Hi there, Welcome !
Let me introduce myself—I’m Demba Sow.
I was born in a remote village where there was no school, no library, no electricity—let alone the internet. Life was simple yet challenging, shaped by the vast landscapes and the rhythms of nature. In a place so small that I knew every face, my childhood was spent amidst the herds, learning the ways of nomadic survival.
My father, a resilient man with multiple wives and many children, faced immense hardship when the Mauritanian government’s Fulani ethnic cleansing attempts in 1989 and 1993 stripped him of his livestock—his sole means of livelihood. Forced to flee to Mali, he struggled to keep the family afloat. When we returned in 1996, he found that everything he once owned—his land, his home—had been taken from him. With little left, he had to start anew.
I was born into this struggle in 1999. From an early age, my mother saw something different in me. I was her hope, her most beloved. My childhood was marked by a deep curiosity and an insatiable hunger to understand the world beyond our village. While I spent my days tending to animals and participating in our family’s survival, my mind was elsewhere—lost in thoughts of engineering, creation, and discovery.
I would collect broken radios, dismantle them, and repurpose their components to build new things. My friends and I once created a makeshift lamp powered by 20 batteries, its light stretching over two kilometers into the dark forests. Soon, word spread, and villagers brought their broken electronics for us to fix. These small acts of ingenuity became my first encounters with problem-solving, the seeds of my intellectual journey.
Our way of life was transient. We migrated often—sometimes in search of better pastures, other times in pursuit of gold, hoping to strike fortune in lands far beyond our home. In these migrations, I witnessed human resilience, suffering, and the fragile nature of existence. Some journeys took more than they gave. I lost a dear friend, Bacca Pendayel, a soul who had dreamed alongside me but whose path was cut short too soon.
Tragedy did not spare my own home either. One night, our house was set on fire by a stranger, reducing what little we had to ashes. Yet, from the ruins, I carried forward an unshaken determination—an understanding that life demands reinvention.
Education was never a given; it had to be stolen in fragments. My older brother, the brightest in the village, would tutor other children at night by firelight. I was too young to join them, but I would hide nearby, absorbing every word. When the students struggled with answers, I would whisper corrections from the shadows.
Eventually, my thirst for knowledge took me beyond my homeland. With a scholarship, I embarked on a journey of higher education in a foreign country, navigating unfamiliar cultures and languages. It was here that I found my true passion—not just for engineering or science, but for the deeper questions of existence.
I became engrossed in philosophy, psychology, and human nature. I devoured books by Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Jordan Peterson, Robert Greene, Viktor Frankl, Dale Carnegie, Yuval Noah Harari, and countless others. Their words reshaped my understanding of the world, revealing the intricate dance between suffering, meaning, and the human condition.
Now, I share my thoughts here—exploring trending topics through the lens of philosophy, psychology, and the raw essence of human nature. This is my space for reflection, for discourse, for unraveling the complexities of our existence.
Perhaps, in the process, I will discover what I have been searching for all along.
Why This Substack?
Here, I’ll break down the world’s chaos through Hegel’s dialectics, Buddhist detachment, and the raw, unfiltered stories of human struggle.
Expect:
🔥 Deep dives into philosophy & psychology and human nature—no fluff, no jargon, just real insights.
🔥 Nomadic chronicles—gold hunts, camel raids, and why deserts forge wisdom.
🔥 Rants on tech’s mind-warping algorithms (and how to outthink them).
Join Me If:
🌊 You’ve ever felt like Odysseus—"wandering too far."
🔍 You crave meaning in a world drowning in hot takes.
🛠️ You’re curious why a boy who fixed radios now wrestles with Hegel.
Your Mission (Should You Choose to Accept It):
🕵️ Drag this email to “Primary”—future-you will be grateful.
📝 Take my “New Reader Survey”—help me write with you, not at you.
📩 Forward this to someone who’d rather debate Nietzsche than discuss the weather.
P.S. If you’re still here, you’re my kind of human. Let’s get gloriously lost in the questions that matter.
— DEMBA SOW
Philosophy’s wanderer. Tech’s skeptic. Your guide to the messy human condition.
