Human 4: Clyde Rathbone

Co-founder of Letter and a member of the Partnerships Team at Substack.

After growing up in South Africa, Clyde moved to Canberra in 2002, where he now lives with his fiancée, Anna, and son, Hugo. In a former life, he played 73 Super Rugby games for the ACT Brumbies and earned 26 caps representing Australia in international rugby for the Wallabies. Clyde retired from rugby in 2014 and co-founded Letter with his brother

Dayne @ Substack

and

Monish Parajuli

. Letter was acquired by Substack in 2021, and since then, Clyde has been a member of the partnerships team where he works with many of Substack’s top writers.

Clyde is a human mammal. Here are his thoughts:

What brings you the most joy in life?

Conversations with my 5-year-old son, Hugo, like this one:

I'm happiest when I'm deeply immersed in the present moment. Hugo, my fiancée Anna, along with my friends and family, are sources of great joy. Spending time in nature (while realising that we are part of nature), learning something new and interesting, exerting myself in a way that connects me with the reality that I am an animal, having great conversations, and striving to master something difficult all provide immense happiness in my life.

What does success mean to you? 

Being fortunate enough to decide how to spend one’s time and attention. Having deeply meaningful relationships with friends and family. Being healthy and living in a part of the world that places few impingements on freedom. This is not to downplay more practical notions of success, but when I'm thinking clearly everything else seems a distant second.

What do you see as your greatest achievement?

If I've achieved anything, it's a willingness to embrace change and continually seek better ways of being.

What are you most grateful for? 

I’m grateful for existence, for being part of this absurd cosmic mystery. I’m grateful for the continued survival and flourishing of the people I love. I’m grateful for freedom and irony. I’m grateful to experience gratitude.

Who or what has had the biggest influence on your life? 

I suppose it would be all the accidents that happened before I existed that influenced my genes, the time period into which I was born, and the geographic location etc.

My parents have been a huge influence. Through their example, I’ve always felt free to live an unconventional life. I deeply appreciate how much they care about other people. They are utterly disinterested in status or material things, and they are remarkably selfless and generous.

My three-younger brothers teach me more than I can ever express. My fiancée and my son show me what love is and inspire me to be and do better. I’ve certainly been impacted by a small band of friends and family who are independent thinkers with diverse perspectives on what it means to live a full life. And I’ve learned a tremendous amount from authors and thinkers who have given me the privilege of touring their minds. 

What do you regret? 

Any time I've spent caring about the wrong things, such as my regrets. That's not to say that I never think about regrets or that doing so has no utility, but rather that a little regret goes a long way. My approach to past mistakes is to extract whatever lessons I can from them and to move forward as painlessly as possible. 

Has there been a defining moment in your life? Can you tell us something about it?

After the 2013 Super Rugby season, I took a trip to visit my brother in Europe. During my time in Maastricht, I consumed Psilocybin truffles and went for a walk through a medieval fort. If I wrote incessantly for ten thousand years I would fail to convey how interesting the hours that followed were. Whatever walked into that fort was quite different from the thing that emerged from it. 

During this period, I came to several realisations that fundamentally altered the lens through which I view reality. I’ve struggled to articulate these ideas, but I'll make a brief attempt here. Before this experience, I might have dismissed most of what follows as superstitious woo, but here it is.

I’ve long known that, in a broad scientific sense, everything in the universe is connected through fundamental forces and laws of physics. From gravity binding galaxies to the interactions of particles at quantum levels, the universe exhibits a profound interconnectedness - I understood this conceptually. For several hours during my experience in Maastricht I became completely absorbed in the experiential reality of this truth. I felt the total union of the universe. I experienced myself as everything, as an infinite thread stretched across a causal chain back to the origins of time and space. This profound sense of connection seemed to crack open a new part of my mind.

From this vantage point, a cascade of insights seemed to unfold all at once. I saw clearly for the first time my non-existence as a central ‘I’. The dissolution of a separate monolithic self was initially frightening, but ‘I’, along with many of my previous ideas soon revealed themselves to be comically naive. I realised that free will is an illusion and that hate is largely incongruent with a bird’s eye view of reality.

I saw the tools of science and spirituality as parallel languages of reality, and dogma as antithetical to progress in both realms. I discovered that death is an illusion and nothing to fear - that we are more than the blink of an eye between the cradle and grave - that we begin at the very beginning and end at the very end. That when we gaze up at the stars we’re looking at our ancestors, that it is a view inward as much as outward. I began to see the pattern of my typical concerns and seriousness as trivialities, as hilarious jokes hidden in plain sight, and I knew that it would be absurd to retain a vice grip on them. More than anything, and more intensely than I had ever experienced anything, I felt an infinite gratitude.

To this day, I find quiet moments to access this state of mind, and it helps me zoom out to see things from a wide angle perspective. I cannot overstate the difference this makes to my quality of life.

What advice would you give your younger self? 

There’s so much to say. The human brain is the most astonishingly complex and powerful thing in the known universe - that’s you. You are also a deeply ignorant and easily fooled primate. Keeping this paradox near the surface of your awareness enables you to navigate the bizarre mystery of life with awe, curiosity, and humour.  Think about death often. This will help you connect with the impermanence of everything and bring your attention to the stuff that matters. Be less confident in your ideas, but no less confident in trying to test them. Be ever more curious and skeptical, and try to see the paradox and irony in everything. Recognise that most of what scares you is an illusion, that you are not your thoughts, and that you can adopt a playful attitude to virtually any idea.

If you could have a conversation with anyone, living or dead, who would you choose and why? 

Two brothers on my mother's side of our family escaped the religious wars in France in the 17th century. They arrived in the Netherlands before migrating to Cape Town when there were only a few hundred European settlers there. They found a way to survive on one of the harshest continents on earth. I’m convinced that it would be impossible to have an uninteresting conversation with these men. I’d also love to revive Christopher Hitchens and get his views on everything that’s happened in the time since he died. Norm Macdonald also died recently, he’s another person I deeply admired and would have loved to speak with.

What do you doubt most? 

Certainty - especially when it emanates from those who assert with great confidence things that cannot be falsified. Of course, I’m guilty of this all the time. 

When did you last change your mind?

I’ve recently come to recognise the distinction between intelligence and wisdom. I believe intelligence is one of the most valuable assets in the universe. It’s the tool that enables us to solve complex problems and invent ever more powerful tools. Wisdom, however, is more abstract, involving insight, judgment, and the application of knowledge - it's not just what you know but how you use what you know.

I now recognise that it's entirely possible to be highly intelligent and not very wise.

Many brilliant individuals seem to lack the judgment or emotional understanding to apply their intelligence in a manner that considers the broader implications or ethical considerations of their actions. They might be skilled at solving complex problems but not adept at handling personal relationships or understanding themselves. This strikes me as a significant issue because modern societies, though not pure technocracies, are increasingly influenced by technical expertise and technology. I suspect that many people assuming power within these systems can leverage intelligence without being required to demonstrate wisdom.

What role does luck play in our lives? 

There is no evidence for libertarian free will. From this perspective, it's luck all the way down. 

Do you have a favourite quote? What is it? Why do you like it?

There are two I’m particularly fond of. David Hume’s, "A Wise man proportions his belief to the evidence”. And the following from George Best, “I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I just squandered”. I love the concise wisdom of the former, and the playful irreverence of the latter. 

Not a pithy quote, but I adore this from Sam Harris, and listen to it often. No matter what is happening in my life, these words invite a shift in perspective that recognises the fleeting nature of life and the true value of each moment.

What would you do with your life if you had unlimited financial resources? 

I'd first spend time creating the conditions that enable me to make good decisions regarding human progress and well-being. It would rank order the problems humanity is faced with and distribute resources accordingly. I would spend more time with my friends and family, and I would certainly read, write and travel a great deal.

If you could have the definitive answer to a single question, what would you ask?

If an entity existed that could provide a definitive answer to any question, I suspect I'd be most interested in that entity, and given that I might ask, ‘Please thoroughly define what you are such that I understand it comprehensively?’ Setting aside the possibility of an omniscient being, I think it would be useful to know how humanity ends. From there we could reverse engineer our priorities.

What is the one concept/fact/idea that every human on the planet should understand? 

Everything in the universe is interdependent and interconnected. Nothing exists in isolation and everything is a result of a complex web of causes and conditions. The true nature of reality is constant change, and you, as both a single node and the entire web, are a complicated part of this vast cosmic flux. Or as Alan Watts said, “You are a function of what the whole universe is doing in the same way that a wave is a function of what the whole ocean is doing.”

Should we think of morality in relative or absolute terms?

I think of morality in relative terms (not to be confused with moral relativism, which asserts that morality is entirely relative to the observer). A moral absolutist might say that it is never right to kill someone, but they never met my primary school math teacher, Mrs. King. 

Do human beings have free will?

If you think you have free will, do not read to the end of this sentence. You read it, didn’t you? No matter, simply use your free will to forget that you did…

Free will is perhaps the least well-understood relatively simple concept I can think of, and many who cling to the notion fail to consider the ethical implications of doing so. It’s incredibly liberating and humbling to realise that all outcomes are born of processes we do not author. In a very real sense we are all 13.8 billion years old - we should act like it.

It is a common mistake to conflate determinism & fatalism. In practical terms, understanding the difference is crucial. Someone who believes in determinism should still see the value in effort and actions, since these form part of the causal chain. But someone who is fatalistic might be more inclined to passivity, thinking that their efforts don't matter because everything is already predestined.

Do you believe in God?

No.

Fictional stories are fundamental to human progress but monotheistic religions make conflicting truth claims that are incredibly dangerous. Maybe there's a religion 2.0, that decouples the moral framework from the truth claims. I think religion could be reshaped in this way, but I’m skeptical this can be achieved fast enough. We've reached a point where our capacity to destroy each other is exponentially accelerating, and I worry that playing the long game is a path to extinction. 

While I think the work of new atheism is now largely complete or redundant, I believe there needs to be more pushback against a popular line of thinking: the idea that many modern Western values and ideas, which might be perceived as secular, actually stem from Christianity. This strikes me as analogous to considering the USA to be British, rather than acknowledging it as a culture heavily influenced by Britain, but which evolved—through a revolution against, and selective departure from - British rule.

That said, none of my criticisms of religion should discount the power of spiritual experiences. A vast universe of profound states and realisations lies beyond our typical experience of reality, but spirituality, free from nonsense, should be rooted in contemplative practices and grounded in empirical evidence.

Could we be living in a simulated universe?

There’s an argument that, as a matter of probability, it would seem not merely possible but likely. We could be a version of discarded code running on an abandoned server, rather than a simulation in which other beings take interest in us. 

Will the continual development of technology have a net positive or negative influence on humanity?

Future technology is likely to vastly improve our lives while also risking the extinction of our species. It is in human nature to forge ahead, so I'm inclined to think we will largely overlook potential pitfalls and accelerate technological progress, hoping it provides enough escape velocity from existential risks.

What is the single greatest achievement of humanity?

Our greatest achievement is that we have learned to cohere such that the answer to this question will always need to be updated as long as our species survives. 

What do you see as the biggest existential threat to humanity?

A failure to align our values resulting in a failure to align our efforts. 

What does it mean to live a good life? 

If one has a net positive influence on other people and sentient beings, I think one could say they’ve had a good life. However, given that our actions produce trade-offs it remains difficult to know precisely how to live. Perhaps the best we can do is act with the intention to improve our lives and the lives of others, and to be guided by science and reason rather than superstition and dogma in this pursuit. I also have a strong sense that a good life is underpinned by a commitment to discover the limits of our potential.

What is a good death?

One that happens to my enemies :)

Thanks for your time, Clyde!

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