A memorial for Charlie Munger
John Harvey Taylor & Robert Cialdini &
LI LU & Warren Buffett
A memorial for Charlie Munger
By John Harvey Taylor (Mar. 12, 2024)
Charlie Munger, who died in November within sight of his 100th birthday on Jan. 1, fell ill at his home in Santa Barbara. When he got to the hospital, a nurse asked him how he was. “I’m dying,” he said. “How are you?”
His daughter Emilie Munger Ogden told the story Sunday afternoon during his family’s beautifully organized celebration of life at Harvard-Westlake School, which he served for 54 years as a trustee and its most generous single benefactor. Kathy and I were along with hundreds of his family and friends, including The Parish of St. Matthew — The Episcopal Church in Pacific Palisades friends Rob and Colleen Wood.
Emilie also said he placed a call from his hospital bed to Warren Buffett, his friend since 1959 and longtime business partner. During the service, Buffett’s daughter, Susie, said the two native Nebraskans, self-proclaimed agnostics, developed an instant man crush. At investing giant Berkshire Hathaway, she said, quoting her father, Warren is the builder, but Charlie was the architect.
The two-hour service allowed plenty of time for Charlie’s famous aphorisms. “You can’t guarantee happiness,” he said. “But you can guarantee misery.” Another daughter, Wendy, said his chief questions were “what the hell is going on here?” and “why the hell is it happening?” Clarity and truth were persistent themes. Famously impatient with ideology and cant, Charlie was know to believe that people in denial always make bad decisions. He called the best relationships “seamless web(s) of deserved trust.”
Speaking of Charlie and his second wife, Nancy (also the name of his first), their son Philip Munger’s voice cracked when he said, “My mother and my father were a home for each other.” In a video, a parade of adorable grandchildren and great-grandchildren repeated favorite words of Charlie’s such as twaddle, kapow, skedaddle, and wise-assery. Members of older generations said they were used to seeing him with his nose in a book. In a montage screened before the service, a half-dozen photos showed him reading.
I remember him praising Jon Meacham’s Lincoln biography when we spoke on the phone a couple of years ago. We served together on the boards of Harvard Westlake and Good Samaritan Hospital (he was its devoted and epically generous chair when it was still part of the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles), and so from time to time I called for advice and political talk. When I said we wanted to build affordable housing, including for commuter students, on 25% of our church campuses, he made my heart sing by saying it wasn’t the dumbest idea he ever heard.
Charlie died on Nov. 28, a Tuesday. On the Saturday before, his daughter-in-law Mandy Lowell emailed and asked me to call him on her cell phone in Santa Barbara, which I promptly did, though we didn’t connect. I’ll always be a little curious about that. With a large personality such as his, curious enough to inquire about someone else’s well-being from his deathbed, it could have been anything. We learned Sunday that someone once asked if he knew how to play the piano. “I don’t know,” he said. “I’ve never tried.” Yet he tried and finished so much in his century. Imagine what he is making of eternity.
Dr. Robert Cialdini
(Nov. 29, 2023)
I have never had heroes, except for Charlie Munger. Today I learned that the man who was my longtime friend, mentor, and supporter passed yesterday at 99 years and 11 months. Although he missed the century-old mark by only a few days, I don’t think it would have mattered to him at all. Charlie didn’t care about such designations. He only cared about finding ways to generate positive outcomes — and, crucially, not just for himself. He wanted everyone he could reach to benefit, too.
Charlie was a capitalist to the bone. But, he advocated a rarified form: selfless capitalism. Two sentiments I heard him express make the case. In describing the importance of acquired wealth, he said it was, “to be in a position to help others when trouble comes.” So, it wasn’t to protect oneself from tribulation; it was to rescue the less well-positioned from it.
Even more impressive to me was a statement he made on the moral responsibility of highly successful businesspeople to share fully their methods for producing that success — something he and Warren Buffett do relentlessly at Berkshire Hathaway. “Amazing,” I remember saying to myself when I heard his claim. Here’s a man at remarkably elevated levels of business attainment who, rather than secreting his causal practices and strategies, recommends revealing them widely to spread and thereby enlarge the gain. What’s more, he walks his talk. Just amazing.
I haven’t cried in years. But, today, I wept.
(charlie在看到influence这本书以后，觉得非常的好，赠送给作者一股BRK的股票)
Remembering my teacher Charlie Munger
By LI LU(Dec. 3, 2023 )
I was on a business trip in Asia on Tuesday when I got the call from the Munger family informing me that Charlie was in his final hours. I hopped onto the next flight I could find to California, and before departure, was able to talk to Charlie through the help of his daughter. Charlie had largely lost consciousness, but still I could clearly hear him trying to make a sound to acknowledge he had heard me. Upon landing, I learned that Charlie had left us a few hours earlier.
I arrived at his Santa Barbara home and had the opportunity to spend cherished time with family members, reminiscing about all things Charlie. Charlie was engaging, humorous and full of wit even at Thanksgiving dinner just a few days ago, family members told me. I visited his home library again. In that very room, exactly 20 years ago, also on a post-Thanksgiving weekend afternoon, following the introduction by our mutual friend Ron Olson, Charlie and I first struck up a deep conversation which ran for several hours. It began an investment partnership that has now endured two decades. Charlie became my mentor, partner, dear friend and above all, life-long role model.
I was so deeply grateful that the Munger family made a special arrangement the next day for me to say a proper and private goodbye to Charlie.
There, lying quietly with eyes closed, Charlie looked the same as ever, peaceful and sincere with a subtle smile on his face. There was a serenity about him. For a moment, I was reminded of the Living Buddhas I once saw in the Buddhist temples of Thailand. In the Buddhist tradition, the bodies of truly enlightened monks, through life-long self-cultivation, can remain incorrupt, without any traces of mummification after death. In that moment, it is what I saw in Charlie, an enlightened sage with an incorruptible body, surrounded by a glimmer of eternal light.
Charlie was not a Buddhist. That vision can never be tested. But it is incontrovertible that his legacy and impact will live on for generations to come.
In our capitalist society, where do virtue, moral responsibility, truth-seeking and public service fit in? Charlie Munger answered these questions through his long exemplary life. He insisted on making money in the most morally sound way, entering transactions only when, if positions were reversed, he would comfortably take the other side. He sought worldly wisdom through life-long learning. He guided life with rationality devoid of mental deficiencies such as envy, resentment and self-pity. He faced and persevered through countless adversities with stoicism and equanimity. As he gained in wealth and stature, he showed little appetite for the trappings of that success, and instead spent his wealth on worthy causes and tirelessly spread his worldly wisdom to those who would listen, often with humor. He remained deeply engaged with family, friends, partners and the broader world with loving assiduousness through his last days.
In his later decades, Charlie Munger’s ideas began to spread across the world, particularly in the most populous countries of China and India. In China, the Mandarin language version of “Poor Charlie’s Almanack,” an anthology by and about Charlie Munger, sold over 1.2 million copies over the last 10 years. There, the educated class increasingly came to view Charlie as the embodiment of the modern-day Confucianism, maintaining a virtuous and enlightened life while embracing the market forces of capitalism. In time, that vision of modern Confucianism will be crucial for Chinese modernization and how China interacts with the rest of the world.
Charlie’s teachings will continue to spread, inspire and impact the world even more profoundly. That will be his eternal legacy.
Warren Buffett
(BRK Inc. Nov.28 2023 in Omaha）
Berkshire Hathaway could not have been bulid to its present sautus without Charlie’s inspriration,wisdom and participacipation.
R.I.P
(Does anyone know where is Charlie buried?)
