the original thesis

Dianetics: The Original Thesis

By: L. Ron Hubbard

Narrated by: Lloyd Sherr
Length: 3 hrs and 28 mins
3.8 out of 5 stars 3.8 (75 ratings)

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Dianetics: The Evolution of a Science

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confusing but very very interesting

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Battlefield Earth Audiobook By L. Ron Hubbard cover art

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5 out of 5 stars

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3 out of 5 stars

addressing the mystery

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2 out of 5 stars

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Good, but it’s totally different than the physical book.

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Great & fascinating history & manifesto for change

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Not at all what is advertised

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Err... Not impressed.

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Big Disappointment!

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From a former SO Child

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Grant is awesome - but don't bother with this one

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The now widely known map of calibrated levels of consciousness was presented in Power vs. Force in 1995 and has been translated into all the world's major languages. This was followed by The Eye of the I (2001), I: Reality and Subjectivity (2003), and Truth vs. Falsehood (2005), which explored the levels of truth reflected throughout society. Transcending the Levels of Consciousness returns to the exploration of the ego's expressions and inherent limitations and gives detailed explanations and instructions on how to transcend them.

By Aceaussie on 10-20-20

Publisher's summary

From the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health , with over 22 million copies sold

Discover the first breakthroughs unlocking the unlimited potential of your mind.

"The basic individual is not a buried, unknown or different person, but an intensity of all that is best and most able in the person." —L. Ron Hubbard

In this book you will:

Find out what drives life
Discover the four “compartments” of life
Discover what basic personality really is
Learn about the mind, its function and operation
Learn about the primary laws of how and why Dianetics therapy works

Listen and start on the road to reaching your full potential.

About the author: With over two hundred million copies of his works in circulation and dozens of international bestsellers, L. Ron Hubbard has inspired a movement spanning every continent on earth. All told, those works comprise some 5,000 writings and 3,000 recorded lectures and, as such, stand as the single most embracive statement on the human mind and spirit. His breakthroughs have helped millions lead more successful lives and achieve true happiness.

Unabridged Audiobook
Categories: Relationships, Parenting & Personal Development

Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health

Can't Hurt Me

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For David Goggins, childhood was a nightmare--poverty, prejudice, and physical abuse colored his days and haunted his nights. But through self-discipline, mental toughness, and hard work, Goggins transformed himself from a depressed, overweight young man with no future into a US Armed Forces icon and one of the world's top endurance athletes. The only man in history to complete elite training as a Navy SEAL, Army Ranger, and Air Force tactical air controller, he went on to set records in numerous endurance events.

Opting for the book instead

By S David on 12-24-18

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Length: 1 hr and 7 mins
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The 13 chapters of The Art of War , each devoted to one aspect of warfare, were compiled by the high-ranking Chinese military general, strategist, and philosopher Sun-Tzu. In spite of its battlefield specificity, The Art of War has found new life in the modern age, with leaders in fields as wide and far-reaching as world politics, human psychology, and corporate strategy finding valuable insight in its timeworn words.

The actual book The Art of War, not a commentary

By Fred271 on 12-31-19

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The world’s leading high-performance coach and multiple New York Times best-selling author Brendon Burchard delivers the six habits of personal growth that will help you create the life of your dreams. Forged from Brendon Burchard’s personal experiences, data from his GrowthDay app, and his many years as a high-performance coach, The 6 Habits of Growth presents the tools you need to construct the life of your dreams.

Don’t bother

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How to enrich your life and destroy doubt in five seconds. Throughout your life, you've had parents, coaches, teachers, friends, and mentors who have pushed you to be better than your excuses and bigger than your fears. What if the secret to having the confidence and courage to enrich your life and work is simply knowing how to push yourself?

I turned it off after an hour.

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One day, Lori Gottlieb is a therapist who helps patients in her Los Angeles practice. The next, a crisis causes her world to come crashing down. Enter Wendell, the quirky but seasoned therapist in whose office she suddenly lands. With his balding head, cardigan, and khakis, he seems to have come straight from Therapist Central Casting. Yet he will turn out to be anything but.

It was like a hallmark movie being waterboarded into my ears for 15 hours

By Amazon Customer on 10-01-19

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In Emotional Investment , therapist-turned-financial coach Amanda Clayman works with a range of people and couples to unravel money dilemmas. Along the way, Clayman gives us practical tools—both financial and emotional—that we can all use in our own lives.

So honest and engaging to hear people’s money stories.

By Jc on 04-12-24

12 Months to $1 Million

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By cutting out the noise and providing a clear and proven plan, this road map helps even brand-new entrepreneurs make decisions quickly, get their product up for sale, and launch it to a crowd that is ready and waiting to buy. This one-year plan will guide you through the three stages to your first $1 million: the Grind (months 0-4), the Growth (months 5-8), and the Gold (months 9-12). If your goal is to be a full-time entrepreneur, get ready for one chaotic, stressful, and rewarding year. If you have the guts to complete it, you will be the proud owner of a million-dollar business.

Good, but a Little Misleading

By Chris Love on 11-28-20

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Why have history's greatest minds - from George Washington to Frederick the Great to Ralph Waldo Emerson along with today's top performers, from Super Bowl-winning football coaches to CEOs and celebrities - embraced the wisdom of the ancient Stoics? Because they realize that the most valuable wisdom is timeless and that philosophy is for living a better life, not a classroom exercise. The Daily Stoic offers a daily devotional of Stoic insights and exercises, featuring all-new translations.

Not well made as audio

By Andreas on 12-27-16

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Started Listening By Accident

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Not my thing, but one good point

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By Anonymous User on 05-16-24

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Words. We use them all the time, every day, mostly without giving them much thought at all. We take for granted that they’re here at our disposal whenever we need them. But if you’ve ever wished you could communicate more effectively, words are the place to start. It’s incumbent upon you to choose the best words to accomplish your goals, because how you choose to communicate influences—well, everything! The power of communication shapes our professional goals, our relationships, and our lives—so the words we choose to use carry a great deal of power.

Meh. Glad I didn't pay for it.

By Paula on 07-23-22

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By Anonymous User on 07-07-17

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A great reminder to once again listen to our inner voice…

By Amazon Customer on 01-14-24

I Can't Make This Up

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Best Audiobook I Ever Listened To

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Decent book severely undermined by last chapter.

By zachary on 11-01-22

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Stop living in fear

By Nike7 on 02-08-19

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The content is great but the reader is awful

By Mark Speener on 06-24-14

People who viewed this also viewed...

Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health Audiobook By L. Ron Hubbard cover art

Length: 17 hrs and 23 mins
Overall 3.5 out of 5 stars 483
Performance 3.5 out of 5 stars 388
Story 3.5 out of 5 stars 382

Containing discoveries heralded as greater than the wheel or fire, Dianetics has remained a best seller for more than 50 years. And with over 20 million copies in print, it's indisputably the most widely read and influential book ever written about the human mind. Dianetics enables you to discover and eradicate these harmful experiences so they never affect you again, revealing the one person you've always wanted to know: You.

Waste of time

By MomC on 06-30-10

What listeners say about Dianetics: The Original Thesis

4 out of 5 stars 3.8 out of 5.0
4 out of 5 stars 4.1 out of 5.0
4 out of 5 stars 3.9 out of 5.0

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Audible.com reviews, amazon reviews.

Overall 5 out of 5 stars
Performance 5 out of 5 stars
Story 5 out of 5 stars

The Solution, the tools for mental illness

I will be listening to it again and also listen to Dianetics again also. Every doctors and professors and everyone should have the tools in this book.

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Overall 4 out of 5 stars
Performance 3 out of 5 stars
Story 4 out of 5 stars

worth a listen if interested in this area

a rather basic overview of the concepts of scientology but a good choice for someone who just wants to understand it a little better or for someone like me who has an interest in dozens of subjects

5 people found this helpful

very well put together. pretty amazing and a very good standard to abide by. keep up the good work.

Scholarly presentation of a most workable subject

This very well-narrated book expresses basic principles of the function and repair of the human mind in intelligent and measured terms. It was written in a much more literate age; some modern readers may therefore need to make liberal use of its glossary in studying the book. Be patient, don't rush it, let the material soak in, and you will be well rewarded.

1 person found this helpful

Matt Walker

Required Reading

If you have already read (or listened to) Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health, then this book will five you greater insight into the theories and research that led to Book One (DMSMH). If you have yet to read Dianetics, then start with this book. I read Dianetics first, and although I learned a lot, I wish I had first read Evolution of a Science. Enjoy!

Overall 3 out of 5 stars
Story 2 out of 5 stars

Curious So I Read It

It was Ok though I can see how these theories were popular in 1950, a few of the basics I suppose are useful.

Publisher of New York Times and International Bestselling Author L. Ron Hubbard

Dianetics: the original thesis.

Mr. Hubbard’s first description of Dianetics. Originally circulated in manuscript form, it was soon copied and passed from hand to hand. Ensuing word of mouth created such demand for more information, he concluded the only way to answer the inquiries was with a book. That book was Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health , now the all-time self-help bestseller. Find out what started it all. For here is the bedrock foundation of Dianetic discoveries: the Original Axioms , the Dynamic Principle of Existence , the Anatomy of the Analytical and Reactive Mind , the Dynamics , the Tone Scale , the Auditor’s Code and the first description of a Clear . Even more than that, here are the primary laws describing how and why auditing works. It’s only here in Dianetics: The Original Thesis .

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Dianetics: The Original Thesis Audio Excerpt

More About Dianetics: The Original Thesis

Here is Mr. Hubbard’s first description of Dianetics. Originally circulated in manuscript form to a few friends, it was soon copied and passed hand-to-hand until it literally circled the globe. But the resultant word of mouth only fueled the fire. With thousands of letters requesting more information, he concluded the only way to answer all inquiries was with a book. That book was Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health, now the all-time bestseller on the mind. Find out what started it all. For here are the bedrock discoveries and equations of Dianetics, including:

The Primary Axioms of Dianetics—axioms upon which the entire subject is built
The discovery of the Dynamic Principle of Existence that drives all life forms—SURVIVE!
The Four Dynamics by which life is compartmented and which determine one’s survival
The discovery and anatomy of the Reactive Mind
Engrams, the single source of all irrational behavior
The powerful command in every engram which prevented their discovery and handling before Dianetics
The Analytical Mind, its function and operation
The first description of the state of Clear, its attributes and potentials
And, most important, the Laws of Returning—containing the explanation of both how and why auditing works

Here, then, are the fundamental breakthroughs Mr. Hubbard used to make the first Clears—breakthroughs which made possible the development of technology for use by every individual to begin the clearing of a planet, breakthroughs only contained in Dianetics: The Original Thesis.

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Dianetics: The Original Thesis

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Dianetics: The Original Thesis Audio Excerpt

MORE ABOUT DIANETICS: THE ORIGINAL THESIS

The Primary Axioms of Dianetics—axioms upon which the entire subject is built
The discovery of the Dynamic Principle of Existence that drives all life forms—SURVIVE!
The Four Dynamics by which life is compartmented and which determine one’s survival
The discovery and anatomy of the Reactive Mind
Engrams, the single source of all irrational behavior
The powerful command in every engram which prevented their discovery and handling before Dianetics
The Analytical Mind, its function and operation
The first description of the state of Clear, its attributes and potentials
And, most important, the Laws of Returning—containing the explanation of both how and why auditing works

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Dianetics: The Original Thesis Paperback – Import, January 1, 2007

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Print length 291 pages
Language English
Publisher New Era Publications International APS
Publication date January 1, 2007
Dimensions 6.22 x 0.79 x 9.29 inches
ISBN-10 8779897746
ISBN-13 978-8779897748
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Publisher ‏ : ‎ New Era Publications International APS; UK ed. edition (January 1, 2007)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 291 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 8779897746
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-8779897748
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.23 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.22 x 0.79 x 9.29 inches
Best Sellers Rank: #5,632,247 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books )

About the author

L. ron hubbard.

With 19 New York Times bestsellers and more than 350 million copies of his works in circulation, L. Ron Hubbard is among the most enduring and widely read authors of our time. As a leading light of American Pulp Fiction through the 1930s and '40s, he is further among the most influential authors of the modern age. Indeed, from Ray Bradbury to Stephen King, there is scarcely a master of imaginative tales who has not paid tribute to L. Ron Hubbard.

Then too, of course, there is all L. Ron Hubbard represents as the Founder of Dianetics and Scientology and thus the only major religion born in the 20th century.

While, as such, he presents the culmination of science and spiritual technology as embodied in the religion of Scientology.

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1948 DIANETICS THE ORIGINAL THESIS ( 2)

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A publication of the harvard college writing program.

Harvard Guide to Using Sources

The Honor Code

Writing "Original" Papers

Some of your writing assignments at Harvard will explicitly ask you to present an "original" thesis, claim, or idea. But even when the word "original" isn't mentioned, you should assume that your professor expects you to develop a thesis that is the product of your own thinking and not something drawn directly from a source. Occasionally an assignment will require only a summary of your reading, particularly if the instructor wants to make sure you have understood a particularly complex concept; however, some assignments may be worded in a way that leaves expectations ambiguous (you may be asked, for example, to "discuss" or "consider" a source), and you may think you are only expected to summarize when, in fact, you are expected to make an argument. When in doubt about whether you are supposed to make an argument in your paper, always check with your instructor to make sure you understand what you're expected to do.

The expectation that you will say something original in every college paper may seem daunting. After all, how can you, an undergraduate who has been studying a particular subject for as little as one semester, know enough to make an original contribution to a field that your professor may have spent a career studying? Indeed, it would be impossible for you to come up with an idea for every paper you write that no one has ever thought of before, and your instructors realize this. When they ask you to come up with an original idea, they may be signaling different expectations, depending on the context of the assignment. Below, you'll find a general framework for thinking about originality in different situations you will encounter in college.

Writing Situation #1: Short Non-Research Papers

In the context of certain assignments, it's enough to come up with a thesis that's original to you—a thesis that you arrived at after thinking about the material you read, rather than an idea you encountered in one of the assigned sources. This will be true for the papers you write in Expos, as well as for many of the short papers you write in your Gen Ed and concentration courses. For these papers, your instructor does not expect you to come up with an idea that no one else has ever written about. Instead, your instructor is most interested in your thought process, your analytical skills, and the way you explain why you think what you think. But why, you may be wondering, would anyone bother writing a paper that presents an idea that other scholars have written about already?

Here's the short answer to that question: There is real value in discovering an idea for yourself, selecting the best evidence to support it, and taking the necessary steps to argue for it. Taking these steps helps you learn both what you think about a topic or issue and how to think through a problem or set of problems. This kind of thinking is necessary preparation for the longer projects you'll do later in your college career when you will be expected to say something truly original. It's impossible to tackle those projects—from a senior thesis to original lab research—if you haven't had the experience of arriving at an idea, fleshing out an argument, and presenting it to an audience. This preparation will serve you well as your college coursework becomes more specialized, and it will also benefit you when you leave college. Whatever field you go into, you'll find yourself in situations where your analysis of a particular problem—and your use of sources to solve that problem—will be crucial to your success.

While the specifics of the assignments for short papers will vary, remember that whenever you're asked to make a claim, you're expected to do your own thinking. In other words, writing a paper about a claim that has been worked over in class, in section, or in your readings will not leave you room to do much thinking of your own. Nor will writing a paper about a claim that will strike your readers as obvious, simple, and unarguable. If you are interested in an idea that has come up in class, or one that seems obvious, you should work on extending or complicating this idea, or coming up with a counterargument that changes the way the idea should be considered. Also, keep in mind that when your instructors tell you not to consult outside sources, they are often doing so precisely to encourage your original thinking, and you should follow their instructions. When an assignment specifies that you avoid outside sources, you should generally take this to mean that you should not do any outside reading in preparation for the assignment.

Writing Situation #2: Short Research Papers and Term Papers

When you are assigned a research paper or term paper for a course, you will often be asked to write 10-20 pages in which you respond to sources you identify and locate yourself . As with the shorter papers you write for your courses, you will generally not be expected to come up with an idea that has never been considered before (although your instructors will certainly be pleased if you do). So how will you know if your idea is original enough?

The key to answering this question is to think carefully about the context of the course and to decide what's reasonable for you to do given the scope of the assignment. For example, if you've been asked to find five sources of your own, your paper will not be original enough if your argument simply echoes one of these sources, or if it echoes a source that was assigned in class. On the other hand, if you locate three sources, each of which offers different answers to the same question, your paper will be original if you can make your own argument for which answer makes the most sense and why.

Your argument will not, however, be original enough if you make the same argument as one of the sources without acknowledging why that source makes the strongest argument. For example, if you were writing about climate change and you were asked to read and consider an argument for investing in nuclear energy and an argument against investing in nuclear energy, you might agree with one of those arguments and present your argument for why it is the stronger idea. Or you might decide that both arguments fall short. You might decide that you support or oppose investing in nuclear energy for reasons other than those offered in the source’s argument. Or you might decide that the argument opposing nuclear energy misses a key factor. The result of doing your own thinking about the topic would be a paper that does not simply restate the position of one of your sources but, rather, uses those sources to inform your own thinking. And the process of writing that paper would have gotten you closer to figuring out what you think about the topic. When you are doing research, it's always a good idea to check in with your instructor to make sure that you are not overlooking important work in that field and that the sources you are choosing are significant and appropriate for your project.

Writing Situation #3: The Junior Tutorial and the Senior Thesis

When you write a substantial piece of work that takes a semester or more (like a junior tutorial paper or a senior thesis), the expectations for originality are different because of the length of the essay you'll write and because of your level of expertise in the field. As you gain experience in your concentration, your knowledge of the major ideas in your chosen field will expand, you will develop your ability to ask more rigorous questions in that field, and you will be able to answer those questions in ways that are original not just to you but to your readers. At this point in your college career, you'll have had the opportunity to learn who the major thinkers are in your field and how to identify the important literature on what research has taken place on your topic. You'll be able to find the most important current scholarship on a topic or the most recent findings related to your research question. Your expertise, along with the time you'll have to devote to the project, means that you will be well-equipped to say something original about your topic.

Even when you write these longer papers, it's still important to understand what it means to say something original. Academic work is very specialized, and scholars build theories and ideas based on the knowledge and ideas that they have studied. In practical terms, this means that ideas evolve slowly, and every original idea doesn't have to be E=mc2 or Kierkegaard's "leap of faith." While there's nothing wrong with hoping to discover a new element to add to the periodic table or trying to figure out the true identity of Shakespeare, it's more likely that your ideas will be original in any of the following ways.

You might discover, in your study of a particular topic, that no one has considered a question or problem that interests you. Or you might bring new information or a new perspective to a question that others have asked. For example, you might look at newly released government documents to consider a question about how the Reagan administration shaped economic policies. While the question may have been asked before, the newly available data will allow you to provide a fresh, original perspective. Similarly, while many people have written about Shakespeare’s plays, you might find that comparing a new production to a more traditional version would bring you a fresh perspective on the play.

Sometimes collecting and analyzing your own data will provide an original take on a topic. For example, if you were writing a senior thesis in a lab science or social science concentration, you might collect and analyze your own data in pursuit of an answer to a question that other scholars have attempted to answer before with different types of data. In psychology, for example, you might conduct an experiment under the supervision of a professor and then analyze your data. In a sociology or anthropology course, you might conduct a series of interviews and analyze them in order to answer a question in a new way.

As appealing as it might seem to discover an entirely new idea, it's just as valuable to add a new step or a new way of thinking to an idea that someone else has already presented. It's also valuable—and original—to consider ideas in relation to each other that have not been considered or connected to each other in this way before.

Whether you're working on a short assignment or a semester-long project, remember that even in the context of all the thinking that has come before yours, you are always capable of bringing your own unique point of view to a paper. In fact, you're doing your own thinking all the time, long before you start writing—in class discussion, in the dining hall, and in your instructor's office hours. When you bring sources into the equation, you're able to go beyond your gut reactions and feelings ("capitalism is good" or “capitalism is bad”) to develop more nuanced ideas ("capitalism does a better job of creating incentives for innovation than other systems" or "a capitalist society cannot protect the most vulnerable"). Sources also introduce you to competing arguments and interpretations and help to lay the groundwork for your own thinking. When you read what has already been written on a particular topic, or when you analyze data that has already been produced in addition to new data, you become more qualified to contribute to the conversation.

Many students tackling college-level writing for the first time find the expectations of college writing new and difficult. There are resources to help you as you embark on your writing assignments at Harvard, and you should feel free to make use of them. Writing Center tutors , Departmental Writing Fellows , and House tutors are all excellent resources. The Harvard Writing Project publishes a number of guides to writing in different fields, and the Writing Center offers general writing resources in addition to individual conferences.

Before you can use sources effectively, you need to know how to locate them, how to know if they are reliable, and how to distinguish clearly between the ideas in a source and your own ideas. The information on this site provides an introduction to the research process, including how and where to find sources , how to decide if a source is reliable and useful , how to use sources accurately and effectively in your papers both to strengthen your own thinking and writing and to avoid plagiarism, and finally, how to integrate source material into your writing and how to cite sources responsibly .

What Does It Mean to Be Controversial?

Most of your college writing assignments will instruct you to take a position or to make an argument. While it's important to learn how to weigh the evidence and draw conclusions that may be different from those of other scholars, it's also important to remember that in academic writing, the most controversial position isn't necessarily the strongest one to take. It might be tempting to manufacture a controversial argument by over-generalizing or caricaturing the ideas you oppose, but ultimately this kind of argument will be neither convincing nor interesting. Any argument you make should be the result of careful thought, and it should follow from a fair reading of the evidence available to you.

Consider, for example, an essay that Aishani Aatresh wrote for her ESPP class, Technology, Environment, and Society. In the paper, Aatresh tries to answer the question of why hydrogen-powered vehicles have not been as successful as electric vehicles in the United States. While it would have sounded most controversial to argue something like “hydrogen-powered vehicles will always be too dangerous because hydrogen is so flammable,” or “hydrogen-powered vehicles are inferior to electric vehicles in every way,” Aatresh’s research suggested that this type of statement would oversimplify a complex situation. She ended up with a thesis that is still controversial in the sense that readers may disagree with it, but one that does not depend on over-simplifying the issues at stake.

Here is the thesis statement she drafted:

Instead of being a contest of modes of sustainability or “superior” technology, FCEVs largely fit into familiar modes of movement while EVs represent elite, material, and innovative “progress” and thus are differentially situated in American society based on how these visions relate to the idea of independence.

With this thesis statement, Aatresh was able to use the evidence that she uncovered to take a position on a controversial topic (alternative fuels) that was both nuanced and arguable.

What Are You Supposed to Do with Sources?
Writing "Original" Papers
Using Sources Beyond Harvard

An Original Thesis: Does That Even Exist?

February 1, 2018

By Soondos Mulla-Ossman

You've just gotten back your first paper of the semester. Your professor is making a face. "I liked your paper, but..." You know what's coming. "I was hoping for a little more...originality."

Coming up with an original idea can be hard for any writer, especially if you've endured the tumultuous process of brainstorming, writing an outline, a first draft, a second draft, etc. And yet, in spite of it all, it's not enough. After all, how can you be truly "original" when at least one of the 7.6 billion other people in the world probably already took your idea? You're bound to accidentally talk about a concept that's already been explored, even if you don't realize it until the professor hands you back your graded essay.

The truth is, it's hard to know which ideas are common and which aren't in an area you've just been introduced to. For example, say you've read The Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde for the first time. Your class has little discussions about it as you work through chapter by chapter. Some students bring up observations you were already thinking about. Some mention things you hadn't considered prior. Either way, when it's time to write, you know other conversations about the book exist, but you're just not familiar with them all. It could take weeks, even months of poring through secondary texts to get even a faint grasp of what you could talk about.

The very core of a writer's topic is communicated through the thesis, so let's start from there. Going off of the example of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde , say you want to talk about Dr. Jekyll's upbringing and how that influenced his actions in the book. That's a broad, common idea, but you can set it apart from this overdone concept by applying a second layer to it. This typically consists of a specific perspective or lens which professors may introduce, such as Marxist, feminist, queer, historical, and psychological perspectives. These lenses serve to frame your scope-or in other words, focus the way you relay your argument. So, if I want to talk about the elements that factored into how Dr. Jekyll was raised, I may want to focus on the historical context behind it-hence applying a historical lens.

That's not always enough, though. Say that with the aid of a historical lens, you decide that you want to write your paper about how London society at the time was responsible for shaping Dr. Jekyll into the kind of person that he was at the start of the novel. Unfortunately, a lot of people may have talked about that. So now what? Here's where the third layer comes into play. For this, zero in on something very specific within the text-and it doesn't have to be explicitly related to the topic of the second layer. A lot of people talk about the historical context of the story. But do people talk about how the police system worked at that time? Or how criminal detective work in general functioned? What about the culture of social structures? Housing? These elements compound in the eventual pursuit of Mr. Hyde, but some may dismiss them as minor themes in the broader story. Here's where you can be different. Grab those seemingly "little" ideas and expand upon them. Take those things that people don't ordinarily care about and make people care about it.

All of a sudden, your thesis statement has gone from "I wanna write about Dr. Jekyll's upbringing" to "Dr. Jekyll grew up a victim of the police force's historical tendencies towards truancy." Bam. Of course, a more unique topic does come with some drawbacks. One of the first things that may be immediately apparent is that finding sources may have just gotten a whole lot harder. After all, if not a lot of people are talking about it already, then how are you going to get quotes? This can be remedied with unyielding searching and reaching out to professors and library staff for help. Searching the history of London's police force, for example, provides helpful documentation that can be bent into your own interpretations.

Secondly, you'll have an easier time finding arguments against your own. Having a strong voice of disagreement may actually be a blessing in disguise, because professors may also expect you to address an opposing argument in your paper. If it's easy to pick out the counterarguments for your claim, then you can just as easily prepare a refutation.

That's about it. Crafting an original idea can be as simple as grabbing multiple seemingly random concepts and bringing them together. Originality is not coming up with something from nothing, but considering and responding to what many different people have said in the past and molding them all together into something you can truly call yours. I have always considered originality to be one of the most important things to consider when planning any paper, and I definitely hope this at least provides some guidance in your own process.

Entertainment

A Recent Timeline of the Drake vs. Kendrick Lamar Beef

T he long-simmering beef between Kendrick Lamar and Drake has exploded in recent days as the rappers repeatedly lobbed insults and allegations about one another’s families and personal lives in a series of escalating diss tracks that has also invoked other hip-hop greats, including Metro Boomin and DJ Mustard.

The feud, in which each rapper has made numerous unverified allegations, prompted Drake to respond in a song on Sunday that he’s “disgusted” by Lamar’s claims about him, including that he has a secret child and engages in sex with underage girls, which he denies.

In “The Heart Part 6”—a title that references Lamar’s “The Heart” song series—Drake said he would have “been arrested” were there any truth to the allegations about him having inappropriate relationships with underage girls. The 37-year-old Canadian rapper, who has a 6-year-old son, also suggested that he leaked false information about having a daughter to Lamar, singing: “We plotted for a week and then we fed you the information/ A daughter that’s eleven years old, I bet he takes it.”

The fight between the two men reached its climax (at least, to date) over the weekend, resulting in the release of multiple songs by and featuring the two artists. While their tense relationship dates back years, the origins of this most recent dispute can be traced to Drake’s song “First Person Shooter,” which was released as part of his album, For All the Dogs, last October. During that track, featured guest J. Cole called himself, Drake, and Lamar the “big three.” When Lamar was featured on Future’s “Like That” on March 22, he ripped into Cole and Drake for suggesting they are on the same level.

Read More: Why Drake Had to Take Down His Song That Featured AI-Tupac Vocals

The ensuing drama has brought forward serious, unverified claims, and shows no signs of slowing down. It is the latest chapter in a long tradition of rap feuds that has seen rivalries between the likes of Jay-Z and Nas and Tupac and Biggie.

Here’s a recent timeline of the beef between Drake and Kendrick Lamar.

The backstory and "First Person Shooter”

Both rappers achieved mainstream fame at around the same time in the early 2010s. They’ve worked together in the past; on Drake’s 2011 album, Take Care , Lamar is featured on an interlude, and Lamar had Drake on his second studio album, 2012’s Good Kid, M.A.A.D City , on the song “Poetic Justice.”

The first sign of trouble seems to have cropped up around 2013, when Lamar appeared on Big Sean’s “Control.” Lamar called out Drake and several other rappers on the song, but Drake didn’t engage at first, suggesting in interviews at the time that he was not going to take the bait.

Instead, Drake's beef with Meek Mill in 2015 consumed much of his time, and later, in 2018, he got into it with Pusha T, who revealed that Drake was hiding a secret baby in the song “The Story of Adidon”—which Drake later admitted was true.

It wasn’t until “First Person Shooter” came out last year that Drake reopened the conflict with Lamar, intentionally or not, after Cole referred to himself, Drake, and Lamar as the “Big Three.”

Kendrick’s featured verse on “Like That”

Lamar, who won the Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for his album DAMN. , took offense to the idea that he and Drake are on the same skill level. The standout line in Future’s song “Like That,” which is produced by Metro Boomin, is, “Motherf-ck the big three, it’s just big me.”

He also refers to Drake’s most recent album, For All The Dogs , rapping, “‘Fore all your dogs gettin' buried/ That's a K with all these nines, he gon' see Pet Sematary .”

J. Cole enters the beef with “7-Minute Drill,” but quickly bows out

Shortly after “Like That” came out, Cole released a surprise album called Might Delete Later, and one of the songs, “7 Minute Drill,” includes a diss directed at Lamar.

In it, he raps, “Your first sh-t was classic, your last sh-t was tragic/ Your second sh-t put n----s to sleep, but they gassed it/ Your third sh-t was massive, and that was your prime,” a line that many listeners took issue with because Cole suggests that To Pimp a Butterfly (an album widely regarded as Lamar’s best) was boring. He says in the song that people don’t care about Lamar, rapping, “He averagin’ one hard verse like every thirty months or somethin’/ If he wasn’t dissin’, then we wouldn’t be discussin’ him.”

However, Cole then decided to distance himself from the beef. He later said that the song “didn’t sit right with his spirit” and removed it from streaming services on April 12, saying his actions are some of the “lamest, goofiest sh-t” he’s participated in.

Drake tells Lamar he needs to do some “Push Ups”

Rap fans waited with bated breath for Drake’s response, and he returned to the beef with not one song, but two, “Push Ups” and “Taylor Made Freestyle,” released on April 19. The Toronto rapper attempts to put Lamar in his place, calling him a “pipsqueak” and rapping, “How the f-ck you big steppin’ with a size-seven men’s on?” Drake also attempts to make fun of Lamar for doing features on pop songs. “Maroon 5 need a verse, you better make it witty/ Then we need a verse for the Swifties," he raps on “Push Ups,” referring to the 2015 remix of Swift’s “Bad Blood” and “Don’t Wanna Know” with Maroon 5 the following year.

But Lamar isn’t the only person called out on this record. Drake also dissed Future, The Weeknd, Rick Ross, NBA player Ja Morant, Metro Boomin, and Cole on the song.

“Taylor Made Freestyle,” AI Tupac and Snoop Dogg

Following “Push Ups,” Drake briefly released “Taylor Made Freestyle,” sharing the song in a now-deleted Instagram post on April 19 with the caption: “While we wait on you, I guess.” In the song, Drake alleged Lamar did not release a response to his diss track because Taylor Swift had just put out her latest album The Tortured Poets Department . “Now we gotta wait a f-cking week 'cause Taylor Swift is your new top, and if you boutta drop, she gotta approve,” rapped Drake.

Read More: How AI is Wreaking Havoc on the Fanbases of Taylor Swift, Drake, and Other Pop Stars

But the track was short-lived after Drake was served a cease-and-desist letter from Tupac Shakur’s estate for using AI-generated vocals from the rap legend, who died in 1996. Drake was then forced to remove “Taylor Made Freestyle” from all public platforms. The estate said they would have never approved of using Shakur’s voice for the track.

The song also featured AI vocals from Snoop Dogg, who joked about it on Instagram.

“6:16 in LA” and the multiple meanings behind the title

Lamar dropped a second song in the same week he released “Euphoria,” with multiple possible meanings behind the cryptic title. He released “6:16 in LA” as an Instagram Reel on his page on Friday. The cover art for the song features a single black glove, seemingly a nod to the O.J. Simpson trial —which began on June 16, 1995. Tupac’s birthday is also on June 16, as is Father’s Day this year. It's also the day the television show Euphoria dropped its first episode. There is also a Bible verse, Corinthians 6:16, that could be read as a dig at Drake’s alleged taste in women: “Do you not know that he who unites himself with a prostitute is one with her in body? For it is said, ‘The two will become one flesh.’”

One of the most surprising aspects about the song was the inclusion of Jack Antonoff’s name on the producer credits. The Bleachers frontman is known for working closely with Taylor Swift and hasn’t previously been publicly involved in this rap feud. Lamar digs further into Drake to suggest that the Toronto rapper might have moles on his team, feeding him information.

“Family Matters”

Drake responded to Lamar by questioning the true father of Lamar’s child with fiancé Whitney Alford, and possibly alleging that Lamar is unfaithful and physically abusive in his current relationship in “Family Matters.” “You the Black messiah wifin' up a mixed queen. And hit vanilla cream to help out with your self-esteem,” Drake raps on the track released on May 3. (Lamar has not directly addressed these claims, although he did say in his response track “Meet the Grahams,” “This supposed to be a good exhibition within the game/ But you fucked up the moment you called out my family's name/ Why you had to stoop so low to discredit some decent people?”)

Later in that verse, Drake specifically names Dave Free, a record executive who works as Lamar’s manager, saying, “I heard that one of 'em little kids might be Dave Free.” Drake also called Lamar and his body of work, which often addresses racism, inauthentic, saying, “Always rappin’ like you ‘bout to get the slaves freed/ You justin actin’ like an activist, it’s make-believe.”

The music video shows the destruction of a van used in the 2012 album cover of Lamar’s Good Kid, M.A.A.D City . As of Monday morning, the track is #1 on “trending for music ” on YouTube.

“Meet the Grahams”

Less than an hour after Drake released “Family Matters,” Lamar put out “Meet the Grahams.” The track is arguably the most aggressive of songs released in the past few months, and starts with Lamar apologizing to Drake’s son for having him as a father. Lamar then goes on to claim without evidence that Drake takes Ozempic, and used photos of medication with Drake’s legal name, Audrey Drake Graham, on it, as the cover art for the song. (The images have not been verified as legitimate.) He alludes to gossip that Drake has had a Brazilian butt lift (a rumor—which Drake has not directly responded to—that prompted Rick Ross to coin the nickname “BBL Drizzy”), and even mentions the way that Drake hid his son from the public eye. “Don't be ashamed 'bout who you wit', that's how he treat your moms. Don't have a kid to hide, a kid to hide again,” Lamar raps.

In the second verse, Lamar makes severe implications about Drake by comparing him to Hollywood sex offender Harvey Weinstein, saying, “Him and Weinstein should get fucked up in a cell for the rest they life.” (Weinstein’s 2020 rape conviction was recently overturned in New York, which has opened a new chapter in his case.)

Lamar dedicates the third verse to Drake’s daughter, claiming that Drake is “not active” in her life and calling him a “narcissist, misogynist.” Drake denied claims he has a daughter on his Instagram story on Saturday.

“Not Like Us”

Lamar doubled down on his allegations against Drake, releasing another four-and-a-half-minute track not even a full 24 hours later on Saturday evening. The cover art is allegedly a photo of Drake’s mansion in Toronto with red markers that seem similar to the ones used to mark homes where sex offenders reside. “Say, Drake, I hear you like 'em young,” Lamar rapped.

He also says that Drake is not a “colleague” but a “colonizer.”

Lamar also called out Drake for using Tupac’s AI voice: “You think the Bay gon' let you disrespect Pac, n---a? I think that Oakland show gon' be your last stop.”

Metro Boomin’s “BBL Drizzy”

Metro Boomin—one of the producers on “Like That”—put his foot in the game when he shared a post on X about a “BBL Drizzy Beat Giveaway” on May 5. The rapper encouraged fans to rap over the beat, which looks to be a sample of a parody song written by comedian and AI storyteller King Willonious, according to Complex .

Drake mentioned Metro Boomin by his legal name in “Family Matters,” calling him “lame” and also alleging that he influenced disagreements between Drake and Future.

Drake commented on an Instagram post sharing one of Metro Boomin’s tweets about him writing , “you just cheffed a beat about my a-s?”

“The Heart Part 6”

The most recent response to the beef came on Sunday night, when Drake released “The Heart Part 6.” In a post to X , he wrote, “And we know you’re dropping [six] minutes after, so instead of posting my address, you have a lot to address.” He denies the allegations that Lamar lobbed at him, saying he purposefully fed Lamar fake information to see if he’d fall for it and tells him that he should get better at fact-checking. Drake called this beef a “good exercise” and laughed it off, suggesting that Lamar would be a “worthy competitor if [he] was really a predator.”

Drake also directly mentioned Stranger Things actor Millie Bobby Brown, saying that he “Only fuckin' with Whitneys, not Millie Bobby Browns, I'd never look twice at no teenager.” This marks at least the second time Drake has responded to online criticism about his friendship with the actress, whom he first met when she was a young teen . Drake previously addressed comments about her in his song “Another Late Night.”

The Drake vs. Kendrick Lamar beef seems to have no end in sight as the two continue to trade disses with ever-increasing severity in the allegations made towards each other.

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How Originalism Ate the Law

America is captive to a legal theory that dictates our laws on guns, abortion, and so much more. we need to act..

This is part of How Originalism Ate the Law , a Slate series about the legal theory that ruined everything.

America is being led astray by a small handful of folks who are drunk-driving on originalism—and not in a funny Marx Brothers, spin-around-in-circles-and-all-fall-down sort of way. No, it’s in a children-murdered-in-their-classrooms, women-hemorrhaging-in-parking-lots, environmental-and-health-regulations-destroyed kind of way. And that’s because the whole nation is currently lashed to a small, stupid, perpetually changing theory of legal interpretation variously known as “originalism,” or “textualism,” or “original public meaning,” or “ history and tradition .” A theory that is—unless you were born in the 1990s—younger than you are.

Whatever the current flavor, originalism and its ever-growing progeny hold that judges and justices should ignore every interpretive methodology judges once used to understand a legal text in favor of free-floating feelings about history : What do we think the drafters of the text intended? What do we wish they had intended? What did the readers of contemporaneous public documents understand that text to mean? What did random dictionaries of the time reflect about … words? What—as cited by a lawyer for former President Donald Trump in arguing recently that presidents can occasionally order political assassinations without facing criminal consequences—did Benjamin Franklin announce at the Constitutional Convention ? And also, how did the crowd react?

As John Sauer, that Trump lawyer, put it in a court filing : “The Framers viewed the prosecution of the Chief Executive as a radical innovation to be treated with great caution. Benjamin Franklin stated at the Constitutional Convention: ‘History furnishes one example of a first Magistrate being formally brought to public Justice. Everybody cried out ag[ain]st this as unconstitutional.’ ” He cited the same piece of historical proof at the argument: “I would quote from what Benjamin Franklin said at the Constitutional Convention, which I think reflects best the Founders’ original understanding and intent here, which is, at the Constitutional Convention.” Call it, perhaps, “Standing O Originalism.” History demands absolute presidential immunity . Why? Because history shows that Ben Franklin said a thing and the crowd went wild.

Here is the thing: Most Americans are well aware that the MAGA supermajority on the current Supreme Court is drunk on something . They know that the result in the Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade was rooted in a view of constitutional history that came from a time in which women had no vote and were property, to boot. They know that the gun violence epidemic is unfixable because the Supreme Court can’t or won’t discern the difference between arming the general populace with “smoothbore, muzzle-loaded, and powder-and-ramrod muskets” and assault weapons. Most Americans are by now aware that, as professor Melissa Murray has put it, “History is messy. It’s not straightforward or fair. It’s not made by most.” They know that a commitment to living in the 21 st century while in legal thrall to the 18 th is bizarre on its best days and lethal on its worst days. Indeed, were they allowed to vote on it, most Americans would wholeheartedly reject a theory of the Constitution that unravels two centuries of progress and understanding. But originalism is the invisible force that allows a handful of unaccountable jurists to unravel both progress and understanding along with the wants of the majority.

Most Americans also know that holding us hostage to the dictates of the 18 th century is an antidemocratic checkmate. They understand intuitively that while public opinion favors reproductive freedom and sensible gun regulations and the right to vote , the MAGA faction of the Supreme Court has found a doctrinal party trick to ensure that nobody can have any of those things because they weren’t protected at the founding or at the time of the Reconstruction Amendments, or whichever point of history the high court deems relevant (it varies). In the single most horrific case in the horrific term at the Supreme Court, gun rights zealots argued that a man who had lost the right to possess a firearm as the result of having beat up his girlfriend should be allowed to possess that firearm—because historically, domestic abusers were not disarmed . In October 2022, a federal judge in West Virginia ruled that the federal ban on possessing a gun with its serial number removed was unconstitutional because, as the judge wrote ruefully, “A firearm without a serial number in 1791 was certainly not considered dangerous or unusual compared to other firearms because serial numbers were not required or even commonly used at that time.” This is the world we are living in. It is the world we are acceding to inhabit.

Shackling one’s understanding of the law to the drunken methodology of “originalism” doesn’t simply ignore the technological realities of modern life, like serial numbers, and bump stocks, and the vagaries of online content moderation. It also turns every judge and lawyer into a part-time Revolutionary War reenactor and part-time recreational archivist (whose bare-bones understanding of history tends to become immediately obvious). As the Supreme Court burns down decades of doctrinal progress and a century of modern government, it leaves only skid marks in its wake. What is a judge to do? She must make her best guesses about whose history matters and wait to see what the history oracles will permit. No system of law that relies on stability, predictability, and consistency can function when “history” means merely whatever five amateur historians decide it means at any given moment. And the test itself keeps morphing: “original intent” to “original public meaning” to “text and history” to “history and tradition.” Now “tradition” is under fire from the right because it might modernize the law a tad too much, so we’re due for another round of refinement. Having leapt seamlessly from “text and meaning” to “history and tradition” one can only wonder what’s next. “Fish and chips” and then on to “Salt-N-Pepa”? The test for what counts as eternal and immutable history just keeps on evolving.

Americans are dying because of this bad history, yes. But they are also dying because originalism has developed such a profound stranglehold over the modern courts that even liberals are attempting to win this uncertain game of spinning the historical roulette wheel to make an argument. In Trump v. Anderson —the recent Supreme Court argument about the state of Colorado’s efforts to remove the former president from the ballot due to his participation in an insurrection— regiments , battalions , and armies of historians came together to debunk the president’s fatuous reading of the 14 th Amendment’s disqualification clause. “ We will win at history ,” they told themselves, “and thus we will win the argument.”

They won the history—and still lost the argument. Because not only is originalism sufficiently malleable and inchoate that it allows for almost any cherry-picked text and any wisp of history to be determinative, but also because, as Justice Elena Kagan famously quipped at her confirmation hearings in 2010, “in a sense, we are all originalists now.” (She has since repudiated that comment.) What Kagan came to understand in rejecting originalism was that the very agreement that all legal interpretation is reduced to a Sherlock-Holmesian effort at pecking through history is a sucker’s game. Because the kingmakers at the Federalist Society pick the judges. And then the judges pick the history. Originalism has morphed from a methodology in which judges strive to locate what history demands into a methodology in which the originalists decide which history counts.

This all happened in the course of a short very few decades. It happened because an entire Potemkin village of originalist academics, originalist law-review articles, originalist theories—chiefly funded by very contemporary oligarchs—was built up to present it as a reversion to the way things always were, as opposed to a revanchist attack on modernity itself; an attack on the common law itself and an assault on the idea of a pluralist, expansive vision of liberty. Originalism is a modern-day lie about history that presents itself as historical. And originalism, marketed in the 1980s and ’90s as, at bottom, a theory of judicial restraint , has now become an uncontrollable and unpredictable Tasmanian devil that has gobbled up decades of precedent, the regulatory state we had built to ensure that we have clean air and drinkable water, and the line between church and state. Perhaps most viciously, originalism has chewed up and spit out the 13 th , 14 th , and 15 th Amendments—the very history that was committed to text in order to protect the idea of a pluralist, generous, and expansive vision of liberty as the country finally ended the atrocity that was slavery. As Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson has pointed out on more than one occasion, the use of history itself to erase history is now a central part of the originalist project.

It is perhaps no surprise that so many of us feel trapped under the dead hand of the Framers in much the same way we feel trapped under the dead hand of an unaccountable and monarchic Supreme Court. The latter has almost singlehandedly built the former. In the most theological sense, many Americans simply believe that if the Church of the Constitution that stands at 1 First St. says that this is how we do law—and further insists that this is how law was always done—then that church must be correct. But that, too, is an ahistorical fabrication of modern vintage. The choice to be paralyzed by both this institution and this methodology is very much a collective choice. The justices who practice originalism are no more oracular figures who can commune with the drafters of sacred text than they are professional historians. The lie, it turns out, comes dressed up in another lie.

We created this package on originalism not simply to lay out the trail of how an entire nation became captive to the idea that modern freedom, dignity, and equality remain what a small group of white male slaveholders envisioned for themselves more than two centuries ago. (To be sure, as professor Jack Balkin reminded us, no other constitutional democracy binds itself to such a cramped notion.) We also created this package to probe why we fell for it; why liberals played along; why we still believe that this is a good-faith debate over history as opposed to a bad-faith abuse of money and politics and institutional power. More than this: We created this package—comprising print pieces by experts reflecting on the damage originalism has done and the violence it will continue to inflict, and a podcast series sketching out this story of originalism embarrassing itself into intellectual irrelevance even as it is ascendant in the courts—as a marker of how it started and how it’s going.

But above all else, we created this to highlight the fact that it need not be forever thus. Brilliant thinkers are showing us the map of how we got here. Thoughtful litigators and academics are working out how to get out . Brave judges are using their opinions to decry a methodology that makes it impossible for them to do their own jobs. And they are lighting the road to something that will serve more than just a few rich white guys in 2024; the exact same constituency that is (imagine!) best served by the men they revere.

It is a choice to believe that you are not entitled to have an opinion on how the courts interpret the law. It is a choice to believe that judicial interpretation rooted in free-floating dust motes of history is so sophisticated an inquiry that it cannot be questioned. It is a choice to believe that American judges have been guided exclusively by originalism from the founding. And it is a choice to believe that we don’t, all of us, deserve a system of justice that has evolved in ways that keep us safe, and healthy, and democratically vibrant, and that also strives to make us equal, and allows us all to live in dignity. This was the year in which originalism, with its promise of judicial humility and scientific certainty, finally ate itself at the court and ate the law of the land in the process. And it will eat us too, unless we choose to fight back. Here’s how we do that .

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What the Origins of Humanity Can and Can’t Tell Us

By Maya Jasanoff

A man looking into a mirror and seeing an apelike reflection.

In the summer of 1856, laborers at a limestone quarry near Düsseldorf were clearing mud and chert out of a cave when they turned up a fossilized skull. It was long and elliptical, with wide sinuses and a heavy ridge over the eye sockets. The workers thought it belonged to some kind of bear, but a local schoolteacher who inspected it had a different hunch. He thought that it was a previously undiscovered kind of human being. The British geologist William King, setting the skull alongside those of chimpanzees and Andaman Islanders, agreed; he declared that it belonged to an entirely new species, which he named Homo neanderthalensis , for the Neander Valley, where it was found.

What we know today as Neanderthals might have been called Engisians or Gibraltarians, if remains of the same species that were dug up earlier in Engis, a municipality in Belgium, and on the Iberian Peninsula had been accurately identified. In the event, English descriptions of the Neanderthal remains appeared at the same time as Charles Darwin ’s “ On the Origin of Species ” (1859), and excited scientists who were mulling over the book’s theory of natural selection. Thomas Henry Huxley, an enthusiastic Darwinian, viewed the fossils as proof that “we must extend by long epochs the most liberal estimate that has yet been made of the antiquity of Man.” That extended era soon got a name: “prehistory,” describing the period before humans recorded their existence in writing.

Since the Neanderthal discovery, the start date for human prehistory has been pushed farther and farther back. The bones of Java Man, found in the eighteen-nineties, and of Peking Man, found in the nineteen-twenties, suggested that humans emerged out of Asia between seven hundred thousand and 1.5 million years ago. Twentieth-century excavations of the genus Australopithecus in South Africa, Tanzania, and Ethiopia—where forty per cent of an australopithecine skeleton dubbed Lucy was retrieved, in 1974—shifted hominin origins to some 3.2 million years ago and informed the “out of Africa” theory that remains widespread today.

Discover notable new fiction and nonfiction.

Each of these discoveries helped answer a historical question—How did humans become human?—while deepening a metaphysical one: What makes humans human? King felt certain that the Neanderthal brain was “incapable of moral and theistic conceptions” of the sort that distinguished humans from other animals. Huxley, for his part, happily accepted that “Man is, in substance and structure, one with the brutes,” although only humans had “the marvellous endowment of intelligible and rational speech.” Other scholars have claimed that humans alone have the power to generate non-utilitarian symbols, or that humans alone make tools not simply to accomplish immediate tasks—the way a chimpanzee uses a stick to get ants—but to make other tools for future use. The most popular account of human distinctiveness today comes from Yuval Noah Harari , whose “ Sapiens ” extrapolates the entire course of human history from the banal claim that Homo sapiens has a unique capacity for creativity.

Accounts of the deep human past, in short, rest on assumptions about what it means to be human in the first place, giving them normative implications for modern society. As the historian Stefanos Geroulanos writes in “ The Invention of Prehistory ” (Liveright), European intellectuals have, in the past two and a half centuries, turned to prehistory to explain things like the structure of families, the basis of states, the prevalence of war, and the nature of sentiment. “The story of human origins has never really been about the past,” he says. “Pre-history is about the present day. It always has been.” When people wrote about distant times, what were they revealing about their own?

In the beginning, Jean-Jacques Rousseau believed, humans had nothing but “two legs to run with” and “two arms to defend themselves with”; they had no language but “the simple cry of nature” and no passions beyond food, sex, and sleep. He imagined the “state of nature” as a simple, peaceful, egalitarian counterpoint to the shackles and constraints of so-called civilization. Rousseau was hardly the first European thinker to draw the contrast—Thomas Hobbes, of course, had devoted a few sentences to what he supposed was the “nasty, brutish, and short” version of life in the “state of nature”—but for Rousseau it wasn’t a brief aside. He thought hard about what life might have been like in the deep past, and in doing so, Geroulanos writes, made it “possible to think of prehistoric humans” as modernity’s ancestors, and to evaluate the present in prehistory’s mirror.

European intellectuals in Rousseau’s wake searched for evidence of how things had really been. Languages offered one clue. In Kolkata, in the seventeen-eighties, William Jones, a British philologist and an East India Company judge, noticed that Sanskrit shared with Greek and Latin such strong affinities that the languages must have “sprung from some common source.” An “Indo-European” family of languages was promptly diagrammed in the form of a genealogical tree, branching through time and space from East to West.

Jones’s insight had particular influence on nineteenth-century German scholars, some of whom proposed that the original Indo-Europeans—also called Aryans—had come from Asia and overrun northern Europe, where they sired the Germanic tribes who went on to bring down the Roman Empire. And just as Aryans were the parents of ancient Germans, the Germans were the parents of modern Europe—a link cemented in the German word for Indo-European, Indogermanisch . The invaders were imagined as muscular, spirited forces reinvigorating stagnant, corrupted realms. Nazi race theorists took these ideas one step further by fixing the Indo-European homeland in northern Germany proper, propelling fantasies of a fresh wave of Aryan conquest.

While Continental nationalists emphasized their superior prehistoric roots, scholars in the expanding British and American empires bolstered a “civilizing mission” by identifying prehistoric practices in contemporary non-European societies. “The European may find among the Greenlanders or Maoris many a trait for reconstructing the picture of his own primitive ancestors,” Edward Burnett Tylor, a founder of cultural anthropology, wrote. He focussed on a long-standing preoccupation of ethnologists—the origins of religion—and positioned a belief in supernatural entities at the primitive end of an axis whose other pole was modern science. Lewis Henry Morgan, a sometime lawyer in upstate New York, compared kinship structures across a hundred and thirty cultures (many of them Native North American) to elaborate a theory of social evolution that started with the “savage” communal family, proceeded to “barbarian” clans, and eventuated in a “civilized” order led by male property owners.

By the end of the nineteenth century, Western intellectuals regularly portrayed the human past in groupings of three stages. Savage, barbarian, civilized. Animism, religion, science. Stone Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age. Where the thinkers differed was on whether or how these triune stages represented “progress.” On one side were Hobbes’s heirs, who vigorously championed civilization over savagery—that is, if civilization meant accumulating private wealth, using industrial technology, and fighting fewer wars. On the other side were Rousseau’s, who saw in prehistory—and its putative living representatives among non-Western societies—forms of egalitarianism and harmony that modernity had destroyed. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, for instance, read Morgan closely and concluded that a primitive communism had been wrecked by the emergence of marriage and monogamy. Either way, Geroulanos points out, real-life “primitive” peoples on the receiving end of the civilizing mission (people like the Andamanese, to whom King compared the Neanderthal) were frequently described as “disappearing”—natural casualties of human evolution, rather than targets of conquest and extermination.

The catastrophic carnage of the Great War prompted a murkier speculation: What if something “savage” resided within us? The German Darwinist Ernst Haeckel had speculated that while in utero human embryos pass through every stage of evolutionary history, developing first what look like gill slits and tails, which disappear in time. Though debunked, the theory had wide influence, notably on Sigmund Freud , who suggested that everyone carries a primal inheritance in the form of the Oedipus complex, which haunts the unconscious with guilt and repression. Freud’s student Carl Jung delivered an antisemitic, fascist-friendly version of a primal psyche in the notion of a “collective unconscious,” stamped by prehistoric archetypes. Prehistoric instinct continues to be a popular explanation for behavior that seems somehow “inhuman.” The neuroscientist Paul MacLean suggested in the nineteen-fifties that the human brain contained a “reptilian” core, governed by instinct—a notion alive and well in some descriptions of Donald Trump.

Today, genetics provides the most influential account of the prehistoric past and its effects on modern humans. Though Geroulanos has little to say about it, the ability to extract and sequence ancient DNA from remains of long-dead humans has transformed our picture of human origins and population movements alike. In place of a single migration of Homo sapiens from Africa some fifty thousand years ago, for instance, there is evidence of multiple passages of hominins between Europe and Africa dating from around four hundred thousand years ago to upward of 1.8 million years ago. Ancient-DNA research has helped resolve the question of where the Indo-Europeans originated, pointing toward a location south of the Caucasus, with dispersals from there into India and the Eurasian steppe, and from the steppe into northern Europe. The research has even identified a kind of hominin, the Denisovan, for which there are scant fossil remains.

Few populations have undergone as extensive a makeover as Neanderthals, whose shifting image over the past hundred and fifty years, Geroulanos shows, indexes Western attitudes about race, primitivism, and savagery. As nineteenth-century scientific racism gathered momentum, Haeckel proposed naming Neanderthals Homo stupidus , and the initial depictions rendered them as hunched, half-naked cavemen. In the early nineteen-hundreds, a time of startling European colonial violence in Africa, a French illustration of a Neanderthal portrayed him as a club-toting gorilla. This inspired a snarling bust made for the Italian criminologist Cesare Lombroso, which was the model, in turn, for a bestial portrait of “Neanderthal Man” in H. G. Wells’s blockbuster “ The Outline of History ” (1920). A diorama installed in Chicago’s Field Museum in 1929, at the height of the American enthusiasm for eugenics, portrayed the Neanderthal as a neckless, bone-sucking oaf. Later, the anthropologist Carleton Coon depicted a clean-shaven Neanderthal wearing a jacket and tie, perhaps to suggest that interbreeding had given rise to present-day racial difference.

Owing to the sequencing of the Neanderthal genome, in 2010, scientists now believe that almost everybody living today carries some Neanderthal DNA—typically around two per cent of the genome in people of Asian, European, and Indigenous American and Pacific origin—and future research may well further blur the species line between Neanderthals and Homo sapiens . You can “Meet Your Ancestors” at the Smithsonian Institution’s Hall of Human Origins, in a display of more than seventy replica fossil skulls, and see the only Neanderthal skeleton in the United States. It was excavated at the Shanidar Cave, in Iraqi Kurdistan, where archeologists found evidence that Neanderthal elders were cared for by community members and buried with intent. The artist John Gurche’s bust of “Nandy,” reconstructing one of the males found in the cave, has his hair scooped into a fashionable man bun and a weathered face filled with poignant expression. These are Neanderthals for the age of 23andMe, which, in 2020, expanded its “Neanderthal Ancestry Report” to show whether your own Neanderthal genes incline you to have “difficulty discarding possessions you may never use,” or to feel “irritable or angry when hungry (hangry).” Now that we know they’re part of us, we’ve decided that Neanderthals may not be so savage after all.

There’s a fair amount of repetition in “The Invention of Prehistory,” in large measure because the currents coursing through modern Western accounts of our deep past have remained so similar since the eighteenth century. (Another book might usefully put these in conversation with concepts of prehistory favored in cultures that don’t have linear concepts of time.) Although we have far more evidence today about the lives, the deaths, and the legacies of prehistoric humans than Rousseau and his peers had, social scientists continue to tread well-worn tracks about the relative merits of prehistoric societies (e.g., David Graeber and David Wengrow, “ The Dawn of Everything ”) or their Hobbesian horrors (e.g., Steven Pinker, “ The Better Angels of Our Nature ”). Pop culture does its part, too, conjuring a deep past abuzz with presentist significance, in movies like “Ice Age” (2002), which spawned a multibillion-dollar franchise on a friendly message of interspecies solidarity, or “The Croods: A New Age” (2020), which transposes current political polarization onto rustic cavemen encountering a snotty liberal élite, in anatomically modern human form.

It’s a truism that all chronicles of history bear the marks of their own times, and there’s no reason to expect those of prehistory to be an exception. What seems distinctive, however, is the frequency with which speculations about the deep past invite fantasies about a more or less distant future: the Flintstones begat the Jetsons. In “ The Descent of Man ,” Darwin voiced hope that, as more “small tribes are united into larger communities,” mankind will “extend his social instincts and sympathies . . . to the men of all nations and races”—a wish echoed by generations of liberal internationalists. Socialists have found it helpful to invoke “primitive communism” as a basis for future redistribution, and feminists to cite prehistoric matriarchy and goddess cults when pressing for a post-patriarchal society. Bill Gates and the Silicon Valley fraternity are fans of Harari’s sequel to “Sapiens,” “ Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow ,” which portrays an algorithm-governed future overseen by a handful of godlike humans.

Such stories about human origins are appealing because they explain the societies we have or justify the ones we want. Yet considerations of human history across the very longue durée have also prompted dismal projections, and these exert a magnetic attraction of their own. In the Second World War, technology, long held up by archeologists as the yardstick of human progress, became indelibly linked with mass destruction. As Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer wrote in the shadow of war, an aircraft pilot spraying poison “might be called superhuman in comparison to the troglodyte,” but our capacity for destruction made it quite possible that the “human species will tear itself to pieces” or “take all the earth’s fauna and flora down with it.” Nowadays, one apocalypse looms in the irreversible human damage to the climate and to biodiversity which prompts scholars to consider the “Anthropocene” a new planetary epoch. Another triune progression haunts our nuclear-armed era: the First World War, the Second World War, the Third World War. However much we’ve learned about the origins of humanity, it has become dangerously easy to bring about its end. ♦

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By Nathan Heller

By Erik Baker

Did Mike Johnson Just Get Religion on Ukraine?

By Susan B. Glasser

Hobart and William Smith Colleges

15 May 2024 • Faculty The Enlightenment and Original Sin

Professor of History Matthew Kad ane’s new book offers a novel interpretation of one of the most important periods in European history.

The Enlightenment and Original Sin

In The Enlightenment and Original Sin, published in May by the University of Chicago Press, he argues that the notoriously hard-to-define Enlightenment took coherent shape in opposition to the Christian doctrine of original sin. But he argues that same doctrine also helps explain the Enlightenment’s eventual contradictions, which rested on divergent faiths in human nature: an anthropological optimism came to justify the Enlightenment’s altruistic tendencies, while an anthro-pessimism, a naturalization rather than wholesale rejection of original sin, came to underpin its valorization of selfishness and the social and political theories that rely on that foundation.

The book considers major authors from the period, from enlighteners like Rousseau, Locke, and Voltaire to reactionaries like Bossuet and Maistre. But it largely approaches the story through its reconstruction of the life of an unknown figure, a ship’s purser named Pentecost Barker, who entered the historical record as an alcoholic Puritan and left it, soberly, as one of the Enlightenment’s staunchest defenders. As Kad ane explains, intellectual historians need to look beyond the usual suspects and to more ordinary people, who, in their willingness to write about their emotional lives, offer rare clues about the motives behind personal ideological change.

In advance reviews of the book, Margaret Jacob of UCLA calls it “groundbreaking,” Jacob Soll of USC describes it “remarkably erudite” and “brilliant,” and David D. Hall of Harvard hails it as “a masterpiece of layered intellectual history.”

Kad ane is also the author of The Watchful Clothier and numerous articles and essays have appeared in The American Historical Review, Past and Present, and other journals and edited books. Research for this newest book was supported by the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, a yearlong Mellon fellowship at the Huntington Library in California, and a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

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Bridging private equity’s value creation gap

For the past 40 years or so, private equity (PE) buyout managers largely invested capital in an environment of declining interest rates and escalating asset prices. During that period, they were able to rely on financial leverage, enhanced tax and debt structures, and increasing valuations on high-quality assets to generate outsize returns for investors and create value.

Times have changed , however. Since 2020, the cost of debt has increased and liquidity in debt markets is harder to access given current interest rates, asset valuations, and typical bank borrowing standards. Fund performance has suffered as a result: PE buyout entry multiples declined from 11.9 to 11.0 times EBITDA through the first nine months of 2023. 1 2024 Global Private Markets Review , McKinsey, March 2024.

Even as debt markets begin to bounce back, a new macroeconomic reality is setting in—one that requires more than just financial acumen to drive returns. Buyout managers now need to focus on operational value creation strategies for revenue growth, as well as margin expansion to offset compression of multiples and to deliver desired returns to investors.

Based on our years of research and experience working with a range of private-capital firms across the globe, we have identified two key principles to maximize operational value creation.

First, buyout managers should invest with operational value creation at the forefront . This means that in addition to strategic diligence, they should conduct operational diligence for new assets. Their focus should be on developing a rigorous, bespoke, and integrated approach to assessing top-line and operational efficiency. During the underwriting process, managers can also identify actions that could expand and improve EBITDA margins and growth rates during the holding period, identify the costs involved in this transformation, and create rough timelines to track the assets’ performance. And if they acquire the asset, the manager should: 1) clearly establish the value creation objectives before deal signing, 2) emphasize operational and top-line improvements after closing, and 3) pursue continual improvements in ways of working with portfolio companies. Meanwhile, for existing assets, the manager should ensure that the level of oversight and monitoring is closely aligned with the health of each asset.

Second, everyone should understand and have a hand in improving operations . Within the PE firm, the operating group and deal teams should work together to enable and hold portfolio companies accountable for the execution of the value creation plan. This begins with an explicit focus on “linking talent to value”—ensuring leaders with the right combination of skills and experience are in place and empowered to deliver the plan, improve internal processes, and build organizational capabilities.

In our experience, getting these two principles right can significantly improve PE fund performance. Our initial analysis of more than 100 PE funds with vintages after 2020 indicates that general partners that focus on creating value through asset operations achieve a higher internal rate of return—up to two to three percentage points higher, on average—compared with peers.

The case for operational efficiency

The ongoing macroeconomic uncertainty has made it difficult for buyout managers to achieve historical levels of returns in the PE buyout industry using old ways of value creation. 2 Overall, roughly two-thirds of the total return for buyout deals that were entered in 2010 or later, and exited 2021 or before, can be attributed to market multiple expansion and leverage. See 2024 Global Private Markets Review . And it’s not going to get any easier anytime soon, for two reasons.

Higher-for-longer rates will trigger financing issues

The US Federal Reserve projects that the federal funds rate will remain around 4.5 percent through 2024, then potentially drop to about 3.0 percent by the end of 2026. 3 “Summary of economic projections,” Federal Reserve Board, December 13, 2023. Yet, even if rates decline by 200 basis points over the next two years, they will still be higher than they were over the past four years when PE buyout deals were underwritten.

This could create issues with recapitalization or floating interest rate resets for a portfolio company’s standing debt. Consider that the average borrower takes a leveraged loan at an interest coverage ratio of about three times EBIDTA (or 3x). 4 The interest coverage ratio is an indicator of a borrower’s ability to service debt, or potential default risk. With rising interest expenses and additional profitability headwinds, these coverage ratios could quickly fall below 2x and get close to or trip covenant triggers around 1x. In 2023, for example, the average leveraged loan in the healthcare and software industries was already at less than a 2x interest coverage ratio. 5 James Gelfer and Stephanie Rader, “What’s the worst that could happen? Default and recovery rates in private credit,” Goldman Sachs, April 20, 2023. To avoid a covenant breach, or (if needed) increasing recapitalization capital available without equity paydown, managers will need to rely on operational efficiency to increase EBITDA.

Valuations are mismatched

If interest rates remain high, the most recent vintage of PE assets is likely to face valuation mismatches at exit, or extended hold periods until value can be realized. Moreover, valuation of PE assets has remained high relative to their public-market equivalents, partly a result of the natural lag in how these assets are marked to market. As the CEO of Harvard University’s endowment explained in Harvard’s 2023 annual report, it will likely take more time for private valuations to fully reflect market conditions due to the continued slowdown in exits and financing rounds. 6 Message from the CEO of Harvard Management Company, September 2023.

Adapting PE’s value creation approach

Operational efficiency isn’t a new concept in the PE world. We’ve previously written about the strategic shift among firms, increasingly notable since 2018, moving from the historical “buy smart and hold” approach to one of “acquire, align on strategy, and improve operating performance.”

However, the role of operations in creating more value is no longer just a source of competitive advantage but a competitive necessity for managers. Let’s take a closer look at the two principles that can create operational efficiency.

Invest with operational value creation at the forefront

PE fund managers can improve the profitability and exit valuations of assets by having operations-related conversations up front.

Assessing new assets. Prior to acquiring an asset, PE managers typically conduct financial and strategic diligence to refine their understanding of a given market and the asset’s position in that market. They should also undertake operational diligence—if they are not already doing so—to develop a holistic view of the asset to inform their value creation agenda.

Operational diligence involves the detailed assessment of an asset’s operations, including identification of opportunities to improve margins or accelerate organic growth. A well-executed operational-diligence process can reveal or confirm which types of initiatives could generate top-line and efficiency-driven value, the estimated cash flow improvements these initiatives could generate, the approximate timing of any cash flow improvements, and the potential costs of such initiatives.

The results of an operational-diligence process can be advantageous in other ways, too. Managers can use the findings to create a compelling value creation plan, or a detailed memo summarizing the near-term improvement opportunities available in the current profit-and-loss statement, as well as potential opportunities for expansion into adjacencies or new markets. After this step is done, they should determine, in collaboration with their operating-group colleagues, whether they have the appropriate leaders in place to successfully implement the value creation plan.

These results can also help managers resolve any potential issues up front, prior to deal signing, which in turn could increase the likelihood of receiving investment committee approval for the acquisition. Managers also can share the diligence findings with co-investors and financiers to help boost their confidence in the investment and the associated value creation thesis.

It is crucial that managers have in-depth familiarity with company operations, since operational diligence is not just an analytical-sizing exercise. If they perform operational diligence well, they can ensure that the full value creation strategy and performance improvement opportunities are embedded in the annual operating plan and the longer-term three- to five-year plan of the portfolio company’s management team.

Assessing existing assets. When it comes to existing assets, a fundamental question for PE managers is how to continue to improve performance throughout the deal life cycle. Particularly in the current macroeconomic and geopolitical environment, where uncertainty reigns, managers should focus more—and more often—on directly monitoring assets and intervening when required. They can complement this monitoring with routine touchpoints with the CEO, CFO, and chief transformation officer (CTO) of individual assets to get updates on critical initiatives driving the value creation plan, along with ensuring their operating group has full access to each portfolio company’s financials. Few PE managers currently provide this level of transparency into their assets’ performance.

To effectively monitor existing assets, managers can use key performance indicators (KPIs) directly linked to the fund’s investment thesis. For instance, if the fund’s investment thesis is centered on the availability of inventory, they may rigorously track forecasts of supply and demand and order volumes. This way, they can identify and address issues with inventory early on. Some managers pull information directly from the enterprise resource planning systems in their portfolio companies to get full visibility into operations. Others have set up specific “transformation management offices” to support performance improvements in key assets and improve transparency on key initiatives.

We’ve seen managers adopt various approaches with assets that are on track to meet return hurdles. They have frequent discussions with the portfolio company’s management team, perform quarterly credit checks on key suppliers and customers to ensure stability of their extended operations, and do a detailed review of the portfolio company’s operations and financial performance two to three years into the hold period. Managers can therefore confirm whether the management team is delivering on their value creation plans and also identify any new opportunities associated with the well-performing assets.

If existing assets are underperforming or distressed, managers’ prompt interventions to improve operations in the near term, and improve revenue over the medium term, can determine whether they should continue to own the asset or reduce their equity position through a bankruptcy proceeding. One manager implemented a cash management program to monitor and improve the cash flow for an underperforming retail asset of a portfolio company. The approach helped the portfolio company overcome a peak cash flow crisis period, avoid tripping liquidity covenants in an asset-backed loan, and get the time needed for the asset’s long-term performance to improve.

Reassess internal operations and governance

In addition to operational improvements, managers should also assess their own operations and consider shifting to an operating model that encourages increased engagement between their team and the portfolio companies. They should cultivate a stable of trusted, experienced executives within the operating group. They should empower these executives to be equal collaborators with the deal team in determining the value available in the asset to be underwritten, developing an appropriate value creation strategy, and overseeing performance of the portfolio company’s management.

Shift to a ‘just right’ operating model for operating partners. The operating model through which buyout managers engage with portfolio companies should be “just right”—that is, aligned with the fund’s overall strategy, how the fund is structured, and who sets the strategic vision for each individual portfolio company.

There are two types of engagement operating models—consultative and directive. When choosing an operating model, firms should align their hiring and internal capabilities to support their operating norms, how they add value to their portfolio companies, and the desired relationship with the management team (exhibit).

Take the example of a traditional buyout manager that acquires good companies with good management teams. In such a case, the portfolio company’s management team is likely to already have a strategic vision for the asset. These managers may therefore choose a more consultative engagement approach (for instance, providing advice and support to the portfolio company for any board-related issues or other challenges).

For value- or operations-focused funds, the manager may have higher ownership in the strategic vision for the asset, so their initial goal should be to develop a management team that can deliver on a specific investment thesis. In this case, the support required by the portfolio company could be less specialized (for example, the manager helps in hiring the right talent for key functional areas), and more integrative, to ensure a successful end-to-end transformation for the asset. As such, a more directive or oversight-focused engagement operating model may be preferred.

Successful execution of these engagement models requires the operating group to have the right talent mix and experience levels. If the manager implements a “generalist” coverage model, for example, where the focus is on monitoring and overseeing portfolio companies, the operating group will need people with the ability (and experience) to support the management in end-to-end transformations. However, a different type of skill set is required if the manager chooses a “specialist” coverage model, where the focus is on providing functional guidance and expertise (leaving transformations to the portfolio company’s management teams). Larger and more mature operating groups frequently use a mix of both talent pools.

Empower the operating group. In the past, many buyout managers did not have operating teams, so they relied on the management teams in the portfolio companies to fully identify and implement the value creation plan while running the asset’s day-to-day operations. Over time, many top PE funds began to establish internal operating groups to provide strategic direction, coaching, and support to their portfolio companies. The operating groups, however, tended to take a back seat to deal teams, largely because legacy mindsets and governance structures placed responsibility for the performance of an asset on the deal team. In our view, while the deal team needs to remain responsible and accountable for the deal, certain tasks can be delegated to the operating group.

Some managers give their operating group members seats on portfolio company boards, hiring authority for key executives, and even decision-making rights on certain value creation strategies within the portfolio. For optimal performance, these operating groups should have leaders with prior C-suite responsibility or commensurate accountability within the PE fund and experience executing cross-functional mandates and company transformations. Certain funds with a core commitment to portfolio value creation include the leader of the operating group on the investment committee. Less-experienced members of the operating group can have consultative arrangements or peer-to-peer relationships with key portfolio company leaders.

Since the main KPIs for operating teams are financial, it is critical that their leaders understand a buyout asset’s business model, financing, and general market dynamics. The operating group should also be involved in the deal during the diligence phase, and participate in the development of the value creation thesis as well as the underwriting process. Upon deal close, the operating team should be as empowered as the deal team to serve as stewards of the asset and resolve issues concerning company operations.

Some funds also are hiring CTOs for their portfolio companies to steer them through large transformations. Similar to the CTO in any organization , they help the organization align on a common vision, translate strategy into concrete initiatives for better performance, and create a system of continuous improvement and growth for the employees. However, when deployed by the PE fund, the CTO also often serves as a bridge between the PE fund and the portfolio company and can serve as a plug-and-play executive to fill short-term gaps in the portfolio company management team. In many instances, the CTO is given signatory, and occasionally broader, functional responsibilities. In addition, their personal incentives can be aligned with the fund’s desired outcomes. For example, funds may tie an element of the CTO’s overall compensation to EBITDA improvement or the success of the transformation.

Bring best-of-breed capabilities to portfolio companies. Buyout managers can bring a range of compelling capabilities to their portfolio companies, especially to smaller and midmarket companies and their internal operating teams. Our conversations with industry stakeholders revealed that buyout managers’ skills can be particularly useful in the following three areas:

Procurement. Portfolio companies can draw on a buyout manager’s long-established procurement processes, team, and negotiating support. For instance, managers often have prenegotiated rates with suppliers or group purchasing arrangements that portfolio companies can leverage to minimize their own procurement costs and reduce third-party spending.
Executive talent. They can also capitalize on the diverse and robust network of top talent that buyout managers have likely cultivated over time, including homegrown leaders and ones found through executive search firms (both within and outside the PE industry).
Partners. Similarly, they can work with the buyout manager’s roster of external experts, business partners, suppliers, and advisers to find the best solutions to their emerging business challenges (for instance, gaining access to offshore resources during a carve-out transaction).

Ongoing macroeconomic uncertainty is creating unprecedented times in the PE buyout industry. Managers should use this as an opportunity to redouble their efforts on creating operational improvements in their existing portfolio, as well as new assets. It won’t be easy to adapt and evolve value creation processes and practices, but managers that succeed have an opportunity to close the gap between the current state of value creation and historical returns and outperform their peers.

Jose Luis Blanco is a senior partner in McKinsey’s New York office, where Matthew Maloney is a partner; William Bundy is a partner in the Washington, DC, office; and Jason Phillips is a senior partner in the London office.

The authors wish to thank Louis Dufau and Bill Leigh for their contributions to this article.

This article was edited by Arshiya Khullar, an editor in McKinsey’s Gurugram office.

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