Obvious State

🎉 Dostoevsky’s Philosophy released early! 

ABOUT THE BOOK 
Dostoevsky is as much a philosopher as he is a novelist. But unlike a philosopher, his arguments are developed between the conflicting points of view of his characters.

In this book, you’ll find twelve of Dostoevsky’s most fundamental themes, each containing two powerful quotations and two competing passages from different characters across his major works. The “challenge” presents a provocative point of view, and the “response” counters it with an alternate perspective. 

Punctuated with 12 bold illustrations, this unique pocket edition serves as both an introduction and an invitation to one of our most passionate, brilliant, and deeply human authors.

Happy Spring! Touch grass.

Gibran’s The Prophet is one of the best selling and most translated books of all time. In addition to its positive attitude toward humanity, there is a subtle provocation to reconnect with nature, directly and deeply. 

We responded to the quote’s personification of the wind and earth. Rather than centering on a person’s experience of the wind, we wanted to capture the wind’s experience of a person. How does the wind “see” something? How does it caress someone it longs for?

ABOUT THE ART
In our illustration, the wind dresses a human form in its movement, becoming a natural surrogate for clothing. 

I recently noticed something about bad days. If you check all of the items off your to-do list, it makes no difference whether you did so miserably or with equanimity. The report was written, the project was completed, the dishes were done, the mail was dropped off, the trash was taken out. And the things don’t care whether you suffered to do them, or delighted in doing them. The modern version of this is the saying “Pain is inevitable, but suffering is a choice.” 

Without getting too self-helpish, I do believe that this is an excellent example of the kind of actionable wisdom that Seneca and Stoicism in general offer. It pairs perfectly with last week’s insight, that the present is really all we have, and how we can completely miss it by engaging in unnecessary suffering, rumination or anxiousness. 

For this illustration for “Letters from a Stoic,” I chose a Parisian street as the backdrop, a sunset reflected in the Hausmann windows. A shadow is cast on the memory, transforming the scene into a rainy night, the crown of the man’s head making a second dark sun. Seneca encourages us to accept the difficulties of life with equanimity, and to reject the temptation to dwell on what we can’t control. And my day was more pleasurable for having read him.

- Evan

WWSD (What Would Seneca Do?)

In the face of an overwhelming, infuriating, almost-paralyzing array of unanswerable philosophical questions, stoicism starts with the most pragmatic one.

What can we actually control? Our judgments, choices, intentions, virtues, efforts, and our focus. 

What can’t we control? Bad fortunes, when and where we are born, other people’s opinions and actions, and even how long we live. 

The only thing we truly own is our time, and what we attempt to do with it.

In visualizing this artwork from our upcoming book, “Letters From a Stoic,” I wanted to show someone in a vast expanse, exposed to the elements, but calm, and a cowboy came to mind. The desert is the endless expanse of time, and he can explore some but not all of it. Cacti and shrubs demarcate the journey. The clock is ticking - one hand pointing to now, the other to the always-approaching end. And yet, he’s unperturbed. He owns and uses his time. He focuses on what he can control. He is content with the present.

Seneca implores us to use our time well. In fact, he says, it’s not even that life is short, “but that we waste much of it.” I think about that every time I’m scrolling Instagram reels kind-of-laughing-but-kind-of-bored. What could I be doing instead? The world is a big place and there’s so much to explore.

But the clock is ticking. WWSD?