Follow your passion.
NYU professor, Scott Galloway[1] says that the worst advice to give anyone fresh out of school is to: Follow your passion. Because anyone telling you to follow your passion is already rich. The person telling you to follow your passion probably made billions in a boring industry like iron ore and smelting.
The more boring an industry, the greater your return on capital. And the monetary rewards, prestige, the recognition of being a subject matter expert, is what makes people passionate about what they do.
"No one grows up thinking: "I'm passionate about tax law", but the best tax lawyers fly private jets and have a much broader selection of mates than they deserve. And they get to do interesting stuff, which by the way, makes them passionate about tax law."
Why things don't work.
Nobody is trying to fix the problems within the organization. They are simply just trying to make (or milk) enough money so that the problems don’t matter to them anymore.
Success is the greatest imposter.
"In life, business, or martial arts, winning is a falsehood. It seduces smart people into thinking that they are invincible. It tricks good people into believing that they are infallible. And it robs all people of reality and truth. Don’t believe the hype. And don’t eat your own bullshit. Or you will lose everything. The only antidote to the poison of success is humility, hunger, and gratitude. Stay humble. Stay hungry. Stay grateful. And outwork everyone." - Chatri Sityodtong
It's relatively easy to be humbled when you have been beaten or when you have failed. But staying humble when you are ahead and winning is a much more difficult task.
Solitude.
Many people still do not understand why early morning coffees and hotpot alone mean so much to me.
"Solitude is dangerous. It's very addictive. It becomes a habit after you realize how peaceful and calm it is. It's like you don't want to deal with people anymore because they drain your energy." - Jim Carrey
Simple brand-less self-worth.
MUJI was born in an era characterized by the rapid globalization of Japan, a booming pop culture and the yearning for a unique identity. This gave rise to the emergence of bold and somewhat psychedelic advertising which targeted consumers who favored branded and lavish goods.
Contrary to the global brands, MUJI adopts a non-aggressive "no-brand" marketing approach. Far from lacking any product identity, it champions the idea that quality should speak for itself, eliminating the need for flashy logos or advertising campaigns[2].
But MUJI wasn't just about selling affordable quality merchandise, it was selling minimalism.
While the rest of the world thrived on an insatiable appetite of wanting more, MUJI strips away this extravagance, reducing it to functional simplicity. Waste not, want not.
"In the MUJI concept, design intervenes in the making of things. This counters the rest of the world, which runs on the fuel of capital and appetite. Japan, looking upon the world from its detached location at the eastern end of Asia, has built an aesthetic that is infinitely attractive to human rationality, not within luxury and extravagance, but simplicity."
True minimalists often live in perfect balance with their surroundings and have an acute sense of self-worth. They avoid the excesses, and seek neither external validation from association with a brand, nor do they care about how the world looks at them.
Prada charges over a thousand dollars for a bag, for which you can get for probably fifty bucks directly from a factory in China or somewhere else.
Christian Dior designer slippers are priced at about sixty times more than the popular Havaianas, which are ten times more costly than your regular flip flops.
If you step back and think about it: Almost no one will spend an inordinate amount of time looking at your footwear under normal circumstances, so why the need to splurge?
Designer and luxury stores are not selling expensive items. They are really selling self-worth to people who do not have any.
The illusion of freedom.
Slaves used to work all day, everyday with no pay. But they had free food, water and shelter.
Today, we work all day, nearly every day and get paid. But with the money we make, we spend on food, water and shelter.
In both situations (past and present) we are still slaves. The only thing that has changed is the illusion of freedom.
Being rich.
Some of the most well-off people I know aren't bankers, lawyers or doctors.
"Doing well with money has little to do with how smart you are and a lot to do with how you behave. And behavior is hard to teach, even to smart people. A genius who loses control of their emotions can be a financial disaster. The opposite is also true. Ordinary folks with no financial education can be wealthy if they have a handful of behavioral skills that have nothing to do with formal measures of intelligence." - Morgan Housel
You are free to leave, but you are also free to starve.
Almost everybody spends most of their life living in a totalitarian system. It's called having a job.
"When you have a job, you are under total control of the masters of the enterprise. They determine what you wear, when you go to the bathroom, what you do – the very idea of a wage contract is selling yourself into servitude. These are private governments. They're more totalitarian than governments are. They can't legally murder you but they can control everything that you do. Yes, you are free to leave, but you're also free to starve. You have a choice between starving or selling yourself into tyranny." - Noam Chomsky [3]
People prefer fiction over the truth.
It's getting more difficult to get access to reliable sources of information.
“The vast majority of information is not the truth. A key misconception - especially in places such as Silicon Valley - is to equate information with truth. Most information is junk. The truth is a very rare, costly and precious kind of information. To write a truthful story, you need to invest a lot of time, effort and money into research, and fact-checking. Whereas fiction is very very cheap.” - Yuval Noah Harari
You can make a hundred mistakes and do no wrong.
In 2016, Jared Kushner came across a book titled "Death by China" as part of an unwitting research on the Internet. The book was authored by Peter Navarro, an economics professor who would later end up being Trump's advisor for economic policy during his presidential campaign.
Five years on after being voted in, Trump is defeated in the 2020 presidential election. The US Capitol is attacked by mobs resulting in the deaths of at least nine people and hundreds of injuries. Among those who allegedly coordinated the coup was loyal Trump supporter, Peter Navarro. When summoned to court, Navarro refuses, and is eventually sentenced to four-months in jail for contempt.
In a turn of events, Trump “resurrects“ from the shadows and into his second presidential term in 2025[4], re-hires Navarro back into the administration, and makes him trade advisor.
Navarro is widely credited as being the "architect" of Trump's tariffs, which has been the subject of much controversy in terms of how the rates had been calculated.
This is a guy who has had a soft job offer from the President while serving jail-time. Trump was quoted as saying, "I would absolutely have Peter back."
This is also the same guy who invented a fictional expert in his book "Death by China", that had been picked up by Jared Kushner nearly ten years ago. Navarro calls this fictional character "a whimsical device and pen name used throughout the years for opinions and purely entertainment value, not as a source of fact."
It just goes to show that you don't need brains and talent to get into the highest ranks of government or senior management.
You can manufacture a tall story, openly defraud the public, talk rubbish, even go to jail, and yet still come back unbowed, unbent, unbroken[5], providing counsel to the most powerful people in the world. You can make a hundred mistakes and still do no wrong -- as long as you are in the right social circles of influence.
Sometimes, who you know is more important than who you are.
[1] Scott Galloway's video clip on "the worst advice given to young people": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1feBz5ifT-U
[2] Yuko Kikuchi, Japanese Modernisation and Mingei Theory, Cultural Nationalism and Oriental Orientalism, https://www.routledge.com/Japanese-Modernisation-and-Mingei-Theory-Cultural-Nationalism-and-Oriental-Orientalism/Kikuchi/p/book/9780415405829?srsltid=AfmBOopQ_vV76QWQout87cBKasyWwgeN4FQHIx7FHmkE-7tqpsqZ5smD.
[3] Noam Chomsky's ideologies have somewhat generated public controversy. This is an editorial article on his life at 96: https://theconversation.com/noam-chomsky-at-96-the-linguist-educator-philosopher-and-public-thinker-has-had-a-massive-intellectual-and-moral-influence-232698
[4] Peter Navarro: the economist who has outsmarted Elon Musk and has the ear of Donald Trump https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/21/peter-navarro-the-economist-who-has-outsmarted-elon-musk-and-has-the-ear-of-donald-trump
[5] To borrow a phrase from the title of the film series "Game of Thrones" (Season 5 Episode 6) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3866842/
Thursday, May 29, 2025