I have mixed opinions about Naval. On one side of the spectrum, he has such a great intellect to say very sensible things and on the other end he is one of the most arrogant people I’ve ever heard. I just wish he was humble and down to earth. Many people would be able to relate to him.
It’s a shame. He really did seem like a great guy and probably still has a lot of meaningful stuff to say. I think with the pandemic and the surge in his popularity combined, he didn’t know how to handle it and started acting immature on Twitter. (If you look at his tweets pre and post pandemic, they are very different. Pre pandemic, he seemed to stay truer to his principles of not wasting time on “status games” like social media fights). I guess the pandemic has really made (what seems like) even the best of us get a little more cuckoo
Moreover, scroll through Naval’s twitter replies on May 17 and you’ll see that he trolls en masse a bunch of people who want to debate him regarding Canada.
He’s human, we’re all human, but you can imagine someone looking at his trolling spree and feeling a little sad, as I did. I used to admire him a lot, especially the way he tried to teach the importance of keeping your cool
That's an interesting perspective. I have never found him arrogant. May be I have not watched the video clips or read tweets that you were exposed to. He does have a counter intuitive take on things, but don't think that come off as arrogance (to me). I have always appreciated the clarity of thinking he has on issues. The way he answers 5 "why"'s questions related to wealth and happiness amazes me. Have learnt so much from Naval's videos and tweets over the years.
You're right - he has a great trove of knowledge, small tidbits of wisdom, some interesting and very abstract perspective of life, etc. He then combobulates it with how to get rich and other topics which are entirely different.
For example, he thinks that we should always be working for ourselves and building leverage. But ignores that most people actually don't want to run their own company and hire people. They're pretty content with their jobs and theyve got other priorities besides making money. He probably looks down on people like Chris McCandless (Into the Wild) who has a completely immaterialistic view of the world.
Great philosophers push their ideas without pulling down other's. Also humbleness comes from the ground up state of mind that our thoughts, no matter how convinced we're to ourselves, is not universally applicable and we should respect others who may not share the road to englightenment.
Furthermore, he looks down on things like:
- Audiobooks and speed reading. They're useless he claims because only the intellectuals actually read them and only then they can comprehend what's being said.
I think he said what he says about building you own business because of how society has been shift to complain about their plights. People complain about education, college, and wealth gap in a way that almost assume that people are stealing from them.
If someone wants to work and these are things they bring up sure. But if they work a regular job yet, don't understand they have that option, but a job will never and should never give you a life that free of burden then he should actually explain to them how they should go about getting those things in a healthy society.
What makes you feel he is arrogant? He does not seem arrogant to me. He’s very direct and thinks from first principles (not from what authority figures say, which can come off to some people as not giving sufficient respect to those authority figures). He is very open to admitting when he’s wrong or uncertain, and I’m pretty sure he feels like he has accomplished only a tiny fraction of what he’d like to.
