Welcome!
Thanks for taking the time to check out my site. This page serves as landing spot for my various endeavors. As the son of a Scoutmaster born on the anniversary of Boy Scouts, I have a deeply engrained desire to leave every place better than I found it. In Shakespearean terms, I seek to spend my hour upon the stage attempting to better this world before I am heard no more; I really can’t think of a more worthy use of one’s limited time.
I firmly believe that we cannot effectively solve a problem until we understand it. Say a car won’t start. Is the problem the spark plugs? A dead battery? A faulty fuel line? If we don’t understand how it works, how can we ever hope to fix it? Society is far more complex than a car, with many more factors at play - without understanding our fellow humans who make up society, how can we ever hope to fix the problems we’re faced with?
Knowing this, I’ve been driven by a lifelong obsession with understanding. Why do people feel and act the way they do? Why do our various social rules exist? How do others experience life? What makes an action good or bad? These questions are all foundational to understanding the world we live in.
I realized early on that understanding is limited by experience. Sure, the child of a rich family can major in philosophy at an Ivy League school, but if they’ve never worked a blue collar job, are they really equipped to understand the experience of the working class? If they’ve never worked in the service industry, can they hope to be well-versed in the ways that “nice people” try to subtly exert power over those they perceive as less than themselves? If they’ve never worried about how they will pay rent, how can they possibly relate to the 50% of Americans who do? This is a recipe for “bad philosophy” - uninformed impressions dressed up as intellectualism.
To combat these blind spots, I’ve made it an active point to seek out a wide range of experiences and perspectives throughout my life, with the hope that they might provide me a deeper understanding of society, and the problems we face within it. I’ve worked as an actor, a producer, a carpenter, a lifeguard, and a mead brewer. I’ve labored on demolition crews and with apartment renovation companies. I’ve coached axe throwing for tipsy Brooklynites and archery for terminally ill children. I’ve written TV screenplays and tended bars. I’ve attended NYC galas with wealthy socialites, and parties around a bonfire with battle-worn veterans (I’ll take the vets over the socialites any day.) Currently, I work in philosophy as an ethics consultant in AI, and I’ve done harm-reduction work for Google, Anthropic, and several other companies. If you want more details about my background, feel free to visit the “about me” section.
This website currently serves as a landing pad for my various endeavors. On it, you will find my philosophical works, as well as an “applied philosophy” blog about my thoughts on the problems we face today, the factors that contribute to them, and actionable ways we may work overcome them. There is also info about my work as an actor, fight choreographer, and combat sport fighter.
Use the tabs at the top to navigate to the area that interests you! You know, like a website. I hope you’ll join me on my quest to leave the next generations with a world better than the one we inherited.
