Reason for Living Newsletter No. 5 | The Art of Living Curiously
Reviewed in this issue: A Classical Education by Caroline Taggart
Issue no. 5, 30 April 2024
Welcome to the Reason for Living newsletter!
In this issue:
Feature Article: The Art of Living Curiously
Book Review: A Classical Education: The Stuff You Wish You'd Been Taught in School by Caroline Taggart
Recently Posted: “Don’t Be a Hyacinth: The Danger of Letting Others Set Your Standards”
Feature Article: The Art of Living Curiously
One of the books that’s helped me improve my productivity and self-esteem most in recent years is Nathaniel Branden’s The Art of Living Consciously (see my review in issue 3 of this newsletter). Living consciously—which he identifies as seeking “to be aware of everything that bears on our actions, purposes, values, and goals . . . and to behave in accordance with that which we see and know”—is crucial to achieving your goals.
While editing the Reason for Living book this weekend, I decided to reference this definition, and in so doing I realized that there’s an important sub-component to living consciously: living curiously. However hard you work to identify and recognize the facts that bear on your actions and values, there will always be information out there that’s relevant to your life but which you would never think to go looking for. That’s where living curiously comes in.
Living curiously means taking an active interest in the world around you. It means recognizing that there is the potential for discovery in every aspect of reality. It means asking “why?” about everything from the color of the sky to the way our language is constructed. It means accepting that there’s no excuse for being bored—there’s always something to learn about.
Since I was a child, I have been an avid railfan (or “rail enthusiast” as it’s known in Britain). I love trains, as well as other aspects of rail transport such as rail infrastructure, management, and operations. This may seem like an esoteric interest that swallows time and money without much benefit, but on the contrary, it has rewarded me richly with knowledge in a wide range of fields. To give a few examples:
History: I learnt a great deal about the society of Victorian Britain, the impact of the world wars on Europe and America, and such historical events as the 1970s oil crisis;
Economics: I learnt about the impact of economic factors on the rail industry, including inflation, regulation, market competition, and long-range economic forecasting;
Electrical engineering: I learnt the differences between alternating and direct current and between voltage and wattage, as well as the purpose of thyristors, and what makes safe electrical insulation;
Physics: I learnt about how steam engines use steam pressure to generate motion, how train stopping distances are affected by momentum and friction, how angular momentum affects objects on trains taking corners at speed, and how relative frames of motion apply to moving trains on adjacent tracks.
All of this knowledge, and much more, can come in handy in a wide range of other areas of life, and I have gained a similar diversity of knowledge from my other interests, including astronomy, aviation, and music theory.
Of course, everybody finds different things interesting, and you can reap these rewards from taking an actively curious interest in virtually anything. If you like animals, studying them can teach you about biology, medicine, prehistory, and geology. If you like art, studying it can teach you about history, philosophy, culture, and psychology. If you like sports, studying a sport on an intellectual level can teach you about business, fitness, sociology, and the value of teamwork.
Dig deep into the fields that interest you, and try to find the interesting value in the seemingly mundane things around you. We live in a world rich in knowledge waiting to be discovered, understood, and enjoyed.
Book Review: A Classical Education: The Stuff You Wish You'd Been Taught in School by Caroline Taggart
There was a time when a basic understanding of the classics was a part of the average person’s education. Talk to many older people and you’ll find they know their Zeus from their Perseus, their Iliad from their Odyssey—and they know the valuable lessons we can draw from these stories.
Not so anymore. In today’s Western world, generally speaking, only the private-schooled elite get such training. The rest of us are taught next to nothing of Greco-Roman culture and history, much less of its relevance to our lives today. That is a problem Caroline Taggart set out to correct in her accessible, humorous primer on the classics, A Classical Education: The Stuff You Wish You'd Been Taught in School.
Taggart starts simple, giving some examples of how the Greek and Latin languages influenced the words and expressions we use today. Understanding the linguistic roots of words and phrases can help us use them more precisely, as well as identify the meanings of unfamiliar words. For example, she shows how knowing that the Latin vertere means “turn” can help you more accurately understand such words as vertigo, subvert, and advertisement (ad meaning “toward”, so an “advert” is something that is turns you toward a product).
She then moves onto a summary of Greek and Roman mythology, then history, literature, art and architecture, science, and finally philosophy. Throughout these increasingly advanced topics, she keeps her tone informal and her presentation simple and easy to follow. Taggart’s style of humor can, at times, be a little grating—it sometimes has the effect of belittling an important or interesting point—but for the most part it gives her writing a sense that she’s a friend who’s there with you to help and relate to you as you learn.
This book is a great introduction to the classics for anyone burdened with a modern public education and thus unfamiliar with ancient Greece and Rome, from which so much of our modern culture and way of life came. Equally, jumping into its pages at random can be a fun way to reinforce your existing knowledge of classical history and mythology. It’s also a great source of interesting facts and tidbits to drop into conversation—such as the fact that the word “tantalizing” comes from the mythical torment of Tantalus, who was subjected to eternal thirst and hunger with water always receding as he reached for it and fruit hanging permanently beyond his reach. Fortunately, with this book, a classical education is now within easy grasp!
Recently Posted: “Don’t Be a Hyacinth: The Danger of Letting Others Set Your Standards”
Have you ever tried too hard to impress someone? Have you ever taken a big hit to your self-esteem because somebody was critical of you?
Evaluating ourselves based on other people’s opinions can lead to all sorts of trouble. The hazards of this mindset are brilliantly depicted in the 1990s British sit-com Keeping Up Appearances, the lead character of which—Hyacinth Bucket—is an outstanding (and hilarious) example of what philosopher Ayn Rand called a “second hander.”
Read my full article on what we can learn from Hyacinth’s character here: https://objectivestandard.org/blog/dont-be-a-hyacinth-the-danger-of-letting-others-set-your-standards
This Week’s Reason for Living Quote:
“Plenty of people use reason to achieve their goals. . . . But few use reason to choose their goals in the first place.”
Reason for Living: A Rational, Fact-Based Approach to Living Your Best Life will be available for preorder in mid-late 2024.
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Prosperity and long life,
Thomas Walker-Werth