Hello!
Do you read new non-fiction books with the latest research and ideas?
Or older titles that have stood the test of time?
Rather than reading new self-help or motivational books, I’ve been re-reading classics:
Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics
Baltasar Gracian’s Art of Wordly Wisdom
Chin-Ning Chu’s Thick Face, Black Heart
I apply Nassim Taleb’s “Lindy” principle here: the longer something has been around, the more likely it is to be around in the future.
Will The Life Changing Magic of Not Giving a F*** be read in 50 years time, let along 100 or 1,000?
Doubt it, but people are still being inspired and nourished by Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics - a work composed in 340 BCE.
His perceived authority from physics to psychology to biology was so great throughout the Middle Ages Aristotle was known simply as ‘the philosopher’. Dante called him the ‘master of those who know’, and he was a crucial influence on Thomas Aquinas, and Islamic philosophers such as Averroes.
Aristotle’s scientific works are now mainly of interest to scholars, but the Ethics (dedicated to his son, Nicomachus) still provides a recipe for the ‘good life’.
The concept of eudaimonia (loosely, ‘happiness’ or ‘flourishing’), for instance, has played a big role in the positive psychology movement.
What I get from Aristotle is that everything in the universe is designed for a function. It’s up to us to discover that purpose and do the work to fulfill it.
“We become builders by building, and we become harpists by playing the harp. Similarly, then, we become just by doing just actions, temperate by doing temperate actions, brave by doing brave actions.” - Aristotle
Virtue and proficiency are matters of daily habit and action. Over a long period of time, these add up to something.
Here’s a short piece I wrote on Aristotle’s Recipe for Long-Term Happiness. It’s a different recipe to what you’ll get in today’s self-help books, but I find it stays with me longer.
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Seventeenth century Jesuit priest and philosopher Baltasar Gracian also wrote about life purpose.
One of my favorite quotes from “The Art of Worldly Wisdom” is:
"Know your best quality, your outstanding gift"
This is the central task in life.
With it you can invent and dominate a niche. Without it you will waste your life imitating others.
Gracian was writing at a time when Spain was in decline, and the Inquisition was in full swing. He had to be careful, so dutifully carried out his roles as priest, professor, and administrator.
But his calling was as a scientist of success and character, and most of the 300 aphorisms in “The Art of Worldly Wisdom” are concise and powerful.
Gracian was born in 1601, 50 years after Machiavelli’s death. The two men are often compared.
While Machiavelli was concerned with the actions of princes and statesmen, Gracian’s 300 aphorisms on ambition, power, and success are relevant to everyone.
Do you feel that things are moving too slowly for your liking? I like this one:
“Know how to wait. Stroll through the open spaces of time to the center of opportunity. Wise hesitation ripens success and brings secrets to maturity. The crutch of Time can do more than the steely club of Hercules…Fortune gives larger rewards to those who wait.”
My recent Twitter thread on Gracian includes biography and a number of quotes.
Here’s a permanent version of it on the Memo’d platform: Baltasar Gracian: Scientist of Success.
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The third book I’ve been rereading is Chin-Ning Chu’s Thick Face, Black Heart.
This unsung success philosopher’s life straddled China & America, communism & capitalism. Born in 1949, her family caught the last commercial flight out of China after Mao had taken power.
After growing up in Taiwan she moved to America, taking with her Sun Tzu’s Art of War, and a more obscure tome, Thick Black Theory - a sort of Chinese Machiavelli.
These influences, plus her life in business, eventually became Thick Face, Black Heart.
The book stood out in the clichéd world of American motivational writing, and it became a bestseller.
Here’s 25 points on Chu’s book with bio and quotes which I think you’ll enjoy.
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Finally on the subject of “success theory” are some recent great insights from geographer Tomas Pueyo.
Creating something of timeless value - even a masterpiece. Is it more realistic than we think?
Yes, he says, if we are willing to:
Dramatically increase our “throughput” (the sheer quantity of work we put out)
Practice “variance” (be willing to frequently try different ideas and approaches)
Pueyo mostly tweets on “geography is destiny” (how land and water masses have shaped cities and countries), so his thread on success was variant. He also has high volume or throughput of work:
“Between Jan 2022 and Jan 2023, I published 1,600 tweets. 5 of them became viral The result was binary: either wild success, or abject failure Do you think ppl came to me to say: "Hahaha look at all your 1597 shitty tweets!" Nobody gives a f**k about your failures”
That’s right - they don’t. Only a fraction of a band’s songs are remembered, only a tiny amount of an artist’s work is “great”. The rest is filler, practice, or failures.
Just get stuff out there and get feedback, which you can build into creating something genuinely great.
There’s a lot of mysticism and romance around creativity, when most of the time it’s about process and work.
This was my experience writing the 50 Classics series and producing the Capstone Classics. Inevitably, some titles bomb, while others surprise you and become bestsellers. You don’t know ‘til the books are there. Nobody knows.
Is that “success theory”? Probably just proven, pedestrian fact. But that doesn’t make it any less inspiring.
Of course in the formula for success there are also unknown aspects like having an inborn “sense of destiny”, which not everybody can or will have.
But throughput and variance seem like shortcuts to me, so it would be foolish not to use them.
Thank you so much, and do add any thoughts below.
Kind regards,
Tom Butler-Bowdon
Hi Tom, yes the throughput and variance formula resonates. Creative endeavours are by definition intelligent risks - some exceed all expectations, others fall flat on their face. Artists in all fields will produce both. We can all name a dozen movies, books or works of visual art which were panned or ignored on production but critically reappraised by later generations...
Aristotle had a point: “What I get from Aristotle is that everything in the universe is designed for a function.” Thanks for sourcing the quote, Tom.