There is a ‘demotivational’ poster floating around the Internet that carries the message: “It could be that the only real purpose of your life is to serve as a warning to others.”

 

For the author of How Plato and Pythagoras Can Save Your Life, the Ancient Greek Prescription for Health & Happiness, the first part of his life might well have fit that message. The second part serves much more like a beacon.

 

This book is the story of how author, Nicholas Kardaras, PhD, came face to face with the bottom of the pit, and, with a lot of help, turned himself around. He’s a first generation American, born of Greek parents, and he writes of some of the struggles that went along with that. He describes that he was not an easy son to live with.

 

Born and raised in New York City, he eventually became something of a wild child, and a glitz set celebrity. He had managed to become owner of a flashy nightclub frequented by some high rollers, and he was once named by Vanity Fair magazine as one of New York’s “50 Most Fabulous People”.

 

That lifestyle lead him to a downward spiral through booze and drugs. At one point, he got close to the bottom only to be rescued by his parents. He tried to clean up, but rejected his parents’ insistence on rehab and fell even further. But he underestimated his parents’ intelligence; despite their humble roots, they turned out to be a lot smarter than he thought and they made him look hard in the mirror. Eventually, he did manage to clean up, with even more help from fellow survivors, and returned to school. Against his expectations, he fell in love with learning and education.

 

Today, he describes himself as being perhaps the only nightclub owner to hit rock bottom and wind up as a PhD and university professor.

 

Somewhere along the line, Kardaras fell in love with philosophy. Not just any old philosophy, but the good stuff: Plato and Pythagoras. These guys saw the world through a different lens than most. In their own ways, they each looked at the world with a combination of childlike wonder, bewilderment, spiritual yearning, and a firm desire that we must always be searching for the way forward, examining the path behind us, and constantly questioning our beliefs and suppositions. In short, they agreed that life was work, but work that was well worth the effort.

 

The philosopher and public gnat Socrates, whose words we know only through the writings of Plato, once said, “the unexamined life was not worth living”. The exact interpretation of that phrase lies within each of us; but essentially it means something like Socrates suggesting that a human who doesn’t examine – in every sense of the term – both her own life and life in general, nature, reality, relationships, motivations, and thoughts is wasting the experience. Such a life is, therefore, not worth living.

 

This is where Kardaras appears to have made his personal breakthrough. He latched on to the teachings and musings of the Greeks – with whom he shares a common heritage – and began to see life for what it can really be.

 

This book takes us through the author’s personal journey of discovery and reacquaints us with the knowledge of the ancients. The book is an excellent read for a variety of reasons. It is written in a very conversational and friendly style and we can almost feel some of the pain of his early years. Even though we might think his situation was his own fault, we can all recognize that there but for fortune …

 

Kardaras reintroduces us to the Greek philosophers in a way that should drive away the fears of anyone who found these writers to be difficult when they were forced to study them. He guides us to the ideas that can teach us to be happy, no matter our station in life. And he does all of this in a style that should appeal to everyone.

 

German alchemist Hennig Brand tried to create a ‘philosopher’s stone’ from his own urine in 1669. Instead, he produced a white powder that glowed in the dark. Eventually, it was named phosphorus and has since been put to numerous practical uses. In that same vein, Kardaras concludes his book:

 

“So may the universe be with you, as I hope that you join me in the Alchemy Survivors' Club.”

 

Hennig Brand would get his point.

 

Look for this book from Conari Press (ISBN 978-1-57324-475-6) or at these online links, here and here.

 

 

 

 

Paul Richard Harris is an Axis of Logic editor and columnist, based in Canada. He can be reached at paul@axisoflogic.com

Read the Biography and additional articles by Axis Columnist, Paul Richard Harris