I’ve been following your work as a subscriber, and I’d like to share some honest feedback. I write this with respect, but also with the intention of being direct, because while your writing is engaging, I also find it deeply problematic.
What strikes me most is the number of logical and rhetorical flaws in your discourse. You present your framework as a path to higher consciousness, but in reality it reads more like a marketing strategy wrapped in pop philosophy.
You’re not a psychologist or a behavioral scientist. You’re, first and foremost, an expert in marketing — and it shows. You’re very good at selling a narrative of transformation, but there is little scientific rigor behind it. You oversimplify extremely complex processes — identity, survival, change — into catchy formulas. That’s not pedagogy, that’s reductionism. You rely on strong metaphors (“the house that rots,” “error as a compass”), which are rhetorically effective, but they don’t reflect a deep or accurate understanding of how the human mind actually works.
Another major issue is that you completely ignore structural factors that shape people’s lives. Your message seems directed at a very specific audience: privileged white men, who don’t have to deal with systemic racism, gender violence, or poverty. For them, your method works as an ego booster — telling them the only thing missing is optimization and self-reprogramming. But for people who live with real, material inequalities, this narrative is insulting, because it erases their reality. In fact, it ends up reproducing those very structures, by blaming the individual for their pain instead of questioning the systems that create it.
Your emphasis on hyper-optimization is also troubling. Life is not meant to be a continuous performance laboratory. Turning every mistake, every decision, every experience into material for “hacks” creates a toxic mindset of endless self-blame and insufficiency.
And finally, your claim that “transcending ideology” is the path to freedom is, frankly, misleading. Lack of ideology is not consciousness — it is often unconsciousness. And it is contradictory to denounce ideology while promoting what is, in fact, a very clear ideology: extreme neoliberalism. Radical individualism, the idea that success or failure depends entirely on the subject, the erasure of social conditions, and the promise of salvation through optimization — these are not neutral ideas. They are an ideology of their own.
So what at first looked like an inspiring framework ends up being, in my view, a machine to reproduce neoliberal logic under the guise of spirituality and self-development. That is not only disappointing, but potentially harmful.
I don’t write this to “win an argument,” but to dispel an illusion. Because your style is seductive, but what many people need is not more limitless optimization — it’s a sense of collective responsibility, critical awareness, and a way of living that is not measured only in terms of performance.
We sleep on delayed gratification but it teaches a lot. Celebrating the small wins is cool but building on it and working towards bigger goals helps you to obtain skills you didn’t think of achieving. 🔑
Dan you’re the fucking man!…I’ve been eating up your content: newsletters and YouTube, for some years now…your insight and perspective is UPPER ECHELON brother!…
Loved this perspective , being awakened isn't fun but it takes so much time and thinking with awareness.
It's tough but it's worth it
Where it's a big word
Like being enlighten or attain something beyond the senses.
Facing your own conditioning while figuring things out that's a different level of dealing with overwhelming programming we've been getting it without an after thought.
It will take real courage for someone to look within.
“Mass regression during stress: When people face stressful events (via a one of catastrophe or cyclical events like elections or tax season), they regress to lower levels of consciousness, becoming reactive and resorting to black-and-white thinking and ideological attachment.”
Hi Dan. Thank you for the article, that provides much needed creed for HUMAN 1.0 to evolve to 2.0.
Curiosly enough I wrote an article yesterday very closely related to this one, in a short format, where I tried to strip all the ritualistic part out, leaving only the experiential guide in. I think you'll like it (5min read). https://pedrorandrade.substack.com/p/the-bottle-and-the-genie?r=5qqy8r.
Superb article. Psycho Cybernetics is a wonderful book that touches on many of these ideas. You can 'idea-branch' certain books and re-read them yearly to emphasize similar frameworks.
Atomic Habits + The Courage To Be Disliked + Psycho Cybernetics are kind of thematically similar to reinforce similar ideas, from different angles.
In the grand tapestry of human aspiration, Dan Koe's missive on metamorphosis over a mere six moons beckons like a siren's call, promising transcendence through disciplined mastery and the shedding of survival-bound identities. Yet, herein lies a profound irony, one that echoes the stoic musings of Epictetus on the chains of perception: Koe himself posits that a staggering 80 to 90 percent - nay, even 99 percent by the tender age of 25 - are ensnared in mediocrity's web, perceiving but a sliver of reality and operating at consciousness levels too lowly to shatter their autopilot existence.
If such multitudes are indeed condemned to this inertial fate, resistant to the very pain of change that Koe prescribes as necessary, then his eloquent blueprint for reinvention becomes a gilded key dangled before locked souls who, by his own decree, lack the hands to grasp it. What, then, is the purpose of this proclamation if not a cruel tease, illuminating paths for an elite few while consigning the vast chorus of readers to the shadows of their unyielding selves?
Philosophically, this paradox invites a Socratic scrutiny of agency and elitism, reminiscent of Nietzsche's übermensch ideal, where only the resolute few ascend beyond the herd's complacency. Koe's framework, while cloaked in motivational fervor, subtly reinforces a deterministic despair: if the majority are biologically and psychologically wired for stagnation, as his survival strategies suggest, then exhortations to "master anything, fast" ring hollow, fostering not empowerment but a quiet resignation.
In this light, the true mastery may lie not in rapid transformation, but in humbly acknowledging the shared human frailty - perhaps urging a collective awakening rather than a solitary sprint toward enlightenment, lest the message dissolve into an echo chamber for the already evolved, leaving the rest to ponder their immutable lot in life's indifferent arena.
Building trust in oneself is always more sustainable than having faith in oneself. But that takes time and effort people are often not willing to invest.
Hi Dan,
I’ve been following your work as a subscriber, and I’d like to share some honest feedback. I write this with respect, but also with the intention of being direct, because while your writing is engaging, I also find it deeply problematic.
What strikes me most is the number of logical and rhetorical flaws in your discourse. You present your framework as a path to higher consciousness, but in reality it reads more like a marketing strategy wrapped in pop philosophy.
You’re not a psychologist or a behavioral scientist. You’re, first and foremost, an expert in marketing — and it shows. You’re very good at selling a narrative of transformation, but there is little scientific rigor behind it. You oversimplify extremely complex processes — identity, survival, change — into catchy formulas. That’s not pedagogy, that’s reductionism. You rely on strong metaphors (“the house that rots,” “error as a compass”), which are rhetorically effective, but they don’t reflect a deep or accurate understanding of how the human mind actually works.
Another major issue is that you completely ignore structural factors that shape people’s lives. Your message seems directed at a very specific audience: privileged white men, who don’t have to deal with systemic racism, gender violence, or poverty. For them, your method works as an ego booster — telling them the only thing missing is optimization and self-reprogramming. But for people who live with real, material inequalities, this narrative is insulting, because it erases their reality. In fact, it ends up reproducing those very structures, by blaming the individual for their pain instead of questioning the systems that create it.
Your emphasis on hyper-optimization is also troubling. Life is not meant to be a continuous performance laboratory. Turning every mistake, every decision, every experience into material for “hacks” creates a toxic mindset of endless self-blame and insufficiency.
And finally, your claim that “transcending ideology” is the path to freedom is, frankly, misleading. Lack of ideology is not consciousness — it is often unconsciousness. And it is contradictory to denounce ideology while promoting what is, in fact, a very clear ideology: extreme neoliberalism. Radical individualism, the idea that success or failure depends entirely on the subject, the erasure of social conditions, and the promise of salvation through optimization — these are not neutral ideas. They are an ideology of their own.
So what at first looked like an inspiring framework ends up being, in my view, a machine to reproduce neoliberal logic under the guise of spirituality and self-development. That is not only disappointing, but potentially harmful.
I don’t write this to “win an argument,” but to dispel an illusion. Because your style is seductive, but what many people need is not more limitless optimization — it’s a sense of collective responsibility, critical awareness, and a way of living that is not measured only in terms of performance.
This is soo helpful. Excellent piece.
Thank you Dan Koe, writing this down and implementing.
This is inspiring me to set up a challenge for myself in 6 months… 🤔
I have nothing to say, other than "thank you." 🙏
We sleep on delayed gratification but it teaches a lot. Celebrating the small wins is cool but building on it and working towards bigger goals helps you to obtain skills you didn’t think of achieving. 🔑
I honestly need to learn how to write something so long and still make it interesting
Thank you very much, you just gave me the Solution I have been looking for.
Thanks.
Dan you’re the fucking man!…I’ve been eating up your content: newsletters and YouTube, for some years now…your insight and perspective is UPPER ECHELON brother!…
Loved this perspective , being awakened isn't fun but it takes so much time and thinking with awareness.
It's tough but it's worth it
Where it's a big word
Like being enlighten or attain something beyond the senses.
Facing your own conditioning while figuring things out that's a different level of dealing with overwhelming programming we've been getting it without an after thought.
It will take real courage for someone to look within.
Even if its dark even if its hard.
But yes why not that's why we call it a journey.
Especially love this part:
“Mass regression during stress: When people face stressful events (via a one of catastrophe or cyclical events like elections or tax season), they regress to lower levels of consciousness, becoming reactive and resorting to black-and-white thinking and ideological attachment.”
Really well written!
Hi Dan. Thank you for the article, that provides much needed creed for HUMAN 1.0 to evolve to 2.0.
Curiosly enough I wrote an article yesterday very closely related to this one, in a short format, where I tried to strip all the ritualistic part out, leaving only the experiential guide in. I think you'll like it (5min read). https://pedrorandrade.substack.com/p/the-bottle-and-the-genie?r=5qqy8r.
Cheers.
Superb article. Psycho Cybernetics is a wonderful book that touches on many of these ideas. You can 'idea-branch' certain books and re-read them yearly to emphasize similar frameworks.
Atomic Habits + The Courage To Be Disliked + Psycho Cybernetics are kind of thematically similar to reinforce similar ideas, from different angles.
In the grand tapestry of human aspiration, Dan Koe's missive on metamorphosis over a mere six moons beckons like a siren's call, promising transcendence through disciplined mastery and the shedding of survival-bound identities. Yet, herein lies a profound irony, one that echoes the stoic musings of Epictetus on the chains of perception: Koe himself posits that a staggering 80 to 90 percent - nay, even 99 percent by the tender age of 25 - are ensnared in mediocrity's web, perceiving but a sliver of reality and operating at consciousness levels too lowly to shatter their autopilot existence.
If such multitudes are indeed condemned to this inertial fate, resistant to the very pain of change that Koe prescribes as necessary, then his eloquent blueprint for reinvention becomes a gilded key dangled before locked souls who, by his own decree, lack the hands to grasp it. What, then, is the purpose of this proclamation if not a cruel tease, illuminating paths for an elite few while consigning the vast chorus of readers to the shadows of their unyielding selves?
Philosophically, this paradox invites a Socratic scrutiny of agency and elitism, reminiscent of Nietzsche's übermensch ideal, where only the resolute few ascend beyond the herd's complacency. Koe's framework, while cloaked in motivational fervor, subtly reinforces a deterministic despair: if the majority are biologically and psychologically wired for stagnation, as his survival strategies suggest, then exhortations to "master anything, fast" ring hollow, fostering not empowerment but a quiet resignation.
In this light, the true mastery may lie not in rapid transformation, but in humbly acknowledging the shared human frailty - perhaps urging a collective awakening rather than a solitary sprint toward enlightenment, lest the message dissolve into an echo chamber for the already evolved, leaving the rest to ponder their immutable lot in life's indifferent arena.
Building trust in oneself is always more sustainable than having faith in oneself. But that takes time and effort people are often not willing to invest.