Hello, I’m Matt.
I’m the author of this daily newsletter.
We’ve had a lot of new subscribers recently and have been charging through hundreds of traditions, thinkers, and philosophers at breakneck speed. This week, we’re going to take a step back and get to know each other, explain our mission, and invite you into the vision we’re building here.
I want to briefly share my story, only so that you can get to know me and what motivates this work. To that end, I hope a quick backstory is helpful and will connect us better. Also, I’m excited to take the first step in getting to know you all better, which we will do later this week.
I grew up in a deeply religious, conservative environment and often choose paths that took me even deeper into that subculture. I was fundamentalist, literalist, frightened, and unloving. Not everyone around me was like this, but for one reason or the other I gravitated towards interpretations of my faith that were often exclusive and hateful, even while trying to cultivate a spirit of kindness, inclusion, and generosity.
I worked hard in high school and was accepted into West Point in 2012 (after a short stop at the West Point Prep School in 2011). For me, the military was an expression of my faith—I sought a sacred calling, one that allowed me to protect what I saw as “god’s chosen"—chosen people, country, and way of life.
For me, my religion, my gender, and my race placed me in a special category, in a special time, performing god’s work. I hated those who hated us, and had little tolerance for anything outside my fundamentalist interpretation of the world.
I originally chose to major in German at West Point (a language I already spoke having grown up in Germany) but quickly realized I needed to change. The easy A wasn’t worth the boredom.
I was also thinking about leaving West Point and the Army at this time, but I wasn’t sure why. Something was beginning to change in me, but I didn’t know how to articulate it or really understand it.
So, without a strong defense of why I should leave—and hearing over and over again that it was probably just because West Point was hard—I chose to stay hoping these feelings of unease would resolve themselves.
In retrospect, my hardened fundamentalist armor was cracking, and I was finding it harder and harder to support a worldview so hateful and limited.
Having chosen to stay at West Point and now without a major (and without any real particular passion or vision of myself) I chose philosophy, embarrassingly assuming that I had chosen theology.
An aspect of my supremacist religion to that point was an assumption that my faith tradition was superior and was revered by all in the academic, philosophical community. I assumed theology and philosophy to be one in the same.
My first lesson.
Over the next two and a half years I was radically transformed. I heard voices to which I had never been exposed—Islamic teachings, Hindu thought, Buddhist parables, feminist critiques—and I encountered thoughts I had been trained to avoid as “sin”—evolution, the scientific method, reflections from transgender friends, experiences of racism in America—and collectively it was too much.
I went into a deep, confusing depression the final semester of my senior year, and had it not been for meeting my now wife in that time I’m not quite sure what would have become of me.
At the core of my suffering was a blatantly contradictory development—I was finding the tradition of peaceful, nonviolent living the most logical and attractive form of existence, and violence as an abhorrent option in almost every circumstance.
Even more than logical arguments, I was finding the personal truth of nonviolence found in the teachings of Jesus, the Buddha, and Hinduism to be not only timeless, but also deeply grounding and helpful. These perspectives were making me the person I wanted to become.
And what’s more, the arguments I was presented about justified war (the leading modern scholar of Just War Theory often frequented our school and our department in specific) seemed rooted in a certain greed, control, arrogance, ego, and ignorance that I was desperate to overcome.
The thing of it was, I was locked into a contract with the Army to commission with the Field Artillery that summer.
My only option was to strongly repress this, and a multitude of other changes that had occurred as the work of philosophy had made me vastly more empathetic and compassionate.
During my basic officer’s training at Fort Sill Oklahoma, I finally snapped one day and had a cathartic experience of sorts, falling alone on the floor weeping and crying out,
“I can’t kill anyone, I can’t take a life, I won’t!”
I began the confusing and uncertain process of figuring out what to do next. I found my way to a Chaplain, who after a few sessions of therapy recommended I seek discharge as a Conscientious Objector.
I spent the next two years fighting for approval to be discharged honorably under Conscientious Objection. I was investigated for authenticity, scrutinized from every angle—my friends and family interviewed and pressed for any inconsistencies.
I then had to send my packet requesting Conscientious Objector status along with this investigation through 36 levels of approval to the desk of the Deputy Secretary of the Army who, upon its receipt, approved my status and allowed me to leave honorably from my contract.
I’ve spent the last 3 years trying to sort out exactly what happened, how I changed, and how I was able to hide such a radical transformation from myself out of fear and ego.
This newsletter is a deep dive and survey into the thinkers, traditions, and truths that remolded my young, hateful heart.
My goal in this project is to share these thoughts with you. I have no agenda for you as I’m largely uncertain how these thoughts will effect you (or not) as they speak to our own truths, experiences, and needs.
However, I do have a mission. The last 8 years of my life—from attending a military academy and joining the army to leaving fundamentalism and embracing my complicity—has birthed in me a purpose.
This newsletter is the result of me finally slowing down enough to be honest and embrace that purpose.
And so we’ll dive into that mission tomorrow. Because I want you, fellow seeker of truth, to join me.
All this week we’ll be exploring why we’re here, what our goal is, and how to best utilize the ecosystem of content and tools emerging as we grow.
If you haven’t already, please subscribe to follow along, I’m happy you’re with us!
Until tomorrow,
Matt
My Story