Week 5: Storytelling, Atheism, and Globalization

Personal rebrand time, and appreciate all the new followers! 🙏 Welcome to my newsletter, where I share weekly wisdom for the artistic, serving 3 primary objectives:

1. Lessons to master your craft.

2. Lessons to improve your life.

3. Lessons to discover your inner artist.

With the amount of stuff I learn every week, I’ve been thinking of splitting up this newsletter into two parts. The weekly learnings will still continue as usual, but I'm also going to be writing essays/posts published at spontaneous times.

I’ve also rebranded the podcast from “Pursuit of Light” → “The Jeston Lu Podcast” since I felt like the former name was too limited in scope with the number of diverse conversations I want to have across various domains.

Personal Updates

This week was pretty eventful, to say the least.

I hopped on two calls on Monday, one with a Forbes 30 under 30 entrepreneur Gary Sheng chatting about the future of technology & America, and recorded a podcast episode with Noah Zender, product manager at Paradox, research assistant at Contrary, and writer for his own newsletter, Pioneers Project.

In this episode (here’s also the audio version if you prefer listening > watching) We talk about the importance of curating a healthy information diet, growing a personal brand, practical mental models for life, underrated strategies for networking, and more.

I’ve also been featured in my friend Akaash Prasad’s new podcast, “To Be Alive.” My episode isn’t up yet, but you can head over there and give a follow!

Learnings

1: How to Master Storytelling (Shaan Puri + David Perell)

We often disregard storytelling as some arbitrary skill used in fiction books. But Shaan Puri debunks this common notion in David Perell’s “How I Write Podcast” with some golden gems on the applicability of this skill. Here’s what I’ve learned:

• When you read any story, you should pause at any moment and ask: Intention: What do they want? Obstacle: What's in their way?

• "Write like you talk.” Say it first, before writing it down. School teaches you to pretend to be somebody you're not.

• Hooks = overrated. Frames = underrated. How you frame ideas > grabbing attention. How do you make an idea relevant?

• Every great story needs stakes. A great story ≠ extreme. It's almost better if it's not. Stakes come from emotions.

• In a good story, you're not saying what happened, you're zooming into moments how you felt. Stories = transformations.

• The world is full of infinite content. We only stop at the things we have a reaction to (e.g: WTF, OMG, LOL, etc.).

• "If I could boil down great work into one word, it'd be curiosity. Curiosity drives excitement, excitement is the engine and the rudder of the boat.” - Paul Graham

• The most valuable traits you have sound like opposites. 1 + 1 = 3 type of reaction (e.g: detailed and visionary oriented).

• Make writing as if it's written to one person that has a warm relationship. What would you think if you were the reader?

• If you have something worth remembering, it's worth the time to package it in a way to make it memorable.

2: Every Argument for Atheism (Alex O’Connor)

I admit I’ve been indoctrinated into the idea of Christianity without fully examining it on an intimate level - at times due to groupthink. But I’ve made it a mission to scrutinize this religion at every level possible, before fully making a commitment (or not) toward God.

I’ve embarked on a journey of inversion - studying a topic on two opposing sides of the spectrum. I’m diving deep into both the world of atheism and Christian theology. Alex O’Connor, in my opinion, is one of the sharpest atheist thinkers of our time. Here are some atheist thoughts for you:

• In the Old Testament, God couldn't abolish slavery for whatever reason (Exodus 21:20-21, Leviticus 25:44-46, etc.).

• Why did it take so long for Christian society to abolish slavery if it was so obviously against God?

• God will one day destroy evil but he can't just do it now because destroying evil = destroying us → what will change that one day he can destroy evil without destroying humans?

• It's not just that people suffer at all; it's that people suffer randomly and arbitrarily, sometimes by accident (e.g: natural disasters, disease, etc.)

• Aren't we glad to find ourselves in a world of racism so we can have the good of overcoming it?

• Your chances of coming to know the true God = determined by where you were born. If such a universal God did exist, wouldn't we expect of him to reveal himself more strongly and reliably?

• By associating science = only dealing with the physical, you're disagreeing with everybody trying to prove God's existence.

• Just because science originated from religious thinkers ≠ science then to undermine religion.

• Before Eve ate of the tree, she didn't have a knowledge of good and evil, so it seems unfair to punish her for doing something she can't have known was bad.

• There must be some proneness to sin with Adam & Eve because at the first opportunity they were given, they fell for it.

3: The Optimistic Thought Experiment (Peter Thiel)

Marc Andreessen calls Peter Thiel (and Venkatesh Rao + Balaji Srinivasan) as a perpetual lateral thinker, capable of approaching a situation differently than anyone else, able to apply different kinds of knowledge together.

These three are definitely worth studying, and I came across an essay Thiel wrote about the effects of globalization. Haven’t finished the entirety of it, but here are my thoughts from the first half:

• For the Judeo-Western inspiration, it is a mistake of first magnitude to place too much value on the things of the world.

• We are losing sight of the impending catastrophe that may unfold toward the end of history. The entire human order could unravel in a relentless escalation of violence.

• "Against this future, it is far better to save one’s immortal soul and accumulate treasures in heaven, in the eternal City of God, than it is to amass a fleeting fortune in the transient and passing City of Man." - Peter Thiel

• Beginning with WWI in 1914, accelerating after 1945, there has re-emerged an apocalyptic dimension to the modern world.

• What if there are x nations armed with Jupiter missiles that can rain down total destruction?

• There exists at some point beyond which there is no stable equilibrium, where there will be nuclear Armageddon. Scientific + mathematical calculus > mystic vision of religious prophets.

Pair Peter Thiel with French theologian Girard (Thiel studied under Girard during his time at Stanford), you get a full picture of the potential apocalyptic armageddon humanity is rapidly heading toward. Another piece that I’ve read, Armageddon: The World’s End by Julian Shapiro, is worth checking out.

Conclusion

I love digging up juicy quotes since they’re such a great heuristic to big ideas. Here’s one from one of my favorite Christian theologians, Jonathan Pageau. Something to really think about:

Keep on being artistic,

Jeston :)