In this episode of Change the Game, Kit Perez sits down with writer and former Navy SEAL Sam Alaimo to talk about what modern life is doing to our ability to think, suffer well, and live with meaning.
The conversation moves from Sam’s transition out of combat and into civilian life, to the idea that meaning is often incorrectly characterized as being “found” inside you. It should be characterized as often revealed through friction with reality: suffering, consequence, proximity to death, and honest reflection afterward.
From there, the discussion widens into orientation: how technology hijacks attention, exploits the validation instinct, and reshapes identity—often driving loneliness, dependency, and what Sam describes as a slow drift into the inhuman. They close on a blunt but practical answer: you don’t need “how-to salvation guides.” You need the basics: autonomy, small real communities, fewer screens, deeper books, and the willingness to own your consequences.
Guests for this episode:
Sam Alaimo is the author of the Substack What then? and a former Navy SEAL. His work explores meaning, modernity, and the psychological and spiritual differences between “civilization” and more ancestral, high-consequence environments—using comparative ethnology, philosophy, and lived experience to ask what kind of life actually produces human flourishing.
Topics Covered
Why the transition from combat to peace can be harder than the transition into combat
Meaning as something revealed through suffering, not “found” through self-invention
How proximity to death clarifies value (and why modern “YOLO” is a distortion)
Orientation failure in a low-stakes, high-distraction environment
Validation-seeking as a technological exploit: identity outsourced to anonymous crowds
Why “comfort culture” produces loneliness and fragility
The need for friends who will “wound you” for your growth (and why most people avoid that)
AI, social media, and the risk of forming inhuman attachments
The coming “pain” required to correct technological overreach (Sam’s forecast)
Transhumanism and the fight over what it means to be human
“Brilliance in the basics”: unplugging, reading classics, building small real tribes
The self through the lens of death, freedom, isolation, and meaninglessness
Choosing consequences and owning them
Mentioned Work & Resources
Dostoevsky — Notes from Underground
Epictetus — Stoic philosophy as a starting point for building an inner posture
Glenn Gray — The Warriors
Eric Hoffer — mass movements, revolt, and the psychology of meaning
Irvin Yalom — existential framework: death, freedom, isolation, meaninglessness
Tolkien — The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion
Grimm’s Fairy Tales and Aesop — formation through enduring stories vs algorithmic feed-life
Sam’s Substack: What then?
