This Japanese Samurai:

• Never took a bath
• Never lost a fight
• Wrote one of Joe Rogan's all-time favorite books:

The Book of Five Rings (1645)

The book is 380 years old but its wisdom still holds up. A thread: 1/ Miyamoto Musashi was undefeated across 61 duels. An all-time record. He never married, never had children, and according to rumors, never combed his hair. He was a strange but profoundly wise man. Rogan says his book is "one of the most valuable things anyone has ever written"

As the world gets crazier, there is one name you will hear more often: Nicolás Gómez Dávila

He wrote 1 book. Published ONLY a 100 copies...

But he's the best teacher on why societies need MYTHS to live

Without myths, collapse is inevitable

A thread👇🏻 1/ A culture that ignores its distinct DNA, and embraces homogenization, is signing its own death warrant

Dávila:

"Violence is not necessary to destroy a civilization. Each civilization dies from indifference toward the unique values which created it."

Hot take: too much humility is a sin. Sometimes you need to over-estimate your abilities so you take bigger leaps. The humble take negative feedback seriously and fold; the arrogant maintain a bull-headed stubbornness in the face of repeat failures. Guess who ultimately wins Schopenhauer: "For what is modesty but hypocritical humility, by means of which...a man seeks to beg pardon for his excellences from those who have none? Whoever attributes no merit to himself because he really has none is not modest, but merely honest.”

https://x.com/PaqWilly/status/1882438861378445610

John Fowles explains in "The Aristos" (1964) how high IQ can subvert your will to act: "High intelligence leads to multiplicity of interest and a sharpened capacity to foresee the consequences of any action. Will is lost in a labyrinth of hypothesis." Rule 1: Do not lose the will Carlyle in 1841: "A man lives by believing something; not by debating and arguing about many things."

Chesterton on how an open mind is no more a virtue than an open mouth: "The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid”

This is Joe Overton

The famous "Overton Window" is named after him

It's the best mental model for understanding how political change ACTUALLY happens

A thread... 1/ Overton was a libertarian political scientist. In the 1990s, while raising funds for rightwing thinktank Mackinac Center, he kept meeting donors who didn't understand what thinktanks actually do. He coined a new concept to solve this problem: Window of Political Possibilities

11 Paradoxes of Modern Dating

1/ People are reaching sexual maturity sooner than ever before while having kids later than ever before. Puberty has significantly moved up and parenthood has significantly moved down—creating a gulf of meaningless hookups in-between. 2/ The internet has exposed you to more people than ever before, thereby significantly increasing your odds of meeting “the one” in theory. But you’re more alone than ever before.

New JP Morgan HQ? Art Deco

New Tesla van? Art Deco

New Orient Express train? Art Deco

Why is this dead 1920s movement making a comeback? And who killed it in the first place?

A thread with all the answers... 1/ Art Deco began with a breakup. Now called the "Vienna Secession," a group of rebels resigned from the "Association of Austrian Artists" in 1897 to chart new territory. The hero's journey begins. Their first project - the "Secession Building" in Vienna (still standing)

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

G.K. Chesterton's best book: Orthodoxy (1908)

Here are its 10 best ideas:

1/ Love precedes lovability: "Men did not love Rome because she was great. She was great because they had loved her." 1/ Love precedes lovability because a "primary devotion" to a place, thing, or person is the source of the creative energy that transforms it. Begin with love, not scorn. Commitment beautifies

Reject stoicism. Reject Buddhism. Even the room lizard is "tranquil." Get ATTACHED. Everything great is downstream of (strong) desires. Latin root for desire is "de sidere," which translates to "from the stars." An intense desire is a gift from the Gods above. A gift of direction REJECTING stoicism is a pre requisite for great achievement

John Fowles explains in "The Aristos" (1964) how high IQ can subvert your will to act: "High intelligence leads to multiplicity of interest and a sharpened capacity to foresee the consequences of any action. Will is lost in a labyrinth of hypothesis." Rule 1: Do not lose the will Carlyle in 1841: "A man lives by believing something; not by debating and arguing about many things."

Chesterton on how an open mind is no more a virtue than an open mouth: "The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid”

Dostoevsky by age:

24: A literary rockstar
28: Almost EXECUTED by a firing squad
29: Exiled to Siberia
38: Returns to write some of the greatest books ever...

In his letters, we see what he loved, hated, and fiercely believed in

Special birthday thread! 👇🏻 1/ Dostoevsky believed life is only possible when you have a philosophical north star you swear by:

"Neither a person nor a nation can exist without some higher idea"

Dostoevsky: "In order to maintain itself and live, every society must necessarily respect someone & something"

After the French revolutionaries beheaded their king, they had another bright idea:

"Let's make the day 10 hours long"

This is NOT a joke. Left-wing "experts" actually changed the length of minutes, hours, and weeks in the name of science...

This is the story of that disaster: 1/ The French revolutionaries adopted a new calendar for three reasons:

- To eliminate religious consciousness from the French society

- To make time more “rational”

- To announce the birth of an egalitarian era

In their zeal they forgot an important factor: human nature

This is Joe Overton

The famous "Overton Window" is named after him

It's the best mental model for understanding how political change ACTUALLY happens

A thread... 1/ Overton was a libertarian political scientist. In the 1990s, while raising funds for rightwing thinktank "Makinac Center," he kept meeting donors who didn't understand what thinktanks actually do. He coined a new concept to solve this problem: Window of Political Possibilities

Cults demand you go through a painful initiation ceremony to prove your loyalty. In modern times, when few have the stomach to administer pain, modern cults demand you say absurd things to prove your loyalty. Like "men can become women." The absurdity is the point But saying something without believing it is...hard. Saying something repeatedly without believing it is close to impossible. The mask becomes the face. A lie spoken ironically to gain admission into a select club soon becomes your sincere truth

From the world's youngest classics professor...

To a hermit forced to pay his books' printing costs.

Until those same books made him history's most influential thinker.

That's Nietzsche. Madman or Genius?

Here are 11 insights. Judge for yourself: 1/ Stop being busy

Nietzsche writes a "raging industriousness" will give you wealth. But it will also drain you - make your senses less subtle...

Money gives, but also extracts: time, energy, one's enthusiasm

Work is a trade - important to keep track of what one gives away

When you think of communism, you think of:

• Food lines
• 1-party rule
• Mass murder

But you probably don't think of symbolic corruption and spiritual warfare...

Here is Julius Evola on communism's endgame: 1/ In The Inversion of Symbols(1928), Evola writes that modern revolutionary movements take "traditional symbols" of healthier societies from the past and give them a NEW spin

He digs into 3 symbols:

• The color red
• The word revolution
• The symbol of the pentagrammic star

Inside this tiny, 200-year-old house...

One man wrote books that changed the world:

• Beyond Good and Evil (1886)
• Thus Spake Zarathustra (1883)
• The Will To Power (1888)

Meet: "The Nietzsche Haus." Here are some pictures and stories from my recent trip... 1/ The Nietzsche Haus is in Sils Maria, a charming town deep in the Swiss Alps. Right next to the town is Lake Sils. Fed by glaciers, it has the highest boating line in Europe. I'll show the boat ride video, but first, see the streets Nietzsche walked as he dreamt up his books...

Dostoevsky🧵

A literary rockstar at 24. Almost executed by a firing squad at 28...

Exiled to Siberia. Returns to write some of the greatest books ever...

In his lesser-known letters and essays, we get a more intimate look at what he loved, hated, fiercely believed in

Dig in👇🏻 1/ Dostoevsky believed life is only possible when you have a philosophical north star you swear by:

"Neither a person nor a nation can exist without some higher idea"

Dostoevsky: "In order to maintain itself and live, every society must necessarily respect someone & something"

Elon Musk reminds me of Carlyle's 1841 book on heroes. Carlyle wrote the single most important quality in great men is their sincerity. They stand directly upon reality, not upon the consensus, the status quo, the norms. Elon calls it first principles thinking, but same thing Short-term incentives always tell you to ignore baseline reality and respond to office politics, interpersonal drama, status games. You require a strange combination of high IQ, low agreeableness, high openness, low neuroticism, to ignore the short-term & deal with reality as is

Yesterday, Elon Musk unveiled the Robovan, and it was Art Deco

Why is this dead 1920s movement making a comeback?

And who killed it in the first place?

A thread with all the answers... 1/ Art Deco began with a breakup. Now called the "Vienna Secession" a bunch of visionaries resigned from the "Association of Austrian Artists" in 1897 to chart new territory. The hero's journey begins. Their first project - the "Secession Building" in Vienna (still standing)