Over the course of the D’Anconia Journal’s existence, I have written some 54 entries and very nearly 100,000 words about the importance of individualism, self-reliance, and personal sovereignty and agency in the face of collectivist influences. My entries have admittedly been about whatever I chose, following my own in-the-moment perceptions about the world around me. They’ve been topical at times, more broadly philosophical at others. What I do try to maintain is the individualist focus, the common thread that existence, if it is to mean anything, must be lived in accordance with truth and that the human tool for recognizing and aligning oneself with truth is Reason. What you read in these entries is extemporaneous. I don’t correct them or edit them, and you’re getting a first-draft accounting of my thoughts at the time of my writing - just as you might find in a journal I’ve written to and for myself. I feel that’s important for a number of reasons, not least so that I can look back and see how my unfiltered thoughts and ideas have changed as I grow and learn. I am not careful in these passages - you get what’s in my mind for better and for worse. Writing in this way requires a sort of distance or even a measure of disregard for you, the reader. I have to write to myself, for myself, or it opens the door to “messaging.” I don’t ever want to evangelize. I don’t want to write for approval or agreement. I don’t want outside opinions to shape my thoughts - only new information, discussion, analysis, and reason. Despite all that, Substack compiles statistics about who is reading what. They’ll tell me how far and wide an article has been shared. They tell me how many times it’s been opened, by whom, and how many times. In this, I’ve discovered something I find odd and vaguely hopeful.
In 54 entries, I see an average of 40% of subscribers here actually open and read what goes out. Believe it or not, I find that to be a high figure. Long form communication has been dying a very slow and agonizing death for decades, and I hear the faint -whack-whack-whack of the final nails being driven into its coffin every day. Still, I don’t want to share these thoughts and ideas with people who lack the motivation or desire to put in the work of reading and understanding, so long form it is and that suits me just fine. If you’re reading for comprehension here, I assume you’ve got a curious enough mind to work with these ideas and many others, to test them and interrogate them against both reality and your own biases, and to form your own beliefs as a result. In other words, you’re my kind of people.
I typically see an “open” rate of about 120 - 140 per entry. I take that as a good thing, too. Since I have very few subscribers to begin with and I don’t actively market this Journal, that means most people are opening entries multiple times. They’re coming back to the ideas, which is something people typically do when they’re working with the material. One-click says to me “I skimmed it and absorbed very little.” Almost no one who opens these entries only opens them once, so that’s pretty encouraging as well.
What really blows me away, though, is that there are precisely three entries over the course of this Journal’s existence that have doubled or even tripled the typical readership. They are:
Truest Freedom (Truest Freedom - by Francisco D'Anconia (substack.com))
This entry deals with the notion that you should be an intellectual omnivore, and that the comprehensive nature of your education should provide you with the knowledge, tools, and ability to be self-reliant. The major theme is that if you don’t have to rely on others, then nobody can control you.
The Right to Exist (The Right To Exist - by Francisco D'Anconia (substack.com))
This entry deals with the October 7th attacks by Hamas against Israel, and it confronts the idiocy of equating Hamas’ actions with Israel’s response as well as the idiocy of the “Israel is an occupying apartheid State” narrative. The major theme was the drawing of a distinction between violence as occurs in the act of self-preservation or war and violence as an instrument of evil.
The Value of Labor (The Value of Labor - by Francisco D'Anconia (substack.com))
This entry addresses the fact that your “effort” and your “labor” hold absolutely no intrinsic worth or value to anyone, including yourself. The major theme is that you must find a way to create value with your labor, and that if you want your labor to be rewarded by others, then it becomes incumbent upon you to create a disproportionately high value to them - one sufficient to choose your labor over all other solutions available and reward you accordingly.
I’ve been wrestling with why these three entries generated such a disproportionate readership. They are among the ones that tell the hardest truths. They are entries which take aim squarely at people’s comfort, their confidence, and perhaps their illusions. They make the reader acutely aware of inadequacies, or large-scale personal challenges, and of the struggle to create real self-worth instead of just applause from the wings - to “be” rather than to “seem.” Not the only ones, to be sure, but certainly some of the more “point blank.” This has begun to tickle my awareness a bit, and to do a bit of what I sincerely hope may be “connecting dots.” With my low number of subscribers and my lower still number of active readers, the optimist in me hopes that this micro-trend means I’m reaching the right people. I’ve never made any bones about it; I do not believe any more than a fraction of a single percent of any society at any given time actually desires or is equipped to be truly individual and free. Most people eagerly give up their own sovereignty in exchange for the relief from having to decide the course of their own lives. I do not hold out hope for shaping their minds or of waking them up to something ultimately better. I accept that those who think like I think are destined to be observers of a kind of chaos that simply endures, but which is likely to remain indifferent to us if we can maintain our Reason. The handful of you who’ve made the decision to really grapple with the tougher content have given me some level of hope that we may not be lonely observers. That there may be a few more of us than I thought out there, watching the Great Dumpster Fire unfold, giving one another a nod from across the wastelands. It gives me hope that my optimism isn’t misplaced, and that Happiness as a choice is something more people are capable of than I might have thought, even in the face of all the world’s ugly. That no matter how badly the collectivists and absentee humans might screw things up, some of us will be alright precisely because we don’t shy away from the truth. Most importantly, at least to me, is that there appears to be at least an elevated fraction of the populace that sees the world’s ugly, acknowledges the truth and the work ahead, and still finds a way to create enough meaning to walk tall and happy by choice despite the obstacles. You ladies and gentlemen are the backs upon which the next great chapter of the world will be carried, the minds from which it will be written, and the voices through which it will be taught to whomever puts all these pieces back together.
From the heart… Thank you.
Great piece, Francisco. We are not alone!