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Friedrich Nietzsche is one of my favorite philosophers, and one of the best ideas he has is this concept of living dangerously. Now, a lot of people get this wrong. They assume that that means to go out and be reckless and just, you know, frivolous and do all of the things that you're told you shouldn't do. That's not, in fact, what he's saying. In today's episode of the Readable podcast, we're going to talk about what it means to live dangerously. Let's get into it. Welcome to this week's episode of the Read well podcast. My name is Eddie Hood, and I'm your host, where I believe it's more important to read well than to be well read. So grab your favorite book, open up your notes, and let's get ready to learn something fascinating. Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the Read well podcast. My name is Eddie Hood, and today we are talking about one of my favorite writers of all time, Frederick Nietzsche. Now, he is a writer who is just full of hyperbole. He is just. His. His writings are really grand and they're really aphoristic and they're pithy, and they're meant to sort of rattle your cages. And some people like that, some people don't. I love it. I think Nietzsche is just a lot of fun to read. And whether you agree with his ideas or not, he will challenge you and push you to the limit in a really fun way. He's actually quite a good writer, too, or he was compared to many philosophers like Kant or, you know, Heidegger or something, who can be really convoluted. Nietzsche is much easier to read. He's very forceful. He's very direct in his wording, and so it's fun. He's got books like Beyond Good and Evil, Thus Spoke Zarathustra and a few others. But what we're going to be talking about today is a concept from a book called the Gay Science Science, which I actually don't have on hand at the moment because I lent it to a friend. This is what good philosophy students do. Anyway, here's the concept. In this book called the Gay Science, he is talking about how to live dangerously. Now, what does that mean? To live dangerously means that you should not be crazy. You know, you shouldn't waste your money. You shouldn't go out and gamble everything. You shouldn't. Whatever. He's asking you to live a risky life. Not a. Not a. Not a stupid life, but a risky life. And for Nietzsche, the riskiest thing you can do is to learn to Be yourself. To give your own life meaning rather than pulling meaning from your church or your parents or your government or your career. It is up to you, through the authentic actions you take, to get and find your own meaning. To do that is a dangerous thing and I'll talk to you about that next. So why is it dangerous? Well, I can tell you this. I know when I'm sitting around the table with my family, whether it's the in laws or the extended family, I behave a specific way because I'm trying to play within the bounds of that family culture. Nothing wrong with that. It's. It's called being respectful. It's called fitting in. But I will tell you that Nietzsche really pushed against the concept of fitting in. He called that being a part of the herd and people who were valuing sort of security and comfort more than freedom and more than self understanding. Those people would prefer to keep their heads down and to do what's expected of them at all times so that they can remain safe, remain comfortable and keep that security blanket over them. Now I'm the first to admit that I kind of like security blanket. It's pretty good. I like going home at night and not having to worry about, you know, where I'm going to get my food from home or, or if my roof is going to be over my head and so on. So I'm just as guilty of being in the herd and living accordingly. But there is a part of me, in my heart, in my soul that yearns to sort of maybe, maybe not shout from the rooftops. But yeah, maybe, I don't know, shout from the rooftops to finally figure out who I am as an individual and as a person and then to go and live that life. I think that's why at 45 years old, I just decided to start a bookstore. Many of you know my story. It's called Edgewater Bookstore. But I'm recently under contract to buy a building in person and I'm hoping it will close by the end of the year here, assuming all goes well. But it is terrifying to go out and purchase a commercial building and to get into this concept of owning a bookstore and a coffee shop and so on because of the money and the complexity. But I know in my heart that is my true me, that is my self speaking. I have a lot of family and friends looking at me going, bro, what are you doing? This is not a good idea and I just don't care. I am so passionate about this project. I'm so in love with it and for the first time in my life feel like I am living life like Eddie Hood. I feel like I have emboldened myself and embraced myself and just accepted this is what I'm gonna do. And when I'm old and just kind of decrepit, I want to be the guy in the bookshelves that are just, like, putting books away, teaching the community that these things called books are the most beautiful thing in the world, and they're worth our time and our energy. So I'm following my passion, and I am scared out of my mind, you guys. I am terrified. But here's the great thing. When you live dangerously, when you lift your head up above the herd and you start, like, looking around going, wait a minute. What's important to me? What do I value? And you start to try and live that life. The really cool thing is that there are other people in the herd that will start to look up with you, and they will cheer you on. They will help you. And people in this community, you probably watching this video, have sent me kind messages of encouragement or have helped me with my Kickstarter campaign or whatever it was. And you are constantly there supporting me. And also, there are people in the herd that will kick you. They will bring you back down. I've had plenty of that. I've had lots of people who have told me that I should not be doing this, and on and on and on, and it is what it is. But here's what's really at the core of this message. To live dangerously. It's all about meaning in your life. I think we're all searching for some kind of meaning, and I think we're all worried. At least I'm worried that at the end of my life, I'll look back and go, what was all that about? Did my life mean anything? Was it valuable that I make a difference? And Nietzsche's argument is that if you don't live dangerously, if you don't learn to listen to your voice in your head and follow that voice, then when you get to the end of your life, you will be disappointed. You will be let down. You will have been a member of the herd who never looked up to see what. What is going on. Okay, so there's a couple books I want to share with you today that I think will help you with this concept of living dangerously. And I would love for you to do a little exercise with me. I did this in my book club last Tuesday, and it's a lot of fun. So grab a piece of paper and a pen. Yep. I don't have them on me at the moment because I'm recording a YouTube video podcast, but I just did this myself. Now I want you to write at the top of the page. When I meet a new person, I introduce myself by saying I am a blank. And in the blank, fill that out. And I want you to be completely honest with yourself. How do you introduce yourself? And what I'm trying to do right now is help you identify your identity. Right? Because I walk around all the time telling people I'm an accountant. That's just what I am. And somehow I've defined my life as an accountant. And if I meet somebody new, that's the thing. And that one sentence sort of landed on me really heavy and it made me think that's how I. And adding meaning to my life is because of my career as an accountant. And it's just been whatever. So I'm trying to find new meaning and I'm trying to learn to sort of find myself. Now this means questioning everything to live dangerously. And this is why it's dangerous. Because you, you have to question the belief set given to you from your parents, from your church, from your boss, from your spouse. All of these things have to be questioned. And in the questioning, you might ruffle a little feathers. You might, you might cause some concern. Okay. And that can feel scary. It can feel terrifying, to be honest. But if you want to have true meaning in your life, you kind of gotta do it. So here's two books I think will help you. The first one is a book I sell at Edgewater. It's called Hiking with Nietzsche. I've talked about this book before. It's written by Dr. John Cag. He teaches philosophy at MIT. I believe he's a really great writer, really fantastic writer. But I like this book because it's a bit of a memoir, as he's taught Nietzsche throughout his course and his career. But he goes, goes to the, the place where Nietzsche lived and he writes about the main ideas that Nietzsche sort of had and, and thought of. But he does it in the setting of, of Nietzsche's town and lifestyle. So it's, it's written in modern day English, really easy to follow, and I like it. And there's a concept in here of Nietzsche's that can be somewhat hard for people to understand, which is the doctrine of eternal recurrence. I know it sounds, it sounds just horribly difficult to follow, but it's not. And if you, if you read CAG's version of this, you'll walk away going Oh, I get it. That's pretty cool. And a little sneak preview. The doctrine of eternal recurrence, if you understand it, will help you to live dangerously. And. Yeah, so go check out that book. You can get it@edgewaterbookstore.com and then my book recommendation for this week, y'. All. I don't say y' all very often, but we're gonna do it. It's a book by Nigel Warburton. I love this book. It's called A Little History of Philosophy. It's got this cute little owl on the front. It's blue and yellow. Love this book. And here's why. Because at the very top, there's a little quote by someone that says that this book is a delight for the young of all ages. And that's actually appropriate because Warburton has done a really good job of giving us a history of Western philosophy from Socrates all the way up to. I can't remember how far he got. Let's see. Let's do a quick review here. Peter Singer. Yeah, so pretty current. We've got John Rawls in here. I love John Rawls. Really cool guy. Alan Turing and. And a few others. So. Ooh, Philip A. Foot. Yeah, it's been a while since I've read this, but I'm going to read it again. What I love about it is that it's written in a way that my probably 11 year old could understand. And it's done really well. It's really fun. In fact, I'm going to read to you the very first paragraph of this book so you can get a sense of the style and the voice. Chapter one is titled the man who Asked Questions. Socrates and Plato. Oddly enough, you'll notice it says the man, but it references two people, Socrates and Plato. That's because Socrates never wrote anything down and we only know about him through his student, his number one student, I would argue, Mr. Plato. So we kind of combine them in thought often in the world of philosophy. Here's chapter one for you. Not chapter one, paragraph one. About two, 400 years ago in Athens, a man was put to death for asking too many questions. There were philosophers before him, but it was with Socrates that the subject really took off. If philosophy has a patron saint, it is Socrates. Snub nosed, podgy, shabby and a bit strange, Socrates did not fit in. It goes on to explain who he was and the kind of person he was and the questions he asked. So you get a sense that this is written in a very fun, easy to approach style. You're Going to learn a lot about a lot of different philosophers. And yes, Mr. Frederick Nietzsche is in here. And yes, you can also get this book@edgewaterbookstore.com Cool thing is, is if you go to my bookstore online, there's a little magnifying glass up top, a search thing. You can click that type in the name of any book you want and hopefully you can find it there. Quick community update. I'm really excited about this. There's a reason why I can now sell a little History of philosophy on my website. Oh, and then I'm going to tell you a secret about how I buy books, which I think you'll find interesting if you stick around. But this last week I figured out how to plug into the back end of all of the publisher databases. I talked to you about this in last week's episode too, but it's now just coming online. I've been chatting with my IT guys today to try and figure this out. Hopefully in the next day or two we'll be able to see way more than just the 31 books I have on Edgewater. I've got access now to millions of different books. I'm not going to feature all of them on my site. That would be ludicrous. But what I've done is I've gone through all of them and I've selected several hundred that I think would be a really great curated set of books. From philosophy to essays to classics, classical literature to poetry to science to self help books, all these things. And now because I can plug right into the back end of their database, I can sell it. And if I don't carry it on hand, they will ship it to you for me. So huzzah. Everybody wins. All right, little fun secret about me and my weirdness when I buy books. So I just got this little copy of A Little History of Philosophy so I could show you. It's. I, I don't have, I didn't have the physical copy on my hand. I actually listened to it on audiobook time around. But what you can't see if you're listening to this on the podcast is this book is actually bent in the corner. It's got all of the pages are bent and turned up and it's not super perfect, right? Whenever I go to a bookstore, I always look for the book that's beat up and that's the book that I buy. Now a lot of you are going to cringe and you're going to go, I can no longer be friends with Eddie. Maybe that's the case. But here's why I do that. Because I think of books not as masterpieces to sit upon my shelves, to never be touched or used. But I feel like books are a tool, a tool of communication between, in this case, Nigel Warburton and myself. He knows more about this stuff than me. And so I get the opportunity and chance to sit at his feet and learn about the history of philosophy, which is a really great honor. Very, very cool. But for me, because a book is a tool, I'm going to treat it as such. I'm not going to treat it as a sacred object, never to be breathed upon and only to be worshiped on Sunday afternoons. I instead, I'm going to carry this with me in my back pocket in my bag. I'm going to write all over it. I'm going to treat it as a thought tool and I'm going to seriously do everything I can to get as much information out of this book as possible. That means interfacing with it. So I like to buy the books that are already bent or a little torn up or whatever for two reasons. One, it helps the local bookstore out, right? Most people are not going to buy that copy. They're going to buy the pristine copy and then these other ones are just going to sort of languish on the shelves and they're never going to get sold. And if you don't know this, bookstores that don't sell their books will sell them back to publishers. And if it's an mass market book, many times they just tear the COVID off and then send the covers back to get refunded because it costs too much to ship the books back. So it's this terrible waste, right, of beautiful books. So I feel like I'm saving a life by buying the ugly child on the shelf. The second reason I do it, like I said, is because it helps me psychologically get past the perfectness of the book. It's already bent, it's already ruined. So now it doesn't matter if I write on it and if I treat it like a really good friend or I spent a lot of time with it. That sounds weird. I wouldn't beat up my friends or treat them poorly. I'm not treating my books poorly, people. I don't want a bunch of comments from you saying that I'm a book abuser. I'm not. I just really love my books and I feel like I have a lot to learn from them. Hey, if you like this video and you want to learn more about Frederick Nietzsche and the ideas that he has. Let me know in the comments down below. I'm happy to make more of these. We can make a video on the idea or the doctrine of eternal recurrence and so many other ideas. He's got great ideas on the origin of morality, for example, why do we call things good versus evil? And so on. He's a fun philosopher. Also, let me know if you would like me to do individual videos or shows on ideas from other philosophers. For example, we could talk about Immanuel Kant and his idea of the categorical imperative. We could just sort of break that down and explain it in real English. To summarize again, to live dangerously is to not be crazy and stupid, but it is to live a risky life. And the riskiest thing you can do is learn to listen to the voice in your own head and follow it. It feels risky because you're scared and we got to get over that scariness. All right, until next week. As always, remember to read slowly, take notes, and apply the ideas. See you all next time. If you'd like to take your reading to the next level, then head on over to thereadwellpodcast.com there you'll find daily posts on how to read well. You'll also get access to all of my book notes and tools for becoming a better reader. And as always, don't forget to read slowly, take notes and apply the ideas. Thank you for listening to the Read well podcast.