The Introverted Thinker Newsletter #002
Lessons on individuality🚶♂️, my new favourite philosopher🧘♂️, a book that captured my heart and brought tears to my eyes💔, and much more.
Hello all👋,
I hope you had a tremendous week. With my final exams coming up I’ve been pretty stressed and short of time, but they’ll be over in a month!
Just a warning that I cover some pretty heavy topics when I talk about the book I read this week, but it’s something very personal to me, so I had to include it.
I hope you enjoy this excerpt of a piece I wrote about trying to stand out from the ‘social system’, inspired by Plato’s allegory of the cave. Here are two insights from an enlightened philosopher on how to be your own person. 🏛
The prisoners sit in a dark, cold cave, with their feet, hands, and necks chained to the rocks around them. They’ve been chained since they were children. The whole cave is pitch black, apart from a small, hopeless fire burning in the background.
All the prisoners see is a wall of which faint shadows are being projected upon. They spend their whole desolate lives speculating and obsessing over these mere phantoms. The cave people will remain like this their whole lives.
They believe that these shadows are the “truth”, just like the majority of people who idolize and pursue shadows based on money, education, fame, love, and so on.
What I have just described to you is a book written by Plato, between 300–400BCE: The Allegory of the Cave. It is an allegory of the current state of society, who believe and see things that everyone else does, never questioning what is in front of them, and blindly abiding by societal standards.
That is until one brave prisoner breaks out of the cave, and sees the bright light, the grass, the trees, and the beauty that the world has to offer. He is the enlightened one.
Here is how we can be unique from others and strive to be like the enlightened escapee.
I. Question All of Your Preconceived Assumptions🧠
How many times have you blindly followed the rules, just because everyone else does? Countless times, I’m sure of it, I too am guilty of it.
However, those great figures in society, like Bill Gates or the once-in-a-generation figure like Elon Musk, do the opposite of this. In the sense of Plato and his allegory of the cave, they are the enlightened ones.
Plato observed how many of our ideas are derived from what the crowd thinks, from what the Greeks called ‘Doxa’, and we’d call common sense.
Thinking like this leads to a life of missed opportunities and one of being just mediocre.
If you don’t question what is around you, like why the leaders of your country are telling you one thing, or why poor people keep getting poorer, you’ll never realize the true reality that actually exists outside the cave.
The key lesson from Plato’s allegory of the cave is to question every assumption of what you think is ‘real’. It takes courage to think outside the box and for yourself, but the rewards are always worth it.
Next time someone tells you something that they say is true, just ask a simple ‘why?’, don’t be a blind sheep.
II. Leave Behind Those Who Aren’t Happy for You❌
“It is the task of the enlightened not only to ascend to learning and to see the good but to be willing to descend again to those prisoners and to share their troubles and their honors, whether they are worth having or not. And this they must do, even with the prospect of death.”
― Plato, The Allegory of the Cave
In Plato’s allegory of the cave, the prisoner who breaks free and sees the real world, and then comes back down to the chained prisoners to enlighten them, is threatened with death.
This has been repeated countless times throughout history. It’s always those who pose a potential revolution in thought that end up getting assassinated. It is because of their never been seen before ideas, figures in authority are always threatened by such developments
The story of the cave teaches us that not everyone will be happy for you when you decide to change your habits or your outlook on life.
We’ve all experienced this I'm sure, as soon as we undergo a great personal change, people we thought were friends suddenly start dropping like flies.
Just like when the prisoner who returned was greeted with hostile death threats, don’t be surprised if your friends and family laugh at your ideas because they are ‘silly’ or ‘stupid’.
Do whatever you want, and be whoever you want to be.
You can read this full article here on Medium, a generous few claps would be appreciated if you have a Medium account. This helps the article get in front of more eyes. :)
A Book I Read That Stole My Heart:
The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway
On the 6 April 1992, war broke out in my home country of Bosnia and Herzegovina. This book is a novel detailing the siege of the capital city, Sarajevo. It was the longest siege in modern history.
This is a historical-fiction novel.
Because Sarajevo is seated in the depths of the valley, it was fired upon by Serb snipers on the mountains, for years. Children in playgrounds were sniped, mothers and women, the elderly fetching water. No one was spared. This is a whole novel about this, and to say that it broke my heart to learn deeper about the conflict is an understatement.
This novel is amazing. It follows the perspective of four different people. A counter-sniper named Arrow, and three civilians, Kenan, Dragan, and the Cellist (someone who plays a cello).
The story is based on a purely factual and true story. It’s about a man named Vedran Smailović, who everyday at 4pm, during the siege, would go with his cello to play in the middle of the square, right in the line of fire of the snipers on the hills.
My father fled a few months after the war broke out. He escaped to London. He rushed to the airport after mortars started hitting his home, and told the flight attendant to get him a flight to anywhere.
They chose London for him, and there he arrived with nothing but a plastic bag not even speaking a word of English. He’s been here ever since.
My father was lucky to get out, my uncle fought on the front lines, his life has never been the same since, he also lives close to us in London.
I could list off many family members who were executed in this genocide, but I’ll spare you the details.
For years my father told me about this conflict, I listened attentively, but it is only after this book that I finally grasped what had happened to my people.
This book will forever stay by my side, for I can never forget the atrocities that were committed against us.
My father always tells me to never forget what happened, not in a bitter way against the Serbs, but as a reminder of the capacity for evil that the human race has, and in efforts to never see this happen again.
It’s a gripping story, so eloquently written, it had me on the edge of my seat at all times, the whole novel just remains in this state of tension, its indescribable.
It brought tears to my eyes as I read accounts of innocent people getting sniped in the head, just for going to collect water. Here is a quote detailing the atrocities and realities of what happened to my people.
“He’ll never know that an arbitrary fraction of a millimetre in her aim one way or another will make the difference between feeling the sun on his face ten minutes from now and looking down to see an unbelievable hole in his chest, feeling all he was or could have become drain out of him and then, in his final moments, inhaling more pain than he knew the world could hold.”
Yes, this book is depressing and extremely sad, it’s certainly not for everyone.
Although, things in this world are often like that, and we cant escape it or pretend they don’t exist.
War is a reality, and it will continue happening until the end of time.
For me, this book is going to stay by my side for the rest of my days. It is important to know where you come from, and why you are where you are today. I only live in London because my father was one the lucky ones to escape the genocide.
Here is an actual audio recording of the Cellist of Sarajevo playing his cello. After reading the book then listening to this, the emotions that coursed through my veins were indescribable.
What I’ve Been Listening To:
Ancient Rome: The Rise and Fall of An Empire by Simon Baker
Here’s something you may not know about me, I’m a MASSIVE history nerd. I love reading books about history. I study it and I don’t know, there is something magical and enthralling for me about being pulled back in time to relive the most important events that have ever taken place.
Also, I’m fascinated by Ancient Rome. I’ve been searching for a while for a book I could read on the topic and I settled for this audiobook. The mythology, the architecture, the glamour, the spartan mentality, all of it.
This audiobook will probably last me a good few weeks because it’s pretty heavy on the facts and spans a huge time span, anyway here is a crazy Ancient Rome fact.
Gladiator blood was recommended by Roman physicians to aid various ailments, including epilepsy and infertility.
Podcast episode: ‘You aren’t who you think you are’ by Alan Watts
Alan Watts was a British philosopher born in 1915, living out most his life in California. This podcast episode essentially just takes chunks of his speeches and uploads them onto spotify and I just happened to stumble across this one in particular.
It was 34 minutes long and it has established Alan Watts as my favourite philosopher. He played a major part in popularising Eastern traditions for a Western audience, such as Buddhism, Taoism, and Hinduism.
I’ve never heard a philosopher marvel at ideas like he does, there is truly a unique spin.
His thoughts were heavily influenced by Zen tradition and the unique insight he gained from psychedelic exploration, which is why I think he is so different from other philosophers.
This podcast episode was him talking about the trap that society lays for us, making us think we have to go down the conventional route when really we don’t have to.
It’s hard to put into words what this 30 minute speech from him was really about, because it is quite broad, but I’ll leave you with a few quotes I noted down, and perhaps I may dedicate a whole article to him once I learn some more.
“Making plans for the future is of use only to people who are capable of living completely in the present. If you cant live in the present you are not able to enjoy the future for which you have planned.”
“The world outside human skin is unfeeling fully automatic stupidity, which we have to fight and dominate otherwise it will swallow us up and condemn us to the imaginary terrors of everlasting nothings”
The Thinker of the Week
Every week, I include a key historical thinker who has impacted the world through their thoughts and actions. They can vary from philosophers, artists, designers, psychologists, sociologists, writers, eastern meditators, and political theorists.
Albert Camus 1913-1960🇫🇷
Albert Camus was an extremely handsome French-Algerian philosopher and writer, who is most well-known for his three novels The Outsider (1942), The Plague (1947) and The Fall (1956).
His most famous novel The Outsider, is about a detached and ironic hero called Meursault - a man who can’t see the point of love, or work, or friendship, and who one day shoots dead an arab man by mistake, without knowing his motives. He ends up not being put to death because he doesn’t show any remorse, nor does he really care for his fate.
The opening of this book is one of the most-legendary 20th century openers in literature.
“Today mother died. Or maybe yesterday, I don’t know.”
The Myth of Sisyphus, another one of his books published in 1942 also has a bold beginning.
“There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living, that is the fundamental question of philosophy.”
Camus was famed for being one of the most famous philosophers of the existentialism movement, which this quote embodies.
He believed that as soon as we start to think seriously, we will realise that life has no meaning - and therefore be inclined to ponder on the thought of whether or not we should be done with it all.
This may sound all dark and depressing, but Albert Camus doesn’t come to the conclusion that our lives are utter hopelessness as the Nihilists believe.
He believes that we have to bear the knowledge that our lives will be small, we will be forgotten and that we belong to a corruptible and violent species, but that we should endure nonetheless.
Because it’s worth it in the end.
However, do not be fooled into thinking this was a depressing man…
Albert Camus was:
An extremely handosme man: for the last ten years of his life he always had at least three girlfriends at one time, aswell as a few wives.
He was also one of the most stylish men of the time, he was even asked to pose for the frontcover of American Vogue
Camus grew to love the pleasures of life, despite being the pioneer in such a depressing philosophy. He said he saw his philosophy as “a lucid invitation to live and to create, in the very midst of the desert.”
That’s all from me for this week. Let me know what you thought by leaving a comment. If you liked this post please don’t forget to share it, this is a brand-new newsletter and any eyes we can get ahold of means the world!
Thanks.👋