The transformation of Arnold Schwarzenegger

David Marchese, Arnold Schwarzenegger Is Here to Pump You Up (Emotionally), NYTimes, Sept. 28, 2023. Schwarzenegger has a new coming book out on Oct. 10: Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life. Marchese interviews him. From the interview:

The last 30 pages or so of the book are about the idea of having a responsibility to others. I’m curious to know more about how you got to that understanding. Because you could be a bully, you were disrespectful with women, you were driven primarily by thoughts of your own greatness. How does that guy transition into a person who realizes the value of selflessness? That’s a good question. First, pull back and do the master shot. I always fell into things. If it is helping other people, if it is the environmental issue, if it is becoming governor of California, if it is fighting prejudice — any of those things, I fell into it. To go back to this particular subject, I noticed that in bodybuilding, I always felt the best when I could teach and help someone. But one day I got a phone call from Wisconsin. They invited me to come to the university where they have a program for the Special Olympics, and would I teach them about weight training? I only paid attention because it was Jackie Kennedy who called. I said, I cannot say no to Jackie Kennedy. So I go. Then, of course, when she picked me up from the airport, I realized that it was not that Jackie Kennedy.

Too late to turn around. I go, and we started teaching Special Olympians how to bench press — the most unbelievable experience. You could see the change in those kids. I was blown away. I went home at night and said to myself: “It’s funny that I feel so good about this. I didn’t make any money, and it was not a career move.” It started there. It has not stopped since.

And then there's the part where he got Milton Berle to write one-liners for him. 

* * * * *

Cf. Buckminster Fuller, The Critical Path, p. 125:

... in my first thirty-two years of life I had been positively effective in producing life- advantage wealth—which realistically protected, nurtured, and accommodated X numbers of human lives for Y numbers of forward days—only when I was doing so entirely for others and not for myself.