All Is As Thinking Makes It So

Derren Brown reaches the last book of Marcus Aurelius's Meditations, where a man nearing death turns unexpectedly generous toward himself. Brown catches Marcus repeating his one weak argument, the move from how things are to how they ought to be, and names it plainly rather than letting it slide. Underneath that argument sits a bigger claim: we never meet the world directly, only the judgments we make about it. Brown has spent his working life on the practical side of exactly that idea, building realities for a living, and Book Twelve gives him plenty of room to test it on himself.