Half a dozen EMPIRES had to join hands to stand a chance against him
Yet his wife slept with other men
The tragic love story of one of the greatest men of all time:
1/ Joséphine
An aristocrat’s daughter, a widow, mother of 2
Also 6 years older than Napoleon
On the marriage certificate, she increased Napoleon’s age by 1.5 years and decreased hers by 4...
Wedding was officiated by an illegitimate priest
Napoleon was just an army officer
2/ Napoleon’s love for her - despite her age, previous children, and his family’s great disapproval - could only be described as wild and profound. From a love letter: “The remembrance of last night’s delirium have robbed my senses of repose. My waking thoughts are all of thee.”
3/ Joséphine hardly ever wrote back
In 1796 Napoleon wrote:
“You do not write me at all, you do not love your husband; you know the pleasure that your letters afford him, and you do not write him six lines of even haphazard scribble.”
Future Emperor, left on “read”
4/ As Napoleon led his men to impossible victories, his spirit stayed agitated and morose
He wrote to Joséphine, telling her he can’t muster a response to “How did you sleep?” without knowing how she slept
He wanted his “genius” to protect HER, and leave him “unguarded”
5/ The thought of Joséphine kept Napoleon sane in the middle of INHUMAN emotional and physical turmoil:
“When I’m weary of the worries of my profession, when men disgust me, when I’m ready to curse my life, I put my hand on my heart where your portrait beats in unison.”
6/ Napoleon was haunted by the suspicion that Joséphine loved him “less” with each passing day
This idea, he wrote, “blights my soul, stops my blood, makes me wretched without even leaving me the courage of fury”
He was right
She was cheating on him immediately after marriage
7/ Napoleon to Joséphine:
“I haven't drunk one cup of tea without cursing the pride and ambition which force me to remain apart from the moving spirit of my life. If I rise to work in the middle of the night, it is because this may hasten by a matter of days our meeting."
8/ Joséphine had the GALL to come visit Napoleon with the man she was cheating on him with
And when Napoleon came for her, she was nowhere to be seen:
“I arrive at Milan, I rush into your apartment, I have left everything to see you, to press you in my arms…you were not there”
9/ Napoleon’s last words: “France, the army, head of the army, Joséphine”
He divorced her
But never got over her
Affairs didn’t help
The pain of not being loved back by her lingered on
I’m reminded of a line from a letter he wrote in 1796: “I had the right to be spared this”
“I had the right to be spared this”
Besides being a heartbroken lover...
Napoleon was an obsessive workaholic, a voracious reader, an incredible ruler, and the scariest general of his time
He also had a golden tongue
I've collected Napoleon's most interesting ideas and sayings here:
Ted Kaczynski’s IQ: 167
Harvard admission: At 15
Youngest ever math prof, UCB: At 25
Money spent by FBI to find him: $50+ mil
The manifesto attacks modern civilization like nothing else before or since
13 best insights from a Philosopher-Terrorist👇🏻
1/ Kaczynski lists the 4 big problems with modern civilization:
- “Excessive density of population”
- “Isolation of man from nature”
- “Excessive rapidity of social change”
- “The breakdown of natural small-scale communities such as the extended family, the village, the tribe”
2/ The big difference between the primitive civilization and our contemporary world is that before, individuals had a lot of autonomy while the state was largely powerless to penetrate into the everyday life of people
Kaczynski argues that modern tech suddenly flips this balance
Ancient Rome was the world's most powerful empire for 500 years
At its height, Rome boasted of roads, public baths, and much else that was close to miraculous for the rest of the planet
Then came the Great Fall...
What happened has lessons for the world TODAY
A thread👇🏻
1/ In his book The City In History (1961), Lewis Mumford explains how Rome went from "Megalopolis to Necropolis." This great city set up its own demise in two ways: Panem et circenses. That is: "bread and circuses." Mumford: "Success underwrote a sickening parasitic failure."
2/ As Ancient Rome became prosperous, it became an unsustainable welfare state
Mumford writes that "indiscriminate public largesse" became common
A large portion of the population "took on the parasitic role for a whole lifetime"
C.S. Lewis almost died in the trench warfare of WW-I
Became best friends with Tolkien
Sold 100 million books
On the cusp of WW-II, he gave an iconic lecture at Oxford University (1939)
His question:
Does beauty matter when bombs start falling?
THIS is his profound answer👇🏻
1/ The permanent human situation is endless strife, chaos and pain
C.S. Lewis:
“Human life has always been lived on the edge of a precipice. Human culture has always had to exist under the shadow of something infinitely more important than itself”
Yet culture breaks out
2/ If we waited for peace to create art the first cave painting would still not be made
Always some “imminent danger” looking more important than culture
Lewis: “If men had postponed the search for knowledge and beauty until they were secure, the search would never have begun”