Yay! I finished the first half of the first book in the series. The Iliad!
As mentioned in the previous post, Reading the Great Books, as I read The Iliad, I picked a quote/passage, crafted a prompt to tie it to some contemporary issue, and submitted the prompt to ChatGPT and Bard. They definitely gave me interesting answers, which made me think further. I posted them on Substack as and when I read them, usually scheduling the newsletter to go out the next day at midnight.
I thought I would read a chapter a day and finish by the end of April, but other priorities took over, and I could finish the book only by today. I was reminded of the movie “Troy” and couldn’t but not think of Brian Cox when Agamemnon came up and Brad Pitt when Achilles. The movie wasn’t entirely faithful to the book, but it was a well-made one.
Here are the episodes and the posts. I configured Substack to make it free for one month and subscriber-only after that. So if you’re reading this after June 22, 2023, all the episodes on Iliad will be for subscribers only.
May 31 update - Took all the Substack posts and converted them into an ebook and published it on Amazon. It was great to get it done on May 31st since that is a key date for me personally. Creating the ebook was a bit tougher in the beginning since the formatting options on kindle create was limited, but in retrospect, I think it was good. With more editing options, I may not have completed the book soon. I just used only the standard elements - Title, Subtitle, Opening quote, Subheading and Body text.
Substack Posts
| Date | Title/Link | Chapter | Topic of Discussion |
|---|---|---|---|
| Apr 1 | Great Books Ep 1: The Sword and the Crown: Differing perspectives on Personal Glory | The Iliad - Book 1 | Is leadership a show of strength? Does a leader in a chaotic system need to be more high-handed than a leader in a relatively stable system? |
| Apr 3 | Great Books Ep 2: Dissuade to Persuade: Saying One Thing with the Hope of Getting Another Thing Done | The Iliad - Book 2 | Leaders sometimes say the opposite of what they want to say expecting people to oppose to make it appear that the decision to do a particular thing came from themselves. |
| Apr 4 | Great Books Ep 3: The Lion and the Lamb: Navigating Romanticism in a Masculine World | The Iliad - Book 3 | Is most of the chaos in the world due to toxic masculinity? Do people wanting to fight till death and challenging others to do as they do, cause more harm than good? |
| Apr 5 | Great Books Ep 4: The Crown or the Scrum: Comparing Direct and Autonomous Leadership Strategies | The Iliad - Book 4 | Is direct management better or giving autonomy to employees better? Shouldn’t the world be moving towards an autonomous style? |
| Apr 6 | Great Books Ep 5: The Tomb or the Ash: What is dead may never die | The Iliad - Book 5 | Is burial better or cremation? Or other mechanisms? There are arguments on both sides. But the hope is that everyone moves towards a sustainable option in the future. |
| Apr 7 | Great Books Ep 6: To fight or not: Motivations for War and Work | The Iliad - Book 6 | Do people in a company work for the joy of creating something or utilizing their talents or do they work since their company competes with others? Is competition the most important motivator? |
| Apr 8 | Great Books Ep 7: What’s in a name? Everything, something, or nothing? | The Iliad - Book 6 | How important is someone’s name and lineage? Is it ever possible to overcome the implicit biases in humans and AI systems that a person’s name or lineage indicates? |
| Apr 9 | Great Books Ep 8: Gods and Technology: Does Monitoring Shape Morality? | The Iliad - Book 7 | Were people in ancient times noble since they believed that gods above watched everything they did? Would having bodycams and cameras everywhere make people more noble and ethical? |
| Apr 10 | Great Books Ep 9: Survival and Empathy: Finding Balance in Times of Strife | The Iliad - Book 8 | Society views unsuccessful people harshly. But you could work hard all day and night and yet not be successful if circumstances are against you. |
| Apr 11 | Great Books Ep 10: Immortality or Longevity? Navigating Career Choices in a Competitive World | The Iliad - Book 9 | Is it better to put in a lot of effort at beginning of the career and risk burnout or have a balanced life from the outset? |
| Apr 12 | Great Books Ep 11: Merit vs. Lineage: Choosing the Right Person for the Job at Hand | The Iliad - Book 10 | Choosing the right person from a group, for a new opportunity, is always challenging. It is bound to antagonize someone. |
| Apr 13 | Great Books Ep 12: Achilles and Patroclus: Are Best Friends a Cultural Construct or Natural Phenomenon? | The Iliad - Book 11 | Does everyone have that one person outside their family that they confide everything in and trust completely? |
| Apr 14 | Great Books Ep 13: The Changing Attitude towards Omens: From Belief to Skepticism | The Iliad - Book 12 | Do people still believe in omens? Why did the ancients believe in them? Or are people so busy that they are not able to see omens any more? |
| Apr 15 | Great Books Ep 14: Not Young, but Not Old Either, and Not Ready for Retirement | The Iliad - Book 13 | Should countries have the concept of retirement age? What are the pros and cons? |
| Apr 16 | Great Books Ep 15: Trust and Paranoia: Can Leaders Navigate Deception Better? | The Iliad - Book 14 | As a leader, is it better to be skeptical about everyone around? Or have a close group that one can blindly trust? |
| Apr 17 | Great Books Ep 16: When a Messenger is More than just a Conveyor of Information | The Iliad - Book 15 | Many major conflicts can be avoided by the people in the middle being wiser, and many times conflicts are created by people in the middle misrepresenting either side. |
| Apr 18 | Great Books Ep 17: To Be in a Group or Not: The Double-Edged Sword of Peer Pressure | The Iliad - Book 15 | One way to overcome the mindset of self-preservation is to evoke a sense of honor and the fear of judgment from others. But belonging to a group can make people do irrational things. |
| Apr 19 | Great Books Ep 18: Duty and Emotion: The Emotional Tightrope of Leadership | The Iliad - Book 16 | There are situations where people, especially executives, may feel torn between their responsibilities and their personal feelings. Is it becoming worse with time? |
| Apr 21 | Great Books Ep 19: War and competition: Fostering the justification for stealing | The Iliad - Book 17 | Maybe the innate capacity to steal property, time, effort, or freedom from another person gets stoked when there is a feeling of lack and limited resources. |
| Apr 22 | Great Books Ep 20: The Paradox of Masculinity: The Crying Heroes of The Iliad | The Iliad - Book 18 | In the hyper-masculine world of The Iliad, we see many instances of men crying publicly. But in modern times, a man crying publicly is frowned upon in many cultures. |
| Apr 23 | Great Books Ep 21: From Smoke to Fire: The Blinding, Destructive and Addictive Nature of Anger | The Iliad - Book 18 | Even a good person can become hardened when angry; it darkens a person’s soul like smoke. Anger also can taste sweeter than honey. |
| Apr 24 | Great Books Ep 22: Vulcan at Work: An Ode to Craftsmanship | The Iliad - Book 18 | Great craftsmanship can imbue the meaning of the whole cosmos into inanimate things, it can make figures etched on a shield lively. |
| Apr 25 | Great Books Ep 23: Single-Mindedness vs Practicality: The Role of a Trusted Advisor in Leadership | The Iliad - Book 19 | To a person blinded by a goal, everything else is oblivious. They may need a wise person like Ulysses to question, counsel, and push back. |
| Apr 28 | Great Books Ep 24: The Fly and the Bull: Provoking the Powerful | The Iliad - Book 20 | Provoking powerful people can have disastrous consequences. So it is important for powerful people to show more restraint than others. |
| Apr 30 | Great Books Ep 25: Great Books Ep 25: The River Runs Red: The Human Toll of Wars | The Iliad - Book 21 | The scene of bodies upon bodies on the river is a reminder that war, at any time in history, has had a massive toll on humanity. |
| May 13 | Great Books Ep 26: To Surrender or Not? Navigating Ego, Values, and Relationships | The Iliad - Book 22 | If one person in a group is more powerful, is it better to cede leadership to that person? Or is it better to fight on, standing up for one’s values? |
| May 15 | Great Books Ep 27: Beyond Competition: The Transformative Power of Games | The Iliad - Book 23 | Games allow one to be competitive as well as creative. They bring out the child in the person. If people played more, maybe there would be less strife in the world. |
| May 16 | Great Books Ep 28: The Iliad Book 24: Beyond Earthly Limits: Population Dynamics and the Human Journey | The Iliad - Book 24 | The number of kids per couple has been declining over the years. Will the advancements in technology lead the world toward a utopia where one can have many kids without thinking of finances? |