Ancient Wisdom for a Modern World
The Ancient Wisdom Papers (name inspired by the Federalist Papers shortly after seeing the hit Broadway musical Hamilton) is a series of posts I’m writing to make the case that ancient wisdom should be a primary source of advice and counsel as you navigate the tricky, the ambiguous, the painful, and even the happy
I started The Ancient Wisdom Project because I was getting frustrated with most of the advice the popular personal development/lifestyle design bloggers were espousing. I decided that ancient wisdom traditions would have time-tested practices and philosophies that would be better that anything some 30-year old would have to say about making your life better and more
My previous post outlined the reasons why most of the modern personal development (PD) advice is generally terrible, which begs the question, how and where can we find good advice? By avoiding sources of advice that have the same weaknesses as the PD genre, we stumble on ancient wisdom. To give some background if you
RSS URL Direct Download Link Who is Chuck Marohn and why an I interviewing him? Chuck Marohn is the founder of the non-profit, Strong Towns, an organization designed to making communities across America and Canada financially strong and resilient. He is also the author of several books, the most recent of which is Strong Towns:
I recently finished Cal’s latest book, Digital Minimalism, and was thoroughly impressed by his core insight: we are mindlessly ceding our autonomy and personhood to technology. While everyone understands, and agrees that Facebook, Reddit, and Instagram are distractions, most people severely underestimate the damage these tools are doing to the core elements of self-hood. His
Yesterday I wrapped up my month of Islam. It went by a lot quicker than I thought it would, which surprised me because this was the month I was most nervous about. Judaism and Catholicism were religions that are fairly integrated into American culture, which makes it relatively accessible. Islam is still in the process
RSS URL Direct Download Link Who is Scott Young? Scott Young is an entrepreneur and writer who is an expert on Ultralearning, a method for acquiring difficult skills rapidly and effectively. While we talk a great deal about his recently published book Ultralearning: Master Hard Skills, Outsmart the Competition, and Accelerate Your Career, Scott has
Over the past two weeks, I’ve been in Portland, Oregon and took a break from the project for a little while. I didn’t intend to, but I was working remotely at weird hours and didn’t have anything logistically set up for my Hinduism month (my shrine, time to study, etc.). Instead of doing a half
The image of human excellence I would like to offer as a counterweight to freedom thus understood is that of a powerful, independent mind working at full song. Such independence is won through disciplined attention, in the kind of action that joins us to the world. And—this is important—it is precisely those constraining circumstances that
I’m finding that one of the toughest things about Epicureanism is that it doesn’t seem to offer any solution to what I believe is my fundamental problem: a lack of meaning in my day-to-day life. Epicurean philosophy is very smart about what brings us pain and what brings us pleasure. It provides a solid analytical