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)

Propaganda flips elections and destroys minds

59 years ago, a French theologian tried to warn the world about it...

12 insights from Jacques Ellul's Propaganda (1965)👇🏻 1/ Modern man can "never stop to reflect." He's not allowed to synthesize his information. Rather, Ellul writes: "One thought drives away another; old facts are chased by new ones..."

Issac Newton was an alchemist. Alan Turing thought telepathy is real. It's undeniable at this point that people at the upper bounds of intelligence are quasi-mystics. A material universe made of inert atoms is for midwits only William James was a parapsychology researcher

Wolfgang Pauli, who Einstein called his "spiritual heir," thought he could break lab equipment from a different city

Past geniuses did not, infact, "trust the experts"

SOURCE of modern man's weakness, stupidity, and general lack of vitality?

His leisure activities

Aldous Huxley predicted the degeneracy of modern amusements in a 104 year old essay: Pleasures (1920)

Huxley on why and how to radically rewire the way you spend your free time👇🏻 1/ Aldous Huxley writes that pleasures must not be an escape from effort

In fact, they must be unavailable *without* effort

Why? Because when preceded by effort, pleasure reinvigorates

But when preceded by nothing, pleasure retards your brain's reward systems

Psychologists in Italy talk about "The Florence Syndrome"—cases when a patient comes in panicked, anxious, and disoriented because they saw something so beautiful that it induced a nervous breakdown. In 2018, a man had a heart attack while looking at this painting in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence.

He recovered.

You're looking at a 465 year old painting...

That contains 126 hidden messages (that we've been able to count...)

This painting is The Topsy Turvy World by Bruegel

And it has the earliest illustration of the *Blue Pill*

Discover this painting's top 10 HIDDEN insights 👇🏻 1/ "She puts the blue cloak on her husband"

Bruegel's original name for his painting: The Blue Cloak

In the center a woman puts a blue cloak on her husband - a Danish proverb meaning to deceive someone

The Matrix made the Blue Cloak the Blue Pill - the meaning remains the same

The king was arrested in the French Revolution

1 man volunteered to be his lawyer

With the king, he was beheaded too

Decades later, the lawyer's grandson wrote a book on the DARK SIDE of democracy, equality, & liberalism

His name: Tocqueville. Book became a classic. A thread: 1/ Human lust for equality overpowers our love for freedom:

“Democratic communities have a natural taste for freedom. But for equality, their passion is insatiable: they call for equality in freedom; and if they cannot obtain that, they still call for equality in slavery”

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 French nobleman survived a headshot...

Left a BIG impact on Nietzsche

And he wrote one-liners more interesting than most books...

Discover La Rochefoucauld's wisdom on charisma, courage, Thinkers v/s Doers, and more👇🏻 1/ Charisma = being comfortable in your own skin

How to be irresistible:

"There is an air which belongs to the figure and talents of each individual. We should try to find out what air is natural to us and never abandon it, but make it as perfect as we can"

Authenticity is hot

Trump shot again

He's a target because he's fighting the "Managerial State" that James Burnham wrote about in 1941...

Burnham saw in the future, elected leaders will be overpowered by unelected managers

These managers will poison all of politics, culture, life. A thread:
1/ Capitalism ruled for the past few centuries and was supported by concepts such as

• Individualism
• Private initiative
• Natural rights

But Burnham sees that capitalism has lost the "boundless self-confidence" that an ideology needs to rule. Individualism out of fashion..