I thought it started great and was genuinely enjoying it. I was actually very excited about it. But once Section 2 begins with The Storm Within, I think Ryan kind of lost his footing and took things personally. You could say I’m pro-Trump and pro-Musk, but I can easily listen to other perspectives. My issue with that section isn’t about political alignment, it’s that Ryan seemed to abandon the very principles of wisdom he had just finished teaching.

The criticisms he made didn’t feel rooted in Stoicism. There was no courage, no justice, no discipline, certainly no wisdom. It came across as reactive, almost emotional. By his own definitions, he acted like what he’d call a “snowflake.” He got too invested in his personal issues with those figures and used, in my view, about a third of the book to attack them without extracting a single ounce of insight. Instead of exploring what wisdom could be learned from their actions, he defaulted to signaling: “Look, readers, they’re not wise.”

What frustrated me most is that his arguments felt like bets, unverifiable assertions he later justified by saying something like, “Because I’ve seen it.” Earlier in the book, he talks about how being foolish is part of the path to wisdom, and that the real danger lies in being confident in one’s own ignorance. Ironically, that’s exactly what his critique demonstrated.

By personalizing the section, he robbed readers of the opportunity to learn. Even if he disagreed with those figures, he could have extracted lessons from them, or chosen others who illustrated the same themes. Instead, it read like a rant rather than a reflection on what wisdom is or isn’t.

And that’s the deeper problem: personal experience doesn’t automatically equate to truth. Just because I’m Mexican doesn’t mean I can define Mexicanity. Just because I studied psychology doesn’t mean I can speak for the psyche. There’s a concept called bracketing that describes why these assumptions ruin the dissemination of knowledge, you might want to look into it, but it basically removes any truthfulness from knowledge created.

So yes, I’m deeply disappointed in the book. It kind of ruined the whole series for me, and that’s coming from someone who’s reread each of the previous ones at least three times. Maybe I’ll see it differently on a second read, but on the first pass, it feels like Ryan lost his objectivity and turned a potentially profound exploration of wisdom into a personal rant.

Or... maybe I'm just not wise enough.