Illustration by Fareha Islam in
The Stuyvesant Spectator (2026) [1]
Opening Remarks
A recently published post on the maxim (and showtune) 'It's Not Where You Start' (18 Aug 2026) now comes with a pointy-tailed pair of comments attached by an anonymous critic, which I thought it might be fun to address at some length here in the form of fragments from an open letter.
This is not because I wish to pick a fight or stage some kind of performative confrontation - nor is it an attempt to butter parsnips, as my anonymous critic puts it [2].
The suggestion that these are merely empty words assembled for the sake of a post misses the functional reality: the comments section has an inconvenient word limit. Also, by publishing the material here it hopefully becomes accessible to a wider number of readers.
Finally, two more things to note: firstly, all quotations in the text are from the comments written by the above (italicised terms are also ones used by them).
Secondly, whilst I will endeavour to address my anonymous demon critic in a courteous manner, as requested, this is nevertheless a critical rebuttal of their arguments which I think naive and moralistic; the sort of uplifting twaddle I would expect from an enthusiastic sixth-form teacher inspired by the disastrous example of John Keating [3].
I.
Dear Anonymous,
You find it bizarre that I should refer to beings sired by the Devil and ask if I can "helpfully point toward one or two of them knocking around the planet", before then making a rather cheap and unfunny joke referencing two cinematic examples of such.
Perhaps you are forgetting that in a previous comment added to an earlier post [4], you explicitly described yourself as demonic spawn. But even if you haven't forgotten this - and are simply engaging in a form of revisionism - to take an obviously metaphorical phrase and treat it as a literal, biological claim is a ridiculous rhetorical failure.
Pointing out that The Omen (1976) and Rosemary's Baby (1968) are "just films", is to treat an everyday figure of speech with the pedantic literalism of a young child - or a deliberately obtuse internet troll. Most readers will recognise that the phrase 'spawned by the Devil' is a humorous narrative trope. To imply that I am referencing actual demons is to set up a straw man just so you can then feel clever in mocking it.
As for your parenthetical remark - "Unless we're missing something" - I read this as a passive-aggressive attempt to establish yourself as the voice of reason and make me seem like the one obsessed with the supernatural.
In other words, you are pretending to be an objective and slightly puzzled reader looking for literal movie monsters, while fully knowing that you are the person the phrase demonic spawn refers to. It's an ironic turning of the tables, but hardly very courteous and betrays the fact you come to the comments section not to discuss ideas, but perform and compete.
I'm fine with that: but don't complain when I decide to play the same game and join you on the stage. One cannot adopt a demonic persona one week and then feign confusion when that exact persona is referenced the next. That's not being protean, just a bit of a prick.
II.
Moving on, we come to your defence of "bloody hard work" and "bringing out the best (or possibly worst) of what one has in oneself".
This, you insist, "isn't a cliché or trite formula", but a "life-affirming idea", thereby positioning yourself as a moral vitalist (someone who views both good and evil as active forces of agency), as well as one who likes to roll their sleeves up and graft (whether this corresponds with the reality of your own life is something I'd be interested to know).
I don't oppose the values of "resilience, persistence, and perseverance" - ironically, the 2,780 posts published on Torpedo the Ark over the last fourteen years demonstrate my adherence to (or embodiment of) precisely these qualities. I'll return to this point later when addressing your accusation of laziness.
However, I do challenge the above as foundational ideals within Christianity that were weaponised by modern bourgeois society [5] - as does Nietzsche, in both his sane and crazy periods.
As he notes in Daybreak (§ 173), for example, the relentless praise of hard work is part of a strategy to keep individuals productive and predictable members of the herd. By draining the individual of their energy through constant economic activity, society successfully prevents the dangerous, disruptive emergence of genuine creative endeavour [6].
Thus, when you champion hard work over idleness you are not being a radical vitalist, but, rather, acting as an anti-Nietzschean shill for the capitalist machine.
And if you care to re-read the section in The Gay Science that you quote from (§ 290), you'll note that Nietzsche doesn't in fact use any of the three terms you defend. Giving style to one's character requires rigorous artistic discipline, not submissiveness to God or economic compliance with the world of work.
Thus, I'm sorry to say that you have misunderstood his philosophy in relation to this question, falling back as you do into a moral liberal framework.
III.
Still on Nietzsche ... You state that his concept of slave morality "isn't a stupid attack on underdogs [...] wanting to succeed" and that's true - but only because the English term was not part of 19th-century German vocabulary (although it is now a loanword I believe).
But even if you love underdogs, I doubt Nietzsche would have had much time for them: what is the letzte Mensch if not the ultimate underdog; hardworking, happy, self-preserving - and he's gonna finish on top once all the top dogs holding positions of power and authority have been neutered.
This certainly sounds like a canine version of the Sklavenaufstand in der Moral and you'd have to be barking to deny it.
IV.
Abandoning philosophical argument entirely, you then shift to a (cod-psychological) diagnosis of my character:
"In his statement that 'starting positions such as wealth, access to education, and social connections heavily determine the direction and final outcome of life' and that people 'lucky enough to have a good start will invariably finish ahead of the game', we learn the truth of Stephen Alexander's own ressentiment, bitterness, and fundamental laziness."
So much for your earlier plea for courtesy!
And it rather surprises me that a demon spawned by the Father of Lies and concealed in anonymity should be so concerned with learning the truth.
More importantly, your character diagnosis fails on a purely empirical level: you provide no evidence of my ressentiment or bitterness and the 2,780 published posts on Torpedo the Ark over the last fourteen years render your accusation of fundamental laziness absurd.
As a writer, my job is to write. And the millions of words written on TTA demonstrate a significant degree of intellectual discipline and creative endurance. To accuse me of "fundamental laziness" is, therefore, an odd thing to say - a kind denial not just of evidence, but reality.
Actual laziness is more likely revealed by vague promises of "one day creating something self-astonishing", just as the safety of anonymity allows one to critique the labour of others without ever exposing one's own work to scrutiny.
V.
Ultimately, your text reads less like a diabolically clever critique and more as a conventional strategy typical of those who dismiss systemic realities in favour of individual exceptionalism. When the structural unfairness of an economic system is exposed, the immediate reflex of its beneficiaries is to pathologise the critic - rebranding political awareness of inequality as mere resentment or envy.
In attempting to counter this by naming exceptional historical anomalies like Nelson Mandela and Edith Piaf, you rely entirely on what is known as survivor bias [7]. Unfortunately, simply pointing to a few extraordinary outliers does not disprove the statistical reality that baseline social structures trap the vast majority of people.
You warn intelligent readers to be wary of anyone who uses phrases like in reality - and that is often good advice, as the phrase is frequently abused - but exercising a degree of rhetorical caution does not allow one to flatly deny that a reality exists.
To suggest that simply because a phrase can be used to disguise doxa the underlying material conditions of human life disappear, is a bizarre leap of logic. It allows you to comfortably ignore the brutal, measurable statistics of poverty and structural disadvantage by treating them as mere linguistic disputes.
VI.
You end your commentary with an additional insult aimed my way, a reading of Aesop's story to do with the tortoise and the hare, and a couple more big names dropped - Samuel Beckett and Derek Walcott - just to add a final literary flourish.
Ignoring Walcott if I may, let me first reply to the insult, then move on to the well-known Greek fable, and then, very briefly, say something about Beckett and his idea of failing better ...
(i)
Your assertion that because I do not turn my criticism into self-criticism - "the telos of all genuinely philosophical criticality" - I am therefore "unable or unwilling to acknowledge [my] own bullshit" is a tu quoque fallacy wrapped up in pseudo-Hegelian terminology.
You invoke the word telos to give your argument a fancy intellectual veneer, but the argument itself is merely an attempt to deflect. By declaring that the ultimate goal of philosophy is self-criticism, you attempt to shift the focus away from your own logically flawed positions and put my character on trial once more.
But a critique of what Byung-Chul Han calls the burnout society does not require an author to issue a disclaimer admitting that they, too, participate in the market economy. Obviously, I'm implicated in the world I discuss. But to suggest that a writer must tack on a confession of their own personal flaws and failings to every structural analysis before that analysis can be validated is ridiculous.
(ii)
I'm afraid to say, having consulted the text, your reading of 'The Hare and the Tortoise' is a modern piece of revisionism. It's clever and imaginative, but far removed from the original story and to rewrite an ancient animal fable as a journey of self-actualisation is to strip it of it textual and historical reality.
You insist the tortoise emerges as the winner not because he beats his opponent per se, but because he remains "faithful to himself, non-stressed, and relentless" and ultimately "overcomes himself".
In other words, the tortoise accepts his own nature, stays calm, and fights his own limits instead of fighting his long-eared rival. He symbolises what we would today call mindfulness and zen focus in a noisy and hectic world.
But that is certainly not how the Ancient Greeks understood the story: they were far more pragmatically-minded and for them, the tortoise wins because he crosses the finish line ahead of an arrogant and complacent adversary; it's a political warning against the dangers of leporine hubris [8].
For the Greeks, wasting divinely-given talents and strengths was a severe moral failing that invited cosmic retribution. The tortoise won because the hare self-sabotaged, not because the slow-moving reptile was morally superior due to his resilience, persistence, and perseverance.
Ultimately, you admire the tortoise for the same reason you love the underdog: because you - like Aesop - support the slave revolt in morality [9].
The lesson of his fable for a lower-class Greek was this: if you are weak, you cannot beat the powerful through brute force or speed. You must quietly exploit their arrogance, keep your head down, stay humble, work hard, and keep moving forward while they destroy themselves.
(iii)
This desire to turn art into uplifting motivational guff is further exposed by your misuse of Samuel Beckett. To borrow his 'fail again - fail better' idea from Worstward Ho! (1983) in order to celebrate "people who achieve things" is an outrageous move.
Beckett was not auditing a business seminar or offering tips for personal reinvention and to enlist the high priest of mid-century nihilism into your campaign for personal productivity is a masterclass in bad faith.
I refer you to my post of 11 June 2013 in which I write:
"Beckett is absolutely not telling us that if at first we don't succeed, we should try, try again in the hope and expectation that such endurance is bound to pay off. Rather, he's saying that no matter how hard you try, no matter how many times you fail, you will never succeed: that success is not even an option. For we are destined to fail: such is the tragic character of our mortal being. The fact that Beckett affirms this and finds in it a source of darkly comic satisfaction, demonstrates that his is what Nietzsche would term a pessimism of strength."
The post concludes:
"The fact that his words are to be found on a wide variety of motivational posters, mugs, and fridge magnets is something that should cause laughter amongst Beckett enthusiasts. For observing people draw comfort and inspiration from lines they have naively misunderstood is, as one commentator notes, like watching someone innocently throw a stick for their dog, not realising that it is in fact a human shin bone they've just picked up in the park."
That, dear demon, makes a good place also to end this letter.
With kind regards,
SA
Notes
[1] This image by Fareha Islam illustrated a piece by Michelle Huang titled 'A Letter from the Devil' in The Stuyvesant Spectator, Issue 14, Volume 112 (11 August, 2026).
The Stuyvesant Spectator is a bi-weekly newspaper produced by students at Stuyvesant High School in New York City. It was first published in 1915.
[2] Interesting that the anonymous critic - who may or may not be a demon (we'll come to this shortly) - should fall back once more on a proverbial saying in order to express themselves. For one of the issues I have with their criticism is precisely that they often substitute common folk wisdom for philosophical insight.
The fact that this particular English proverb from the 17th century betrays a suspicion of fine words (i.e., complex language which they believe lacks sincerity and is empty of meaning) is also very telling. They seem to imply that simple words invested with common sense are best - and that actions matter more than any form of speech, which is an unusual (self-loathing) position for a writer to adopt.
[3] John Keating was the character played by Robin Williams in Dead Poets Society (dir. Peter Weir, 1989), whose unorthodox teaching methods and romantic idealism had tragic results.
Keating was the sort of teacher who inspired passion and encouraged free-thinking, but failed to warn his impressionable young students of the risks they were taking (and consequences that would follow) by acting in defiance of authority and convention. The sort of teacher who posed as a rebel having established a well-paid career for himself.
[4] See the comment dated 14 August 2026 attached to the post 'On the Temptation of Christ' (07 Aug 2026).
[5] Obviously, there are differences between early Christian culture and bourgeois society. The former, for example, directs these ideals - conceived as gifts of God's grace or fruits of the Holy Spirit rather than acts of human will or indicators of individual agency - toward spiritual salvation; while the latter ties resilience, persistence, and perseverance to material success, upward mobility, and personal achievement.
Over time, however, a fanatic religious work ethic fed directly into middle-class capitalist culture, as famously argued by Max Weber in his classic study of 1905, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. For Weber, Calvinism in particular created the unique mindset necessary for modern capitalism to thrive; the pursuit of wealth was repackaged as a moral calling, transforming hard work into a moral duty (and idleness into a sin).
[6] See Nietzsche, Daybreak, ed. Maudemarie Clark and Brian Leiter, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 105. Nietzsche explicitly calls the blessing of work a covert strategy to suppress the individual.
It is worth remembering also that he insists on idleness as the crucial condition from which philosophy is born and sees perseverance as an Asiatic - specifically Chinese - mode of life suitable for "industrious ants". See Daybreak, § 206 (p. 127 in the above edition).
[7] Survivor bias is a form of cognitive and logical error. It occurs when an analysis focuses exclusively on the winners or survivors of a particular process while completely ignoring the vast, nameless cohort of those who failed or perished. D. H. Lawrence became acutely aware of this dynamic when observing the mechanics of American society:
"It is not till you live in America, and go a little under the surface, that you begin to see how terrible and brutal is the mass of failure that nourishes the roots of the gigantic tree of dollars." See 'Introduction to Bottom Dogs, by Edward Dahlberg', in Introductions and Reviews, ed. N. H. Reeve and John Worthen (Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 119.
Ultimately, survivor bias is not merely an intellectual oversight; it is an ideological deception weaponised by the powerful to convince the powerless that systemic barriers can be overcome by sheer force of will and a lot of hard work. The organisers of the National Lottery rely on precisely the same psychological trick: they spotlight a microscopic handful of winners and declare "It could be you", deliberately obscuring the mathematical reality that, for the overwhelming majority of ticket holders, it never will be.
[8] The Greeks also viewed the fable's underlying concept as a logical paradox; how could a slow-moving creature defeat a fast one - was it possible that motion itself was merely an illusion, as the philosopher Zeno argued?
[9] According to early writers like the ancient historian Herodotus, Aesop was an enslaved person on the Greek island of Samos who later gained his freedom.
