The Introverted Thinker Newsletter #015
Sharing a powerful ancient fable, one of the best books I have read this year, and a super interesting thinker of the week!
Hello again to everyone reading!
Not much to update you on this week, things have been pretty standard, but I hope everyone has enjoyed their weekend!
Here’s a piece I wrote about a fable about an old Chinese farmer, the article idea is centered around the misconceptions of what misfortune or luck is. And I weave Eastern philosophy into my analysis of the parable.
Enjoy.
A Powerful Life Lesson on Fate From A Fable About A Chinese Farmer
Ancient Eastern philosophy being weaved into a beautiful little story.
everything, my travel cards, my ID, my credit cards, gym membership cards. Quite unlucky some may say.
But then I replaced it all, so I had a fresh new wallet and all my cards back in my possession around 5 days after losing everything. The burden of misfortune had now disappeared.
But then yesterday, I lost it all again. Misfortune. “Why am I so unlucky…” I kept repeating to myself as I would beat myself up mentally. Now the question here is, what is misfortune? Are these series of events really unlucky, or is that just my perception of something that is far simpler.
Fortune, misfortune, luck, or fate? How about we disregard these things and just go with life. Let’s dissect this idea with a story about a Chinese farmer by my favorite philosopher Alan Watts.
The Story of the Chinese Farmer
Once upon a time there was a Chinese farmer whose horse ran away. That evening, all of his neighbors came around to discuss it. They said, “We are so sorry to hear your horse has run away. This is so unfortunate.”
The farmer said, “Maybe.”
The next day the horse came back bringing seven wild horses with it, and in the evening everybody came back and said, “Oh, isn’t that lucky. What a great turn of events. You now have eight horses!”
The farmer again said, “Maybe.”
The following day his son tried to tame one of the horses, and while riding it, he was thrown off the horse and broke his leg. The neighbors then said, “Oh dear, that’s too bad,” and the farmer responded, “Maybe.”
The next day the conscription officers came around to find people for the army, and they rejected his son because he had a broken leg. Again all the neighbors came around and said, “Isn’t that great!”
Again, he said, “Maybe.”
— Alan Watts
The significance of this story:
Life is sort of like a puzzle that can never be solved, yet this puzzle is being attempted by cocky people who are convinced that they have the God-given solution. The reality is that they don't have the solution for this puzzle we call life.
This person will constantly try to predict the outcomes of their actions, like a puzzle if you will. “If I place this piece here, maybe this part will fill out and I can complete this section.”, the cocky puzzle maker will think to themselves. Well, this is the opposite of what really happens in life, because we can't predict the outcome of anything. We can make educated estimates, but that's the extent to which we should pay attention to such a pointless endeavor.
It is this cocky puzzle maker who is more vulnerable to the hardships of life, because when things don't go to plan, they will be significantly more distraught compared to someone who had no expectations.
As we can see from the story about the farmer, all the people around the farmer were trying to make judgments about the fortune or misfortune of events. Look how that turned out. They were all wrong.
A judgment about the future, or past, has no place in the present.
The farmer stayed neutral, he made no judgments on the so-called fortune or misfortune he was experiencing. And he was the one who came out victorious. He could easily have cried a river of concern for when his son broke his leg, but he stayed composed. It ended up working for the best.
Now in the poetic words of my favorite philosopher:
The whole process of nature is an integrated process of immense complexity, and it’s really impossible to tell whether anything that happens in it is good or bad — because you never know what will be the consequence of the misfortune; or, you never know what will be the consequences of good fortune. — Alan Watts
Taoism As An Approach To Emulate The Farmer
Taoism is a 2,500-year-old philosophy from China that embodies this idea of going with the flow of life. It’s about acceptance, not resistance. The most useful analogy to help you understand Taoism is water.
You should flow with the water, along with its effortless nature, passing over the rocks and creaks. If you resist what happens in life, or get annoyed about things that happen, you will face hardship and obstacles.
“Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don’t resist them; that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.”
― Lao Tzu
Alan Watts, the British philosopher nicknamed “The First Zen Philosopher of the West” was the one who came up with this fable. Watts was heavily influenced by Zen Buddhist traditions and Taoism in particular, and I believe you can see the Taoism shining through the demeanor of the farmer.
A person that is truly content with their existence and their life state will always be like the farmer. They will not make preconceptions on the events of the present, they will rather let them flow by like the current of a river, effortlessly moving through the universe like the processes of nature.
If we can learn anything from this, it’s that nature is the ultimate teacher for life lessons. The processes of nature happen effortlessly with no resistance. The deers frolic through the forests, the birds soar through the sky.
And the farmer, the person in the story who truly benefitted from the events that transpired, he emulated nature. Don’t question if your fate is unlucky or lucky, everything will reveal itself in the way it needs to in due time.
As Alan watts said:
“You never know what will be the consequence of the misfortune; or, you never know what will be the consequences of good fortune.” — Alan Watts
A Book I Read Last Week (One of the best I’ve read this year):
The Midnight Library by Matt Haig
I was HUGELY skeptical going into this book, and I had a lot of preconceptions that were completely wrong. I don’t know why, but for some reason, I steer away from books that are incredibly popular and hyped, it’s like the more I see a book recommended the less likely I am to read it.
But this book exceeded my expectations and is by far one of the best I’ve read this year.
Whilst I’m sure many of you have read this, this book is a novel about parallel universes, depression and suicide, mental health, and philosophy. It’s called Midnight library because the premise of the book is set in a library in between life and death (kind of like purgatory in Christianity) where you can choose to relive any life you want in a parallel universe where you did one thing differently.
This quote summarises the premise of the book:
‘Between life and death there is a library,’ she said. ‘And within that library, the shelves go on for ever. Every book provides a chance to try another life you could have lived. To see how things would be different if you had made other choices . . . Would you have done anything different, if you had the chance to undo your regrets?’
This main character, Nora, is someone who struggles with mental health problems like depression. And Matt Haig gives the most accurate representation of depression I have ever seen, showing us what it’s like inside the mind of such a person.
Not only was this book brilliant and had me glued to it, but I also related to it so much. The main character is a lover of philosophy and weaves in philosophy quotes and lessons throughout the whole novel.
But wait, there’s more. The main character constantly quotes Henry David Thoreau as her favorite philosopher, and well, he’s my favorite philosopher too! There were so many crossovers in this book to my life it was insane. As someone who is wanting to pursue a philosophy degree, this was really cool to see because the protagonist also talks about her time studying philosophy at university. Here’s an example of her quoting Thoreau.
She also quotes Albert Camus, David Hume, Betrand Russell, Sartre, and more.
The lonely mind in the busy city yearns for connection because it thinks human-to-human connection is the point of everything. But amid pure nature (or the ‘tonic of wildness’ as Thoreau called it) solitude took on a different character. It became in itself a kind of connection. A connection between herself and the world. And between her and herself.
‘If one advances confidently,’ Thoreau had written in Walden, ‘in the direction of his dreams, and endeavours to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.’
This book will make you think very deeply. It will make you look at all the regrets in your life, all the past decisions you’ve made, everything. You can’t help but think about your own parallel lives, asking yourself questions like “what would my life be like if I did just that one thing…”
“Every life contains many millions of decisions. Some big, some small. But every time one decision is taken over another, the outcomes differ. An irreversible variation occurs, which in turn leads to further variations…”
Something I Listened To Last Week - Discovering A New Modern Day Philosopher:
The 3 Paradoxes of Life from Mark Manson’s Audio Articles
I always thought of Mark Manson as a pretentious self-help gimmicky type of guy. Well, guess what, I was wrong again. (I really need to stop having all these preconceptions lol.)
To my surprise, Mark Manson is a great captivating writer as well as a super funny guy! Lots of jokes mixed with deep thoughts. This narration of his article “The 3 Paradoxes of Life” was roughly half an hour and it was super introspective.
He is very philosophical so I know you guys will like it.
One of the paradoxes he talks about is what I call the paradox of individuality. It’s basically where people around you, whether it be someone you are trying to be friends with, current friends, or romantic relationships, hate it when people try to be the same as them.
For example, everyone remembers in high school how the popular kid had these not-so-popular kids trying to copy them and do exactly as they say to become friends, yet it never worked.
It’s because people subconsciously value their individuality and also value and respect individuality in other people. When someone tries to imitate another person, the other person loses their own sense of importance because they feel like they aren’t unique.
So the solution to this paradox and a very important life lesson is to be yourself at all times, and it is only when you are truly a unique individual that people will start to become attracted to connect with you on an emotional level, be it friends or relationships.
I recommend this.
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.
Karl Marx: 1818 - 1883
People are too quick to dismiss Marx.
We all agree that we have to change the way our economy runs, there are too many flaws and injustices, but we dismiss the man who had the most famous ideas about why our economic system is wrong.
However, it isn’t surprising Marx is disliked. His ideas in practice have caused disastrous consequences with economies that collapsed and some of the world's most brutal dictatorships.
His demands do sound a bit ludicrous when you think about it, he wanted private property to be abolished and for no one to own anything. Nowadays, in the UK, Openly Marxist parties received only 1,658 votes in the 2010 elections.
Karl Marx was born in 1818 in Germany. He came from a long line of rabbis, but converted to Christianity at 6 years old to better fit into German society. Marx was sent to the University of Berlin where he joined a group of philosophers called the Young Hegelians. They rejected the state of modern politics and economics.
After this, Marx became a part of the Communist Party, who were a tiny group of intellectuals at the time.
Marx gained popularity because he wrote about capitalism, the system that controls all of the Western World. Capitalism was just getting under way at Marx’s time, and he was the most intelligent and introspective critic of his time.
A principle idea of Marx’s which I quite like is the idea of specialisation vs generalisation. Marx said we are all generalists deepd own, and we arent born to stick to one thing all our lives.
Due to the greedy nature of the economy, we are made to sacrifice our innate human qualities to a single profession or life calling. In Marx’s words, this leaves us “one sided and dependant” and “depressed spiritually and physically to the condition of a machine.” This idea was called ‘alienation’ (Entfremdung in German) and it was first seen in his work the Manuscripts of 1844.
Whilst Marx wrote all of this and much more, he viewed his writing as descriptions of the current state of humanity, not solutions and methods about what to do in the future.
Marx’s writing show this utopian ideal he had in his head that never came to fruition. In The Communist Manifesto, he talks about an existence where there is no private property, inheritance of money, no tax, no control over banking, free transport and education for everyone, and much more.
Marx moved to London and lived the remainder of his later years there, where he was never really that popular as an intellectual. He died in 1883 with less than a dozen people attending his funeral.
People laughed at his ideas, thinking they would never gain success, but it wasn’t until a few decades later that everything came into fruition…
Thanks for reading everyone.
I really particularly enjoyed writing about Karl Marx for you all, I learnt a lot and am now considering reading The Communist Manifesto!
I hope you all enjoyed, and yet again I’d like to tell you how grateful I am for those of you who read this every week. Your support doesn’t go unnoticed!
Until next week.
Thank you Julian, well worth a second read.
“If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster,
And treat those two imposters just the same.”
I wish you well-being, may you be at ease.
Thank you Julian. I enjoyed reading your newsletter #015.