Ryan Holiday reminds us that 2020 isn’t the first scary time in history. Winston Churchill, in 1939, with Hitler invading everywhere, read old fiction. Why? He found it comforting. This sounds crazy, until you realize that the only way to deal with current scary times is to read those who lived through their own. In fiction, and reading, we see all of the human tragedies unfold. We see greed, envy, lust, anger, evil, and every sort of human suffering. We also see good, triumph over evil, and every sort of human goodness. Reading all of our forebears who thought to write down what they lived, is the best way to prepare for, and then deal with, our own repeated history. Because everything that is, has happened before. Different humans, same story. If you are bored, it is your own fault. Because many who have lived before have something important to teach us. Ryan admits that he is just an aggregator of history and fiction and philosophy. I call him a wisdom aggregator. He admits that he is just a marketer, and he is very good at it. But, he is marketing something every intelligent human needs…the tools to survive and thrive in a scary world. Just like news aggregators of today, who cull tidbits from thousands of sources, and publish them for consumption on the Internet, or in newspapers, he collects, reads and redistributes ancient philosophers, and writers, and novelists and others. What better use of time for Churchill as he prepared to deal with Hitler than to cull the wisdom of others? As Ryan writes today:
“You may think you don’t have time for poetry or theater or ancient mythology. We promise, you do. You have to. Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, Aristotle, Montaigne, Plato, Shakespeare–the greatest minds in history quoted and adapted fictional works as though they were fact. That’s how valuable fiction is. If you haven’t discovered that already, if all you remember about the Iliad is it was required reading in high school or the Aeneid is it has something to do with the founding of Rome—you have been misguided. You were not given the tools and techniques necessary to understanding and enjoying humanity’s greatest works of art.”