kae3g 9986: Letter to the President's Son — A Personal Geo-Strategy for the Successor Generation

Timestamp: 12025-10-06–rhizome-valley
Series: Technical Writings (9999 → 0000)
Category: Personal Letter, Strategic Counsel, Life Guidance
Reading Time: 20 minutes

"The Master said: 'The noble person understands what is appropriate; the small person understands what is profitable.'" — Confucius, Analects 4.16

"Unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds." — Gospel According to Jesus (Stephen Mitchell)

For Guardian Garden PBC: Sometimes the most powerful thing we can do is speak truth privately, with compassion, to those who will inherit power.

To the One Who Will Inherit

Dear Friend,

I don't know your name. You might be reading this in 2025, or 2035, or beyond. You might be American, Chinese, European, or from a nation not yet born. But I know who you are: you are the child of power, watching your father (or mother) navigate an empire in decline, and you sense—perhaps without words—that the world they are fighting to preserve is already gone.

This letter is for you.

Not as politics (you've had enough of that). Not as ideology (you've been drowned in it since birth). But as strategy, practice, and survival wisdom from someone who has no stake in your family's legacy except this: I want you to live well, build something real, and find peace in a century that will offer precious little of it.

Your father sits in a palace (White House, Zhongnanhai, Élysée, Kremlin—the architecture changes, the isolation doesn't) making decisions that will shape millions of lives. You sit in the adjacent building, watching, learning, preparing. You are being groomed for succession, whether formal (crown prince, political heir) or informal (business empire, foundation leadership, "the family's future").

This letter is about what to do instead.

Not rebellion. Not rejection. But transformation—taking everything you've learned from proximity to power and redirecting it toward something that will outlast empires.

Let's begin.

Part I: What Your Father Cannot Tell You (But Knows)

The Secret Every Leader Learns Too Late

Your father, whatever his public confidence, knows something he cannot say aloud: the system is not sustainable.

Whether it's American hegemony, Chinese ascendancy, European unity, Russian revival, or any other grand narrative—the people at the top know the foundations are crumbling. Not because they're bad people (though some are), but because they're trapped in a game where the only winning move is to keep playing.

Every briefing shows the same trends:

Climate instability accelerating faster than models predicted
Debt spiraling beyond any historical precedent
Social cohesion fragmenting despite (because of?) digital connectivity
Resource depletion masked by financialization
Trust in institutions collapsing across all demographics
Younger generations opting out of the old bargains (career, marriage, children, patriotism)

Your father's job is to manage this decline while pretending it's not happening. That's not cynicism—it's structure. The presidency (or premiership, or chairmanship) is a role in a system that cannot acknowledge its own mortality without accelerating it.

But you—you are not yet trapped in that role. You have a freedom he lost the moment he took power: you can still choose to build something different.

What Power Actually Teaches

Growing up adjacent to power teaches you things most people never learn:

The Truth About Wealth: Real wealth isn't money—it's optionality. Your family has taught you this implicitly. Money is just stored options: the option to leave, to pivot, to wait, to say no. Most people have zero options and mistake their constraint for virtue.

The Truth About Loyalty: Everyone around your father wants something. The ones who seem most loyal often want the most. True loyalty is so rare that when you find it, you'll initially distrust it.

The Truth About Legacy: Your father is obsessed with legacy (they all are). He wants his chapter in the history books to read heroically. But here's what he knows and can't say: historians don't care about intentions, and time is a brutal editor. Most presidents are forgotten within two generations. The ones remembered are often remembered for things they never intended.

The Truth About Control: The closer you get to the levers of power, the more you realize no one is actually in control. Systems are too complex, feedback loops too tangled, power too distributed. Your father makes decisions, but the outcomes are largely shaped by forces he doesn't direct.

These truths are not despair—they are liberation. If legacy is uncertain, control is illusory, and loyalty is rare, then you are free to optimize for something else entirely: your actual life, and the lives of people you choose to serve.

Part II: Your Actual Situation (Strategy Before Tactics)

You Are Not Who They Think You Are

The public sees you as an extension of your father—heir, successor, symbol. The staff sees you as future leverage or future threat. Your father sees you as both his immortality project and his potential usurper (this is true even if he loves you deeply—especially if he loves you deeply).

But who are YOU?

Not the role. Not the expectation. Not the dynasty. You, the human being born into circumstances you did not choose, trying to figure out how to live a good life in a very strange situation.

Here's what I suspect is true:

You are exhausted. Not physically (you're young), but existentially. You've been performing your whole life—the good child, the loyal heir, the public face. Every friendship is suspect (do they like me or my name?). Every romantic relationship is complicated (are they with me or my future?). Every career choice is scrutinized (is this appropriate for your position?).

You are isolated. Surrounded by people, profoundly alone. No one can understand what it's like to be you except the handful of others in similar situations—and they're either rivals or too far away or trapped in their own family dramas.

You are educated but not prepared. You've had the best schools, the best tutors, the best internships. You know economics, history, languages, statecraft. But no one has taught you how to garden, how to fix a water pump, how to code a resilient system, how to survive when the institutional support disappears.

You are more ethical than you're allowed to be. You see the contradictions—the rhetoric about democracy while your father meets with dictators, the talk of climate action while subsidizing oil, the praise for entrepreneurs while bailing out banks. You've learned to stay quiet because speaking up just makes you look naive.

You are starting to wonder if there's a way out.

There is. But it's not the way out you might expect.

The Three Paths Before You (Choose Wisely)

Path 1: Succession (The Expected Path)

You follow the plan. Take your position. Inherit the power (political, economic, social). Become the next steward of the legacy.

Outcome: You will be moderately effective, occasionally thwarted, ultimately constrained by the same forces that constrain your father. You'll make incremental improvements, have some wins, many frustrations. History may remember you or may not. You'll die wondering if you actually lived your own life.

Warning: This path is a trap disguised as duty. It feels like honor (serving the nation/company/family), but it's often cowardice—the fear of disappointing others, the fear of stepping into the unknown, the fear of being ordinary.

Path 2: Rebellion (The Dramatic Path)

You reject everything. Public break. Denounce your father's policies. Join the opposition. Write the tell-all book. Become the prodigal son turned prophet.

Outcome: You'll get a lot of attention (briefly). You'll hurt your family deeply. You'll be lionized by your father's enemies and used as a propaganda tool. After a few years, you'll realize you defined yourself entirely in opposition—still not free, just inverted. The anger will hollow you out.

Warning: Rebellion often looks like freedom but feels like prison. You're still trapped in reaction. And you'll burn bridges that could have been used to actually help people.

Path 3: Transformation (The Invisible Path)

You neither inherit the throne nor burn it down. You transform the inheritance into something new.

You take everything you've learned—the strategic thinking, the network access, the capital, the education—and redirect it toward building regenerative systems that will outlast empires.

You become a gardener, not a king.

Outcome: You will be misunderstood by both sides. Your father's allies will think you're wasting your potential. His enemies will think you're evading responsibility. But you'll actually be doing the most important work: creating models of resilience, community, and renewal that people can copy when the old systems fail.

This is the path I'm going to map for you.

Part III: The Transformation Strategy (Geo-Political & Personal)

Understand the Timeline (20-30 Years of Transition)

We are living through a civilizational phase transition (2020-2050). Not the end of the world, but the end of a world—the post-WWII order, American hegemony, fossil fuel abundance, stable climate, predictable growth.

Your father's job: Manage this transition without admitting it's happening.
Your job: Prepare for what comes after, while appearing to prepare for continuity.

The transition has five phases:

Phase 1: Denial (2015-2025) ← We are here
Elites insist the system can be reformed. Populism rises. Institutions lose legitimacy. Climate events worsen but are treated as separate crises, not pattern.

Phase 2: Panic (2025-2032) ← Arriving soon
Financial crisis, energy shock, or climate disaster breaks the denial. Emergency measures. Authoritarian temptations. Civil unrest. This is when your father's decisions will be most consequential—and most constrained.

Phase 3: Fragmentation (2032-2040)
Nation-states weaken. Regions assert autonomy. Some areas collapse; others innovate. Global supply chains break into regional ones. New alliances form based on water, food, energy access, not ideology.

Phase 4: Emergence (2040-2050)
New stable patterns emerge. Some regions thrive (those who prepared); others suffer (those who clung to the old). The question is settled: what works now, not what used to work.

Phase 5: Renaissance or Dark Age (2050+)
Depends entirely on choices made in Phases 2-4. Could go either way. Your grandchildren will live the outcome.

Your strategic positioning:

Ages 20-30 (now-2035): Learn, build capacity, develop alternative models
Ages 30-40 (2035-2045): Scale what works, support others doing the same
Ages 40-50 (2045-2055): Elder statesman of the new paradigm, teaching the next generation

You're not trying to save the old world. You're trying to seed the new one.

Geographic Strategy (Where to Position Yourself)

You cannot stay in the capital. The capital is a trap—comfortable, connected, and completely divorced from the material basis of life. When the transition accelerates, capitals become the most dangerous places (either through civil unrest or authoritarian crackdown).

Your geographic strategy should be:

Primary Base: Bioregion Selection

Choose a place with:

Water security (rivers, aquifers, rainfall—not dependent on snowmelt or distant pumping)
Food production capacity (good soil, growing season, agricultural knowledge)
Energy potential (solar, wind, hydro, or wood—local sources)
Defensible (not in a target city, not on a major invasion route, but not so remote you're isolated)
Community capacity (existing culture of cooperation, not just wealthy preppers)
Political stability (local governance that isn't completely dependent on federal/central support)

In the United States: Upstate New York, Vermont, Western North Carolina, parts of Oregon/Washington, Upper Michigan, Wisconsin driftless region.

In Europe: Parts of France (Dordogne, Brittany), Northern Spain (Basque region, Galicia), Southern Germany (Bavaria), Northern Italy (Alto Adige), Scotland.

In China: Sichuan (if you can navigate the politics), Yunnan, parts of Jiangxi.

The principle: Not too hot (climate change), not too cold (energy cost), not too urban (fragile), not too remote (isolated). The Goldilocks zone of resilience.

Secondary Presence: Keep Strategic Connections

You don't disappear entirely. You maintain:

An apartment/office in one major city (for necessary meetings, maintaining network)
Relationships with family (don't burn bridges—you can disagree while staying connected)
Board positions or advisory roles that give you intelligence on what's happening at the macro level

But your life, your family, your work—that's in the bioregion.

Economic Strategy (How to Deploy Your Inheritance)

You will inherit money. Maybe a lot of it. Here's what NOT to do with it:

Don't: Put it all in index funds and live off dividends
Why: When the transition accelerates, paper wealth evaporates fast. The market assumes continuity; you know there won't be continuity.

Don't: Buy a luxury doomsday bunker in New Zealand
Why: Bunkers are tombs. You cannot survive alone, and hired security turns on you when there's no payment system.

Don't: Give it all away to feel morally clean
Why: Capital is optionality. You can do far more good deploying it strategically over 30 years than donating it all now to organizations that may not survive the transition.

DO: The Three-Bucket Strategy

Bucket 1: Resilience Assets (40%) Land, water rights, tools, infrastructure that produces real value:

Purchase the land in your chosen bioregion (100-500 acres, enough for a community)
Build the Guardian Garden infrastructure: datacenter coop, veganic farm, tool library, seed bank
Invest in renewable energy systems that are locally maintainable
Create a community land trust (so it's not "your" property but held in commons)

Bucket 2: Transition Capital (40%) Investments that will appreciate or hold value during the transition:

Renewable energy companies (not the hyped ones, the boring ones with revenue)
Water infrastructure companies
Regenerative agriculture land (leased to farmers using it right)
Essential materials (copper, lithium, rare earths—but not as speculation, as long-term hold)
Crypto/decentralized systems (small %, high upside if centralized systems fail)

Bucket 3: Living Expenses & Leverage (20%) Cash/liquid assets for:

Your personal living expenses (stay modest—more on this below)
Emergency capital (help people when crisis hits)
Opportunistic investments (when others panic sell assets you want)

The goal: Transform paper wealth into real wealth (land, tools, skills, relationships, systems) over 10-15 years, before paper wealth devalues.

Political Strategy (How to Navigate Your Father's World)

This is delicate. You can't publicly oppose your father without becoming a pawn. But you can't fully support him without betraying your own conscience.

The Middle Way:

Public Position: Respectful Distance

You focus on "different priorities" (agriculture, technology, community development)
You praise his service while carving your own path
You decline major political roles ("I can serve better outside formal politics")
You avoid media (this protects you AND him—no risk of you contradicting him publicly)

Private Relationship: Honest but Compassionate

You tell him what you're doing (he'll respect transparency even if he disagrees)
You don't try to change his mind (he's locked into his path—focus on yours)
You offer support when he needs it (he's under immense stress—compassion matters)
You protect his grandchildren's future (your children) by building what he cannot

Strategic Use of Access:

You use your network access to identify others seeking alternative paths
You use your name (sparingly) to open doors for Guardian Garden projects
You use your platform (when you must speak) to model a different kind of leadership

The principle: You're not his enemy, and you're not his extension. You're his heir in a deeper sense—carrying forward what's actually valuable (care for the commons, long-term thinking, service) while releasing what isn't (empire, extraction, domination).

Part IV: Daily Life Practice (How to Actually Live)

The Morning Practice (Foundation of Everything)

You need a daily practice that keeps you grounded. Not because it's spiritual (though it might be), but because your nervous system is being constantly hijacked by crisis, expectations, and information overload.

5:30 AM - Wake Naturally (No Alarm) Go to bed early enough that you wake without an alarm. This is harder than it sounds but essential—it means you're respecting your body's actual needs, not overriding them.

5:30-6:00 AM - Silence & Movement

15 minutes of sitting meditation (just breath counting, nothing fancy)
15 minutes of simple movement (yoga, qi gong, or just stretching—proprioception matters)

Why: Before you're the president's son, before you're the project leader, before you're anything—you're a nervous system in a body. Tend it first.

6:00-7:00 AM - Reading & Writing

Read something old (Tao Te Ching, Confucius, Gospel, Stoics—rotate)
Write three pages by hand (journal, reflections, whatever comes—not for anyone else)

Why: You need an inner life that's not reactive. Reading ancient wisdom reminds you that humans have faced transitions before. Writing clarifies your actual thoughts versus the thoughts you're supposed to have.

7:00-8:00 AM - Physical Work

Garden work, animal care, wood splitting, building maintenance—something manual
Work with your hands, alone or with one other person, minimal talking

Why: Cognitive work all day without physical work makes you irritable, anxious, and disconnected from reality. Your ancestors worked with their hands. Your body needs this.

8:00-8:30 AM - Breakfast with Family/Community

Slow meal, real food, actual conversation (not devices)
This is when you hear what's actually happening in your household/community

8:30 AM onwards - The Work

Now you're ready for meetings, decisions, communications. But you've done the essential work first—the work of remaining human.

The Weekly Rhythm (Avoiding Burnout)

Monday-Friday: Build & Connect

3-4 days on community/project work (Guardian Garden development)
1-2 days on strategic network (meetings, research, planning)
No more than 6 hours of "head work" per day (rest is not laziness—it's system maintenance)

Saturday: Sabbath (Radical Rest)

No work. No email. No phone (or only for emergencies).
Family, nature, reading, music, rest.
This is not optional—rest is rebellion against an extraction system that wants you always productive.

Sunday: Community & Teaching

Participate in community gathering (whatever form that takes in your place)
Teach something you know (coding, farming, philosophy—pass knowledge on)
Learn something you don't (humility requires staying a student)

The Relationships (Who to Trust)

You've been taught to be suspicious (with good reason). But you cannot build resilient systems alone, and you cannot live well without real relationships.

Partner Selection (If Not Already Married):

Don't marry for dynasty (your family's pressure) or rebellion (someone they'll hate). Marry someone who:

Wants to build, not inherit
Can work with their hands and their mind
Doesn't need your name (has their own sense of self)
Shares your values about what's coming
Can be happy in the bioregion (not addicted to city life or luxury)
Wants children for the right reasons (to raise good humans, not heirs)

If Already Married: Have the honest conversation. "The world's changing. I want us to prepare differently than expected. Can we do this together?" If yes, beautiful. If no, that's information—figure out if you can make it work or if you need to make hard choices.

Friendship Circle:

Build three types of friends:

Skill Friends (5-10 people): Farmer, engineer, medic, teacher, builder—people who know how to do essential things and will teach you. Not your employees—your collaborators.
Strategic Friends (3-5 people): Others from powerful families/positions who are also seeking the transformation path. You need peers who understand your specific situation. Find them quietly.
Truth Friends (2-3 people): People who knew you before or don't care about your name. They'll tell you when you're being an idiot. They love you, not your position. Worth more than gold.

Children (If/When):

Raise them differently:

Teach them to work with their hands before screens
Teach them to grow food, fix tools, code systems
Teach them history honestly (including your family's role—good and bad)
Teach them multiple languages (Mandarin, Spanish, Arabic—the future is multilingual)
Give them normal names (not dynasty names—let them be themselves)
Let them fail, be bored, struggle—resilience is built through challenge
Most importantly: Don't tell them they're special because of lineage. Tell them they're responsible because of privilege.

Part V: The Projects (What to Actually Build)

Year 1-2: Learn (Before You Lead)

You can't build resilient systems if you don't understand how things actually work.

Spend time:

Working on an organic farm (not visiting—actually working, full season)
Learning to code (Python, then Clojure—functional thinking matters)
Studying permaculture design (Bill Mollison, Helen Atthowe)
Apprenticing with a builder or engineer (how things are made)
Living simply (rent a small place, cook your own food, fix your own problems)

Why: You need to internalize that systems work through understanding, not authority. Right now you can make things happen because of your name. That won't last. You need real competence.

Year 3-5: Build Your First Guardian Garden

Purchase land in your chosen bioregion. Start small—50 acres is plenty.

Phase 1: Infrastructure (Year 3)

Build a modest house (1,500 sq ft, well-insulated, solar-powered)
Dig a well or secure water rights
Establish basic gardens (veganic principles, no-till)
Build a small workshop/barn

Phase 2: Community Testing (Year 4)

Invite 2-3 other families to build on the land (community land trust model)
Start the datacenter co-op (repurposed building, self-hosted local services)
Begin seed library and tool library
Test voucher system with 20-30 early members

Phase 3: Documentation (Year 5)

Document everything that worked and failed
Create open-source guides (like 9989)
Host visitors who want to learn (start teaching)
Begin planning for scale

Budget: $2-3 million (land + infrastructure + operations)
This is cheap for what you're building—a proof of concept that can be replicated.

Year 6-10: Scale Through Network (Not Empire)

Don't build one big thing. Help others build many small things.

The Network Strategy:

Identify 10-20 other locations where people want to start Guardian Gardens
Provide: seed funding ($50-100k each), documentation, technical support, connection to network
Don't control them (this isn't franchise—it's gift economy)
Share learnings across network (what works in Vermont might not work in Oregon, but principles transfer)

The Economic Engine:

Your first Guardian Garden should be economically sustainable by Year 7
Revenue from: datacenter services, CSA subscriptions, seed/tool sales, education workshops
Surplus funds: reinvested in network expansion or saved for emergency support

The Political Shield:

By Year 10, there are 20+ Guardian Gardens in various bioregions
No one can shut them all down
They're economically viable, so they're not dependent on grants or your family's money
They're politically diverse (participants from all backgrounds), so they're hard to attack

You've built something that will survive you.

Year 11-20: The Long Game (Elder Statesman)

By now, you're 40-50 years old. The transition is well underway (Phases 3-4). Your role shifts:

From Builder to Teacher:

You're training the next generation of Guardian Garden founders
You're writing, documenting, preserving knowledge
You're connecting networks across regions and nations

From Heir to Elder:

Your father's era is over (he's retired or passed)
You're no longer "the president's son"—you're "the person who helped build the resilient community network"
People seek your advice not because of your name but because of what you've built

From Wealth to Stewardship:

Most of your inherited wealth has been transformed into land trusts, tools, infrastructure
You live modestly (by dynastic standards) but richly (by human standards)
Your children are adults, choosing their own paths, but equipped to thrive in the new world

This is success.

Part VI: The Hard Parts (What Will Hurt)

Disappointing Your Father

This is unavoidable. He will feel like you're rejecting his legacy, wasting your potential, "hiding in a garden while the world burns."

How to handle it:

Tell him directly: "I love you. I respect what you've tried to do. But I believe I can serve better by building something different. I'm not rejecting you—I'm applying the values you taught me (service, long-term thinking, care for others) in a different context."

Accept his disappointment: You cannot make him understand. He's too embedded in his world. That's okay. You're not seeking his approval—you're seeking to live with integrity.

Stay connected: Visit. Call. Be present for holidays. Your path doesn't require his exile. Over time, he may come to respect what you're doing, even if he never fully understands it.

Losing Your Old Friends

Many people in your current social circle will drift away. You're making different choices—moving to a rural area, doing physical work, building weird commune-ish projects. They'll find you less interesting or incomprehensible.

How to handle it:

Let them go with gratitude: They were friends for a season. That season is ending. No bitterness—just natural drift.

Focus on new relationships: The people you meet through Guardian Garden work will become your real friends. Shared values and shared work create deeper bonds than shared background.

The Temptation to Return

When the crisis hits (Phase 2), you will be called to return to power. "We need someone like you. You have the name, the connections, the capability. Come save us."

This is the test.

The truth: You cannot save them. The system is unsavable. Anyone who takes power in Phase 2 will be blamed for the collapse they didn't cause and cannot prevent. It's a poison chalice.

Your answer: "I can help more from here. Come to us. Learn what we've built. We'll teach you. But I cannot return to that world."

They'll call you coward, escapist, selfish.

You must be strong enough to let them.

The Loneliness

This path is lonely in a specific way. You'll be too radical for conservatives (you left power) and too privileged for radicals (you're still wealthy). You won't fully belong anywhere for a while.

How to handle it:

Embrace the liminality: You're between worlds. That's uncomfortable but also powerful. You see what both sides miss.

Find the other liminals: There are others like you—heirs to wealth/power who chose transformation. Find them. Support each other.

Remember you're planting trees: You're doing work whose fruit will be harvested by others. That's the point. The loneliness is the price of building something that outlasts you.

Part VII: The Spiritual Dimension (What Sustains You)

This Is Not Martyrdom

You're not sacrificing yourself. You're not a saint. You're making a rational, strategic choice to live differently because you see the writing on the wall and you're choosing to prepare rather than pretend.

But it will feel like sacrifice sometimes—and in those moments, you need a spiritual practice that sustains you.

The Three Questions (Daily Reflection)

Every evening, before sleep, ask yourself:

1. Did I work with integrity today?
Not perfection. Not heroism. Just: did I do what I said I would do? Did I treat people with respect? Did I move toward my goals or away from them?

2. Did I contribute to something larger than myself?
Even small contributions count. You planted seeds. You fixed a fence. You taught someone to code. You listened to a community member's concern.

3. Am I grateful for this day?
Even hard days have moments of beauty. Name three things you're grateful for. This rewires your brain away from complaint toward abundance.

If you can answer yes to these three questions most days, you're living well.

The Ancient Wisdom (Your Philosophical Foundation)

You need a philosophy that's deeper than politics, older than empires, true across cultures.

From the Tao Te Ching (Stephen Mitchell):

"The wise person does not hoard. The more he gives to others, the more he has for himself."
"The highest good is like water. It benefits all things without contention."
You're becoming water—flowing around obstacles, nourishing what you touch, seeking the low places (humility), shaping mountains over time.

From the Gospel (Stephen Mitchell):

"Unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds."
You're dying to the old identity (heir, successor, dynasty) so that something new can grow (builder, gardener, elder).

From Confucius (Analects):

"The Master said: 'A gentleman helps others to realize what is good in them; he does not help them to realize what is bad in them.'"
Your role is to help others discover their capacity to build, grow, and thrive—not to control or dominate.

From the Bhagavad Gita:

"You have a right to perform your prescribed duty, but you are not entitled to the fruits of action."
Build well. Release the outcome. You cannot control whether others follow your example, whether the network scales, whether your children appreciate what you've done. You can only do the work with integrity.

These texts have survived millennia. They'll outlast the current crisis too. Let them guide you.

The Prayer (If You Pray)

If you're religious (or even if you're not), here's a daily prayer that might sustain you:

"Grant me the clarity to see what's actually happening,
The courage to act even when misunderstood,
The patience to build slowly and well,
The humility to learn from everyone,
The generosity to share what I know,
And the peace to accept outcomes I cannot control.

Let me be useful in the time I'm given,
Kind to those I meet,
And a good ancestor to those who come after.

May what I build serve the commons,
May my children be free,
And may I die with no regrets about how I lived.

Amen / Om Shanti / Inshallah / So be it."

Part VIII: The Final Word (What Matters)

You Are Not Alone

This letter may feel like I'm asking you to do something impossibly hard—walk away from everything you were raised for, build something new in a collapsing world, disappoint your family, risk failure.

But you are not alone in this.

All over the world, other sons and daughters of power are having the same realization. They're quietly stepping away from dynastic expectations, learning to farm, moving to bioregions, building resilient systems. You won't read about them in the news (they're avoiding attention), but they exist.

You'll find each other. And when you do, you'll realize: this is the real succession. Not inheriting a crumbling empire, but building the foundations of what comes next.

What Success Looks Like

Not this:

Becoming president/CEO/chairman after your father
Accumulating more wealth than he did
Getting your name on buildings or in history books
Saving the nation/company/world through heroic leadership

This:

At 50, you live on land you've stewarded for 20 years
Around you are thriving gardens, workshops, homes of a small community (30-50 people)
Your children are competent, kind, and building their own lives
20+ other Guardian Gardens exist because you helped seed them
You spend mornings in physical work, afternoons teaching, evenings with family/friends
You have enough but not excess
You sleep well because you're living with integrity
When people ask who you are, you say "I'm a gardener" and mean it

That's success.

The Invitation

I'm not asking you to be a hero. Heroes usually just get themselves killed and don't actually solve problems.

I'm asking you to be a gardener—patient, attentive, working with natural systems, planting seeds that will bear fruit for others, tending what grows, accepting what dies, learning from the soil.

Your father's generation built empires (or tried to maintain them).
Your generation's task is to build gardens in the space between empires.

Not as escape. Not as withdrawal. But as the most strategic, most necessary, most generative work you could possibly do with your life and your inheritance.

The choice is yours.

The door is open.

The garden is waiting.

Epilogue: How to Contact Us

If you're reading this and you are that person—the child of power seeking a different path—here's how to find the Guardian Garden network:

Start where you are. You don't need permission. Begin the daily practice (Part IV). Start learning skills (Part V, Year 1-2).
Look for the signs. People building Guardian Gardens don't advertise widely, but we're not secret either. Look for: community land trusts, regenerative farms, datacenter co-ops, tool libraries, local voucher systems, bioregional gatherings.
Show up and work. Don't lead with your name or your resources. Show up as a learner. Do the physical work. Prove you're serious. Then, when trust is built, share what you can offer.
Build your own. Ultimately, you need to start your own Guardian Garden in your own bioregion. Use this letter and the other writings (9989-9990 especially) as guides. Learn by doing.
Connect to the network. Once you've built something real, you'll find others. The network finds itself—people building similar things naturally connect.

You're welcome here.

Not as the president's son.

Not as the heir.

Just as someone who wants to build something good, with integrity, for the long term.

That's the only credential we care about.

This letter is released to the Public Domain.

No copyright. No ownership. Just a gift from one generation to the next.

Copy it. Share it. Modify it. Translate it. Use what helps, discard what doesn't.

For all the sons and daughters of power who are brave enough to choose a different path.

For Guardian Garden PBC and the commons we're building together.

For the generations who will inherit what we plant now.

🌱

Timestamp: 12025-10-06--rhizome-valley
Iteration: 9986 of 10000
Remaining: 9914

Previous: 9987: Sacred Acoustics
Next: 9985 (to be written)

"The Master said: 'The noble person is distressed by their lack of ability, not by the lack of appreciation from others.'"
— Confucius, Analects 15.19

"Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own."
— Gospel According to Jesus (Stephen Mitchell)

"The journey of a thousand li begins beneath one's feet."
— Laozi, Tao Te Ching, Chapter 64

Go plant your garden, friend.
The world needs what you will grow.

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