Vol. II · No. 156
Established 2025

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Friday, June 5, 2026
160 writers in the library
Culture · 2 shelves
CulturePhilosophy

The Autodidact.

Omar Najjarine on virtue, meaning, and cultural critique — essays from a lecturer and autodidact.

Recent essays

23 of 23

Why creative people are broke

On devotion and monetization

A man lives by believing something, not by debating and arguing about many things

Meaning is made, not found

Of course you can't focus. You live a life of permanent interruption

Why we can't think clearly anymore

I worked hard for a life I don't want

Seminar announcement

Clavicular and the race towards ungreatness

You can get everything you want and still hate who you are

Plenty of good people lead unfulfilling lives

Ethical living doesn't shield you from emptiness

No, I don't want a "baddie." I have real interests in my life

Dating in a bored culture

I can’t overcome my lust no matter how hard I try

Our pornographic nervous systems

Everything you need to know to build a full-time, six-figure income reading, writing and teaching on the internet

The full book

We are not serious people

Why some ways of life die out and others keep going

Life doesn't start until you have kids

My uncle once told me, “Omar, I know you love your books and your writing, but until you have kids, life hasn’t really started yet.”

Multitasking is a form of escapism

Make your life about one thing at a time

How your brain changes when you quit porn

Whatever gives your brain the most dopamine is what it will crave the most

A civilization without elders

One of the most tragic things to see is an unhappy old person.

Read this to find your calling

When you're gone, your miracle ends

How to be an incredibly interesting person

Live a phone-less life. People completely misunderstand the nature of the problem.

Being good doesn't get you anywhere in life

Some reflections on The Sopranos

What we find ugly in others, we tolerate in ourselves

William James speaks of a built-in hypocrisy in human nature: what we find ugly in others, we tolerate in ourselves.

Be a great person of history

Americans love and hate war

If you asked the average native-born American whether they would erase from the record of history the great wars of the United States — the Civil War, the War for Independence, our storming of the beaches at Normandy — if you could somehow play God and delete…

The Strange Decline of Jordan Peterson

I'm late responding to Peterson's now-infamous Jubilee discussion

Imagine if you were everything you pretended to be

5 Laws of Personal Transformation

Is the decline of the religious spirit a sign of societal progress or loss?

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