Are You A Nihilist?

we all know how it goes one day we're born one day we die everything that happens in between we know and understand but everything that happened before and will happen after we know nothing about as a result it's really difficult to say what exactly the meaning or importance for us being here is if we can't tell how we came or where we came from how can we know why we're here in the same in vain if we don't know where we're going or what we're going to become how can we tell if any of our present actions have any significance at all it is this uncertainty of both our Collective pasts and Futures that has allowed the question what is the meaning of life to plague Humanity ever since we became sentient we've never been able to objectively answer this question as a species however a lot of us have found comfort in many different ideologies to at least subdue the anxiety that it causes in many different religions a DED made the entire universe put us all in it and whatever we do on this Earth will be used to determine when and how we spend eternity afterwards for some others the meaning of life is the love we share with friends family and our loved ones some others believe the existence of life in itself is what makes it worth living but for nihilists life is meaningless all action suffering emotions both good and bad are entirely senseless and meaningless this is nihilism the belief in nothing at some point in our lives many of us have been faced with nihilistic thoughts we're hit by a strong sense of purposelessness like our lives have no meaning and we have no intrinsic value usually this happens when we begin to question our old beliefs but also just before we get new ones to hold on to it's in that phase where you're growing out of your parents' beliefs learning new things getting new experiences and forming your own views about the world and usually all of these thoughts begin with one simple question why a three-letter monosyllabic word that's capable of making anything and everything that feels like the rock of your foundation start to become slippery like quicksand dragging you into the misery that may be just maybe your whole life hasn't been what you thought it was just pause and take a moment to think about your core values and just ask the question why why do you believe those things where did they come from who did they come from keep asking and eventually you'll arrive at a point where there's no longer an answer you'll arrive at nothing all the religions of the world all of our scientific discovery but yet the question why is one that we still cannot answer and so for the nihilist it is at this point that they come to the conclusion that there is no why there is no answer there's simply nothing as Alan Watts once wrote Life is nothing more than a trip from the Maternity Ward to the crematorium it's really in the name the term nihilism comes from the Latin word n which translates to nothing and ISM which translates to ideology it's the ideology of nothing but that doesn't really help us in understanding it completely usually people confuse nihilism for pessimism but they are very different from each other pessimists believe in the worst outcome they have a downtrending view of the world and tend to focus on the negatives in life because they believe that in the end evil will always overcome good and this is what makes them different pessimists believe that there's good in the world but they just don't think humans are capable of doing it at least in its entirety nihilists on the other hand do not believe in anything they don't believe that there's evil in the world neither do they believe that there's good in the world in the mind of the nihilist the world simply exists and humans created morality thereby creating good and evil let's let take the glass cup metaphor for instance optimists say you should see the glass as half full while pessimists say we should see the glass as half empty nihilists they say throw the entire cup away because what does it matter if it's full or empty full empty good bad it's all irrelevant we're all going to die anyway nihilism is also often compared to several other philosophies like sinicism and apathy but again they are all very different from one another and correctly categorizing your thoughts in these baskets may be harder than you think cynics believe that people are always motivated by self-interest they don't believe that anyone can have intrinsically good motives they have no faith in the human species and believe that we're all entirely selfish only fighting for our own benefit however the idea that humans are not good means that in the mind of the cynic good exists out there somewhere just not in humans in the mind of the nihilist nothing exists out there there's no good or evil they don't see people as evil neither do they see them as good because they don't believe either of those things exist they're simply traits we've applied to things apathetic people just don't care they believe that there's meaning to life but they simply don't care about it nihilism on the other hand is the idea that there's no Grand Design or purpose nothing to believe in and therefore no meaning this brings to mind the Paradox of nihilism if you believe in nothing then that nothing becomes something that you believe in but since you now believe in something then there is no nihilism because nihilism is the belief that there is nothing nism is quite different from other philosophical ideas because it was first a literary invention before it ever became philosophical as a result it's not clearly defined as many of the other philosophies that exist many different people explained it in many different ways but eventually these different definitions got categorized forming many different kinds of nihilism there's political nihilism political nihilists believe that for Humanity to move forward as a species all political social and religious order must be destroyed then there's ethical nihilism it rejects the idea of absolute ethical or moral values with this type of nihilism good or bad is only defined by society and as such it shouldn't be followed if we as a species will ever attain absolute individual Freedom we can kind of just do whatever we want and then we have existential nihilism it's the understanding that life has no value or meaning it's the most popular kind of nihilism and the one we've been talking about for most of this video for nihilists the existence of things like the state religious bodies and even communal morality is a breach on our freedom as individuals if we can't do absolutely anything we want to do then are we truly free or have we simply bound ourselves by some kind of invisible mental chain for reasons we can't explain one night I was scrolling through Reddit and I came across the question if you had the chance to save your pet or a stranger who would you save an overwhelming number of people said they're pet pretty obviously when one commenter was confronted they simply asked the question why do you think a human life is worth more than that of an animal and no one really had an answer of course people tried to beat around the bush but the question why was never answered and that right there is the point of the nihilist if we can't answer why we bind ourselves by these rules then why do we choose to do it well it might be because of the existential horror and the emotional anguish that comes with agreeing to the fact that life is meaningless think about it for a minute if life is truly meaningless and everything we're doing has no value then all the Feats of science the wonders of Technology things like space exploration and human rights movements look at how far we've come and then think about the fact that it all might just be waste a blip in time with no consequence whatsoever in the grand scheme of things knowing that all the things we experience the ups and downs we go through that in the end it's all for nothing we aren't obligated to understand the chaos of reality just to laugh at it friedr nche was a strange philosopher because he argued both for and against nihilism at the same time arguing for he explained that there is no objective structure or order in our world except for the one that we create for ourselves he once said every belief every considering something true is necessarily false because there is simply no true world he believed nihilism would expose all of Humanity's beliefs and truths as nothing but a symptom of defective Western mythology as he famously said God is dead now he wasn't talking about the actual deity of the religions he was talking metaphorically about the power that religious orders held at the time and how people were starting to chart their own paths find their own own meaning in life denying what the status quo was at the time but then in the same breath friederick argued against nihilism saying that in the coming centuries the Advent of nihilism would drive civilization towards a catastrophe a disaster waiting to implode a river that has reached its end and if you look at the most destructive civilizations in human history we can clearly see that this is true long-standing cultural Traditions beliefs religious institutions and even Financial systems are broken down and nothingness starts to creep in think about it if nothing matters and we're all just a random combination of transient atoms how can we call Hitler objectively one of the worst humans to ever live for trying to wipe out an entire culture at a fundamental level most of us understand that all of these things are indeed terrible but the danger is that because we cannot explain why we feel that way logically we can never convince another person to follow the same path and that is exactly what Friedrich feared some people still blame blame him for the Nazi era because although he saw all of these dangers he still continued preaching nihilism he believed that if we could work through the breakdown of civilization that nihilism would eventually cause we can then create a new course of action for mankind he believed that to move forward as a species we must create a new morality one that does away with the Prejudice of what existed before because at the end of the day tearing down your old house shouldn't make you homeless rather it should present you with an opportunity to build a bigger and better home pause and look around you for a moment observe everything that's going on particularly on social media and you can see that we as a species might just be heading for another nihilism outbreak religion no longer holds any saying what is morally acceptable people are destroying long-standing beliefs and cultural practices and are instead charting new courses for themselves anything no matter how Despicable you think it is now has a loyal fan base defending why they have a right to do whatever it is they want to do and in reality why not not that's the question no one can answer Humanity will keep Shifting the needle forward ever so slightly until one day none of us will be able to tell the other that they're wrong because why are they wrong William Shakespeare once wrote life's but a walking Shadow a poor player that struts and Frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more it is a tale told by an idiot full of Sound and Fury but signifying nothing if life is truly meaningless and we have no purp for being here our response should be to make the best out of a bad situation instead of seeing the glass half full or half empty we can simply throw it out and drink directly from the faucet until we're satisfied because at the end of the day life alone is reason enough for living here is an apple and here's a banana pick one whichever one you picked it was your decision completely this is what we call free will it's the idea that we are the sole authors of our destiny that in the face of multiple choices whatever decision we make is completely down to us we have the power of free choice but what if I told you that Free Will is a myth that we were all just a group of atoms who will react to a particular stimulus in a way that can be predetermined if you picked a banana at the beginning of the video and we go back in time if Free Will Truly exists you should be able to change your mind and pick the Apple instead said what if I told you that if we go back in time under the exact same circumstances you'll pick the banana again what if I told you that I can actually tell which of these two options you're going to pick 300 milliseconds before you actually pick it with 100% accuracy in the 1980s Benjamin libid a physiologist used an EEG an electro andram to show that you can read and tell that somebody is about to move 300 milliseconds before they decide in their conscious mind to actually move this means that before we decide that we want to move our bodies it's already been decided for us in our subconscious and we only think that we made the decision ourselves after it's already been made in a similar study participants were asked to press one of the two buttons while looking at a clock with a random sequence of letters on a screen with the use of fmri functional magnetic resonance imaging they discovered that two of their participants brain regions showed what button they would press 7 to 10 seconds before they consciously made that decision the results of This research only proves one thing a few seconds before you pick the banana or the Apple your brain makes that decision for you it is after this decision has been made deep in your subconscious that your brain becomes aware of it and we become convinced that we are in the process of making that decision because the brain is like the heart we don't tell it what to do it just does so in reality consciously making a decision the experience we call a free will is actually an illusion it's simply a visualization of events that the brain has already set in motion it tells you what the brain has decided to do for as long as Society has existed we've understood the role of surrounding influences on our decision-making With Idioms like it takes a village to raise a child and you are the product of your environment we understand that to a great extent our upbringing our parents the society we grew up in all of these influence our decision-making process if someone is born religious it's not crazy to think that they'll be religious throughout their lives taking it a step further things like genetics also play a huge role in our choices Charles Darwin in the theory of evolution brought forward the idea that if species do indeed evolve then things like intelligence must be hereditary intelligence is a trait that helps us make better decisions and while you can study hard to know more than the average person for the most part how intelligent you are is not entirely up to you so some people cannot make certain intelligent choices not because they don't want to but because their genes are limited in that instance would you say that the person has the freedom to make those intelligent choices because in reality they do not their Fates are predetermined by their genes how can we all truly have the freedom to decide Our Fate when we're not dealt equal cards from the start and it's not just the cards we dealt it's also the ability to play those cards some are simply born better bluffers than others when you look at the concept of Free Will critically the whole idea seems to crumble pretty quickly in fact researchers have come to the conclusion that believing in Free Will is like believing in religion neither of them agree with the laws of physics think about it if Free Will Truly exists and if choice is not just a chemical process then why can things like alcohol and antis psychotics completely change a person's Behavior even worse we've seen brain tumors turn people from pediatricians to pedophiles Dominico miello was once a respected pediatrician for 30 years he was loved by his patients and adored by their parents and everyone in the society in a shocking turn of events however in 2012 he began facing trial after being accused of making pedophilic advances towards his female patients neuroscientific research showed that Mello had a 4-in tumor growing at the base of his brain that changed his behavior in 2002 a similar thing happened to an American school teacher he suddenly started having pedophilic urges towards his stepdaughter and was arrested then it was discovered that he had an egg-sized tumor growing in the part of his brain that was supposed to be responsible for decision-making after the tumor got removed the man's pedophilic urges stopped completely and he was able to return to his family if Free Will exists why can removing a tumor change a person's choice is it then possible that by altering brain chemistry or physical composition we can completely change a person's beliefs ideologies and choices without the person being able to do anything about it in more recent years lawyers have started using MRI scans to help plead the case of their clients with neuroscientific research proving that brain tumors and malfunction cause them to commit their crimes it's difficult to argue against it because if they did not have the freedom to choose to do something else then why would you give them the heaviest punishment for actions they could do nothing about Brian Dugan was facing execution in the state of Illinois after he pleaded guilty to murdering a 10-year-old girl however MRI scans revealed that he had mental malfunctions that affected his decision-making process his lawyers pleaded with the court to spare him the capital punishment because in reality can we really say that it was his fault if malfunctions in his brain caused him to do what he did then he didn't have the free will to make a better decision while he was on death row his case continued to get argued and as a result the state of Illinois abolished capital punishment some scientists who still want to cling on to the idea of free will argue that while it's true that the subconscious makes decisions for the conscious we still have the free will to shape the unconscious world and on first glance this makes a lot of sense you can read a book and an idea gets into your subconscious then in the face of a choice the idea you've read floats back out of your subconscious forming your conscious decision however there's a flaw in that idea it's much like a paradox because where then does the desire to change your subconscious by reading a book Come From Desire much like Choice comes from the subconscious so a conscious effort to shape your subconscious is actually a subconscious effort to change your subconscious the biggest obstacle the idea of free will or lack thereof faces is morality if morality is based on Free Will and Free Will doesn't exist then what happens to morality what happens to every other man-made institution that has been designed around the idea of free will when faced with questions like these many people immediately fall into into a trap of fatalism fatalism is the idea that we are completely powerless in the universe's game people who think like this believe that since we are not completely in charge of our destiny we're completely at its Mercy it's random and not up to us then they become a lot less happy and starts slacking in their relationships they stop trying to be good people or uphold any moral standards and overall they start to have a lower sense of fulfillment in life but we don't have to fall under that trap the scientists who Champion the idea of the absence of Free Will would rather explain it philosophically as determinism rather than fatalism determinism is the idea that all events are predetermined by existing causes that everything that will happen can be explained through the Clockwork laws of cause and effect it doesn't mean that we're completely powerless and simply at the mercy of what's to come it simply gives us a different way to look at everything that happens around us according to the government of the United Kingdom more than half the people in prison have a brain injury doesn't that tell a scary story understanding the true concept of free will will help us realize that those people are no different from us they're not worse humans and many times they're just there because of a combination of bad events that were totally out of their control in the same way with deterministic thinking we would also show more humility when talking about our achievements because now we understand that we are simply a product of our past experiences it helps us to have empathy for people who are not in a similar position as we we are and it helps us to reduce our sense of entitlement if the people in higher positions in society do not attribute all their success to their personal efforts alone they're more likely to do more for others they're more likely to help and to give back to others hoping they might be able to recreate the factors that help them succeed if you're getting scared or confused right now I totally get it even the scientists who have been studying this for decades have found it very disturbing it's a difficult thing to wrap your head around because it goes against everything Society is built around Free Will is the basis of our society it's what determines who is right and who is wrong who gets the praise and who deserves to be punished it tells us that a man who killed another man deserves to spend the rest of his life in prison and that someone who works hard deserves to live a good life and that's the fear of spreading the absence of free will message many scientists believe that if enough people are aware of this idea it could literally end society as we know it because why would someone else risk his life to save another person if after he's done people will only say well he didn't decide himself to do it so he doesn't deserve any praise the reality is praise and Punishment are two huge factors that help influence our decisions so if we remove them from our society we pave the way for fewer good deeds and much worse ones it's a strange Dilemma to be in because although the truth is that we do not have free will believing that we do is actually a lot better for us this is the concept of illusionism that although Free Will is an illusion it's one that we must keep up with because faced with the choice between truth and good it benefits the most of us to always choose good so next time you see a homeless person down the street don't just roll your eyes and judge the person understand that there are a multitude of factors many of which they might not have been able to control that caused them to be where they are be humble about what you have and what you've achieved because just a tiny less intelligence in your DNA and you might not have made that one decision that changed your life know that you do not have free will will at least how you imagine it and you're just lucky your mixture of Adams makes the right decisions but immediately forget that forget everything I said for the past 10 minutes and act like every decision is yours completely because only then will you be able to make the decisions that can truly change your life those words were spoken by Jeffrey dmer a serial killer a sex offender necrophiliac and cannibal who brutally murdered 17 Milwaukee young men throughout the late '70s 80s and '90s D's story makes for a chilling example of a psychopath whose appearance of normaly played a huge part in his ability to get away with so many atrocities yet it is also this facade that causes us to wonder how much a person who seems perfectly normal on the outside could commit such Outrageous Acts of violence we want to look into the eyes of these individuals to get a glimpse of why they are the way they are we want to understand the psychology of a serial killer as a society we like to think we have Psychopaths and serial killers figured out and in some ways we have in 1980 a Canadian forensic psychologist named Robert hair created a master list of 22 traits you can use to diagnose psychopathy a list that is still the most widely used by experts to this day the list includes things like superficial charm grandiosity pathological lying in deception impulsivity proness to boredom showing No Remorse a lack of realistic long-term plans leading a parasitic lifestyle and being unable to accept responsibility when most of us think of the term psychopath these traits pretty much perfectly describe the image that comes to mind a person who is full of themselves unaware of the emotional reality of others deceitful manipulative and self-centered where things get a little complicated is when you discover that there's still a distinct difference between being a psychopath and a serial killer although the two distinctions often overlap unlike what a lot of us think the fact that someone is a diagnosed psychopath doesn't automatically mean they have the capacity to kill and vice versa just because someone is a serial killer doesn't automatically make them a psychopath dmer is a perfect example of a person who is a serial killer but not necessarily a clear-cut psychopath a the revised 40o version of the hair psychopathy checklist is used to evaluate individuals those that meet 25 to 35 of the criteria on the list are considered to be Psychopathic while other notorious Psychopaths Like Richard Ramirez Ted Bundy and John Wayne gayy all scored within the 25 to 35 range dmer only matched 13 of the warning signs and you can pick up on this just by watching some of the interviews he gave after he was caught and I acted on my fantasies and uh that's where everything went wrong in them dmer comes across as startlingly softspoken self-reflective modest remorseful and honest about what he did and why he thinks he may have done it other serial killers struggled to convey this level of apparent normaly after their crimes were exposed for years Ted Bundy tried to lie and manipulate his way out of responsibility for his crimes John Wayne gasy admitted to his acts with absolutely no remorse referring to his victims as pieces of his property Richard r mirz proclaimed proudly I love to kill people I love watching them die both displayed signs of obvious narcissism and psychopathy traits that could pretty easily single them out in a crowd and make them appear obviously different from you or I this is what makes dmer different and perhaps even more terrifying than other serial killers at the time that he was committing the murders dmer was able to fly under the radar more easily than others since he didn't fit the image of the deranged egotistical Maniac that everyone was looking for he spoke and looked just like you and I he could have been your classmate your close friend your cousin or even your brother and you would have never known Jeffrey's own father Lionel dmer wrote an entire Memoir about how shocking it was for him to wrestle the fact that his oldest son who he remembers as being a sweet playful curious child went on to inflict such horror on so many people whenever people hear of a story like Jeffrey dmer the knee-jerk reaction is to focus on the perpetrator's childhood assuming that they must have been abused neglected or psychologically damaged in some way this approach is understandable people want events to follow a linear point A to point B cause and effect pattern it makes evil easier to predict identify and prevent unfortunately the motivations desires and urges of serial killers don't usually operate that way making these questions about the person's childhood usually pretty unhelpful in explaining their behavior while dmer didn't have a picture perfect upbringing by no accounts was he physically abused or taken advantage of in any way that even came close to the horrors that he went on to inflict on his victims during his sentencing dmer went up on the stand and said this to the judge this has never been a case about trying to get free I never wanted Freedom frankly I wanted death for myself this was a case to tell the world that I did what I did not for reasons of hate I hated no one I knew I was sick or evil or both now I believe I was sick I know how much harm I've caused I tried to do the best I could to make amends after the arrest but no matter what I did I cannot undo the terrible harm I've caused this quote encapsulates the questions we're all asking what is this sickness that drives serial killers to do what they do and how can someone who appears to be so stable commit such Insidious violations of humanity experts have come to learn that the desire to inflict extreme harm on others is more often a mysterious dark urge that originates from deep within the individual and not something external like we tend to think dmer described this urge as as a compulsion which he says started to stirring him around the age of 9 or 10 when he became fascinated by the bodies of a lifeless crab he found on the beach over the next few years D's compulsion grew and he began to dissect other small animals including dogs and cats saying that he was captivated with the way that the insides of their bodies looked in his early teens these desires switched from animals to humans dmer didn't hear voices in his head that told him what to do he was not a person who was acting on impulse or for Revenge he went out on secret premeditated missions honing and all strangers with the singular intent of committing vicious atrocities on them after his first murder in 1978 dmer claims that he tried to get his urges in check and he did to an extent going 6 years without blood on his hands but he as well as all others like him could only keep the uncontrollable urge at Bay for so long one framework that psychologists use to categorize personality traits is called the five Factor model it divides the human personality into five main pillars extroversion agreeableness conscientiousness neuroticism and openness to experience the combination of these traits that is most commonly used to describe a psychopath is a person who has low and agreeableness and conscientiousness and high in neuroticism this type of person has a low level of sensitivity towards the emotion of others a low level of intelligence and ability to adhere to the rules standards and structures set by society and a high potential to experience emotional instability or possess some kind of mood disturbance it's been theorized that the most noteworthy trait difference between functioning Psychopaths who are able to become relatively successful based on our society's normative standards of achievement and unsuccessful Psychopaths who are unable to amount to much of any quantifiable success Is conscientiousness possessing high levels of conscientiousness makes a person dutiful organized deliberate and competent for example let's say there's a diagnosed psychopath named Jimmy Jimmy has low levels of empathy towards others a tendency towards lying and deception and a grandio sense of self and almost all professional settings these Psychopathic characteristics would make Jimmy an unlikable and untrustworthy person in the eyes of his co-workers and employers thus putting him at a disadvantage however let's say that Jimmy also has a high level of conscientiousness this conscientiousness would help him to self-identify the potential pitfalls of his cold-heartedness lying in grandiosity and likely give him the motivation to adjust or hide his other negative behaviors enough so that he could get ahead in the workplace this measurement of conscientiousness can also be used to differentiate serial killers those who have higher levels of it are called organized killers they tend to lead methodical lives have skilled employment be socially proficient and have high levels of intelligence disorganized killers on the other hand possess low levels of conscientiousness they're more likely to have lower levels of intelligence and are less concerned about leaving behind sloppier crime scenes the difference between Psychopaths and serial killers is that with psychopathy conscientiousness can be a positive trait which can help them gain control over their negative Psychopathic qualities but with serial killers there are no positives it makes them even deadlier as it only seems to pair their murderous internal urges with organized competent and deliberate plans of execution this is what makes them better at finding strategic ways of getting away with their actions at least for a while as you would expect dmer was one of these people he committed heinous crimes in his apartment and had bodies hidden throughout in various stages of decomposition yet anytime someone mentioned an odor or noticed anything that might seem out of the ordinary he always had a meticulously crafted answer that made sense he methodically targeted racial minorities and homosexuals because he knew sadly enough that law enforcement at the time was simply less interested in pursuing crimes against people of those identity categories humans like dmer forc us to ask questions like how can we identify killers Who hide so skillfully behind these masks of normaly and I think this question is where so much of the Intrigue about both Psychopaths and serial killers comes from the idea that anyone around us right now could be outed as the next murderous Maniac as you're watching this video you may be haunted by the possibility that one of your neighbors close friends or even family members could be one of these people harboring hidden fantasies about hurting others for all we know you could even be a psychopath Whose desire to inflict harm on someone for for your own pleasure is just being suppressed under a mask of normaly in the words of Ted Bundy we are your sons we are your husbands we are [Music] everywhere this is green this is red and this is blue but how can you tell what you're seeing as blue is the exact same thing as what I see as blue we've named the colors to give us a way to communicate and reference them but in reality there's no way of knowing what you see is the same as what another person sees even with the small steps and the giant leaps we've made as a species there's still a lot to learn about Earth life and The Human Condition there's still everything we don't know on the 26th of February 2015 one picture of a dress divided the internet you are seing white and gold where you look looking at oh just Chang white no you're Kidd while Some solid as gold and white others solid as blue and black and ever since then there's been a number of repetitions of the same experiment either using the same sense in this case sight or even other senses like hearing in the famous yany or Laurel debate Laurel these experiments remind us that there's no way for us to tell that you and I sense the same things what I call Red might just be what you call Blue and there might be someone out there who sees human beings with purple teeth but just refers to it as white 71% of the entire Earth is covered by water humans are made up of about 60% water potatoes 80% watermelons 93% and cucumbers 95% it's very clear that water is essential for life on Earth but we really don't know that much about water not even about the very oceans we came from in fact we've only explored 5 to 10% of the Earth's oceans the rest well who knows what's down there it's even scarier when you realize that fish like the blob fish and the barreled eye fish belong to the slim percent of things that we've already discovered the deeper you go the crazier things seem to get what's at the bottom of the ocean for the most part we just don't know but back on the surface countries that are bordered by water use something called coastlines to mark their territory the coast is the land along the Sea and the boundary between the coast and the sea is known as a coastline so how long is the US Coastline or any other Coastline in the world the answer is well again we don't really know coastlines constantly curve and cut in and out even the smallest deviations from a straight line can add distance and over time these small distances add up some of these features are massive like Bay While others are minuscule now measuring each and every little crevice isn't really efficient so surveyors cut corners and straighten rough edges into easly manageable lines if you do a quick Google search of the measurement of any Coastline you'll find a lot of different answers they all cut Corners just differently Humanity as a species though well we've done really well for ourselves when in a pinch we invent something to push us through we made clothes when the weather was harsh shelter so we could be safe from Wildlife to rest and recuperate weapons to hunt for food money to replace pure bartering but what about fire was fire a discovery or an invention and music music has been described by scientists as a relatively recent invention by humans it's believed that music helped our ancestors to bring together a close-knit community but did humans really invent music or did we just discover that certain sounds sound nice with other sounds birds sing whales sing even tree frogs have a nice rich bar tone sometimes so can we really say man invented music if we did then what is the true definition of music I guess we'll never know on the list of man's greatest inventions has to be Tools in fact for a really long time scientists were pretty sure that this is exactly what made us human we were the only animals who through the use of such a variety of tools were able to expand and grow so quickly except we aren't the only ones who use tools a lot of animals mainly primates use tools for all kinds of reasons a study by Jane goodle on African chimpanzees would change the definition of man forever in the research it was discovered that these chimpanzees use tools to gather food brush their teeth and even more so in response would this mean we must now redefine man or redefine tool they use tools for the exact same things we would do we accept chimpanzees as human well of course not this begs the question if using tools doesn't then what makes us human in the same research it was also discovered that chimps had individual personalities and were capable rational thoughts like emotions and sorrow they gave pats on the back hugs kisses and even just messed around with each other just for fun they developed affectionate bonds with family members and with other members of the community and some of these bonds lasted for over 50 years if emotions rational thought and affectionate actions do not then what makes us human in the past it was thought that humans were the only animals who were self-aware however in the past 30 years extensive research has proven that many other animals are too in fact in 2012 a group of neuroscientists created the Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness which states that humans are not unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate Consciousness non-human animals including all mammals and birds and many other creatures also possess these neuros substrates if Consciousness sentience wakefulness and the ability to feel and experience do not then what makes us human we really just don't know all we know is that one day we weren't today we are and one day we will be no more we don't know what happened before we existed and neither do we know what will happen after we die if a person dies and comes back to life it's referred to as a near-death experience because we see death as a finality but what if it isn't what if one of the beliefs of Humanity's many religions is true even the Earth itself can be very weird and sometimes you just see formations that make no sense like who built Stonehenge and why the same goes for the pyramids some people think the gods of Egypt made the pyramids others are convinced it was made by human effort but in reality we just don't know the human mind is everything all of man's greatest inventions theories and discoveries have all come from a human mind we first conceive of an idea in our mind before we can ever create it in the real world but perhaps we don't yet know or understand exactly how powerful the mind can be the placebo effect gives us a glimpse I made an entire video about the placebo effect but basically doctors appear to give a patient treatment but in actuality they don't however this fake treatment registers in the brain perceives it as real and kickstarts the healing process basically the Mind heals the body because it thinks the body is getting treatment even if it isn't in research on social cognitive and effective Neuroscience it was discovered that self-affirmation helps to maintain a positive self- viw and helps to restore your self-confidence and self-worth simply by telling yourself nice things it is indeed possible for your mind to convince your brain and body that you are those things and these are just the things we know the mind is capable of think about everything we don't know there are a lot of things we know about animals dogs are sweet and loving cats can have an attitude and the lion is apparently the king of the jungle even if it lives in a savannah not everything makes sense and we really don't know as much as we think we do going to space is is one of man's greatest achievements however what space exploration has clearly shown us is just how small we are in the grand scheme of things there are at least 2,500 other solar systems that have been discovered but that number could go up to the tens of billions we just can't know for sure that's just in our galaxy The Milky Way and the Milky Way is just one of billions of galaxies that are out there it's so incredibly massive that you just can't help but think are we alone in the universe and if if we aren't why hasn't anyone said hi we have ideas but as always we don't know and we really can't prove most things a very fundamental question for nature is what exactly is the universe made of and why is there stuff in it to begin with we know that almost all matter is made up from indivisible atoms but why why do atoms exist and where do they come from when we die what exactly do those atoms become and everything else at this point you've listened to me talk for about 7 8 minutes time is persistent for everything with mass time never stops we all know that yesterday is in the past today is the present and tomorrow is the future but what exactly is time and where does it come from even more confusing is did humans discover or invent time there are so many things about the world that we just don't know and while some are deep questions like we've talked about others are more well trivial while watching the video of this person yawning you probably also yawned so even more importantly why is yawning contagious when we're happy we laugh when we're sad we cry but why for a long time it was believed that laughter was a social tool to show one another that we're enjoying what's currently happening it was an evolution tool used to help enhance connectivity in soet ities but if that was the case then laughter should be unique to us humans or at least primates but it's not other social animals like dolphins and even rats laugh so why do we laugh also why do we cry it's as if crying has emotional healing powers crying activates our parasympathetic nervous system and helps her return our bodies to a normal fully functional State it's a good thing for your body so why do we associate it with such sad things we often cry after something bad has happened not really while it's happening is it a process that evolved solely for our brains to process emotionally painful things then again we cry for happy reasons as well so scratch everything I just said why are some people right-handed and others are left-handed why isn't everyone ambidextrous wouldn't that have made a lot more sense we can have theories for many many things but they remain just that theories in actual it proving theories as a fact of nature is a lot harder than you'd think many scientific theories are superseded with time considered obsolete or simply wrong we used to think that Earth was the center of the universe then one day we realized it wasn't then again not everyone could accept the fact that their view of the universe was so wrong I mean there's a theory that is recently as World War II the Germans attempted some advances under the impression that the Earth was Hollow so it is very possible that mostly everything we do know about the world right now is wrong honestly it probably is we simply don't know everything about everything and that's okay all we can do is keep asking questions and keep learning about the world around us trying to uncover each of its Mysteries one stone at a time hopefully answering the most important question of them all what does existence truly mean life is but a walking Shadow a poor player that struts and fret his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more it's a tale told by an idiot full of Sound and Fury signifying nothing have you ever met someone who calls himself a nihilist maybe you have a friend from college or a family member who says they're a disciple of n at every opportunity they love to wax poetic about the meaninglessness of Life briefly indulging them in their philosophical ideas can expand your mind and help you to see things you never would have but the truth is outside of philosophical discussion leading a nihilistic life is Bleak think about it if nothing matters and we're all just specks of dust floating through space and time what's the point in trying it all building healthy relationships with friends and family doesn't seem worth it because in the end everyone you know will die anyway all attempts at self-improvement are futile because in the universe's grand plan none of it matters even if you're not all doom and gloom there will be days when getting out of bed will seem pointless where life itself will seem kind of pointless and the current state of the world with issues like the climate crisis the rise in extreme politics and economic instability doesn't help with our psychological State this glimpse into the void might dissuade you from wanting to do anything with your life you're staring down nihilism the belief in nothing and framed like this it makes life sound pretty awful but there's another way to look at nihilism one that teaches you not to see the glass as half full or half empty but instead to throw the glass away and drink straight from the faucet until you're satisfied this is optimistic nihilism the realization that the universe's meaninglessness is the most liberating thing in the world it's the type of nihilism you get when standing on the precipice of a huge mountain or watching a motherb bird feed her young it's the profound smack of insignificance you feel when faced with the miracle of your existence the amount of luck and chance that it took for you to get here in the first place optimistic nihilism doesn't mean we're doomed to live in a meaningless Universe instead it allows us to experience the universe in our own unique ways according to the niist you and I don't matter nothing does religious morality or societal Norms don't restrict Your Existence you are entirely free in the control of making your life mean something once you accept the meaninglessness of your life as a gift rather than a burden you find peace with the life you have because life is brief and fleeting it's precious writing in the late 19th century German philosopher Friedrich n was worried about modernity he was very critical of the traditional European morality and the religion of his time which placed Christian beliefs at the center of social and political life in his 1882 book the gay science he proclaimed the infamous line God is dead God remains dead and we have killed him here n didn't make an argument for atheism and in said he observed that believing in one true Christian God was no longer Central to European Society people's lives no longer revolved around the church's calendar or teachings industrial means production gripped Europe flooding the pockets of factory owners and enforcing a standardized workday on everyone else with that personal freedom and agency became core values in society people no longer yearned for a higher power to guide them through life explain what comes after death or show them right from wrong increasingly people took took these matters into their own hands while n was critical of religion he was equally skeptical of what Society could become without it he understood that without Christianity as a guiding principle people might move through life confused and disorientated a world without God creates a void of understanding in our lives and humans aren't psychologically capable of a pure belief in nothing we're always searching for purpose in anything even when we're not aware of it think about how you start your day and imagine you wake up and look out your window to see a beautiful owl perched on your balcony railing you might associate that with having a good or bad day depending on the culture you were raised in we're constantly making connections and associations like this in our lives down to the most mundane things people aren't built to remain in a constant nihilistic State it's only a phase that allows us to gain perspective on the structures that govern our everyday life according to Niche we fill the void where God once was with ourselves we become our own tiny Gods so to speak we give ourselves the authority to distinguish right from wrong and determine our individual meanings in life if nihilism from a nian point of view interests you we made an entire video on nihilism so you can check that out by clicking on the link in the description the existentialists who came after Nicha like French philosopher Jean Paul SRA expanded on this idea to SRA we have complete Freedom over our lives in a world without God or objective meaning but with great power comes great responsibility you have the power to shape the life you want to live let that sink in for a moment yes you can make good choices for yourself but how are you supposed to know which choices are good and how often do you do things that are against your own self-interest in good moments when things are going well for you you might feel empowered and in control you may get the promotion you deserve or marry the person you love you might move to a new city and establish a community of friends that you couldn't imagine life without you've invested time energy and love into making a meaningful life for yourself without following arbitrary rules or some intangible plan ordained from above all the good things in your life have come from you yet in the trenches of the everyday life can seem overwhelming especially when you're in charge of making sure you have a good one to give our lives meaning we create internal narratives about ourselves and this is where we start to run into issues we tell ourselves were hard workers and consequently the importance of our jobs and the identity they provide us with start to weigh us down it's the same at school students get sick with anxiety about test scores and grades as if getting into the perfect College will finally confirm their life's worth similarly you inject meaning into your love and family life you strive to be the perfect parent child or partner because of your belief that these relationships will make your life meaningful this is what keeps people in unhealthy or toxic relationships they've attached this idea of meaning or Worth to something that's ultimately meaningless having to constantly reaffirm who you are because there's no higher power to do that work for you can be exhausting while we have the freedom of total control that also bogs us down what happens when you're busy shaping the life you think you want yet you're still unhappy all this meaning making trying to make sense of your life contributes to a plague of depression and anxiety especially among Millennials and gen Z people are burned out stressed out and exhausted so why do we Chase meaning even with this feeling in the back of our minds that none of it matters there's a contradiction between our pursuit of meaning and the reality of a meaningless Universe it's devastating to confront the idea that all the hard work we put into making our lives mean something is for nothing optimistic nihilism is the solution to this anxiety that we inherit when we're forced into the position of making meaning out of our Lives yes nothing matters but isn't that a relief you can find yourself responding to the seemingly urgent work emails at 3:00 a.m. or over obsessing over your Instagram caption but in the moment it feels like like the weight of the world rests on these things you spend late nights tossing and turning all of your mistakes and wrongdoing spinning until you've convinced yourself that you're the worst person on the planet but embracing that none of these things ultimately matter is freeing forgive yourself for your past mistakes and look forward excited to experience the future when we're the center of our own structures of meaning every choice we make good or bad becomes weighted with significance when you find yourself in one of these mindsets where your life feels too big to handle remind yourself that you're small and insignificant the universe is indifferent to your worries struggles and mistakes and in the end none of it matters you'll die one day and in the future no one will remember your brief flight on this planet there's no use Fring about trying to create the perfect life because the energy spent making your life mean something is worthless when it's all said and done you're dust it's completely normal to allow the squirming sensation of your insignificance to wash over you for a moment but staring nihilism in the face is only comfortable if you let it be if you call yourself an optimistic nihilist it's probably good practice to confront all the different emotions your meaninglessness makes you feel otherwise you won't reap the actual benefits of optimistic nihilism instead it'll be a bandage to your problems something you just tell yourself to believe in order to get through the day instead of a true guiding principle you need to sit with your nothingness and accept it for what it is then use the objective meaninglessness of life to relieve yourself from the pressure that meaning making entails take a look at your life and all it means to you your relationships the values you hold close the things that get you out of bed in the morning you have to be willing to part with all of them and embrace the void that they leave behind suddenly the choices you make are the problems you face every day things that take up so much of your mental capacity don't seem so overbearing optimistic nihilism frees you from the crushing burden of meaning making of course it doesn't absolve you of wrongdoing your actions still have consequences and you shouldn't give in all your impulses for the sake of it continue creating a life that you love one that you're excited to live whatever that means but just know that in the end everything you've made will dissolve into The Ether and you'll leave nothing behind in the face of this reality take advantage of all the sweetness life offers the good things in your life are made all the more beautiful because of their fleeting insignificance sharing a meal with those you love the smell of blooming lilacs and spring and even petting your cat it's such a miracle that you're here able to experience anything so shouldn't you spend your life enjoying yourself instead of worrying so much about making your life mean something life is precious beautiful and all inspiring despite its chaos and disorder it's a wonder that you can find goodness amid a void of meaning you need to end the Hopeless search of meaning making and dive head first into the void and when you emerge on the other side you'll find nothing but that nothing nothing will be clear and bright a Guiding Light into a better yet fleeing [Music] life why do we love being scared is it the way our parts pound in our chests the mixture of curiosity in revulsion when we see a monster or a ghost or is it something even darker like the disturbing themes portrayed in popular culture are we drawn to genres like horror because we recognize them as a shadowy reflection of ourselves since primitive humans first gathered around campfires to tell stories we've been trying to scar each other in 2021 historians at the British museum identifi the world's oldest drawing of a ghost carved into an ancient Babylonian clay tablet dating back 3500 years it lays out specific instructions for getting rid of unwanted Spirits early mythologies are filled with these kinds of terrifying creatures often these monsters were intent on punishing humans for some perceived misdeed the story of Medusa tells of a woman who turned men into stone in retribution for her own defilement African Legends speak of creatures called impundulu vampiric lightning birds that summon storms and steal unprotected children the Oni of Japanese myth are terrible flesh eating trolls who often bring about disease or Calamity many of these early horror stories are rooted in folklore and function as cautionary tales they're meant either to deter or encourage particular behaviors abuse and murder will result in a vengeful hating by a poltergeist honoring an ancestor's grave will keep their soul at peace even as Society has moved on from using these Legends as Guidance the need for horror Still Remains our modern idea of horror emerged in 18th and 19th centuries with the rise of Gothic literature novels like Mary Shel Frankenstein and Dracula by Bram Stoker paved the way for a new genre devoted solely to Terror unlike older folktales which primarily served as moral lessons these stories were written with with the explicit intention of frightening their audiences they Incorporated dark claustrophobic environments characterized by fear Decay and the constant threat of the supernatural Gothic literature set itself apart with an intense focus on how the present is always haunted by the past more than two centuries later modern audiences still love to be scared we spend hours on YouTube watching creepy videos gather outside of haunted houses hoping to run out screaming and flock to theaters to see the latest horror flick it's no surprise that John kosinski's a quiet place part two earned nearly 300 million worldwide at the box office but of course there's no better Testament to Horror's popularity than Halloween an entire holiday celebrating all the things that make our spines tingle the same year that a quiet place part two broke pandemic era opening weekend box office records it's estimated that Halloween spending hit an all-time high surpassing $1 billion so why do we like being scared to answer this question we need to understand the the nature of fear itself in a basic sense fear is an evolutionary adaptation that allows us to rapidly identify and react to physical danger to increase our chances of survival on a neurological level it engages our amydala also known as the fear center of the brain this cluster of neurons essentially functions as an alarm Bell controlling our emotional responses and creating feelings of anxiety aggression and fear and reaction to perceived threats other parts of the brain involved in Rapid decision- making and the encoding of long-term memories come online during this process as well these not only help us to quickly respond to a situation but to also clearly remember the incident later that way if we ever find ourselves in similar circumstances we know how to react for example if shouting and making a lot of noise is able to scare off a lion that has been stalking you the next time you run into one you'll remember to do the same thing this is why generally the more emotionally intense and experiences the better we remember it it's how our brains learn what to to seek out and what to avoid this applies not only to moments of intense Joy such as a graduation or surprise party but also potentially frightening experiences like riding a roller coaster although scary at the same time in hindsight these events can actually be remembered as incredibly fun and pleasurable this reaming makes us want to seek out and repeat these experiences again and again another reason we may like being scared is because it releases a host of chemicals that our bodies naturally crave fear activates what's known as our sympathetic nervous system a complex network of nerves that controls some of the body's unconscious actions when triggered the system initiates a intricate physiological process known commonly as the figh ORF flight response if you've ever experienced sweaty Palms shortness of breath increased heart rate and a sinking sensation in your stomach then you know what this feels like during figh or flight the body is floated with a complex chemical cocktail that includes everything from adrenaline and endorphins to serotonin and even oxytocin this particular recipe helps maximize our chances for survival by initiating various physical responses such as blood moving from the extremities to larger muscle groups where they're actually needed interestingly every one of these chemicals is also associated with other more traditionally Pleasant emotions like happiness surprise and excitement so what on the surface may appear like an undesirable experience can actually turn out to be extremely enjoyable it makes sense then why people with particularly efficient neurological reward systems tend to like being scared more the thrill of a slasher film produces an immediate pleasurable Rush of adrenaline much in the same way as skydiving it's important to understand though that there's such a thing as too much fear if something is terrifying enough it can trigger the development of phobias an extreme and irrational fear of a particular object or situation if experienced repeatedly over long enough Tire periods it can lead to depression and postraumatic stress disorder or PTSD but when encountered in a safe positive setting fear can actually be fun think about it like this almost drowning in the ocean when you were a child bad watching jaws and jumping out of your seat when the shark eats the late night skinny Dipper at the beginning of the film good there's also another reason why we're drawn to horror perfectly summed up in a statement by celebrated author and professional Boogyman Stephen King we make up Horrors to help us cope with the real ones and he's right a 2021 study found that horror fans fared much better psychologically during the first few months of the co 19 pandemic than those who said they didn't like being scared it's speculated that people who regularly expose themselves to terrifying situations even fictional ones may be better at regulating fear because the more time spent in this heightened emotional state the more desensitized the brain becomes reducing its instinctual responses in favor of rational decision making therapists use this all the time in exposure therapy a treatment specifically designed for anxiety conditions including obsessive compulsive disorder PTSD and various phobias it works by retraining the amydala through repeated activation by encountering a feared object or situation over and over the severity of the brain's response is lessened over time think of it like exercise the first time you go to the gym your body is going to be extremely sore and achy afterwards but with each repeated visit your soreness decreases your muscles become accustomed to the stress the same goes for your brain and fear as the brain recognizes that the threat no longer exists or wasn't even real in the first place it transitions from its fight ORF flight response to a state of rest this shift creates feelings of relief and euphoria that can alleviate anxiety and even boost self-confidence over time exposure therapy moves the patient's neurological reaction away from the amydala back to parts of the brain that control higher cognition this reduces the intensity of instinctual gut reactions allowing for complex planning and logical decision- making for example if someone's afraid of of sharks therapists will have the patient think about sharks visit an aquarium or even go deep sea diving with the help of virtual reality with every repeated exposure their fear response decreases eventually causing it to recede horror has been shown to be similarly effective at doing this the formula of suspense and resolution common to the genre mimics the exact neurological process one goes through when encountering a fear inducing stimulus this could be why some people who suffer from anxiety disorders really enjoy horror trauma survivors and victims of abuse in particular might even benefit from it the internet is filled with anecdotal accounts of people with PTSD and generalized anxiety feeling a sense of relief and calm after watching a scary movie or walking through a haunted house aside from relief this attraction to horror may also have something to do with a phenomenon known as repetition compulsion the tendency for trauma survivors to seek out similar situations humans find comfort in what's familiar and predicted able even when it's actively harmful to us this can look like a person returning to a toxic relationship or a war veteran watching footage of the battle in which they were wounded it's the classic the devil you know is better than the angel you don't potential reasons for this Behavior range from low self-esteem to an aversion to change but one explanation is that the brain is attempting to achieve a form of Mastery over the situation we never want to feel powerless again so we repeatedly enter the same scenarios to hopefully gain control over them and as it turns out control plays a big part in regulating fear a 2018 study found many people enjoyed scary movies exactly because they created these feelings of Mastery and control horror then can be incredibly beneficial for trauma Survivors by allowing them to delve into a world that is alien but familiar at the same time without re-entering the same toxic situations in real life this creates an Avenue for recontextualizing traumatic experiences in a safer environment it's a form of exposure therapy a continual process of Confrontation coping and relief this may actually account for 2021s Rapid uptick in Halloween related sales and the success of recent horror films like a quiet place part two we now have an entire population looking for ways to cope with having lived through a global pandemic and hoping they'll be in better control if history ever repeats itself but what happens when we don't face our fears or when we try to hide the parts of ourselves that we'd rather not think about 20th century psychologist Carl Young proposed that every human mind contains a shadow an unconscious aspect of our personalities that doesn't conform to the picture we have of ourselves in our heads it's an emotional blind spot a personification of everything a person refuses to acknowledge about themselves an unconventional interest might invite mockery preferences in sexuality could result in Social rejection or even physical harm a traumatic life experience in your past might make others look at you differently so instead of expressing these parts of ourselves we repress them burying them deep beneath the surface surface yet at our core we still naturally seek out these parts of ourselves because the mind craves integration the process of assimilating various elements of our personalities into our concept of self we don't want to see ourselves as a desperate collection of divided pieces Forever at War but as a unified whole if a person fails to do this the shadow threatens to overtake their personality coming out in malevolent and often violent ways this is a situation best represented in the novel The Strange Case of Dr yo and Mr Hyde where a scientist literally transforms himself in order to indulge in vices minus the consequences is it any Wonder then that Gothic literature first took off during the Victorian era a period defined by intense societal repression or that its defining theme involves the past returning to haunt the present stories act as gateways into our unconscious urges and desires allowing us to safely explore them for some this may be vicariously living out in unspoken fantasy for others it can be an opportunity to confront past traumas and hopefully grow Beyond them by its nature horror includes an element of evil often personified by figures like Dracula Leatherface and Hannibal Lecter it's this evil that must be defeated in the same way horror forces us to confront our shadows it challenges us to grow and begin a process towards becoming stronger and more confident individuals at its core fear is a survival mechanism it's meant to help us overcome threats and Keep Us Alive from a psychological perspective the most effective way to do this isn't to fight or run from the parts of our personality or our past that we don't like but instead to incorporate them into ourselves by doing this we create the fittest most robust individual possible horror then is about completeness it's about feeling whole some love it for the Thrills the spectacle of blood and gore others use it as an outlet to deal with and overcome a prior negative event recontextualizing it and regaining some form of control but but for all of us horror represents an opportunity to confront our fears only by doing this can we come to understand the ghosts of our pasts and hopefully accept the darker parts of ourselves you are a chicken yes you you look around and sometimes wonder why your owner takes such good care of you at first you're not sure you're skeptical what if he sends you to the slaughter housee you've never been there but you know very well none of your friends have ever come out of that place you remain on high alert for when that fateful day might arrive but it never does days go by and then weeks months even years you are now convinced your owner loves you more than any of these other chickens and he would never do anything bad to you each passing day is additional evidence to say that you will live for the next 1 thousand days go by like this a thousand beautiful days until of course the Thousand and1st day when the illusion of safety breaks and you end up on someone's dinner plate you should have never crossed the road now imagine how betrayed the chicken must have felt when it was being taken to that terrifying part of the farm given the thousand days worth of evidence the chicken's trust in its owner was ironically at its highest level when it was eventually slaughtered perhaps if it wasn't so foolish to believe that it was special or unique maybe it would have at least been spared the feelings of betrayal that one final day completely changed the Outlook of the chicken's life that one piece of evidence outweighed the previous thousand days and it's not even a contest this is something known as a Black Swan a single event or observation that comes as a surprise with disproportionate consequences radically changing our Outlook about something people used to think that swans could only be white until they saw Black Swan which basically reshaped the way people thought about what is out there theim Nicholas TB wrote a book called The Black Swan the impact of the highly improbable to study this very phenomenon and shine light on how vulnerable we are to black swans and how we are only becoming increasingly more vulnerable with each passing day in his book he talks about some fundamentals of epistemology that limit our ability to understand the black swans before they happen but first let's talk about why our modern society as technological Advanced as it is is the perfect nesting place for a Black Swan event let's say we're going to weigh a few thousand people and at the extreme end of that sample contains the heaviest person in the world so long as that person is subject to biological constraints like the rest of us it doesn't really matter how much he or she weighs let's say 2,000 lb now how much do you think that accounts for in the total weight of all the people we weighed the answer is probably less than half a percent it shows that even a crazy czy outlier like a 2,000lb person doesn't really overwhelm the average TB calls this ecosystem mediocris to refer to how the mediocre measurements of the average person do mostly represent all measurements quite well now let's conduct the same experiment but with wealth let's gather a few people and include just one of the 3,000 or so billionaires in that list how much do you think that billionaire accounts for in the total wealth of all the people in that sample an overwhelming majority almost always close to 99% contrary to the first scenario here the outlier overwhelms everything else TB calls this world extremist done as it rewards a few people extremely well but leaves basically nothing for the others TB says that the modern world is composed of circumstances that are geared towards extremist not mediocris because money for all intents and purposes is just a number in someone's book the vast majority of money is completely digital it's not subject to physics laws or biology to constrain it to minimal variance sure most people don't make that much money but a few people can make a lot of money similarly if you want to consider musicians most musicians don't sell that many albums but a few artists sell quite a few you can conduct the same thought experiment with Book Sales scientific Publications shoe brands and so on point is the modern economy is a very much a win or take all system that rewards a very small number of people with a disproportionately large port of the pie if it was more like the weight example we just talked about you wouldn't expect the outliers to be so wild but the fact that they really are indeed so wild just goes to show how unpredictable the environment we're living in really is the forecasts we take for granted today often fail to take into account the true nature of this unpredictability these Black Swan events you might be inclined to say that no these billionaires put in the work day in and day out and therefore they can enjoy the fruits of their labor indeed most of them probably worked really hard some of their Innovations might later pave the way for a better future for all of us I'm not discounting that however the system is not rewarding them proportionately more importantly it's hard to say how much of their efforts are the fruits of their labor and how much of it is due to Pure chance if you were to run a few simulations with extremist in type circumstances you would inevitably have a few Jeff Bezos like outliers we may be biased into thinking that we understand what causes Bezos like outliers in our society you know the usual think out of the box start a revolutionary company worked extremely hard for a few years and then smell the roses happily ever after we've all read the autobiographies we've all watched the documentaries however when was the last time you read about a person who did all of those things and failed when was the last time you saw shelves of books about people who failed chances are probably never these stories just never really quite make it there is 's an epistemic bias in all of this TB says now take a look at the cemetery it is quite difficult to do so because people who fail don't seem to write Memoirs and if they did those business Publishers I know would not even consider giving them the courtesy of a returned phone call this is despite the fact that often advice about what not to do is more useful than what to do but that's just the economy that's just one facet of [Music] society we also don't understand the sociopolitical aspects take 9/11 for example which is certainly a Black Swan event after it happened you had tons of experts come out and say that they had known for years that it was about to happen well why didn't they say anything this retrospective Distortion of the understanding of a problem is one of the Hallmarks of a Black Swan event none of them really knew if they did cockpit doors would have been bulletproof long ago pocket knives would have never been allowed in a cabin and the TSA would have been invented much earlier but these things were only instituted after 9/11 if you were to suggest such policies in 1991 for example you would probably not be taken too seriously or would have been shown a spreadsheet that suggested Airlines don't have the money for bulletproof doors but inevitably they did thankfully the likelihood of a 911 style event is much lower now than it used to be countries around the world are more prepared more Vigilant however that also makes these precautions somewhat lose their relevance you've all knowah Harari in his book hodas cites a paradox about knowledge he says knowledge that does not change behavior is useless but knowledge that changes Behavior loses its relevance the more data we have and the better we understand history the faster history Alters its course and the faster our knowledge becomes outdated despite the measures we have taken for a Black Swan event like 9/11 that does nothing to improve our odds against a future Black Swan if anything it might lure us into a false sense of security and in fact worsen our chances of coping with the impacts of the next highly improbable event we tend to convince ourselves that we understand risks once we have understood a game of dice or Blackjack however trying to approximate the risks in real life with the same methods used in a closed loop artificial game is simply oversimplification a mistake that we commit daily this Tob calls is the ludic fallacy we learn simple games and immediately conclude that the stock market works in the same way even though one of these things lives in mediocris and the other lives in extremist if the markets were well understood do you think something like GameStop or AMC would have ever been allowed to happen sure short squeezing is not a particularly new phenomenon and yet even a non-black swan event such as this one left even the smartest hedge fund managers scratching their heads and practically chasing bankruptcy this false sense of understanding makes black swans that much more dangerous there are other reasons why we are increasingly more vulnerable to black swans TB said whereas in the past people might have been studying different kinds of literature and Diving deep into a locally developed set of ideas today arguably the most spread book is Harry Potter that's of course not to say Harry Potter is a bad book or anything but it goes to show that we are much less in tune with each other's ideas for Better or For Worse for the most part everyone is dealing with generally the same ideas that cou with the rising complexity and reach of technology means when something fails it fails for more people than ever before the Pakistani government tried to shut down YouTube in Pakistan it ended up shutting down YouTube worldwide to websited we don't understand these things that's just one way for technology to fail but it goes to show how interconnected things are and while that is often touted as a plus given sufficiently poor luck that can really spell Doom for us all take coronal mass ejections as an example these are regular bursts of radiation from the Sun that scientists on Earth know and expect the largest coronal mass injection ever on record is the Carrington event in 1859 its effects were mostly felt by Telegraph operators who had some of their equipment burnt from the sudden surge most of the world went on without a hitch on the other hand if a Carrington class event were to occur today with all the grids electric cars and equipment that we now have the damages would be in the trillions of dollars and repair could take decades if at all possible and with each passing day with each little transition into an electric future we becoming more and more vulnerable to such an event the thing is this isn't even a Black Swan event in 2012 the likelihood of uring to an event in the next decade was calculated to be around 12% and yet despite that high probability we're not particularly prepared for such an event given the esoteric nature of its risk seemingly low probability but high impact despite all the mounting evidence you'll have a very hard time convincing governments to make modifications to power grids to avoid catastrophic failures so if that's how little we care about an event that we know is bound to occur eventually imagine how unaware we are of a true Black Swan the chicken in the farm where it to somehow be spared by some miracle would never trust another human being ever after the Betrayal it endured however few were ever so lucky meanwhile for the owner the chicken's death comes as no surprise it is a routine event and therefore no Black Swan the idea of a Black Swan is therefore relative to the knowledge one possesses hence our objective is to try and be in the position of the butcher not the butchered TB says I worry less about advertised and Sensational risks more about the vicious hidden ones of course the idea of a Black Swan also incorporates good things such as wildly unlikely positive outcomes of chance otherwise known as life the odds of being born are 1 in 400 trillion but to be fair I just unfollowed my own advice such a thing can't really be predicted can it for all we know and for all we don't being born is an unimaginably unlikely event that nobody really predicted so if you are alive whatever that means in the end we're actually all the black swans we've been trying to avoid the entire time ironic isn't it Copus was a great king of Greek mythology so clever he was able to outwit Gods themselves twice he cheated death first by capturing Thanos the god of death then by tricking the goddess of the underworld panie into releasing him back into the lands of the living the gods weren't happy with this and so for his arrogance Copus was given a deceptively simple punishment roll a boulder up a hill the problem was that the boulder had been magically Enchanted to fall back down to the bottom every time Copus managed to get it to the top effectively condemning him to an eternity of repeating the same impossible and meaningless task classical interpretations of the myth view it as an allegory for the futility of trying to escape death no matter how powerful or clever a person is we're all doomed to meet the same fate more modern audiences have found something more relatable about cop's struggle saying it not as a simple parable about the inevitability of death but more like a metaphor for the drudgery and monotony of their own lives every day we wake up make coffee take the train to work stare at a computer for hours get yelled at by our boss stare at the computer some more then take the train back home binge Netflix or YouTube while eating dinner go to bed and then wake up and do it all over again just like sisifus we seem condemned to repeat the same meaningless tasks over and over and over most of us do this every day for the rest of our lives as though we're sleepwalking never waking up or stopping to ask why for some of us one day we're standing on a street corner preparing to go to work when in an instant we're struck by the strangeness of it all suddenly nothing appears to have purpose life is halfhazard and meaningless you look around and you whisper to yourself why are all of these people even in such a hurry for that matter why am I what's what's the point of all this why am I even alive there's a modern day problem with absurdism money or the lack thereof the reason many of us never pause to ponder our meaning is because we don't have the economic stability to do so it's difficult to think about the meaning of life when you're worrying about keeping a roof over your head which is why we're getting to a point where Financial stability may just be the first step towards embracing the Absurd human beings crave meaning it's part of our biology we're evolutionarily programmed to search for pattern and chaos to try and understand why things are happening it's how we learn the problem is that existence is that best random and irrational nothing really seems to matter your loved ones die stars explode natural disasters wipe out entire cities millions of people spend half their day on Tik Tok and for what yet we keep going constantly striving to create order by giving these things purpose despite the universe denying it this conflict is what the french Algerian philosopher Albert Kimu referred to as the Absurd it's an irreconcilable Paradox we yearn for meaning in a meaningless Universe Kimu uses the myth of Copus as an allegory to describe this relationship we can try to push the boulder to the top of the hill but inevitably it will roll back down more often than not the effects of this are intense feelings of anxiety alienation and hopelessness we shout into the void but are met only with deafening silence not even in Echo for most of history people have turned to religion for answers you didn't need to worry if your life had meaning because some higher power was there to provide it this all changed in 19th century Europe as new forms of Science and philosophy threatened to replace Christianity as the central axis around which people's lives revolved notable texts such as Charles Darwin's the Origin of Species challenge previously held beliefs about the nature of humanity leading to a radical shift in society away from religion German philosopher friederick NCH noted this famously declaring God is is dead and we have killed him despite what some may think that statement wasn't claiming that God had literally been murdered nor was nich celebrating rather it was an observation that without Christianity Society had lost the foundation upon which it had built centuries old systems of morality metaphysics and meaning n felt a great deal of anxiety about this swearing that without a clear replacement people would succumb to nihilism I've talked about nihilism before in another video so I won't go into depth here but to give a brief explanation nihilism is the belief in nothingness a belief that rejects the idea of objective truth according to n nihilism was a necessary step on the journey away from religion but it wasn't the destination because it presented a very real problem if people viewed life as having no inherent meaning it would likely lead them to despair because of this he sought to speed up the arrival of nihilism so that he could in turn speed up its departure he believed that after nihilism had passed Humanity could finally arrive at the true philosophical foundation on which society could Thrive unfortunately while he successfully expedited nihilism arrival he failed to do so with its departure in fact n's philosophy was taken up by many of the violent ideologies that Define the early 20th century well over a 100 years later nihilism remains rampant throughout Global culture trust in both secular and religious institutions is at in alltime low our our governments are corrupt there are CEOs with more money than some countries and our spiritual leaders often appear ineffective and out of touch most people today report that Faith plays little to no role in their lives instead we've begun looking to science and reason for answers but these haven't been able to offer a sufficient solution to the problem of meaning either so what are we to do should we just simply accept Our Fate conclude that our lives were without purpose and allow the boulder to roll back over us well 20th century philosophers Albert and Jean Paul Sara didn't think so both argued that in the absence of objective meaning we as freak and rational beings must fight to create our own purpose SAR is credited as the father of modern existentialism a philosophical School concerned with our plight as individuals forced to assume responsibility for our lives without certain knowledge of truth though its roots can be traced back to 19th century figures like saen kard and Fodor dooi SAR differentiated himself by rejecting the the idea that humans are relying on an external power like God to provide us with meaning he claimed that man is nothing else but that which he makes of himself and referred to those who would Outsource this responsibility to a higher power as acting in what he called bad faith in sarto's view existence precedes essence we are conceived and only after being born do we figure out what our purpose in life will be this might seem like an uncontroversial opinion to us today but in the mid 20th century this was a radical idea for most of human history it was assumed that Essence precedes existence since the time of Plato and Aristotle it was widely believed that our purpose as individuals was assigned to us before birth the meaning of your life was ready made by the gods prepackaged before you were even born Sara's claim was a direct contradiction of this widely held belief a declaration that we as humans aren't beholden to gods or Kings to provide us with meaning only to ourselves for Sara the only problem of existence wasn't its lack of meaning but rather its absolutely terrifying level of Freedom after all without an objective meaning or morality every one of us is responsible for Designing our own purpose according to our own ethical code Kimu largely agreed with Sara's diagnosis that we live in a meaningless Universe where we as humans are in his own words abandoned to freedom however he didn't agree with the cure to kamu this solution to the problem of meaning wasn't as simple as making up your own the universe would naturally rebuke our attempts to do so no matter how hard we tried we can push the boulder up the hill but it will always fall back down this in turn would still give rise to feelings of the Absurd as well as the associated sense of anxiety alienation and hopelessness that accompanies it to kamu there were only three possible reactions to this the first of these is suicide which kumu famously wrote is the one truly serious philosophical problem rather than grappling with the absurdity of life you can simply refuse to play the game the only issue is when you're gone you can no longer enjoy life however meaningless it may be it also doesn't actually solve the problem it only allows the Absurd to decide your fate it's essentially admitting defeat the second possible reaction is the solution of Faith which kamu Dub's philosophical suicide similar to SAR concept of bad faith it's when a person rejects the burden of creating their own meaning by Shifting the responsibility to an external ideology this amounts to a kind of denial where the individual deludes themselves into thinking they've conquered the problem when in reality they're just avoiding it it's simply an attempt to replace the Absurd with a set of man-made beliefs the consequence of which is the abdication of existential Freedom importantly Kimu doesn't limit this to religion any ideological system system can serve this function nationalism capitalism or even the values of our own family when we allow external systems to dictate meaning to us we give away the potential to determine our life's purpose how many of us took a job or studied for a degree solely because our parents told us that we should in a world as complicated and confusing as ours it can be tempting to contract out our thinking and just go along with what we're told but the risk of Ruin we run in doing this is ending up in a situation where were unhappy and unfulfilled that's why many of us pause on that random Tuesday afternoon and ask ourselves why am I doing any of this if instead we make our own choices we can decide meaning for ourselves and follow a path that calls to us instead of one that's just prescribed of course there's no guarantee of success in fact according to Kimu you are destined to fail again and again what he argues though is that this is the only true solution to the problem to acknowledge the meaninglessness of life and continue living anyway or as Kimu puts it the only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion the universe will always reject all attempts by the individual to create meaning just like Copus were doomed to Forever push the boulder up the hill knowing that no matter how hard we try it will inevitably roll back down to the bottom yet we must fight back against the Absurd because it is by virtue of our struggle that we Empower ourselves to live life the way we want it's not about the destination it's about the journey this philosophy effectively rejects nihilism as nothing more than a stepping stone on the way to absurdism life is meaningless sure in the only rational course of action is to behave as such there is no plan no objective truth and everything happens purely by accident but this doesn't necessitate nihilism if we instead choose to embrace the Absurd we can view our circumstances as an opportunity to change our perspective Kimu notes that it's not meaninglessness that hurts rather it's the desire for meaning being continuously rejected if we can put aside our desires and simply accept life for what it is we open up ourselves to experiencing it fully living as passionately and as intensely as we like in a world without meaning we are free to constantly invent and reinvent our life's purpose changing it as often as it suits us today you may be stuck in a redundant dead-end job but tomorrow you could easily quit and go about completely redefining Your Existence maybe you want to be a chef or a classical composer maybe you want to spend the next year backpacking through the Wilderness or volunteering with an aid organization all you have to do is find the courage to acknowledge your own freedom and you can be whoever you want to be now knowing this we can abandon any expectations for the future and instead choose to live in the present moment it isn't necessary that our actions lead to something bigger there's no goal we have to reach no afterlife to prepare for then we can find joy in every situation no matter how unpleasant or absurd because well it doesn't really matter although we may be faded to fail there's no reason we can't be happy while we do it this might lead to Greater empathy for our fellow humans as we recognize that every person alive is fighting the same fight that we are we can feel a sense of camaraderie and knowing that we're all in this together we'll never make it to the top of the mountain the meaning of Our Lives will forever elude us but as Kimu says the struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man's heart it's because of this that one must imagine Copus [Music] happy death can only be interpreted by people who are alive yet since no one who is alive can simultaneously experience what it's like to be dead who then does death actually concern this logic is oddly reassuring even so if my doctor were to call me up right now and tell me that I would die in 12 hours I would still likely spend all that time in a state of debilitation fear and anxiety just thinking about this possibility makes me realize that whether I like it or not death terrifies me right now even as a person who is fortunate enough to be in good health it seems irrational and perhaps illogical to fear something that I have so little knowledge about or control over but no matter what I do I just can't seem to shake this nagging fear of the unknown and I'm not alone according to the 2017 survey of American fears conducted by Chapman University 20.3% of Americans are either afraid of or very afraid of dying but why do we have such a strong fear of death the fear of death largely comes from the uncertainty and lack of control of the situation but perhaps there's a better way to think about our lives and our eventual passing that might end this fear or at least chip away at its root cause to start off let's talk about the only other life event aside from death which has happened and will continue to happen to every single person who will ever exists on this planet birth try to imagine the moment you were born of course you can't actually remember this I know but just try for a second to bring yourself back to that time the moment when you were pulled out of the darkness by a mysterious set of hands only to be flooded by fluorescent lights and the chaotic bustle of a delivery room as your eyes adjusted to the light for the very first time you also had to take in a room full of total strangers who were all likely staring at you some of whom you'd never see again and others you could go on to spend the next 80 plus years with on this journey we call life this journey that you in that hospital room however many years ago had absolutely no tangible knowledge about we talk about how scary death is but the truth is birth was probably equally as scary if not more so it's no wonder that we judge the health of the newborn by how hysterically they cry in the delivery room my point in bringing all of this up is to say that death isn't the first life-changing existential experience you've gone through was birth scary most likely but every single day since then you learned more and more about the experience that is being alive to the point where you thought of going back to the state you were in before birth has now become the idea you fear Mark Twain once wrote I do not fear death I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it this perfectly expresses the another truth that most people fail to consider when it comes to death we all know and seem to accept easily that there was an infinite amount of time before we were alive on Earth so why is it so hard for some of us to Grapple with the fact that there will also be an infinite amount of time that comes after our existence on earth when someone dies at an early age we feel great sadness for all the Earthly events they won't be able to be a part of but when a baby is born we don't mourn everything they missed out on before their delivery we all seem to know how nonsensical it would be to feel sad about that a baby's time of birth is what it is a fixed situation which nobody has had really any control over but when it comes to death there seems to be so many wh ifs or ifon involved maybe it's because of the how and when of our passing seems to say something about the way that we live consider the death of Robert Atkins the man who dedicated a large majority of his life to refining the Atkins diet and preaching it as the most health conscious way to live only to die by slipping on an icy sidewalk people often reference this as a way to say that death is inevitable no matter how healthily one chooses to live a message which ironically enough is the exact opposite of the one Atkin spent his life trying to convey stories like Roberts are another major reason why some of us find Death so frightening the idea that the where how and when of our passing puts a climactic punctuation mark at the end of our existence and somehow adds to the definition of what our life meant you either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain you seem to accept and even participate in creating these punctuations or labels even when it comes to external things and people that we have no interpersonal connection too when a breaking news story emerges where an innocent person is murdered the majority of us collectively labeled their life as beautiful and their death as tragic and when that person's kill is found guilty and sentenced to death we label their life as Despicable and their death as deserved labeling others is a comforting habit that is strongly hardwired into our psychology it's part of how we organize simplify and make sense of our world yet we all know that even the best one-word label couldn't possibly be used to sum up the entirety of who and and what a person is and what the life they lived was so the idea that our death could assign us with one of these simplistic labels which don't allow any room for the complexity of who we really were is terrifying if there's anything certain and non-debatable it's that death is a termination of our physical bodies Our Hearts stop beating our neurons cease firing and we take one last breath our physical presence here on Earth is terminated at the time of our deaths while this is undeniably true it still leaves us with multiple unanswerable questions a large one being are we just a body a spectacularly designed or random collection of cells atoms and molecules that is purely physical or is it possible that we're composed of a physical body a physical mind and something else something intangible and non-physical like for the lack of a better term a soul this debate has been going on between philosophers for a millennium epicurus believed quite adamantly that we are merely physical beings whose deaths were a total annihilation of our existence while some of Plato's most famous dialogues argue for the immortality of the Soul if you believe that there's nothing more to us than the atoms and DNA that compose our physical bodies and Minds then you might be what modern philosophers call a physical list if on the other hand your inclination is to believe that we are composed of a physical body a physical mind and something intangible that resembles the soul then you might be what they call a dualist there are are other variations and subsect of these definitions but for simplicity's sake we'll leave it there thinking back now to the problem of death with all this in mind we can clearly see that whether or not someone is a dualist or physical list makes an enormous difference in the ways they would interpret their beliefs about death and ultimately whether they would fear death or not if death is a definitive end to the physical body then as far as physical lists are concerned death is a pretty straightforward pill to swallow death is just the end but for du this the possibilities are quite endless for if we possess something like a soul then the range of options of what could happen to that Soul after our physical bodies die is wide open while some people cling to religious texts and beliefs are some answers in Comfort non-religious people are left with a huge uncertainty over what life after death holds and as humans we have evolved to be naturally scared of the unknown maybe the best place to turn to for further investigation of death is to consider the stories of people who have died the near-death experience Research Foundation presents what many would consider to be the most compelling scientific evidence for life after death Jeffrey long the foundation's creator has studied and examined the accounts of thousands of people who have reportedly had near-death experiences while no two people's near-death experiences are exactly the same there are some characteristic features that have been commonly observed long has conducted and posted 5,100 interviews to date with people who have claimed to have had in nde and compiled the data he's gotten from them over the years in this he identified 12 essential elements that are consistently present in his subjects some of which are an out-of Body Experience encountering deceased relatives friends or mystical beings and experiencing a sense of alteration in time or space technically speaking having any kind of lucid experience while one is clinically dead without a heartbeat should be impossible still 74% of the people interviewed reportedly felt conscious and alert during their time spent dead than they did in their waking lives the remaining 20.4% reportedly felt the same amount of Consciousness awareness in death as they do alive while only 5.2% said they experienced less even though the belief that death is the end of our Consciousness is relatively common out of the thousands of people who participated in this survey only 5% reported that to be true for their near-death experience these statistics are startling for sure and there are plenty more like this that are equally compelling but I think that sometimes it can be too easy to tune out the significance of figures like these because well you can find statistical data to support just about any claim you're trying to make these days perhaps a more powerful and effective way to discuss ndes is to delve into specific stories take this one for example reported by a woman who died by accidental electrocution at the age of seven I was transported out of my body and surrounded by the brightest warmest like ever the only way to explain it is our true home it felt very familiar it felt like home I had never felt at home here on Earth before or after this experience I didn't feel or see my body I believe I was more like a pure light source that flows just like a river of pure love and joy I was just so happy to be home another person claimed that the Earth is like a film that hasn't been developed not until we reach the other side is the film developed everything will be seen in beautiful colors that don't exist here on Earth and another said in an instant I knew that the life we live is an illusion it's not real because it's a creation of our minds we continually create thoughts and then project these thoughts outside of the mind just as cinematic frames are projected onto a screen reports like these are incredibly interesting but you might be wondering where the proof is for all we know these are just subjective accounts that people could be just making up and you would be right sadly as of right now there is no definitive proof proof of the validity of nde like you I also started off my research into this a little bit skeptical but the more of these stories I heard and read over time the harder it became for me to believe that there wasn't at least some validity to them no matter what belief you choose to carry with you about what happens to us after we die I think it's important to research the literature out there learn what the people who have firsthand knowledge have to say and use all the information to form a real thought out opinion for yourself because sadly there is no no way to tie a bow on this topic and wrap it up nicely no matter what any of us say death will always remain an existential mystery but if you struggle with the fear of death here is something that helped me tremendously and hopes that it helps you too the most comforting thing about death is that it will happen to us all we all know how it goes one day we're born one day we die everything that happens in between we know and understand but everything that happened before and will happen after we know nothing about as a result it's really difficult to say what exactly the meaning or importance for us being here is if we can't tell how we came or where we came from from how can we know why we're here in the same vein if we don't know where we're going or what we're going to become how can we tell if any of our present actions have any significance at all it is this uncertainty of both our Collective pasts and Futures that has allowed the question what is the meaning of life to plague Humanity ever since we became sentient we've never been able to objectively answer this question as a species however a lot of us have found comfort in many different ideologies to at least subdue the anxiety that it causes in many different religions a DED made the entire universe put us all in it and whatever we do

Channel: Aperture

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Keywords: aperture, yt:cc=on, stoicism, philosophy, self improvement, the greatest stoic quotes, powerful stoic quotes, philosophy lecture, ryan holiday stoicism, inspiration, personal development, psychology facts, social media, the dangers of social media, tiktok, snapchat, meta, instagram, facebook, mental health, harmful tiktok trends, mental health disorder, mark zuckerberg, youtube, treat, thinking, deep thoughts, documentary, educationl, educational documentary, end of the world, end, nihilist

Id: x0lWhi4pOSk

Length: 107min 28sec (6448 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 24 2023