The War of Art by Steven Pressfield is a book about fighting Resistance with a capital R – the most dangerous force that any creative person can encounter. Pressfield spent most of his life doing odd jobs while working on his writing. While life forced him to take several paths that were unrelated to his … Read more
In one of his lectures, Jordan Peterson was asked a question about whether morality was merely a matter of who was more powerful. He replied by telling the story of Bret “The Hitman” Heart and recommenda documentary to watch that he thought was one of the best he’s seen: Hitman Hart: Wrestling with Shadows. … Read more
In Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche makes a powerful argument against the moral philosophers, the utilitarians, and the “pure” souls. There is no such thing as virtue, there is only the strong and the weak. Exploitation is not wrong, it is the essence of being alive. Being trampled on, being placid, being foolish – those … Read more
On Becoming a Person is a book by Carl Rogers about the third psychological paradigm. There were two psychological worldviews that dominated the way the human mind was understood. The first was Freud’s idea of the unconscious and the view that human beings were by nature impulsive and aggressive, and that their behavior has their … Read more
“Art is the kind of marathon where you cross the finish line and instead of getting a medal placed around your neck, the volunteers roughly grab you by the shoulders and walk you over to the starting line of another marathon.” Perennial Seller is a book by Ryan Holiday that tries to teach you how … Read more
Many thinkers including Kierkegaard, C.J Jung, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Carl Rogers, and Plato have all written about the discovery of the self. To Kierkegaard, there was only one greater tragedy than failing to become oneself – it was succeeding in becoming something you were not. Or as Kurt Cobain famously and cogently said, “I’d rather … Read more
Carl Rogers advances many concepts in A Way of Being that today are more widely accepted. He advocates for openness, self determination, being skeptical of tradition and authority, and of anything that seeks to dominate and control. He urges his readers to seek a balanced life that includes the body and spirit instead of being constrained by only the intellectual. … Read more
You cannot accuse someone of being dogmatic, because to do so you must be dogmatic yourself. When you accuse someone of extremism in their beliefs, it must be relative to a lack of extremism in your beliefs. But you can be extreme in your lack of extremism. You may believe that those that have extreme … Read more
In 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, Harari writes about globalism, nationalism, religion, technology, meditation and economics but the book is more philosophical than historical although many interesting historical references are made. Harari’s thesis is that the source of the development of society is the fictions we have created, but when these fictions are taken … Read more
Harari acknowledges that while he has dismantled almost everything from politics to religion to business as some form of myth, he is required to provide something in its place. His answer is meditation. If you want to understand death, you need to understand life. For years, to understand what life was about, Harari read books … Read more