Saturday Letters
Receive hand-typed letters by Hugo Ares about truth, philosophy, and human nature, every Saturday straight to your inbox. P.S. After clicking "Subscribe" you’ll get a confirmation email. Check your spam folder if you can’t find it.
Sep 06 • 1 min read
The Cost of Blame - Saturday Letter #5
The Cost of Blame - SL#5 On October 1st, 331 BC, the vast arid plain of Gaugamela (today’s Nineveh Plains in Iraq) was covered in bronze and iron. Spears rose like a forest, and two armies of tens of thousands faced each other as the fate of empires hung heavy in the air. On one side stood Darius III, ruler of the Persian Empire, with 50,000 to 80,000 men. On the other, Alexander, King of Macedonia, commanding far fewer men, outnumbered nearly two to one on flat terrain. But Alexander didn’t wait. He attacked. With his right wing, he charged first, a move so daring that historians still debate it today. It unleashed one of the most decisive battles in history. The result? Alexander triumphed. Darius, unable to rally his men or himself, fled the battlefield. His empire crumbled behind him. This moment reveals a timeless truth about human nature. Even when outnumbered, Alexander took full responsibility for the outcome. He acted as if the weight of the battle rested entirely on him. Darius, on the other hand, held back, commanding from a distance. And when the tide turned, he didn’t own it, he ran. Ancient sources consistently describe him as blaming circumstances, generals, fortune… anything but himself. As Robert Greene writes in The Laws of Human Nature: “Mistakes and failures elicit the need to explain. We want to learn the lesson and not repeat the experience. But in truth, we do not like to look too closely at what we did; our introspection is limited. Our natural response is to blame others, circumstances, or a momentary lapse of judgment.” This is The Blame Bias. Darius’s story highlights the cost of never scratching beneath the surface of our failures. By refusing responsibility, he handed away the chance to adapt. By contrast, Alexander built his life and campaign on the opposite principle: absolute ownership. Our brain is the producer of our experience, thus the real enemy is within. All the best, Hugo Ares, |
Receive hand-typed letters by Hugo Ares about truth, philosophy, and human nature, every Saturday straight to your inbox. P.S. After clicking "Subscribe" you’ll get a confirmation email. Check your spam folder if you can’t find it.