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Bulls***t Inc.
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There’s a book called The War of Art, by Steven Pressfield. It’s a book I think everyone should read at least once in their lives. Since I got the book as a requirement for acting school (in 2012), I’ve read it once a year.

Every time I read it, I understand it better. I distinctly remember reading it at 20, 22 and just recently at 25 years old. I can honestly say that at twenty years old, I only read it because it was required reading. At twenty-two I read it because I was looking for answers to my internal questions about life and existence. At twenty-five, I read it for all of the above, but especially because I’m a point in my life where I not only understand things better, but self-development (kaizen) is at the front and center of my focus.

The book is a short and quick read…it’s also a slap in the face. The premise of The War of Art is simple: over our lifetimes we’ve often embarked on certain activities, but gave up on them for a variety of reasons, often we abandoned quite quickly.

The War of Art gives a list of those activities, but let me just give you the most popular ones:

  1. Education of every kind
  2. Any diet or health regimen
  3. Any activity whose aim is tighter abdominals
  4. The launching of any entrepreneurial venture, for profit or otherwise
  5. The pursuit of any calling in writing, painting, music, film, dance, or any creative art, however marginal or unconventional.

Do any of these sound familiar? I thought so. This has most certainly happened to you (It has to me oh so many times).

The War of Art is about RESISTANCE. Pay attention to that word, because Steven Pressfield believes, and very convincingly so, that resistance is responsible for everything that is bad in our world today. It’s a “destructive force inside human nature that rises whenever we consider a tough, long-term course of action that might do for us or others something that’s actually good.”

The book is divided in three parts, the first part of the book is identifying the enemy (resistance), and the many ways in which it manifests itself in our everyday lives, often in ways we don’t even realize. You don’t know what it is, you just know it’s there and it’s causing you misery. Pressfield informs us that resistance cannot be seen or touched, but can be felt. It comes from within. It’s “self-generated and self-perpetuated.” Let me give you some examples, there are so many good ones that I had trouble choosing, but I did my best:

  1. “Resistance and procrastination: resistance and procrastination is the most common manifestation of Resistance because it’s the easiest to rationalize. We don’t tell ourselves, “I’m never going to write my symphony.” Instead we say, “I am going to write my symphony; I’m just going to start tomorrow.”
  2. “Resistance and Trouble: We get ourselves in trouble because it’s a cheap way to get attention. Trouble is a faux form of fame. It’s easier to get busted in the bedroom with the faculty chairman’s wife than it is to finish that dissertation of metaphysics of motley in the novellas of Joseph Conrad….

…Ill health is a form of trouble as are alcoholism, drug addiction, proneness to accidents, jealousy, chronic lateness, and the blasting of rap music at 110db from your smoked glass 95’ Supra. Anything that draws attention to ourselves through pain-free or artificial means is a manifestation of Resistance.”

  1. “Resistance and Unhappiness: What does Resistance feel like? First, unhappiness. We feel like hell. A low-grade misery pervades everything. We’re bored, we’re restless. We can’t get no satisfaction. There’s guilt but we can’t put our finger on the source. We want to go back to bed; we want to get up and party. We feel unloved and unlovable. We’re disgusted. We hate our lives. We hate ourselves.

Unalleviated, Resistance mounts to a pitch that becomes unendurable. At this point vices kick in. Dope, adultery, web surfing.

Beyond that, resistance becomes clinical. Depression, aggression, dysfunction. Then actual crime and physical self-destruction. Sounds like life, but it it’s not, it’s Resistance.”

Pressfield goes on to say this: “What makes it tricky is that we live in a consumer culture that’s acutely aware of this unhappiness and has massed all its profit-seeking artillery to exploit it. By selling us a product, a drug, a distraction.”

  1. “Resistance and criticism: If you find yourself criticising other people, you’re probably doing it out of Resistance. When we see others beginning to live their authentic selves, it drives us crazy if we have not lived out our own.”

These are just a few, I wish I could write down all of them, so that you can see just how dire this is. The stronger your desire to fulfill your calling, the more you’ll feel resistance in your body.

Book II of The War of Art is how to combat resistance, because as Pressfield points out: “Never forget: This very moment, we can change our lives. There never was a moment, and never will be, when we are without the power to alter our destiny. This second, we can turn the table on Resistance.”

The way to turn it, he says, is to simply sit down and do our work. Do what you know you should be doing, but are putting off with cheap distractions and fake forms of attention seeking. Just focus on one thing: show up every single day, come rain, hail or snow, like a pro. That’s it. By doing that, you attract, muses, angels, god and inspiration that will work in your favour.

Which is what Book III of The War of Art is about: what happens when you actually sit down to do your work. Pressfield believes that there are angels and Gods, way more powerful than us, that are constantly watching. So when you actually commit to doing what you are supposed to do, putting in some work everyday, these angels and muses align and fight for your cause, bringing you inspiration and many more things.

This is why you’ll notice that when you actually work on your calling, you have ideas that come out of nowhere, even when you take a break or you are swimming or jogging, or doing something completely unrelated, your mind seems to keep on working, giving you suggestions, ideas and advice. Ever had that before and taken it for granted? Well don’t. You need to ask yourself why that happens, and where it comes from. It’s anything but normal. It’s genius.

Resistance is out to kill you. Not to get you, to kill you. It’s against progress, it’s against you realizing that thing is important to the growth of your soul. It wants to turn you into a miserable stain on society, and then into dust. You also need to understand that fighting resistance is a lifelong battle, because you’re going to feel it everyday when you get up and get ready to work.

“Any act that rejects immediate gratification in favour of long-term growth, health, or integrity…elicits resistance.”

That’s why we are always doing things like drinking, taking drugs, shopping, masturbating, watching TV, using your cell phones, gossiping etc. We’re being “exemplary consumers. We’re doing exactly what TV commercials and pop materialist culture have been brainwashing us to do from birth. Instead of applying self-knowledge, self-discipline, delayed gratification and hard work, we simply consume a product.

Which is why Pressfield advises the “artist” who wants to embark on a journey of growth to “enact an internal revolution, a private insurrection inside our own skulls. In this uprising we free ourselves from the tyranny of consumer culture. We overthrow the programming of advertising, movies, video games, magazines, TV and MTV we have been hypnotized with from the cradle.”

“We will never cure our restlessness by contributing our disposable income to the bottom line of Bullshit, Inc., but only by doing our work.”

I want to end this piece of writing with something Pressfield says at the beginning of the book. It’s a dramatic overstatement that shows you just how serious resistance is, if you don’t believe me:

“You know Hitler wanted to be an artist, at 18 he took his inheritance, seven hundred kronen and moved to Vienna to live and study. He applied to the Academy of Fine Arts and later to the School of Architecture. Ever see one of his paintings? Neither have I. Resistance beat him.

Here’s the punch line: “It was easier for Hitler to start World War II than it was for him to face a blank square of canvas.”

Let that sink in…don’t put off your life until your deathbed. Resistance is “standing between the life you live, and the unlived life within you. That unlived life that is the person you could become, as well as all the things you could accomplish. You know you have visions of that person all the time.

“Resistance is the most toxic force on the planet. It’s the root of more unhappiness than poverty, disease, and erectile dysfunction. You must declare it evil. As powerful as is our soul’s call to realization, so too is the force of resistance against it…If every soul woke up with the power to take the first step towards pursuing his or her dreams:

Every shrink in the directory would be out of business. Prisons would stand empty. The alcohol and tobacco industries would collapse, along with junk food, cosmetic surgery, pharmaceutical companies, hospitals…domestic abuse would become extinct, as would addiction, obesity, road rage etc.”

This book is gold. I could go on and on, but I have to go to bed for I wake up in a few hours to start a hectic week. Read The War of Art. Now. Stop contributing to bulls***t Inc., just sit down and do your work. Period.

https://www.amazon.ca/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=The+War+of+Art

 

 

1 Comment

  1. Wow, Theo! Thanks again for this great review of the book! I want to and am eager to read this book, a jewel!
    When you think about it, we could be living the life we all desire and deserve if we could actually sit down and carefully do our work, what we have to do. But we allow resistance to take control and stand “between the life (we) live, and the unlived life within (us).”

    With your permission I will share it with my readers. We need to know that resistance exists, its many forms and the need to kill it by all means if we are to live the life we desire and deserve.

    Thanks again, Theo!

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