Einzelgänger

WHEN LIFE KEEPS KNOCKING YOU DOWN

Oftentimes, just when you think you’ve got your life in order, something happens that undermines it all. I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s experiencing this. Just when everything feels right, there’s some event throwing a spanner in the works. It’s pretty frustrating.

We’re walking around with these ideal images of how life should be, but we’re never getting there. There’s always something lacking. There’s always something going on, despite our efforts to live well. Life, so it seems, never just works without problems. It’s never as it’s supposed to be.

Prolonged adversity can gradually wear us down. Too many disappointments can make us pessimistic and almost feel destined for misfortune. I’ve felt like that often, myself, as if the devil has been toying with me since I was born. “Why me?” I frequently said out loud and, honestly, I still do sometimes.

But the Buddhists believe that the ongoing stream of unfortunate events isn’t something to be distressed about. Sure, being upset about misfortune is natural, but when we look closely at how things have worked since the dawn of time, we see that our default operating mode for handling misfortune is pretty irrational.

The upcoming video explores why bad things keep happening and why it’s useless to be overly concerned about them, and what we can do to be more resilient in the face of misfortune.

4 days ago | [YT] | 2,125

Einzelgänger

IS MODERN DATING BROKEN?

Modern dating is insufferable, isn’t it? Somehow, in a world overflowing with options, finding love has never been more frustrating or more confusing. In the past, things were much easier. You married the girl next door or met your future partner at church, and that was that.

But today, things seem much more complex. We don’t just marry the neighbour, and religious communities aren’t the go-to places to find a spouse anymore. We look beyond the old structures that once regulated our love lives into a wide, open world with endless opportunities.

Contrary to the past, marriage has become optional (at least in the West). We’re now exploring the exciting world of casual dating, situationships, and friends with benefits. New forms of relating have increased our freedom to shape our love lives as we see fit, but they have also complicated things.

Moreover, dating apps add fuel to the fire, granting us access to a dating pool of many millions of potential candidates. And so, someone looking for a romantic partner is confronted by this unprecedented complexity and choice, which seems like a good thing, but… is that really the case?

The upcoming video explores what’s happening in modern dating, and whether there’s anything we can do about it.

2 weeks ago (edited) | [YT] | 1,399

Einzelgänger

WHY NOTHING FEELS EXCITING ANYMORE

Maybe it’s just me, but hasn’t the world grown less appealing, and far less interesting, almost overnight? It’s like everywhere I go, every place I visit, I’ve already seen before. In cities around the globe, I encounter the same stores. Train stations and airports look similar. And even people seem to look alike in appearance and manner.

Everything seems manufactured; originality and uniqueness are fading qualities, and many of the things we entertain ourselves with have become repetitive and overly abundant. It’s as if our planet has lost its magic and life, its mystery.

The world has transformed from a giant enigma filled with riddles and secrets into a massive, interconnected shopping mall, where every little spot, every place of significance, is on full display, like shoes in a store window. True adventure and discovery are things of the past, and experiences have become commodified, sold like prepackaged meals in a 7-Eleven.

What’s left to wonder? What’s left to explore? What experiences are truly worthwhile and touch the depths of our souls? In a world so heavily globalized, shrunk by technology and robbed of its mystique, what’s really the point?

This upcoming video explores why life feels so meaningless today.

1 month ago | [YT] | 2,242

Einzelgänger

WHY SKEPTICISM IS CRUCIAL TODAY

It’s funny, sometimes, when you look at two opposing media outlets, say Fox News and MSNBC, reporting on the same issue, they come up with two entirely different stories; Fox will say that the conservatives “owned the libs”, while MSNBC will announce the “complete meltdown” of the conservatives.

How can such completely opposite versions of the truth exist? And more importantly, in this case, why do some people embrace the story by Fox News as truth, and others the story by MSNBC as truth? Could it be out of convenience? Personal preference?

Ancient Greek philosopher Xenophanes of Colophon observed that people readily accept “truths” without evidence, guided more by preference than reason. As one of the first skeptics in Western philosophy, he urged a more humble and questioning approach to truth.

This week’s podcast episode explores why skepticism is crucial today, based on the wisdom of Xenophanes.

Substack: journeyofideas.substack.com/p/004-why-skepticism-i…
Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/4BOQaZraMRcwzbWDdsAdD6

1 month ago (edited) | [YT] | 835

Einzelgänger

GET BUSY LIVING OR GET BUSY DYING

In prison, your fate largely depends on others. Your body is subjected to the whims of both prison guards and fellow inmates. You can’t leave. So if you don’t like it for some reason, and people are making your life a living hell, you have to deal with it in some way or another. And in the first moments one enters prison, this harsh reality can hit like an atomic bomb.

The first scenes of the film The Shawshank Redemption shows how newcomers, referred to as “fresh fish”, experience their first nights, and how one guy in particular starts sobbing uncontrollably, as he realizes his fate, followed by a fatal beating by the brutal prison guard Captain Hadley.

From an existentialist viewpoint, being imprisoned is part of one’s ‘facticity.’ Most people don’t choose to be in a place like Shawshank State Prison. And for protagonist Andy Dufresne, being a highly educated, brilliant, successful, and relatively young man, ending up there is really one of the worst things he could have imagined happening. But it’s a fact of his existence, no matter how unfair.

After the rite of passage ends, after they’ve been checked for lice, walked naked to their cells, endured that first night among violent inmates and guards, their new reality sets in. The fresh fish now face a new challenge: how to shape their lives as prisoners. So, in their unfreedom hides an inescapable freedom.

The upcoming video explores The Shawshank Redemption from an existentialist philosophical perspective.

1 month ago (edited) | [YT] | 1,040

Einzelgänger

WHY WE NEED TO BE BORED

Have you noticed that these days, whenever people go idle—even for just a few seconds —they instantly reach for their phones? It’s like they can’t help themselves.

In terms of functionality, the smartphone is a wonderful development; it has created a whole new economy and has also been a game-changer in developing countries. We basically have the entire world in our pocket: infinite information, news, instant connectivity with billions of people, and unlimited entertainment. I’d say it’s such an enticing, irresistible object that if Gollum were to visit our world, he would probably swap the One Ring for an iPhone.

However, the smartphone has also become the most effective thief of a ‘mode of being’ that most of us avoid. I’m talking about boredom. And today’s human, the ‘homo smartphonicus’, can’t stand it.

Boredom usually gets a bad rep. It’s painful. It’s something we want to get rid of as quickly as possible. Hence, whenever today’s homo smartphonicus feels the slightest boredom, he’ll reach into his pocket, get the device out, and start checking his email for the 24th time that day. That’s how he copes.

Boredom has become nothing more than a signal of idleness, an unproductive, uninteresting state that needs to be eliminated quickly by activity… which is a shame. Because if we’d have the patience to welcome boredom, to let her in for once, and see what she has to say, we might discover she’s actually a pretty wise companion.

Several philosophers have discussed the significance of boredom, what it means to be bored, and how we deal with it. The upcoming video explores why we need to be bored.

1 month ago | [YT] | 1,745

Einzelgänger

Meaning. It’s probably the buzzword of the century. Everyone is talking about it, and it seems that everyone wants it.

When I think of meaning, I think of something that gets me out of bed in the morning; something to live for; something that has more significance than the usual jazz, you know, sleeping, eating, watching TV, scrolling on my phone, and exchanging my time and labor for money to pay the bills. It should be something that transcends all that and makes life worth living.

But what is ‘meaning’ exactly? What does it look like? Does it come in a package? Do you learn it at school? Can you find it in romance or friendship? Or in a book perhaps?

The overall vagueness of the concept ‘meaning’ is probably one of the reasons why people are struggling to find it. And many do struggle, so it seems to me. There’s a whole industry catering to people who want to escape their meaningless lives, be it in the form of psychologists, life coaches, authors, gurus, and, I guess, content creators like myself.

Meaninglessness is a somewhat ironic byproduct of a civilization that is richer than ever before, with unprecedented options and social mobility. You’d expect that with so many things to do, so many doors to enter, activities to choose from, finding meaning would be easy? I guess that’s not how it works, as meaninglessness and nihilism are so common nowadays.

So, how do we find meaning? Do we have to look for meaning or create it ourselves? And do we even need meaning to live happy lives?

The upcoming video explores ‘meaning’.

2 months ago | [YT] | 1,182

Einzelgänger

In the 6th century BC, in a city named Croton, Pythagoras was building himself a cult.

Throughout the ages, countless rituals, customs, ideas, and beliefs have been attributed to this cult. One of the most notable is a prohibition on eating beans. Beans? Yes, beans.

No one really knows why. Some say it was for health reasons. Others suggest it was simply because beans make people fart, and that was seen as a bad sign. Another theory suggests that beans and humans were thought to be related, so eating beans was perceived as almost like eating human flesh.

Food was a ‘thing’ in the cult. Beans weren’t the only form of nutrition Pythagoras taught his followers to abstain from. Meat, fish, eggs, and alcohol were a no-go. Instead, they followed a vegetarian diet.

The reason Pythagoras was so focused on diet relates directly to his belief in the transmigration of souls, which is essentially reincarnation, and also explains why his followers had to refrain from wearing animal skins as clothing.

Pythagoras thought that after a body dies, the soul lives on. And the soul could go from human to human, but also from human to animal and vice versa. One day, he saw someone beating a puppy. He intervened and said, “Stop! Don’t hit it! It’s the soul of a friend of mine. I knew it when I heard it cry.”

And that’s why eating meat was not allowed. After all, you never knew if you were eating your grandma for dinner.

And Pythagoras even claimed to remember some of his own past lives. He claimed to have lived as Aethalides, son of the god Hermes, as well as Euphorbus, a hero of the Trojan War, and as Pyrrhus, a fisherman.

Within the cult, personal possessions were also not allowed; everything was shared, which surely stood in sharp contrast to the lives of many Greeks who often accumulated a lot of wealth.

So, the cult was a countermovement; they sought to live better lives, different from the norm, going against the grain. They opposed the decadence and moral decline around them, choosing instead moderation and simplicity. They wanted to purify themselves.

This week's video explores Pythagoras and his curious cult.

2 months ago (edited) | [YT] | 780

Einzelgänger

Have you been watching (or reading) a lot of news lately? Does it leave you feeling anxious, sad, or even hopeless?

Philosopher Henry David Thoreau wasn’t a big fan of the news, as he saw it as a major distraction from what he truly deemed important: a close relationship with nature, one’s direct environment, and God. He felt that the things people read in newspapers every day were repetitive; it’s always the same stuff.

For example, if you’ve read about one or two robberies, one or two shootings, haven’t you read about all of them? Why do we need to know about every single one? And why do we need to stay updated about every single one of them happening in areas where we never go or live?

So, when Thoreau discusses the repetitive nature of the news, I can see where he’s coming from. In terms of knowledge, does the news actually bring something new? Does watching the news give us profound insights? Does it expand our horizons? Or is it just repetitive, superficial, drivel that’s unnecessary for us to function in our daily lives?

Is the news, whether we get it from newspapers, television, social media, or YouTube videos, closer to knowledge or closer to noise?

This week’s video on the Einzelgänger YouTube channel will address “the news“ and how to worry less about it.

3 months ago (edited) | [YT] | 2,828

Einzelgänger

Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes believed that the Earth and, therefore, the universe (as far as they had a concept of it) had started from something: some fundamental force. They called this source of everything “arche,” which we could loosely translate as “first principle”.

As it’s a first principle, the arche must have been something big, something so overarching and great that everything could be derived from it. And with everything I mean everything: the trees, the oceans, the mountains, people, animals, your noisy neighbor, and so forth.

The arche had to be credible (at least, for that period). It had to be rationally sound and consistent with what we can observe in nature, instead of being based on the ancient Greek version of… “trust me, bro”. So, appealing to the conventional gods was not sufficient. Saying that Poseidon was the cause of earthquakes or Zeus the cause of lightning was inadequate.

Even though Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes agreed on the first principle underlying everything, they didn’t agree on what it actually was. All three of them had their own speculations and unique explanations for what they came up with.

Their theories were pretty interesting. Sure, most of it is clearly incorrect. But it’s important to remember that they were pioneers whose efforts profoundly influenced the course of human thought in the West. And therefore, they deserve our attention.

This week's episode explores the first Western philosophers: Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes.

Stay tuned!

3 months ago (edited) | [YT] | 1,029