In the Beginning…
I was born in 1979 in a steel town outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. When I was 15 years old, I began studying the martial arts (Pencak Silat Cimande, primarily, with some Xingyiquan, Kali, and IRT combatives). Later, when I was 18 years old, I began studying Nietzsche, Jung, and Campbell; I was obsessed with existentialism for most of my 20s, though by that time, I was a nihilist and “living the life” in Las Vegas. This was not healthy for me. When I was 27, I traveled to Huangshan, China, where I discovered Mahayana Buddhism and became fascinated by questions of consciousness. And so I began studying psychology and philosophy, receiving my Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Pittsburgh and my Master of Arts degree from American Military University.
By this time, I was not terribly pleased with the modern paradigm of therapy, which seemed to ignore masculine psychology entirely, and so began developing “my heroic theory.”
However, in 2014, my brother passed away. This hit hard. Things back home required attention, so I left returned once more (vacillation between Pittsburgh and Las Vegas has been a theme in my life). Then in 2018, I found myself at the wrong end of a literal knife fight; ultimately, I won that battle, but it was costly: I found myself with PTSD, could not work, and lost everything for the second time in four years.
It was clear to me that if I was going to survive my PTSD without the use of drugs- which I was (and still am) adamantly against-, I was going to have to find some way to turn my suffering into fulfillment. So I determined to understand it in the hope that I might glean some wisdom from the experience that I could share with others. That mission succeeded; I learned something about trauma and tribalism, which I later put to good effect by providing personal mentorship to young men in the tech sector- engineers and entrepreneurs- who I found were amenable to my martial-existential-psychological framing of things. This is how I created Tribe (my personal mentorship services for individuals), which later evolved into Tribe: I/O (my professional mentorship services for organizations).
And this brings us roughly to now.
Looking back, I see themes. This is the great advantage of age and experience: We trade energy for understanding, and it turns out that understanding is more powerful (if we are not stupid about living). Thus, I came to realize that underlying all these theories, blogs, books, and projects is a singular realization: Something is wrong- insidiously wrong- about the way in which we have structured society, and it is slowly destroying us.
We are not designed to live in the world we have created.
This is not the end of the world. But we must rediscover the wisdom hidden in our shared human psychology, that we need- like a man dying of thirst in the desert- tribe, purpose, sacrifice…
What I do is apply old school psychology to modern problem-solving: I teach people how to build resilient psyches; how to realize themselves; how to cultivate strength, wisdom, and compassion within themselves; how to organize their lives, their goals, their teams; and, finally, how to overcome adversity and to wisely navigate everyday stress, black swans, and existential crises, actively and strategically.
Why, though? Because if there is anything that I have learned since “the injury,” it is that we cannot be fulfilled unless we connect that fulfillment to others. So if you need help, reach out.
By this time, I was not terribly pleased with the modern paradigm of therapy, which seemed to ignore masculine psychology entirely, and so began developing “my heroic theory.”
However, in 2014, my brother passed away. This hit hard. Things back home required attention, so I left returned once more (vacillation between Pittsburgh and Las Vegas has been a theme in my life). Then in 2018, I found myself at the wrong end of a literal knife fight; ultimately, I won that battle, but it was costly: I found myself with PTSD, could not work, and lost everything for the second time in four years.
It was clear to me that if I was going to survive my PTSD without the use of drugs- which I was (and still am) adamantly against-, I was going to have to find some way to turn my suffering into fulfillment. So I determined to understand it in the hope that I might glean some wisdom from the experience that I could share with others. That mission succeeded; I learned something about trauma and tribalism, which I later put to good effect by providing personal mentorship to young men in the tech sector- engineers and entrepreneurs- who I found were amenable to my martial-existential-psychological framing of things. This is how I created Tribe (my personal mentorship services for individuals), which later evolved into Tribe: I/O (my professional mentorship services for organizations).
And this brings us roughly to now.
Looking back, I see themes. This is the great advantage of age and experience: We trade energy for understanding, and it turns out that understanding is more powerful (if we are not stupid about living). Thus, I came to realize that underlying all these theories, blogs, books, and projects is a singular realization: Something is wrong- insidiously wrong- about the way in which we have structured society, and it is slowly destroying us.
We are not designed to live in the world we have created.
This is not the end of the world. But we must rediscover the wisdom hidden in our shared human psychology, that we need- like a man dying of thirst in the desert- tribe, purpose, sacrifice…
What I do is apply old school psychology to modern problem-solving: I teach people how to build resilient psyches; how to realize themselves; how to cultivate strength, wisdom, and compassion within themselves; how to organize their lives, their goals, their teams; and, finally, how to overcome adversity and to wisely navigate everyday stress, black swans, and existential crises, actively and strategically.
Why, though? Because if there is anything that I have learned since “the injury,” it is that we cannot be fulfilled unless we connect that fulfillment to others. So if you need help, reach out.
Heroic Theory
“Heroic theory” entails a number of related theories that I have been working on since college, which I referred to as “my heroic theory:”
For more, please see my blog Blah, Blah, Blah.
- Agonistic & Existential Semiotics (ÆS): ÆS is concerned with the development of a unified theory of consciousness that holds explanatory power across four domains- tribal, personal, professional, and psycho-spiritual. It is intended to reconcile the three great influences on my thought- Nietzsche’s Wille zur Macht, Jungian archetypes, and the principles of Mahayana Buddhism. Although this mission may not be important to others, it is important to me, and I believe that I have developed something unique and enlightening; I hope that those intrigued by epistemology- all six of them- will find value in it.
- Tribe: Tribe is the personal and interpersonal aspect of Heroic Theory, which is concerned with analyzing and strategizing the problem of tribal psychology and its interaction with post-modern civilization.
- Tribe: I/O: Tribe: I/O (Information / Organization) applies the tribal psychology of Tribe to teams and to business environments (startups and scalable technology, especially) across three domains- leadership, information, and organization. For more about Tribe: I/O, please see Black Collar Consulting below.
- ZenTactics: ZenTactics is my “will & wisdom tradition;” it applies Nietschean existentialism, martial arts, military strategy, and Mahayana Buddhism to our personal lives. ZenTactics is respectful of our deep need for spiritual connection, yet it maintains the positive and masculine ethos of the great warrior traditions of history. Being the most religious dimension of my thought, this is very personal to me, and I tend to live this through the martial arts (see www.zenshidai.com/).
- Guerrilla Psychology: Guerrilla Psychology refers to my tendency to utilize strategies from across various domains in order to solve problems. For example, I am more than willing to apply tribal psychology to tech sector entrepreneurship, or to apply martial arts to personal development, or to apply the principles of Mahayana Buddhism to the navigation of existential crisis. Because as Korzybski showed, “the map is not the territory:” Whatever our worldview may be, it is only a worldview, and so our models for how we ought to approach problems are simply that- models; they are not reality itself. And so we ought to consider ourselves free to apply whatever model may be appropriate at the moment, and I do so consider myself. [NOTE: I am currently working on a self-published book describing this ideological ecosystem, for those interested.]
For more, please see my blog Blah, Blah, Blah.
Black Collar Consulting
Black Collar Consulting began, as most good things do, with a crisis.
I had never had any interest in working in either in business or in software. But after surviving a brutal knife fight and overcoming PTSD, I took some time in Colombia where I met a young software developer with aspirations of entrepreneurship. Further, we had shared interests: He had studied some Jung, Nietzsche, and Dostoevsky, and so we connected quickly. So I began mentoring him, and kept mentoring him throughout COVID.
When COVID ended, he introduced me to the principal of a consultancy specializing in functional programming (FP) who needed an executive advisor. We got along well, and so he hired me on. However, nine months later, FTX collapsed, we lost both our primary clients, and went nearly bankrupt. So I began strategizing a path through the crisis and gained more and more responsibility. Eventually, the markets stabilized, and we began to grow again. I had succeeded, and my services were no longer required.
But I had grown to love the work. More importantly, I had learned some things about the way the tech sector works- especially in the case of startups-, and felt that I had something to offer to the conversation. There are a lot of smart people in the tech sector, but they tend to be cock-sure and over-specialized, which of course contribute to the kind of market volatility that kills ninety percent of startups in the United States. And so what could I do but start my own consultancy? I had saved one company; I could save others.
Thus was born Black Collar Consulting.
I had never had any interest in working in either in business or in software. But after surviving a brutal knife fight and overcoming PTSD, I took some time in Colombia where I met a young software developer with aspirations of entrepreneurship. Further, we had shared interests: He had studied some Jung, Nietzsche, and Dostoevsky, and so we connected quickly. So I began mentoring him, and kept mentoring him throughout COVID.
When COVID ended, he introduced me to the principal of a consultancy specializing in functional programming (FP) who needed an executive advisor. We got along well, and so he hired me on. However, nine months later, FTX collapsed, we lost both our primary clients, and went nearly bankrupt. So I began strategizing a path through the crisis and gained more and more responsibility. Eventually, the markets stabilized, and we began to grow again. I had succeeded, and my services were no longer required.
But I had grown to love the work. More importantly, I had learned some things about the way the tech sector works- especially in the case of startups-, and felt that I had something to offer to the conversation. There are a lot of smart people in the tech sector, but they tend to be cock-sure and over-specialized, which of course contribute to the kind of market volatility that kills ninety percent of startups in the United States. And so what could I do but start my own consultancy? I had saved one company; I could save others.
Thus was born Black Collar Consulting.
Biography
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Joshua van Asakinda was born 22 September, 1979 near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He holds a master's degree from American Military University, and a bachelor's degree from the University of Pittsburgh, where he studied psychology and philosophy. During that time, he began developing his “heroic theory” of psychology, and has self-published a number of books, including Slay the Maiden, Profile the Left, and Stranging the Beautiful Noise. As a master-level consulting psychologist, he specializes in male, trauma, and leadership psychology. He now works primarily in the tech sector; he is the founder of Heroic Theory; Tribe; Tribe: I/O; and ZenTactics, and is founder of Black Collar Consulting. Finally, he is a Buddhist, and First of the Zenshida’i, creator of Pencak Silat Cimande dari Zenshida'i.
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Joshua van Asakinda
