MASTERMIND: John O'Donohue

John O'Donohue was an Irish poet and philosopher who lived in a small cottage in the West of Ireland. He wrote several books including Anam Cara: The Book of Celtic Wisdom and Eternal Echoes: Celtic Reflections on Our Yearning to Belong. John passed away on January 3, 2008. He was 52 years old. You can access his website to learn more about John and his work.

John appeared in the 2004 Masters Forum. He spoke of many deep and important things. Some are noted here.

On the Importance of Approaching Others
"One of the nice dimensions of Celtic thinking was that significant occasions or encounters should be appropriately framed. In our times, one of the things that we’re exceptionally coarse and vulgar at is the art of approaching. We have lost all sense of the reverence of approach, and many very significant things decide, I believe, not to approach us because our approach lacks expectation, appropriateness, and reverence."

On the Spirit of Approaching Others -
Beannacht: A Blessing
"On the day when the weight deadens
on your shoulders
and you stumble
may the clay dance
to balance you.
And when your eyes
freeze behind
the gray window
and the ghost of loss
gets in to you,
may a flock of colours,
indigo, red, green
and azure blue,
come to waken in you
a meadow of delight.
When the canvas frays
in the curach of thought
and a stain of ocean
blackens beneath you,
may there come across the waters
a path of yellow moonlight
to bring you safely home.
May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
and the clarity of light be yours,
may the fluency of the ocean be yours,
may the protection of the ancestors be yours.
And so may a slow
wind work these words
of love around you,
an invisible cloak
to mind your life."

On Wholesomeness
"The heart of the talk I want to give this morning is about wholesomeness. And the axiom is really that to awaken wholesomeness is to become fully alive, and that in turn animates all those around you. And it seems to me that the imagination is the human faculty that has a priority of loyalty to wholesomeness. Your mind splits things all the time. The mind and the understanding can’t bring together things that have been split apart, but the imagination actually can. And when your imagination comes alive, you begin to enter into your own wholesomeness."

On Imagination
“No matter how much we might deny it in the daylight world, each of us lives from our imagination. So the only difficulty, then, is in awakening the imagination, and an awakened imagination gives you entry to an enriched world of possibility. Because imagination is the great friend of possibility. Where the imagination is alive, possibility is available and active and ready to be awakened."

"It’s interesting to look back along your life and ask yourself, 'What happened to the lives I had before me once but that I didn’t choose? Where do they actually live?' One of my theories is that in some secret way your unchosen lives live themselves out, and that maybe death only comes to us, not alone when we have completed the visible life that we think we have, but that somehow the other, unchosen lives have also come to fulfillment. But that’s the magic of the imagination; the imagination can go from the facts down into the matrix of deeper possibility."

On Imagination and Leadership
"In terms of leadership, that’s what’s absolutely necessary, because a leader that doesn’t have imagination and doesn’t have access to that world of possibility always gets stuck on the surface of a given situation, whereas the leader is one who has a vision and can always see the unattended-to possibilities in a situation. Always we tend to equate the limit with the limits of what’s possible, but it never is. If you could look at limits in a creative way, the limit would always be the invitation to the beyond that you don’t know yet."

On the Qualities of a Leader

• The first quality that I would like is that a leader would have an inner life – the person wouldn’t be just an outside, external functionary.

• Secondly, they would have a quality of vulnerability. I don’t mean vulnerability in the sense that they are assailable from every corner, but when you’d look in their eyes, you would know that they knew what it was like to be vulnerable.

• A third thing I like a leader to have is a bit of solitude, a very rare thing in our times. It’s hard to find it, and a lot of people are terrified of it, and they’ll run from it, but a person that can’t endure their own demons or know them, or have a secret place where they can meet them, can’t be trusted fully in the interaction of combat, where power is the question.

• A fourth thing I like in a leader is imagination and vision. Vision is vital. A vision is something that links together the gift of your own individuality with the need that is where you are, it links gift and hunger together in a way that links the best in you toward the best in them. Vision can only be developed if you are awake to the blessings and the potential of their own mind.

• Fifth, a leader has to have character. A person who has character is someone who is not a prisoner of their own ego and limitations.

• Sixth, a leader is someone who has the gift of compassion as well as the ministry of encouragement . . . It’s amazing when you think of some of the gifts and abilities that you have, if you hadn’t got that old praise or recognition or encouragement, you might never have crossed over into your own gift.

• The last thing I think a leader should have is the quality of listening. Heidegger said that true listening is worship, and it’s amazing, actually. It’s amazing to be listened to. When you’re truly listened to, a burden and all kinds of old false layering falls away from you completely.

On Birth, the Feminine and Creativity -
Nativity
No man reaches where the moon touches a woman.
Even the moon leaves her when she opens
Deeper into the ripple in her womb
That encircles dark, to become flesh and bone.

Someone is coming ashore inside her,
A face deciphers itself from water,
And she curves around the gathering wave,
Opening to offer the life it craves.

In a corner stall of pilgrim strangers,
She falls and heaves, holding a tide of tears.
A red wire of pain feeds through every vein,
Until night unweaves and the child reaches dawn.

Outside each other now, she sees him first,
Flesh of her flesh, her dreamt son safe on earth.

A Page of Lost Questions

• Is there someone walking home this evening through the streets of Leningrad that you have never met and never will meet, but whose life has had an incredible interest on yours?
• At the angel bar, what stories does your one tell about you?
• Supposing you were to take your heart away on your own for a day out, and that you really decided to listen to your heart, what do you think your heart would say to you?
• If you were in a conversation with your heart, and you told it how actually, factually short your life is, what would your heart make you stop from doing right now?

On Friendship
"Real friendship or love is not manufactured or achieved by an act of will or intention. Friendship is always an act of recognition. ...in the moment of friendship, two souls suddenly recognize each other. It could be a meeting on the street, or at a party or a lecture, or just a simple, banal introduction, then suddenly there is the flash of recognition and the embers of kinship grow. There is an awakening between you, a sense of ancient knowing."

"We are not as near each other as we would like to imagine. Words create the bridges between us. Without them we would be lost islands. Affection, recognition and understanding travel across these fragile bridges and enable us to discover each other and awaken friendship and intimacy. Words are never just words. The range and depth of a person's soul is inevitably revealed in the quality of words she uses. When chosen with reverence and care, words not only describe what they say but also suggest what can never be said."

On Fear and Truth
"The opposite of fear is truth. And always at the heart of a fear, if you sit down with it and give it a chance to meet you and talk to you, you’ll find a truth that you’re trying to avoid. And when you enter into that level of conversation, what you’re doing is you’re trusting the wholesomeness of yourself to be able to go through this door of fear, not into destruction, but actually into a possibility that you would never otherwise have entered."

On Identity
"Identity is being reduced to biography, whereas in actual fact identity is a far more sublime, substantial, and sophisticated concept. Meister Eckhart says, 'There’s a place in your soul that neither time nor space not no creator’s thing has ever touched.' There’s a place inside you where no one has ever got to you, where no one has ever damaged you, where you have a niche of tranquility and natural serenity, and a courage and a hope that can never be taken from you. And I think that the intention of prayer, creativity, and true leadership is to somehow bring you into that place within you. This is summarized wonderfully in four lines by William Stafford in a poem from his book, Crossing Unmarked Snow:

"The things you do not have to say, make you rich.
Saying the things you do not have to say, weakens your talk.
Hearing the things you do not need to hear, dulls your hearing.
The things you know before you hear them, these are you and this is the reason that you are in the world."

From CMED Institute
A Presentation at Entering the Castle Workshop by John O'Donohue (Video)

From American Public Broadcasting
The Landscape of Inner Beauty: John O'Donohue Resources Page (Audio, Interviews & More)

A Reading of Beannacht by John O'Donohue (Slide Show)

From Harper Collins
A Reading Guide to Anam Cara

A Reading Guide to Eternal Echoes

From Personal Transformations
The Presence of Compassion: An Interview with John O’Donohue by Mary NurrieStearns

MASTERMIND: Dr. George Friedman

Dr. George Friedman is the founder and head of Strategic Forecasting, Inc. (Stratfor). His organization, which provides geopolitical intelligence to businesses, government agencies, and other clients, has been hailed by ABC News as "often able to uncover the globe's best kept secrets and predict world-changing events in ways that no one else can." Barron’s says, "Stratfor has enjoyed an increasing vogue in recent years as a result of its heady geopolitical forecasts and many news breaks." He is the author of a recently released book, The Next Hundred Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century.

Dr. Friedman appeared at the Masters Forum in early 2006. Here are his comments on many and varied subjects.

On American Business
"The single greatest weakness of the American business community is that it does not take seriously the exogenous event. . . The world is infinitely more complex than American businesspeople like to think."

On the Folly of Extrapolation
"It is a grave mistake to try to forecast the future by extrapolating from the present."

• In 1900, Europe was generally prosperous, at peace, and highly interdependent (thirty percent of France’s capital, for example, came from Germany). To most observers, that meant that war was nearly impossible. Books were written saying that no war in Europe could last more than six weeks.

• By 1920, war had shattered Europe, killing millions. Everything that once was solid now was gone. A communist regime ruled Russia. It had taken a million American soldiers in Europe to end the war. Germany was destroyed. Observers saw no possibility that war could reappear.

• By 1940, Germany had conquered all of continental Europe. The Nazis were allied with the Soviets and Italy. To all observers it was clear that 'the fat lady had sung' – the war was over and Germany had won.

• By 1960, Germany had lost the war. The US and the USSR were facing off in Europe, and nuclear war between those superpowers seemed practically inevitable. Since the US had never been defeated in war, it was assumed that such a conflict would be 'won' by the US.

• By 1980, the US had lost a war – in Vietnam. The US was a declining power, and the Soviets were pressing everywhere. The one thing we know in 1980 is that the US has got to make an agreement with the Soviet Union; there has to be a nuclear freeze; the United States cannot keep up this competition, its economy will collapse.

• By 2000, the Soviet Union had collapsed and the US was undergoing the largest economic expansion in its history.

"Common sense doesn’t work. You cannot extrapolate. Anyone who says that twenty years from now everything’s going to be the same only more so is going to be wrong."

On the US Economy
"It’s always a claim that in twenty years the US is going to be a third-rate power. You go back in any time frame, and the one certain common-sense conclusion is the US is finished. It never is, but it’s a conviction."

"The one striking thing about the world, particularly since 1980, is that where everyone else is in a short cycle of economic well-being, military power, and so forth, the US is in a deep, long cycle, and that cycle is ever upward."

"Go out to the Mississippi. Look at it and see the foundation of American power. This incredible river system meant that the farmers in the American Midwest didn’t have to be subsistence farmers ."

"You need a bigger framework than economics. It is useful, but it is a severely limited tool. Purely economic thinking is irrational and empirically false."

"From 1991 to 2001 there was an 'optical illusion' that the world was generally at peace, everyone could 'become an American' – the 'giddy springtime of the bourgeoisie.' But the reality was that the force field that was holding the world together, created by the influences of the US and the USSR, had collapsed."

On the US - Jihadist War
"After the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, the US was unprepared to respond because its military had been downsized and intelligence was sorely lacking. So President Carter arranged for counterinsurgency efforts by the mujahadeen against the USSR in Afghanistan to be funded by Saudi Arabia, using primarily Saudi fighters, and be housed in Pakistan, with training from American military specialists and the CIA. Osama bin Laden was invented by Jimmy Carter, and that’s just a small exaggeration."

"The Saudis recruited ultra religious militants to conduct the guerrilla war in Afghanistan. They became the core of Al Qaeda. Once the USSR was defeated, they perceived an opportunity to recreate the once-enormous, once-powerful Islamic empire, the Caliphate. To do that, they intended to create Islamist uprisings to overthrow Muslim governments allied with the United States. To demonstrate the weakness of those governments, they intended to show that the United States was both weak and hostile."

"September 11 was a superbly executed covert operation to strategically destabilize the United States. It could be carried out because of bin Laden’s deep understanding of how the CIA works, which he gained in Afghanistan. That put the United States in a position that required military retaliation, which was bin Laden’s goal. He wanted to give the United States a shot that it couldn’t ignore, because he wanted an American response."

"The US war in Afghanistan was arranged through key alliances: Russia provided bases in Central Asia and arranged for the US to 'rent' the Northern Alliance as its principal fighting force; Iran agreed to provide Shiite support in western Afghanistan. The Taliban was never defeated, but in most ways the first round went to the United States."

After Afghanistan
"Now there's another problem: There is a legitimate fear of nuclear attack on the US from a suitcase bomb. So what do you do? The US plan became to simultaneously attack Al Qaeda operatives throughout the world. But the US did not have the intelligence information to launch such strikes."

"To understand how Iraq comes up, you have to understand the desperation in the spring of 2002. All the good options are gone. You have to either stand and hope or do something else."

"The necessary intelligence about Al Qaeda exists, among the Pakistanis and the Saudis. Pakistan can be coerced into some cooperation, but Saudi Arabia cannot see cooperation as being in its best interests, among other reasons because it has seen the US back away from long-term engagements and Al Qaeda, which has shown its durability, has considerable support within Saudi Arabia. For the Saudis, backing the United States is backing a loser. It has to worry about Al Qaeda; it doesn’t have to worry about the US. Cooperation with the United States is too dangerous."

"So the center of gravity of the problem becomes getting the Saudis to cooperate with intelligence about Al Qaeda. In a more general sense, the US realizes that it must demonstrate more military resolve, that it must put Saudi Arabia into a strategic bind, and it must take control of the most strategic country in the region if it intends to fight a long-term war. That country, because of its borders and its air bases, is Iraq. If we take Iraq, we can own the region."

Explaining US Policy
"Here is where everything goes wrong. It’s hard to explain this policy; it’s hard to go on TV and say, 'We’re attempting to blackmail the Saudis.' So WMD was chosen as the explanation to give the American public. And in fact, everyone thought Saddam had WMD. Even Saddam thought he had WMD because he was being deceived by his scientists. He thought he had nukes."

"Further, the US did not anticipate Saddam’s follow-on war plan, which included full preparations for a guerrilla war, and the US did not – because of CIA failures compounded by Defense Secretary Rumsfeld’s intransigence – respond to that plan for three crucial months."

A Deal with Iran Made and Broken
"Since the US did not have enough forces to deal with the problem on the ground in Iraq, it turned to Iran, which had a lot of influence on Iraq’s Shiites. A deal was struck in which Iran kept the Shiites from rising up against the Sunnis and split them off from the jihadists. The US promised, 'In the end, we will leave you with a Shiite-dominated government.' For three years, that was our position: we were in alliance with Iran."

"And then, as the situation started to stabilize, the US 'double-crossed' Iran by backing Sunni demands in Fallujah and then by cutting a deal with Sunni elders to participate in the elections and distance themselves from the jihadists."

Iran and Nukes
"Becoming desperate as it saw its strategy of the past three years going down the drain, Iran decided it needed a strategy related to nuclear weapons for leverage against the US. Iran cannot accept a return to power of the Sunni former Baathists in Iraq, which is what the US is currently facilitating. Iran does not really seek nuclear weapons, and it knows it will not be permitted to get them, but it believes that going after them will assure American attention. Now the Iranians are pushing toward some unspecified line that would be a flash point for a crisis, trying to stay on the safe side of that line while waving their arms to convince the world they’re insane so the US will negotiate with them. The US does not want to attack Iran, so negotiations are likely."

"We could of course just give Iraq to the Iranians. What do we care who has Iraq? But the Saudis would go absolutely ballistic, because the Saudis are the mortal enemies of the Iranians."

"So it gets complicated and complicated. We want a compromise in Iraq; the Iranians want a compromise in Iraq. It’s tilted differently: we’re using as our nukes the Sunnis; they’re using as their nukes, nukes."

The US Politics of Iraq
"President Bush is unable to defend his complex strategy regarding Iraq in part because he started off with a simplistic explanation. The idea that we are fighting to bring democracy to Iraq, if by democracy you mean something like Minnesota, is kind of a whacked-out notion."

"In combination with his problems justifying his Iraq strategy, Bush almost lost his presidency after Katrina because his approval fell so low that it showed his own party was turning against him. An approval rating below 35% leads to a failed presidency. Although the President has recovered, he still faces significant challenges to his approval ratings on many fronts."

As Things Stand in Early 2006

• "Iraq is chaotic but contained: the malignant possibility of a complete breakdown into a total guerilla war against the US is gone."

• "Al Qaeda is a shattered organization: the intelligence for counteracting real terrorist threats is coming from Saudi Arabia."

• "Anti-Americanism does not translate into strategic terrorism. They hate us in the Islamic world . . . but terrorism is hard to do, and most of the trained ones are dead."

• "Iran is now a serious threat, but even the Iranian problem is containable."

• "Islam will be a problem, but not the central problem. The idea that our geopolitics will be defined ad infinitum by this 'clash of civilizations' is not true."

George Friedman, America's Domination in the 21st Century


George Friedman, Interview from Avid Reader Brisbane - Part 1


Interview from Avid Reader Brisbane - Part 2 (Video)
Interview from Avid Reader Brisbane - Part 3 (Video)
Interview from Avid Reader Brisbane - Part 4 (Video)
Interview from Avid Reader Brisbane - Part 5 (Video)
Interview from Avid Reader Brisbane - Part 6 (Video)
Interview from Avid Reader Brisbane - Part 7 (Video)

From Stratfor
The Next 100 Years Overture by George Friedman

Friedman on Geopolitics (Free Articles)

Burton and Stewart on Security (Free Articles)

Stratfor Video Center (Free)

MASTERMIND: Rick Warren

"I did a series of lectures for the faculty in the Kennedy School ... I started with this quote from Peter Drucker: 'The most significant sociological phenomenon of the first half of the 20th century was the rise of the corporation. The most significant sociological phenomenon of the second half of the 20th century has been the development of the large pastoral church - of the mega-church. It is the only organization that is actually working in our society.' Now Drucker has said that at least six times. I happen to know because he's my mentor. I've spent 20 years under his tutelage learning about leadership from him, and he's written it in two or three books, and he says he thinks it's [the mega-church] the only thing that really works in society." - Rick Warren

"A critical question for leaders is, 'When do you stop pouring resources into things that have achieved their purpose?' The most dangerous traps for a leader are those near-successes where everybody says that if you just give it another big push it will go over the top. One tries it once. One tries it twice. One tries it a third time. But, by then it should be obvious this will be very hard to do. So, I always advise my friend Rick Warren, 'Don't tell me what you're doing, Rick. Tell me what you stopped doing.'" - Peter Drucker, Forbes, November 19, 2004

"Lessons from business books never stick. Much better learning tools are novels, history books and biographies. For me, at least, these can really teach. Why? I suppose it's because when your imagination is engaged, when you dig the lessons out yourself and connect them to your own life, the learning goes much deeper. With that said, I give you the best book on entrepreneurship, business and investment that I've read in some time. It's not new and it's not a business book. It was written in 1995 and comes from the field of religion. It's titled The Purpose-Driven Church and was penned by Rick Warren. Warren - in 1980 and from scratch - launched Saddleback Church in Orange County, Calif. Under his leadership, the church has become the fastest-growing one in America. Weekends bring in an average of 15,000 worshipers. Saddleback has spawned dozens of so-called daughter churches throughout the country. Were it a business, Saddleback would be compared with Dell, Google or Starbucks. The Purpose-Driven Church has sold more than 1 million copies. Its sequel, The Purpose-Driven Life, has sold 12 million copies. Whatever you think about Warren or his religious beliefs, he has discerned a consumer need out there." - Rich Karlgaard, publisher, Forbes Magazine (Read the rest of the article here.)


Rick Warren, Big Think Interview
How Do You Organize a Mega-Church?


What Is a Purpose Driven Life?


Other Questions from the Big Think Interview (Video)

From TED
Rick Warren, A Life of Purpose (Video)

From The New Yorker
The Cellular Church: How Rick Warren Built His Ministry by Malcolm Gladwell

MASTERMIND: Thomas Sowell

"Much of the self-righteous nonsense that abounds on so many subjects cannot stand up to three questions: 1) Compared to what? 2) At what cost? and 3) What are the hard facts?" - Thomas Sowell

"One of the great meaningless phrases of our times is: 'I take full responsibility.' This does not mean that you are prepared to pay the consequences for what you have done. On the contrary, this statement is usually offered instead of taking the consequences." - Thomas Sowell

"Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good." - Thomas Sowell

"No individual and no generation has had enough personal experience to ignore the vast experience of the human race that is called history. Yet most of our schools and colleges today pay little attention to history. And many of our current policies repeat mistakes that were made, time and again, in the past with disastrous results." - Thomas Sowell

"Not only does the passage of time produce knowledge, it also produces ignorance. As the passage of time removes people with first-hand knowledge of an earlier era, they are replaced by people ignorant of those times and therefore easy targets for demagogues." - Thomas Sowell

"Nearly two hundred years ago, the great economist David Ricardo said: 'I wish that I may never think the smiles of the great and powerful a sufficient inducement to turn aside from the straight path of honesty and the convictions of my own mind.'" - Thomas Sowell

"Some people are so busy being clever that they don't have time enough to be wise." - Thomas Sowell

"Talkers are usually more articulate than doers, since talk is their specialty." - Thomas Sowell

"Perhaps the scariest aspect of our times is how many people think in talking points, rather than in terms of real world consequences." - Thomas Sowell

"In this era of political correctness, some people seem unaware that being squeamish about words can mean being blind to realities." - Thomas Sowell

"The problem isn't that Johnny can't read. The problem isn't even that Johnny can't think. The problem is that Johnny doesn't know what thinking is; he confuses it with feeling." - Thomas Sowell

"It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong." - Thomas Sowell

"You will never understand bureaucracies until you understand that for bureaucrats procedure is everything and outcomes are nothing." - Thomas Sowell

"One of the sad signs of our times is that we have demonized those who produce, subsidized those who refuse to produce, and canonized those who complain." - Thomas Sowell

"There was once a time when parents pointed out bums on the streets and told their children that this was what could happen to you if you didn't bother to learn the things you needed to know, and do the things you needed to do, to make it in life. Today, children are taught to be 'non-judgmental' and the media keep saying that these drug-ridden derelicts are 'people just like us' who happened to fall on hard times." - Thomas Sowell

"What is ominous is the ease with which some people go from saying that they don't like something to saying that the government should forbid it. When you go down that road, don't expect freedom to survive very long." - Thomas Sowell

"One of the common failings among honorable people is a failure to appreciate how thoroughly dishonorable some other people can be, and how dangerous it is to trust them." - Thomas Sowell

"If the battle for civilization comes down to the wimps versus the barbarians, the barbarians are going to win." - Thomas Sowell

Thomas Sowell, Intellectuals & Society: Part One - Introduction


Intellectuals and Society: Part Two - Economics (Video)
Intellectuals and Society: Part Three - Vision (Video)
Intellectuals and Society: Part Four - War (Video)
Intellectuals and Society: Part Five - The Rest of Us (Video)

Thomas Sowell, A Conflict of Visions


From the Jewish World Review
Intellectuals and Society by Thomas Sowell (Column)
Intellectuals and Society: Part II by Thomas Sowell (Column)

From The Orange County Register
Thomas Sowell Dissects Intellectuals by Mark Landsbaum (Editorial)

MASTERMIND: Alain de Botton

"The house has grown into a knowledgeable witness. It has been party to early seductions, it has watched homework being written, it has observed swaddled babies freshly arrived from hospital, it has been surprised in the middle of the night by whispered conferences in the kitchen. It has experienced winter evenings when its windows were as cold as bags of frozen peas and midsummer dusks when its brick walls held the warmth of newly baked bread. It has provided psychological sanctuary. It has been a guardian of identity. Over the years, its owners have returned from periods away and, on looking around them, remembered who they were." - Alain de Botton, The Architecture of Happiness

"In medieval Japan, poets and priests directed the Japanese toward cherry blossoms, deformed pieces of pottery, raked gravel, moss, rain falling on leaves, autumn skies, roof tiles and unvarnished wood. A word emerged, wabi, of which no Western language, tellingly, has a direct equivalent, which identified beauty with unpretentious, simple, unfinished, transient things. There was wabi to be enjoyed in an evening spent alone in a cottage in the woods hearing the rain fall." - Alain de Botton, The Architecture of Happiness

"In our playpens and high chairs, we are rarely far from displaying either hysterical happiness or savage disappointment, love or rage, mania or exhaustion – and, despite the growth of a more temperate exterior in adulthood, we seldom succeed in laying claim to lasting equilibrium. Our innate imbalances are further aggravated by practical demands. Our jobs make relentless calls on a narrow band of our faculties, reducing our chances of achieving rounded personalities and leaving us to suspect (often in the gathering darkness of a Sunday evening) that much of who we are, or could be, has gone unexplored." - Alain de Botton, The Architecture of Happiness

"It is books, poems and paintings which often give us the confidence to take seriously feelings in ourselves that we might otherwise never have thought to acknowledge. Oscar Wilde referred to this phenomenon when he quipped that there was no fog in London before Whistler started painting the Thames." - Alain de Botton, The Architecture of Happiness

"Because the rhythm of conversation makes no allowance for dead periods, because the presence of others calls for continuous responses, we are left to regret the inanity of what we say, and the missed opportunity of what we do not." - Alain de Botton, How Proust Can Change Your Life: Not a Novel

"Every adult life could be said to be defined by two great love stories. The first - the story of our quest for sexual love - is well known and well charted, its vagaries form the staple of music and literature, it is socially accepted and celebrated. The second - the story of our quest for love from the world - is a more secret and shameful tale. If mentioned, it tends to be in caustic, mocking terms, as something of interest chiefly to envious or deficient souls, or else the drive for status is interpreted in an economic sense alone. And yet this second love story is no less intense than the first, it is no less complicated, important or universal, and its setbacks are no less painful. There is heartbreak here too." - Alain de Botton, Status Anxiety

"All societies have had work at their centre; ours is the first to suggest that it could be something much more than a punishment or a penance." - Alain de Botton, The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work

"What makes the prospect of death so distinctive in the modern age is the background of permanent technological and sociological revolution against which it is set, and which serves to strip us of any possible faith in the permanence of our labours." - Alain de Botton, The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work

"The more familiar two people become, the more the language they speak together departs from that of the ordinary, dictionary-defined discourse. Familiarity creates a new language, an in-house language of intimacy that carries reference to the story the two lovers are weaving together and that cannot be readily understood by others." - Alain de Botton, On Love

Alain de Botton, Philosophy: Shopenauer on Love


Philosophy: Shopenauer on Love - Part 2 of 3 (Video)

Philosophy: Shopenauer on Love - Part 3 of 3 (Video)

Philosophy: Neitzsche on Hardship - Part 1 of 3 (Video)

Philosophy: Neitzsche on Hardship - Part 2 of 3 (Video)

Philosophy: Neitzsche on Hardship - Part 3 of 3 (Video)

Philosophy: Socrates on Self-Confidence - Part 1 of 3 (Video)

Philosophy: Socrates on Self-Confidence - Part 2 of 3 (Video)

Philosophy: Socrates on Self-Confidence - Part 3 of 3 (Video)

Philosophy: Epicurus on Happiness - Part 1 of 3 (Video)

Philosophy: Epicurus on Happiness - Part 2 of 3 (Video)

Philosophy: Epicurus on Happiness - Part 3 of 3 (Video)

Philosophy: Montaigne on Self-Esteem - Part 1 of 3 (Video)

Philosophy: Montaigne on Self-Esteem - Part 2 of 3 (Video)

Philosophy: Montaigne on Self-Esteem - Part 3 of 3 (Video)

Philosophy: Seneca on Anger - Part 1 of 3 (Video)

Philosophy: Seneca on Anger - Part 2 of 3 (Video)

Philosophy: Seneca on Anger - Part 3 of 3 (Video)

From TED 2009
A Kinder, Gentler Philosophy of Success by Alain de Botton (Video)

From FORA.tv
The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work by Alain de Botton (Video)

From City Journal
The Consolations of Pessimism by Alain de Botton (Essay)

From The Atlantic
The Status-tician by Adam Baer (Interview with Alain de Botton)

From The Guardian
On The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work by Lynn Barber (Interview with Alain de Botton)

From The Independent
Philosopher King by Katy Guest (Interview with Alain de Botton)

MASTERMIND: Nassim Nicholas Taleb

On Black Swans
"Our human race is affected with a chronic underestimation of the possibility of the future straying from the course initially envisioned.” - Nassim Nicholas Taleb

"A black swan is an outlier, an event that lies beyond the realm of normal expectations. Most people expect all swans to be white because that's what their experience tells them; a black swan is by definition a surprise. Nevertheless, people tend to concoct explanations for them after the fact, which makes them appear more predictable, and less random, than they are." - Nassim Nicholas Taleb

"Much of the research into humans' risk-avoidance machinery shows that it is antiquated and unfit for the modern world; it is made to counter repeatable attacks and learn from specifics. If someone narrowly escapes being eaten by a tiger in a certain cave, then he learns to avoid that cave. Yet vicious black swans by definition do not repeat themselves. We cannot learn from them easily." - Nassim Nicholas Taleb

On Skeptical Empiricism
"The writer Umberto Eco belongs to that small class of scholars who are encyclopedic, insightful, and nondull. He is the owner of a larger personal library (containing thirty thousand books), and separates visitors into two categories: those who react with 'Wow! Signore professore dottore Eco, what a library you have! How many of these books have your read?' And the others – a very small minority – who get the point that a private library is not an ego-boosting appendage but a research tool. Read books are far less valuable than unread ones. The library should contain as much of what you do not know as your financial means, mortgage rates, and the currently tight real-estate market allow you to put there. You will accumulate more knowledge and more books as you grow older, and the growing number of unread books on the shelves will look at you menacingly. Indeed, the more you know, the larger the rows of unread books. Let us call this collection of unread books an anti-library. We tend to treat our knowledge as personal property to be protected and defended. It is an ornament that allows us to rise in the pecking order. So this tendency to offend Eco’s library sensibility by focusing on the known is a human bias that extends to our mental operations. People don’t walk around with anti-resumes telling you what they have not studied or experienced (it’s the job of the competitors to do that), but it would be nice if they did. Just as we need to stand library logic on its head, we will work on standing knowledge itself on its head. Note that the Black Swan comes form our misunderstanding of the likelihood of surprises, those unread books, because we take what we know a little too seriously. Let us call an anti-scholar – someone who focuses on the unread books and makes an attempt not to treat his knowledge as a treasure, or even a possession, or even a self-esteem enhancement device – a skeptical empiricist." - Nassim Nicholas Taleb, from The Black Swan

Life Tips, The Sunday Times, 6/1/2008

• Skepticism is effortful and costly. It is better to be skeptical about matters of large consequences, and be imperfect, foolish and human in the small and the aesthetic.
• Go to parties. You can’t even start to know what you may find on the envelope of serendipity. If you suffer from agoraphobia, send colleagues.
• It’s not a good idea to take a forecast from someone wearing a tie. If possible, tease people who take themselves and their knowledge too seriously.
• Wear your best for your execution and stand dignified. Your last recourse against randomness is how you act — if you can’t control outcomes, you can control the elegance of your behaviour. You will always have the last word.
• Don’t disturb complicated systems that have been around for a very long time. We don’t understand their logic. Don’t pollute the planet. Leave it the way we found it, regardless of scientific ‘evidence’.
• Learn to fail with pride — and do so fast and cleanly. Maximise trial and error — by mastering the error part.
• Avoid losers. If you hear someone use the words ‘impossible’, ‘never’, ‘too difficult’ too often, drop him or her from your social network. Never take ‘no’ for an answer (conversely, take most ‘yeses’ as ‘most probably’).
• Don’t read newspapers for the news (just for the gossip and, of course, profiles of authors). The best filter to know if the news matters is if you hear it in cafes, restaurants... or (again) parties.
• Hard work will get you a professorship or a BMW. You need both work and luck for a Booker, a Nobel or a private jet.
• Answer e-mails from junior people before more senior ones. Junior people have further to go and tend to remember who slighted them.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, A Crazier Future



From Comedy Central
The Colbert Report with Nassim Nicholas Taleb (Video)

From edge.org
Reflections on a Crisis: A Conversation in Munich with Nassim Nicholas Taleb and Daniel Kahneman (Video)

From RSA Events
David Cameron in Conversation with Nassim Taleb (Video)

From The Sunday Times
Nassim Nicholas Taleb: The Prophet of Boom and Doom by Bryan Appleyard

From The New Yorker
BLOWING UP: How Nassim Taleb Turned the Inevitability of Disaster into an Investment Strategy, by Malcolm Gladwell (PDF)

From The Financial Times
Ten Principles for a Black Swan-Proof World by Nassim Nicholas Taleb (PDF)

From the Foreword of Lecturing Birds How to Fly
History Written by the Losers by Nassim Nicholas Taleb (PDF)

From NPR
'Black Swans' and the Problems of Probability by Nassim Nicholas Taleb (Audio, Transcript, Book Excerpt)

From edge.org
The Fourth Quadrant: A Map of the Limits of Statistics by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

From Change This Manifestos
Few and Far Between: Black Swans and the Impossibility of Prediction by Nassim Nicholas Taleb (PDF)

Nassim Nicholas Taleb's WEBSITE

MASTERMIND: Warren Buffett

Learning from Warren Buffett
"While much of Mr. Buffett's methods can't be duplicated - genius is genius, after all - The Snowball usefully emphasizes a few core Buffett imperatives: taking a close look at an investment's intrinsic value, making a brutal evaluation of its risks, and calculating a margin of safety. The book also underscores the importance of learning from failures. The Buffett-Munger approach is to invert, always invert. Turn a situation or problem upside down. Look at it backward. What's in it for the other guy? What happens if all our plans go wrong? Where don't we want to go, and how do you get there? Instead of looking for success, make a list of how to fail instead." - Paul B. Carroll, Why Panic Passes Him By: All You Wanted to Know About Warren Buffett and More, The Wall Street Journal, October 15, 2008

"It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently." - Warren Buffett

"The business schools reward difficult, complex behavior more than simple behavior, but simple behavior is more effective." - Warren Buffett

"In a difficult business, no sooner is one problem solved than another surfaces - never is there just one cockroach in the kitchen." - Warren Buffett

"The investor of today does not profit from yesterday’s growth." - Warren Buffett

"A public opinion poll is no substitute for thought. - Warren Buffett

"Never ask the barber if you need a haircut." - Warren Buffett

"A pin lies in wait for every bubble and when the two eventually meet, a new wave of investors learns some very old lessons." - Warren Buffett

"Coca-Cola was Roberto Goizueta’s painting. It was never finished, and he was never totally satisfied with it. But he had the Sistine Chapel in his head, and he was always working on it." - Warren Buffett

"Our prototype for occupational fervor is the Catholic tailor who used his small savings of many years to finance a pilgrimage to the Vatican. When he returned, his parish held a special meeting to get his first-hand account of the Pope. 'Tell us,' said the eager faithful, 'just what sort of fellow is he?' Our hero wasted no words. 'He’s a forty-four medium.'" - Warren Buffett

"A good managerial record (measured by economic returns) is far more a function of what business boat you get into than it is of how effectively you row. Should you find yourself in a chronically-leaking boat, energy devoted to changing vessels is likely to be more productive than energy devoted to patching leaks." - Warren Buffett

"When the whorehouse burns down, even the pretty girls have to run out." - Warren Buffett

Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, Keeping America Great
Transcript: Keeping America Great with Warren Buffett and Bill Gates (PDF)

From Berckshire Hathaway, Inc.
Warren Buffett's Annual Letter to Shareholders: 1977-2008

MASTERMIND: Clayton Christensen

The Innovator's Dilemma
"The innovator's dilemma is in his head. Well, first it's in his eyes: not seeing what you don't believe is possible is the first problem; not believing what you're seeing is the second; not being able to imagine it as a threat is the third; not responding to it in time is the fourth." - Clayton Christensen

Different Takes on the Innovator's Dilemma
"The lion does not turn around when a small dog barks." - African Proverb

“As the doctors say of a wasting disease, to start with it is easy to cure but difficult to diagnose. After a time, unless it has been diagnosed and treated at the outset, it becomes easy to diagnose but difficult to cure.” - Machiavelli, The Prince

"Success is dangerous. One begins to copy oneself, and to copy oneself is more dangerous than to copy others. It leads to sterility." - Pablo Picasso

"The journey is hard, for the secret place where we have always been is overgrown with thorns and thickets of ideas, of fears and defenses, prejudices and repressions." - Peter Matthiessen, The Snow Leopard

"The best swordsman in the world doesn't need to fear the second best swordsman in the world; no the person for him to be afraid of is some ignorant antagonist who has never had a sword in his hand before; he doesn't do the things he ought to do, and so the expert is not prepared for him; he does the thing he ought not to do and it often catches the expert out and ends him on the spot." - Mark Twain

"Genuinely believing that your enemy is irrational, as opposed to pretending to do so for propaganda purposes, will almost certainly ensure that you cannot defeat him. You can only defeat an antagonist whose ways of seeing things you can make sense of. Some of the British People may have believed that the IRA had no goals other than to maim and slaughter, but British Intelligence took a different view. There is nothing irrational, as opposed to morally repulsive, about killing people to achieve your political ends. It is not on the same level as believing that you are Marie Antoinette. If one’s enemy really is metaphysically evil, then the chances of defeating him look rather small. Not even the SAS can stand up to Satan." - Terry Eagleton, Holy Terror

"The past is never dead. It’s not even past. All of us labor in webs spun long before we were born, webs of heredity and environment, of desire and consequence, of history and eternity. Haunted by wrong turns and roads not taken, we pursue images perceived as new but whose providence dates to the dim dramas of childhood, which are themselves but ripples of consequence echoing down the generations. The quotidian demands of life distract from this resonance of images and events, but some of us feel it always." - William Faulkner

"The future enters into us in order to transform itself into us… long before it happens." - Rainer Maria Rilke

“Nothing is more dangerous than an idea when it's the only one you have.” - Emil' E Chartier

"The laws of life and death are as they should be. The laws of matter and force are as they should be, and if death ends my consciousness, still is death good. I have had life on those terms, and somewhere, somehow, the course of nature is justified. I shall not be imprisoned in a grave where you are to bury my remains. I shall be diffused in great nature, in the soil, in the air, in the water, in the sunshine, in the hearts of those who love me, in all the living and flowing currents of the world, though I may never again in my entirety be embodied in a single human being. My elements and my forces go back into the original sources out of which they came, and these sources are perennial in this vast, wonderful, divine cosmos." - John Burrough, Accepting the Universe

Clayton Christensen, The Innovator's Dilemma


From MIT World
The Innovator's Prescription: A Disruptive Solution to the Healthcare Crisis, Clayton Christensen (Video)

From The Gartner Fellows
Interview with Clayton Christensen - Part One

Interview with Clayton Christensen - Part Two
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