I’m excited to announce that pre-orders for my new book, Essays: De Rerum Natura, are officially live on Amazon.
These pre-orders are for Kindle only – on August 20th, the book will go live, as will paperback sales.
This collection of thirty essays has been a labor of deep reflection and brutal honesty, a work born from struggle and discipline and having to rebuild my own life after collapse. I’ll give some “straight talk” below on what exactly this book is and what you’re getting into.
The content is heavily skewed towards human nature, knowledge of self, philosophy, history, literature, as well as topics including duality, discipline, taking risk, habits, controlling emotions, destroying everything you built, and then building it all back even higher, and above all else, the quest for perfection of character. If these topics sound familiar, it’s because they’re the exact same stuff that people have been writing about for 3000 years.
The structure is as follows. I try and read wide and deep, connectting dots across great thinkers, heroes, artists, emperors, poets, philosophes, historians… piecing together a functional, somewhat cohesive worldview, adding precepts and maxims where I’m lacking. When relevant and helpful, I’ll weave in my own life experience, which could be markets, it could be self-immolation, could be jail, drugs, failure, disappointment, humiliation, its all on the table. There’s a lot in here on pulling your life back together, rebuilding when broken, especially for those of similar archetype as myself – the high-energy, high risk appetite, high potential, strong will, “dangerous,” yet continually derailed by poor discipline and poor restraint. What you realize is that no one has ever once been in your way, buddy, you’re your own worst enemy. If that is you – it is a VIOLENT inner war you have to fight to overcome this, zero hyperbole on violent, a daily war, where your ceiling equals your discipline because the excess passion is always there.
If you know, then you know.
The book is dark at times. There’s definitely some brooding, sick, twisted stuff in there, and those who read Blind Spots already know, that book was dark as hell. In my mind, you should always go darker, always push as dark as you can. If you know, you know…that’s the only place where the truth is. Everything else is bullsh*t.
The #1 goal, the only goal, is to “SPEAK TRUTH TO PAIN”…dive in, dig it up, find the words, blast it to the world. those four steps, easily 40-50 years to reach mastery. no one even tries….guys never want to look inside (dive in), much less open that box, much less think about it and put words to it, much less share it with the world. Four separate layers of fear to punch through…but the truth is men are all the same, your innermost messed up up thoughts, everyone has them, and whatever the serial killer is thinking, some of that lives in you too. The guy with the repressed thoughts, afraid to look inside, is the most dangerous to be around…no knowledge of self, no self control…time bomb.
When someone speaks TRUTH TO PAIN..as a reader, the moment you see it on the page, and it’s real… you feel it like a cold knife. that’s the truth. it changes your entire worldview…the writing of great philosophers gives this same sensation…Pascal, Schopenhauer, I’ll add Montaigne, Machiavelli, and Jung. If you want to write, not about the 10-year treasury, but something will change another person’s life…it’s pain. If you want the reader to understand his own darkness and understand himself, you have to be the mirror…that means flaying yourself in public.
This is why the quick fix, pop bestseller books, they’re hollow…the author isn’t there, they’re invisible, there’s no pain on the page… upper-middle class white people disillusioned with their corporate job, LARPing a hardship story and spiritual journey. TRUE, GENUINE PAIN changes a motherf’er, for real…like a David Goggins type, any war veteran, like, you can’t hide that stuff if you wanted to…it shows up on the page.
This is why everything of value is in the dark, so I try to live there…dwelling on pain and ugliness, getting my own stains out as they become clear…thinking about the deepest, darkest most shameful and weak stuff that people hide…La Rochefoucauld exposed these brilliantly… things they’re terrified of admitting, yet are things that everyone does, or has done, or has thought of doing…then try and blow it out on paper
Only after reading wide and deep do you learn that life’s best questions, they don’t have answers. If I can find 5-10 brilliant guys across generations who all say the same thing, screw it…swing low and let me ride. I’m an optimist, enjoy people, pour tons of time into friendships, look for the good…but if enough great men throughout history keep spitting the same message, like, “don’t trust a single motherf’er until their loyalty has been tested”… I’m going to listen. I think I have 50 true friends, they say “you’re lucky if you have, like, 5 in your entire life….most people never have one,” These are the questions with no answers… human relationships and what lurks in the heart of man.
Some essays, I might find 10 opinions, and if they’re split 5 and 5, or even 9 and 1…I just wrote it up that way. Here’s one side, here’s the other side… do with this what you will. I’m not taking sides in Montaigne versus Schopenhauer…you go ahead…Schopenhauer put over 1000 words in print in 2 volumes (WWR), with a worldview that covers everything from metaphysics, to music, to human nature, ontological proofs of God…bulletproof all around…published it at age 31. Stunning monument to human genius, left his entire brain out for the future generations. I’m not going against that.
If you’re a “thinker,” I give you plenty of stuff to chew on in here. That 9 vs 1, to you, that’s brain food, new opinions, new angles, new questions to meditate on, leads you can follow. Chances are, you already know what I know, which is that the best answer to life’s most difficult questions…its always the same two words: know thyself. Thats when the script gets flipped, and its when you read your very first book….you might be 50 years old and have “read” 1,000 books…nope… you weren’t reading before. It’s not “please tell me what to do”…its “just give me the raw material…dump your entire brain out, I’ll tailor the suit custom.” The flaws and vices go here, strengths and merits here… I ran out of blind spots…I know exactly what I need, all great thinkers have something to offer.
Finally, all proceeds will go to AFSP, just like with Blind Spots. The table of contents is below. I hope you’ll pre-order the Kindle version today or the paperback on August 20th when it releases. Enjoy!
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
I: ON DUALITY
II: ON PASSION
III: ON THE LAWS OF THOUGHT
IV: ON ENERGY
V: ON FORGIVENESS
VI: ON FRIENDSHIP
VII: ON KINDNESS
VIII: ON SUICIDE
IX: ON MOVING FORWARD
X: ON DISCIPLINE
XI: ON SILENCE
XII: ON ASCETICISM
XIII: ON HABITS
XIV: ON RELIGION
XV: ON JUDGMENT
XVI: ON STORIES
XVII: ON PAIN & PLEASURE
XVIII: ON CRITICISM
XIX: ON WRITING
XX: ON EXTERNAL VALIDATION
XXI: ON INDIVIDUATION
XXII: ON ADDERALL
XXIII: ON TRUTH
XXIV: ON PRIDE
XXV: ON ENVY
XXVI: ON AMERICA
XXVII: ON CORRUPTION
XXVIII: ON CRIMINAL JUSTICE
XXIX: ON OBJECTIVITY
XXX: ON COUNSEL
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