Tag: 2014

Posted on

The War of Art

Author: Steven Pressfield
Recommended for: Anyone working on a creative or entrepreneurial endeavor
Read: November 2014, October 2019

Quick Summary:

The War of Art is an essential book for anyone working on a creative or entrepreneurial endeavor. In The War of Art, Steven Pressfield identifies the force that opposes our creative efforts as Resistance. Pressfield points out the different forms that Resistance takes and methods that it uses to undermine us every step of the way. Pressfield also provides strategies for overcoming Resistance, primarily by focusing on mastering our craft and showing up every single day.

If you enjoyed The War of Art, you can follow the book with Do the Work, a short follow-up read that focuses on overcoming and defeating Resistance.

There’s a secret that real writers know that wannabe writers don’t, and the secret is this: It’s not the writing part that’s hard. What’s hard is sitting down to write. What keeps us from sitting down is Resistance. 

What does it tell us about the architecture of our psyches that, without our exerting effort or even thinking about it, some voice in our head pipes up to counsel us (and counsel us wisely) on how to do our work and live our lives? Whose voice is it? What software is grinding away, scanning gigabytes, while we, our mainstream selves, are otherwise occupied? 

Key Lessons:

  • That feeling that I feel inside – the one that attempts to block me at every turn – that is real, and not something I made up. All creative individuals must wrestle with it.
  • We can defeat Resistance by simply dedicating ourselves to our work at the same time every day. Treat your work professionally. Show up, no matter what.

My Highlights

Italicized sub-bullet comments are mine.

  • When inspiration touches talent, she gives birth to truth and beauty. 
  • How many pages have I produced? I don’t care. Are they any good? I don’t even think about it. All that matters is I’ve put in my time and hit it with all I’ve got. 
    • Eventually, once you’ve put in enough time, you’ll come up with something good!
  • There’s a secret that real writers know that wannabe writers don’t, and the secret is this: It’s not the writing part that’s hard. What’s hard is sitting down to write. What keeps us from sitting down is Resistance. 
  • Most of us have two lives. The life we live, and the unlived life within us. Between the two stands Resistance. 
  • One night I was layin’ down, I heard Papa talkin’ to Mama. I heard Papa say, to let that boy boogie-woogie. ‘Cause it’s in him and it’s got to come out. — John Lee Hooker, “Boogie Chillen”
  • How many of us have become drunks and drug addicts, developed tumors and neuroses, succumbed to painkillers, gossip, and compulsive cell-phone use, simply because we don’t do that thing that our hearts, our inner genius, is calling us to? Resistance defeats us. 
  • The enemy is a very good teacher. — the Dalai Lama 
  • Resistance is not a peripheral opponent. Resistance arises from within. It is self-generated and self-perpetuated. Resistance is the enemy within. 
  • Rule of thumb: The more important a call or action is to our soul’s evolution, the more Resistance we will feel toward pursuing it. 
  • We’re wrong if we think we’re the only ones struggling with Resistance. Everyone who has a body experiences Resistance. 
  • The warrior and the artist live by the same code of necessity, which dictates that the battle must be fought anew every day. 
  • Resistance has no strength of its own. Every ounce of juice it possesses comes from us. We feed it with power by our fear of it. Master that fear and we conquer Resistance. 
  • RESISTANCE IS MOST POWERFUL AT THE FINISH LINE 
  • Odysseus almost got home years before his actual homecoming. Ithaca was in sight, close enough that the sailors could see the smoke of their families’ fires on shore. Odysseus was so certain he was safe, he actually lay down for a snooze. It was then that his men, believing there was gold in an ox-hide sack among their commander’s possessions, snatched this prize and cut it open. The bag contained the adverse Winds, which King Aeolus had bottled up for Odysseus when the wanderer had touched earlier at his blessed isle. The winds burst forth now in one mad blow, driving Odysseus’ ships back across every league of ocean they had with such difficulty traversed, making him endure further trials and sufferings before, at last and alone, he reached home for good. 
  • The danger is greatest when the finish line is in sight. At this point, Resistance knows we’re about to beat it. It hits the panic button. It marshals one last assault and slams us with everything it’s got. 
  • The professional must be alert for this counterattack. Be wary at the end. Don’t open that bag of wind. 
  • The reason is that they are struggling, consciously or unconsciously, against their own Resistance. The awakening writer’s success becomes a reproach to them. If she can beat these demons, why can’t they? 
  • Often couples or close friends, even entire families, will enter into tacit compacts whereby each individual pledges (unconsciously) to remain mired in the same slough in which she and all her cronies have become so comfortable. 
  • The highest treason a crab can commit is to make a leap for the rim of the bucket. 
  • The awakening artist must be ruthless, not only with herself but with others. Once you make your break, you can’t turn around for your buddy who catches his trouser leg on the barbed wire. The best thing you can do for that friend (and he’d tell you this himself, if he really is your friend) is to get over the wall and keep motating. 
  • The best and only thing that one artist can do for another is to serve as an example and an inspiration. 
  • The most pernicious aspect of procrastination is that it can become a habit. We don’t just put off our lives today; we put them off till our deathbed. 
  • Never forget: This very moment, we can change our lives. There never was a moment, and never will be, when we are without the power to alter our destiny. This second, we can turn the tables on Resistance. 
  • We get ourselves in trouble because it’s a cheap way to get attention. Trouble is a faux form of fame. It’s easier to get busted in the bedroom with the faculty chairman’s wife than it is to finish that dissertation on the metaphysics of motley in the novellas of Joseph Conrad. 
  • Ill health is a form of trouble, as are alcoholism and drug addiction, proneness to accidents, all neurosis including compulsive screwing-up, and such seemingly benign foibles as jealousy, chronic lateness, and the blasting of rap music at 110 dB from your smoked-glass ’95 Supra. Anything that draws attention to ourselves through pain-free or artificial means is a manifestation of Resistance. 
    • I have certainly been guilty here. For years at a time.
  • The working artist will not tolerate trouble in her life because she knows trouble prevents her from doing her work. The working artist banishes from her world all sources of trouble. She harnesses the urge for trouble and transforms it in her work. 
    • And this is my cure
  • When we drug ourselves to blot out our soul’s call, we are being good Americans and exemplary consumers. We’re doing exactly what TV commercials and pop materialist culture have been brainwashing us to do from birth. Instead of applying self-knowledge, self-discipline, delayed gratification and hard work, we simply consume a product. 
  • What finally convinced me to go ahead was simply that I was so unhappy not going ahead. I was developing symptoms. As soon as I sat down and began, I was okay. 
  • John Lennon once wrote: Well, you think you’re so clever and classless and free / But you’re all fucking peasants / As far as I can see 
  • We unplug ourselves from the grid by recognizing that we will never cure our restlessness by contributing our disposable income to the bottom line of Bullshit, Inc., but only by doing our work. 
  • We’re wired tribally, to act as part of a group. Our psyches are programmed by millions of years of hunter-gatherer evolution. We know what the clan is; we know how to fit into the band and the tribe. What we don’t know is how to be alone. We don’t know how to be free individuals. 
  • The artist and the fundamentalist arise from societies at differing stages of development. The artist is the advanced model. His culture possesses affluence, stability, enough excess of resource to permit the luxury of self-examination. The artist is grounded in freedom. He is not afraid of it. He is lucky. He was born in the right place. He has a core of self- confidence, of hope for the future. He believes in progress and evolution. His faith is that humankind is advancing, however haltingly and imperfectly, toward a better world. 
  • Fundamentalism is the philosophy of the powerless, the conquered, the displaced and the dispossessed. Its spawning ground is the wreckage of political and military defeat, as Hebrew fundamentalism arose during the Babylonian captivity, as white Christian fundamentalism appeared in the American South during Reconstruction, as the notion of the Master Race evolved in Germany following World War I. In such desperate times, the vanquished race would perish without a doctrine that restored hope and pride. 
  • The humanist believes that humankind, as individuals, is called upon to co-create the world with God. This is why he values human life so highly. In his view, things do progress, life does evolve; each individual has value, at least potentially, in advancing this cause. 
  • The paradox seems to be, as Socrates demonstrated long ago, that the truly free individual is free only to the extent of his own self-mastery. While those who will not govern themselves are condemned to find masters to govern over them. 
  • If you find yourself criticizing other people, you’re probably doing it out of Resistance. When we see others beginning to live their authentic selves, it drives us crazy if we have not lived out our own. 
  • Individuals who are realized in their own lives almost never criticize others. If they speak at all, it is to offer encouragement. 
  • Remember our rule of thumb: The more scared we are of a work or calling, the more sure we can be that we have to do it. 
  • The professional tackles the project that will make him stretch. He takes on the assignment that will bear him into uncharted waters, compel him to explore unconscious parts of himself. 
  • (Conversely, the professional turns down roles that he’s done before. He’s not afraid of them anymore. Why waste his time?) 
  • If you didn’t love the project that is terrifying you, you wouldn’t feel anything. 
  • Grandiose fantasies are a symptom of Resistance. They’re the sign of an amateur. The professional has learned that success, like happiness, comes as a by-product of work. 
  • The professional concentrates on the work and allows rewards to come or not come, whatever they like. 
  • What are we trying to heal, anyway? The athlete knows the day will never come when he wakes up pain-free. He has to play hurt. 
  • Have you ever been to a workshop? These boondoggles are colleges of Resistance. They ought to give out Ph.D.’s in Resistance. What better way of avoiding work than going to a workshop? But what I hate even worse is the word support. 
    • Pressfield’s view certainly makes me feel less guilty about holding this view as well!
  • It is one thing to study war and another to live the warrior’s life. — Telamon of Arcadia, mercenary of the fifth century B.C. 
  • Someone once asked Somerset Maugham if he wrote on a schedule or only when struck by inspiration. “I write only when inspiration strikes,” he replied. “Fortunately it strikes every morning at nine o’clock sharp.” That’s a pro. 
  • I’m keenly aware of the Principle of Priority, which states (a) you must know the difference between what is urgent and what is important, and (b) you must do what’s important first. 
  • The artist committing himself to his calling has volunteered for hell, whether he knows it or not. He will be dining for the duration on a diet of isolation, rejection, self-doubt, despair, ridicule, contempt, and humiliation. 
  • Remember, the Muse favors working stiffs. She hates prima donnas. To the gods the supreme sin is not rape or murder, but pride. To think of yourself as a mercenary, a gun for hire, implants the proper humility. It purges pride and preciousness. 
  • Resistance loves pride and preciousness. Resistance says, “Show me a writer who’s too good to take Job X or Assignment Y and I’ll show you a guy I can crack like a walnut.”
  • The professional arms himself with patience, not only to give the stars time to align in his career, but to keep himself from flaming out in each individual work. He knows that any job, whether it’s a novel or a kitchen remodel, takes twice as long as he thinks and costs twice as much. He accepts that. He recognizes it as reality. 
  • A pro views her work as craft, not art. Not because she believes art is devoid of a mystical dimension. On the contrary. She understands that all creative endeavor is holy, but she doesn’t dwell on it. She knows if she thinks about that too much, it will paralyze her. So she concentrates on technique. The professional masters how, and leaves what and why to the gods. Like Somerset Maugham she doesn’t wait for inspiration, she acts in anticipation of its apparition. The professional is acutely aware of the intangibles that go into inspiration. Out of respect for them, she lets them work. She grants them their sphere while she concentrates on hers. 
  • The professional shuts up. She doesn’t talk about it. She does her work. 
  • The amateur believes he must first overcome his fear; then he can do his work. The professional knows that fear can never be overcome. He knows there is no such thing as a fearless warrior or a dread-free artist. 
  • The professional conducts his business in the real world. Adversity, injustice, bad hops and rotten calls, even good breaks and lucky bounces all comprise the ground over which the campaign must be waged. The field is level, the professional understands, only in heaven. 
  • A PROFESSIONAL DEDICATES HIMSELF TO MASTERING TECHNIQUE 
  • The professional respects his craft. He does not consider himself superior to it. He recognizes the contributions of those who have gone before him. He apprentices himself to them. 
  • The professional dedicates himself to mastering technique not because he believes technique is a substitute for inspiration but because he wants to be in possession of the full arsenal of skills when inspiration does come. The professional is sly. He knows that by toiling beside the front door of technique, he leaves room for genius to enter by the back. 
  • A PROFESSIONAL DOES NOT HESITATE TO ASK FOR HELP 
  • Tiger Woods is the consummate professional. It would never occur to him, as it would to an amateur, that he knows everything, or can figure everything out on his own. On the contrary, he seeks out the most knowledgeable teacher and listens with both ears. The student of the game knows that the levels of revelation that can unfold in golf, as in any art, are inexhaustible. 
  • The professional cannot take rejection personally because to do so reinforces Resistance. Editors are not the enemy; critics are not the enemy. Resistance is the enemy. The battle is inside our own heads. We cannot let external criticism, even if it’s true, fortify our internal foe. That foe is strong enough already. 
  • A professional schools herself to stand apart from her performance, even as she gives herself to it heart and soul. The Bhagavad-Gita tells us we have a right only to our labor, not to the fruits of our labor. All the warrior can give is his life; all the athlete can do is leave everything on the field. 
  • The professional loves her work. She is invested in it wholeheartedly. But she does not forget that the work is not her. Her artistic self contains many works and many performances. Already the next is percolating inside her. The next will be better, and the one after that better still. 
  • The professional cannot let himself take humiliation personally. Humiliation, like rejection and criticism, is the external reflection of internal Resistance. 
  • First, he didn’t react reflexively. He didn’t allow an act that by all rights should have provoked an automatic response of rage to actually produce that rage. He controlled his reaction. He governed his emotion. 
  • What he did do was maintain his sovereignty over the moment. He understood that, no matter what blow had befallen him from an outside agency, he himself still had his job to do, the shot he needed to hit right here, right now. And he knew that it remained within his power to produce that shot. Nothing stood in his way except whatever emotional upset he himself chose to hold on to. Tiger’s mother, Kultida, is a Buddhist. Perhaps from her he had learned compassion, to let go of fury at the heedlessness of an overzealous shutter- clicker. In any event Tiger Woods, the ultimate professional, vented his anger quickly with a look, then recomposed himself and returned to the task at hand. 
  • The professional cannot allow the actions of others to define his reality. 
  • Tomorrow morning the critic will be gone, but the writer will still be there facing the blank page. Nothing matters but that he keep working. 
  • Tomorrow morning the critic will be gone, but the writer will still be there facing the blank page. Nothing matters but that he keep working. Short of a family crisis or the outbreak of World War III, the professional shows up, ready to serve the gods. 
  • Remember, Resistance wants us to cede sovereignty to others. It wants us to stake our self-worth, our identity, our reason-for-being, on the response of others to our work. Resistance knows we can’t take this. No one can. 
  • The professional learns to recognize envy-driven criticism and to take it for what it is: the supreme compliment. The critic hates most that which he would have done himself if he had had the guts. 
  • A PROFESSIONAL RECOGNIZES HER LIMITATIONS She gets an agent, she gets a lawyer, she gets an accountant. She knows she can only be a professional at one thing. She brings in other pros and treats them with respect. 
  • A PROFESSIONAL REINVENTS HIMSELF 
  • The professional does not permit himself to become hidebound within one incarnation, however comfortable or successful. Like a transmigrating soul, he shucks his outworn body and dons a new one. He continues his journey. 
  • Making yourself a corporation (or just thinking of yourself in that way) reinforces the idea of professionalism because it separates the artist-doing-the-work from the will-and- consciousness-running-the-show. No matter how much abuse is heaped on the head of the former, the latter takes it in stride and keeps on trucking. Conversely with success: You-the-writer may get a swelled head, but you-the-boss remember how to take yourself down a peg. 
  • Have you ever worked in an office? Then you know about Monday morning status meetings. The group assembles in the conference room and the boss goes over what assignments each team member is responsible for in the coming week. When the meeting breaks up, an assistant prepares a work sheet and distributes it. When this hits your desk an hour later, you know exactly what you have to do that week. I have one of those meetings with myself every Monday. I sit down and go over my assignments. Then I type it up and distribute it to myself. I have corporate stationery and corporate business cards and a corporate checkbook. I write off corporate expenses and pay corporate taxes. I have different credit cards for myself and my corporation. 
  • If we think of ourselves as a corporation, it gives us a healthy distance on ourselves. We’re less subjective. We don’t take blows as personally. We’re more cold-blooded; we can price our wares more realistically. Sometimes, as Joe Blow himself, I’m too mild-mannered to go out and sell. But as Joe Blow, Inc., I can pimp the hell out of myself. I’m not me anymore. I’m Me, Inc. 
  • The first duty is to sacrifice to the gods and pray them to grant you the thoughts, words, and deeds likely to render your command most pleasing to the gods and to bring yourself, your friends, and your city the fullest measure of affection and glory and advantage. –Xenophon, The Cavalry Commander 
  • If it does, you have my permission to think of angels in the abstract. Consider these forces as being impersonal as gravity. Maybe they are. It’s not hard to believe, is it, that a force exists in every grain and seed to make it grow? Or that in every kitten or colt is an instinct that impels it to run and play and learn. 
  • Here’s Socrates, in Plato’s Phaedrus, on the “noble effect of heaven-sent madness”: The third type of possession and madness is possession by the Muses. When this seizes upon a gentle and virgin soul it rouses it to inspired expression in lyric and other sorts of poetry, and glorifies countless deeds of the heroes of old for the instruction of posterity. But if a man comes to the door of poetry untouched by the madness of the Muses, believing that technique alone will make him a good poet, he and his sane compositions never reach perfection, but are utterly eclipsed by the performances of the inspired madman. 
  • Our ancestors were keenly cognizant of forces and energies whose seat was not in this material sphere but in a loftier, more mysterious one. What did they believe about this higher reality? First, they believed that death did not exist there. The gods are immortal. The gods, though not unlike humans, are infinitely more powerful. To defy their will is futile. To act toward heaven with pride is to call down calamity. Time and space display an altered existence in this higher dimension. The gods travel “swift as thought.” They can tell the future, some of them, and though the playwright Agathon tells us, This alone is denied to God: the power to undo the past yet the immortals can play tricks with time, as we ourselves may sometimes, in dreams or visions. The universe, the Greeks believed, was not indifferent. The gods take an interest in human affairs, and intercede for good or ill in our designs. The contemporary view is that all this is charming but preposterous. Is it? Then answer this. Where did Hamlet come from? Where did the Parthenon come from? Where did Nude Descending a Staircase come from? 
  • I’ll take Xenophon at his word; before I sit down to work, I’ll take a minute and show respect to this unseen Power who can make or break me. 
  • Artists have invoked the Muse since time immemorial. There is great wisdom to this. There is magic to effacing our human arrogance and humbly entreating help from a source we cannot see, hear, touch, or smell. 
    • A good habit to build
  • Sustain for me. Homer doesn’t ask for brilliance or success. He just wants to keep this thing going. This song. That about covers it. From The Brothers Karamazov to your new venture in the plumbing-supply business. 
  • I admire particularly the warning against the second crime, to destroy for meat the oxen of the most exalted Sun. That’s the felony that calls down soul-destruction: the employment of the sacred for profane means. Prostitution. Selling out. 
  • Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation) there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would not otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favour all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance which no man would have dreamed would come his way. I have learned a deep respect for one of Goethe’s couplets: “Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, magic, and power in it. Begin it now.” — W. H. Murray, The Scottish Himalayan Expedition 
  • When I finish a day’s work, I head up into the hills for a hike. I take a pocket tape recorder because I know that as my surface mind empties with the walk, another part of me will chime in and start talking. 
  • What does it tell us about the architecture of our psyches that, without our exerting effort or even thinking about it, some voice in our head pipes up to counsel us (and counsel us wisely) on how to do our work and live our lives? Whose voice is it? What software is grinding away, scanning gigabytes, while we, our mainstream selves, are otherwise occupied? 
  • The principle of organization is built into nature. Chaos itself is self-organizing. Out of primordial disorder, stars find their orbits; rivers make their way to the sea. 
  • How do we experience this? By having ideas. Insights pop into our heads while we’re shaving or taking a shower or even, amazingly, while we’re actually working. The elves behind this are smart. If we forget something, they remind us. If we veer off-course, they trim the tabs and steer us back. 
  • What can we conclude from this? Clearly some intelligence is at work, independent of our conscious mind and yet in alliance with it, processing our material for us and alongside us. 
  • The power to take charge was in my hands; all I had to do was believe it. 
  • You’re supposed to learn that things that you think are nothing, as weightless as air, are actually powerful substantial forces, as real and as solid as earth. 
  • The moment a person learns he’s got terminal cancer, a profound shift takes place in his psyche. At one stroke in the doctor’s office he becomes aware of what really matters to him. Things that sixty seconds earlier had seemed all- important suddenly appear meaningless, while people and concerns that he had till then dismissed at once take on supreme importance. 
  • Other thoughts occur to the patient diagnosed as terminal. What about that gift he had for music? What became of the passion he once felt to work with the sick and the homeless? Why do these unlived lives return now with such power and poignancy? 
  • Faced with our imminent extinction, Tom Laughlin believes, all assumptions are called into question. What does our life mean? Have we lived it right? Are there vital acts we’ve left unperformed, crucial words unspoken? Is it too late? 
  • The Ego, Jung tells us, is that part of the psyche that we think of as “I.” Our conscious intelligence. Our everyday brain that thinks, plans and runs the show of our day-to-day life. The Self, as Jung defined it, is a greater entity, which includes the Ego but also incorporates the Personal and Collective Unconscious. Dreams and intuitions come from the Self. The archetypes of the unconscious dwell there. It is, Jung believed, the sphere of the soul. 
  • Have you ever wondered why the slang terms for intoxication are so demolition-oriented? Stoned, smashed, hammered. It’s because they’re talking about the Ego. It’s the Ego that gets blasted, waxed, plastered. We demolish the Ego to get to the Self. 
  • The instinct that pulls us toward art is the impulse to evolve, to learn, to heighten and elevate our consciousness. The Ego hates this. Because the more awake we become, the less we need the Ego. 
  • These are serious fears. But they’re not the real fear. Not the Master Fear, the Mother of all Fears that’s so close to us that even when we verbalize it we don’t believe it. Fear That We Will Succeed. 
  • We know that if we embrace our ideals, we must prove worthy of them. And that scares the hell out of us. What will become of us? We will lose our friends and family, who will no longer recognize us. We will wind up alone, in the cold void of starry space, with nothing and no one to hold on to. 
  • Personally I’m with Wordsworth: Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: The soul that rises with us, our life’s star, Hath had elsewhere its setting, And cometh from afar: Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come, From God who is our home. 
  • Our job in this lifetime is not to shape ourselves into some ideal we imagine we ought to be, but to find out who we already are and become it. 
  • In the animal kingdom, individuals define themselves in one of two ways — by their rank within a hierarchy (a hen in a pecking order, a wolf in a pack) or by their connection to a territory (a home base, a hunting ground, a turf). 
  • We thrash around, flashing our badges of status (Hey, how do you like my Lincoln Navigator?) and wondering why nobody gives a shit. 
  • We have entered Mass Society. The hierarchy is too big. It doesn’t work anymore. 
  • But the artist cannot look to others to validate his efforts or his calling. If you don’t believe me, ask Van Gogh, who produced masterpiece after masterpiece and never found a buyer in his whole life. 
  • In other words, the hack writes hierarchically. He writes what he imagines will play well in the eyes of others. He does not ask himself, What do I myself want to write? What do I think is important? Instead he asks, What’s hot, what can I make a deal for? 
  • The artist and the mother are vehicles, not originators. They don’t create the new life, they only bear it. This is why birth is such a humbling experience. The new mom weeps in awe at the little miracle in her arms. She knows it came out of her but not from her, through her but not of her. 
  • Instead let’s ask ourselves like that new mother: What do I feel growing inside me? Let me bring that forth, if I can, for its own sake and not for what it can do for me or how it can advance my standing. 
  • Here’s another test. Of any activity you do, ask yourself: If I were the last person on earth, would I still do it? 
  • Someone once asked the Spartan king Leonidas to identify the supreme warrior virtue from which all others flowed. He replied: “Contempt for death.” For us as artists, read “failure.” Contempt for failure is our cardinal virtue. By confining our attention territorially to our own thoughts and actions — in other words, to the work and its demands — we cut the earth from beneath the blue-painted, shield-banging, spear-brandishing foe. 
  • When Krishna instructed Arjuna that we have a right to our labor but not to the fruits of our labor, he was counseling the warrior to act territorially, not hierarchically. We must do our work for its own sake, not for fortune or attention or applause. 
  • Then there’s the third way proffered by the Lord of Discipline, which is beyond both hierarchy and territory. That is to do the work and give it to Him. Do it as an offering to God. Give the act to me. Purged of hope and ego, Fix your attention on the soul. Act and do for me. The work comes from heaven anyway. Why not give it back? 
  • Creative work is not a selfish act or a bid for attention on the part of the actor. It’s a gift to the world and every being in it. Don’t cheat us of your contribution. Give us what you’ve got. 
    • Put this somewhere that you can see it.
Posted on

The Philip K Dick Anthology

Author: Philip K. Dick
Rating: 4/5
Last Read: December 2014
Who Should Read: Sci-fi fans, short story fans

The Philip K. Dick Anthology is a collection of thirteen short stories by the famed sci-fi writer Philip K. Dick. Many of his stories have been turned into movies such as Total Recall, Minority Report, and Blade Runner.

This collection contains a different list of stories than those in the Selected Stories of Philip K. Dick. The thirteen included stories are:

  • “The Eyes Have It”
  • “Beyond the Door”
  • “Beyond Lies the Wub”
  • “Mr. Spaceship”
  • “The Skull”
  • “The Crystal Crypt”
  • “The Defenders”
  • “The Hanging Stranger”
  • “The Gun”
  • “Tony and the Beetles”
  • “The Variable Man”
  • “Piper in the Woods”
  • “Second Variety”

My Highlights

Apparently in my first pass through I was only struck by a single passage, but it is a beautiful one:

find in your Odysseus a figure common to the mythology of most self-conscious races. As I interpret it, Odysseus wanders as an individual, aware of himself as such. This is the idea of separation, of separation from family and country. The process of individuation.”
“But Odysseus returns to his home.” Peterson looked out the port window, at the stars, endless stars, burning intently in the empty universe. “Finally he goes home.”
“As must all creatures. The moment of separation is a temporary period, a brief journey of the soul. It begins, it ends. The wanderer returns to land and race….”

Posted on

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Author: Philip K. Dick
Rating: 4/5
Last Read: November 2014
Who Should Read: Sci-fi fans, people who liked the movie Blade Runner

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, like many other Philip K. Dick stories, inspired the movie Blade Runner. Unlike the other movies-inspired-by-stories, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is a full novel, though you might find yourself finishing it in a single sitting as if it were a short story.

The novel and the movie are markedly different, but do share similarities. The main plot still follows a bounty hunter, Rick Deckard, who is tasked with retiring escaped androids. As with most Philip K. Dick stories, there is an exploration of an underlying theme about what it means to be human.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is an excellent entry point into the work of Philip K. Dick. You won’t be disappointed.

It is no good. I can’t do it. I can play the Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Trash Compactor Repairman Game, but I cannot turn it into a story at once puzzling, poignant, grotesque, philosophical, satirical, and fun. There is a very special way of doing this and the first step in its mastery involves being Philip K. Dick.

My Highlights

Empathy, evidently, existed only within the human community, whereas intelligence to some degree could be found throughout every phylum and order including the arachnida.

Because, ultimately, the empathic gift blurred the boundaries between hunter and victim, between the successful and the defeated. As in the fusion with Mercer, everyone ascended together

The tyranny of an object, he thought. It doesn’t know I exist. Like the androids, it had no ability to appreciate the existence of another.

But maybe she doesn’t know how to cook, he thought suddenly. Okay, I can do it; I’ll fix dinner for both of us. And I’ll show her how so she can do it in the future if she wants. She’ll probably want to, once I show her how; as near as I can make out, most women, even young ones like her, like to cook: it’s an instinct.

“I am your friend,” the old man said. “But you must go on as if I did not exist. Can you understand that?” He spread empty hands.
“No,” Rick said. “I can’t understand that. I need help.”
“How can I save you,” the old man said, “if I can’t save myself?” He smiled. “Don’t you see? There is no salvation.”

“You will be required to do wrong no matter where you go. It is the basic condition of life, to be required to violate your own identity. At some time, every creature which lives must do so. It is the ultimate shadow, the defeat of creation; this is the curse at work, the curse that feeds on all life. Everywhere in the universe.”

Do androids dream? Rick asked himself. Evidently; that’s why they occasionally kill their employers and flee here. A better life, without servitude.

Time and tide, he thought. The cycle of life. Ending in this, the last twilight. Before the silence of death. He perceived in this a micro-universe, complete.

She seemed more externally composed now. But still fundamentally frantic and tense. Yet, the dark fire waned; the life force oozed out of her, as he had so often witnessed before with other androids. The classic resignation. Mechanical, intellectual acceptance of that which a genuine organism—with two billion years of the pressure to live and evolve hagriding it—could never have reconciled itself to.

You have to be with other people, he thought. In order to live at all.

You can’t go back, he thought. You can’t go from people to nonpeople. In panic he thought, I’m dependent on them. Thank god they stayed.

“That’s because you’re a highly moral person. I’m not. I don’t judge, not even myself.”

Buy the Book

If you are interested in purchasing this book, you can support the website by using our Amazon affiliate link.

 
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Vol. 1 (of 6)

By Philip Dick

 

Posted on

Total Recall

Author:  Philip K. Dick
Rating: 5/5 (A most excellent short story)
Last Read: December 2014
Who Should Read: Sci-fi fans, short story fans, Total Recall movie fans

Fans of the movie Total Recall may not realize that it is based on a short story by the science fiction writer Philip K. Dick. This book is actually just a single short-story publication of “We Can Remember It For You Wholesale,” the work that inspired the movie.

This story is included in the collection Selected Stories of Philip K. Dick. That collection contains some of the best stories written throughout his career.

My Highlights

Was this the answer? After all, an illusion, no matter how convincing, remained nothing more than an illusion. At least objectively. But subjectively—quite the opposite entirely.

“You’re not accepting second best. The actual memory, with all its vagueness, omissions, and ellipses, not to say distortions—that’s second best.”

Buy the Book

If you are interested in purchasing this book, you can support the website by using our Amazon affiliate link.

 
Total Recall (Kindle Single)

By Philip K. Dick

 

Posted on

Into Africa: The Epic Adventures of Stanley and Livingstone

Author: Martin Dugard
Rating: 3/5 (Good and enjoyable book, but not life changing)
Last Read: November 2014
Who Should Read: Those who enjoy lightweight historical books; those interested in the 1800s age of exploration and the exploration of Africa by Europeans

I picked up Into Africa during an Amazon Kindle book sale. I didn’t really have any reason to read about Stanley and Livingstone, other than the fact that they were two famous names that I knew very little about. 

This book primarily covers the exploration for the source fo the Nile river. Great Britain asked Dr. Livingstone to explore and find the source. Only a few weeks after embarking, his expedition vanished without a trace. Stanley, a journalist, was sent into Africa in search of Livingstone as part of a plan to capitalize on the world’s obsession over Livingstone’s disappearance. The book’s chapters alternate between Stanley and Livingstone, and we see how the story unfolded for both.

Into Africa: The Epic Adventures of Stanley and Livingstone is an engrossing lightweight nonfiction read about two historic men. The author also does a great job at painting the scene and us a glimpse into the time period. I learned quite a bit while reading this book, especially about the Arab slave trade (something I had never heard about before).

My Highlights

“The effect of travel on a man whose heart is in the right place is that the mind is made more self-reliant: It becomes more confident of its own resources—there is greater presence of mind.

“No one,” he once wrote, “can truly appreciate the charm of repose unless he has undergone severe exertion.”

“We also rejoice in our sufferings,” Paul had written in his letter to the Romans in the middle of the first century, “because suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character hope. And hope does not disappoint us.”

Not only did Livingstone achieve more through kindness than Stanley had through rage, but by the time Livingstone had negotiated their way out of one problem or another, a hostile tribe or recalcitrant porter was often a new ally.

Buy the Book

If you are interested in purchasing this book, you can support the website by using our Amazon affiliate link.

 
Into Africa: The Epic Adventures of Stanley and Livingstone

By Martin Dugard

 

Posted on

Old Man’s War

Author: John Scalzi
Rating: 8/10
Last Read: 12/2014

Old Man’s War is an excellent science fiction novel with some thought provoking aspects to it. The novel is set in man’s future, where we have expanded to the stars. The interesting twist of the book is that the Colonial Defense Force (CDF) recruits soldiers from the elderly population: 65 and up. Although they are not sure why old farts are wanted, they eventually find their minds transferred into genetically engineered super-soldier bodies. Their new lease on life comes at the cost of serving in the CDF’s ongoing wars, however.

The overall concept is interesting, and I certainly haven’t read another sci-fi book with this particular theme. I highly recommend Old Man’s War for sci-fi lovers.

P.S.: The first book is the best in the trilogy, but I also enjoyed the two novels that follow Old Man’s War.

My Highlights

Kathy’s marker has her name (Katherine Rebecca Perry), her dates, and the words: BELOVED WIFE AND MOTHER. I read those words over and over every time I visit. I can’t help it; they are four words that so inadequately and so perfectly sum up a life. The phrase tells you nothing about her, about how she met each day or how she worked, about what her interests were or where she liked to travel. You’d never know what her favorite color was, or how she liked to wear her hair, or how she voted, or what her sense of humor was. You’d know nothing about her except that she was loved. And she was. She’d think that was enough.

For as much as I hate the cemetery, I’ve been grateful it’s here, too. I miss my wife. It’s easier to miss her at a cemetery, where she’s never been anything but dead, than to miss her in all the places where she was alive.

The problem with aging is not that it’s one damn thing after another—it’s every damn thing, all at once, all the time.

“I didn’t mind getting old when I was young, either,” I said. “It’s the being old now that’s getting to me.”

“What is the weak point of the human body?” Ruiz asked as he circled around our platoon. “It’s not the heart, or the brain, or the feet, or anywhere you think it is. I’ll tell you what it is. It’s the blood, and that’s bad news because your blood is everywhere in your body. It carries oxygen, but it also carries disease. When you’re wounded, blood clots, but often not fast enough to keep you from dying of blood loss. Although when it comes down to it, what everyone really dies of is oxygen deprivation—from blood being unavailable because it’s spewed out on the fucking ground where it doesn’t do you a goddamned bit of good.

“What is it like when you lose someone you love?” Jane asked.
“You die, too,” I said. “And you wait around for your body to catch up.”

“Is that what you’re doing now?” Jane said. “Waiting for your body to catch up, I mean.”
“No, not anymore,” I said. “You eventually get to live again. You just live a different life, is all.”

“I’m not insane, sir,” I said. “I have a finely calibrated sense of acceptable risk.”

Buy the Book

If you are interested in purchasing this book, you can support the website by using our Amazon affiliate link:

 
Old Man’s War

By John Scalzi

 

Posted on

Do the Work

Author: Steven Pressfield
Recommended for: Anyone working on a creative or entrepreneurial endeavor
Last Read: June 2014, October 2019

Quick Summary:

I had ready many of Steven Pressfield’s novels before I had discovered his works  on the creative spirit.  Do the Work is a short read that discusses the role of Resistance in the projects that we tackle.  Pressfield shares anecdotes and provides motivation for pushing past resistance, doing the work, and shipping whatever you’re working on.

While a little woo-woo and out there, I must admit that Do the Work has opened my eyes to the role that Resistance plays in my life.  I have streamlined my processes, separated research and action, and committed doing the work. With results like that, I can’t knock the woo-woo side.

For those interested in creating or producing something, read this book. If you like the book, you can follow it up with The War of Art.

On the field of the Self stand a knight and a dragon.   You are the knight. Resistance is the dragon.

I was thirty years old before I had an actual thought. Everything up till then was either what Buddhists call “monkey-mind” chatter or the reflexive regurgitation of whatever my parents or teachers said, or whatever I saw on the news or read in a book, or heard somebody rap about, hanging around the street corner. 

Key Lessons:

  • The best way to combat Resistance is to commit yourself to doing your work without fail. Show up, every day, like a professional. 
  • Don’t let anything delay you from taking action, because that’s how Resistance creeps in. Act, then revise. Bias yourself toward action.

My Highlights

Italicized sub-bullet comments are mine.

  • On the field of the Self stand a knight and a dragon.   You are the knight. Resistance is the dragon. 
  • Resistance cannot be seen, heard, touched, or smelled. But it can be felt. We experience it as an energy field radiating from a work-in-potential. 
  • Rule of thumb: The more important a call or action is to our soul’s evolution, the more Resistance we will feel toward pursuing it. 
  • Bad things happen when we employ rational thought, because rational thought comes from the ego. Instead, we want to work from the Self, that is, from instinct and intuition, from the unconscious. 
  • The problem with friends and family is that they know us as we are. They are invested in maintaining us as we are. The last thing we want is to remain as we are. 
  • Ignorance and arrogance are the artist and entrepreneur’s indispensable allies. She must be clueless enough to have no idea how difficult her enterprise is going to be—and cocky enough to believe she can pull it off anyway. 
  • A child has no trouble believing the unbelievable, nor does the genius or the madman. It’s only you and I, with our big brains and our tiny hearts, who doubt and overthink and hesitate. 
  • Don’t think. Act. We can always revise and revisit once we’ve acted. But we can accomplish nothing until we act. 
  • Once we commit to action, the worst thing we can do is to stop. 
  • There’s an exercise that Patricia Ryan Madson describes in her wonderful book, Improv Wisdom. (Ms. Madson taught improvisational theater at Stanford to standing-room only classes for twenty years.) Here’s the exercise: Imagine a box with a lid. Hold the box in your hand. Now open it. What’s inside? It might be a frog, a silk scarf, a gold coin of Persia. But here’s the trick: no matter how many times you open the box, there is always something in it. Ask me my religion. That’s it. I believe with unshakeable faith that there will always be something in the box. 
  • Fear saps passion. When we conquer our fears, we discover a boundless, bottomless, inexhaustible well of passion.
  • When art and inspiration and success and fame and money have come and gone, who still loves us—and whom do we love? Only two things will remain with us across the river: our inhering genius and the hearts we love. 
  • Don’t prepare. Begin. Remember, our enemy is not lack of preparation; it’s not the difficulty of the project or the state of the marketplace or the emptiness of our bank account. The enemy is Resistance. 
  • Good things happen when we start before we’re ready. For one thing, we show huevos. Our blood heats up. Courage begets more courage. The gods, witnessing our boldness, look on in approval. 
  • Before we begin, you wanna do research? Uh-unh. I’m putting you on a diet. You’re allowed to read three books on your subject. No more. No underlining, no highlighting, no thinking or talking about the documents later. Let the ideas percolate. Let the unconscious do its work. 
  • Research can become Resistance. We want to work, not prepare to work. 
  • The creative act is primitive. Its principles are of birth and genesis. Babies are born in blood and chaos; stars and galaxies come into being amid the release of massive primordial cataclysms. Conception occurs at the primal level. I’m not being facetious when I stress, throughout this book, that it is better to be primitive than to be sophisticated, and better to be stupid than to be smart. 
  • If you and I want to do great stuff, we can’t let ourselves work small. A home-run swing that results in a strikeout is better than a successful bunt or even a line-drive single. 
  • Steve, God made a single sheet of yellow foolscap exactly the right length to hold the outline of an entire novel. 
  • He meant don’t overthink. Don’t overprepare. Don’t let research become Resistance. Don’t spend six months compiling a thousand-page tome detailing the emotional matrix and family history of every character in your book. Outline it fast. Now. On instinct. 
  • Discipline yourself to boil down your story/new business/philanthropic enterprise to a single page. 
  • Three-Act Structure Break the sheet of foolscap into three parts: beginning, middle, and end. This is how screenwriters and playwrights work. Act One, Act Two, Act Three. 
  • Here’s a trick that screenwriters use: work backwards. Begin at the finish. 
  • If you’re writing a movie, solve the climax first. If you’re opening a restaurant, begin with the experience you want the diner to have when she walks in and enjoys a meal. If you’re preparing a seduction, determine the state of mind you want the process of romancing to bring your lover to. Figure out where you want to go; then work backwards from there. 
  • Yes, you say. “But how do I know where I want to go?” Answer the Question “What Is This About?” Start with the theme. What is this project about? 
  • Have you ever meditated? Then you know what it feels like to shift your consciousness to a witnessing mode and to watch thoughts arise, float across your awareness, and then drift away, to be replaced by the next thought and the thought after that. These are not thoughts. They are chatter. 
  • I was thirty years old before I had an actual thought. Everything up till then was either what Buddhists call “monkey-mind” chatter or the reflexive regurgitation of whatever my parents or teachers said, or whatever I saw on the news or read in a book, or heard somebody rap about, hanging around the street corner. 
  • Pay no attention to those rambling, disjointed images and notions that drift across the movie screen of your mind. Those are not your thoughts. They are chatter. They are Resistance. 
  • Chatter is Resistance. Its aim is to reconcile you to “the way it is,” to make you exactly like everyone else, to render you amenable to societal order and discipline. 
  • Where do our own real thoughts come from? How can we access them? From what source does our true, authentic self speak? Answering that is the work you and I will do for the rest of our lives. 
    • This is a purpose to latch onto
  • We’ve got our concept, we’ve got our theme. We know our start. We know where we want to finish. We’ve got our project in three acts on a single sheet of foolscap. Ready to roll? We need only to remember our three mantras: Stay primitive. Trust the soup. Swing for the seats. And our final-final precept: 4. Be ready for Resistance.
  • David Lean famously declared that a feature film should have seven or eight major sequences. That’s a pretty good guideline for our play, our album, our State of the Union address. 
  • Do research early or late. Don’t stop working. Never do research in prime working time. 
  • One trick they use is to boil down their presentation to the following: A killer opening scene Two major set pieces in the middle A killer climax A concise statement of the theme In other words, they’re filling in the gaps. The major beats. 
  • One rule for first full working drafts: get them done ASAP. Don’t worry about quality. Act, don’t reflect. Momentum is everything. 
  • Unless you’re building a sailboat or the Taj Mahal, I give you a free pass to screw up as much as you like. The inner critic? His ass is not permitted in the building. Set forth without fear and without self-censorship. When you hear that voice in your head, blow it off. This draft is not being graded. There will be no pop quiz. Only one thing matters in this initial draft: get SOMETHING done, however flawed or imperfect. You are not allowed to judge yourself. 
  • Nothing is more fun than turning on the recorder and hearing your own voice telling you a fantastic idea that you had completely forgotten you had. 
  • Let’s talk about the actual process—the writing/composing/ idea generation process. It progresses in two stages: action and reflection. Act, reflect. Act, reflect. NEVER act and reflect at the same time. 
    • A principle of creation
  • Forget rational thought. Play. Play like a child. Why does this purely instinctive, intuitive method work? Because our idea (our song, our ballet, our new Tex-Mex restaurant) is smarter than we are. 
  • Our job is not to control our idea; our job is to figure out what our idea is (and wants to be)—and then bring it into being. 
  • When an idea pops into our head and we think, “No, this is too crazy,” … that’s the idea we want. When we think, “This notion is completely off the wall … should I even take the time to work on this?” … the answer is yes. Never doubt the soup. Never say no. The answer is always yes. 
  • At least twice a week, I pause in the rush of work and have a meeting with myself. (If I were part of a team, I’d call a team meeting.) I ask myself, again, of the project: “What is this damn thing about?” Keep refining your understanding of the theme; keep narrowing it down. 
  • Paddy Chayefsky famously said, “As soon as I figure out the theme of my play, I write it down on a thin strip of paper and Scotch-tape it to the front of my typewriter. After that, nothing goes into that play that isn’t on-theme.”
  • We have been conditioned to imagine that the darkness that we see in the world and feel in our own hearts is only an illusion, which can be dispelled by the proper care, the proper love, the proper education, and the proper funding. It can’t. There is an enemy. There is an intelligent, active, malign force working against us. Step one is to recognize this. This recognition alone is enormously powerful. It saved my life, and it will save yours.
  • Principle Number Two: This Enemy Is Implacable The hostile, malicious force that we’re experiencing now is not a joke. It is not to be trifled with or taken lightly. It is for real. In the words of my dear friend Rabbi Mordecai Finley: “It will kill you. It will kill you like cancer.” This enemy is intelligent, protean, implacable, inextinguishable, and utterly ruthless and destructive. 
  • Pat Riley, when he was coach of the Lakers, had a term for all those off-court forces, like fame and ego (not to mention crazed fans, the press, agents, sponsors, and ex-wives), that worked against the players’ chances for on-court success. He called these forces “peripheral opponents.”
  • Resistance is not a peripheral opponent. It does not arise from rivals, bosses, spouses, children, terrorists, lobbyists, or political adversaries. It comes from us. 
  • The fourth axiom of Resistance is that the enemy is inside you, but it is not you. 
  • The enemy is in you, but it is not you. No moral judgment attaches to the possession of it. You “have” Resistance the same way you “have” a heartbeat. You are blameless. You retain free will and the capacity to act. 
  • On the field of the Self stand a knight and a dragon. You are the knight. Resistance is the dragon. There is no way to be nice to the dragon, or to reason with it or negotiate with it or beam a white light around it and make it your friend. The dragon belches fire and lives only to block you from reaching the gold of wisdom and freedom, which it has been charged to guard to its final breath. The only intercourse possible between the knight and the dragon is battle. The contest is life-and-death, mano a mano. It asks no quarter and gives none. This is the fifth principle of Resistance. 
    • I know the truth of this, deep in my bones
  • The sixth principle of Resistance (and the key to overcoming it) is that Resistance arises second. What comes first is the idea, the passion, the dream of the work we are so excited to create that it scares the hell out of us. 
  • Resistance is the response of the frightened, petty, small-time ego to the brave, generous, magnificent impulse of the creative self. 
  • It means that before the dragon of Resistance reared its ugly head and breathed fire into our faces, there existed within us a force so potent and life-affirming that it summoned this beast into being, perversely, to combat it. 
  • In myths and legends, the knight is always aided in his quest to slay the dragon. Providence brings forth a champion whose role is to assist the hero. Theseus had Ariadne when he fought the Minotaur. Jason had Medea when he went after the Golden Fleece. Odysseus had the goddess Athena to guide him home. In Native American myths, our totemic ally is often an animal—a magic raven, say, or a talking coyote. In Norse myths, an old crone sometimes assists the hero; in African legends, it’s often a bird. The three Wise Men were guided by a star. All of these characters or forces represent Assistance. They are symbols for the unmanifested. They stand for a dream. The dream is your project, your vision, your symphony, your startup. The love is the passion and enthusiasm that fill your heart when you envision your project’s completion. 
  • Test Number One “How bad do you want it?” This is Resistance’s first question. The scale below will help you answer. Mark the selection that corresponds to how you feel about your book/movie/ballet/new business/whatever.   Dabbling • Interested • Intrigued but Uncertain • Passionate • Totally Committed   If your answer is not the one on the far right, put this book down and throw it away. 
  • Test Number Two “Why do you want it?” 
  • Because I have no choice 
  • Did you ever see Cool Hand Luke? Remember “the Box”? You don’t get to keep anything when you enter this space. You must check at the door: Your ego Your sense of entitlement Your impatience Your fear Your hope Your anger You must also leave behind:   All grievances related to aspects of yourself dependent on the accident of birth, e.g., how neglected/abused/ mistreated/unloved/poor/ill-favored etc. you were when you were born. All sense of personal exceptionalness dependent on the accident of birth, e.g., how rich/cute/tall/thin/smart/charming/loveable you were when you were born. All of the previous two, based on any subsequent (i.e., post-birth) acquisition of any of these qualities, however honorably or meritoriously earned. The only items you get to keep are love for the work, will to finish, and passion to serve the ethical, creative Muse. 
  • The Big Crash is so predictable, across all fields of enterprise, that we can practically set our watches by it. Bank on it. It’s gonna happen. 
    • The trough of sorrow in startup-speak
  • There’s a difference between Navy SEAL training and what you and I are facing now. Our ordeal is harder. Because we’re alone. We’ve got no trainers over us, shouting in our ears or kicking our butts to keep us going. We’ve got no friends, no fellow sufferers, no externally imposed structure. No one’s feeding us, housing us, or clothing us. We have no objective milestones or points of validation. We can’t tell whether we’re doing great or falling on our faces. When we finish, if we do, no one will be waiting to congratulate us. We’ll get no champagne, no beach party, no diploma, no insignia. The battle we’re fighting, we can’t explain to anybody or share with anybody or call in anybody to help. 
  • Crashes are hell, but in the end they’re good for us. A crash means we have failed. We gave it everything we had and we came up short. A crash does not mean we are losers. A crash means we have to grow. 
  • A crash means we’re at the threshold of learning something, which means we’re getting better, we’re acquiring the wisdom of our craft. A crash compels us to figure out what works and what doesn’t work—and to understand the difference. 
  • We got ourselves into this mess by mistakes we made at the start. How? Were we lazy? Inattentive? Did we mean well but forget to factor in human nature? Did we assess reality incorrectly? Whatever the cause, the Big Crash compels us to go back now and solve the problem that we either created directly or set into motion unwittingly at the outset. 
  • Creative panic is good. Here’s why: Our greatest fear is fear of success. 
  • When we experience panic, it means that we’re about to cross a threshold. We’re poised on the doorstep of a higher plane. 
  • In the belly of the beast, we remind ourselves of two axioms: The problem is not us. The problem is the problem. Work the problem. 
  • A professional does not take success or failure personally. That’s Priority Number One for us now. 
  • That our project has crashed is not a reflection of our worth as human beings. It’s just a mistake. It’s a problem—and a problem can be solved. 
  • I’m not trying to be cryptic or facetious. We went wrong at the start because the problem was so hard (and the act of solving it was so painful) that we ducked and dodged and bypassed. We hoped it would go away. We hoped it would solve itself. A little voice warned us then, but we were too smart to listen. The bad news is, the problem is hell. The good news is it’s just a problem. It’s not us. We are not worthless or evil or crazy. We’re just us, facing a problem. 
  • We ask our Big Question: “What’s missing?” 
  • No matter how great a writer, artist, or entrepreneur, he is a mortal, he is fallible. He is not proof against Resistance. He will drop the ball; he will crash. That’s why they call it rewriting. 
  • Why does Seth Godin place so much emphasis on “shipping”? Because finishing is the critical part of any project. If we can’t finish, all our work is for nothing. 
  • How hard is it to finish something? The greatest drama in the English language was written on this very subject. Hamlet knows he must kill his uncle for murdering his father. But then he starts to think—and the next thing you know, the poor prince is so self-befuddled, he’s ready to waste himself with a bare bodkin. 
  • When Michael Crichton approached the end of a novel (so I’ve read), he used to start getting up earlier and earlier in the morning. He was desperate to keep his mojo going. He’d get up at six, then five, then three-thirty and two-thirty, till he was driving his wife insane. Finally he had to move out of the house. He checked into a hotel (the Kona Village, which ain’t so bad) and worked around the clock till he’d finished the book. Michael Crichton was a pro. He knew that Resistance was strongest at the finish. He did what he had to do, no matter how nutty or unorthodox, to finish and be ready to ship. 
  • Marianne Williamson: Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others. 
  • That’s why we’re so afraid of it. When we ship, we’ll be judged. The real world will pronounce upon our work and upon us. When we ship, we can fail. When we ship, we can be humiliated. 
  • “You’re where you wanted to be, aren’t you? So you’re taking a few blows. That’s the price for being in the arena and not on the sidelines. Stop complaining and be grateful.” 
  • When we ship, we open ourselves to judgment in the real world. Nothing is more empowering, because it plants us solidly on Planet Earth and gets us out of our self-devouring, navel-centered fantasies and self-delusions. 
  • Slay that dragon once, and he will never have power over you again. Yeah, he’ll still be there. Yeah, you’ll still have to duel him every morning. And yeah, he’ll still fight just as hard and use just as many nasty tricks as he ever did. But you will have beaten him once, and you’ll know you can beat him again. That’s a game-changer. That will transform your life. 
  • From the day I finally finished something, I’ve never had trouble finishing anything again. I always deliver. I always ship. 
    • A standard we should live by
  • I stand in awe of anyone who hatches a dream and who shows the guts to hang tough, all alone, and see it through to reality. 
  • I tip my hat to you for what you’ve done—for losing forty pounds, for kicking crack cocaine, for surviving the loss of someone you love, for facing any kind of adversity—internal or external—and slogging through. I come to attention when you walk past. I stand up for you like the spectators in the gallery stood up for Atticus Finch in To Kill A Mockingbird. 
  • You have joined an elite fraternity, whether you realize it or not. By dint of your efforts and your perseverance, you have initiated yourself into an invisible freemasonry whose members are awarded no badges or insignia, share no secret handshake, and wear no funny-looking hats. But the fellows of this society recognize one another. I recognize you. I salute you. You can be proud of yourself. You’ve done something that millions talk about but only a handful actually perform. And if you can do it once, you can do it again. I don’t care if you fail with this project. I don’t care if you fail a thousand times. You have done what only mothers and gods do: you have created new life. 
  • Then get back to work. Begin the next one tomorrow. Stay stupid. Trust the soup. Start before you’re ready.
Posted on

Man’s Search for Meaning

Author: Viktor E. Frankl
Rating: 9/10
Last Read: May 2014

Quick Summary: Viktor Frankl was sent to a concentration camp during WWII.  He discusses his own experiences and those of fellow prisoners, and tries to find the reason that some were able to survive the harsh concentration camps, while others simply gave up and died.  This book is an excellent read and will shift your perspective on the value of having a purpose and a good mental attitude.  

Terrible as it was, his experience in Auschwitz reinforced what was already one of his key ideas: Life is not primarily a quest for pleasure, as Freud believed, or a quest for power, as Alfred Adler taught, but a quest for meaning.

One thing to note: I remember reading this in China while riding on the bus to Foxconn.  It’s incredibly hard to do work after reading Frankl’s descriptions of being in concentration camps and differentiating those who survived and those who didn’t.  Be aware of the material, and perhaps find a suitable time to read.  This is not bedtime reading material.

There is value is looking into the dark parts of the human condition.  In those parts one can truly find the appreciation for the positive aspects of life, the strength of the will, and the generosity of those whose spirit will not be bent and broken by the dark aspects of the world.

We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.

My Highlights

The forward echoes my own sentiments on the value of a good book:

Typically, if a book has one passage, one idea with the power to change a person’s life, that alone justifies reading it, rereading it, and finding room for it on one’s shelves. –loc 16

Nietzsche: “He who has a Why to live for can bear almost any How.” –loc 21

Frankl saw three possible sources for meaning: in work (doing something significant), in love (caring for another person), and in courage during difficult times. –loc 29

Suffering in and of itself is meaningless; we give our suffering meaning by the way in which we respond to it. –loc 30

Forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation. You cannot control what happens to you in life, but you can always control what you will feel and do about what happens to you. –loc 35

Frankl would have argued that we are never left with nothing as long as we retain the freedom to choose how we will respond. –loc 41

We have come to know Man as he really is. After all, man is that being who invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz; however, he is also that being who entered those gas chambers upright, with the Lord’s Prayer or the Shema Yisrael on his lips.
HAROLD S. KUSHNER
–loc 55

And now, to Frankl’s own words…

Whereupon I react by reporting that in the first place I do not at all see in the bestseller status of my book an achievement and accomplishment on my part but rather an expression of the misery of our time: if hundreds of thousands of people reach out for a book whose very title promises to deal with the question of a meaning to life, it must be a question that burns under their fingernails. –loc 65

“Don’t aim at success—the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one’s dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it. I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long run—in the long run, I say!—success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think of it.” –loc 81

it will try to answer this question: How was everyday life in a concentration camp reflected in the mind of the average prisoner? –loc 104

It is easy for the outsider to get the wrong conception of camp life, a conception mingled with sentiment and pity. Little does he know of the hard fight for existence which raged among the prisoners. This was an unrelenting struggle for daily bread and for life itself, for one’s own sake or for that of a good friend. –loc 114

Every man was controlled by one thought only: to keep himself alive for the family waiting for him at home, and to save his friends. With no hesitation, therefore, he would arrange for another prisoner, another “number,” to take his place in the transport. –loc 127

These former prisoners often say, “We dislike talking about our experiences. No explanations are needed for those who have been inside, and the others will understand neither how we felt then nor how we feel now.” –loc 139

In psychiatry there is a certain condition known as “delusion of reprieve.” The condemned man, immediately before his execution, gets the illusion that he might be reprieved at the very last minute. –loc 187

At that moment I saw the plain truth and did what marked the culminating point of the first phase of my psychological reaction: I struck out my whole former life. –loc 240

Apart from that strange kind of humor, another sensation seized us: curiosity. I have experienced this kind of curiosity before, as a fundamental reaction toward certain strange circumstances. When my life was once endangered by a climbing accident, I felt only one sensation at the critical moment: curiosity, curiosity as to whether I should come out of it alive or with a fractured skull or some other injuries. –loc 264

The prisoner of Auschwitz, in the first phase of shock, did not fear death. Even the gas chambers lost their horrors for him after the first few days—after all, they spared him the act of committing suicide. –loc 292

I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love. I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved. In a position of utter desolation, when man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way —an honorable way—in such a position man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfillment. –loc 528

I knew only one thing—which I have learned well by now: Love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved. It finds its deepest meaning in his spiritual being, his inner self. Whether or not he is actually present, whether or not he is still alive at all, ceases somehow to be of importance. –loc 541

The attempt to develop a sense of humor and to see things in a humorous light is some kind of a trick learned while mastering the art of living. –loc 610

To draw an analogy: a man’s suffering is similar to the behavior of gas. If a certain quantity of gas is pumped into an empty chamber, it will fill the chamber completely and evenly, no matter how big the chamber. Thus suffering completely fills the human soul and conscious mind, no matter whether the suffering is great or little. Therefore the “size” of human suffering is absolutely relative. –loc 611

(The consciousness of one’s inner value is anchored in higher, more spiritual things, and cannot be shaken by camp life. But how many free men, let alone prisoners, possess it?) –loc 839

Man can preserve a vestige of spiritual freedom, of independence of mind, even in such terrible conditions of psychic and physical stress. –loc 874

We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way. –loc 875

Dostoevski said once, “There is only one thing that I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings.” –loc 886

It can be said that they were worthy of their sufferings; the way they bore their suffering was a genuine inner achievement. It is this spiritual freedom—which cannot be taken away—that makes life meaningful and purposeful. –loc 888

An active life serves the purpose of giving man the opportunity to realize values in creative work, while a passive life of enjoyment affords him the opportunity to obtain fulfillment in experiencing beauty, art, or nature. But there is also purpose in that life which is almost barren of both creation and enjoyment and which admits of but one possibility of high moral behavior: namely, in man’s attitude to his existence, an existence restricted by external forces. A creative life and a life of enjoyment are banned to him. But not only creativeness and enjoyment are meaningful. If there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death human life cannot be complete. –loc 889

Everywhere man is confronted with fate, with the chance of achieving something through his own suffering. –loc 902

Take the fate of the sick—especially those who are incurable. I once read a letter written by a young invalid, in which he told a friend that he had just found out he would not live for long, that even an operation would be of no help. He wrote further that he remembered a film he had seen in which a man was portrayed who waited for death in a courageous and dignified way. The boy had thought it a great accomplishment to meet death so well. Now—he wrote—fate was offering him a similar chance. –loc 903

This young woman knew that she would die in the next few days. But when I talked to her she was cheerful in spite of this knowledge. “I am grateful that fate has hit me so hard,” she told me. “In my former life I was spoiled and did not take spiritual accomplishments seriously.” Pointing through the window of the hut, she said, “This tree here is the only friend I have in my loneliness.” Through that window she could see just one branch of a chestnut tree, and on the branch were two blossoms. “I often talk to this tree,” she said to me. I was startled and didn’t quite know how to take her words. Was she delirious? Did she have occasional hallucinations? Anxiously I asked her if the tree replied. “Yes.” What did it say to her? She answered, “It said to me, ‘I am here—I am here—I am life, eternal life.’” –loc 916

The unemployed worker, for example, is in a similar position. His existence has become provisional and in a certain sense he cannot live for the future or aim at a goal. –loc 936

Instead of taking the camp’s difficulties as a test of their inner strength, they did not take their life seriously and despised it as something of no consequence. They preferred to close their eyes and to live in the past. Life for such people became meaningless. –loc 955

What does Spinoza say in his Ethics? —“Affectus, qui passio est, desinit esse passio simulatque eius claram et distinctam formamus ideam.” Emotion, which is suffering, ceases to be suffering as soon as we form a clear and precise picture of it. –loc 978

Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual. –loc 1018

When a man finds that it is his destiny to suffer, he will have to accept his suffering as his task; his single and unique task. He will have to acknowledge the fact that even in suffering he is unique and alone in the universe. No one can relieve him of his suffering or suffer in his place. His unique opportunity lies in the way in which he bears his burden. –loc 1026

Long ago we had passed the stage of asking what was the meaning of life, a naïve query which understands life as the attaining of some aim through the active creation of something of value. For us, the meaning of life embraced the wider cycles of life and death, of suffering and of dying. –loc 1031

“Was Du erlebst, kann keine Macht der Welt Dir rauben.” (What you have experienced, no power on earth can take from –loc 1086

The body has fewer inhibitions than the mind. –loc 1156

Logotherapy focuses rather on the future, that is to say, on the meanings to be fulfilled by the patient in his future. (Logotherapy, indeed, is a meaning-centered psychotherapy.) –loc 1236

According to logotherapy, this striving to find a meaning in one’s life is the primary motivational force in man. –loc 1244

Man’s search for meaning is the primary motivation in his life and not a “secondary rationalization” of instinctual drives. This meaning is unique and specific in that it must and can be fulfilled by him alone; only then does it achieve a significance which will satisfy his own will to meaning. –loc 1248

The term “existential” may be used in three ways: to refer to (1) existence itself, i.e., the specifically human mode of being; (2) the meaning of existence; and (3) the striving to find a concrete meaning in personal existence, that is to say, the will to meaning. –loc 1268

A man’s concern, even his despair, over the worthwhileness of life is an existential distress but by no means a mental disease. –loc 1292

Thus it can be seen that mental health is based on a certain degree of tension, the tension between what one has already achieved and what one still ought to accomplish, or the gap between what one is and what one should become. –loc 1315

No instinct tells him what he has to do, and no tradition tells him what he ought to do; sometimes he does not even know what he wishes to do. Instead, he either wishes to do what other people do (conformism) or he does what other people wish him to do (totalitarianism). –loc 1335

The existential vacuum manifests itself mainly in a state of boredom. Now we can understand Schopenhauer when he said that mankind was apparently doomed to vacillate eternally between the two extremes of distress and boredom. –loc 1339

Let us consider, for instance, “Sunday neurosis,” that kind of depression which afflicts people who become aware of the lack of content in their lives when the rush of the busy week is over and the void within themselves becomes manifest. –loc 1343

This emphasis on responsibleness is reflected in the categorical imperative of logotherapy, which is: “Live as if you were living already for the second time and as if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now!” –loc 1371

Such a precept confronts him with life’s finiteness as well as the finality of what he makes out of both his life and himself. –loc 1374

By declaring that man is responsible and must actualize the potential meaning of his life, I wish to stress that the true meaning of life is to be discovered in the world rather than within man or his own psyche, as though it were a closed system. –loc 1385

It denotes the fact that being human always points, and is directed, to something, or someone, other than oneself—be it a meaning to fulfill or another human being to encounter. –loc 1387

The more one forgets himself—by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love—the more human he is and the more he actualizes himself. –loc 1388

Thus far we have shown that the meaning of life always changes, but that it never ceases to be. According to logotherapy, we can discover this meaning in life in three different ways: (1) by creating a work or doing a deed; (2) by experiencing something or encountering someone; and (3) by the attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering. –loc 1391

The second way of finding a meaning in life is by experiencing something—such as goodness, truth and beauty—by experiencing nature and culture or, last but not least, by experiencing another human being in his very uniqueness—by loving him. –loc 1394

Thus love is not understood as a mere side-effect of sex; rather, sex is a way of expressing the experience of that ultimate togetherness which is called love. –loc 1404

For what then matters is to bear witness to the uniquely human potential at its best, which is to transform a personal tragedy into a triumph, to turn one’s predicament into a human achievement. –loc 1408

When we are no longer able to change a situation—just think of an incurable disease such as inoperable cancer—we are challenged to change ourselves. –loc 1409

suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice. –loc 1416

“our current mental-hygiene philosophy stresses the idea that people ought to be happy, that unhappiness is a symptom of maladjustment. Such a value system might be responsible for the fact that the burden of unavoidable unhappiness is increased by unhappiness about being unhappy.” –loc 1425

I observed that procreation is not the only meaning of life, for then life in itself would become meaningless, and something which in itself is meaningless cannot be rendered meaningful merely by its perpetuation. –loc 1491

Logotherapy bases its technique called “paradoxical intention” on the twofold fact that fear brings about that which one is afraid of, and that hyper-intention makes impossible what one wishes. –loc 1544

Our generation is realistic, for we have come to know man as he really is. After all, man is that being who invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz; however, he is also that being who entered those gas chambers upright, with the Lord’s Prayer or the Shema Yisrael on his lips. –loc 1664

To the European, it is a characteristic of the American culture that, again and again, one is commanded and ordered to “be happy.” –loc 1714

One must have a reason to “be happy.” Once the reason is found, however, one becomes happy automatically. –loc 1716

Once an individual’s search for a meaning is successful, it not only renders him happy but also gives him the capability to cope with suffering. –loc 1725

Live as if you were living for the second time and had acted as wrongly the first time as you are about to act now. –loc 1857

From this one may see that there is no reason to pity old people. Instead, young people should envy them. It is true that the old have no opportunities, no possibilities in the future. But they have more than that. Instead of possibilities in the future, they have realities in the past—the potentialities they have actualized, the meanings they have fulfilled, the values they have realized—and nothing and nobody can ever remove these assets from the past. –loc 1864

Frankl was once asked to express in one sentence the meaning of his own life. He wrote the response on paper and asked his students to guess what he had written. After some moments of quiet reflection, a student surprised Frankl by saying, “The meaning of your life is to help others find the meaning of theirs.”
“That was it, exactly,” Frankl said. “Those are the very words I had written.” –loc 2057

Posted on

Why Don’t We Learn From History?

Author: B. H. Liddell Hart
Rating: 10/10
Last Read: June 2014

Quick Summary: This short read covers Hart’s opinion of how much we tend to misread history and how many lessons we fail to take away from it. The study of history provides experiences and lessons that an individual may not normally be able to draw from otherwise in life.  Hart shares some of the lessons he has learned, as well as provides his thoughts on the mindset needed to get the most out of historical lessons.

“Fools,” said Bismarck, “say they learn by experience. I prefer to profit by other people’s experience.”

My Highlights

Man seems to come into the this world with an inalterable belief that he knows best and that he can make others think as he does by force. –loc 87

People live by comfortable habit, we think and act more from habit than we do from reflection. Those who read history tend to look for what proves them right and confirms their personal opinions. –loc 115

Any successful institution, bureaucracy, bank, business, medical, legal protects itself from change to it own eventual destruction. ‘For where unification has been able to establish unity of ideas it has usually ended in uniformity, paralysing the growth of new ideas.’ It keeps doing what may or may not have at one time worked until it no longer works. –loc 120

“Fools,” said Bismarck, “say they learn by experience. I prefer to profit by other people’s experience.” –loc 136

Polybius. “There are two roads to the reformation for mankind, one through misfortunes of their own, the other through the misfortunes of others; the former is the most unmistakable, the latter the less painful . . . we should always look out for the latter, for thereby we can, without hurt to ourselves, gain a clearer view of the best course to pursue –loc 142

It helps us to realize that there are two forms of practical experience, direct and indirect and that, of the two, indirect practical experience may be the more valuable because infinitely wider. –loc 181

“History is universal experience,” the experience not of another but of many others under manifold conditions. –loc 187

And from all that the historian is led to realize how greatly the causation of events on which the fate of nations depends is ruled not by balanced judgment but by momentary currents of feeling, as well as by personal considerations of a low kind. –loc 223

Many documents are written to deceive or conceal. Moreover, the struggles that go on behind the scenes, and largely determine the issue, are rarely recorded in documents. –loc 227

Exploration should be objective, but selection is subjective. Its subjectiveness can, and should be, controlled by scientific method and objectiveness. Too many people go to history merely in search of texts for their sermons instead of facts for analysis. But after analysis comes art, to bring out the meaning and to ensure it becomes known. –loc 274

Adaptation to changing conditions is the condition of survival. –loc 283

The path of truth is paved with critical doubt and lighted by the spirit of objective inquiry. To view any question subjectively is self-blinding. –loc 297

Faith matters so much to a soldier, in the stress of war, that military training inculcates a habit of unquestioning obedience which in turn fosters an unquestioning acceptance of the prevailing doctrine. –loc 305

While fighting is a most practical test of theory, it is a small part of soldiering; and there is far more in soldiering that tends to make men the slaves of a theory. –loc 306

Doubt is unnerving save to philosophic minds, and armies are not composed of philosophers, either at the top or at the bottom. –loc 309

Lung Ming Academy, a motto that headed each page of the books used there: “The student must first learn to approach the subject in a spirit of doubt.” –loc 312

expressed in the eleventh-century teaching of Chang-Tsai: “If you can doubt at points where other people feel no impulse to doubt, then you are making progress.” –loc 314

We learn from history that in every age and every clime the majority of people have resented what seems in retrospect to have been purely matter-of-fact comment on their institutions. –loc 316

Always the tendency continues to be shocked by natural comment and to hold certain things too “sacred” to think about. –loc 319

I can conceive of no finer ideal of a man’s life than to face life with clear eyes instead of stumbling through it like a blind man, an imbecile, or a drunkard, which, in a thinking sense, is the common preference. –loc 320

How rarely does one meet anyone whose first reaction to anything is to ask “Is it true?” Yet unless that is a man’s natural reaction it shows that truth is not uppermost in his mind, and, unless it is, true progress is unlikely. –loc 321

‘Wahr ist was wirkt.’ (Anything that works is true.) –loc 331

History that bears the qualification “official” carries with it a natural reservation; and the additional prefix “military” is apt to imply a double reservation. –loc 332

Yet the longer I watch current events, the more I have come to see how many of our troubles arise from the habit, on all sides, of suppressing or distorting what we know quite well is the truth, out of devotion to a cause, an ambition, or an institution; at bottom, this devotion being inspired by our own interest. –loc 341

We learn from history that those who are disloyal to their own superiors are most prone to preach loyalty to their subordinates. Not many years ago there was a man who preached it so continually when in high position as to make it a catchword; that same man had been privately characterized by his chief, his colleague, and his assistant in earlier years as one who would swallow anything in order to get on. –loc 389

Loyalty is a noble quality, so long as it is not blind and does not exclude the higher loyalty to truth and decency. –loc 392

They are in a false relation to each other, and the loyalty which is then so much prized can be traced, if we probe deep enough, to an ultimate selfishness on either side. –loc 395

Truth may not be absolute, but it is certain that we are likely to come nearest to it if we search for it in a purely scientific spirit and analyse the facts with a complete detachment from all loyalties save that to truth itself. –loc 420

All of us do foolish things, but the wiser realize what they do. The most dangerous error is failure to recognize our own tendency to error. That failure is a common affliction of authority. –loc 432

the tendency of all “governments” is to infringe the standards of decency and truth; this is inherent in their nature and hardly avoidable in their practice. –loc 446

We learn from history that democracy has commonly put a premium on conventionality. By its nature, it prefers those who keep step with the slowest march of thought and frowns on those who may disturb the “conspiracy for mutual inefficiency.” –loc 450

There is always an “Inner Cabinet,” but usually it has no official constitution and might be more aptly described as an “Intimate Cabinet.” It is a fluid body. It may comprise those members of the actual Cabinet on whom the Prime Minister mainly relies or considers it essential to consult. But it may include men who have no ministerial position. For its constituent elements depend on the Prime Minister’s judgment, and choice, of the men whose opinions are most helpful and stimulating to him. The essential condition of membership is intimacy, not status. –loc 499

“Once you’ve behaved like a knave, you must never behave like a fool.” –loc 607

It is man’s power of thought which has generated the current of human progress through the ages. –loc 628

the thinking man must be against authoritarianism in any form, because it shows its fear of thoughts which do not suit momentary authority. –loc 629

Efficiency springs from enthusiasm, because this alone can develop a dynamic impulse. Enthusiasm is incompatible with compulsion, because it is essentially spontaneous. Compulsion is thus bound to deaden enthusiasm, because it dries up the source. The more an individual, or a nation, has been accustomed to freedom, the more deadening will be the effect of a change to compulsion. –loc 656

Moreover, every unwilling man is a germ carrier, spreading infection to an extent altogether disproportionate to the value of the service he is forced to contribute. –loc 665

As defined by Lord Lothian, in a letter to The Times in March 1938, it embodied the “allocation of every individual” to a particular form of service “whether in peace or in emergency.” It is being freshly urged now as an “educational” measure. –loc 697

Such a system entails the suppression of individual judgment. It violates the cardinal principle of a free community: that there should be no restriction of individual freedom save where this is used for active interference with others’ freedom. Our tradition of individual freedom is the slow-ripening fruit of centuries of effort. To surrender it within after fighting to defend it against dangers without would be a supremely ironical turn of our history. In respect of personal service, freedom means the right to be true to your convictions, to choose your course, and decide whether the cause is worth service and sacrifice. That is the difference between the free man and the state slave. –loc 699

Another false argument is that since conscription has long been the rule in the Continental countries, including those which remain democracies, we need not fear the effect of adopting –loc 714

Civilization is built on the practice of keeping promises. –loc 788

Any constructive effort and all human relations, personal, political, and commercial, depend on being able to depend on promises. –loc 789

I have come to think that accuracy, in the deepest sense, is the basic virtue, the foundation of understanding, supporting the promise of progress. The cause of most troubles can be traced to excess; the failure to check them to deficiency; their prevention lies in moderation. So in the case of troubles that develop from spoken or written communication, their cause can be traced to overstatement, their maintenance to understatement, while their prevention lies in exact statement. –loc 830

Sweeping judgments, malicious gossip, inaccurate statements which spread a misleading impression; these are symptoms of the moral and mental recklessness that gives rise to war. Studying their effect, one is led to see that the germs of war lie within ourselves, not in economics, politics, or religion as such. How can we hope to rid the world of war until we have cured ourselves of the originating causes? –loc 834

Where the two sides are too evenly matched to offer a reasonable chance of early success to either, the statesman is wise who can learn something from the psychology of strategy. It is an elementary principle of strategy that, if you find your opponent in a strong position costly to force, you should leave him a line of retreat as the quickest way of loosening his resistance. It should, equally, be a principle of policy, especially in war, to provide your opponent with a ladder by which he can climb down. –loc 917

War is only profitable if victory is quickly gained. Only an aggressor can hope to gain a quick victory. If he is frustrated, the war is bound to be long, and mutually ruinous, unless it is brought to an end by mutual agreement. –loc 923

Since an aggressor goes to war for gain, he is apt to be the more ready of the two sides to seek peace by agreement. The aggressed side is usually more inclined to seek vengeance through the pursuit of victory; even though all experience has shown that victory is a mirage in the desert created by a long war. –loc 925

The side that has suffered aggression would be unwise to bid for peace lest its bid be taken as a sign of weakness or fear. But it would be wise to listen to any bid that the enemy makes. –loc 929

The history of ancient Greece showed that, in a democracy, emotion dominates reason to a greater extent than in any other political system, thus giving freer rein to the passions which sweep a state into war and prevent it getting out at any point short of the exhaustion and destruction of one or other of the opposing sides. Democracy is a system which puts a break on preparation for war, aggressive or defensive, but it is not one that conduces to the limitation of warfare or the prospects of a good peace. No political system more easily becomes out of control when passions are aroused. These defects have been multiplied in modern democracies, since their great extension of size and their vast electorate produce a much larger volume of emotional pressure. –loc 935

It was because he really understood war that he became so good at securing peace. He was the least militaristic of soldiers and free from the lust of glory. It was because he saw the value of peace that he became so unbeatable in war. For he kept the end in view, instead of falling in love with the means. Unlike Napoleon, he was not infected by the romance of war, which generates illusions and self-deceptions. That was how Napoleon had failed and Wellington prevailed. –loc 951

Like most planning, unless of a mainly material kind, it breaks down through disregard of human nature. Worse still, the higher the hopes that are built on such a plan, the more likely that their collapse may precipitate war. –loc 984

There is no panacea for peace that can be written out in a formula like a doctor’s prescription. But one can set down a series of practical points; elementary principles drawn from the sum of human experience in all times. Study war and learn from its history. Keep strong, if possible. In any case, keep cool. Have unlimited patience. Never corner an opponent and always assist him to save his face. Put yourself in his shoes so as to see things through his eyes. Avoid self-righteousness like the devil; nothing is so self-blinding. Cure yourself of two commonly fatal delusions: the idea of victory and the idea that war cannot be limited. –loc 986

An intellectual ought to realize the extent to which the world is shaped by human emotions, emotions uncontrolled by reason; his thinking must have been shallow, and his observation narrow, if he fails to realize that. –loc 997

History bears witness to the vital part that the “prophets” have played in human progress, which is evidence of the ultimate practical value of expressing unreservedly the truth as one sees it. Yet it also becomes clear that the acceptance and spreading of their vision has always depended on another class of men, “leaders” who had to be philosophical strategists, striking a compromise between truth and men’s receptivity to it. Their effect has often depended as much on their own limitations in perceiving the truth as on their practical wisdom in proclaiming it. –loc 1015

The prophets must be stoned; that is their lot and the test of their self fulfilment. A leader who is stoned, however, may merely prove that he has failed in his function through a deficiency of wisdom or through confusing his function with that of a prophet. –loc 1019

Even among great scholars there is no more unhistorical fallacy than that, in order to command, you must learn to obey. A more temperamentally insubordinate lot than the outstanding soldiers and sailors of the past could scarcely be found in England one has only to think of Wolfe and Wellington, Nelson and Dundonald; in France, Napoleon’s marshals in this respect at least were worthy of their master. –loc 1037

Robert E. Lee’s conduct at West Point was so immaculate that he had not a single offence recorded against him, while he became known among his fellows as the “Marble Model.” What a contrast this offers to the experience of Sherman and Grant, who were both often unbearably irked by the petty restrictions and often kicked over the traces. –loc 1040

For Sherman, even when looking back upon it when he had risen to be commanding general of the United States Army, sarcastically wrote: “Then, as now, neatness in dress and form, with a strict conformity to the rules, were the qualifications for office, and I suppose I was not found to excel in any of these.” –loc 1043

A model boy rarely goes far, and even when he does he is apt to falter when severely tested. A boy who conforms immaculately to school rules is not likely to grow into a man who will conquer by breaking the stereotyped professional rules of his time, as conquest has most often been achieved. Still less does it imply the development of the wide views necessary in a man who is not merely a troop commander but the strategic adviser of his Government. The wonderful thing about Lee’s generalship is not his legendary genius but the way he rose above his handicaps, handicaps that were internal even more than external. –loc 1049

Beyond this is the doubt whether we should be able to eliminate it even if we had the strength of mind to take such a risk. For weaker minds will cling to this protection and by so doing spoil the possible effectiveness of non-resistance. Is there any way out of the dilemma? There is at least one solution that has yet to be tried; that the masters of force should be those who have mastered all desire to employ it. –loc 1057

That solution is an extension of what Bernard Shaw expressed in Major Barbara: that wars would continue until the makers of gunpowder became professors of Greek, and he here had Gilbert Murray in mind, or the professors of Greek became the makers of gunpowder. And this, in turn, was derived from Plato’s conclusion that the affairs of mankind would never go right until either the rulers became philosophers or the philosophers became the rulers. –loc 1060

Can war be limited? Logic says, “No. War is the sphere of violence, and it would be illogical to hesitate in using any extreme of violence that can help you to win the war.” History replies, “Such logic makes nonsense. You go to war to win the peace, not just for the sake of fighting. Extremes of violence may frustrate your purpose, so that victory becomes a boomerang. Moreover, it is a matter of historical fact that war has been limited in many ways.” –loc 1068

Contact with the East, however, helped to foster the growth of chivalry in the West. That code, for all its faults, helped to humanise warfare by formalising it. –loc 1085

Another important influence was the growth of more formal and courteous manners in social life. This code of manners spread into the field of international relations. These two factors, reason and manners, saved civilization when it was on the verge of collapse. Men came to feel that behaviour mattered more than belief, and customs more than creeds, in making earthly life tolerable and human relations workable. –loc 1099

Sherman saw very clearly that the resisting power of a democracy depends even more on the strength of the people’s will than on the strength of its armies. His strategy was ably fitted to fulfil the primary aim of his grand strategy. His unchecked march through the heart of the South, destroying its resources, was the most effective way to create and spread a sense of helplessness that would undermine the will to continue the war. –loc 1119

Another was the growth of a new theory of war which embodied all the most dangerous features of revolutionary and Napoleonic practice. That theory was evolved in Prussia by Clausewitz. Pursuing logic to the extreme, he argued that moderation had no place in war: “War is an act of violence pursued to the utmost.” As his thinking proceeded he came to realize the fallacy of such logic. Unfortunately, he died before he could revise his writings and his disciples remembered only his extreme starting point. A further dangerous factor was also developing, the terrific scientific improvement in the weapons of war. –loc 1129

Indeed, in the destruction of cities, the record of World War II exceeds anything since the campaigns of Genghis Khan and Tamerlane. –loc 1146

A wider and more profound treatment of the subject came, a century later, in T. E. Lawrence’s Seven Pillars of Wisdom. His masterly formulation of the theory of guerrilla warfare focused on its offensive value and was the product of his combined experience and reflection during the Arab Revolt against the Turks, both as a struggle for independence and as part of the Allied campaign against Turkey. –loc 1194

Ascending the spiral, it can be seen that individual security increases with the growth of society, that local security increases when linked to a wider organization, that national security increases when nationalism decreases and would become much greater if each nation’s claim to sovereignty were merged in a super-national body. Every step that science achieves in reducing space and time emphasizes the necessity of political integration and a common morality. The advent of the atomic era makes that development more vitally urgent. A movement of the spirit as well as of the mind is needed to attain –loc 1384

To face life with clear eyes, desirous to see the truth, and to come through it with clean hands, behaving with consideration for others, while achieving such conditions as enable a man to get the best out of life, is enough for ambition: and a high ambition. Only as a man progresses toward it does he realize what effort it entails and how large is the distance to go. –loc 1407

He may realize that the world is a jungle. But if he has seen that it could be better for anyone if the simple principles of decency and kindliness were generally applied, then he must in honesty try to practice these consistently and to live, personally, as if they were general. In other words, he must follow the light he has seen. –loc 1416

“Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.” –loc 1419

Posted on

One Bullet Away: The Making of a Marine Officer

Author: Nathaniel C. Fink
Rating: 9/10
Last Read: June 2014

Quick Summary: This book recounts Fink’s journey through Marine Corps officer training and his experiences with war in Afghanistan and Iraq.  Fink shares some of the leadership training that he gained during his schooling and leadership roles in the USMC.  

While I don’t normally recommend books about war for those who are not interested, in this case I will do the opposite.  It takes me back to the years I spent in ROTC receiving similar training (with much lower stakes) – many people in leadership roles do not carry the same ideals or perspectives that the USMC instills in its leaders. There is much wisdom to be gained in the USMC leadership principles, and I think this book showcases some practical examples of their application.

My Highlights

We should remember that one man is much the same as another, and that he is best who is trained in the severest school.
—THUCYDIDES

“I saw a bumper sticker in the parking lot that said ‘Nobody ever drowned in sweat.’” –loc 127

Olds explained that orders slowly executed meant advantages lost. –loc 200

I wanted to be there, and I tried hard. For the first time in my life, desire and effort wouldn’t be enough. I was learning that in the Marines, the only easy day was yesterday. Success the day before meant nothing, and tomorrow might never happen. I woke up each morning at Quantico wondering whether I’d still be there that night. –loc 285

But in combat, we were told, there’s rarely time for discussion and debate. Complex ideas must be made simple, or they’ll remain ideas and never be put into action. –loc 308

We drilled them, and every other list, over and over again. I memorized them in the classroom, in line at the chow hall, and in my rack at night. The purpose, we were promised, was to make them instinctive. They would become innate to our decision-making process and infuse everything we did without even a conscious thought. –loc 310

“First,” he counseled, “you must be technically and tactically proficient.” There was no excuse for not knowing everything about the weapon, radio, aircraft, or whatever else it was you were trying to use. “Being a nice guy is great, but plenty of nice guys have gotten half their Marines killed because they didn’t know their jobs. –loc 355

A good plan violently executed now, he urged, was better than a great plan later. Be decisive, act, and be ready to adapt. –loc 359

“Fourth, know your men and look out for their welfare.” Fanning smiled as he remembered Marines he’d served with. They will, he said, follow you through the gates of hell if they trust you truly care about them. “This is not about you.” Fanning spoke the sentence slowly, emphasizing each word. He explained that the Corps existed for the enlisted infantryman. “Everyone else—you aspiring infantry officers included—is only support. –loc 364

From that afternoon on, I accepted the rules and lived by them. When getting dressed by the numbers, I tried to move faster and yell louder than anyone else. When Olds made me call cadence, I did it with heart and never backed down. He stopped caring that my calls confused the platoon. Marching didn’t matter. It was about cool under pressure. It was about detachment. We had to retain our ability to think when the world was crumbling around us. Not for ourselves, but for our Marines. –loc 374

His message was clear: you need discipline most when it’s hardest to muster—when you’re tired, hungry, outside your comfort zone. –loc 456

Being a Marine was not about money for graduate school or learning a skill; it was a rite of passage in a society becoming so soft and homogenized that the very concept was often sneered at. –loc 549

The Corps teaches three fundamentals of marksmanship: sight picture, bone support, and natural point of aim. –loc 571

The third element, natural point of aim, is the most important. With each of the shooter’s breaths, the rifle muzzle rises. It settles with exhalation back to a natural resting point between breaths—the natural point of aim. Make the bull’s-eye your natural point of aim, squeeze the trigger near the bottom of your breath, and you’ll hit the target. –loc 573

We learned the six troop-leading procedures by the acronym BAMCIS. Begin planning. Arrange for reconnaissance. Make reconnaissance. Complete the plan. Issue the order. Supervise. –loc 605

SMEAC: situation, mission, execution, administration and logistics, command and signal. –loc 608

Speed, we were taught, is a weapon. Be aggressive. Keep the tempo high. –loc 616

We learned that indecision is a decision, that inaction has a cost all its own. Good commanders act and create opportunities. Great commanders ruthlessly exploit those opportunities and throw the enemy into disarray. –loc 617

We learned that the Corps relies on mission-type orders: “Tell me what to do, not how to do it.” –loc 621

Decentralize command and allow subordinates to operate freely within the framework of the commander’s intent. –loc 621

I remembered the “80 percent solution”—a good plan now was better than a perfect plan later. We had crossed the threshold of action. This was enough information to do the job; now the task was to do it. –loc 684

Leaders have an ethical responsibility to serve as buffers, protecting their subordinates, and a moral obligation to act from the courage of their own convictions. The moral courage of their leaders is what separates combat units from armed mobs. –loc 765

He explained that Americans, especially young American men, exhibit posturing behavior. Two guys in a bar bump chests, get up in each other’s faces, and yell. If a fight follows, it’s about honor, saving face. That’s posturing. Marines on the battlefield must exhibit predatory behavior. In that bar, a predator would smile politely at his opponent, wait for him to turn around, and then cave in the back of his skull with a barstool. –loc 786

He identified five things an infantry leader can do to help maintain the psychiatric effectiveness of his men in combat: minimize fatigue by sleeping whenever possible, build confidence as a team, encourage communication, use spare time to practice emergency medical training, and do after-action critiques to address the shock of combat and killing. –loc 807

“Your Marines will expect four things from you: competence, courage, consistency, and compassion.” –loc 879

The last thing they needed was a Pattonesque monologue from a newborn lieutenant, so I introduced myself and said I was happy to be the newest member of the platoon. I told them I wanted to meet with each man individually over the coming week and asked if they had any questions for me. There were none. Staff Sergeant Marine dismissed them, and they headed back to the armory. I thought I heard approval in his voice as we walked back to the office. “No bullshit, sir. Marines appreciate that.” –loc 993

“If safety were paramount,” Whitmer declared, “we’d stay in the barracks and play pickup basketball. Good training is paramount.” Whitmer’s idea of good training reminded me of something I’d read about the Roman legions—their exercises were bloodless battles so that their battles were bloody exercises. –loc 1002

Captain Whitmer replied that we, as infantry officers, had been trained to be aggressive. Nods all around. “But there’s a fine line between aggressive and foolish.” Good commanders, he explained, could operate right at that line, without crossing it. We had to know the difference between a risk and a gamble. All commanders take risks. They are calculated decisions to make gains in a dangerous environment. Gambles are pure chance—closing your eyes and running the gauntlet. –loc 1024

even if they had a low CDI factor. I took the bait. “What’s CDI?” “Chicks dig it, sir. Football team: high CDI. Chess club: low CDI. Platoon sergeant: high CDI. Mortar section: low CDI. Doesn’t matter that mortars have all the firepower. Life’s unfair. Didn’t they teach you that in college?” –loc 1078

‘Never regret not doing a real mission. Now you can have all golden memories and no ghosts.’ I –loc 1096

“The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places,” Hemingway wrote. –loc 1151

“But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure that it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.” –loc 1152

Past deeds are a young Marine’s source of pride, inspiration to face danger, and reassurance that death in battle isn’t consignment to oblivion. His buddies and all future Marines will keep the faith. Some people in my life would call that naivete, but I was coming to know it as esprit de corps. –loc 1164

I climbed up to Captain Whitmer’s cabin, to let him know his officers were all aboard. I found him sitting at his desk, wearing sweatpants and looking relaxed. His incense burner smoldered, and acoustic guitar played softly in the background. This was Captain Whitmer at his best, embodying the line from Rudyard Kipling’s poem about keeping your head when all around you are losing theirs. Yes, he knew about the attacks. Yes, he expected we’d be sailing earlier than planned. No, he saw no need for concern. –loc 1201

Captain Whitmer was too self-effacing to say it, but I knew the answer. Among the battalion’s company commanders, he was the iconoclast, the outcast stepchild who trained his Marines to be good instead of look good. He pushed us hard, questioned authority, and couldn’t even feign obsequiousness. –loc 1343

It is a central tenet of the Marines’ war-fighting philosophy that each subordinate must provide options to his boss—tell him what you can do, rather than what you can’t. Depending on the situation, two or three or four courses of action would be developed and then roughed out into basic operational plans. –loc 1361

Hardness was the ability to face an overwhelming situation with aplomb, smile calmly at it, and then triumph through sheer professional pride. –loc 2327

The pilot had requested the most favored method for guiding a helicopter into a landing zone in the dark. The NATO-Y, standard throughout the Western militaries, is four chem lights tied to premeasured lengths of parachute cord. When laid on the ground and pulled taut, they form a Y. One of the Marines pulled it out, already tied, and cracked the four chem lights. He laid them across the landing zone, with the base pointing into the wind and the two legs marking touchdown points for the helicopter’s main landing gear. –loc 2581

I remembered a story I’d heard from General Jones, the commandant who’d eaten dinner with us on the Peleliu. He’d quoted a former Marine officer who went on to be a Fortune 500 CEO. When asked for his guiding principle, the CEO replied, “Officers eat last.” The philosophy is simple, and it goes a long way. –loc 2907

Winning a firefight requires quick action by leaders. The key is to make decisions about your enemy and act on them faster than he is acting on decisions made about you. –loc 2917

In training, I was taught the OODA loop, a four-stage decision-making process described by Air Force fighter pilot Colonel John Boyd: observe, orient, decide, act. –loc 2918

Engage your brain before you engage your weapon. –loc 3082

“Well, sir,” Person said, turning in the seat to face me, oblivious to the fight all around him, “I guess I’m fighting for cheap gas and a world without ragheads blowing up our fucking buildings.”
“Good to know you’re such an idealist.”
“That world sounds pretty ideal to me right about now.”
–loc 4051

I remembered General Conway’s instruction back in Kuwait: “Your first obligation as an officer is the defense of your men.” –loc 4238

“Howdy, sir. How you doin’ this evening?” Espera said.
“Never better. Tired, cold, wet, hungry. I feel like a Marine.”
–loc 4274

“Last time I saw you in a cold hole, LT, was in Afghanistan. Makes me feel like an old campaigner.”
“Regular warhorse, Espera. Just wait. Next year it’ll be Syria, then North Korea, and who knows where after that. We’ll never have to train again. Just war, war, war.”
–loc 4276

I ached for him. No one knows the costs of war better than the grunts. I guessed the television news that night was full of reports of collateral damage and civilian casualties. I wished people could see how much we agonized over our decisions and prayed they were the right ones. These choices didn’t always translate into hesitation on the trigger or racking self-doubt, but sometimes it was enough to sit awake in the cold rain just thinking about them. –loc 4282

“Never pet a burning dog.” –loc 4335

Gunny Wynn’s priority as platoon sergeant, first and always, was the safety of his men. Mine, as platoon commander, was accomplishing our mission. –loc 4341

Gunny Wynn and the team leaders systematically strengthened the plan, pointing out weaknesses and suggesting improvements. It is a simple fact of human nature that people will more willingly go into danger when they have a say in crafting their fate. –loc 4347

Ironically, I remembered Colonel Ferrando’s words from a briefing the day before: “You can’t volunteer to go to war and then bitch about getting shot at.” –loc 4406

Strong combat leadership is never by committee. Platoon commanders must command, and command in battle isn’t based on consensus. It’s based on consent. –loc 4538

Any leader wields only as much authority and influence as is conferred by the consent of those he leads. –loc 4539

What’s past is past, but the present and future will kill you. –loc 4560

I finally understood why Whitmer had threatened us that night. Commanders always bear the heaviest responsibility. When you’re tired and under stress, your efforts to convey that gravitas can come out all wrong. –loc 4568

“The sacred geometry of chance, sir.”
“I like that.”
“Espera and I talked about it earlier. We can do a lot to influence the outcome, but sometimes it’s out of our hands,” Rudy said, then mimed firing a rifle. “A running man shoots a burst into a moving Humvee. Why do some miss? Why do some hit? Why a flesh wound and not a femoral artery? Aim and skill have nothing to do with it. The difference between life and death out here is seconds and millimeters—the sacred geometry of chance.” –loc 4599

After all, I would be right there at the front, in as much danger as anyone, sometimes more. An instructor at Quantico had told me that officers got paid to be gophers: when all the sane people were burrowing in the dirt, it was an officer’s job to poke his head up and see what was happening. –loc 5368

Anyone who looks with anguish on evils so great must acknowledge the tragedy of it all; and if anyone experiences them without anguish, his condition is even more tragic, since he remains serene by losing his humanity. —AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO –loc 5870

I left the Corps because I had become a reluctant warrior. Many Marines reminded me of gladiators. They had that mysterious quality that allows some men to strap on greaves and a breastplate and wade into the gore. I respected, admired, and emulated them, but I could never be like them. I could kill when killing was called for, and I got hooked on the rush of combat as much as any man did. But I couldn’t make the conscious choice to put myself in that position again and again throughout my professional life. –loc 5923

Great Marine commanders, like all great warriors, are able to kill that which they love most—their men. It’s a fundamental law of warfare. Twice I had cheated it. I couldn’t tempt fate again. –loc 5926