Audio recording of the post, “2 Great books on self-improvement”
Lately I have been enamored with a non-fiction author who has genuinely changed my perspective on problem solving and mental toughness.
Problem solving is the act of finding and deploying solutions on problems. And mental toughness is the wherewithal to not give up or to give in, but to stick with it.
His books have been awesome study material over the past two months, and I highly recommend you look into either of these books by Dr. Jason Selk:
Audio Recording of the Post ‘Why you are never going to make it (ngmi)’
Take it from me when I say this, there will always be a bigger fish.
As cryptic as that sounds, consider ‘The Old Man and The Sea’. By the end of the book, the complete desecration of the huge fish that he brings in seems utterly tragic. And when I read that novel as a young man, I was rather touched by the ending. To this day, my father speaks of the tragedy of the fish with reverence.
But I got thinking this morning, wondering where I was going to travel to next after spending the month of February in Mexico. I kept asking myself, why bother going anywhere else in the world – its all just dirt, plants, water, and people under the sky anyway.
And while I sat there on the toilet, as I imagine Hemingway had when he thought up the start of that iconic novel, I realized that there will always be a bigger fish to pull in.
I just have to go back out to sea, throw in my line, and try again.
You are not alone if you have found your self asking, “Why should I buy cryptocurrency?”
While I was searching for why I should, I discovered a book that eloquently, and correctly, hypothesized what the world would look like after the year 2000 from the perspective of 1998. I imagine it was much like looking over a chasm’s edge.
The Sovereign Individual was written by James Dale Davidson & Lord William Rees-Mogg. I imagine writing with a partner is difficult, but these two pulled it off nicely.
How I came by the book
It is difficult to pinpoint in memory where I found this book suggestion. I don’t use goodreads or other review/recommendation websites. Most times it seems that books are looking for me.
As for The Sovereign Individual, I came across the book while digging through some cryptocurrency forum. The subtitle, “Mastering the Transition to the Information Age” seemed interesting enough.
I grabbed a copy from Lib Gen on my personal phone and had Librera Pro read the text to me (TextToSpeech, TTS). That’s right, I did not read the book. I listened to it, which just lends to the validity of this book in my eyes… or ears.
What the book is about
The Sovereign Individual is about how impactful technology is on the mega-political structures of humankind.
They, Davidson & Rees-Mogg, examine three major historical turning points:
The End of the Roman Empire
The End of the Roman Catholic Church
The End of the Iron Curtain
With each of these historical turning points, they look at:
The context for why these technologies were revolutionary
How each new technology fueled changes in human quality of life (for better and for worse)
How currency has changed with each era of mankind on account of these technologies
They elucidate that with the invention of the micro-processor humankind has transcended the need or use of the nation-state.
What does their argument look like?
Computational encryption and communication empowers man to write messages that the nation-state can’t stop. And thusly, be able to exercise sovereignty over their liberty.
Need a couple examples?
Unstoppable Messages
I can lock a message with OneKeyChain on my phone that only you can unlock. Or a group of people can unlock. In that encrypted message could be anything. And the desirous-to-be-all-seeing nation-state doesn’t like that.
If you wanted to lock a message that only I can open, here is the pgp public key I generated as an example:
Alixander Court 