Century-old perspectives on a life well lived
· 10 min
I recently sold an entire 32-volume set of the Encyclopedia Britannica from 1992. It was obsolete, unthinkably heavy, and entirely beautiful. The retail price upon its release ranged from $1,200 to $2000. Adjusted for inflation today, it would be worth a staggering $6,500 dollars. I sold it for $50 and considered myself lucky.
However, not all of my parent’s artifacts were as defunct as the Encyclopedia. During that same excavation of my garage, I also stumbled across two other sets of books: The Young Folks Treasury from 1909 and a 54-volume set of The Great Books of the Western World from 1990. I was ecstatic. Part of my excitement stemmed from the fact that this stuff was old. As a computer geek growing up in the 2000s, I’ve always wondered what life was like before the release of Facebook in 2004, League of Legends in 2009, or most recently, TikTok in 2017. How did people spend their time before algorithms came into existence? I desperately wanted to get a taste of that lifestyle.
I’m sharing this experiment to illustrate just how distorted modern self-help content has become, and how some old books have expanded my views on financial independence and the definition of a good life.
Self-Help: Past & Present
The ninth volume of the 1909 Young Folks Treasury (YFT) is labeled “Men and Women of Achievement; Self-Help.” As an avid addict of mental masturbation (excuse my language) and modern self-help content, I was curious to compare the genre between two snapshots in time. What I noticed was a complete shift in values I would argue has turned for the worse.
In my experience, modern self-help is comprised of YouTube videos and Twitter threads. An oversaturated thumbnail of a man fanning out some cash, or perhaps a hook beginning with, “I spent 20 years in sales, here are ten ideas that changed my life.” It’s not magic that modern copywriting captures attention well, it simply plays on our psychological reward systems. The core message is:
Here’s the secret shortcut to make money fast, become an expert in hours, and live your dream life… just take ten minutes to consume my content (and ads)!
Compare this with the YFT’s self-help guides where the words “character” and “labor” show up on every page.
“I wish now to emphasize the fact that no habit is so valuable, no love of anything in the world so precious, as the love of labor, of constantly and regularly producing something useful… it is the purifier of character.”
Hard work is acknowledged, even glorified. It is not glossed over or underrepresented. While modern self-help perpetually dangles the carrot of financial independence in every video, the YFT emphasizes the process far more than the result. They even go so far as to say:
“Poverty is the finest inheritance a young man can have. No combination can be better than poverty and good health to a young man who wants to carve his way in the world.”
One cannot imagine commending poverty as a strength in today’s society.
“No man who values his character… should engage or cause his children to engage in a business whose main object is to make money, not to earn it; to grow rich without labor; to rise on the ruin of others… it must be dug out of the earth, blasted out of the mine”
Poverty is seen as neutral while making money for its own sake is actually condemned. The path to success is touted to be achieved organically through a love of industry and the creation of concrete value. How would the author react to the college dropouts looking to strike it big day trading right now?
Of course, shortcuts, exploits, windfalls, and lucky opportunities exist. Yet the era of clickbait has sold the narrative so strongly that many (young men especially) simply drift from trend to trend, running in circles to find the next life-changing shortcut. You might not be one of them, but ask yourself - do you want to live in a society where character is mentioned less and less? Where making money is uncorrelated, or even antonymous with producing real value?
“Whenever a man who has risen from obscure poverty to great wealth dies, it is a common thing for young men to say: ‘Oh, yes, he started when there were lots of chances. But a man can’t do that sort of thing now.’”
What has not changed are the excuses. Whichever one you may choose, I can assure you that it has been used for hundreds of years, the excuses carry no weight and never will.
Lastly, one may critique that the YFT’s self-help articles were far more inspirational than they were practical. That is undoubtedly true, and they should not be read literally. Yet there’s something very noble about them that scratches my moral inch inside, representing a step backward in the right direction. It has created in me a repulsion to the money-frantic, results-oriented self-help content that is ubiquitous on the internet today.
My wish is for us to stop over-indexing on novelty and read content that was incentivized for learning rather than for advertisement clicks, and where ethics was even fractionally a part of the discussion. The ingredients for success haven’t changed.
Role Models: Past & Present
Apart from the path to success, these old books have reshaped my destination as well. Success as glorified by flashy influencers is a lot less attractive when you’ve seen it in a different light, such as through Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography. Franklin started from humble beginnings as a successful operator of a printing press before shifting his focus from enterprise to politics, where his patriotism and conscientiousness left a legacy that has earned his visage on the $100 bill even today. Many entrepreneurs would have been satisfied with the profits from the press, but Franklin’s ultimate goal was impact, not comfort. It shows that the pursuit of financial independence represents only one challenge of the hydra-headed mess that is life. It is true that it often needs to be the first dragon slain, but perhaps the dragon doesn’t need to be as large as we imagine it to be. Franklin didn’t wait to become a billionaire before getting involved with his community.
Moving on from anecdotes, consider this table from a 2022 study on happiness published in the Psychological Review:
Oishi, Westgate; A psychologically rich life: Beyond happiness and meaning. Psychological Review, 2021
A good life is scientifically proven to be far more multi-faceted than becoming rich, despite what the YouTube gurus say. The Measurements and the Facilitators differ across all three dimensions. You can go deep in one dimension (the “I” shape), or split your time between two (the “T” shape), but color me impressed if you’re able to track highly on all three. I realized that the goal is balance, to make enough to live a satisfactory lifestyle before shifting one’s focus to another dimension. The trap I was deluded into through modern content was believing that financial independence was the ultimate goal.
The closest example I could find from the YFT of a man achieving high levels of all three dimensions was in a biography of Samuel Morse. Morse began as a painter before inventing the telegraph through a stroke of electromagnetic genius. Before long, he achieved international fame, attained riches, and appeased his scientific curiosity to great effect. Note that the telegraph didn’t make him wealthy to the point where money starts accruing negative marginal utility; he passed with a net worth of around $10 MM in today’s terms, though certainly enough to live comfortably. Throughout his life, he also made sizeable philanthropic gifts to churches, universities, and bursaries for struggling artists, affecting his community in the ways he saw fit.
Finding New Perspectives
Through my excavation in the garage, I was reminded of a more moral and realistic path to riches and a set of historical role models that speak more to me than the idols on social media. If that seems somewhat anachronistic, then yes, I might be old-fashioned compared to some peers. I am convinced that it was the overconsumption of clickbait modern content that subconsciously led me to explore a different time period, and these books were just the catalyst.
If you want to taste like I did, try ordering some hundred-year-old books off eBay. Use our infinite technology to deliver something real and grounded right to your doorstep. Maybe get some thousand-year-old ones too (modern copies). Then, armed with perspectives that span the ages, both old and new… you can craft your Good Life too.