The essay argues that the fundamental principles for how to live are: help people, take care of the world, and make good new things. Making good new things represents the best proof of human thinking and should be understood broadly to include discoveries, ideas, art, and any creative work. While traditional answers to 'how should one live' focused on virtues like wisdom and justice, they addressed 'how to be' for a landowning class whose work was predetermined, whereas modern people have more freedom to choose original, creative work.

• •The three fundamental principles for living are: help people, take care of the world, and make good new things
• •Making good new things is the best proof that one has thought well, and represents the most impressive thing humans can do
• •Traditional answers about how to live focused on 'how to be' rather than 'what to do' because most people's work was foreordained by their social class
• •Newness is essential to valuable creative work—copying or repetition lacks the impressive quality of original creation
• •People who make amazing new things often help people and the world even without intending to, as Newton's work demonstrates

Newton, Cicero, Confucius, Archimedes, Raymond Chandler, Trevor Blackwell, Jessica Livingston, Robert Morris