Commentary Week 1 November 2026

I wrote commentary after encountering the work of a few people across disciplines over the last few weeks, some of which I have sent out already. But I have not gotten around to publishing the commentary, so I am doing so now. And also adding some new thinking written today.

It is easier for me to publish a few comments at once instead of as separate posts, especially since the critiques are narrow and since in some cases it will help other people to read these critiques. Other than this point, there is no relation between the three groups I am commenting on in the posts below.

On Kendrick Lamar (and Drake and Sylosis)

• I was listening to Kendrick’s album DAMN. a few months ago, which I liked a lot.
• The one problem with DNA that really stuck out to me was the overemphasis on DNA, to a degree that felt reckless. It is possible that Kendrick has discussed the importance of providing multiple views around the concept, but even if that is what he intended, I found the method he used to still need some improvement.
• My main comment for Kendrick was and is that if he has such impressive creative skills, a lyrical power, then that also means is that he has a responsibility to use this skill wisely and to not bait and attack people in a cheap way.
• My immediate thought when listening to the album was that Kendrick’s lyrics and music are better than most other rap artists. I think the hype around Kendrick is warranted. I still favor some of the A$AP Mob sound and vibes, but the Kendrick raps I have listened to are definitely better than Drake’s (I say this as something that I thought before, and as something that I’m emphasizing after reading some funny points on the RapGENIUS comments about Geraldo Rivera talking shit about Kendrick). And Kendrick’s raps are better than many other rappers that have been popular in similar time frames to his record releases.
• I’ve sent commentary to other rappers, as I have a lot of people. As for Drake, I invited him to learn about the Catholic church and I sent some encouraging messages to him sometime in 2025. I don’t know how much of it he received, but certain actions make me think he got the message. I asked for flowers to be sent to 50cent at one point, meant in a disarming and slightly disorienting way because of some of the beef that I saw going on at the time. I think I remember seeing a post of him receiving some. The response to me from Drake has been complicated, but I stand by my position of trying to encourage Drake to find style and space for his creativity that isn’t negative and also isn’t overly defined by one-off battling. - In some ways, it seems Kendrick was baiting Drake into being constricted almost entirely in a back-and-forth. And so by reaching out to Drake when I did in 2025, I may have broken him out of an over-attachment to Kendrick in that beef. Which is funny. I suppose I cleaned up Kendrick’s attack situation before he could do it himself. I didn’t see any reason why Drake would attack me directly at the time, but if that’s where his energy turned then I still think it was a better outcome than him getting stuck in an attack loop with Kendrick.
  
• I will say that I thought Drake’s use of full music videos for each track on the recent album was great. I hope more musicians do this. I instructed for a few musicians to get more budget and talent to record music videos for every track on their album, although I do not know how many did so. Sylosis was one of them.
  
• I also instructed to support a new wave of artists across genres, and I think we need to continue that.
• Back to comments specifically on the song DNA. It is a sign of a naive young man figuring out his power to make powerful statements too aggressively and attack another person, in a way that can actually harm some of the people around him longer and in a way that actually shows him to be weaker and less skilled than someone who is able to create a more nuanced discussion.
• I actually think it is important overall for Kendrick to talk about DNA. Teaching the importance and reality of DNA is a positive. But then using DNA concepts to bash others and taunt them too much is a sign of weakness.
• I hope to see both Kendrick and Drake climb enough knowledge levels where they can attack each other lyrically on a nuanced selection of a philosophical position (where there is actual choice that is more of a fair fight) instead of on cheap shots about consumer spending or non-competitive cultural habits. Or maybe attack each other about taking the wrong side of a corporate or tech startup investment (its VCR not BetaMAX, you fool your tapes cant playback to back or back at all; Wait you’re learing here’s my hand, there are no fools when God-given words exchanged can lift us out of hell). Or maybe on getting a historical fact wrong if they wrote some songs inspired by an important historical event.
• That said, it is important that Kendrick called out Drake if Drake did commit some terrible moral acts. Kendrick was moving dangerously and taking responsibility for another human by doing that. We all need to call each other out for moral failures.
• But my core message stands, that with Kendrick stepping into heavy topics such as DNA, he also has a responsibility that he is not intentionally or accidentally providing lyrics that others can use to abuse psychologically.
• If Kendrick or Drake or Sylosis are annoyed with my commentary and want to really piss me off, they will quit creating music, give away all of their money and possessions to worthy friends or family or strangers, and then buy a one-way ticket to one of the few remaining war zones in the world to fight and die on the front-lines, wasting their Lord God given talents destroying themselves and others.
• If any of them want to please me, they’ll go buy an old history book or novel that no one knows about and write an entire album about some rare lizard species or a coral reef which exists only in one part of the earth, or write an album about a fictional history that replaced a true history which can be shown clearly because of the way two competing history books fit together, or write about a true history of an unknown person that lived 100s of years ago and all we know about this person are these few small historical artifacts (but lets speculate what they were like and how they would respond to present day problems). All of these album approaches would be incredibly helpful to kids and adults today, and require skills to build storytelling that I do not know if these artists possess.
  
• But Jeremy, that won’t sell. Why won’t it? Why does it matter if it sells? You’re saying your influence and skills aren’t strong enough that you cannot make an album on any topic sell some copies? Are you saying you do not have enough money to survive if one album that proves some real knowledge and creative capabilities doesn’t sell well?
  
• There are some artists who can take a single leaf from a tree right outside their window and unravel an entire album and artwork. From a single leaf. Prince was at that level. Hendrix. From the interviews I’ve seen of 2pac he was at that level. 2pac seemed to embody a very specific character in songs while showing wildly different ways of thinking and being in interviews. Maybe some early Led Zepplin was at that level. Freddie Mercury and Queen. BICYCLE. There are others. If you think about it, you can pick them out.
• Bootsy Collins might be one of the few musicians alive today who seems to be at that level of being able to create in a wide variety of genres and styles. Bootsy’s new metal album with Buckethead is WILD. The album isn’t as hooky as some of the metal music that I most enjoy, but the flexibility to create in that space is incredibly impressive for me to hear.
• Until Kendrick and Drake (and other artists) want to do something challenging that is not simply attacking each other, they can learn to be grateful. Because any day where they are alive and learning and creating (and even sparring with me or with others, even if that annoys me) is a day that they are not dying on the front-lines of a stupid war. And that makes me happy.
  
• Finally, I will say that I have occasionally taken extremely sharp positions against other philosophers on my blog or other social media or at in-person debates in the last year. There is an importance to this, especially if a person understands the most cutting edge philosophy principles of Girard’s mimetic theory and my reflection theory (in addition to, if a person exists in the teachings of Jesus Christ, which we all do today). Over the last year or so, I found some positions and actions by philosophers that seem to be clearly obfuscated, or in the best case just sloppy. In either case, I am one of the few people on the planet able to call these writers out on their bullshit, and I had and still have an obligation to do so.
• This differs from the problem I am calling out with Kendrick, that of using an artistic entertainment position responsibly, especially if an artist is capable of knowledge and expression positions that are so powerful as to sometimes be dangerous.

On Felipe de Brigard and other Duke Professors

I read recently that Felipe de Brigard at Duke won the MacArthur Genius award. Because my reflection theory broadly affects all of psychology and philosophy, which are areas where Felipe is doing work, and because I have previously studied at Duke University, it is important for me to clarify a few points:

• First, I have not read any of Felipe’s work.
• Second, I saw a brief talk by Felipe called “Memory and Forgiveness” when visiting a Duke Centennial philosophy event in October 2024. I was encouraged that Felipe was trying to give rational grounds for the importance of forgiveness. This is an area that I was already familiar with from Girard and Bergson and a few other philosophers and theologians I was reading in 2024 and prior.
• Third, after the talk I was excited to ask some questions and I asked Felipe how he thought his writing might differ with or be connected to mimetic theory. Felipe’s response to me was something about “memes” and “memetics”, the Richard Dawkins concept. I was shocked. I quickly and briefly explained that I was referring to mimetic theory from Rene Girard. It was clear by his response to me that he did not know about the work of Girard at all.
• I encouraged Felipe to read Girard’s work since it had so much connection to Felipe’s interests in forgiveness, and because some of the concepts he was explaining in forgiveness and memory are already covered in the work of Girard.
• Fourth, I have not encountered any of Felipe’s work or anyone else from the Duke philosophy department since that presentation.
• Fifth, because of what I said in the above post about Kendrick, I should make clear that this post is not me picking apart sloppy or intentionally deceptive writing. I think Felipe did not (and may still not) know about Girard, despite the influence of Girard’s work being all around him. I hope Felipe will do the work to understand how his writing connects to mimetic theory principles.

I should also mention a few other Duke related meetings from the last few years, since I am discussing my visit at the Duke philosophy event in 2024. The first set of meetings was with Alex Rosenberg, a former philosophy professor of mine from undergraduate studies at Duke, who I had not spoken with in about a decade.

• I met with Alex in May 2024 after reaching out to him because I was working on new theories of technology and theology and philosophy and I hoped to get some feedback. I was doing this work in combination with new technology work attempting to resolve digital addiction. We discussed points about technology and the katechon and I told him about mimetic theory and mirror neurons and Oughourlian’s concept of mimetic brain and many more philosophers I was reading for my work. Alex recommended a book by Michael Graziano called Rethinking Consciousness, which it turned out had a cover image about mirror neurons, whose discovery was made by Vittorio Gallese, who has written about mimetic theory and collaborated with mimetic theory writers. I have not read much of Graziano’s book, and need to revisit it now that I’ve finished core work on reflection theory. I did read some papers by Vittorio Gallese, but I have not met with or spoken with him. Alex Rosenberg recommended I read more from Durkheim, who I had already skimmed because of Girard and Wolfgang Palaver’s references. I revisited Durkheim after discussion with him.
• In October 2024, I sent Alex an early draft copy of Catastrophe of the Soul, with the explanation: “The piece is short, but carefully crafted and contains many layers. In some ways it is more of a poem or litany than it is an analytical essay. It is best read in dialogue with [the writings of] JP Dupuy, Blaise Pascal, Rene Girard, Marx, Hobbes, Francis Bacon, Thomas More, Leo Strauss, and Will MackAskill (a young philosopher who worked on the Effective Altruism movement, who’s newer book is "What We Owe the Future”).“ I also detailed about 30 books I’d read in the few months prior since our last meeting. And I outlined the key points of a few other draft works including Katechonic Space theory, Leviathan Loop (a re-reading of Hobbes with Dupuy and Gunther Anders), and interdividual Formation learning (which is one thread that lead to the entire breakthroughs of Reflection Theory). Alex responded that he read the piece but without much comprehension. I then offered a few points on the importance of the sovereign exception from Carl Schmitt, and the problem of so many current leaders using sovereign exceptions to justify changes. I then offered that my position differs from Hobbes and Schmitt, and asked Alex if he could identify what the differences might be. Alex did not respond. (I have outlined in other posts the importance of Catastrophe of the Soul in connection with sovereign exceptions. I have also slowly refined the essay, and plan to combine the final version into a small book with other complimentary essays and explanations).
• I did follow-up with Alex twice. Once to let him know that Jean Luc Marion was visiting Duke for a talk in March of 2025, which he might find interesting. And a second time in January 2026 when I was visiting campus, after I’d been kicked in the face a few times by a global security system (and survived), which I’ve described in other posts. My January 2026 email was a bit more pointed to posit that maybe Alex just didn’t know much about the katechon and the questions of sovereignty that I was investigating. He responded briefly but cryptically that he wasn’t on campus.
• I am not outlining these points so much to critique Alex (although I did read his latest book Blunt Instrument, and have a few critiques on that, many of which fall back to the problems of desire in thinking about consumer behavior and scarcity, some of which are outlined by Girard and others of which are addressed by Paul Dumouchel and JP Dupuy using Girard’s principles), as I am outlining them to offer a clear explanation of my interactions with other philosophy writers during this period of developing reflection theory.
• I am less concerned about collaborative discussion and debate on reflection theory (and competing theories), and I am more concerned about someone accidentally or intentionally representing something about reflection theory without me being able to quickly address the claim, since so much is dependent right now on this developing theory.

As for other professors at Duke:

• I did make a few meetings during 2024, 2025 and in 2026 in the theology department with Peter Casarella, who I have shared some of my breakthroughs with and who continues to be kind with questions and feedback. I also met in 2025 with history professor John Martin by recommendation of Peter, who seemed to take more of an interest in the work on katechon theory and the apocalypse than some of the other professors. I taught a brief class in 2025 to some undergraduates by invitation from John Martin on Girard and the current (at the time) political thinking of Elon Musk and Peter Thiel. I also briefly talked with Kevin Hart and with Reinhard Huetter at events to tell them about some of the work I was doing. Reinhard seemed particularly excited that I had found Ferdinand Ulrich’s writings. I also recently had a brief meeting in 2026 with Michael Munger to share some details of my work.
• Finally, I share all of this to make clear that, whether positive or negative, Duke University or Duke University professors or visiting professors or other Duke related entities or other universities in North Carolina have no authorship for and limited influence on my writings. That might be a strange point to make, but it is an important point because I am confident that reflection theory breaks major new ground across psychology, philosophy, theology, history, political science, neuroscience, and perhaps biology and some other disciplines. Mimetic theory also broke new ground across many disciplines, so this should not be a surprise that a breakthrough following mimetic theory might also affect so many areas.
• If I am not clear about this point, then I could accidentally introduce pressures on Duke professors that should not be there.
• The same should be said about my other responsibilities, that I have not given Duke or any Duke related entities or Duke professors or other universities or other professors any kind of decision making authority in relation to my wide responsibilities.
• What I’m writing here should not detract from my appreciation for Duke and some of the people there. I should also say that I have been in discussion with a few of these professors at Duke about my ongoing writing and research to find some ways to possibly collaborate on future works.
• Also, I should comment that I do not anticipate always needing to write extensive outlines of meetings with other writers that I collaborate with as I am doing here. The period of my life in 2025 and 2026 when developing reflection theory was so strange that I have a responsibility to provide details on these meetings in order to minimize negative consequences to other people.

On Jacob Helberg’s Wires of War (and Keith Rabois and Kagan or Mattis)

Jacob Helberg seems smart from everything I have read and seen from him. A few comments after reading through Wires of War:

• I learned about his work from a tweet from his husband Keith. After providing valid critique to the news article that Keith linked about Jacob leading a charge towards war against China, I found Keith’s follow-up assertions to be ridiculous (but perhaps understandable spouse-promoting, which I discuss further in another point).
• I found Jacob’s book to not be well-written even though some of the concepts in the book are interesting. Someone else should have told him this feedback. And yes, it occurred to me that there may be some Straussian or other hidden structure to the book, which I have already critiqued is a stupid trap to get caught in. I would like to see Jacob’s talents get used in a more focused way.
• A specific case of poor writing are the multiple definitions of what Jacob calls Gray War, which is really a re-coining of new strategies of irregular warfare. Gray War seems to be simply defined early in the book, but there are other usages and even slightly similar words used later in the book when talking about propaganda that blur the definition. If this is intentional, then it serves to give slight evidence to the erosion and dynamism of language and a hint towards the nature of current psychological irregular warfare. If it is not intentional, then it serves to undermine Jacob as an author. In both cases, the writing is ineffective as a political tool because in both cases it undermines the effectiveness of the book.
• The notion of dual-use technologies goes to some topics of Manichaeism but without clear reference. This connects to my recent work of shifting more people towards an Augustinian frame for understanding technology, and also towards better understandings of mimetic theory principles and reflective theory principles. I am not against thinking of the importance of technologies always in a dual-use way. My only addition is that weapons companies and warfare institutions of any type need to be regularly redirecting technologies to the positive use, and regularly publicly identifying new negative use capabilities of existing technologies.
• I noticed a lot of familiar names referenced throughout the book and in the acknowledgements. Related to psychological warfare, how do we know that Jacob wrote this book and not Keith using Jacob’s name? How do we know that Mattis or Trae Stephens didn’t write this book, using both Keith and Jacob as a skinsuit? How do we know that Mattis didn’t write my critique of Jacob’s book? Does Jacob know that?
• Maybe Jacob is writing with such odd personal detail in what seems like sloppy writing as a way to explain that he was really in these rooms because he is concerned that other people are being used as puppets. If that is the case, then he should be explicit about that (which is one of my ongoing critiques about Straussian-ism or any kind of veiled writing in an time of deep fake internet and deep fake reality).
  
• I should state clearly that I believe Jacob did actually write this book (and not Trae Stephens or Mattis or someone else), and that Jacob wrote it the way he did with at least partial awareness of the confusing influence environment we are in. I am writing my comments with that in mind.
• Weirdly, Keith’s bickering and boasting (as I assume a displayed prideful love of Jacob, or perhaps as selfish-love or stupid-manipulation if he would throw Jacob into the treacherous waters of geopolitical writing without a full awareness of the true pressures of that world), which started my interaction with Jacob’s book, is one of the better signals of the validity that Jacob wrote the book.
• Arguably there have always been cold wars, especially if someone wants to take the position that there are always wars. The title Wires of War and the cover art both set an initial frame that war is inevitable. War is only inevitable if we define ourselves only in terms of war, and choose to embody frames that relate only to war. That is one reason why my work around reflection theory, with some different conclusions from mimetic theory on the topic of violence escalation and de-escalation, is particularly important.
• The events described in the book are one way to represent the recent political events in the 2010s. But there are other ways to explain the events too. Instead of the emergence of Trump being led by Russian hackers, it could alternately have been the same disgruntled citizens that elected him again in 2024 by even wider margins. That is not to say that Russia doesn’t have influence operations and hackers that would gladly influence US policy if they could. But it is an oversimplified explanation.
• I should also point out that I wrote an essay on what I called "cargo cult democracy” in the 2010s, about the rise in authoritarianism across the world and the problem of expecting countries to transition to democracy too easily. So I am not naive to the arguments that Jacob makes about the history of brutality and deception of some regimes, including that of China. Even with a history of deception, we still have to find ways to shift international relationships back to real trust. The leaders of most countries want to survive, and want their people to thrive. The US needs to use that truth to incentivize bad actors to become better actors and then good actors again. Strangely, there are times in the last decade when other countries have had to incentivize some leaders in the US to become good actors again.
• Jacob’s mention of Trust and Safety teams at different companies is somewhat concerning after mention of his perspective about the election in 2016. Strangely, for all the recent talk of peace and safety being the slogan of the biblically-described antichrist from weekend-at-bernie’s-Peter-Thiel, perhaps the one group that has not been discussed are the creepily named trust and safety teams at some technology companies. In the 2010s, many of these teams were operating with just as much strict speech control as what Jacob describes happening in China. That is one reason that Elon Musk purchased Twitter and transformed it into X.
• The final page of Jacob’s book reads as an attempt to cram in a last few lines of frame setting. The ending of the book points to a perpetual struggle with China, a frame that we are shifting away from partially because of my work. It also points to Robert Kagan before comments about code and rewriting the future.
  
• The final line about the future being ours to rewrite is the most concerning. The term unwritten is different than rewritten, after following mention of inevitable competition with China and a quote from Robert Kagan. I have already considered some work on the power of rewriting reality and history, and I’ve noted that because of Satoshi and Bitcoin, this power is broken (even if some rewriting might still happen today). All of the power in any given nation state is not enough to rewrite the Bitcoin blockchain. Further, even if some of the encryption of Bitcoin does one day get broken, the concept and principles and technologies and awareness of Bitcoin are set now such that the Bitcoin system will persist unless the world shifts to a system of paper computing. However, shifting to a world of paper computing will still undermine the abilities for certain people in power to attempt to rewrite history. I should say that I have some concerns about what long-term human surveillance means for humanity (in short, Bitcoin is the closest technology to the skynet concept from Terminator), but on the short-term I do not think a dependency on Bitcoin is a bad outcome.
• Any person or institution that does regularly participate in the open or hidden re-writing of history will undermine themselves because of the pace of technology development today, since they undermine the ability for their own human teams to trust each other and to trust the systems of writing and computing and organizing that are enabling re-writing.
• This is a reason why I have been so vocal about my actions over the last two years, despite it all seeming very confusing and strange to many people. Right or wrong, frequently a little slow, but the signal I am sending to people has at least been consistent and pushing for transparency and long-term problem solving as solutions that can minimize violence.
• I hope to see Jacob writing more on topics of public policy and geopolitics. The biggest danger Jacob faces will be letting the influence of money and status and the more recent hidden-signaling-communication-style of some writers prevent him from writing a more substantial work (which likely will be much shorter in scope and size, and much more precise in language) that very narrowly addresses concrete problems. Perhaps he is seeing communication issues on the ground while meeting with countries in his current role at the State Department. In particular, he could write some on problems of how to avoid intentionally or accidentally signaling a war-frame with countries or people who have resources that could be put to better use if a collaborative frame is enabled.