- Eight books that changed my life.
I think every book I've read
has changed my life in some way or another,
a la Ralph Waldo Emerson,
"I Cannot remember the books I've read
"any more than the meals I have eaten;
"even so, they have made me."
But I chose these eight books
because they caused paradigm shifts in my thinking.
Number one, "Meditations" by Marcus Aurelius.
I don't think there will ever be a universally agreed upon
set of moral values and principles for humans to follow,
but for me personally,
"Meditations" is the guide
for the cultivation of good character.
Let's turn to the spicy quote.
(gong rings)
"Think not so much of what you lack
"as of what you have:
"but of the things you have, select the best,
"and then reflect how eagerly you would have sought them
"if you did not have them."
(gong rings)
Just a quick note:
The Dover Thrift translation
is denser than the Hays translation.
Both are great but choose at your own risk.
Number two, "The Righteous Mind" by Jonathan Haidt.
If you've been a fan of the channel for a while,
you've already heard me mention this book.
Along with Kahneman's "Thinking, Fast and Slow,"
this book changed my entire view of human nature
and convinced me
that the most dangerous thing in the world is dogma.
Haidt shows us how our moral reasoning
is dictated almost entirely by emotion.
We have an institution, a snap judgment,
and then we recruit our reasoning
to justify that snap judgment.
And it may sound sad
but people's self-interest
and concern for their own reputation
greatly influences moral reasoning
and that makes us huge hypocrites a lot of the time.
(gong rings)
"Our moral thinking
"is much more like a politician searching for votes
"than a scientist searching for truth.
"If you think that moral reasoning
"is something that we do to figure out the truth,
"you'll be constantly frustrated
"by how foolish, biased, and illogical people become
"when they disagree with you."
(gong rings)
To make matters worse,
different people have different foundations
on which their morals rest.
So you might have a hard time understanding why,
for example, someone cares so much about the flag
but for someone else,
they can't believe why you don't care about the flag.
And that's the key sentence in the book:
"Morality binds and blinds."
It brings tribes together
and it blinds you to the ideals of other tribes.
Haidt is out to dispel the myth
of the Manichean worldview,
that all human interaction
can be framed as good versus evil.
The moment we frame ourselves
or someone else as always good,
we raise them above criticism.
The moment we frame someone as evil,
they're beneath contempt and dumber than us.
Helpful in war maybe
but not in running a society.
I left this book feeling an immense amount
of compassion for other people.
Everyone is helplessly righteous
and the only way to fix it is openness and love,
not condescension and dismissiveness.
Number three, "A Confederacy of Dunces"
by John Kennedy Toole.
I have never laughed harder reading a book.
This book destroyed my ego.
It cut my heart out.
Teenage me fancied himself
a brilliant polemicist of culture.
You know, the insufferable
no one's authentic and smart but me.
The Holden Caulfield everyone's a phony mindset.
This book is just shots fired at teenage me.
(gong rings)
"The nation as a whole has no contact with reality.
"That is only one of the reasons
"why I have always been forced
"to exist on the fringes of its society,
"consigned to the Limbo reserved for those
"who do know reality when they see it."
(gong rings)
Reading this book, you'll realize how big the gap can be
between your opinions and your actions.
The main character writes incisive polemics
about the contemporary culture
but is a complete nuisance to society through his actions.
It's also just a really well-written book
with good characters and beautiful prose,
so just pick it up.
Number four, "How to Read a Book" by Mortimer Adler.
If you couldn't tell by the title,
this book is about reading books.
This is not a short read nor is it an easy read,
but if ever there were a book
that encouraged me to read more,
it's this one.
There's no limit to the growth of a mind
and Adler gives you the tools to do it.
(gong rings)
"The ability to retain the child's view of the world,
"with at the same time a mature understanding
"of what it means to retain it,
"is extremely rare
"and a person who has these qualities
"is likely to be able
"to contribute something really important to our thinking."
(gong rings)
Also, huge bonus,
Adler gives you the essential works of the western canon
in the back of the book,
so that's pretty cool too.
Number five, "Amusing Ourselves to Death" by Neil Postman.
This book cut my movie and TV consumption in half.
(gong rings)
"When a population becomes distracted by trivia,
"when cultural life is redefined
"as a perpetual round of entertainments,
"when serious public conversation
"becomes a form of baby-talk,
"when, in short, a people become an audience,
"and their public business a vaudeville act,
"then a nation finds itself at risk;
"culture-death is a clear possibility."
(gong rings)
Spicy.
All the hot-button issues of today.
We're too distracted.
The news doesn't inform, it entertains.
We overvalue emotion and undervalue reason.
Politics is all about appearance and no substance.
We don't read enough.
It's all in there.
Number six, "Economics in One Lesson" by Henry Hazlitt.
One of the fascinating things
about going through the American education system
is that you can leave it
having never learned basic economics.
You often read Marx's "Communist Manifesto"
if you take philosophy and history
because it's an essential humanities text,
and no doubt Marx's view of economics
is an important one to have,
but if it's the only one you get,
that's really bad.
So that happened to me,
so after college, I picked up some of the bigger players
like Mises and Keynes and Smith
but those are like huge tomes
and I just wanted an intro
so I picked up Hazlitt.
It was probably the best intro I could find.
So just teach yourself some basic economics.
Pick it up. It might change your view.
Number seven, this one doesn't have a cover
so turn it around here,
"How to Win Friends and Influence People" by Dale Carnegie.
I always get laughed at by recommending this book.
People always say, "It's such basic stuff, dummy,"
and yet, by laughing at me for recommending the book,
they break all the basic rules in the book.
(gong rings)
"Instead of condemning people,
"let's try to understand them.
"Let's try to figure out why they do what they do.
"That's a lot more profitable and intriguing than criticism
"and it breeds sympathy, tolerance, and kindness."
(gong rings)
Dale Carnegie understood human nature incredibly well.
We are reciprocal, social animals
who want to be known and loved
and to belong to something greater than ourselves.
We like praise
and we like people who are interested in our interests.
In light of these truths,
Carnegie lays out how to best communicate with people.
Yes, it's persuasion but everything is persuasion.
All the most likable people I know
follow the rules in this book.
Whether they do it consciously or not, I don't know,
but it's definitely a good book to have
to know how to communicate well with people
no matter where you are in life.
And finally, number eight,
"The Wisdom of Insecurity" by Alan Watts.
God, I love Alan Watts.
This book might have gotten me back into reading
after I stopped reading for a while.
(gong rings)
"If my happiness at this moment consists largely
"in reviewing happy memories and expectations,
"I am but dimly aware of this present.
"I shall still be dimly aware of the present
"when the good things that I have been expecting
"come to pass.
"For I shall have formed a habit
"of looking behind and ahead,
"making it difficult for me to attend to the here and now.
"If, then, my awareness of the past and future
"makes me less aware of the present,
"I must begin to wonder
"whether I'm actually living in the real world."
(gong rings)
Watts is the philosopher you read after a rough breakup
or the loss of a friend or family member.
He's also good if you have generalized anxiety.
He's really funny
and he puts you at ease
with your place in the universe,
much like Aurelius does in "Meditations."
He made Buddhism accessible to me
when I really needed it
and for that I will be forever grateful to him
and this book. (chuckles)
It was hard to choose this list.
There are a lot of great books that I'd like to recommend.
A few months ago,
I did sort of narrow down
a lot of the nonfiction books that I've read
into sort of an essentials list
and that's linked on my Patreon.
You can go and download it. You don't have to be a Patron.
Of course, I'd appreciate it if you became a Patron.
You get stickers and a personal letter
and even more things at higher levels
and I also send out a monthly newsletter
with a reading list and my thoughts from the month.
So I'd of course appreciate that.
But go over there, download the essentials list,
and look at some of those books.
And if you're looking for even more cool books,
I do a series on Instagram called Book of the Week
where I review a book
and I'm always posting about books on Twitter,
so just follow me there too.
And finally, I just wanted to say
I'm working on a pretty substantial project right now.
It's going to take a while
but it'll be worth it.
Thank you all for watching.
Merry Christmas, happy New Year,
and I'll see you soon-ish.
(gentle music)