership

Given our context, what is the so-called “future of leadership”?

Shoggoth/AI offers benign and generic statements like “the future of leadership is characterised by a need for continuous learning, adaptability, technological integration, and a focus on people and strategic foresight”. You and I, on the other hand, know that we must also be subversive. It’s not enough to optimise for the current game; we must change the game itself, transmuting it into the infinite.

But—two caveats before I continue: I am a tad allergic to the term “futurist” and “leadership”. And whilst I, sometimes, refer to my role as akin to that of a “leadership futurist”—I want you to know I do so with a pained smirk.

“Leadership” is too often fixated upon the individual; whereas in reality it is often situational and relational function. An emergent role we all play, when and as needed. Thus a “true leader” [sic] ought ultimately seek to make themselves redundant by creating the conditions in which they are no longer needed. Alas: redundancy is not that appealing of a concept to most. 😅 Also, being not-needed—whilst good in theory—doesn’t actually feel that great in practice, so... hence we do the opposite. How To Become The Leader Your People Need.* ✅

* Jokes aside: good leadership is also good followership. It’s largely about being attuned to a greater story, and serving in what ways you intuit.

A “futurist”, on the other hand, is someone who spends more time on the internet than you do, and is able weave together compelling narratives of technological progress, hype and hope with bullshit artistry—usually matched with oddly specific bold claims like: “the metaverse will be an $800 billion market opportunity within three years”. Yet—no one holds any futurist to account. We go from themes of remote work to crypto to metaverse to artificial intelligence to quantum computing, cashing in on bold claims of a bright future whilst dishing out hopium to the faithful adherents of the naïve progress narrative. I might have more respect for them if they had some skin in the game, and used technologies like polymarket to back themselves (and their claims). Or: to avoid making such bold claims altogether, and to instead focus on the underlying generator-functions, emergent patterns and attractor-states to paint a constellation of visions as to what might emerge (whilst mostly serving to engender the sensibilities that enable us to better quest and orientate to relevance-realisation). But hey.

* This is an actual claim, btw, from October 2022). I guess we have a year or so to see how this plays out.

This month I went to a wonderful literary event put together by Liminal Magazine, where I was once again struck by how deep and rigorous writers and poets are. And how the role of a professional critic is generative and valuable; lifting the collective standards of an industry whilst also serving to catalyse brilliance amidst the writers themselves. I wish we had something like this for “thought leadership”—but I don’t want to be that guy. 😅

This is a long way to say that “the mythical future of leadership” is not certain; not fixed. But it does require that those of us (with the wit, wisdom and wiles to see) to work our way into positions where we can influence the emerging state of things—so that we move closer to a world more curious and kind (and a future less grim). And, sometimes, this means you need to play the role of the sleeper agent. To be the plant.* But! I would say that, if you are waiting for your time to awaken to your role—that time will likely be now, or very soon.

* This pertains to one of my future books for you, btw.

We don’t have much time left to course-correct. It may even already be too late. Yet still: we can shape what is to come.

~~~· Putting it all together

The Mythical Future of Leadership will not be a time of ‘Great Men’ [sic] making heroic interventions to ‘save the world’. Nor will it come from those seeking to ‘dominate’ the market and ‘win’. And it probably won’t come from the folks with millions of followers; folks already captured by their audiences in devotion to The Algorithm. It might—but it probably won’t.

Nay, it’ll come from the periphery, in the penumbra. It’ll come from the likes of you, who are curious enough to read such museletters so deep. It’ll be those of us who’ve achievement enough to know the hollowness of many of the games we play. Those of us ready to play an entirely different game—NG+, the infinite game—wherein we play to continue the play. And in so doing, cultivate a richer sense of fulfilment in service to life itself.

Or something like that. ☺️

~~~· Glimmers •.·☆⋆*:･ﾟ

We had a lovely “Mythic Deepwinter Rekindling” last month. These are gatherings of kind and curious folk that share a thread of being collapse-aware. Together, we explore what regenerative sensibilities might look like in this “time between worlds”. I overheard it described as a “warm, post-intellectual salon”—and I quite like that.

A poem from Jessamie Yule

At our mythic midwinter Rekindling we had my dear friend Jessamie Yule join us on stage, where she shared a few glimmers that are alight in her world. Jessamie also gifted us all a poem—which many folk asked for a copy of. But lo! I have something even better for you. You can read and listen to Jessamie recite this piece for you—and more—via her substack. I highly recommend subscribing. Jessamie is well immersed amidst the interplay of metamodern regenerative and mythopoetic sensibilities; a beacon I remain very much inspired by.

Counselling with David Pecotić

The Rekindling also featured my friend Dr. David Pecotić. I don’t believe I can adequately summarise what David brought for us, which is perfectly apt for the nebulous, numinous, poetic, and (re-)enchanting contribution he made.

As mentioned previously, David was the professional, talented counsellor-friend I needed in my latest chapter amidst the dark. I was questing amidst the dark, beyond hope, snorting lines of Schmachtenberger, imbibing the full felt-realisation of the metacrisis (whilst witnessing ongoing genocides, amidst climate collapse). There were few people I could sense-make with—David was one of the few. And he was especially apt, as this was not something I could merely ‘rationalise’ my way out of—I needed to get properly mythopoetic.

If you find yourself in a chapter in life where your path is non-obvious and resistant to default/conventional “advice”, David’s counselling might be an option for you, too.

Gurdjieff for a Time Between Worlds

For many years Kim and I have had Ouspensky’s The Fourth Way: An Arrangement by Subject of Verbatim Extracts from the Records of Ouspensky's Meetings in London and New York, 1921-46. It is a ponderous read that never really pulled me in. But when David Pecotić (above) wove insights from Gurdjieff into our conversations, my curiosity was once again aroused. Then, a certain Layman Pascal—a metamodern integralist character of post-doom sensibilities, that I very much admire—released a new book: Gurdjieff for a Time Between Worlds: Hyperpersonal Essays on the Grandfather of Metamodern Spirituality.

“The radical 20th-century Armenian spiritual philosopher G. I. Gurdjieff is still largely unknown within leading-edge developmental, transformational, and regenerative communities. His profound teachings, unusual writing style, and sheer force of character are famously unique in the annals of human wisdom. Was this man a proto-metamodern prophet? Did he use transrational, mythopoetic, and sincerely ironic communication to help incept and prepare a planetary-scale shamanic resurgence of existential understanding for the post-pluralist Epoch of the Metacrisis? Yes and no. Obviously. In this collection of diverse and humorous micro-essays, the spiritual teacher, philosopher, and cultural activist Layman Pascal takes us on a wild intellectual rollercoaster ride with one of history’s most enduringly relevant and cryptic sages.”

There are few I can think of who are ready for this book—but you might be one of the few. (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧

The appealing authority of Theo Winter

I had meant to share this one with you a couple of months ago. Theo Winter—whomst once upon a time asked me a question that inspired an hour-long video response, and is now a friend—has put together a video essay on the “Appeal to Authority” logic fallacy, aka:

Argument From Authority, Proof by Authority, Truth by Authority, the Latin "argumentum ad verecundiam" (often translated as "argument from respect" or "reverence"), Appeal to Irrelevant or Inappropriate Authority, Appeal to Wrong or False Authority, Appeal to Doubtful or Dubious Authority, A Say-So Argument, On My Say So, On My Word, On My Authority, Ipse Dixit ("he himself said it."). Plus, the major subtypes: Appeal to Others / Tradition / Culture (aka the Bandwagon Fallacy), My Guru Says So, My Expert Says So, Science Says So, and Appeal to Scientific Consensus.

I’ve a very small cameo in this well-researched and compellingly presented piece. What I love about this is the spirit in which this video essay was made. This is not some ackchyually-guy pointing out how you’re wrong, but rather: a genuine exploratory enquiry into one of the many ways persuasive arguments work (whilst drifting from logic and reason). Recommended!

A better way to salon?

My longtime friend Sian Gooden recently co-hosted an in-home salon with friends. It was so good as to make me reconsider how I go about the ones I attempt to host. Because, for many years I have strived for the cozy speakeasy ‘haven-salon’ vibes—but I’ve almost always done them in “third places”. But inevitably these bring their own chaos-energy and distraction.

When Sian and her friends hosted, it was in the living room of one of their homes. The lighting was warm (with no downlights, ofc) and the vibes were so wondrously welcoming. There was a distinctly feminine energy to it too, which was personally refreshing, as many of the spaces I find myself in these days have a masculine-cerebral bent that isn’t nearly as nourishing as we might feign otherwise.

Sian and her friends used a framework from olio.rsvp to guide the night. I’d never heard of Olio before this, but the sequencing and diversity of contemplative and conversational prompts made for an unexpectedly rich experience. I’ve been to enough events to recognise a ‘formula’—but with this I was delightedly surprised.

Also: it was a relatively small number of people (I think 12 or so?)—which translated into an experience that felt much more intimate and deep. This echoes wisdom that my friend Joe Lightfoot has long lived and written about:

“In the face of so many pressing cultural issues and existential risks Small Grouping invites us to slow down, centre ourselves and cultivate connection at the speed of trust. As a practice it lies somewhere in the sweet spot between the generation of deep platonic intimacy, the ongoing integration of our collective shadow material and a shared commitment to continually improve our lives (aka get meaningful shit done). It's easy to get started with, the potential benefits are huge and it provides us with an opportunity to become much more adept at peer to peer counselling and mentorship. Which in my opinion makes it one of the more potent responses to The Meta Crisis currently at our disposal.”

Book Writing + My “Plans”

I cannot seem to write short museletters to you; despite knowing that we live in a distraction economy and that this really ought be broken down into 420 TikTok videos to be spoon-fed to a world that can now only afford time to micro-dose learning.

But really: this could have been nearly 5,000 words towards my next book for you. Instead, this will be an email that gets put into a ‘read later’ folder or tab, never to be read (except by an ardent few—thank you).

And so: how’s the book writing going?

Well: a lot has happened in the past four years since I began writing it. The world has changed—as have I, in parallel. But what I have now is a book that is finally beginning to poetically cohere into a form substantial enough that I can sense the shape of it. And so begins/continues the long ritual of conjuring it for you.

This means: I need a different approach to these museletters. And I think I’ve an idea for it—something I’ve attempted twice before, but third time’s the charm.

Stay tuned,
—fw