Steven Pressfield
The Gnostics believed that exile was the psychological condition of the human being. It certainly feels that way to me. We’ve been talking about artists and addicts for the past couple of weeks. Not every artist is an addict, and certainly not every addict is an artist. But it seems to me that both share an acute, even excruciating sensitivity to the pain of being human—and both actively seek ways to overcome it, transcend it, or at least make it go away. What is the pain of being human? To me, it’s the condition of being suspended between two worlds…
Read MoreThe artist and the addict are not very far apart, are they? Often they’re one and the same. A blues musician or a painter can be an addict one minute and an artist the next. He can be an artist and an addict at the same time. On Tuesday you’re rocking the casbah; on Wednesday you’re checking in to Betty Ford. Why is that? “It may be the devil or it may be the Lord, But you’re gonna have to serve somebody.” If Bob Dylan is right in Gotta Serve Somebody (and I think he is), we all do have to…
Read MoreThus endeth our series, The Warrior Ethos. To read the full book for free, click here. A “lightbox” will open. For those (like me) who are not 100% hip to lightboxes, they’re like e-books except you don’t need a Kindle or an iPad; you can read them on your regular laptop or desktop. Once you’re in the lightbox, open the window wide till you see PREVIOUS | NEXT in the lower left hand corner; then just “turn the pages.” Clicking on a page also turns it. There’s a CLOSE button in the lower right when you want to quit. The…
Read MoreHave you ever noticed that addicts are often extremely interesting people? Addiction itself is excruciatingly boring, in that it’s so predictable. The lies, the evasions, the transparent self-justification and self-exoneration. But the addict himself is often a colorful and compelling person. His story reads like a novel, packed with drama, intrigue, conflict and heartbreak. If the addict’s drug of choice is alcohol, the narrative is frequently one of job loss, domestic abuse, divorce, abandonment of children, bankruptcy. If Class One narcotics are the culprit, the tale often includes crime, the law, violence, even death. Of course we fallible mortals can…
Read MoreBelow are some of the dusty tomes I studied in writing The Warrior Ethos. Does the word “arcane” ring a bell? Reading these is like getting beaten up with a bag of ball bearings. Trust me, if the library at Quantanamo Bay contained nothing but these books, there would be no need for “enhanced interrogation techniques.” The prisoners would sing like birds. “Please! No more! I’ll tell you anything you want!” I’m the opposite. I love this stuff. Unearthing Frontinus’ The Strategemata deep in the library stacks, I was as psyched as Quentin Tarantino when he first got his hands…
Read MoreThe Domino Project is a partnership between Seth Godin and amazon.com, in which together they find, commission, edit, design, print, advertise, market and distribute a specific type of book/audio/eBook that Seth calls a “manifesto.” The first such piece, published two months ago, was Seth’s Poke the Box; the second, two weeks ago, was my Do the Work. In last week’s post, I offered my own befogged take on what the Domino Project is, what it represents, and what were some of the possible implications of this model for all of us artists and entrepreneurs going into the future. Continuing that…
Read MoreChapter 28 The Warrior Archetype Jung was a student of myths and legend and of the unconscious. He discovered and named the Collective Unconscious, meaning that part of the psyche that is common to all cultures in all eras and at all times. The Collective Unconscious, Jung said, contains the stored wisdom of the human race, accumulated over thousands of generations. The Collective Unconscious is the software we’re born with. It’s our package of instincts and pre-verbal knowledge. Within this package, Jung discovered what he called the archetypes. Archetypes are the larger-than-life, mythic-scale personifications of the stages that we…
Read MoreFirst, I want to thank everyone who helped make last Wednesday’s launch of Do The Work such an overwhelming success. I sent pizza to the gang at Seth Godin’s Domino Project (thanks, Pizza Grill in Hastings-on-Hudson, NY)—but I also want to give a shout-out to everyone who downloaded the free Kindle version, ordered the hardback or audio, tweeted, Facebooked, blogged, retweeted or just told a friend and passed DTW along. Thanks, you guys! You helped make this thing a hit without any traditional media, advertising, testimonials, blurbs, reviews, the whole shooting match. Next week in this space I’ll talk with…
Read MoreChapter 25 The War Inside Ourselves The Bhagavad-Gita is the great warrior epic of India. For thousands of years, Indian caste structure has been dominated by two elite social orders—the Brahmins (poets and holy men) and the Kshatriyas (warriors and nobles). The Bhagavad-Gita is the story of the great warrior Arjuna, who receives spiritual instruction from his charioteer, who happens to be Krishna—i.e., God in human form. Krishna instructs Arjuna to slay his enemies without mercy. The warrior-god points across the battlefield to knights and archers and spearmen whom Arjuna knows personally and feels deep affection for—and commands him…
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