Parallel Lives Archives

For the past 14 months, ever since December 2021, I have been patiently going through Parallel Lives. That’s a heavy, dusty, four-volume e-book, equivalent to some 1,900 print pages, of biographies of famous Romans and Greeks.

I’ve been patiently going through Parallel Lives so I can bring you insights that have stood the test of time.

Take Lycurgus, the legendary lawgiver of Sparta. He did such a good job training his populace that they became bees, ready to sacrifice themselves fully for the collective good of the hive. And not only physically, by sacrificing their bodies.

Lycurgus got the Spartans to gladly sacrifice their honor and burn their egos, while being told to sit down and shut up.

Example: A noble Spartan named Paidaretus was rejected when he tried to join the Three Hundred, the Spartan royal guard of honour.

Paidaretus went away rejoicing. “Wow!” he said. “I am a good man, and yet the city has 300 men better than myself. What good fortune!”

You might say this anecdote shows the power of identity. It does that, but it shows something else also.

It also shows the power of a change of perspective.

Paidaretus did not just sacrifice his ego and his honor to the welfare of his city. He did not just do it willingly. He actually felt joy over it.

That’s the power of giving somebody a change of perspective. A different way of looking at the exact same situation. Failure becomes joy, humiliation is transformed into hope.

If you’re wondering where I’m going with this, it’s to sell you something. Well, to give you a new perspective on gladly opening up your wallet.

Six days ago, I got a message from a marketer named Adrian Chann, who had recently bought my Copy Riddles program. Adrian wrote:

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I realized why your emails (and sales pages) are addicting: they are packed with a-ha moments. It’s more entertaining and enriching to read your emails then watching uninspiring Youtube videos marketers who rehash the same advice without any additional insight.

I’m a huge Ben Settle fan and open up nearly every single one of his emails, yet I ended up buying something from you rather than him (not that it is a competition). The a-ha moments you created are what got me to gladly open up my wallet!

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Maybe you got no a-ha moments from today’s email. Or maybe you did.

In any case, if you’d like to get Copy Riddles yourself:

https://bejakovic.com/cr/

Let warn you straight out, if you are a conspiracy lover, that this email is not about Jeffrey Epstein.

Instead it is about that meme, from a year or two thousand years ago, of tagging “… and Epstein didn’t kill himself” onto any conversation.

For the past six months, every single day, I’ve been reading Plutarch’s Parallel Lives, a collection of biographies of famous Greeks and Romans. It’s part of my attempt to force a change of perspective on myself.

And it’s been working. It’s fun and fascinating to see how some quirks and problems we think are unique to our own time existed a couple thousand years ago in other complex societies.

So in ancient Greece, there was a powerful and influential man named Alkibiades, who seems to have been the ancient version of Trump.

Alkibiades cut off his own dog’s tail to get people horrified and outraged. “Good,” he said, “at least they aren’t talking about the really bad stuff.”

And in ancient Rome, there was Marcus Cato, a politician and general. Cato was a war monger, and late in his life, he constantly tried to get the Romans to attack the city of Carthage in North Africa.

Whenever Cato got up to speak in the Senate, on any topic, internal or external, before sitting back down, he would always sneak in, “… and I am also of the opinion that Carthage must be destroyed.” Mic drop.

Cato did get his way in the end. The Romans became convinced that Carthage was a threat, and they launched the third and final war on the Carthaginians.

They leveled the city of Carthage, enslaved its population, and destroyed Carthaginian culture and empire forever.

Was it all Cato’s doing?

No, of course not. But Cato’s insistent nagging probably did contribute.

I imagine it started ringing in the heads of other influential Romans, who began to feel that “Carthage must be destroyed” was their own thought and not just something they’ve been hearing over and over from a persistent and cranky old man.

So here’s my point:

In this newsletter, I talk a lot about proof, persuasion, infotainment, building vision, concrete facts, and specificity. It’s all good advice, and it has the added benefit of sounding sexy.

But that sexy and beautiful bamboo pavilion is built on plain but powerful concrete foundations that are rarely talked about.

The fact is, a plain old claim, repeated over and over, a propos of nothing, will in time wear people down, get them curious, and even make them believe. Even if you do nothing else. And if on top of that you add in some proof or a story or some surprising and stimulating facts, all the better.

So there you go. My advice for you for today. Just append, “… and I am also of the opinion that my offer is amazing” to the end of each of your marketing messages.

Speaking of which:

As this email goes out, I will be starting my “Analysis of Daniel Throssell” presentation.

And I am also of the opinion you should have already signed up to attend this amazing presentation live.

But in case you didn’t, you still have a bit of time. You can either join live, or you can at least get the recording when it’s over.

I’ll be disassembling the optin once the presentation ends later tonight. For now it’s still active, and all you gotta do is click on the link below and fill out the form on the next page:

https://bejakovic.com/daniel-throssell-presentation

Joy instead of failure, hope instead of humiliation

“… and I am also of the opinion that Epstein didn’t kill himself”