Aesthetico: Future’s Philosophy

“All things excellent are as difficult as they are rare.” ~Baruch Spinoza

Aesthetico is a fresh artistic philosophy for the future of humanity with a framework that shakes up conventional thinking, tackles the life-death-rebirth cycle with flair, keeps us nimble in the face of our own messy condition, sprinkles in some humor to lighten the load, and blends a cycle-surfing ethos with a creative, self-aware twist. Let’s dive in…

1.) Prism Mind (Thinking outside the box):

“Receive without pride. Let go without attachment.” ~Marcus Aurelius

Replace the “box” of linear thinking with a prism. Split your perspective into multiple beams of possibility. Instead of one truth, refract reality into a spectrum of Truth, each beam of the spectrum revealing something new.

When faced with a problem (say, mortal angst), ask: “What’s the opposite? What’s the diagonal? What’s the ridiculous version?” Death isn’t just an end—it’s a punchline, a plot twist, a cosmic “gotcha” that restarts the game.

As Rick Rubin said, “The more we accept our prism-like nature, the freer we become to create in different colors and the more we trust the inconsistent instincts we hold while making art.” This includes, especially, the art of life.

Treat every boxed-in thought as a setup for a joke, a humorous hook: “Why’d the human stay in the box? Because he thought the lid was the sky.”

2.) Möbius Twist (Squaring the circle):

“God is an infinite sphere, whose center is everywhere and circumference nowhere.” ~Joseph Campbell

The Möbius twist is about squaring the circle of the life-death-rebirth cycle. Life, death, and rebirth aren’t separate phases—they’re a single, seamless Möbius strip. There’s no inside or outside, no start or finish—just a continuous flip where death feeds life, and rebirth is death’s encore. “Squaring it” means embracing the paradox without forcing it into a perfect shape.

You are all at once caterpillar, cocoon, and butterfly. All at once annihilated and enlightened. All at once mortal and immortal. Live like you’re already mid-rebirth. Act as if every moment is a comeback tour. Death is just the intermission where you tweak the setlist.

Life is a Möbius strip—halfway through, you realize you are upside down and still haven’t found the exit. Good thing there isn’t one. There’s only transformation. You are the thing that transforms itself. You are that which creates itself. You are Metamorphosis. You are story-weaver, myth-mender, center-mover, death-bender.

As Black Elk said, “The center is everywhere.”

You are the center. You are finite, yet the circle is infinite. You wreck your mortality against immortality but in the wreckage, you become whole: compounded and antifragile.

True warriors don’t balk. They use death as a compass. They understand that death is a reason to celebrate life.

Humor hook: “I asked my soul, what are you doing? It said: I am not a doing; I am a being.”

3.) Anticipatory Play (Staying ahead of the curve):

“You are the unconditioned spirit trapped in conditions.” ~Rumi

The human condition—flawed, fragile, and fumbling—is a curve that keeps bending forward. Don’t just react, play. Spin the dials. Invert the switches. Tweak the Matrix. Anticipate the next twist by inventing your own rules, like a cosmic improv artist.

Treat every setback as a rehearsal for the next steppingstone. Loneliness? Stage a one-person comedy show with your environment. Failure? Call it avant-garde performance art. Death? Prep your next character arc into rebirth and beyond.

As Jean-Paul Sartre said, “The desire to play is fundamentally the desire to be.”

Work hard, just remember to play even harder. A sense of play is vital for health and well-being. You come alive when you play. Have fun with it. Poke holes in the balloon of certainty. Shoot yourself in the daredevil-foot from time to time. Practice Kidmaste: the little kid in me honors the little kid in you.

As Khalil Gibran said, “Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh, and the greatness which does not bow before children.”

Commune with Cosmos. Reconnect to the interconnectedness of all things. Playfulness is a good sense of humor in action. Stay ahead of the curve by cultivating a Humor of the Most High.

Humor hook: “The human condition throws curveballs. So, I brought a bat and practiced hitting homeruns.”

4.) The Jester’s Ascent (Self-overcoming):

“You only lose what you cling to.” ~Buddha

Nietzsche’s “self-overcoming” gets a remix. Rise above yourself not with grim determinism, but with a madcap’s wink. Laugh at your old limitations, then vault over them like a jester doing parkour. Paint outside the lines.

Reflect without regret. Use mirth like a mirror. Look at yourself—past, present, and future—not with judgment, but with playfulness. Self-reflection is a funhouse mirror, warping the ego into something lighthearted and not so serious.

Stand in front of a mirror and narrate your life like a cartoon villain: “Behold, the fool who forgot the milk!” Laugh, then rewrite the script. Turn tables. Flatten boxes. Shred all the envelopes.

Leave roses at the gravestones of your previous self. Write a eulogy for your past self every year—make it absurdly flattering and hilariously brutal: “Here lies Me 1.0: loved pizza, feared commitment, thought ‘falling in love’ was optional.”

Overcome yourself so thoroughly that you are forgotten, and the interconnectedness of all things is remembered.

Humor hook: “I overcame myself so hard, I left a note: Catch up when your sense of humor becomes transcendent.”

5.) The Cosmic Madcap (A new way to be human in the world):

“The highest human being would have the greatest multiplicity of drives.” ~Nietzsche

Humanity 2.0 isn’t sleek or perfect; it’s gloriously and defiantly goofy. We’re not here to master the universe, but to riff off it. Aesthetico celebrates the stumble as much as the stride, dances a jig in the abyss as well as on the summit, mocks the devil as well as God.

Start each day with a ridiculous vow: “I’ll trip over the stars and fall into the void.” Make peace with being merely a speck in the universe in the universe by understanding that you are also the entire universe inside a speck. Own the absurdity of it. Embrace agony over polarity, multiplicity over monotony, hunger over satiety. Dance a jig on God’s third eye. Transform yokes into haloes and haloes into mortal coils. Embrace the suck, then suck the marrow out of a life-well-lived.

Sharpen dull fragility into antifragile mettle. Build a bridge to the Overman. Juxtapose those opposed to outflanking infinity. Learn how it’s all laughable, then have a laugh. Question all your masks, all your delusions, all your illusions, and then have the audacity to turn yourself like a mirror onto society.

Be divergent. Be Dionysian despite your Apollonian cultural conditioning. Dance through the mannequin society. Thunder past the status quo junkies. Stop pretending to be asleep. Become a courage-enforcer, a mettle-sharpener, a lion-awakener, a force of nature first and a person second.

Don’t be merely sane, be beautifully insane. Surf the cruel waters of vicissitude. Free yourself to become authentic. Resurrect the latent hero within. Dig up the labyrinth, embody the Hero’s Journey, then impress it upon the world.

Humor hook: “My life’s a Jackson Pollock—looks like a mess, but there’s an aesthetic to it.”

6.) The Canvas of Chaos (Mess as Masterpiece):

“Art is a reverberation of an impermanent life.” ~Rick Rubin

Life’s a wild, splattered canvas. Don’t try to clean it up, paint along with it, flow with it, surf it like a wave. Aesthetico sees every flaw as a brushstroke in an ongoing, chaotic artwork, a stutter step to the beat of defeat.

Tragedy and failure are not endpoints; they are the bassline of existence, the drumbeat of beauty. Aesthetico tunes into the rhythm of ruin and discovers rebirth, transforming annihilation into a foxtrot in the choreography.

A downfall doesn’t have to be mere dissonance; it can be a bridge of assonance into the next verse. Transformation is sometimes not optional, but how you respond to it is.

As exurb1a said, “If you die before you die, then you won’t die when you die.”

It comes down to how well you respond to tragedy. Is it adapt and overcome, or is it remain inert and overwhelmed? Similarly, it comes down to how well you respond to triumph. Is it hubris and power, or is it prestige and empowerment?

Find a way to both outshine the darkness and see through the blinding light. Iterate like a god unleashed. Transform shit into compost, death into purpose, failure into fortitude, and demons into diamonds.

There is more to life than choice, there is vicissitude.

Humor hook: “I tripped into the abyss and turned it into a breakdance battle.”

7.) Shadow Tag (Playful shadow integration):

“It is the pull of opposite polls that stretches souls. And only stretched souls make music.” ~Eric Hoffer

Your shadow represents your buried fears, quirks, and suppressed bits. It’s not a monster unless you ignore it for too long. Stay ahead of this ignorance by transforming your dark twin into a cheeky dance partner. Shadow work is more like a game of tag than it is therapy. Chase your shadow out of the abyss, tease it up the switchbacks, then spin it into a dervish pirouette onto the summit.

Give your shadow a nickname (“Grumpy Gus” or “Sneaky Sue”) and stage a mock interview: “So, Gus, why did you hide my courage under the bed?” Then, integrate it with flair—write it into a poem, fingerpaint its visage with wild colors, or waltz with it in your living room. The goal? Make it a co-creator, not a critic.

Embolden your shadow to find one paradox a day and make a toast to it. Revel in the clash of opposites instead of resolving them. Let shadow eat light, abyss subsume summit, devil choke on God. Have a Dionysian laugh at the absurdity of Apollonian over-seriousness.

Your shadow is your most “alive” aspect. Strike black gold by integrating it. Let it bring you to life. Let it guide you out of Plato’s Cave.

Wrestle threshold guardians into submission. Flip the track like an existential Deejay. Mete out the Mecca of individuation. Fly over all the false gods. Juggle heaven and hell, love and loss, purpose and pain, life and death. Form fierce infinity patterns in the sky.

Humor hook: “I got a whiff of the void—it smells like burnt almonds and second chances.”

Image source: Giclee Print Paradiso, Canto 31

About the Author:

Gary Z McGee, a former Navy Intelligence Specialist turned philosopher, is the author of Birthday Suit of God and The Looking Glass Man. His works are inspired by the great philosophers of the ages and his wide-awake view of the modern world.

This article (Aesthetico: Future’s Philosophy) was originally created and published by Self-inflicted Philosophy and is printed here under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Gary Z McGee and self-inflictedphilosophy.com