The Part of the Philosophy Nobody Wants to Hear
Baoism is easy. Just three rules. They’re not all th same.
Everyone loves Stop Tox.
“Stop the things that are making you worse” — yeah, that lands. It’s recognizable. You know what your toxic inputs are. The feed that keeps you angry. The group chat that drains more than it connects. The reflex to open an app when you feel a feeling instead of feeling it.
Stop Tox is the permission slip. The philosophical backing for the thing you already knew you needed to do.
Do Rox is harder.
Not consuming better. Not optimizing your inputs. Not building a morning routine or reading more books or taking a digital detox and calling it transformation.
Making. Something that was not there before you made it.
I’ve been making things since I was 22, living in a VW bus in the Pacific Northwest with a broken heater and a notebook I’d bought at a drug store. Nobody was waiting for what I was writing. The market was not signaling that it needed my weird, peripatetic essays about what it felt like to opt out of the American script.
I wrote them anyway. Not because I was brave or had a platform strategy. Because the alternative — having something to say and saying nothing — was worse than the embarrassment of making something bad.
The first version of everything I’ve ever made was bad. Genuinely bad. The first version of Rough Living read like a confused 23-year-old talking to himself, which is exactly what it was. The first draft of Hasan i-Sabah had no idea what it was. The first version of Xcrol — the social network I’m building — crashed constantly and made no sense to anyone but me.
None of that mattered.
What mattered was the sequence: make something bad, learn from it, make the next thing, repeat until you’ve made something good enough to be worth the reader’s time. You cannot skip the sequence. The bad version is not a detour — it’s the path.
Here’s what I’ve noticed in 25 years of making things:
The gap between “has something to say” and “says it” is almost never about talent. It’s not about having enough time, or the right platform, or the perfect setup.
It’s about willingness. The willingness to sit down when the page is blank and you have no idea what you’re doing, and make something anyway, knowing it will be worse than you imagined, knowing you’ll cringe at it in three years, knowing the market may not care.
Do Rox is not a productivity principle. It’s not “make more content.” It’s not a growth strategy.
It’s an orientation. You’re a person who makes things. That’s who you are. The platform, the audience, the revenue — those are consequences, not the point.
The Sultanate of Baboob exists because I followed something interesting instead of something strategic. A philosophy I invented on a road trip with my daughter — Stop Tox, Do Rox, Bao Ji — became the spine of a fictional universe that now has two serialized novels, a series bible 5,000 words deep, and a posting schedule through June.
None of that was planned. All of it came from the same decision: make the thing.
The social network I’m building at Xcrol.com exists because I got tired of every existing network being designed to keep me on it longer than I wanted to stay. So I’m building the alternative. Not because it’s a good business move (the jury is still out). Because I had something to make and I’m making it.
Stop Tox clears the space. That part is necessary.
But clearing the space isn’t enough. A clean room isn’t a life. A detox isn’t a direction.
Do Rox asks: now that you’ve made some room — what are you putting there?
Not what you should put there. Not what will perform well. Not what your audience wants (you don’t have an audience yet, and that’s fine).
What are you making?
That question has an answer. You already know what it is. The only question is whether you’re going to make it or keep waiting until you feel ready.
You won’t feel ready.
Make it anyway.
If this landed, the longer version lives at indignified.substack.com
Tired of spiritual systems that boss you around? Grab the free Baoism Starter Guide — zero dogma, zero membership, zero “enlightenment ladder.” Just a dead-simple framework that actually helps you feel happier and more present right now.
CD Damitio writes at indignified.substack.com — essays on utopias, dystopias, and the spaces between. Free to read. No algorithm, no sponsored content. His books can be found on Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/stores/CD-Damitio/author/B001JP7NWA
CD Damitio writes INDIGNIFIED — utopias and dystopias explored. Free to read.
