What have you read lately?

[-HP-]

15 hours ago, 0kelvin said:

So I read half of this book "Ego is the enemy".

I can't stop noticing that this book is talking about the core issue of almost every mental disorder. Specially the case of personality disorders. Ego is the main issue of narcissistic personality disorder. Everything about it is about ego.

About real life, this book has a lot of examples that tell you not how to be successful. Rather, what is required to be successful. All the discussion in it can be applied to families, companies, admission exams, politics, everything. Some parts of it resonate quite well with the lessons that I've learned with Mark Rosewater in his talk about mistakes made while making Magic.

I have a feeling that almost everything that I read in this book I have already read elsewhere. If you ever read about athletes, great leaders and stories of successful companies, most if not all ideas in this book are not new.

You'd like Robert greene - Laws of Human Nature

[ZZZ]

Finished 90% of Ego is the enemy.

One thing I started to notice. It tells many cases of success and failures and how ego is always there. However, this book does not tell you why ego is there. It tells the consequences, but not the causes. It also does not tell you how to control your own ego.

[ZZZ]

...

Edited February 8 by ZZZ

[ZZZ]

Solving the procrastination puzzle.

I delayed and delayed, procrastinated, reading this book for years. I finally read it. Everything it teaches makes sense. I mean, I do everything this book describes. It's the same thing that the psychiatrist that I follow explained. Deep down it's about negative emotions and how we handle them. There are many illusions that we cast on ourselves that ultimately make we delay this, delay that, postpone in a never ending cycle of pain and suffering. It's all created inside your own mind and knowing what decisions you subconsciously make is the beginning of a process of enlightenment.

[ZZZ]

I'm reading "Small treatise of the great virtues". Finished the first chapter and going to finish the second. Boy, it's hard. Maybe not as hard as Kant, but it's paying off. I'm learning new vocabulary.

There is a famous teacher here that recorded a class he gave where he talked about "having the guts" to read Kant. He dared everyone to pick up "Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals" and read the first three pages. He warned "the first paragraph is going to cause you some bad feelings. Don't let Kant laugh at you! Read it again and again and again. You have to have the guts to understand it". I never knew this teacher but I'm getting it by reading something about virtues. The previous book, about procrastination, is paying off too. I must have read some paragraphs of this book about virtues about 10x until I finally grasped it.

Years ago I'd be frustrated by the difficulty of reading and just drop it. Now it's different, I'm concentrating on one page at a time or one paragraph at a time. It's working and preventing me from procrastinating.

Edited December 9, 2021 by 0kelvin

[ThunderKeil]

1 hour ago, 0kelvin said:

He dared everyone to pick up "Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals" and read the first three pages. He warned "the first paragraph is going to cause you some bad feelings. Don't let Kant laugh at you! Read it again and again and again. You have to have the guts to understand it".

am I allowed to stop after 3 pages, or was this a trap to call me a quitter for not finishing it

[ZZZ]

14 hours ago, ThunderKeil said:

am I allowed to stop after 3 pages, or was this a trap to call me a quitter for not finishing it

He said to not bother about the rest of the book because it's uninteresting, but if you don't read the first pages you are missing the experience of having to face a very hard text.

[-HP-]

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