Autobiographies
Autobiographies are only useful as the lives you read about and analyze may suggest to you something that you may find useful in your own journey through life.
-Eleanor Roosevelt
I love autobiographies, especially those written near the end of the author’s life. They have vast knowledge to dispense while having few ulterior motives.
At worst, the author’s incentive is to convince you of their narrative of the world. Maybe they mistell stories to make them look better. However, they’d have to be narcissists for that to make sense. Writing is reflective. In writing about your life to teach others, you must expose your flaws and show your humanity.
Some write end of life autobiographies to preserve their legacy, but they mostly do it to record for future generations to learn from their mistakes.
We have direct access to the thoughts and hard learned lessons from some of the most amazing people ever to live. These treasure troves are undervalued. What’s great now is how recent figures, from Sam Zell to Matthew McConahay to Norm MacDonald to Patrick Stewart, are the voice actors of their audiobooks.
Feynmann
Richard Feynman wrote a few autobiographies. He’s a physicist who won a Nobel Prize and didn’t even want the Nobel prize. He worked on the Manhattan Project and stole the nuclear codes multiple times as a prank to prove a point.
Feynmann was known as the greatest science teacher to ever live. His wit and first principled thinking are unmatched. He didn’t care what others thought of his actions. He played the frigideira at Carnival and testified to Congress how strip clubs are great places for the local community and shouldn’t be shunned.
Feynmann was eager for publicity early in life, then later learned that it’s awful and good to stay away from. He was lonely and proposed to a girlfriend. That marriage only lasted 2 years. Feynman had a reputation for being honest and saying if he thinks ideas are good or bad. People would use him as a sounding board.
The Manhattan Project had incompetent bureaucrats around it. Locked drawers with important info were easy to pick. He stole the nuclear codes multiple times to prove this point to leadership. Instead of fixing the problem, leadership instructed staff to be careful around Feynmann. It’s no wonder Russia stole our nuclear secrets.
At the same time, the military didn’t disclose that the purified uranium was explosive to the engineers building the first nuclear bomb. It could have killed people if Feynmann hadn’t ruffled feathers, as army bureaucrats wanted to keep the device secret even to the people building the bomb.
Feynmann stressed that we should never assume we have all the answers. That’s how we doom humanity. Reading history, he felt that’s what destroyed societies– lack of iteration. Scientists need to encourage freedom. Doubt should not be feared but discussed. Demand freedom as a duty to all coming generations, or humanity’s progress will slow.
He stressed understanding concepts and frameworks vs pure memorization. This was novel at the time and still is in many contexts. The worst business people I’ve met always do something because someone else did it. Without understanding the why, the action doesn’t mean much.
When you understand the why behind things, you see the matrix. You can quickly identify bullshit for what it is. Feynmann went to a conference with prestigious liberal arts professors. They talked about how the US should give all its wealth to other countries and everyone should have the same resources. At face value, he thought it made sense until he realized it’s not zero-sum, and we’re wealthy because we create and build things. Humanity’s default state of being is destitution, not wealth.
Generalizable
We need emotions for things to stick. Whether it’s a viral video or a past experience, our long-term memory selects for our most emotional moments. The best autobiographies include intimate details about their lives. Norm MacDonald’s pseudo autobiography had a shocking moment that I still think about to this day. It was in the middle of a ridiculous, almost non-sensical reflection on his life. It was so jarring that I had to stop to process it.
Autobiographies are a great way to understand history and life. The first part is generally about their parents’ lives and personal upbringing. It gives a sense of life back then, often emphasizing how important local groups and religion were to communities. Although perhaps prosaic at the time, these descriptions made the beginning parts of Katherine Graham’s and Andrew Carnegie’s biographies a joy to read.
For any struggle you’re personally experiencing, there are likely dozens of people throughout history who have lived through something similar. Many have come back from the lowest lows to reach the highest highs.
I plan to write an autobiography one day. I hope my friends do as well. That’s part of the purpose of these writings– to hone my ability. Our responsibility is to do what we can, learn what we can, improve the solutions, and pass them on. Give people of the future a free hand.