Ryan Holiday

Americans fucked this up.

And then you you read about Rome and Sparta and Athens and

As you said, and you go, oh, wait, every country does this stuff.

Every country is bad.

Yeah.

Every country has shameful secrets.

Every country has weird, hilarious quirks.

Every country has practices that make no sense.

One of Herodotus' famous stories is he talks about these two different, it's like the meeting of these people from

India versus these people from Greece.

I forget what it was exactly, but he's basically like one of them is describing how they treat their dead and the other is like disgusted and appalled.

And then they go, well, what do you do?

And they say, and then they're disgusted and like one of them burns their dead, which if you think the body is sacred is like the worst thing you could do.

And then the other one, you know, like ate a piece of the dead.

And then if you think the body is putrid and disgusting, you're

That's the worst thing you could possibly do.

And his point is, everyone thinks what other people do is crazy because they think going into it that there's only one way to do things.

And that wisdom is, again, part of the reason for the humility that comes along with wisdom is that you learn there's a lot of ways to do things.

Well, this is the fascinating thing about Montaigne, and I talk about this in the book.

While Montaigne is living in Reformation and Counter-Reformation France, the New World is discovered.