[ email | Criticism/analysis of society | Travelling | Projects | Goncharenko centre: Talks/discussions » Book review: Essentialism (McKeown) ]
2025-10-5: To do: add some more context in a few places and expound my criticism...
I started to read this book on 2025-9-20.
p.1 [ pdf p.16 ] --- But a grand goal in living is the first component of a philosophy of life. ---
WHS: No, not necessary.
p.1 [ pdf p.16 ] --- This means that if you lack a grand goal in living, you lack a coherent philosophy of life. ---
WHS: Nonsense.
p.2 [ pdf p.17 ] --- There is, in other words, a danger that when you are on your deathbed, you will look back and realize that you wasted your one chance at living. Instead of spending your life pursuing something genuinely valuable, you squandered it because you allowed yourself to be distracted by the various baubles life has to offer. ---
WHS: Not true. Because when looking back generally you find that people can't do things differently even if they know the outcome.
WHS: Never regret, just do what you find interesting, what you like.
p.2 [ pdf p.17 ] --- This strategy will specify what you must do, as you go about your daily activities, to maximize your chances of gaining the thing in life that you take to be ultimately valuable. ---
WHS: Sounds like another business book.
WHS: It all depends on your personality.
p.3 [ pdf p.18 ] --- She would remind us ---
WHS: Why 'she'?
p.5 [ pdf p.20 ] --- I instead felt comfortable with what is, for almost everyone, the default philosophy of life: to spend one’s days seeking an interesting mix of affluence, social status, and pleasure. ---
WHS for me: 1. No, 2. No., 3. Not much. Instead, I seek interesting things...
[ I asked attendees at the Goncharenko centre, see the meeting of 2025-9-21. ]
[ I just know all the things that I read that are in books/papers about psychology and philosophy of life such as the books I read recently and that I discussed in the meetings in the Goncharenko centre. I think it is because of a combination of personality and thinking about everything. ]
up to here done just before meeting 2025-9-21 at the Goncharenko centre...
continuing after that meeting:
p.6 [ pdf p.21 ] --- In conducting my research on desire, I had an ulterior motive. I had long been intrigued by Zen Buddhism and imagined that on taking a closer look at it in connection with my research, I would become a full-fledged convert. ---
WHS: Weird. Why would you imagine that? Once you understand what it is all about you decide whether you like the life, before that thinking about some religion or virw of life to be the one for you? That is strange.
1025-9-27: Maybe what I thought about later, that the author looks to be somewhat autistic, explains this...
p.9 [ pdf p.24-25 ] --- In ancient Greece and Rome, a would-be Stoic could have learned how to practice Stoicism by attending a Stoic school, but this is no longer possible ---
WHS: Oh really? How unexpected! :)
2025-9-26: I was thinking that the writer could be autistic, with his need to explain various trivial things [ which is what gives me the feeling that he writes as if the readers are morons. ]
p.13-14 [ pdf p.28-29 ] --- The audience I am most interested in reaching, though, is ordinary individuals who worry that they might be misliving. This includes those who have come to the realization that they lack a coherent philosophy of life and as a result are fl oundering in their daily activities: what they work to accomplish one day only undoes what they accomplished the day before. It also includes those who have a philosophy of life but worry that it is somehow defective. ---
WHS: What poppycock! Do people exist who have such inane worries?
p.15 [ pdf p.30 ] ===== PART ONE / The rise of stoicism
p.17 [ pdf p.32 ] ==== ONE / Philosophy takes an interest in life
p.19 [ pdf p.34 ] --- Before Socrates, philosophers were primarily interested in explaining the world around them and the phenomena of that world—in doing what we would now call science. ---
WHS: No, because in science experimentation is essential and the ancient Greeks did not really experiment...
p.27 [ pdf p.34 ] philosophy = 'her'...
p.28 [ pdf p.43 ] --- Instead, I think that which philosophy of life a person should choose depends on her personality and circumstances. ---
WHS: Calling a 'person', 'her', is no accident. These writers are almost certainly woke and manipulating... Either use 'he' as a general form, or use 'he/she'.
p.29 [ pdf p.44 ] ==== TWO / The first stoics
p.31 [ pdf p.46 ] --- He believed hunger to be the best appetizer, and because he waited until he was hungry or thirsty before he ate or drank, “he used to partake of a barley cake with greater pleasure than others did of the costliest of foods, and enjoyed a drink from a stream of running water more than others did their Thasian wine.” ---
WHS: Nonsense. I don't have that so there is something else going on. A former friend from Sumy asked me, when I said I bought some delicious bread with cherries and strawberry on the platform of station Zhmerinka (after the suggestion of a conductrice), whether that was so tasty because I was hungry. I said " No, if I am hungry then I enjoy food less". Hunger impairs tasting the food...
p.35 [ pdf p.50 ] --- Tell a modern reader that the Stoics advocate that she live in a virtuous manner, and she might roll her eyes; ---
WHS: 100% sure this is gender manipulation.
p.37 [ pdf p.52 ] --- Most Buddhists can never hope to become as enlightened as Buddha, ---
WHS: Normally the use of the word 'enlightened' is: you are enlightened or not, no scale... So he should have written: "Most Buddhists can never hope to become enlightened, as Buddha was."
p.44 [ pdf p.59 ] ==== THREE / Roman stoicism
p.55 [ pdf p.70 ]: --- He will realize that to have a good life, he needs to perform well the function of a human being, the function Zeus designed him to fulfill. He will therefore pursue virtue, in the ancient sense of the word, meaning that he will strive to become an excellent human being. ---
WHS: This interpretation of virtue by the ancient Greeks is not a good one because it requires knowing what an animal or human is "designed to be", so you already need knowledge. Why not use what you know about yourself, i.e. we are aware, more than animals, about life, about what is good and bad in relation to others. Judge from that. Virtue can then change, a bit, when awareness grows, which is normal: you judge by what you know. Using "we were designed to be xxx" means knowing what that is but you don't know that for sure... You can also, by virtue of being aware, judge non aware or low aware and judge them differently, such as animals. An animal doesn't kill out of malice but for food or when it feels threatened. We can do the same, we judge why a person kills, but a person has more options to do something else but kill so he must be judged more strictly than an animal.
p.55 --- Readers should therefore realize that it is entirely possible to practice Stoicism—and in particular, to employ Stoic strategies for attaining tranquility—without believing in Zeus or, for that matter, in divine creation. In chapter 20 I will have more to say about how this can be done. ---
WHS: Or do what I wrote above!
p. 60 (pdf p.75) --- That Stoicism has seen better days is obvious. Have you, in the course of your life, encountered even one practicing Stoic? ---
WHS: It seems I am similar, so: sort of.
p.62 --- Another, less dramatic form of hedonic adaptation takes place when we make consumer purchases. Initially, we delight in the wide-screen television or fi ne leather handbag we bought. After a time, though, we come to despise them and find ourselves longing for an even wider-screen television or an even more extravagant handbag. ---
WHS: No.
WHS: Intermission: I don't like this book. The assumptions of how people behave are ridiculous, often nowhere near correct, and he writes as if the reader is a moron, or to state it more friendly, a little child, who must be told everything, otherwise he wouldn't understand. (example: , p.9 --- In ancient Greece and Rome, a would-be Stoic could have learned how to practice Stoicism by attending a Stoic school, but this is no longer possible --- Ah yes, as if we need to be told that there are no such schools...)
Continuing:
p.67 --- They end up just as dissatisfied as they were before fulfilling the desire. ---
WHS: I have never had this.
[ Meeting: Ask: Who had this happen? ]
My bicycles: I liked them unless there was an issue, then I started looking for a replacement. I never got tired of them. I never got tired of my computers, I just needed say more memory or software bloat was do bad that a faster computer was needed. I selected the housing also for a reason in all cases, and so I always felt they were cool.
The only thing of which I got tired was some decorative things related to computer games, such as a statue. I got rid of it, it was not important. Just about everything I buy is like a tool, useful in some way, and so these never get tiresome to me...
p.68 --- that the easiest way for us to gain happiness is to learn how to want the things we already have. ---
WHS: I don't think so. Happiness is not about having things...
p.69 --- consider two fathers. The first takes Epictetus’s advice to heart and periodically reflects on his child’s mortality. The second refuses to entertain such gloomy thoughts. He instead assumes that his child will outlive him and that she will always be around for him to enjoy. The first father will almost certainly be more attentive and loving than the second. ---
WHS: imagining the death of a child, loss of a friend, loss of possessions etc. is stupid. There is no need. 2 examples, of 1) loss of a friend and 2) how to appreciate people:
- L's behaviour in Zhytomyr in 2022: crazy, irrational. I said goodbye and in essence I lost a friend. That her behaviour was so illogical and stupid is what affected me, not that I lost a friend. That was not important. (it happened again in 2025 with another friend who wanted to force her opinions onto me, I said goodbye...)
- To appreciate people the following is better: just tell yourself to make each day together pleasant: make jokes, do something for the other person. Giving is better than receiving, seeing someone else get happy is better than you yourself getting happy from getting something. example, a Dutch guy who wrote various esoteric books: promised himself to make his wife laugh at least once a day...
p.71 it 'could' be your last day, but it is not sure, so spending all your money and doing whatever you like doesn't make sense already considering you may live on...
p.71 --- Most of us spend our idle moments thinking about the things we want but don’t have. We would be much better off, Marcus says, to spend this time thinking of all the things we have and reflecting on how much we would miss them if they were not ours. ---
WHS: No, this is just stupid.
p.72 --- But thanks to hedonic adaptation, as soon as we find ourselves living the life of our dreams, we start taking that life for granted. Instead of spending our days enjoying our good fortune, we spend them forming and pursuing new, grander dreams for ourselves. As a result, we are never satisfied with our life. Negative visualization can help us avoid this fate. ---
WHS: Absolutely not needed. When I see a couple arguing I think: Idiots! You have someone to share life with, why not do that, make it better for the partner, instead of making it worse for both. This is a mindset, nothing to do with 'hedonic adaptation' unless you are only busy with material things...
As people we strive for new experiences but not necessarily new things, we think, the new things we like can be about creations, experiences, etc. This is why I don't want new things unless I need some tool to do something new, to create something. Negative visualisation is one of the stupidest concepts I ever heard!
p.74 I use a type of negative visualisation but only once you feel negative, see my list of life in which I suggest that if you have a problem think back to: "I was unhappy that I only had 1 shoe, until I saw the man with only 1 leg...". This is much better!
p.77 saying grace before a meal is negative visualisation? Yeah, right. Come on! It is an appreciation for what you have, it is in the here and now, and not in an alternate reality!
2025-9-27: about boundaries: strictness can help people such as people studying after phd at an American vs English university. 1st speaks badly English, the 2nd much better: I am sure this is because the rules/behaviour/more strict way of speaking make them feel they must try better and a more coherent/similar accent helps with that.
p.84 --- But now that we know they cannot be repeated, they will likely become extraordinary events: The meal will be the best we ever had at the restaurant, and the parting kiss will be one of the most intensely bittersweet experiences life has to offer. ---
WHS: No, depends on your personality.
p.85 --- According to Epictetus, though, a philosopher—by which he means someone who has an understanding of Stoic philosophy— ---
WHS: I thought first there was a missing word. But it seems he means that for Epictetus only stoic philosophers are 'philosophers'.
p.85 --- But as Epictetus points out, “It is impossible that happiness, and yearning for what is not present, should ever be united.” ---
WHS: Wrong, this is possible, I have that. I consider myself happy, sort of, but miss something in my life that is not about happiness... (ultimate fulfilment, meaning).
p.86 --- Your primary desire, says Epictetus, should be your desire not to be frustrated by forming desires you won’t be able to fulfill. Your other desires should conform to this desire, and if they don’t, you should do your best to extinguish them. ---
WHS: Too abstract, indirect.
p.87 --- Consider again Epictetus’s “dichotomy of control”: He says that some things are up to us and some things aren’t up to us. The problem with this statement of the dichotomy is that the phrase “some things aren’t up to us” is ambiguous: ---
WHS: Not a problem, it makes no difference, in either case of partial control or no control is failure to get what you want possible.
p.88 --- Stated in this way, the dichotomy is a genuine dichotomy. ---
WHS: Who cares, not important, that was clear from the start! I think I am right that the writer is autistic (he needs to clarify things for himself that are to others blatantly obvious).
p.89 --- Epictetus suggests, quite sensibly, that we are behaving foolishly if we spend time worrying about things that are not up to us; ---
WHS: Worrying is always foolish!
From this book I think Irvine is autistic.
p.90 --- On restating the dichotomy of control as a trichotomy, though, we must restate his advice regarding what is and isn’t sensible to worry about. ---
WHS: It is not sensible to worry about anything... And as I wrote before, it is not important to split into 3 options instead of 2.
p.90 ==> --- Epictetus says we have complete control over our opinions, impulses, desires, and aversions. ---
p.90 --- Suppose I am walking through a casino and, on passing a roulette table, detect within me an impulse to place a bet that the number 17 will come up on the next spin of the wheel. I have a degree of control over whether I act on this impulse but no control over whether it arises in me. ---
WHS This guy is a moron. Yes, you can change your mindset so that these impulses do not occur because they come from feelings, desires etc.
Example advertisements on late evening/night tv for sex lines or something, I got annoyed by the style of talking, then another time it didn't bother me at all and I was analysing her clothes, as I realised a bit later.
p.91 --- These examples suggest that Epictetus is wrong to include our impulses, desires, and aversions in the category of things over which we have complete control. ---
WHS: What a moron.
p.92 --- Indeed, Marcus thinks the key to having a good life is to value things that are genuinely valuable and be indifferent to things that lack value. He adds that because we have it in our power to assign value to things, we have it in our power to live a good life. ---
WHS: What a moron. Stating the obvious. Is there any point continuing with this book?
p.94-96 sports: tennis: how about playing a game because 1) you like it, 2) it is good for you, 3) if you lose you know what you should try to improve. That is much better than Irvine's nonsense.
p.98 aspiring novelist is a 'she' here...
p.99-100: --- In talking about the internalization of goals, then, I might be guilty of tampering with or improving on Stoicism. As I shall explain in chapter 20, I have no qualms about doing this. ---
WHS: What a moron. Of course that is fine, after all you wrote a book to make people think about their lives, not to teach what the ancient stoics thought!!!
I am skipping now far ahead to see if anything gets better:
p.250 ===== TWENTY-TWO / Practicing stoicism
p.250 --- The first tip I would offer to those wishing to give Stoicism a try is to practice what I have referred to as stealth Stoicism: You would do well, I think, to keep it a secret that you are a practicing Stoic. (This would have been my own strategy, had I not taken it upon myself to become a teacher of Stoicism.) By practicing Stoicism stealthily, you can gain its benefits while avoiding one signifi cant cost: the teasing and outright mockery of your friends, relatives, neighbors, and coworkers. ---
WHS: What a moron! Who cares what others think!
I have had enough, I won't read any more in this book.
I stopped reading this book on 2025-9-30.
This book is weird. It feels as if the writer doesn't understand basic things in life, which means he is almost certainly emotion poor/autistic.
The methods of how to be happy are from classical Greek and Roman philosophy, not updated and barely changed, which would be better to make more sense, but which the author doesn't seem to be able to do. He even writes that he feels justified to make some little changes to make it more applicable, so he feels as if he needs to go by the rules of the already existing ancient ideas of the stoics. This fits with him likely being autistic as autists are rule followers. The rule he has seems to be, from what he wrote: "This is stoicism so this is what I will use as my philosophy of life, and not change it even if it makes more sense to make changes (both big and small), only make small changes that are in line with the old stoic ideas", or to get to the essence: "If I change the rules/methods of this philosophy of life then it is no longer stoicism and I am writing a book on, and living according to the rules of ancient stoicism, so I won't do that.". The use of negative visualisation is a big problem, it is not needed and means you are always thinking about negative things. My method in my list of life is far better: Change your mindset to not worry and to not see 'problems' as problems, so you can always be positive and if there is a 'problem', it will not influence your mindset (or not much), you will simply solve it as best you can.
Rating: I rate this book 1/10.
|
Copyright W.H.Scholten, 2025. To contact me you can email or send a message via telegram (via phone +31648816383), or via vk.com (https://vk.com/w.h.scholten, which I don't really use but I will get notified of messages from there). I don't use: facebook, linkedin, twitter. |