Who Will Bring the Wisdom?

I’d been told he was the most important public relations guy in the world. He’d called to invite me to come see him at his offices in New York. I learned that his company occupied an entire floor in one of the most iconic buildings in the city. After the long ride up alone in the designated elevator, a man in a dark suit was awaiting me when the doors opened. “We’re glad you could come. We know how busy you must be.” He escorted me down the long wide hall to the most massive private office I’d ever seen, an open space the size of an entire mid modern home, appointed with beautiful furniture, rugs, and lamps to the point that it was hard to take it all in. The man himself was waiting for me, and welcomed me with a booming voice and firm handshake. “Sit, sit, and be comfortable.” He gestured me over to a large sofa behind a low glass table festooned with top journals like Foreign Affairs, as well as some of the more high-toned intellectual magazines of the day.

After a few pleasantries, he got right down to business. “Let me tell you what’s on my mind,” he said. I couldn’t imagine. I was a professor of philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, and my first general interest book had just been published. There had been a surprisingly long book tour, where I sat in middle seats in coach on more flights than I could count but oddly stayed in nearly every great Ritz Carlton in the country the nights before visiting some amazing bookstores. I had done most of the big “Good Morning San Diego,” and “Good Morning Chicago, Dallas, Detroit” type programs on television around the country, culminating with the most popular live national morning show at the time, and had visited lots of great radio stations along the way. It was like being shot out of a cannon. And here I had landed in this huge gigantic glass-walled office overlooking the world. My host spoke again.

“I thought it was going to be Johnny Carson who brought wisdom back into our broader culture. He certainly had the attention of the nation and he cared about ideas. Everybody thinks of him as an entertainer, but he’s really an educator. Carl Sagan, primate zoo people, bird people, Australians; he wanted to bring knowledge and real insight into people’s lives. But the Hollywood pressures were just too great. There were so many actors to have on and comedians. He had to launch careers and stoke the fires of the ones needing new momentum. In the end, he didn’t have the time for the impact I was hoping to see. Then, I thought it would be Bill Moyers who would bring the wisdom back, on PBS. You know, he's done some great things for ideas and that mythology stuff. But in the end, Bill's a journalist, not a philosopher. Then, I thought it was going to be Deepak Chopra—the wisdom of the east and all that. But in the end, he just wanted to sell candles and massage oil and incense.” I had to laugh.

I said, “There are a few big names these days in the world of speaking on success and motivation, and I don’t know much of their stuff directly, but from what I hear they may be trying to bring some old ideas into the present to help people.”

“No, trust me, they’re all hype and no real content. Pretenders. We need the real thing, not fakes and counterfeits. Now, I think it might be you.”

“Me?”

“The real thing.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. You might be the guy to bring real wisdom back into the broader culture. I like the new book a lot. It’s going to start a conversation, I think, and one with potential. It already has.” 

“I’m sure hoping to make a difference in a positive way. And people are showing more interest than I’d expected. Ed McMahon’s lawyer just called me, you know, Johnny Carson’s sidekick, about doing a late night infomercial on TV for real wisdom, for practical philosophy.”

“What’s he want?”

I smiled. “Twenty percent of every dollar I ever bring in as a philosopher.”

“You have a speaking agent and a literary agent already as percentage guys.”

“Yeah.”

“You don’t need another piece being taken out, especially of everything.”

“Yeah, I know. And the infomercial is a fairly tawdry form of television.”

“Look, here’s what I propose. No percentages, just a simple arrangement. We begin a relationship and make a plan, and maintain and alter the plan as needed. That’s one fee. And then we execute the plan, and there are fees for results. No percentage of anything. What’s yours is yours.”

“What are the fees, and what do you think I need?”

“I can get you on television in a regular way. We can get you major magazine coverage for anything you do. You can be a household name.”

“I’d love to do whatever I can to promote practical philosophy, you know, the wisdom of the ages and what it can mean for people’s lives now. That’s my goal.”

“Yeah I know. That’s what would happen as a result. We get you out there everywhere and people discover what you’re talking about.”

“So, what sorts of fees go with this kind of work?”

“Ten thousand up front to sign a deal, ten a month to plan and maintain a strategy and adjust it along the way, then five to ten extra for every major media appearance, depending on the medium.”

“Wow. That’s a lot.”

“Not for the impact. It’s actually very little. It’s a special consideration, because I believe in what you’re doing.”

“I’d have to really think it. You know, I’m a philosophy professor and your yearly fees would be triple or quadruple my salary.”

“You’re way beyond that at this point already.”

“Well.”

“Think about it. You can be the guy.”

Hours later, I was on a plane sitting next to a man who started up a conversation. It turned out that, by the cosmic coincidences that seem to populate my life in an ongoing way, he was in public relations. I told him about my meeting earlier. He was both impressed and perplexed at the fact that I’d even been invited to have that meeting. He then asked what sort of deal I’d been offered. I told him. He said, “What are you, Ford Motor Company?”  

I laughed. “Yeah. No, I’m a philosopher.

“You can’t say yes to that.”

“I know.”

“It’s crazy. It’s too big a roll of the dice.”

“Yeah.”

“You’re not even Chrysler.” No. No, I’m not even Studebaker.

And I’m not Johnny or Bill. I’m not Deepak. And, so far, I’m surely not “the guy.” But then, I’ve likely got a little time left to make a difference for wisdom in the culture. And yet, really, I think I’ve lived a much saner life than what was being offered to me that day in New York. Certainly, it’s a less expensive one. And on most days, I think I’d rather be the guy to find and help “the guy,” or the lady that we need, rather than being the guy myself, as if there was every really any true danger of that at all.

Our culture needs wisdom more than ever. But it doesn’t follow from this that our culture wants wisdom at all. Yet. But, you never know, perhaps soon. Maybe there will be a turn after having been up to our eyeballs in the opposite. So we should all just stay tuned and hang in there and make the difference we can, day to day. Perhaps there doesn’t need to be one person to do it, but lots and lots of us instead. If we pay the fee of really paying attention and trying to do our part, each of us, day to day, then the percentage of our time and attention we have to give to the cause will, I think, be returned to us many-fold as perhaps the best investment we could ever make. And the costs we incur won’t even feel like costs, but fulfilling works of joy. We can all make a difference. At least, we can hope.

My Own 80/20 Rule

Last night before falling asleep I had a fascinating thought.

I've never taught a good enough class. I've never given a good enough speech. I've never written a good enough essay. In fact, with one amazing exception, nothing I've ever done has risen to my own lofty expectations. The best efforts of my life so far have attained about 80% of the quality or excellence I had aimed for and worked toward, and have perhaps had at most about 20% of the positive impact I had imagined.

I've always done the best I knew how, with 100% commitment to the task and an enthusiasm and dedication that refuses to give up, regardless of the gaps in quality and impact that seem so stubbornly entrenched in my outcomes. I'm oddly proud of that form of 100%, rather than being simply disappointed about the rest.

The one exception to this rule seems to be the story that told itself to me over a five year period and insisted that I write it down and somehow get it out to the world. My only job was to look and listen and write. I had to quiet my mind and get out of the way and let the story unfold itself. I think that, with the second editions of the books that resulted, now out, I've hit about 98% of the quality I had aspired to attain in my transcription of the amazing tale. And so, I can be happy with about 2% of the positive impact I might have envisioned in the end, should the stories arise to that point in the world. This seems to be how it works.

But I may finally be at the stage in my life when I'm learning how to get out of my own way. The stories have begun to show me that, both in the way they came to me, and in their deep lessons. Fulfillment may depend on a sort of wonderful and all too rare spiritual emptiness that alone allows of an exuberant filling up that we ourselves could never have managed out of our best ego resources and energies. Perhaps when our personal presumptions get down to 0%, then our contribution can go to 100.

If you're curious about the stories, you can find out more at www.TheOasisWithin.com.

Leadership in Our Time

In our time, we know more about the universe and ourselves than all who have come before us could even imagine. And the more we’ve learned, the deeper the ultimate mysteries have become. We’re high up enough now on the lofty hill of advanced knowledge and informed speculation that we can see the vast reaches of enduring enigma that are stretched out before us, and perhaps even slightly glimpse a heretofore hidden expanse of possibility beyond conception that roils around us. In this new context, with its astonishing vistas, any willful expression of individual human arrogance or cruelty or pettiness should be an embarrassment of massive proportion. All displays of greedy self-aggrandizement or hints of malicious wickedness in the face of the sheer magnificence of existence surely represent the nadir of stupidity.

Most of us know honorable and morally admirable people, truly good souls who are as imbued with kindness, compassion, and personal humility as they are invigorated by love and a hope of good things to come that this world has not yet experienced in the abundance and universality we should desire. But the decent and honorable take that as a challenge and a calling that suggests some version of their mission on earth, to bring a little more goodness as well as whatever is fine into the lives of others and the immediate future that so needs its healing balm.

So when we see the angry, aggrieved, snarling and yet smugly bloated little egos of people who have risen into positions of public service and intended leadership, and yet have fallen so far from the moral requirements and high expectations of those offices, their sad smallness of spirit and perversion of character glare forth in high contrast with the transcendental qualities of truth, beauty, goodness, and unity to which the better angels of our nature have always aspired. These individuals we watch from afar have become contemporary cautionary lessons of how it can be that what Blaise Pascal called the greatness and wretchedness of our condition can shed half its potential and devolve into something truly squalid that sets us all back and seeks to hold us down from the great flourishing that is our intent and purpose.

We should first grieve the loss of what might have been so many fine minds and souls who instead have meandered into the opposite of what was meant and could have been for their time on earth. We need to have real compassion for their loss, and our own that has come as the consequence of their degradation. And then we should work to see to it that we no longer allow such people into positions of power and responsibility for which they are neither qualified nor deserving. We’re here for more and better and greater things. We have a responsibility whose weight too few of us have felt and discharged with the care and serious gladness it merits. But now we know anew. We have an opportunity, as most generations have had in their own times, to awaken afresh to our duties. We can see the absurdities we have to face when we haven’t cared enough or worked hard enough to secure the common good. But then, that's why tomorrow beckons us forth.

Is it Wise?

We live in an unwise time. To use an old fashioned word, foolishness abounds and surrounds us. Smart people do idiotic things. The uninformed, lazy, self-indulgent, and the perpetually irate unintentionally harm themselves and make their own lives worse. They don't do much to help the rest of us, either.

There's a simple question we too often forget to ask. It's one we need to pose about nearly anything that presents itself to us as a choice: Is it wise?

It may be easy, but is it wise?
It might feel good, but is it wise?
It could seem safe, but is it wise?
It may be interesting, exciting, or impressive, but is it wise?
It could be what everyone's doing, but is it wise?
It might be the hot new thing, but is it wise?
It promises to bring money or power or fame, but is it wise?
It could be what you've always done. but is it wise?

Now, let's be clear. We won't always ask the question deeply enough or answer it well. After all, it takes a measure of wisdom to see what's wise. That's where the guidance of the already thoughtful, and experienced, and even sagacious can help us. And yet, we'll still occasionally mess up. But no process has to be perfect to be advisable. As we seek the path of wisdom, we'll more likely find it.

What's wise will make you a better person, lift others up, and leave the world a slightly better place. It will do genuine good. What's unwise is otherwise. It will always bring some form of harm.

Wisdom is real insight into proper, healthy living. Wise choices express or encourage human flourishing, or both. Wisdom takes us along the path of true human excellence. Foolishness distracts us and gets us lost. Wisdom directs us to what's worthy of us. Foolishness lures us to the counterfeit and false.

The wise live a life that the foolish can't comprehend. It’s rich and deep and peaceful.

Therefore, seek to act wisely in all things. And in every such choice, you'll choose to be on the path of wisdom; you'll choose to be, in however small a way, wise.

Whatever presents itself as good, or as convenient, or as true, ask first: Is it wise?

Gilgamesh and Our Motivations

The Epic of Gilgamesh is one of my favorite books ever. It’s also the oldest epic tale we have, describing events that date back to about 2,500 years BCE.

Gilgamesh was tall, handsome, strong, smart, and the King of Uruk, a walled city-state in what is now Iraq. He was reported to be 2/3 divine and 1/3 human. He was also a pretty major malignant narcissist. As a consequence, he was a very bad king, who viewed the kingdom as his personal candy store. His position as a leader was all about getting everything he wanted at the expense of whomever had to pay. He exploited his position and his people for his own base enjoyments and personal enrichment. When we meet him, he’s not married, but he insists on always being the substitute groom who spends the wedding night with any young woman of his kingdom who is married, and then he moves on to the next special treat he plans to give himself. He wears out the young men of the kingdom in competitive games just so he can win, over and over, and continue to prove his immense superiority.

The people complain to the gods, “Help us with this guy! We can’t take it any more!” And the gods do something creative. They make him a counterpart, an equal to him in size and strength, and they initially put this man into the woods to live with the animals as their protector. While Gilgamesh is a man of the city, this new creature Enkidu is a child of the forest. Gilgamesh has experienced the height of sophistication in an urban setting that at its peak had up to 80,000 inhabitants. Enkidu as a nature boy has a mindset of simple innocence. Rumors of his existence, great strength, and exploits in saving the animals from hunters make their way to the city, and Gilgamesh is both intrigued and troubled. He has to meet this individual and perhaps once again prove his superiority over what is quickly becoming an urban legend and, in that sense, a threat to his own reputation as the strongest and greatest man alive.

Gilgamesh goes to the big religious temple in town and approaches the beautiful temple prostitute—which was apparently a well-known job in ancient times, serving to unite the world and the spirit in distinctive ways—and he asks her to go find this legendary man in the woods and use her special skills to lure him to town. She agrees and is successful. I'll elide over all the fascinating details.

To summarize: Enkidu arrives just as Gilgamesh is about to exercise his jus primae noctis (right of the first night) or, as it later came to be called, his droit du seigneur, and the wild hairy man of the forest intervenes to stop the king from this presumptuous deed. They fight violently and it’s basically a tie. Gilgamesh is very impressed. So is Enkidu. They instantly become best friends, and soon go off on adventures together. The prayers of the people have been answered. The king is no longer interested in exploiting them. He has bigger fish to fry with his new buddy. But the things the two big guys get involved in bring the wrath of the gods, and Enkidu has to die. Gilgamesh is stunned and falls into intense grief. He goes on a challenging and difficult quest to find the secret of avoiding death, any key to eternal life possible, having heard that there is one man far away who has this unique gift. In the midst of his daunting journey in a desperate search for immortality, he oddly comes across a wine bar in the middle of nowhere, and a wise barmaid named Siduri, who advises him to abandon this inevitably futile search and learn to be happy with what he has.

In one of the most beautiful and wise passages in all of literature, Siduri says:

“Gilgamesh, where are you going? You’ll never find the eternal life you seek. When the gods created man, they gave him death, and they kept life without it for themselves. Humans are born, live, and die. This is the order that’s decreed. But until your own end comes, enjoy your life. Live it in happiness and not despair. Relish your food and drink. Make each of your days a delight. Bathe and groom yourself well. Wear nice clothes that are sparkling and clean. Let music and dancing fill your house. Love the little child who holds your hand. And give your wife pleasure in your embrace. This is the way for a man to live.”

He’s unable to listen to this great advice, and continues on his mission until when it fails, as Siduri knew it would, and he returns to his city, chastened, and humbled, and perhaps ready to live as the wise woman had suggested.

It’s often been said that the two great forces in life are love and death, or the polarity of desire and fear. The Greek word ‘Eros’ is often used for the former, and ‘Thanatos’ for the latter. When the story begins, Gilgamesh is motivated by Eros, but in a bad and corrupted way. Then, with Enkidu’s death, his motivation changes. He’s moved by Thanatos, but also in a bad way. I believe the power of the story is that he discovers in the end how to be motivated by both in a constructive and positive way.

I won’t follow Freud in his famous uses of Eros and Thanatos, which I take to be the claim that we’re either motivated by a constructive creativity that moves toward unity and life, or a destructive aggression that delights in dissolution and death. I would rather see these two polarities in a different way.

The force of Eros is a pull toward life. The force of Thanatos is a push away from death. Or to put it more comprehensively:

The Pull of Eros is about embracing life, strength, pleasure, and growth.

The Push of Thanatos is about avoiding death, suffering, deprivation, and weakness.

The common human quest for money or power, status or fame can be driven by either of these forces. Gilgamesh experiences the full range of this, and for most of the story only in bad or unwise ways. Siduri recommends to him a life of proper Eros in a constructive mode. Before the death of his friend, the king had been living a life of Eros in an improper or destructive mode.

The proper mode of Eros is to bring good to others as well as yourself. The improper mode is to focus only on yourself.

When Enkidu dies and Gilgamesh is plunged into the shock and grief that results, his motivation changes. He is desperate to avoid death in his own life. But perhaps even before he met Enkidu, there was a negative motivation from the side of Thanatos in his life. The destructive mode of Thanatos, like destructive Eros, is also to focus only on yourself, but in this case in a willingness to sacrifice the good of others in order to avoid your own vulnerability to death, suffering, deprivation, and weakness.

By contrast, a proper and constructive mode of Thanatos motivation is to focus on helping others to avoid needless death, suffering, deprivation, and weakness.

Done right, the two motivations of Eros and Thanatos both can be manifestations of love. Done wrong, they’re the opposite.

Love: Care, Compassion, Nurture, and Delight: That’s what Siduri wanted Gilgamesh to learn to experience and give to others. And I think eventually he does. If there was hope for him, there may be hope for nearly anyone. It’s a story well worth your time.

For the best translation of the tale, scraped together from various clay tablets, click HERE.

The Lessons of Socrates and Christmas

Socrates called philosophy a preparation for death. I guess he never heard of estate planning. Philosophy in my view is a preparation for life—a full and good life. For death, it gives us very little solid guidance. For life, it offers a lot.

And yet then, perhaps the wise and good life it prescribes is in itself also the best preparation for death, or the final ending of this life. So, in a sense, the old boy was right. But then, I think I am too. And he left out the middle part, which is not to be ignored. But then again, our Christmas and Easter stories imply that even the finest intellectual guidance or theoretical preparation for life or death is never enough. Inner transformation is required of us. We come into the world like unmolded clay. We need first to be formed, and then transformed. And while that never comes from philosophy, it can be mediated through it. Perhaps that was the one more thing Socrates would have told us if he had not been required to drink the particular spiked punch that ended his time here. But don't worry about him. He was prepared.

Happy Christmas. May the joys and lessons of the season infuse the new year for you and yours.

Wisdom For the Culture!

Today my new publishing endeavor got some great and unexpected publicity from one of the best book and film reviewers in the country, a man I'm honored to know. We had coffee together the other day (actually Diet Coke for him) but we had a great talk that I didn't know would generate a very nice write-up that went out over the wires and into papers this morning. It’s about part of my ongoing effort to bring practical wisdom into the culture by every means possible. I’m just thrilled that philosophers around the country are now asking me to publish their books! And don’t worry. I’ve tamed my hair since this photo of me philosophizing earlier in the year.

For the short piece, click HERE.

We Don't Always Know What We Need

Ok, Homer once more. When The Odyssey opens, King Odysseus has been away from home for nearly twenty years. For ten, he fought at Troy. For the remaining time, he’s been trying to get home. His wife Penelope is besieged by suitors, all the young men of the region, princes and kings, who admire her beauty and want to marry her. They’re constantly trying to convince her that her husband is dead and so she should move on. She has done everything she can to delay the day when, for the sake of her son, she should indeed remarry and move out with a new husband, allowing her son to have the palace, grounds, and crops and herds he is to inherit. The suitors are crowding into the house every day, feasting constantly, and eating up a lot of the boy’s inheritance.

Telemachus, the son of Odysseus, is of course now twenty years old. He has the genetic endowment of his heroic father and smart, beautiful, and resourceful mother, but he has grown up without his father’s influence and, instead, surrounded by anxiety as to the welfare of Odysseus, and then the grief of all who loved him that he might indeed be dead.

Telemachus is in despair that the suitors constantly harass his mother and blatantly consume the family’s resources on a massive scale, day after day. And he is not yet old enough, strong enough, or bold enough to do anything about it. He feels helpless, and despondent that no one knows for sure whether his father is dead or alive. But at this point, he and his mother have emotionally had to accept the worst and assume that he’s gone and never coming home.

Early on in the story, there’s a puzzle. The Goddess Athena, a great friend to Odysseus, comes to Ithaca and the family home of Penelope and Telemachus disguised as an old friend. She greets Telemachus and speaks with him. She tells him that his father is alive somewhere out there in the world, but he doesn’t believe her. As a top goddess, she has the power to make him accept her words, but she doesn’t. She doesn’t put him into a hypnotic state to elicit assent, or do any of the other things she could have done to change his mind, which she thinks is important to do. And this is puzzling. Instead, she suggests that he go on a voyage, a quest to learn if anyone has word of his father, as to whether he’s still living or may have perished in his efforts to get home. She urges him to visit King Nestor and Menelaus, old friends of Odysseus who fought with him at Troy.

Now the problem, the conundrum for the careful reader who may have learned from the Iliad and other mythology what Athena was capable of, is why she didn’t just change the boy’s beliefs on the spot, so that he would have the hope of awaiting his father, and the courage to do what might be necessary to prepare for his arrival home to end the scourge of the suitors. Why didn’t she just implant in his brain the crucial information he needed to accept?

And the answer is as simple as it is revelatory. Athena knew that what Telemachus most needed was not just information but transformation. She had to send him on a quest that would grow his sense of self, his self knowledge, and the self esteem that would be required for the courage he would need in the coming days. It would be hard, and risky, but it was also necessary.

And that’s a lesson for all of us. In a summer seminar for school teachers long ago on meaning in life, one of the participants actually became angry because he thought, a week or two into the seminar, that I was playing a game and withholding a crucial piece of information, a sentence or statement that, if I would just share it with the group, would clarify his questions about the meaning of life. He had been left by his young wife, with nothing more than a goodbye note on the table when he got home from work, a day before he was to come to my seminar. He was in a tailspin. He wanted information.

But I, like Homer, and like Jesus, understood that there are matters where what’s needed isn’t propositional information but personal transformation. And before those deep changes, it may not even be possible to know what we most want to know. In the story, it turns out that Athena was right. Telemachus goes on his adventure and returns changed and ready, even though he’s not aware of how ready he is until Odysseus shows up and they join together to do what needs to be done.

Oh. And the student. I went to his dorm room and sat with him for two hours, listening at first to a tirade, and then a dirge, and then I worked hard to explain to him the limited role of propositional knowledge in wisdom and existential understanding, and how we need to be formed in order to see certain things and be certain things, and how it's our struggles and sorrows that deepen us the most. And in the end, he understood. He and I, like Telemachus and his dad, were able together to slay the philosophical suitors who had besieged the home of his heart.

Heroic Endurance

I've read The Odyssey three times this year, over five or six times in my life, and that's not nearly enough. People have read it and talked about it for over three thousand years, across 150 generations. It's that good and important. But why?

It's a tale about a flawed hero, a man of intellect and action and excellence in many things who faces nearly endless obstacles to the one thing he wants the most—simply to get home to the wife, son, father, and friends he loves. But everything seems to stand in his way. Any of us who have ever faced adversity, especially repeated difficulties that threaten to end our dreams and extinguish our hopes, can find inspiration in this doggedly determined human being. He's sometimes punished by the gods, and at other times favored by them.

To give you a flavor of who he is, I've copied every major description of him in the Robert Fagles translation. There are some repetitions, because of the epic's background in oral recitation, but what's chosen to be repeated says a lot about how the character of Odysseus is viewed by the bard. It's quite a list of terms, many of which appear in apposition to his name in the telling of the tale. But I thought it would be useful and illuminating to give you them all. May he inspire us all. So here we go.

Cursed by fate

luckless man

longs to die

one who excels all men in wisdom

never at a loss

the most unlucky mortal man ever born

one who outperformed all men of his time

the godlike man

cunning

More than all other men, that man was born for pain

no one there could hope to rival Odysseus, not for sheer cunning

at every twist of strategy he excelled us all

brave Odysseus

No one, no Achaean, labored hard as Odysseus labored or achieved so much

the crafty one

that fearless Odysseus

More than all other men, that man was born for pain

Never an unfair word, never an unfair action

Never an outrage done to any man alive

who excelled the Argives in every strength

that luckless man

that godlike man

long-enduring

a spirit tempered to endure

Man of misery

Long-enduring

weighed down with troubles

the man of many struggles

seasoned, worldly-wise

long-suffering

long-enduring

raider of cities

seasoned man of war

most cursed man alive

unlucky friend

man of twists and turns

born for exploits

master of exploits

man of pain

the unluckiest man alive

the man of countless exploits

mastermind of war

man of tactics

cunning

famed for exploits

luckless man

equipped with the gods’ own wisdom

who had suffered twenty years of torment

sick at heart

man of misery

foxy, ingenious, neer tired ot tricks and twists

far the best at tactics, spinning yarns

the cool tactician

so winning, so worldly-wise, so self-possessed

kind

the man for all occasions

raider of cities

full of tactics

no one could touch the man at plots or battles

man of exploits

a brave man in war and a deep mind in counsel

the great raider of cities

strong, enduring Odysseus

the one who knew the world

master of many exploits

the man of many trials

master of craft

a man who’s had his share of sorrows

the master improviser

the great master of subtlety

the man of craft

sly profit-turning

There was a man, or was he all a dream?

The Son of Pain

man of exploits

man of exploits

the unluckiest man alive

Impossible man!

great and strong as a god

mastermind in action

master of craft and battle

the wily fighter

the wily captain

mastermind of war

master of tactics

raider of cities

the crafty rascal

long-enduring

the best on earth, they say, when it comes to mapping tactics

the most understanding man alive raider of cities

the soul of cunning

long -suffering great Odysseus

Happy Odysseus

mastermind

long-enduring

the most unlucky man

Man of strife

luckless man

master of exploits

To get the book, click HERE.

The Birth of Philosophy

Philosophy was born in a time of massive self deception. I don't mean that a lot of people suddenly thought, "Wow, if I study this stuff, I can surely get a good job and end up popular, rich, and happy!" No. You can go to your local university's philosophy department and see that this is not the inevitable result of serious pondering. It won't typically look like life on a cruise ship, unless it's one ... with norovirus. But then, the academic study of a thing is rarely the thing itself. Philosophy is a path, a way of life, and not a profession.

The Athens around Socrates was full of people who thought they knew things that they didn't know at all. Many of them arrogantly presumed they had life figured out. And Socrates realized they didn't even have themselves figured out. Through intensive questioning, he unearthed a massive amount of self deception all around him. And once he started charting the possibility of an alternative, young people began to respond. This activity of philosophy was something different. This alternate path departing from smug prejudice and personal delusion might offer light and air and hope.

And so, given the massive self deceptions of our own time, we can be optimistic that, perhaps, philosophy will be reborn out of its own ashes and lead us once more to that light, and air, and hope.

Aristotle's Recipe for Greatness

Aristotle's simple recipe for human greatness:

People in Partnership for a shared Purpose.

It's never put so briefly (he's Aristotle, after all) but it's to be found in his Politics, which is about how we best live well together. Oh, how we've drifted! Here he is sans pupils. But that's ok. We can be his pupils, even today. He reminds us that greatness is never a solitary achievement. It arises out of people working together. How? In partnership. And there must be a clear, shared purpose that brings the people together and makes the partnership possible.

I just finished my second reading of The Iliad a few days ago, as I’ve mentioned here before. It’s a great story about partnerships breaking down when there is no longer first and foremost a shared purpose. I had a great talk on the plane the other day with a fellow philosopher from the real estate world about how The Iliad can help us to be better in our organizations and to avoid or heal those breakdowns. The wisdom is out there. It’s up to us to find it and use it. Good wishes in your own wisdom adventures!

Our Need to Read the Iliad

When you read a classic more than once, you can come to realize in a new way why it's a classic. I just finished my second reading this year of Homer's Iliad, an ancient tale about the tenth year of the Trojan War. And it's actually all about ego and anger. Plus, it's really good and it’s full of lessons we need today.

An older Greek king, Menelaus, has a young and beautiful trophy wife, Helen. Ego. A handsome young prince from Troy named Paris visits them and seeks to seduce Helen. Ego again. She enjoys the attention from this gorgeous man and accepts his advances. Ego. They run away to Troy and Menelaus, rather than realizing his mistake in the mismatch, gathers a huge army to go and get Helen and bring her back. Big Ego and it's almost inevitable pal, Anger.

But this is all backstory. The real tale opens with Agamemnon, the brother of Menelaus, who has become leader of all the assembled Greek forces besieging Troy. The battle has lasted nine years. And Agamemnon, in his own ego and bloated sense of self entitlement, decides that he hasn't had enough of the spoils from this war so far for his own enjoyment. He's irritated. Ego and Anger. He's had his eye on a ravishing beauty earlier given to Achilles, the greatest of the warriors. And so he decides to take her for himself, apparently unaware that he's just repeating what Paris did to Menelaus with Helen. Unfortunate Ego. A god keeps Achilles from just killing the man on the spot and guides him to comply with his leader's demand. Agamemnon is the top commander, after all. So the great warrior goes along with the unjust order, but in a rage. Bad Anger to the Max. His rights and deserved glory have been violated. Ego all over the place. So he vows to fight no more, and allow his fellow Greeks to be killed en masse until they appreciate anew how great and needed he is.

Fast forward: Thousands die. Without Achilles, the Greeks and Trojans are evenly matched, and whenever they're not, the gods get involved on one side then the other. The balance keeps changing, yet always lives are lost. But Agamemnon won't relent and admit he was wrong. And neither will Achilles. It's a battle of the egos and their anger. That's the deeper war fought at Troy.

But when far too many of his favorites die and he feels the disaster's pain, Agamemnon finally decides he needs to bribe Achilles to come back and fight for the cause. He'll return the woman, and add in lots and lots of treasure to appeal to the ego needs of Achilles. The warrior refuses. But then his BFF, Patroclus, begs Achilles to let him put on the great man's armor and appear on the battlefield where the Trojans might think Achilles himself is back, and flee in panic. The charade takes place and after killing lots of the enemy, Patroclus is killed by Hector, chief warrior among the Trojans. And of course, Achilles has to take revenge and kill him, then dishonor his body in the most outrageous ways. Ego beyond the pale once more. And the band plays on.

Our lesson: The bloated egos of a few can create disaster for many. As further confirmation, check the daily news.

For one easily accessible version of the classic, click HERE.

What is Philosophy?

What , after all, is philosophy? At its core, it's really not so much a range of questions or a vast body of possible answers, despite any appearances to the contrary. Those are just tools. In essence, it's much more profound and personal than that.

At its inception long ago, philosophy was mainly about understanding your self and your world well enough to connect the two properly. It was about finding and walking a good path, or engaging fully in a wise and healthy way of life. Beneath all the many technical studies of academic philosophers today that can support that quest, it's still essentially the same concern about discovering and traveling a road that's right for you and our world. And in its purest forms, it never seeks to replace the spiritual, but rather to augment that vital dimension of our lives.

Because of this, the way I do philosophy is simple. When a weary traveler on this road of life approaches me with a need to sit and get his bearings, I'm not going to lecture him on the nature of chairs, ancient and modern, or the general history of furniture in human culture, or on the anthropology of sitting. I'm going to pull up a chair and offer him a seat. And that’s what I’ll seek to do in these short blog posts, So if you find yourself weary or bewildered, puzzled or perplexed, shoot me a note and perhaps we can sit and chat together about the road ahead,

Sisyphus, The Rock, and the Roll.

Y'all may have to help me out with this one.

“I think of Sisyphus as a hero.” A great psychologist, top leadership expert, and a good friend said this to me the other day on the phone. Sisyphus is of course the guy who rolls a rock endlessly up a mountain, only to have it roll back again, and he has to repeat his task endlessly, with the same result. I had never heard him called a hero. “Really?” was my astute reply. “Yep,” I recall my friend explaining to me. I was surprised. “I’ll have to think about that.” And a day later I called him back to ask for a bit more detail.

Before I go on, I should give you the basic back story of the famous mythological figure. And I’m not making this up. According to ancient sources, a baby boy named Sisyphus was born into money and power that came from his father. He went on to become, like that father, a king. And he came to be known as a greedy, avaricious, self-aggrandizing and deceitful ruler, who often killed those who sought to come into his country. This may be starting to sound vaguely familiar. His only concern was to maintain his own power, and he devoted most of his time and energy to that end. He had a brother he hated and so he seduced the man’s daughter as part of a failed plot to kill him. Two children resulted from the sorry episode, and their mother, the niece Sisyphus had seduced, is said to have killed them both. It wasn’t a happy group of people.

The bad king also made another major error in later on betraying Zeus for his own intended gain. He wasn’t much for respect and loyalty to others. As a punishment, the chief of all gods sent Death to visit the man and put him into chains. But the slippery king was not to be so easily stopped, and he managed to trick Death into showing him how the chains would work, and the Grim Reaper himself ended up locked in place. Zeus, as you might imagine, was not to be thwarted so easily. So he took charge himself and bound Sisyphus to the endless task for which he has become famous. His new life was to push a large rock up a mountain to the top, but right before fully accomplishing the job, the rock would elude his control and roll back down the hill. So Sisyphus would have to start all over again, pushing it back up again fruitlessly, since it would always roll back down, and this would be repeated forever.

We can see here several patterns. One is the cycle of aspiration, striving, near success and ultimate failure. Rinse and repeat. We find it too often in life. Is this the dog chasing his own tail? Is it a metaphor for all of existence? What exactly is it?

When we think of the man now, we tend to envision only this endless end state. The rock. The roll. The return. The redo. And on, and on. The French existentialist philosopher Albert Camus saw this portrayal as emblematic of our condition, viewed as absurd. We strive; we fail. We try again; we fail again. We’re born, we work hard at an education, and then at a life, and when we finally get to the point high enough on this mountain to have some real wisdom, we roll back down and die. And of course, there are religions that tell us we’re then born again to roll that rock back up another hill.

So, I asked my friend, absent all the hideous background information on the mythical character that might these days qualify him as a certain political party’s next nominee for high office: How can he be thought heroic?

He quickly told me about Admiral William McCraven’s excellent graduation speech which has been turned into the book, "Make Your Bed." McCraven talks about Navy Seal Training, and how the first lesson is to make up your bed in the morning and to do it perfectly. That reminded me of a conversation I had with my college roommate many years ago. I asked, “Why don’t you make your bed?” He said, “I’d just have to do it all over again the next day, and over and over. What's the point?” I mentioned the conversation to my wife and she said, “With a lot of people, it’s cleaning the sink, an equally endless task.” Or else, sweeping the floor. Or, you-name-it. Consider for contrastive pondering a parallel: “Why didn’t you eat anything today?” Answer: “I’d have to do it all over again tomorrow. What’s the point?”

Some things are just going to need to be redone or repeated. There are very few actions in our daily lives that are “one and done" forever. But, let’s get back to Admiral McCraven. He says this about making your bed:

<<The wisdom of this single act has been proven to me many times over. If you make your bed every morning, you will have accomplished the first task of the day. It will give you a small sense of pride and encourage you to do another task, and another, and another. And by the end of the day, that one task completed will have turned into many tasks completed. Making your bed will also reinforce the fact that the little things in life matter. If you can’t do the little things right, you’ll never be able to do the big things right.>>

With a lot of great football coaches, regular practice isn’t often about learning fancy plays and developing great strategies. It’s about blocking, tackling, running, and catching. “What are we going to do today, Coach?” – “Block, tackle, run, and catch.” – “What about tomorrow?” – “The same.” When I was an undergraduate, the UNC tennis team was often number one in the country and also known for how much they ran in practice, around and around the track and in wind-sprints. You’d think they were the track team. They’d run and run and run and run. And in a big tournament, near the end, when their opponents could barely move or breathe, they still had gas in the tank, from all that basic, simple, repetitive running.

So I thought about Sisyphus. Not mainly about his greed and deception and awful behavior as king, but about his endless task after those years. And then I saw the connection. Hubris. Pridefulness. Ego. There are endless mountains to climb for the undisciplined grasping ego. Nothing is ever enough. You roll the rock up the hill and then you have to do it again. You’re only as successful as what you’re doing now. Yesterday is gone. The world you always feel a need to impress has just one question: What have you got for me today?

Whether 100 days or 100 months or 100 years into his punishment, even Sisyphus may have gotten the message. The bloated ego can never be satisfied. The desperate quest of getting to the top of the hill never ends.

So let’s imagine our man has had an epiphany, a “mountaintop experience” on one of his trips up, or down. He realizes how foolish he had been, how evil, how duped by his own endless, self-defeating self-deceptions. And he takes a new attitude, maybe like a Navy Seal. Each day, making up the bed perfectly is a task worth doing. It’s a job in which you can take pride. It has a beginning and an end, each time. It doesn't have to lead to anything else to be worth your work. But it most often does, anyway.

But wait. What about rolling a rock? Let's get creative: Does Sisyphus do exactly the same thing every day? Well, on a superficial level, he pushes the rock up for the first time only once, and for the second time only once. He rolls it on Monday, then on Tuesday, and maybe from the front of the hill and perhaps then the side. He may angle it up like the stripe on an old Barbershop pole. It could be that he shoves it all the way with his arms once, then with his shoulder the next trip. He next uses his feet. Maybe he backs it up, inch by inch by foot by yard, or meter, depending on the metrics of Hades. He very likely becomes the best rock roller of all time. Those 10,000 hours are now ancient history. He's the Master. He can do it in so many different ways it’s mind-boggling. He zens out at some times, just feeling his breath and the feet in his shoes, and at other times he sings while he shoves, then maybe recites ancient poetry. He makes up stories. He prepares to sing again, or talk to the birds. You can even hear him at a distance saying, “I dedicate this roll to Hera, for putting up with Zeus.”

Maybe he rolls it because he has to, only until that magic moment when he rolls it because he wants to, and that’s a major change. Perhaps he begins to roll it as an object lesson for all the rest of us, as a cautionary tale on one level, and an inspirational story on another. You can imagine his thought, as he projects it out to us: "No matter how many times this stone rolls down, I’m on it. I’m pushing it back. I won’t be defeated. Ever. And neither should you. You’re as free as your attitude and your choice to persevere. And: So am I. We can push on, as often as it takes. And is it without meaning? Who says? I hereby give it meaning. Watch me."

So. Who is a hero? One who works for the good of others and never just his own narrow ends. A hero engages in arduous or dangerous activity for the sake of other people, for their good, for our benefit. And maybe after a life of the opposite as a king, old Sis finally got the message and changed his tune to do exactly this.

When I was talking to my wife about the rock and the roll, I said, “Can you imagine weeks and months into this business how amazingly fit and STRONG this guy would have become?” She said, “How about the pain?” Yeah, maybe he’d be sore, aching all over. But he’d have the chance to work through it, right? No pain, no gain. Maybe that's a part of it, too. So, yeah, he could have become a strange and powerful hero with the inner judo, the spiritual alchemy that we all often need.

For Make Your Bed: https://amzn.to/36rpE88

The McCraven video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBuIGBCF9jc

Goals and Problems

The secret connection of Goals and Problems don’t get talked about much.

The problems we face form us. Those that we choose define us.

Have you ever pondered the fact that when you set a new goal, you invite new problems into your life? Many situations around you and facts about the world that would have been of no special interest to you suddenly become problems when they stand between you and a goal you've chosen. Apart from that goal, they would not have counted as problems for you. Many of those situations you might never have noticed at all. Others would have come to your attention, but not as difficulties or hardships for you. They didn't impinge on you personally. Until you set the goal you wanted to pursue. And then suddenly, you begin to notice circumstances anew, as problematic, as obstacles, as irritations.

Other situations will develop as personal problems while you pursue your goal. You'll get yourself into hard places that you could have avoided. You'll face challenges that are of your own doing. But that's Ok. It's your goal, after all. And it's important to have goals, even though they bring problems. It's part of the package deal in this world. We'd have vastly fewer problems if we had no dreams, or aspirations, or goals. It's the purpose of our goals to stretch us and grow us. And they often do that through the problems they bring with them. And as the Roman poet Horace once said, we often find that, "The greater the difficulty, the greater the glory." We feel best about the success that comes out of challenge.

Therefore, hence, ergo. When you fall down, don't worry about it. Just pick yourself back up. Recall how the journey you're on may have brought you to this fall. You'd be back in your armchair without the goals you're pursuing. And you wouldn't be falling. But you wouldn't be going anywhere, either. And bouncing back from a fall may be just what you need.

So when you're facing a new problem, obstacle, or difficulty, ponder how your dreams and aspirations and goals may have brought it into your life. Embrace it with cheerfulness as a part of the process. Solving it may just give you the wisdom you need down the road. Even the sheer process of struggling with it might accomplish that same end. We're always becoming, never just doing. With the right attitude and practice, we can become great, falls and all.

The Obstacle as the Way

The bestselling author Ryan Holiday recently interviewed me for his mega email newsletter and sent me gift copies of some of his books. Today I just finished his empowering short book, The Obstacle is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph. Ryan presents the essence of stoic philosophy for modern living. Every obstacle is an opportunity for something good. It's up to us to use that obstacle to find the way forward, learning and growing as a result.

We waste too much time on irritation, frustration, anger, despondency, and sadness when things go wrong. We're in a world where things often will go differently than we expected and hoped, but rather than this being something we should be mad about, it's something we should accept, explore, and use well. How? By developing a can-do attitude in the toughest of situations. There's always a way forward. There's something to be learned. There's growth to be had. Maybe there's a new path to your goal, or a new goal that will be even better.

On reading Ryan’s fun and useful book, I became aware at a deeper level that my book The Oasis Within, and the Egyptian novels to which that is a prologue, are a deeply stoic study in exactly how to implement the wisdom of the ages wherever we are, and whatever we face.

In this book, Ryan is a stoic cheerleader for any of us who feel burdened, or blocked, frustrated, or frantic. He will help you to calm down, focus on the right things, and take action that will matter. Do yourself a favor. If you don't already know the stoics, get this book (after reading my own on the topic - The Stoic Art of Living - Ha!). If you do, you'll still enjoy its breezy conversational cadences and reminders through lots of great stories of how we human beings can make things work for us well, even the toughest of things!

Find the book HERE.

Luck

Luck. The world is a kaleidoscope of constantly changing configurations. And I see a pattern within them. Those who develop some form of true goodness or excellence and persist in trying to do fine things are likely to get into a position where what's called good luck can meet and boost them. It can seem to happen to others, but that's appearance only. The corrupt, venal, and vicious have no truly good luck. In a sort of reverse alchemy, they taint anything they touch, and whatever may seem to come to them as a good most often ends up as a curse, not a blessing, until they themselves engage in inner change. But then, any curse evoking such a change ends up as a blessing, and perhaps the first of many that can now come.

The Most Surprising Way I Make People Mad

I post on controversial things across social media. I call out corruption, blast the worst forms of self dealing leadership, name and shame vicious behavior in all domains of human life, and dive into controversial issues with questions and distinctions and cautionary notes that many people don't want to hear. I don't intend to do it, but I sometimes make people mad. Some are merely irked. Others are enraged. How dare I? Well, I'm just following in the footsteps of Socrates. Yeah, and look what that brought him. I know. So I'm not utterly perplexed by this phenomenon.

But the thing that really does surprise me is that the posts of mine that seem to spark the most ire are often my recommendations of kindness. No, I'm not kidding: simple kindness. I often mention it here and on other social platforms, and in a very positive way. We should be kind. We need to bring more kindness into our work lives, our home lives, our politics, our simple daily interactions with others. And rather than everyone nodding and agreeing that we do need to be reminded of that now and then in our time, and maybe sending me a cute stuffed teddy bear for my efforts, I often see angry and offended people shoving these recommendations back in my face.

Kindness is a cheap perfume, they seem to say. Manners can mask monsters. Nice is syrupy and saccharine and utterly inauthentic. Some cynics will rail about Southern Hospitality and down-south friendliness as if it's always a case of some spider inviting a fly into her vast web of deception. Say WHAT?

There is plenty of counterfeit wisdom in the world, and faux virtue. There are false versions of nearly everything that's good and true and honorable. But should that for a second make us hesitant about what really matters? It's only an unkind view of the world and those of us in it that will automatically interpret a recommendation of kindness as a suggestion that people be duplicitous and false, when they're actually better off indulging the inner jerk and treating others awfully, or with disdain, or at least as if they don't matter at all. Here’s the real news: Not every appearance of goodness is a matter of hypocrisy and deception.

Kindness, by actual contrast, is the first level for applying the famous Golden Rule, treating others the way we'd want to be treated if we were in their place. And it's actually the first step in self care. It's only when we're kind to ourselves that we can improve ourselves in healthy and wise ways. I think that kindness is where morality and ethics all begin. It's a thing of the spirit, and is as powerful as it is simple.

I'm not the first to push kindness, and I hope I won't be the last. And if anyone reads this and you somehow feel your blood pressure rising, I would hope that you'll be kind to yourself and take a deep breath, and reconsider your irritation before you shoot me an authentically mean reply. As we say in the South, "Namastay!"

The Joy of Writing and Speaking

I love being a writer and speaker. When my wise friend Vinod Rangra read my book on Steve Jobs, Socrates in Silicon Valley, he told me that he drew from it an important lesson. He said something like: The problems that we confront and grapple with throughout our lives form us; the problems we choose to tackle along the way in part define us. Steve Jobs chose problems that were as big as his passions.

I remember thinking, "Wow." Vinod showed me something in the book I had not even been explicitly aware of. And he was right. That's a part of the joy of writing and speaking. I can put something out into the world to be pondered by wise people who may see a side of what I'm saying that I had never consciously recognized. It's almost like the quarterback who throws the ball downfield. A talented receiver has to catch it and often run with amazing moves of his own in order to get the touchdown that the quarterback alone could not have attained. And then Joe Montana, or whoever, celebrates it all, arms in air. And I can tell you that Joe isn't celebrating his nice pass, but what happened after the ball was out of his hands. I feel the same when the idea is out of my hands and some wise friend or reader or audience member takes it across the line to score a great insight or achievement as a result.

Of course, when you share thoughts with a smart friend, you can have the same sort of experience to enjoy. Wise partners help us understand the world better and more deeply. Write that note, share that thought, have that conversation, and you may end up celebrating a score you didn’t anticipate.

For the book, click here.

The L Word

It's clearly a good time for the L Word. Love each other. Love your neighbor. Love your enemy. Love as I have loved. Love, Love, Love.

When you read the Gospels and pay close attention, you keep getting this message. Jesus seems to be hitting over and over on what's for him a major and central theme. It appears to be a core issue, the interpretive key for anything else in his teaching that might, all these millennia later, be less clear. Here's your default position: Love.

Now, what does that mean? See in others great value and potential. Treasure them as children of God. Care for them. Be committed to their good. In comes the philosopher Kant: Never use others as a mere means to your ends and not also as ends in themselves. The interests of others count. Now the great Jewish philosopher Martin Buber: Relate to others as "I-Thou" and never "I-It." Honor others. Respect them. Allow the positive power that can be transformative of your own life to flow through you toward them. Never hate or despise with sneering contempt.

But that's hard. Sure, or we wouldn't have to be reminded so many times. It doesn't mean tolerating evil or accepting falsehood as truth or staying silent in the face of immoral and unethical conduct. It never means giving bad behavior a pass or allowing bullies to do their thing. It means seeking to treat people as who they were intended to be more than who they act like they are. It means being concerned for everyone at the level of spirit. It's something we all need to keep in mind daily.