VIDEO TRANSCRIPTION
No description has been generated for this video.
This video is sponsored by Ground News. Use my link in the description to get 40% off their unlimited access advantage plan. We know that they are there, somewhere, waiting for us. They're scattered across our lives in often random, unforeseen places. Although their looming presence is typically beneath our regular awareness, deep down, we know that there will be terrible phone calls throughout our lives that will change everything. I'm sorry. There was a horrible accident. I'm sorry. Everything was lost. I'm sorry. They said he should be put down. I'm sorry. She's gone. I'm sorry. You have. Most of us are not regularly worried about terrible, life-changing phone calls.
If we were, we wouldn't be able to function. To be fully aware of and worried about the full spectrum of uncertainty and tragedy in life would be to become paralyzed. When referring to the ordinary tragedies of human life, the 19th century novelist and poet George Eliot wrote, That element of tragedy, which lies in the very fact of frequency, has not yet wrought itself into the coarse emotion of mankind, and perhaps our frames could hardly bear much of it. If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel's heartbeat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence.
Despite how quiet this roar might be on a day-to-day basis, arguably somewhat contrary to the passage from Eliot, it isn't silent. The anxiety and dread we feel over the prospect of tragic moments, from small to big, for many of us, is always there. A low background hum reverberating through our unconscious mind, like the hum of a refrigerator that we no longer notice because it is always there. This unease simply goes unnoticed most of the time because it has faded into the backdrop of the familiar. When something seems off, however, our attention is directed toward it, and we become aware of its constant presence. An untimely phone call, too late or too early in the day.
A text message that reads, in an out of character tone, call me ASAP. In these instances, we might feel that otherwise quiet unease move into the foreground, as we are reminded of how much is out of our control. How much is uncertain? How much can and will go wrong? As conscious beings, we possess foresight. The ability to imagine, consider, evaluate, and predict what will happen in the future. We are all partial fortune tellers in this respect. This ability gives us many advantages. It allows us to plan and prepare for the future. It allows us to build things that will last into the future, and it allows us to imagine and hope for the future.
But also, of course, this foresight comes with a terrible curse. It makes us knowingly aware of the things that can and will go wrong. It puts us in the front row for the unrelenting show of time and disorder, a seat from which we cannot ever get up until the show is over. We are perhaps the only being that not only feels the possibility of things going wrong, but also knows that these things will happen for a fact. There are many things in life that benefit from worrying about. There are also many things that don't. And sometimes it can be hard to tell the difference.
How much worry and preparation is useful, and how much is not. When attempting to determine this balance, and even more challengingly, when attempting to calibrate our perspective and behavior accordingly, there are many schools of philosophy that we can look to for guidance. The philosophy of Stoicism dedicates a significant amount of its discourse toward this problem. The Stoics argue that the universe is governed by a fundamental principle that they refer to as the logos. A sort of rational order to everything. The universe functions as an interconnected system, and everything that occurs, occurs as it should. We participate in this system, but we cannot successfully resist, change, or will ourselves against it.
And so, to live a smooth, good life, we must live according to nature as it is. In order to do so, according to the Stoics, we must recognize what we can control, and what we cannot. What aspects of nature we are active participants in, and what aspects we are essentially passengers to. For the Stoics, what we can control is our choices, evaluations, and perceptions. How we respond to and consider what happens around us. What we cannot control is everything else. Our attention, efforts, and concerns, therefore, should begin and end at the perimeter of our internal domain, which we can and should guide by our reason.
In doing so, we can differentiate useful worries from wasteful worries, and we can orientate ourselves toward virtue and a good life. The Stoic philosopher Seneca wrote, The philosophical tradition of Buddhism articulates a similar framework of thought, though it takes it a slightly different direction. Like Stoicism, Buddhism suggests that the world is a constant flux of interconnected events. Unlike Stoicism, however, Buddhism claims that this state of flux persists within our internal domain as well. Our thoughts and feelings and states. We are merely empty points of awareness, constantly being filled up by the phenomena of the world, our body, and our mind.
For the Buddha, we achieve peace within this condition through non-attachment, which is broadly attained by accepting the conditions of nature, flowing with them without resistance, and eliminating our desire. Our desire to control, cling to, and perpetuate things. The good renounce attachment for everything. The virtuous do not prattle with the yearning for pleasures. The wise show no elation or depression when touched by happiness or sorrow, says the Buddha. The philosophy of Taoism also tells us something similar.
That the natural way and order of the universe, referred to in Taoism as the Tao, is out of our control, beyond our linguistic and rational comprehension, and the way to live well within this is to live in harmony with it. By living with a sort of graceful passivity toward the events of the world, simply observing, flowing with, and adapting to their ineffable course without rigidness or resistance, we obtain a positive state of fluidity in life. Water is the softest and most yielding substance, yet nothing is better than water for overcoming the hard and rigid, because nothing can compete with it, says Lao Tzu, the author of the foundational text of Taoism, the Tao Te Ching.
Each of these schools of thought, which notably never came in contact during their early formations, although they differ in many respects, they share this similar ideal, the acceptance and embrace of the nature of existence as it is. Like just about everything, this is much easier said than done. For some of us, it might never be possible to accept the nature of existence. For others of us, it might be possible to varying degrees, but still only up until a point. Arguably, total acceptance of this form is merely an ideal. Enlightenment, or whatever you want to call it, is not achieved but strived toward.
Over time, however, with the right effort and mindful deliberation, we can get closer to it, and we can better learn how to accept the total image of existence. There's a modern concept known as anti-fragility. The term was coined by the essayist, mathematical statistician, and former options trader Nassim Nicholas Taleb. The term is used to describe systems that increase in ability and strength as a result of disorder, attacks, or failures. This differs from qualities like resiliency, which describes the ability to recover from hardship and disorder, and robustness, which describes the ability to resist hardship and disorder. Anti-fragility, Taleb writes, is beyond resilience or robustness. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same. The anti-fragile gets better.
Generally, the term is applied to areas like risk analysis, physics, and computer science, but of course, we ourselves are also systems. As we grow older, we inevitably receive an increasing number of terrible phone calls, text messages, and have increasing amounts of terrible experiences and conversations. But with each instance, instead of weakening, instead of resisting, instead of even recovering, in some major relevant way, we strengthen. Our ability to withstand the misfortunes of life, to withstand the prospect of them happening, and to process them when they have happened, improves.
With each instance of something going wrong, of pain, of loss, of confusion, we become better prepared for the next, and we become increasingly prepared for the last instance we'll ever experience. Many of us, if not most of us, have already received phone calls, text messages, and had conversations that contain the sort of terrible news we all dread. And we're still here. Your life is almost certainly different. You are almost certainly different. But you are still here, not unscathed, but nonetheless still capable of continuing on. Whatever we are worried about, so long as it isn't the final thing we are worried about, and perhaps even then, we'll be okay. You'll be okay. Everything will be okay.
More broadly, worrying about the loss of things and fearing things going wrong necessitates having something to lose and feeling that many things in life are currently going well. The pain we have felt, are feeling, and are worried about feeling in the face of terrible news. That sense of loss and grief are all directly proportional to how much we love and care about the things in our life. Worry, fear, grief, and pain. These things are not merely the consequences of things going wrong, but they are also the marks of things having gone right. They are the darkness through which we can see light. They are the silence through which we can hear sound.
To care about anything is to lose. To love anything is to be devastated. My formula for greatness in a human being, wrote the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, is amorphante. That one wants nothing to be different. Not forward, not backward, not in all eternity, not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it. All idealism is mendacity in the face of what is necessary, but love it. To have great phone calls, text messages, conversations, and so on, we need the occasional terrible ones. And in the end, most phone calls, texts, and conversations are totally ordinary, benign, and wonderful. Hey, just checking in. How are things? Everything is good here.
Something that not only causes but preys on our anxieties and fears is the news. Many mainstream news outlets often manipulate or sensationalize the truth in order to incite stronger reactions and keep us hooked. This is why this video's sponsor, Ground News, is so important in today's world. Ground News is an app and website that collects thousands of news articles from around the world, bringing them all into one place and adding important context about their political bias, factuality, ownership, and so on, also that we can distill truth from propaganda, mongering, and exaggeration.
For example, I read this article about the Oregon governor's, Tina Kotech, recent vow to sign a bill that recriminalizes drug use after voters had previously approved a law that decriminalized the possession of drugs. On Ground News, I was able to explore this further and found 13 sources reporting on the story. Firstly, using Ground News' coverage details feature, we could see that there was only one left-leaning source covering this story. So, if you exclusively consume left-leaning news, you might not have even encountered this story. Additionally, through Ground News' bias distribution feature, we could see that 69% of the sources are center-leaning and 23% are right-leaning.
We can then compare the headlines to see how they present and skew the story differently. Fox's headline, for example, reads, Oregon governor to sign bill recriminalizing illicit drugs, ending liberal experiment. While a more center-leaning sources headline, like Oregon Public Broadcasting, reads, Oregon governor will sign bill to recriminalize drugs, expand treatment. Clearly, these are different tones. Using the bias insights feature, we can also see the overall bias found within these articles, the right-leaning sources tending to narrow in on Governor Tina Kotech. While the center sources do not do this as much and provide more of a comprehensive overview on the repercussions of the situation and highlight a wider spectrum of views, opinions, and critiques.
In a media landscape prone to manipulation and informational silos, to see more clearly what has potentially been contrived for ulterior reasons and how, and to see what is likely to be true and worth caring about, is essential. And Ground News is now making this readily possible. Go to ground. newsslashpursuit to give it a try for yourself. My link in the description gets you 40% off their unlimited access vantage plan. And of course, as always, thank you so much for watching in general, and see you next video. .
By visiting or using our website, you agree that our website or the websites of our partners may use cookies to store information for the purpose of delivering better, faster, and more secure services, as well as for marketing purposes.