The point of this article doesn’t exist (and yet you'll still read it)
A mind-bending exploration of why business, creativity, and meaning are built on invisible foundations, and how to thrive anyway. Welcome to the world of quantum capitalism.
This essay is the start of a series I’m writing leading up to January Joy, a free slate of events I’m co-hosting with Claire Venus ✨ next month, including live conversations with experts about how they grow with joy, challenges to help you plan your own joyous growth, and a masterclass at the end to wrap it all up. You can sign up for free to get access to all most of the events.
All you have to do is subscribe to the January Joy publication, and you’ll be registered for everything but the masterclass, which is $100. However, Hapitalist members get a free ticket. If you’ve been thinking about joining, this is a great time to consider an upgrade.
Hi,
Mathematically, a point has no dimension, length, width, or depth. It doesn’t occupy space. I’m not a mathematician, but to me that means points don’t exist.
And yet, we see them, use them, and literally navigate to them. Your map says, “Turn left at this point,” and you do. Eventually, you arrive at the destination, but the destination never had substance in the first place.
This is the world we live in, one filled with nonsense, and yet people expect to make sense, even though every bit of it is a collection of made-up destinations we treat like real things.
We’re trying to find the point…in a world made of pointless points.
Points do have a point, though, insomuch as they give structure to things that exist. Lines exist. We can draw them, measure them, trace them with our fingers. Same thing with shapes. Triangles, polygons, perfect little geometries composed of lines, and built on points.
We build worlds out of them. We design software, sketch blueprints, draft stories, and plan our lives using lines and shapes and 3D models.
And yet, the foundation of it all is a fiction. The structures, logic, and systems we rely on are scaffolding built atop something that isn’t even there. And somehow, it still works…
…except when it doesn’t, and then again when it does, until it doesn’t another time, and it’s all chaos. How do you even? Well, the solution might be kind of odd.
Let’s talk Gödel. Kurt Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorems state that any system powerful enough to describe the world will contain truths that can’t be proven within it.
Basically, you will never fully understand the system you’re inside of.
At some point, we believed that there were “immutable laws of physics”, but Einstein and Newton left the building long ago.
In the past 100 years, quantum physics blew up everything we thought we knew about reality, and in doing so created a much better explanation of owning a creative business than anything else I’ve come across before or since.
At the quantum level, particles aren’t even particles, at least not all the time. They’re probabilities that are sometimes particles, sometimes waves, and maybe sometimes something else…you can’t know which is which without fundamentally altering it.
Until you do, they’re both and neither. You know what else behaves that way? Your business.
Your business only makes money or gets exposure when someone interacts with it. Your stories only really live when someone reads it, and even then it exists differently inside everyone who does. That course? That Kickstarter? That mailing list you’re obsessing over? None of it has tangible economic value until somebody responds to it. And when they do? The act of them looking changes what you’ve built.
Welcome to quantum capitalism, where there is no structure or certainty. There are likely outcomes and less likely outcomes, but there is always a possibility of randomness and nonsense.
Most people break when the system doesn’t work how they think it should. They believe in structure and predictability. So, when they launch a product, run an ad, or follow the guru playbook, and nothing happens, they spiral.
The problem must be them, right? Wrong. The problem might be them. There could even be a high probability that it is them, but it could be anything, really.
The chance that you will die from a whale falling out of the sky is very, very, very low, but it is never zero.
The problem is that we were all taught to expect rational outcomes from irrational systems. If you’re a writer, creator, or artist in this mess, it’s even worse because your business model isn’t just irrational, it’s intangible.
Does your product feel like it’s literally made up? That’s okay…all products are made up.
We started with the idea that points don’t exist, which means they’re fiction.
But fiction? That’s your superpower. If points are lies, then stories are truth-shaped lies that carry us through the chaos.
You don’t build a business by hitting the “right points.” You build a business by creating a narrative people want to follow and one they see themselves in.
A few weeks ago, I asked a tech executive why AI companies seem to get venture capital (VC) funding at wild valuations while their revenue is less than or equal to what I make in revenue every year, even after years on the hustle.
Their response? “That’s because VC funding isn’t about the product. It’s about the story you tell. If you can craft a compelling vision for the future, and then put your company at the center of it, VCs will eat it up.”
Sound like anything we’ve been talking about? All we’re doing all day every day is telling stories. The whole VC industry is built on putting money behind compelling stories, and we’re all storytellers here.
Before Facebook sold ads, they sold a story. Before eBay sold used products, they sold a story. Every time they fund another round of investment? They are selling a story of the future that only has a tangential relationship to the past.
The economic value of the entire VC world is largely built on stories, and yet we’re largely an industry of broke creators. We have to open our eyes, (finally) understand the system we’re living inside, and learn how to take advantage of it without selling our soul.
Here’s what taking advantage of quantum capitalism looks like in real, actionable terms:
Stop looking for proof and start collecting patterns. There will never be a guaranteed path, but you can notice what tends to work for you, your people, your energy, your voice. Build from that.
Play with the math. If A = xylophone, then start asking better questions. What’s your xylophone? What weird, irrational, unexpected connection keeps showing up in your work? That’s your angle. Lean into it.
Use your voice as the constant. You don’t control algorithms or markets, but you do control your voice, your resonance and your vibe. Make that consistent, and your audience will follow even when the rules change.
Make meaning, even if it’s made up. Your whole job is creating meaning where there was none. Why would your business be any different?
Sell stories like they matter. In quantum capitalism, they’re the only thing that do.
Points don’t exist, but we still chase them because they give us direction. They’re the placeholders we need to keep moving in a world where nothing makes sense.
You don’t need it to make sense, though. You just need to care enough to keep going. Write the next thing, launch the next weird project, say the next true sentence, and open your eyes to the possibilities inherent in a chaotic systems.
Build your line, one imaginary point at a time. Because even if the system is nonsense, even if A = xylophone, even if we’re all faking it…
You’re still here, and that’s the realest thing there is.
If you don’t see the point in all this, that’s okay…because the point doesn’t exist anyway. It’s what you make of it that matters.
What do you think? If you want to start living quantum in 2026, I’m working with Claire Venus ✨ on a free program we’re calling January Joy.
It’s all about how to grow joyously in 2026, and also make the money you want to make. It’s filled with live conversations, challenges, and even a masterclass at the end of it.
The masterclass is $100, but the rest of it is completely free. Plus, it will be free for all Hapitalist members, and be available for watching afterward inside my archives.
