Marcus Aurelius didn't publish the book, the book contains thoughts he wrote to himself without any intent to make them public.
When pressed for scrap paper, they chose to use something they considered to be B-grade, rather than Meditations. Though who knows if what they tossed was really inferior. Julius Caesar, Aristotle and Archimedes wrote several books which were not considered quite worth preserving. Lost say 1500 years ago because no one bothered to copy and further distribute them. The great editorial filter all of our history went through.
(There has been some recent fascinating work on recovering the writing from painted over and re-used and re-scraped papyrus and parchment. Some of Archimedes's works were rediscovered this way: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archimedes_Palimpsest )
I don’t believe that all rich people “exploited” those that work for them. Private businesses have customers who (in a non-crony system) voluntarily chose to give them money. It is the most noble and honest way to earn a living.
So they have interesting stories to tell and things to say as they accomplished a rare thing a lot of people dream about. Makes sense to me.
FTFY. Give me the name of a self-made rich person and I'll tell you how they either a) weren't as self-made as their hagiobiography says or b) were luckier than they admit.
The good thing with the Internet is that there is so much out there...
The last one I read was literally (not exaggerating) "Grandma gave me a condo as a graduation gift (!) and instead of living in it like a chump I turned it into an income stream by renting it out while mom and dad covered all my living expenses. Aren't I smart?" (Ok, the last sentence was an exaggeration)
Implied but unstated is "you can do it too, just make better decisions."
*eta: some of them still turn out rotten.
Going through such events as partner's cancer treatment, triumphs such as full remission, and the death of a loved one have had more impact on my values and perspective of time then would ever happen with bank accounts bursting at the seams.
Growing older, with continued exposure over time to new ideas and perspectives from people from all walks of life from over the world has also had a big effect.
These experiences are not bought with money.
In this way, for example, I learned that 99% of the time it makes little sense to get confrontational but it's better (for both sides) to try to resolve things peacefully. I tried both approaches repeatedly and that's why I know this. But if I wrote it down, why would anyone believe me? How would it change things if I made a lot of money or not? It makes no sense.
Everybody needs to put these things to test and see for themselves how they feel when they do good things, when they do bad things, what works in the long run and so on. Reading others reflections might be inspiring at times but rarely corresponds to specific real-life situations we need to deal with.
I mean, if you are unable to explain something as entry-level as Descartes' "cogito", its limits and what that entails, why it engender dualism, i'd rather not listening to you talking about consiousness. You don't have to read Chalmels (you should, but you don't HAVE to)(Btw i'm more of an illusionist myself, i don't suscribe to Chalmels thesis), but not knowing the classics is disqualifying.
Disclaimer: I do not belong to the class being referred to.
Sigh,
The Taliban aren't rich but they specialise in telling people how to live their lives.
At gunpoint.
That's a pretty big assumption
Now picture the worst episode of "Hoarders", and imagine all that weird obsessiveness and attachment to the thing.
That's rich people.
Writing blog posts?
If you want to learn about moral/life philosophy, then there are some great free courses on Coursera
https://www.coursera.org/learn/the-science-of-well-being
https://www.coursera.org/learn/moralities
https://www.coursera.org/learn/moral-politics
If someone else wants to read Paul Graham's blog I do not see the issue...
"I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops." ― Stephen Jay Gould, The Panda's Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History
I wonder if in Blue Origin we are seeing the real Jeff Bezos, and that Amazon post-2003 or so has succeeded in spite of, not because of Jeff Bezos. That is, AMZN was in the right place at the right time, got good systems in place at the beginning, and that AWS might have been the only strategic pivot that mattered. (E.g. Prime Video makes headlines because the media is the #1 favorite topic of the media, not because it changes anything)
Musk’s strength, when it comes to SpaceX, is that he takes it absolutely seriously. (Bezos took AMZN seriously, but Blue Origin's main business seems to be suing the government.)
The alternate scenario I see is that Bezos died in 2005 or 2010, they did a CEO search was successful, and the firm did OK without him. Or perhaps AMZN had such a great flywheel that it would have taken legendarily stupendous incompetence to stop it. (E.g. opening lots of brick and mortar stores)
