Museletter ⟠ horizonal wizardry

What-ho friends,

I’ve had an influx of new subscribers. Welcome!

You’re reading the museletter of Dr. Fox (aka foxwizard). The museletter is an epistolary soliloquy, with many links. Open this one up at foxwizard.com/horizonal-museletter if you like, and take your time. If a friend forwarded this to you, you can subscribe at foxwizard.com ❦

Actually, speaking of friends, I did a whoopsie-daisy. I thought to do some tidying, so I removed a few hundred ‘non-responsive’ emails from the subscriber list. I later realised that I may have inadvertently removed sage folk who do read these museletters via email providers that block trackers. So, if you aren’t reading this email right now—this is why. Apologies. If you are reading this email, could you check that your friends who subscribe (or who might like to subscribe) are also seeing this, too? (◕‿◕✿)

In this museletter we reflect on the met-arational canny required to do ‘strategy’. But first: some updates.

Noticeboard 𝌉

With December looming, many of us begin to reflect on the year that was, and the new year that may be. I’ve some things to share pertaining to this.

1 // The dangerlam wall calendar is back ｡◕‿◕｡

My darling and co-conspirator—Dr. Kim Lam, the dangerlam—has released the latest iteration of her wall calendar.

The 2026 dangerlam wall calendar is available for purchase now as a digital download (which is easily printed locally). I wrote of Kim’s calendar last year in a museletter. This year, Kim has maintained a new practice of noting poetic phrases and concepts that emerge in each day. Turgid plums, slime mother, fancy sneeze, dish rack joy, potentiometer, conch blast, geis, child crone, faceted classification, lizards! lightning! and omni-useless are a few favourites.

The power of this practice is in the acuity and attunement. Want more poetry in your life? Cultivate the capacity to perceive it; to recognise and know it when you sense it.

It’s as the poet and mystic W.B. Yeats reminds:

“The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.”

This can be ordered from Kim’s website:
dangerlam.com/shoppe/2026-calendar

2 // A new “Services Guidebook” is coming soon ⭔

A decade ago, back when I mentored many fellow thought leaders, I created a “services guidebook” to give prospective clients a sense of the ways in which we can work together.

A few of my erstwhile colleagues drew quite, uh, direct inspiration from this document. This, in turn, encouraged me to venture deeper into authentic, esoteric and inimitable expressions. The irony being that this also took me beyond the Overton Window, and further away from the peak of midwittery (and its greater addressable market).[^ Fun fact—it takes a midwit to know and use and talk about the midwit meme. Midwit thought leadership captures a larger addressable market because it reconciles two competing audience demands: the desire for intellectual status and the aversion to cognitive friction. Simple principles fail to flatter an audience’s sense of their own discernment; whereas more esoteric perspectives demand expertise or sustained engagement—something most audiences lack the background or patience for (particularly in this distraction economy, now augmented with easy answers and tailored reasoning).]

I’m referencing the midwit meme here. If you’re not familiar with it, Peter Limberg once wrote a great piece on the matter: From mid-wittery to intellectual humility. I should point out, I maintain that “IQ” is a bullshit[^ I say this in the correct philosophical sense; bullshit is indifferent to truth.] concept, far too narrow, and blind to worlds of intelligences. I don’t like it. But the midwit meme gestures towards a phenomenon worth noting: those of us with the kind of intelligence that has us construct elaborate frameworks can also fail to recognising when those frameworks are wrong.[^ It’s also worth remembering Bonini’s Paradox here: as the accuracy of a model for a complex system increases, its utility decreases. And it’s also worth remembering the aphorism that “all models are wrong, but some are useful.”] This is compounded when your business model depends upon the ‘intellectual property’ you have created.[^ As Upton Sinclair said, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” Now imagine if your whole ‘brand’ was built around a particular idea or model.]

In other words, the trap of midwittery is that we have the capability to build a coherent, internally consistent position—but not enough ironic distance nor intellectual humility to see its arbitrariness. But a person of (supposedly) ‘low intellectual capability’[^ Remember, I don’t believe in such—the reason I find the midwit meme appealing is precisely that it points out the dangers of attachment to our own thinking and models.] might find truth through intuition or natural wisdom, and the genuinely sophisticated thinker can recognise the limits of their own models. The midwit, however, is trapped in the performance of sophistication.

“Better to operate with detachment, then; better to have a way but infuse it with a little humor; best, to have no way at all but to have instead the wit constantly to make one’s way anew from the materials at hand.”

That’s from Lewis Hyde’s Trickster Makes This World, and it’s a good Way to Be. Words to live by, along with James P. Carses’s words: “Only that which can change can continue: this is the principle by which infinite players live.”

I used to be A KING of midwittery. Peak. Now I play the role of both wizard and fool.[^ And yet I still often occupy the midwit domain. But less so, I would like to think. Intellectual honesty is something I have long sought to maintain in a lemon market that rewards the inverse).] It’s a good role.

I am, of course, not against wit. Perish the thought! I like all the wits—dim, bright, quick, slow, sharp, etc. Even mid. But the key is in having enough dispositional fluidity and mental acuity to recognise when we have become ensnared within our own constructions—and to slip that trap. Fox evades capture.

During my “Dark Forest chapter”[^ The chapter of my Descent.] I set fire to much of my internet presence and past work. Websites, blogs and podcasts I had maintained for years—immolated. All gone.[^ At the same time, a celebrity soldier known as “Jason Fox” trounced me in terms of SEO. And so, I leaned ever more into the esoteric expression of ‘foxwizard’ you read here.] I think it was a way of becoming free again. All rogues recognise traps.

And yet—some things survived.

An example: The Faculty of Mathematics and Economics at The University of Vienna has a cached version of my 2016 guidebook on their website. A guidebook that was made this time 10 years ago.

How to Lead a Quest was published at around the same time, too. The book has never been more relevant. Organisations (and many of us ourselves, in our own lives) are more than ever needing the sensibilities of questing. Of knowing how to live and lead meaningful progress (as distinct from perpetuating a rich delusion of progress) in this time betwixt worlds.

To quest doesn’t mean disappearing into the dark forests (though this might be exactly what some of us need). We can quest amidst—which means: we can cultivate wisdom and wit enough to hold to the bearing of meaningful progress whilst also dancing through the necessary pantomimes of a world enamoured within its delusions of progress.

It’s subtle, meta-rational deftwerk™ (with a trickster’s glint).

I have not forgotten that we are still in the ‘notice board’ section of this museletter. This was all just to say: I have new keynotes and offerings that will be packaged up for thee ‘soon’. If you are planning events to kick things off for 2026—and don’t want to wait for this wizard to get his act together—be in touch with kim@drjasonfox.com and we can tee up a call.

Here’s a testimonial from an event held in a literal mansion on behalf of TikTok earlier this year.

“Most of us are so busy dealing with what’s right in front of us, we rarely stop to consider what truly drives the world around us.

Fortunately, Dr. Jason Fox does. He has a rare ability to distil big, complex ideas into insights that feel immediately relevant and useful.

Take a moment. Step back. Let him shift your perspective on what’s really going on.”

—John Halpin, CEO, WPP Media New Zealand

Plenty more at drjasonfox.com/happy-clients

What magic might you and I evoke, I wonder?

3 // A portal to The School of Fox Wizardry will open 𐀔

When? Thoon.

I have had quite a few of you asking me of this, ever since I teased this obscure poster a while back.

You are invited to apply for the school of fox wizardry.
But how to apply? And what is it even? ب_ب

Ha! Very well—I will shed some light.

The School of Fox Wizardry is for construct-aware[^ This is my mundane way of saying ‘magic’-aware, too.] liminal leaders[^ A ‘construct-aware liminal leader’ operates from the recognition that all frameworks, models, and meaning-making systems are provisional—useful but not ultimately real—while maintaining active presence in the generative ambiguity of ‘threshold spaces’. Such liminal leaders are deftly attuned to questing and emergence.] who seek to be more effective agents in this time betwixt worlds. If you’re a subscriber to this museletter, there’s a high chance that’s you.

Our established systems can’t solve new problems—but new systems haven’t yet quite emerged. We can’t simply fix the old system—because that paradigm is past its half-life. It’s exhausted, and failing us. But, lo—we also can’t point to any clear ‘solutions’, as nothing has yet coalesced; all is in flux. This is the liminal condition, and it’s disorienting for most.

But—there are patterns to be found, amidst it all. Potentialities in the penumbra. Glimmers to be gleaned. A way that reveals the way, too—if we know where (and how) to look.

This is questing—amidst[^ To quest amidst means to have wisdom and wit enough to hold to the bearing of meaningful progress whilst also dancing through the necessary pantomimes of a world enamoured within its delusions of progress. It’s subtle, meta-rational deftwerk that must be done (with a trickster’s glint).] and betwixt.[^ That is: a time betwixt worlds. Together we quest to co-create a world more curious and kind (and a future less grim).]

The School of Fox Wizardry will teach this, and more.

There are three kinds of folk I have in mind for this.

1. Construct-aware executives (my clients). You’ve seen too many change initiatives fail, too much innovation theatre, and too many consulting firms take the piss and make bank. Over time, you’ve weathered the pattern enough to readily discern its limitations. But rather than give up, go numb, or sell your soul to The Machine—you’ve the glint about you. You know that you can affect great change. You also know: you don’t want to be trapped. You wonder: where might you be the liminal leader folk turn to? And how might you lead where others wait for a clear path to follow?
2. Construct-aware independent consultants (my peers). You’ve chosen independence because you chafe within singular paradigms. You cannot be contained. And so you oscillate between the established and the emergent. You bring refreshing new value to the established in exchange for coin, and then you use that coin to buy the time to explore the emergent (where your curiosity and values pull you). This then enriches and informs the value you bring to your clients, creating a virtuous feedback loop. But it can also be a path filled with doubt, particularly when you don’t follow the herd. You wonder: where might you deepen this practice beyond improvisation? And how are others doing this work?
3. Poets, philosophers, scholars, shamanoids and liminal practitioners (my inspo). You are well and truly construct-aware, and live within the liminal as your primary work. You write, make, teach, practice and share in ways that sound utterly impractical to consensus reality—yet somehow your work names things before they have names, sees patterns before they coalesce into legible forms. You’re of the economic precariat and often professionally illegible—but you're doing the work that consultants and executives will be drawing upon in five years hence. You sometimes wonder, though—what would it be like to make a little more coin? And how might you do this, whilst staying authentic and true?

All have the sensibilities of an infinite player who knows that, occasionally, we must adopt the roles of finite play. But also—I’m talking about my favourite clients, peers, and inspirations here. Friends (and potential friends) all.

Which takes me to the real motivation behind The School of Fox Wizardry.

I want to start a thieves’ guild.[^ I am very inspired by The Guilds of Discworld. For example: “Nowadays, the modern, properly registered Thieves’ Guild makes money mainly by having rich people pay an annual premium, and arrange for a convenient date to rob an acceptable amount from these rich clients in their own home. For the poorer (but not penniless) citizens who do not arrange for premiums and appointments, the Thieves quite politely rob them in the streets, in their business premises, or in their homes, not badly injuring them, and always leaving them a receipt which guarantees that these people will not be inconvenienced with another official robbery for the rest of the year.”]

Except it’s for wizards, rogues, and trickster-kin. Spellcasters, shapeshifters, independent consultants and liminal agents.

And so The School of Fox Wizardry will ostensibly train savvy minds in the subversive fox magics that allow liminal agents to be effective ‘thought leaders’ in this time betwixt worlds. But—through shared curriculum and cultivated kinship—I suspect we may end up with a network of independent consultants who may, at times, band together for good work. Good work including (but not limited to): big enterprise projects, events, programs, publications—and more.

The thing about a thieves’ guild is that, whilst everyone is an omnicompetent generalist with shared philosophy and cant, each member also has their unique Talents and Knack. You have lockpicks, strongarms, swindlers, cutpurses, catburglars, fences, and more. I’m drawing from The Complete Thief's Handbook a little here. And I will trust you know I am not speaking of a literal thieves’ guild.

But I do like the idea of a global network of kindred spirits who live and lead amidst the liminal. The School of Fox Wizardry is the perfect front.[^ And to answer the burning question a few subscribers have asked: yes, this will be available for folks around the world. There will be one core cohort, with various enhancements available (one of which is an optional stream for folks who can meet in-person to develop a new keynote presentation for delivery to a live audience in November). Pricing is in five figures, but not six. Think: something like 2–3 gold coins. More details on all of this... thoon.]

I’ve been quite inspired by Metalabel’s Theory of Groupcore and The Dark Forest Collective of thinkers and writers that make publications there. I also love The Other Internet research collective and their old article on Squad Wealth. Having cultivated collectives in the past + produced beautiful collective publications + hosted collective events + mentored dozens of thought leaders + led research teams... I feel a sense that we might be able to pull these threads together, to see what might coalesce.

So! There’s a glimmer of a sense of what The School of Fox Wizardry might be. A cohort-based program for liminal leaders that may well lead to networked guild membership and collective future works. A collective that progressively decentralises, with (as a placeholder) code drawn from Be More Pirate.

Curious? Just so. There’s nothing to do now other than stay subscribed to the museletter. 𓂀

Questing a plan જ⁀➴

Earlier this month I worked with a senior leadership team of a large financial institution; a team ostensibly tasked with maintaining ‘cybersecurity’, amongst other things.

Naturally, security is always a complex, dynamic, and evolving challenge. It’s not something to which you can set-and-forget.[^ This is something Greg Dack and I discussed in episode 15; Warmly Secure.] Cocksure confidence and hubris are less-than-admirable traits in this domain—you want to be sceptical, witted, alive and attuned to context, brimming with healthy doubt.

And yet, like most teams, “annual planning” is required. If they don’t submit a strategic plan with a budget to provision resources, then they would likely not have access to adequate resources when they need it. Nor would they be able to invest in bigger developments to improve cybersecurity for the wider organisation and its clients. How does one plan, in advance, for unknown emergent and novel security threats in a rapidly changing world?

Of course, my clients are great, and mature organisations have contingency budgets, staged releases, and ‘adaptive re-forecasting’ so as to properly meet emergent challenges. But it was a reminder just how revered plans are, to some.

To paraphrase a military chap:[^ I don’t like to make a habit of such, but this quote is good.] “plans are worthless, but planning is everything”.

Now, I personally wouldn’t say ‘worthless’. But I also wouldn’t go and overly revere a plan. The plan itself is just an artefact that drops from the much more fruitful activity of planning—which, if done well, encompasses curiosity, empathy, acuity, imagination, and more.[^ Things I write of in How to Lead a Quest. It’s soon to be the 10th-year anniversary of the book, and I am thinking to make 2026 a quest-themed year. Enterprise teams need it.]

Alas, the future cannot be perfectly knowable. We might discern the pattern or some of threads, in broad strokes—but this will always be a supposition based upon our collective protosynthesis.[^ “The first quality of a metamodern mind is its ability to productively handle paradox. Protosynthesis is the first and foremost paradox to handle.” (source) See also: 5 things that make you metamodern.] An amusing hypothesis to put to the test.[^ But still, once a plan is put in motion, it can be like a finite game—something to be played vigorously and wholeheartedly. Whilst knowing it is a game, that can be changed, so as to continue the play.]

Ergo, we must dance with Mystery.

And so the process of strategic planning itself becomes a necessary kind of pseudo-prophecy and propaganda. We create a fabricated-yet-plausible, Bayesian ‘honest-as-can-be’ narrative of how things will likely come to be, working with what bricolage insight we have at hand. Which is not to say we simply make it all up. But we do manifest a vision of how things will unfurl. Imagination, reasonableness, maturity, and trust that required for this to work.

“We connect all that we know and create a story,” writes ‘Hanzi Freinacht’. “But we know that it’s just a story. However, we prefer it to no story at all.” Likewise with plans.

I would almost call this mythopoetic—the making of myth—but I want to keep such at arms length from the machinations of Enterprise Land, M̴͕̜͕̿̇̂̃̅̐͋͒͂͂o̵̡̩̝͛͛͒͆͛̽̀̏̈l̵͚̀͜o̸̡̡͓̙̫͎͍̝̜̠̜̪̿̇̍̐͊c̸̡͎̝̹͕̭̞̹͔̣͊̏̊͗͗͋̈́͝͝h̴̖̙̦̘͓̣̣̭̬̓̔̈̈́͜͠, and The Machine. I already corrupted the word ‘quest’ with the book How to Lead a Quest. But where does strategy come from? Questing.

Questing is the precursor to strategy.

And let’s remember:

“The strategy of infinite players is horizonal,” as James P. Carse writes.

Note: that’s horizonal—not horizontal. Though cultivating horizontal relationships is the right disposition to have. You don’t want verticality betwixt us, unless it’s playful and serves a role. But beneath it all, it’s always horizontal.

“If you are building even one vertical relationship with someone, before you even notice what is happening, you’ll be treating all your interpersonal relations as vertical.” – Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga, The Courage To Be Disliked

In addition to this, questing leaders must have a horizonal way of seeing. Otherwise we remain locked within plans, trapped within the very boxes we seek to tick.

“Instead of placing one body of knowledge against another, storytellers invite us to return from knowledge to thinking, from a bounded way of looking to an horizonal way of seeing.” – James P. Carse, Finite and Infinite Games

A bounded vision treats the world as a landscape of objects and facts with defined properties (what’s visible is what exists, and what’s invisible is irrelevant), but a horizonal way of seeing treats the horizon itself as essential.

To see horizonally is to hold your perceptual and cognitive stance such that what lies beyond the visible remains generative rather than merely absent. You don’t look to a horizon and think, huh, that’s all there is. You instead ask: I wonder what lies beyond?

Plans inspire bounded ways of looking,
but planning requires horizonal ways of seeing.

But many seem to not know this, which is why—after conducting a strategy offsite, with much effort—we end up with ‘bold’ ‘new’ ‘strategic plans’ that look eerily similar to last year’s plans.

We must cultivate the sensibilities to resist the tempting allure of the default, the convenient, the safe, the predictable, the familiar, the ready answer, the smooth reasoning, and that which is easy to measure. At least in domains that pertain to strategy. Even if only temporarily. And if we still collapse back to the default—at least we have canvassed the options. Because remember: our defaults are the options we choose automatically in the absence of viable alternatives. Choosing the default amidst the consideration of viable alternatives is totally legitimate.

Still, as I said, nine years ago: “I worry about the curse of efficiency”. This has only amplified in the age of artificial intelligence. And whilst I don’t want to overly bemoan The Machine (it’s become too fashionable now)—I still want to ensure that my readers keep their wits about them.

Here’s one more passage from James P. Carse’s Finite and Infinite Games. It’s a favoured piece that inspired a much earlier musing: Move Quietly and Plant Things.

“The alternative attitudes toward nature can be characterized in a rough way by saying that the result of approaching nature as a hostile Other whose designs are basically inimical to our interests is the machine, while the result of learning to discipline ourselves to consist with the deepest discernable patterns of natural order is the garden.

‘Machine’ is used here as inclusive of technology and not as an example of it-as a way of drawing attention to the mechanical rationality of technology. We might be surprised by the technological devices that spring from the imagination of gifted inventors and engineers, but there is nothing surprising in the technology itself. The physicists’ bomb is as thoroughly mechanical as the Neanderthal’s lever-each the exercise of calculable cause-and-effect sequences.

‘Garden’ does not refer to the bounded plot at the edge of the house or the margin of the city. This is not a garden one lives beside, but a garden one lives within. It is a place of growth, of maximized spontaneity. To garden is not to engage in a hobby or an amusement; it is to design a culture capable of adjusting to the widest possible range of surprise in nature. Gardeners are acutely attentive to the deep patterns of natural order, but are also aware that there will always be much lying beyond their vision. Gardening is a horizonal activity.

Machine and garden are not absolutely opposed to each other. Machinery can exist in the garden quite as finite games can be played within an infinite game. The question is not one of restricting machines from the garden but asking whether a machine serves the interest of the garden, or the garden the interest of the machine. We are familiar with a kind of mechanized gardening that has the appearance of high productivity, but looking closely we can see that what is intended is not the encouragement of natural spontaneity but its harnessing.”

Serve the garden, not the machine.