Yesterday, I wrote an email about Bertrand Russell’s idea of what the unconscious is really made of. Reader Matt Perryman wrote in to tell me this idea ain’t nothing new:
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Not a coincidence by any stretch, but the idea behind Russell’s take on the unconscious is much older than his quote (and much older than Freud, who supposedly “discovered” it). It dates back to at least the Renaissance, when a few writers like Ficino and Pico della Mirandola rediscovered Plato and ancient magical traditions. Today, you have “chaos magicians” and all sorts of Law of Attraction people using this idea. Kind of funny that it dates back to antiquity, and possibly long before that.
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I was grateful to Matt for writing me this, because I love this kind of history of ideas stuff.
It always turns out somebody’s had a bright new idea today — but it actually goes back hundreds or thousands of years, when some tunic-and-sandal-wearing ancient thought about it on a much deeper level.
All that’s to say, there’s value, even practical value, in going back and reading what smart people from other ages have said and written.
But on to business:
I do not know the intellectual history of what I call the Most Valuable Email trick. But if I had to bet, I’d bet that the first time it was applied was thousands of years ago, in ancient Greece or maybe before, in some ancient email written on a wax tablet.
I’d bet on that because the Most Valuable Email trick is based on fundamental human psychology. And I’d bet on it because this trick creates the rare and unique feeling of insight, particularly in “teachy” situations, like daily emails can be sometimes.
Since the MVE trick is based on fundamental human psychology, it has persisted through the ages and will always persist, as long as humans communicate with each other in some form.
But for whatever reason, the Most Valuable Email trick is not used broadly, at least in the daily email space.
That’s both a shame, and an opportunity. In case you’d like to start taking advantage of that opportunity today: