You hear a lot of “advice” in the world today. Many a content creator’s career – from cringier dudes like Daniel Mac to cooler cats like Lit Nomad – revolves around this very type of ostensible knowledge transfer. But does it even exist? Or is it merely cheetos for the soul: hyper-engineered pseudo-nourishment designed to be as addictive as possible without creating any material improvement for the recipient?
Laozi said that “those who know do not speak; those who speak do not know” and Nietzsche said that “one repays a teacher badly if one always remains a pupil” so we won’t refute either today, but we will instead construct a care package for a philosophically-inclined young oilman that I had the pleasure of chatting with this week.
Sharing a beautiful summer evening on the patio of the best golf course in the city, our conversation flowed effortlessly between McLuhan to Milton to Plato to Asimov, covering everything from AI to pair bonding to feudalism to the didactic insights revealed only in low arctic environments. It was a 4-hour attentional adventure that barely felt an hour long.i In any event, we parted ways amicably, unsure if our paths would cross again in the future, but with some homework for yours truly. Being that I have about 15 more years of blogging experience (and life experience) than the young oilman, he asked if I could curate a “care package” for him based on my public writings.
After an hour sifting through the lovely Contravex Archives, which is honestly something I should do more often, I came up with a blog dump for him, but now realize that a proper care package shouldn’t just be a mass of ingredients thrown into a blender, but rather a sophisticated multi-course meal structured for optimal enjoyment. So without further ado, and for your behind-the-scenes entertainment, here’s the young oilman’s care package including justifications for the ranking:
| ▲ | Title & Year | Why it matters for this YOUNG OILMAN |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Second Law of Barbarian Dynamics (2024-08-18) | Gives a thermodynamic model of demographic “entropy”, monetary debasement and imperial sclerosis. Maps neatly onto Canada’s resource frontier and the young oilman’s interest in post-West civilisational trajectories. (Contravex) |
| 2 | The Unseriousness and Primitivity of Secularism (2024-04-28) | A frontal assault on secular modernity; supplies theological ammunition for the recipient’s running argument that oil-patch life is spiritually fuller than urban progressivism. (Contravex) |
| 3 | Politics Isn’t Purpose, but the Continuation of War by Other Means (2023-12-03) | Re‐frames politics as logistics of conflict; dovetails with the recipient’s “politics-as-aesthetics” pieces and offers Clausewitzian vocabulary for petro-national debates. (Contravex) |
| 4 | Behind the Iron Ocean: Views from the Second World (2025-03-02) | Positions resource exporters between First-World decadence and Third-World chaos—perfect for someone literally writing from the bitumen frontier. (Contravex) |
| 5 | Capitalism Isn’t Going Anywhere, But What if it Just Declines in Status? (2022-11-27) | Explores a soft-landing, low-prestige future for capitalism; meshes with the recipient’s scepticism that GDP worship explains Alberta’s telos. (Contravex) |
| 6 | Finding the Modern Amidst the Post-Modern in a World of Prestigious Autists (2022-10-02) | Art-historical lens for diagnosing cultural exhaustion; supplies aesthetic vocabulary for essays such as “The Sublime in the Oil Sands.” (Contravex) |
| 7 | Succession Isn’t “Stealth Wealth”; It’s the Future of Our Blood Lines (2024-02-04) | Introduces dynastic time-horizons and fertility economics—central to any young man pondering legacy in a volatile extractive region. (Contravex) |
| 8 | Two Steps Forward, Two Steps Back (2022-01-23) | Cyclical-progress critique; complements the recipient’s explorations of boom–bust petroleum psychology. (Contravex) |
| 9 | Crypto vs AI: How Best to Choose Rich™ (2024-03-31) | Strategic comparison of two techno-frontiers; sharpens the recipient’s thinking on whether to treat Bitcoin or LLMs as “exit valves” from petro-rent path-dependency. (Contravex) |
| 10 | Why “Transparency” Is Antithetical to Good Leadership (2022-08-14) | Argues for prudent opacity; useful if the recipient eventually scales his platform and needs governance philosophy. (Contravex) |
| 11 | In Defence of Smallness—And Smallness as Defence (2022-11-06) | Strategic subsidiarity; reinforces the value of tight-knit northern communities versus globalist sprawl. (Contravex) |
| 12 | The “Vibecession” Is Proof We’re Now Trying to Be More Catholic Than the Pope (2024-06-09) | Links economic malaise to metaphysical hunger; fertile ground for petro-Catholic metaphors. (Contravex) |
| 13 | So Basically Pinker’s “Long Peace” Was Just a Vol-Squeeze (2022-02-27) | Debunks decline-in-violence narratives; enriches any oil-patch realism about looming conflict. (Contravex) |
| 14 | Finding Strength by Making Space (2022-12-18) | Treats civilisational retreat as creative negative space—aligns with the recipient’s interest in “tzimtzum”-like withdrawals. (Contravex) |
| 15 | Intelligence Isn’t Just Between Your Ears (2022-11-13) | Extended mind thesis; expands the toolkit for essays on embodied labour in open-pit mines. (Contravex) |
| 16 | Starting Forest Fires, One Spark at a Time (2024-05-05) | Tactical activism metaphor; modestly useful for framing how small publications ignite discourse. (Contravex) |
| 17 | What I Learned Losing (Half) a Million Dollars (2023-06-04) | Cautionary tale of speculative hubris; secondary relevance unless the recipient writes on personal finance. (Contravex) |
| 18 | Cynical vs Aristotelian Martyrdom (2024-07-14) | Nuanced ethics piece; worthwhile but less directly tied to his core subject matter. (Contravex) |
| 19 | Wholesomeness Unbounds Us (2023-02-12) | Lyrical desert-campfire poem; inspirational yet light on analytic payload. (Contravex) |
| 20 | Finance Is to FinDom as Derpy Dog Owners Are to PetDom (2024-08-04) | Satirical culture-war skit; entertaining but peripheral to petro-philosophy. (Contravex) |
| 21 | No Thrift of Powdered Heavens, Narrow Passages ’Tween Elevens (2023-04-23) | Dense metaphoric verse; lowest direct utility for the recipient’s analytical projects. (Contravex) |
So if you’re looking for “advice” that will somehow generically apply to your specific life circumstances, you’re going to be awfully disappointed in life… or at best end up with very dusty orange-caked fingers. Instead, try getting to know someone, let them into your world as well, and see what happens. You never know, there might be a care package with your name on it one day. 🎁
___ ___ ___
- Einstein’s quote about relatively felt only too relevant (minus the romantic undertones, of course). And speaking of Einstein…
