Recently I’ve been wanting to read more biographies, to learn more about the historical figures who’s names most people have heard, but whose deeds we know much less about. I came across a book called Charlie Munger: The Complete Investor by Tren Griffin, which has many great quotes about learning and models which we can use when making decisions. Munger is the lesser known business partner of Warren Buffet and also a voracious reader and continuous learner. Early on in the book there was a quote which made a good case for reading more biographies as well as an explanation of why Munger has read so many of them.
Unfortunately, they are missing a key point: no one can ever be Charlie Munger, just like no one can be Warren Buffet. The point is not to treat anyone like a hero, but rather to consider whether Munger, like his idol Benjamin Franklin, may have qualities, attributes, systems, or approaches to life that we might want to emulate, even in part. This same process explains why Munger has read hundreds of biographies. Learning from the success and failure of others is the fastest way to get smarter and wiser without a lot of pain.
Reading a biography lets us learn about what someone accomplished in their life and how they were able to do what they did. Knowing how they were able to succeed, we can apply those lessons towards our own lives and work when we have to make decisions.
In addition to what someone did right in their life, by reading a biography we can also learn about the mistakes that they made. Learning about and from other’s mistakes hopefully allows us to do better if presented a similar situation, or teaches us how to avoid the situation entirely.
By reading many biographies we can fit multiple lifetimes worth of lessons into a much shorter period of time, since we don’t have to actually live them all out ourselves. By modeling ourselves on the best that humanity has and has had to offer we can work to become better than we otherwise might be. Regarding models for living Munger said:
There’s no reason to look only for living models… Some of the very best models have been dead for a long time.
–Charlie Munger, Berkshire Annual Meeting, 2000
Often a person’s life and contributions to humanity can’t be properly judged until after they have passed away. By modeling ourselves only after living people we risk choosing for models people who may start to live in a way which is no longer a worthy model to follow, that we may not recognize until it is too late. By also modeling ourselves after those who have already died we can benefit from history which will filter out those less worthy of emulation and highlight those of real value.
History allows us to learn about the lives of some of the greatest people who have ever lived and see not just what they contributed to humanity, but what they could have done better, allowing us to build on their work and correct mistakes that they made.
In America, we tend to view the founding fathers as almost godlike, infallible figures, but despite their achievements and lasting legacies, they were still only men, just as capable of making mistakes as anyone else. I recently read a biography of Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power by Jon Meacham, which clearly illustrated the point within it’s introduction.
In the end, for all the debate and the division and the scholarship and the symposia, there may be only one thing about Thomas Jefferson that is indisputable: that the man who lived and worked from 1743 to 1826 was a breathing human being who was subject to the passion and prejudice and pride and love and ambition and hope and fear that drive most other breathing human beings.
Thomas Jefferson has gotten a lot of flak in modern times for his hypocritical views, including writing the Declaration of Independence, in which he declared “all men are created equal”, while being a slave owner his entire life. As president he worked to reduce the national debt, while also being in debt for most of his life.
Because of the reverence paid to the founding fathers, it seems to come as a bigger shock to us when we learn that they weren’t perfect and did in fact make mistakes. Even in his own time Jefferson recognized the attribution of superhuman knowledge and abilities to himself and those with whom he helped to found the country.
The past, he thought, should hold no magical, unexamined claim over the present. “Some men look at Constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them, like the ark of the covenant, too sacred to be touched,” he wrote in 1816.
They ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human, and suppose what they did to be beyond amendment. I knew that age well: I belonged to it, and labored with it. It deserved will of its country. It was very like the present, but without the experience of the present: and 40 years of experience in government is worth a century of book-reading: and this they would say themselves, were they to rise from the dead.
Even though the founding fathers were not perfect, they can still offer us many valuable lessons in living. Despite their flaws, they created a system of government which allows change, both to allow it to adapt to changing times, as well as to fix problems that have arisen from it. The passage of time has given us experience and changed philosophies which has allowed us to correct the most glaring mistakes within the system that they gave us.
History has yet to find anyone who has lived a perfect life, but offers us many who have lived good lives upon which we can model our own in an attempt to better ourselves. By reading many biographies we can accumulate lessons and models for living to better equip us for living and help us to be better people.