Keys to critical self-awareness

Arthur Brooks' guidance

Excerpt: "Know thyself is the most famous maxim of Greek philosophy, carved into stone on the Temple of Apollo at Delphi.

Why? you might ask. The greatest philosophers and writers throughout history are more likely to tell you why not, so foundational is the idea of self-knowledge to a meaningful existence. In his tragedy Thyestes, the Stoic philosopher Seneca writes, “Death lies heavily on him / Who, though to all the world well known, / Is stranger to himself alone.”

And as Shakespeare asserts in his comedy As You Like It, “The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man / knows himself to be a fool.”

Seneca and Shakespeare were artistic geniuses with extraordinary insight, but in an empirical sense, modern behavioral scientists can make an even stronger case for the value of self-knowledge.

I’ll get into the details of that in a moment, but what their work shows is that knowing thyself can protect people from the damaging errors and biases that lead them into self-serving delusion."