On Being Better.

Focusing on creating better environments for the growth of all involved. Also, an introduction to me!

May 4, 2026

I hope for this article to seen both as an introduction to my blog, me, and my interests, but also about the conduct standards I hope to encourage for a better discourse environment.

About me

Perhaps my favorite topic is myself!

As an upcoming law student, I wanted to create an avenue to engage in fruitful discussion and a productive intellectual dispute.

During my undergraduate studies, I studied history, eventually culminating in my writing a thesis about labor groups’ dispositions towards immigration that evolved alongside the ascendancy of eugenics. (Which I think adjusted down could make an interesting blog post at some time.)

During a time of my life when I expected myself to be overwhelmed with directed work, I was hoping to find a time to explore topics that were intellectually interesting to me personally. So, what to expect on this blog is the following:

• Phil. of Mind
• Phil. of Religion
• American Law and Legal System
• American History
• Discourse and Debate norms
• Light political commentary
• AI (Of course)

About becoming better

I, like many others, am not a perfect person. Anger comes quickly, and frustration breeds insults and words that are disrespectful to all, flung as insults to individuals. As someone who has participated in online political discussions in the past, I had gravitated towards extreme positions and hurtful phrases because of the anger of politics. No more, at least I hope.

The hope in this being my first post on Substack is that it will become a cornerstone in the way I engage with things. Internet politics is a den of toxicity, and if you are not careful, you will quickly become desensitized towards the way that people hate each other, and I do not mean in the more persistent frameworks of hateful ideology, something I have never participated in, but more so in the toxic, bad-faith, straw-manning, and insulting variety of politics.

Stop and take a look at discourse on Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, or Discord, the frequent use of harmful and hateful language, amongst all on the political spectrum, attacking each other. While I think that one may grow from discussing politics online, teaching one how to structure arguments, critically evaluate one’s own positions, and get closer to the truth, I think you can very easily fall into a pit of just being mean and cruel and forgetting about the person on the other side of the conversation. So, I hope to engage in fruitful conversations on Substack about law, politics, philosophy, and religion (or any other good dinner table conversation), but I want to be accountable to a set of standards that I believe everyone should engage with.

I believe all should engage in the following and disengage when the standards are not met:

• Do not insult another, ever.
  • I want to be clear, insulting others is not technically a fault of formal logic, its likely just bad. It obscures everything in the conversation, shuts down fruitful dialogue, and, depending on the method of insulting, harms those who are not involved in the conversation.
  • If you reach the point where you believe that insulting someone is the sensible step and all reasonable discussion has ceased, it’s best to disengage.
• Steelman before strawman
  • Should you be unable to construct a reasonable interpretation of another’s argument, it’s best to leave it. Either because there is something clouding your ability to grant that your interlocutor has a genuine belief, or the position is so absurd that the steelman still proves absurd. Either way, best to take a step back.
  • Mind you, the idea here is not that you can not engage in a public way to critique poorly formulated ideas, rather, its the idea that discourse may start to break down in an interpersonal interaction, its best to know when to pull away for your sake.
• Find a way to love and respect the dignity of those you are talking with.
  • Believe it or not, there is likely an inherent dignity to those you are talking to, and you should do your best to find it. To love them or find a reason they are lovable. Should you stop before pressing send on a reply, say, “I bet their children really love them,” or, “I bet they have a golf group that thinks they are really funny,” I bet you will be able to be way more constructive about what is just another person on the side of the screen.
  • If you are unable to find the love for that person, if you find them to hold such a despicable or isolating position, maybe it’s best not to engage with them directly. Maybe you write a post outlining the position in detail, but you likely won’t gain much from discussing with a person that you find to be wholly irredeemable.

So that’s the intro post here. Hopefully, this blog will remain quasi-academic, and I will comment on things that I have sufficient training in. I want this to remain a cornerstone of the blog, showing kindness to those I engage with to keep me honest, and together we can converge on the truth.

I also want people to call me on my failure, you don’t think I am approaching you with love? Remind me that I should.

Thanks for reading.

Originally published on Sui Generis.