BOOK NOTE - The Last Place on Earth - Roland Huntford

 All stories are stories of adventure.

In the dawn of time, when the first adventurer left his tribe’s campfire and dared to wander beyond its glow, he brought back a story. Paul Zweig’s book The Adventurer calls this the source of storytelling itself.

Man risking his life in perilous encounters constitutes the original definition of what was worth talking about.

Roland Huntford’s The Last Place on Earth is one such book about adventure. It is a biography of two men, told through the lens of their grand journey to the South Pole at the beginning of the 20th century. In chronicling Robert Falcon Scott and Roald Amundsen's journeys —one ending in death and failure, the other in success that is almost clinical—the book takes us through a world on the brink of the modern era. A world without plastics, vitamins, or germ theory—this was adventure before comfort.

By the late 1890s, most of the world had been mapped. The last unconquered frontier was Antarctica, and at its heart, the South Pole. British explorers like Scott and Shackleton made attempts. But it was the Norwegian Roald Amundsen who won the race, reaching the Pole in 1911.

What drew me to this book was a reference to leadership. Greg McKeown in Effortless talks about consistency over intensity. He compares Amundsen—whose team succeeded—to Scott, whose team did not survive, on this leadership dynamic.

The key difference was in their approach. Amundsen was consistent. His team did 15-mile treks daily, regardless of weather, making steady progress without exhaustion. Scott’s team on the other hand was erratic. Some days they pushed too hard heroically, but on other days they completely stalled from exhaustion and poor planning. That emotional, unscientific style cost them the race—and their lives.

But this book offers so much more lessons for modern leaders. Lessons on preparedness, risk-taking, empowering autonomy, learning from the best, trying new methods, but also valuing cultural knowledge and the underrated value of good humour.

It took me over 4 years to finish reading it. Slowly. For the joy of it. For the story of an adventure from the last great expedition of the Age of Discovery.

The book chronicles the personal journeys of Scott and Amundsen—from their roots to their eventual race to the South Pole.

Scott was emblematic of a declining Britain. By the 1870s, the race of giants that defined the glory of Queen Victoria’s reign was coming to an end. Dickens died in 1870, Darwin’s last major work was published in 1871, and Livingstone died in 1873. Scott, born in 1868, was steeped in a world where that glory was slipping away—a hero for a nation in decline. It is because of this, and Scott’s temperament, that the author argues he made the expedition to the Pole an affair of heroism for heroism’s sake. Amundsen, by contrast, was a cool and calculated Norwegian who turned the conquest of the Pole into something between an art and a sport.

This led to remarkable differences in their motivations and approaches.

Scott, with civilizational pride behind him, expected the elements to align in his favor—and grew resentful when they did not. Amundsen, on the other hand, had the Viking respect for nature and prepared for the worst. When conditions favored him, he responded with gratitude, not entitlement.

Amundsen learned from failure. When his first sledging journey under his command failed spectacularly, he noted in his diary that they had “harvested experience.” Scott, more driven by passion, failed time and again to learn from experience—his ambition clouding his judgment.

Amundsen had a good read of people. Early in his apprenticeship journeys, he realized that under stress, passivity dissolved into apathy—and in extreme conditions, apathy was fatal. He developed ways to identify those prone to such weaknesses and removed them from the team before it was too late. Scott, meanwhile, was more swayed by flattery than by character. His choice of companions for the final push to the Pole reflected personal preference more than competence.

Amundsen had the humility to learn from anyone. He studied how to live under polar conditions from the indigenous Eskimos. He believed no civilization held a monopoly on wisdom—and that so-called primitive people had much to teach the modern man. From them, he learned how to dress in a way that avoided sweat (a deadly hazard in the cold) and how to effectively use dogs for sledging. Scott, rooted in Royal Navy traditions and ceremonies, resisted such learning. His reluctance to adopt key innovations in clothing, and his disdain for dog sledding, proved fatal for his team.

Scott carried the trappings of status as a Royal Navy officer but lacked true connection with his men. Beneath the mask of a gentleman officer, he smouldered with ambition, yet failed to truly move or inspire his followers. Locked into a command-and-control mindset, he couldn’t bring out the best in his team. Amundsen, by contrast, was quietly confident and inspired confidence in others. He preferred trust over control, noting that when “you let everybody have the feeling of being independent within their own sphere, there arises a spontaneous and voluntary discipline, which is worth far more than compulsion.”

This is not to say Amundsen was perfect. But he demonstrated the best traits of leadership where it mattered most.

When Amundsen finally reached the South Pole, there is a poignant passage. He experiences not jubilation, but something closer to emptiness:

Amundsen had learned what the Duke of Wellington had meant when, in the moment of victory, he wrote that ‘Nothing except a battle lost can be half so melancholy as a battle won.’ Such, then, was the attainment of the South Pole: a muted feast; a thing of paradox, of classic detachment; of disappointment almost.

And yet, it is Scott’s ill-fated expedition that lives on in popular memory. Amundsen, almost too perfect in his accomplishments, is largely forgotten.

That, perhaps, is the final lesson in leadership: success demands both science and art. The science of preparation and execution. And the art—not just of living the moment—but of making it live in others.

Ghiblification Is not the problem. Concentration of artistic power is.

I have this view, and it might be contrary to what is being said about AI and its impact on creativity. I think, those saying the Ghiblification trend is some kind of 'insult to artists' are mostly missing the point.

The panic, I think, is misplaced. What people should be worried about is not whether AI is replacing artists. It is about who owns the tools. Who controls the pipes. How creativity is being fenced in quietly by a few tech players while everyone else argues about taste.

This is not in anyway a new story or outrage. the outrage against power gathering around access, infrastructure and enforcement, while the rest of us debate what counts as authentic, is an old one. Something that comes up with almost every new technology.

What we are seeing is not the death of art. However, it is something slower and more dangerous. A quiet, large-scale takeover of the conditions for making and sharing it. Imitation itself is not the real threat. The danger is when only a few companies get to decide who imitates and who gets paid. That is the kind of scale AI makes possible. That is what should keep people up at night.

And now that this is on the table, let us get to the usual questions people keep circling back to: Would Miyazaki be offended? Is AI art real craft? And does imitation degrade originality?

I. Would Miyazaki care?

I don’t think Hayao Miyazaki would care about the Ghiblification trend that flooded the internet in early 2025. It's mostly those who are unable to create something like the great director that seem to be obsessing over and ranting about this supposed “affront to artists” — with their predictable arguments about copyright infringement and creativity deterrence.

Now, yes, there’s the infamous quote from 2016 when Miyazaki was shown an AI-generated animation. He was horrified. He said, “I strongly feel that this is an insult to life itself.”

But context matters.

This moment comes from the documentary Owaranai Hito — The Never-Ending Man — a portrait of Miyazaki grappling with retirement and continuing to be creative. In it, he embarks on his first CGI project, Boro the Caterpillar. He doesn’t reject the new tool. He experiments with it, albeit with disdain and reluctance. Eventually he adapts, then returns to what he does best. That’s what artists do.

The point is: Miyazaki was not rejecting technology in absolute terms. He was reacting to a shallow use of it. The AI demo he saw lacked not skill, but soul. It had no intentionality. It had a sense of movement that was not grounded in meaning. His discomfort wasn’t with technology — it was with indifference.

And as of today, neither Miyazaki nor Studio Ghibli has issued any public statement on the Ghiblification trend. That silence should tell you something.

II. What counts as craft?

Let’s continue with Miyazaki to understand the ethos of artists and craftsman like him. To understand Miyazaki’s relationship with craft, you need to look at how he works — or rather, how he obsesses. Ghibli’s work isn’t for the attention economy. It’s a meditation. Built over years. Layered with meaning.

As Steve Alpert recounts in Sharing a House with the Never-Ending Man, while watching Princess Mononoke scenes repeatedly during production:

“I once repetitively watched a sequence where the heroine San charges into the Tataraba Fortress, leaps up onto the roof, and speeds across it. Then the hero Ashitaka leaps up and goes after her. What I noticed after seeing this again and again was how the tiles on the rooftop react to being stepped on, first by the light and lithe San, barely registering the weight of her compact body and small feet, and then by the heavier and less graceful Ashitaka. Just by how the rooftop registers the tread of their feet you have a sense of the weight, mass, velocity, and physical force exerted by each character. What I also noticed in the sequence was that when Ashitaka jumps up onto the roof he causes a few of the tiles at the edge of the roof to crumble. Pieces of them fall to the ground.

With my newly gained knowledge of animation, I realized that what was unusual about this is that the roof is a part of the background and not something that normally moves in animation. Princess Mononoke was the last major feature-length animated film to be drawn by hand and animated on hand-painted cels. In hand-painted cel animation the moving pieces are done in a somewhat simplified style that allows them to be more easily replicated and manipulated. But the elaborate backgrounds on which they move are too detailed, too intricate, and too finely done to be manipulated (animated) in that way. Also, they are done in watercolor and not pencil.

In other words, in order to get those few pieces of rooftop tile to crack and crumble to the ground, Miyazaki would have had to get an animator to specially create elaborate hand-painted cels to match the background image and to painstakingly recreate them in enough versions of crumbling to make the effect work. This sequence lasted on screen for perhaps only a few seconds or less. But it would have taken a large chunk of someone's time (and therefore money) to create. This on a project that was already precariously in danger of not meeting its production deadlines.”

That level of care for a detail barely anyone would consciously notice — that’s not just technique. That is philosophy. That’s the difference between making art and just making content.

Someone with that kind of dedication isn’t going to be threatened by a trend. Leonard Cohen put it best: 

“You can add new technology — synthesizers, effects — but a song without a soul is still a dead song.” 

That’s Miyazaki’s position. I doubt he’d waste time being offended by machine mimicry.

All AI is doing right now is mimicking. Some results are charming, sure. But they’re not creating anything truly original. The outrage against Ghiblification is sort of virtue signaling. Because originality was never about output. It was about seeing, noticing, intending. As Antoine de Saint-Exupéry said,

“A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral.”

AI doesn’t bear anything within it. It just recombines. But even recombination has its place. The right question isn’t whether AI threatens art. The real question is whether audiences will still care enough to tell the difference.

III. Imitation isn't theft. It’s how craft evolves.

Levelling the AI imitates accusation is shallow. Are we really arguing that human artists don’t learn from existing works? Does emergence of a new tool threaten an art form completely? Emergence of photography did not kill painting. And when photography took over realism, painters didn’t give up — they reimagined what it meant to see. Impressionist and surrealist movements were born. The two art forms are unique. 

Are we seriously going to ask artists to avoid digital brushes and synthetic paints because they’re too easy? Should we instruct storytellers to avoid the Hero’s Journey because it is templated? This kind of logic borders on the absurd.

As Leonard Read said in I, Pencil, everything today is built through distributed craft — no single creator, but a web of specializations, tools, and imaginations. Artists will use AI just like they used synthetic paints and make better things. 

Just like fast food doesn’t destroy high cuisine, Ghiblification doesn’t impact what Studio Ghibli stands for. One is engineered for mass attention. The other is for depth. We know the difference.

AI is just the next new tool humanity has discovered. Artists will experiment with this, the market will react, and once it commodifies, new things will have to be found — things that hit a chord the way Spirited Away once did. AI won’t be creating that. At least not without a human prompt. And what the artist creates with a new tool will often be better than what a non-artist can create with the tool. Basically, tools don’t make the artist, on the contrary, new tools make the artists even better.

The concern is not that anyone can now produce a Ghibli-style frame in five minutes. The concern is when those five minutes belong to a platform that logs your data, watermarks your work, and licenses your prompt to someone else.

And that brings us back to where we started.

The real danger isn't that artists will be replaced. It's that artists, and all of us, will be locked out.

Locked out of meaningfully shaping the tools.
Locked out of owning our own work.
Locked out of the new infrastructure being built under the guise of creativity.

Ghibli’s films were born from a context where the director had the final say. Not the algorithm. Not the platform. That’s what we’re at risk of losing.

So yes, use the new tools. Experiment with Ghiblification. Remix. Reimagine. But don’t confuse the tool for the vision.

And don’t be distracted by outraging over mimicry while the platforms are building moats around your cathedral.

Outrage, if you must, against monopolization of creativity.

PS: My previous post on this was more of a rant and had some errors, like wrongly calling the book by Steve Alpert by the name of the documentary. I have updated my views here and have also presented a more comprehensive view.

 

SERIES: Potentially Contrarian Ideas - Miyazaki wouldn't care

I think Hayao Miyazaki would not be too worried about ChatGPT’s Ghiblification trend. It’s mostly those who are unable to create something like Miyazaki who seem to be obsessing over and ranting about copyright infringement.

Yes, he was horrified back in 2016 when he saw what AI animation produced and called it “an insult to life.” But if I understand him right, he was saying that AI would never be able to create what he can — and that he would never incorporate it into his work. And he’s right.

All AI is doing is mimicking. And while some of the results are charming — especially considering they often take less than five minutes of effort — they aren’t doing anything truly original.

And let’s be honest: the trend is literally called Ghiblification.

Even if it does produce something original, are we really arguing that artists don’t learn from existing works? Are we suggesting that if a machine does it, it’s somehow more of an infringement than if a human artist had done the same?

Are we going to ask artists to use only natural paint, which takes years to produce, instead of the incredible synthetic paints we have now?
Are we going to say that artists shouldn’t use MS Paint just because it allows things to be created faster than with watercolours?
Are we going to tell advertisers and filmmakers not to create themes inspired by popular films?
Are we going to instruct storytellers to avoid the Hero’s Journey as a structure?

It borders on the absurd.

Leonard Read already explained the modern world through I, Pencil. AI is just the next new tool humanity has discovered.

Yes, some claim AI might be the last invention of humanity. But I, for one, remain skeptical.
We shouldn’t confuse a fad with a trend. Artists will experiment with this, the market will react, and once it commodifies, new forms will need to emerge — forms that strike a chord, like Spirited Away once did. AI won’t be creating that. At least not without a prompt from a human.

Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli had a clear passion for their craft. AI today cannot mimic that.

What we’re witnessing is not just a copyright issue. It’s the age-old tension between new tools and existing power structures.
The real concern shouldn’t be mimicry — it should be about the concentration of these capabilities in the hands of anti-competitive forces.
It’s regulation and intellectual monopolies that risk stifling creativity.

On a side note, to understand better Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli's potential views, I am reading Sharing a House with the Never-Ending Man by Steve Alpert. A book by one of the few foreigners (gaijin) who spent years working with Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli. I haven’t finished the book, but in the introduction I find this text below:

Studio Ghibli's films have influenced and inspired both animated and live-action filmmakers worldwide. Reflections and versions of images originally created by Hayao Miyazaki can be found in the films of well-known independent and Hollywood motion picture directors, including some major box office hits. Hayao Miyazaki has been called the Walt Disney and the Steven Spielberg of Japanese film. His influence on other filmmakers has been enormous.

Craft is about learning from the best.

And in some ways, this Ghiblification trend is a kind of homage to Miyazaki’s passion.

It’s not going to derail his creative output.

Owaranai Hito, the Japanese title of the book, translates to “The Man Who Is Never Finished.”

I will return and update my views if the book reveals otherwise 

BOOK NOTE - A Gentleman in Moscow - Amor Towles

I was introduced to Amor Towles’ books via James Altucher’s podcast with him. Amor and James discussed the writing process and particularly about creating memorable characters. I found A Gentleman in Moscow to be one of the best books I have read in recent times. Towles’ writing style is smart and witty, but also profound. You can know from the way the stories and characters interact and intersect that they are crafted with great care. And while the story builds slowly after an amazing start, it is a pleasure to read and leads up to a great crescendo and climax.

A Gentleman in Moscow is set in the early 1900s in post-Imperial Russia. It is in that unique time set soon after the Bolshevik revolution, where the true horrors of Communism and of Stalin are yet to happen, excepting off-screen. Us readers know about it, but the characters are unaware. They must find out as the story progresses. But the book’s style is not very crass to get into the horrors and describe them. It is only through the mood that we ever come across it.

The setting—the magnificent Metropol Hotel in Moscow—is as much a character as any of the human protagonists. And through the characters and the changes that happen to them, we see the golden age of Russia descend—initially into a sense of euphoria and then into the despair that Communism brings.

Along with the Metropol, Count Rostov is a perfect protagonist to show this transition. An erudite aristocrat, he knows the glories of the golden Imperial age. But he is not an out-of-touch aristocrat. He embodies what Kipling says in the famous poem If,

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much

He is the Metropol in human form, and the hotel is him as an institution.

Amor Towles has mentioned in his interview that he is not a Russologist, but the book is an amazing exploration of Russia and the divided classes in Russia of that time. What is even more fascinating is that he talks about how his writing style is not direct research-driven.

“Rather than pursuing research-driven projects, I like to write from areas of existing fascination,” he says on his website. “…I chose to write A Gentleman in Moscow because of my longstanding fascination with Russian literature, culture, and history. Most of the texture of the novel springs from the marriage of my imagination with that interest.”

As a book which captures a long period of time, and at the same time is a book of mystery and intrigue, getting the pacing right is very important. I alluded earlier that the book starts off great, but then slows down before ratcheting up the pace and a crescendo towards climax. Without giving any spoilers, this is achieved through a unique accordion style of time expansion and contraction, which is very unique to any books I have read. Towles observes how this reflects how we remember our lives as well –

While odd, this accordion structure seems to suit the story well, as we get a very granular description of the early days of confinement; then we leap across time through eras defined by career, parenthood, and changes in the political landscape; and finally, we get a reversion to urgent granularity as we approach the denouement. As an aside, I think this is very true to life, in that we remember so many events of a single year in our early adulthood, but then suddenly remember an entire decade as a phase of our career or of our lives as parents.

Some amazing life observations that have stayed with me from the book are:

“Arriving late, what a delicacy of youth”

The Count observes how it is stylish and acceptable when young people arrive late or in-between things. This is part of growing up, and even stylish. But soon fades when in middle age and the focus of lives becomes more monotonous. It made me reflect about how we lose part of our youth when we become too rigid in our ways.

“The surest sign of wisdom was constant cheerfulness – Michel de Montaigne”

The Count and the Metropol in some ways are embodiments of this maxim. They survive and even thrive by finding joy in the toughest of times. Wisdom is being able to get what you want, despite the circumstances.

In terms of historical fiction, A Gentleman in Moscow does a great job of reflecting the sense of the times. And for those interested in the strange time of transition, in one of the most radical shifts in human history—from Imperial grandeur to Bolshevik commanding heights—it is a must-read.

A masterpiece in capturing the romance of the golden age as it slips through our collective hands.
 

How to Focus on One Thing

One of the main challenges many of us face in this hyper-distracting world is the ability to focus.

Any pursuit of mastery requires some degree of focus. Real mastery demands an exceptionally high level of it. We are what we give our attention to. If we fail to do so, we are at the mercy of external forces, and mastery will elude us.

Focusing on mastery is a lifelong journey. But distraction is also a persistent, lifelong challenge. Steven Pressfield famously described this as the evil thing called “resistance" in his book The War of Art.

A 1987 Esquire article on mastery, which has recentlygained renewed interest thanks to Jerry Seinfeld’s reflections on his pursuit of it, contains a particularly insightful passage (hat tip SatPost by Trung Phan):

The modern world can be viewed as a prodigious conspiracy against mastery. We are bombarded with promises of fast, temporary relief, immediate gratification, and instant success, all of which lead in exactly the wrong direction.

Life’s incentives often favour speed. But I believe this is a false motivator—an easy trap to fall into, especially since society actively rewards it. While this hustle may be beneficial in certain seasons of life, and even suited in certain seasons of life, it is unsustainable in the long run and can ultimately be detrimental.

True joy lies in slowing down, trusting yourself, and even embracing boredom.

Monotasking is an incredible source of satisfaction. In fact, it is a luxury. If you can mono-task, you are already winning. This ability comes when you resist the urge to maximize short-term output and short-term rewards.

But how does one disconnect from distractions and push back against the "prodigious conspiracy against mastery" imposed by the modern world?

Here are some personal observations that have contributed to my success in professional, personal, and intellectual pursuits:

Ways to Reduce Distractions

• Establish a schedule — even if you don’t always stick to it.
• Set specific intentions for time blocks — separate planning from doing; frequent task-switching creates overwhelm.
• Track your progress visibly — streaks create momentum and reinforce habits.
• Identify and manage distraction triggers — know the who, what, where, and emotional/social context that lead to distractions.
• Select analogue over digital whenever possible — mindfulness increases when distractions decrease; savour experiences instead of getting lost in digital rabbit holes.

Cultivating deep engagement:

• Love the process—attach joy to intention, not just outcomes:
• Celebrate the process, not just the result.
• Observe and compliment others who embody this mindset to create a reinforcing feedback loop.
• Be comfortable with plateaus—progress isn’t always visible, but sticking with it prevents frustration.
• Approach tasks as if they’re new — curiosity enhances focus. Haruki Murakami finished writing his first novel because he seized the moment of inspiration that struck him while watching a baseball game. He didn’t overthink the logistics of publishing or the long road ahead—he simply acted on the creative impulse in front of him. Similarly, Seth Godin advises:

If you’re feeling creative, do the errands tomorrow. If you’re fit and healthy, take a day to go surfing. When inspiration strikes, write it down. The calendar belongs to everyone else. Their schedule isn’t your schedule unless it helps you get where you’re going.

• Avoid rigidity—choose flexibility—perfectionism can be a distraction; complexity should exist at the right scale.
• Incorporate playfulness—play reduces mental resistance, making focus easier (e.g., Richard Latham’s idea of "clowning around" to learn writing).