Summary Of The Disciplined Pursuit Of Less By Greg Mckeown

▪Jennings may be too comfortable at his job. He is taking his employees for granted and using them to do personal favours.

At the end of the chapter, McCandless tells the man to try living his life as simple as possible in order to find happiness. Hinting that McCandless could have felt a need to live a plain life in order to be content.

"But my hope is to write a book that will be useful . . . and so I thought it sensible to go straight to a discussion of how things are in real life and not waste time with a discussion of an imaginary world; for the gap between how people actually behave and how they ought to behave is so great that anyone who ignores everyday reality in order to live up to an ideal will soon discover he has been taught how to destroy himself, not preserve himself."

As humans, self-reliant choices are made everyday. Free will demonstrates that self-reliance outweighs external authorities. It shows that people are able to act voluntarily upon their own choices. In the book Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer, the expedition made by Chris McCandless is justified because free will is based off of one’s individual life choices. This is supported by the perspectives of Jon Krakauer, and it is refuted by the opinions of Walt McCandless.

Thesis: Chris McCandless has found the meaning of his life with inspiration of Emerson's quote, “The foregoing generations beheld God and the nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe (“Nature” ). He has found this by trusting his decisions, living alone in Alaska, and seeing life through his own eyes rather than the eyes of others.

McCandless speaks and acts nearly exactly how well established transcendentalist speak and act. Ralph Waldo Emerson, who led the transcendentalist movement during the mid-19th century, believe that “the only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be” (Ralph Waldo Emerson). One cannot deny that McCandless absolutely refuses to let anyone shape his life and destiny other than himself. He not only constantly fights against the grain of society, but rather leaves it entirely. When he began his societal departure, “he intended to invent an utterly new life for himself... free to wallow in unfiltered experience... he even adopted a new name... he was now Alexander Super-tramp, master of his own destiny”(Krakauer 23). This adaptation of a new name shows that both well known transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson, and McCandless, believe that destiny is what you make of it; what you decide, and no one else. Transitively, this shared core belief with transcendentalism that ultimately directs McCandless’s entire lifestyle in the years leading to his death, validates beyond doubt that McCandless’s guiding philosophy is in fact

“Nothing can bring you peace but yourself, Nothing can bring you peace but the triumphs of principles.” This is a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Self-reliance which resonates with Krakauer’s and McCandless’ shared beliefs and interactions. This quote can help us to understand why McCandless and Krakauer enjoyed going into the wild. They were searching for themselves. By looking at their shared beliefs, their respective journeys, and Krakauer’s opinions of McCandless it can be seen that they have similar stories, but their stories both ended very

He does this in order to question the status quo of society, ultimately coinciding with Miller’s third criteria of a tragedy. Miller defines that a tragic hero’s struggle “must enlighten the reader by questioning the status quo of our society and pointing out that which limits humankind’s realization of dignity, identity, and freedom”(Miller). McCandless’ personality has a strong effect on drawing in others to be interested in his aspirations. Krakauer paints this emotional grip through the story of Ron, an 81 year old man who meets Chris McCandless and becomes drawn into his lifestyle. Being heartbroken when left without notice by McCandless, Ron is brought into this daring lifestyle when he receives a letter from Chris, saying “we must have the courage to turn against our habitual lifestyle and engage in unconventional living. My point is that you do not need me or anyone else around to bring this new kind of light in your life. It is simply waiting out there for you to grasp it”(Krakauer 57). Before meeting McCandless, Krakauer illustrates Ron as an individual who has a routine focus of working from night until day, and bases life off of monetary value. The new type of lifestyle that Ron sees through Chris leads to him having the desire to recraft his whole vision of life

ITW brings us inside the mind of Chris McCandless showing his view on society. At first, McCandless is shown to participate well in college and with his family but as seen in the story, he begins to have no need for society or family. Stated by Carine, Chris’s sister, “He didn’t seem to need toys or friends. He could be alone and entertain himself for hours” (107). Chris didn’t feel the need for people to be close to. He wasn’t anti-social but just believed close relationships were a waste of time. This is the start of a feeling of for non-conformity for civilization and a spark of transcendentalism. Wayne Westerberg, a friend of Chris’ from ITW, when referring to Chris states, “He was hungry to learn about things. Unlike most of us, he was the sort of person who insisted on living out his beliefs” (67). Westerburg noticed how determined Chris was to carry out his plan to escape society. No matter what feelings Chris developed for Wayne he still pushed forth and left Wayne sticking true to his ideals. McCandless noted, “You are wrong if you think joy emanates only principally from human relationships. God has placed it all around us” (47). This quote shows his explanation for not needing human relationships due to his belief in God and surrounding joy in nature. His strong faith is shown here as being close to nature is being close to God.

McCandless was trapped in a society that created an illusion of his own fake happiness while he was looking to discover himself. He possessed a desperate need to find the true meaning that only he could answer. McCandless quotes “I'm going to paraphrase Thoreau here... rather than love, than money, than faith, than fame, than fairness... give me

The case study focuses on an employee, Paul Keller, who is being affected by a number of factors. His job performance is hindered by constraints such as his work environment, his home environment, stressors, mood, and the management style of his superior. The case study demonstrates how his job performance is affected and what the consequences could be as a result of his poor job performance and lack of concentration.

David Livingstone Smith’s essay “Less Than Human” explores the topic of dehumanization and allows us to understand how it has changed the society in the past and continues to do so. The essay talks about how humans are able to belittle each other and hurt one another as it is a norm in this world now. To better understand his essay and his meaning behind it we must first analyze his purpose, audience, evidence, arrangement, implications and his word choice.

To begin, living freely, being one with nature, and not conforming to society is what Chris McCandless shows through his actions. Living freely is what the meaning of life is to Chris McCandless as shown through his actions.This quote is from one of his letters he wrote to his friends, “ This is the last communication you shall receive from me. I now walk out to live amongst the wild. Take care it was great knowing you” (Krakauer 69). This is an example of him living freely by cutting off all his communications with his friends and going to live in the wilderness. Furthermore, Chris McCandless finds it important to become one with nature and to be one with it. By going into the wild he is surrounding himself with nature and nothing else,“The beauty of this country is becoming part of me”(Krakauer 91). What this means is that through living in the wild he becomes closer to his surroundings and finds out what life really means. Lastly, the final meaning of life is to not to conform to society as Chris McCandless did. He did this through not listing to people who just wanted to make him better, “But if you tried to coach him, to polish his skill, to bring out that final ten percent, a wall went up. He resisted instruction of any kind”(Krakauer 111). This shows nonconformity by him not accepting advice from anyone to make his skill the best he is resisting giving into what everyone wants him to do and not conforming to society.

However his ineffectiveness is evident from the fact that despite making plans about writing a proposal about "Custom Chip manufacturing documentation problem" he was unable to accomplish it and he forgot to acknowledge his subordinate Bill on his fifth anniversary in the company. He also forgot to fill in the appraisals sent in by the HR manager showing his lack of self organization. As Mary Parker Follet describes "The first essential of business success is the capacity of organized thinking" . So he was not an effective organizer. He was not able to convince his Boss to hire new employees showing his lack of persuasion and fear of rejection. He also thinks that his judgments are best ones and

One of the most important is that this supervisor’s employees were completely denied the opportunity to learn and grow. This definitely breeds resentment among the employees, as the entire staff begins to feel that shortness in opportunity is preventing them from moving forward professionally (Walker, 2002). Furthermore, a lack of learning and developing leads to low self-esteem, motivation, and moral. It was very obvious that the entire team felt this way, as they were not trusted to take on these situations. This, in turn, negatively affected the entire company, as talent was not being properly developed.