The Rawness Layer - I Was a Dick Disguised as Honest
Using the Insight for Good
Raw onion tastes completely different from cooked. Sharp. Pungent. Unfiltered.
When did you last experience yourself that way? Raw. Unprocessed by social expectations. Unedited for the audience.
Week 38. I'm realizing that being raw doesn't mean being unfiltered. It means being honest without using honesty as a blade.
The Inheritance
I come from a long line of raw truth-tellers.
My father: Inappropriate jokes at BBQs. Chilean humor. Alcohol-fueled truth bombs that somehow got under your skin while everyone laughed. Crude. Direct. Shock value wrapped in charm.
My mother: Random opinions. Gossip. Loving manipulation. She'd instigate, poke at insecurities, say the truth even if it hurt. All disguised as care.
I learned from both. Strong truths disguised in humor. I could sense people's insecurities and weaponize them. The funny guy. The shock comedian. I'd say outrageous things, push the envelope, get the laugh, see the wound, and follow up with: "Oh, I'm just kidding."
But the damage was already done.
Growing up, my close friends and I understood the dynamic. We were brutal to each other. At the core, we thought it was love and hilarious—we even made a T-shirt featuring all our crazy phrases. But to everyone else, we were just dicks.
I had this superpower—reading people, sensing what they weren't saying, knowing exactly where the nerve was. And I abused it.
Protecting myself. Hiding in my scared little boy sensitivity behind comedy and insecurity. I didn't know the barometer. I didn't know when to stop.
The Damage
Looking back now, I'm embarrassed.
I hurt people. I made fun of them. I weaponized their insecurities for a laugh. I thought I was being real. I thought rawness meant no filter.
I don't dwell on it anymore. I've moved on. But if I ran into one of those people and they brought it up? I'd apologize. The damage is done. Their judgment is set. I own that.
But I'm not chasing ghosts. That version of me was part of the learning process. Life's ebb and flow. Karma in action.
The Refinement
Over the years, I toned it down. Controlled it. Learned the consequences.
Alan Watts: "Karma means action—the doing of your own life. Your present circumstances are the unfolding result of past actions. Not punishment. Not reward. Just cause and effect."
I saw the reaction. I felt the weight. I started growing up.
I see some baby boomers still stuck in that deprecating humor. It's borderline sad now. It doesn't help anyone. It's not a good look.
But here's what I learned: Rawness isn't about shock value. It's about honing your craft.
I still have the ability to read people. To sense what's unsaid. To feel the energy in the room.
But now I use it differently.
The shift: Refined thought, humor, and insight for good.
I come from discernment now. I'm more direct in my intentions. Still intentionally funny, or just funny looking now—that's part of me. I express an opinion if asked, or if the situation calls for it. I share from my own experience, not theirs.
And if the room doesn't call for it? I just eat my food, smile, play with my son, and stay in my own world.
I don't even know who won the Super Bowl. Social media, lately, is a cesspool of conquer and divide. So I'll just eat with my son and wife.
Rawness as Ambush vs. Rawness as Invitation
There's a difference between the two.
Rawness as ambush: BBQ shock humor. Weaponized truth. You didn't ask for it, but here it comes. Laugh or be the target.
Rawness as invitation: The Rebel Onion. You choose to read it. You opt in. I'm not ambushing you at a party. I'm offering vulnerability, and you decide if you want to engage.
That changes the responsibility.
When you ambush people with rawness, you're using it as a weapon. When you invite people into rawness, you're offering it as a gift.
The art is knowing the difference. Reading the room. Feeling the energy. Choosing when to speak and when to stay silent.
The New Tribe
The Rebel Onion readers—people who choose this rawness—they're a specific kind of person.
People with insight, knowledge, action. Business risk and smarts. Good upbringing. Good family. Degrees or strong work ethic. Fortitude.
And yet: It's still so hard out there.
Building businesses is brutal. The game feels rigged. Nepotism reigns. The "elites" hold the gates.
But we keep going. Our kind keeps breaking barriers. Some of us document it. Inspire it. We fulfill the hero's journey.
I don't recommend this path if you can't get your ass handed to you yearly. But I know this is the rite of passage I will break through.
The Rebel Onion reader sees my story and relates. "It's not just me." That's insight for the good.
That's the rawness that matters. Not shock value. Not weaponized truth. Just honest struggle, shared openly, for people who choose to witness it.
Where I'm Still Cooking Myself
I said earlier that 33 of 38 weeks have been fully raw. A couple weeks, I pulled back.
Why?
Fear of judgment, maybe. Some things are confidential. Some things just don't need to be out there.
And sometimes, I wonder: What's the line between being considerate and hiding?
I'm still figuring it out.
But I know this: The Rebel Onion isn't about being unfiltered. It's about being honest. Vulnerable. Real. Without using that realness to hurt people.
In an era where AI makes it harder to tell what's genuinely human versus generated, conveying lived experience—the messy, unpolished truth—matters more than ever.
It's the evolution from weaponized raw to honest raw to channeled raw. Honed. Always evolving.
The Inner Voice
I'm working soon on my next book.
It's about received knowledge from the unknown—God, your higher power, whatever you call it. Intuitive insight that comes when your conscious and subconscious are aligned to receive it.
Meditation. Silent moments on the beach. The shower. That moment after a brutal workout when you can barely breathe and the whisper comes.
The download. The inspiration. The inner whisper that can change your life direction in a single insight.
Twenty years ago, I read Robert Greene's 48 Laws of Power. Law 4: Always Say Less Than Necessary.
I hated it. I needed to say what I had to say. No filter. All raw.
Now I'm starting to get it.
The evolution: Weaponized raw → Honest raw → Channeled raw.
Not saying what you think unfiltered, but saying what the universe whispers to you when you're aligned—and still sprinkling in a little humor. Lord knows we need it.
That's the next level. That's the refinement.
Week 38. Still peeling. Still learning when to speak and when to stay silent.
Let go. Let God. Let the whisper guide.
Stop weaponizing the rawness. Use it for good.
The "Being Coached" Layer: The Death of the Easy Score
The Death of the Easy Score
Dr. Goodman says: The word "sarcasm" has its origins in the Greek sarkazein, which literally means "to tear the flesh." That is the weaponized humor you are referring to. The real question is: when you stop tearing the flesh, what is left?
What remains is the willingness to abandon everything you think you know. You must reach a point where you are happy to be proven wrong, because only then do you have evidence of the growth you are making. Growth is found in the moment you recognize the "easy score"—that perfect, biting remark the "old Martin" or "old Larry" would have made—and you choose to say nothing instead.
You recognize the "easy victim" because they are just like you. This is the origin of the phrase, "If you spot it, you got it." When you feel compelled to judge, criticize, or use "haha humor" to poke a nerve, recognize that you are actually judging a part of yourself. This brings us back to the Demartini Method: Where have I done that, and to whom? It isn't about the person in front of you; it’s about what’s happening inside of you. Use those insights privately, between you and your trusted mentor, to heal the part of you that still feels the need to attack.
Bookshelf Peeled - The Tamed Cheetah’s Truth
In Untamed, Glennon Doyle introduces the metaphor of the caged cheetah—an animal raised on "store-bought steaks" and domestic training that makes it forget its wildness. Doyle argues that we are all "caged" by cultural expectations of who we should be. This connects deeply to "weaponized rawness." For years, your shock humor and "truth-bombs" were the rebellion of a caged animal—using honesty as a blade to bite back at a world you didn't quite trust. You were performing "realness" rather than actually being it.
The lesson here is that rebellion is just as much of a cage as obedience, because both are merely reactions to someone else. True "rawness" isn't about the shock value of the wild; it's the quiet confidence of "The Knowing." As Doyle says, "The more often I do things I want to do, the less bitter I am at people for doing what they want to do." When you stop using your truth to "tear the flesh," you stop needing to be the truth-bomber. You move into Channeled Rawness, becoming the man who no longer reacts to the world, but instead listens to the whisper.
Untamed
By Glennon Doyle
Design Rebel: The "funny" guy at the BBQ
This week’s deep dive was born in the heat of family BBQs and that one "funny guy" who doesn't know when he's crossed the line into "too much." To bring this digital hallucination to life, I leaned into the chaos of AI. I used Sora and Leonardo.ai for the imagery, often embracing the wild video outputs that ignored my prompts but actually made the story more visceral.
The Rebel Onion's voice was crafted through ElevenLabs, utilizing their Veo 3.1 video integration to hit those surreal notes. The script was a collaborative grind between Gemini and myself, with the final cut polished and edited in Wondershare Filmora. It’s a mix of high-tech tools and raw, human reflection on what it means to finally put down the "Just Kidding" sign.
Weekly Inspired Insights I liked or found useful this week:
I liked this a lot. Be kind at home. That's the real test.
P.S. If this resonates with you, share it with someone. I'm dedicated to helping fellow explorers—or anyone who found this page—uncover their authentic self with humor and insight. We're all in this together, finding the courage to truly live from our core essence (or as close as we can get!).
The Symmetry Layer: Finding Your Natural Pattern
Fridays with Goodman: A striving artist, a Good-man and the Universal Principles at Play
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