If you were to look at my profile, you will see that one of my favorites books is the "Life of Reason" by George Santayana. You may not know who he is, and if you are interested, you can read about him here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Santayana. I'm confident you are familiar with the following aphorism: "Those who forget the lessons of history are doomed to repeat it"...bad paraphrase, but it's my "humming a few bars for you".
I stumbled up Santayana in a used book store in Lynchburg (The Little Givens Bookstore) which had a pretty extensive used book section. One of my favorite past times is going to used bookstores and wandering the stacks. I find that books jump out at you at times--a sign, of course, that you are ready for the topic, if you place any stock in "book karma".
When I picked up the book The Life of Reason, a frayed hardback, I could tell that it was a well-loved book. This particular book was a bit of a Reader's Digest version. As I opened the book and read the prose I was astounded about the incredible elegance of the use of language. It was like prose-poetry. Yet, I had never heard of this man. [Santayana was Spanish, and English was his second language. What I would give to have half the command of it as he. For those of you who didn't bother with with the Wikipedia link, he was a philosopher, taught at Harvard, and studied under William James).
So after purchasing the book and reading a bit and becoming even further struck by his extraordinarily deft and musical command of the written word, I asked a few people I knew if they were familiar with his work. I honestly couldn't understand why this man was not more well known. One of my book club members is one of the most erudite people I know. He's a theologian, clinical psychologist and business consultant. All bases covered there! I asked him about Santayana, and his face broke out into a grin. "How funny you should ask," he said. "I did my master's dissertation on him." As it turns out, Santayana was a student of Arthur Schopenhauer's works. Don gave me one of Santayana's works for Christmas--an exceedingly thoughtful gift that I will cherish.
You see, I'm one of those nerdy folks who has read AS's, "The World as Will and Representation". I also have (and have read) his "On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason." (I know this should be underlined, but there is no facile way to do this in this Blogger format). What's interesting about AS, is that he was one of the first Western philosopher's to study Eastern religion and incorporate it into his works. He was a curmudgeonly fellow, too. In fact, Ebeneezer Scrooge was likely patterned after AS! So it is indeed serendipitous that I also stumbled upon Santayana who was a disciple of sorts of AS's works. Also of interest, is that AS was such a ferocious note taker on the books that he read that the pencil would sometimes gouge the pages. (I have formed the habit of never reading unless I have pen and paper. I have a pen and paper fetish that I'll speak more about when I'm in a different mood.) Now understand, because I say that I have these incredible works and have read them, by no means suggests that I fully understand them. But I have this one wish that when I die, people will look at the books that I have and say...Wow! (Fluff over stuff, you know!)
But as I pick up GS's book to tell you about it, I'm reminded that it is time to revisit it. Great works by wondrous thinkers have deeper meanings than any of us can fully access on first reading. I remember reading John Adam's biography and his habit of reading Cicero's (?, oh pox on my bad memory) over and over. So tomorrow, I will settle in and read a chapter or two, and marvel again at such mastery over our language. And as I pick up GS, I'm reminded of Ernst Cassirer who wrote "Language and Myth", and who referenced GS's wonderful work "The Sense of Beauty".
And for those of you thinking what the heck does any of this have to do with investing...I leave you with E. O. Wilson. E. O. Wilson is an evolutionary socio-biologist. He wrote "Consilience" where is posits: "that the sciences, humanities, and arts have a common goal: to give a purpose to understanding the details, to lend to all inquirers "a conviction, far deeper than a mere working proposition, that the world is orderly and can be explained by a small number of natural laws." This is the essence of consilience." (From Wikipedia).
And as we think about how psychology, economics, base emotions (fear, greed), etc. politics, finance, mathematics, statistics, all conspire to move the world, then I think that affects investing! These are the great thinkers that introduced new concepts on integrating divergent disciplines into coherence.
And I'll leave you with my favorite GS quote and a suggestion.
Favorite Quote: "The definition of a zealot is when the efforts are redoubled when the aim is lost."
Suggestion: Pick up a book on something that you know little about but on which you'd like to learn more and read it.
Perhaps one of my NY's resolutions will be this. For the balance of my life, I will spend one year devoted to either one person's works or various works on particular subject and read all that I can. String theory, Italo Calvino, William Gass, chaos theory, flowers, training dogs,...whatever. Imagine the depth and richness that you will cultivate in your life.
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