How Should We Live? Book Summary - How Should We Live? Book explained in key points

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How Should We Live? summary

Name: How Should We Live?
Rating: 4.5 (45 reviews)
Author: Roman Krznaric

Roman Krznaric

Great Ideas from the Past for Everyday Life

4.5 (45 ratings)

32 mins

What is How Should We Live? about?

How Should We Live? (2013) gives a wide-lense view of why we Westerners tend to think the way we do. From love to work to death, it explains how our modern-day views evolved, and offers some age-old advice on how we might improve them.

Table of Contents

How Should We Live?
summarized in 12 key ideas

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Key idea 1 of 12

What’s in it for me? Learn how to live a better life from past masters.

History is more popular than ever. Think that’s an odd thing to say? Well, just consider how many thousands of history documentaries have been made, or how much space all of today’s history books would take up.

And yet, so much of this history is focused on “important” people and their ideas. It’s quite easy to find out about kings and queens and epidemics and battles. But discovering what the past was like for average people is much harder.

This is a pity, because normal people’s lives can provide us with templates for our own contemporary ones. In our overwhelming, fast-paced, impersonal world, we might have a thing or two to learn from the slower-paced societies of yesteryear. So let’s look at what we can learn from history about topics like money, family, time, love, and more.

In these blinks, you’ll discover

where the word husband comes from;
how French peasants got through the cold winters; and
how Albert Schweitzer can help you with your career.

The modern Romantic idea of a soul mate is impractical in reality.

Finding love these days can be pretty tricky. After days spent trawling through profiles on dating sites, we spend countless evenings on awkward and unsuccessful dates. And, in the end, we wind up right where we began: alone.

But why is it so hard to find that special someone?

Well, we might be too narrow-minded when it comes to love. We expect a single individual to satisfy all our emotional needs. But these emotional needs are complex and diverse – and usually far too numerous for one person to meet.

So we might want to take a tip from the ancient Greeks, who had a much better approach to love.

They believed that love took six distinguishable forms:

Eros, the fiery, passionate yet dangerous love;
Philia, the platonic love between friends and comrades;
Ludus, the playfulness that is found among new lovers and children;
Pragma, the deep understanding that grows over time between partners;
Agape, the selfless, charitable love for our fellow humans;
and Philautia, the love of the self, which could be either a positive acceptance or a detrimental self-obsession.

Rather than relying on one partner to satisfy all these needs, the ancient Greeks believed that each role could be fulfilled by different individuals. This allowed them to spread their emotional needs across a wide range of relationships, making it easier for them to find love.

But how did we get from this ancient Greek ideal to our present, rather messy, state? Unfortunately, over the centuries, the six Greek forms of love gradually merged together.

This merging began in the medieval literature of Arabia, which popularized the passion of eros between two lovers, and the joining of their souls. The idea spread to medieval Europe, where it was combined with the selflessness of agape and became cortezia, or courtly love. Chivalric culture expected knights to perform noble, selfless deeds in the name of passionate love.

In the sixteenth century, the Dutch made these passions central to marriage, which was previously just a contract of alliance, and, in the process, combined them with the philia and pragma that grew between spouses.

Finally, twentieth-century capitalism brought the narcissism of philautia, as love became tied to consumerism.

So, if we want to find true love, it’s time we undid over two thousand years of history and looked for various individuals to fill our many emotional needs.

The problems faced by the modern family have historical roots.

Did you know that the word “husband” originally derived from a combination of “house” and “bound”? Originally, it referred to a man whose work was based around the home, much like a “housewife,” the woman with whom he would share domestic duties.

Yet, over time, changes in social conventions pulled the husband away from his original position.

Humans are intrinsically empathetic, and we can use this to broaden our horizons.

We’ve all done something selfish. Maybe you took the last piece of pizza at that company meeting or “forgot” to make a donation to your friend’s Kickstarter. Selfishness can be a natural human quality – so natural, in fact, that some have argued it’s our defining quality.

In his book Leviathan, the philosopher Thomas Hobbes argues that people are naturally selfish and cruel, and that life is a contest of person against person. Hobbes’s pessimistic view of life proved incredibly popular and has influenced much of Western thinking.

Despite today’s disorienting variety of career choices, we can still find purpose in our work.

Have you ever assembled a piece of Ikea furniture, or even just a Lego set? It can be frustrating at times, but there’s also something deeply satisfying about building something yourself from start to finish. And before the Industrial Revolution, almost everything was produced by individual craftspeople. A cobbler made the whole shoe; a tailor, the whole shirt.

This all changed, however with the division of labor. In the eighteenth century, the economist Adam Smith argued that the best way to increase productivity was by dividing complex work into stages. He devised the model of the pin factory, where the individual stages of production – such as polishing or smelting – were divided among workers, increasing productivity from 1 pin per day to almost 5,000.

Modern-day people are obsessed with time and enslaved to the rhythm of the clock, but this wasn’t always the case.

It’s difficult to imagine a world without time. A world where you couldn’t arrange a meeting, let alone be sure how old you are. Time seems like a natural part of things, but it wasn’t properly measured until the ancient world needed a way to help track agricultural cycles. Since then, there have been three major developments, each of which helped form our modern relationship to time.

First came the invention of the mechanical clock, back in thirteenth-century Europe. Initially used to notify monks when to pray, clocks were soon installed in town centers, and shops began to schedule their hours of operation around them. In 1370, one was built in Cologne, Germany, and within four years it was dictating the start and end of workers’ days, as well as a one-hour lunch break. Sound familiar?

Money may make the world go round, but how we approach it is a choice.

Until the mid-eighteenth century, a consumer was someone who was wasteful, and consumption was another word for tuberculosis, a disease that causes the body to waste away.

What we know as consumerism developed with industrialization. During this period, more people were able to accumulate wealth and, as a consequence of this, more products were produced for them to expend it on. This development redefined our perception of money, and material possessions became status symbols signifying wealth.

Our senses shape our understanding of the world, but we may have more than the accepted five.

Although the ancient Greek philosopher Plato believed in many senses – such as the sense of temperature perception – his student Aristotle believed in an overarching symmetry. Aristotle posited that, since there were five elements (fire, air, water, earth and ether), there must only be five senses.

But, recently, scientists have been able to confirm Plato’s idea of temperature perception, now known as thermoception. And it doesn’t stop there. They’ve also identified a sense of balance, equilibrioception, and even magnetoreception, an ability – albeit extremely weak – to detect magnetic fields, much like homing pigeons.

Travel is a great way to learn about yourself and the world, and four travel personas can help.

In the nineteenth century, English preacher Thomas Cook organized a trip from Leicester to Loughborough for poor workers to attend a temperance meeting. Five hundred people attended, which inspired him to organize further tours to Europe, the general goal being to open people up to travel and expand their worldviews.

Unfortunately, his son, a man with less laudable ambitions, eventually took control. He focused on wealthy clients, expensive routes and an overindulgence in leisure, thus giving birth to the modern travel industry.

Our relationship with nature has changed a lot over time, but we’re still bound to it mentally, if not physically.

We all know that longing feeling for beautiful landscapes or wildlife. But why are we so attached to nature?

Today, nature serves as a source of three things: beauty, psychological health and natural resources.

Our beliefs are often inherited, but we should be willing to challenge them.

Every one of us holds some sort of belief. Some people believe that monarchies should be abolished. Others feel it’s important not to eat meat. Still more believe that neither of these things is of any interest compared to religion. But where do all these beliefs come from?

They are the personal values against which we judge the goodness or harm of a particular action, and they shape our relationship with the world. But we rarely question beliefs’ validity.

We wrongly assume that creativity can't be taught, but it’s an important form of self-expression available to everyone.

Perhaps you’ve felt the joy of learning to play your favorite song on the piano. Or maybe you’ve had the satisfaction of baking a delicious cake for your whole family. If so, then you understand the pleasure of creating.

The word creativity comes from creare, the Latin for “to make or produce,” and it is a vital part of evolutionary activity.

Today, death is a taboo subject, but it wasn’t in the past – and, to really live, we must embrace it.

Death was once part and parcel of daily life.

The memento mori – Latin for “remember you must die” – was once an important icon. Consisting of a skull depicted on jewelry and in portraits and within churches, it reminded people of their mortality and equality in the face of death.

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Best quote from How Should We Live?

Medieval science believed in five additional inner senses: fantasy, instinct, memory, imagination and common sense.

—Roman Krznaric

About the Author

Roman Krznaric, is a social philosopher and author. He is the cofounder, along with Alain de Botton, of The School of Life, in London. He has taught sociology and politics at both Cambridge University and City University London.

Who should read How Should We Live??

People looking for a historical take on lifestyle advice
Anyone interested in the roots of our cultural preconceptions
General-knowledge buffs after a little extra history

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