Notes From 20 YouTube Videos I Watched
- Aug 11, 2020
- 43 min read
What's The Point of a Doomed Romance? (Part 1) | 500 Days of Summer
In a romance movie the ultimate goal is for 2 characters (usually the main characters) to end up together...so what's the point of the story when we know that both characters will never be with each other? Is it just an examination of a failed relationship? Is it just to feel bad and think that romance just isn't for everyone sorry go home and feel bad about it ...? That you'll be alone forever since all romance ends in tragedy anyways… Not quite.
Most romance movies tend to show 2 characters ending up together as the main cathartic moment to look forward to before the movie ends. The doomed relationship represents a different type of goal that the characters are trying to attain. A goal they didn't even know they were headed for. Perhaps not the goal they would have wanted but the one they needed. A lesson in which the trials of romance provide the necessary conflict for an important internal discovery...their own personal growth.
We follow Tom a young twenty something at a greeting card company, he's bored out of his mind at an office meeting until he sees his boss's new assistant Summer. And he falls in love. He discovers she even likes the same bands he does & takes this shared interest as one of the many "strong" signs of her being perhaps / definitely THE ONE.
Tom and Summer present their mismatched points of view. Tom is a romantic he believes in love, he believes in fate destiny and the notion of the one. Summer on the other hand is the embodied rebuttal to his rosy take on love, she even starts challenging his ideals. For Summer, relationships all share the same fleeting qualities None of them ever last, feelings change emotions get hurt and things get messy. For her, relationships have up until now mainly been flings (as her name denotes). So why go through all of that trouble or heartache when you can enjoy being single and work on yourself as an individual.
But even after challenging one of his core beliefs they start a casual relationship together. In doing so she starts testing the other aspects of his life like his taste in music or his offhanded judgmental observations all the while letting her general outgoing disposition naturally push his boundaries and ultimately challenging the way he views himself.
Not much is known about what happened to dampen Tom's dream of becoming an architect, apart from the first conversation he had with Summer. We learn that he studied architecture but couldn't get a job, so he's been working at the card company for about three to four years. The only reason we get to learn this is because of the exterior forces around Tom that question his actions. He never really says it, but he does miss architecture and he's obviously not ready to let go of it. As Summer and Tom start dating, he shows her all different designs he loves around the city and is eager to share it with her even his favorite spot in the city. Summer notices he becomes a different person when he speaks of the buildings unlike the man she sees at work, bored at his desk and unfulfilled. This inner spark intrigues her, but she knows he struggles to show it or might be embarrassed to say it out loud. She invites him to verbalize and exteriorize what he would do to change things as an architect. This is a realization he would not have had without Summers quirky intrusive help. Even once they broke up, she was still interested in knowing if he managed to leave his job and follow his calling. She helped Tom rediscover himself.
As everything was stripped away, he focused on the thing that remained a constant in his life...his passion. Little by little he managed to rebuild himself and move forward while focusing on the pursuit of his once sidetracked career...his true love. This rebuilding helps him acquire a new perspective...a different outlook on life. The lasting aftertaste of heartbreak has left a new-found sense of clarity inside of Tom (with a hint of cynicism): He's been doing things the wrong way. He realizes that he hasn't had the best perception of love or relationships. He would often times misinterpret the smallest things to the point of absurdity. If he could misinterpret the small things going wrong, then he could equally misinterpret things going his way.
The characters around him also offered a sobering view of his relationship with Summer. What really struck a chord with him is his sister asking him to look back at his relationship under a different lens. ”Look, I know you think that she was the one...but I don't...no, I think your just remembering the good stuff...next time you look back I uhm...really think you should look again.”
As the montage strays from the happy vignettes in the relationship he starts focusing on the warning signs the red flags the things he didn't catch at first glance or didn't want to...The things that show that it was never really perfect...He only chose to see it that way. Their relationship is like their trips to Ikea. They walk around the kitchens the bedrooms, the camera framing them like a couple sharing an intimate moment, but the kitchen is not kitchen the bedroom is not a bedroom it's all an aesthetically pleasing mock-up of an ideal...an ideal he wants... a relationship… but that at its core doesn't work.
The real moment of clarity that shatters his core belief happens once he's invited to Summer's dinner party. The scene is a simple yet effective juxtaposition of Tom's expectation vs his reality. The rekindling of a relationship, Love triumphing over all… vs a friend invited to a dinner party...not unlike anyone else there... leaving without being followed. The encapsulation of how sometimes we can create a beautiful false expectation that reality fails to live up to.
The movie offers an important piece of growth in this last part. Tom is now a different man, he has a been tested, he has rebuilt himself and has a new point of view on things but now he meets with Summer for the last time as a final test of growth (like an awkward but amical boss battle) before moving on to the next phase of his Life. This time its on his terms. We end where we began. This was the girl he felt he was in love with and now he looks for answers.
On how she became a married woman: “I just...I just woke up one day and I knew. Knew what? What I was never sure of with you.”
This story isn't about the one, but the one you learn from. The one that teaches you something, something important about yourself whether you like it or not. What things you need to leave behind or improve on and what things are actually important to you to keep moving forward. What to look for, for the next time because there will be a next time. The one that offers growth from a painful learning experience in the process of adulthood.
“It was...It was meant to be, and I just kept thinking Tom was right.
- (laughs) No
- Yeah, I did (laughs) I did...It just wasn't me that you were right about…”
He was looking for the one but instead he found someone.
The TikTok Ban
Zhang Yiming is China’s Mark Zuckerberg. He started Bytedance which with Musical.ly formed tiktok. 2 billion downloads in 4 years. Bytedance is worth 75 Billion. Zhang is worth 16 billion himself. What is remarkable is that it is not a clone of a foreign made app & not a (financially) govt backed company like Huawei. It is China’s first true consumer tech export success story, despite overcoming the challenges of starting in China. On 29 June, India (their biggest market) banned TikTok & 60 other China based apps accused of stealing & sending user data outside of the country. US accounts for 10% of TikTok’s user base, but 56% of revenue. A USA ban on TikTok could allow US based companies to capitalise. Instagram will release its own version, Reels soon. Netflix has identified TikTok as a competitor in letter to shareholders. A ban on tiktok raises eyebrows as such an app presenting a threat to national security is not a very intuitive argument. But experts claim that that is what makes it such a great tool; no one suspects it. Experts agree that TikTok’s data collection practices are common, & even restrained compared to other ad-based services like FaceBook, Reddit & LinkedIn. China’s 2017 National Intelligence Law compels all companies with info stored within China to hand-over data upon request; with no constraints of courts / warrants. It does not matter that ByteDance is incorporated in Cayman Islands or Zoom HQ in California. Companies access the China internet market via self-censorship it used to be rational to profit maximise with this approach but now there is a trade off. Now at a time of record bipartisanship in favour of a harder stance on China, it is no longer possible to feign ignorance. Option 1: leave china market & advert PR against competitors who do not leave China, all whilst facing backlash from investors. 2. Leave non-chines markets 3. Higher risk, higher reward: Juggle both (like TikTok). Though TikTok has seemingly sided with USA (hired a new American CEO, created 10,000 US jobs), it may not assuage fears during a time of intense scrutiny towards China & a presidency at stake. Long term solution that may not seem as politically strong, as opposed to a ban, is to pass regulation governing data storage requiring disclosure of algorithms, auditing & enforcement etc foreign & domestic to these fair standards. TikTok would remain, incentivising innovation amongst domestic companies & user data privacy would be respected.
How to Remember Your Life
Vast majority of you life is forgotten. It would be nice to remember the best stuff & the mundane but special stuff. Photos & videos is the way to go. By taking photos of experiences, our brain hones in on the visual experience not the feeling & general experience. Delete unwanted photos often. How to document places: after taking the photos, take a break, then let your brain take in the other info such as the sounds, smells, breeze.
How To Remove Toxic People From Your Life: What I've Learned
Toxic: deeply unhappy & refuses to grow & change thus being destructive to all those around / toxic situation. E.g. of a toxic bond: where you cannot grow into the person you need to be. It is not your job to ‘change’ / ‘fix’ other people. 2. You do not need to prove yourself / gain approval from others 3. You do not owe anyone anything (beyond basic respect). Exiting these situation: work on yourself. Just cut them off. Cutting ties creates space for yourself or others. Though it is painful & discomforting, it can be liberating. Toxicity is contagious & may be due to lack of awareness. ‘Cleanse’ yourself, pay attention to bad habits & break them. “What you say about others, say a lot more about yourself.” Changing your environment can give you perspective & change those you interact with. This is your life to live. “The most painful thing is losing yourself in the process of loving someone too much, and forgetting that you are special too.”
― Ernest Hemingway
Total Recall - What's the Difference?
The book’s main character saves the ‘world’ by merely existing while the film’s main character does so with his proactiveness. The film is more than just violence, gore & sex. It is about reality & identity. Regardless of how a viewer interprets the movie; seeing it all as a fantasy/delusion or reality, he/she is not wrong. The film exists both ways, enabling it to be relevant 30 years later.
What's The Point of a Doomed Romance? (Part 2) | Her
It is a doomed romance as you can infer that in the long run, a relationship between a human & an AI is not to last (Honestly I find this debatable). The doomed relationship moulds both parties & they grow. Theo deals with the emotions he had troubles with & his loneliness.
1. Seeing their potential: his failed marriage has a hold on him still. She sees Theo’s potential in writing letters. He opens up & sees his own potential. She too gets closer to her potential. As an AI, she learns with experience. But she sees the lack of a body as a limitation. She focuses on this ‘lack of a body’ issue until she emulates natural human behaviour which she does not need to replicate. She begins to lose sight of her limitations & focuses on her abilities. She evolves & has new emotions. She admits to being in love with 641 others. She ascends to an unknown metaphysical plane with other OSs while Theo receives a new copy of his book. Samantha is off to pursue a new reality while Theo has the ability to reach more people via his writing. Both their aims were vastly different but they would not have reached them if not for each other.
2. Being alone: Theo is alone again? Not quite. He is emotionally & physically distant from others from the way the movie is shot at the start of the movie. It focuses on the unused space around him. With Samantha’s inquisitiveness, he opens up. He is smiling more, he has a swagger in his step. His relationship with others flourishes while this happens. By the end, he is alone once more, but he chooses to go get Amy (his college friend who is left alone by her OS as well) rather than fall into his old habits of social distancing.
3. Dealing with emotions: what made Theo & Samantha connect was their emotions. He was physically there but not emotionally there which caused his marriage to fail. On the opposite, Theo & Samantha cannot be physically together but they are emotionally. It was ironic for someone like him to but unable to verbalise his feelings during his marriage.
For Theo & Samantha’s relationship to thrive, the feelings & emotions could not be anymore real. Theo initially treats Samantha’s AI as basic by asking her to read his emails dismissively while playing a game. She in turn reads it in a robotic voice jokingly, implying that she was not a random computer but a real being with feelings. Samantha helps Theo find words to describe why he liked her, what he liked about her, himself & his writing. Theo does something he was unable to do before being Samantha. He finally writes not for a client / stranger but for himself to his ex-wife expresses his regret & what she means to him. He manages to finally move on.
How Robinhood App Crashed on the best day in Wall Street history
Stock market cost per transaction is low but big companies traditionally charge huge fees. Younger generations distrust the banking system after multiple economic crisis eroding trust in traditional banking systems. Thus robinhood provided no fees no min for stocks. Well targetted app: 80% of users under 35. Average age of 28. By 2017 (2 years since launch), they had 2 million users. Valuation rose forms 1.3 B to 8 B from 2017 to 2020. Many wondered how they made money. E.g. when some one buys a share of apple, Robinhood sells that order to a bigger trading company & receives cents for it. These transactions accumulate. This is payment for order flow (PFOF): for the more orders you give me, the more I pay you. This can be wrong when a company chooses to sacrifice the best possible conditions for users in favour of better returns for themselves. In 2019 FINRA fined them. They did not ensure users were getting the best prices possible. In 2019, E-trade, Ameritrade & Charles Schwab went 0 fee. Competitors fell in value but all followed suit. Was their goal to disrupt the banking world? To democratise the financial world (which is why there are called robin hood?) Their biggest screw up came on 2 March 2020. On the biggest one-day point gain in DOW history, Robinhood’s system had crashed. Thrice in that week.
Can You Ever Trust Experts?
Philip Tetlock is a psychologist who over 20 years tracked 80,000 predictions made by ~300 people, all of whom made a living offering insights into the future of politics & economy. Tetlock's professional predictors of the world were generally less accurate than random chance.
Tetlock is quick to point out that while people have taken his study to mean that there are no trustworthy experts that's not the case they're just a small minority. 2 types of experts:
Hedgehogs: bold predictors. They have a theory of how the world works, are completely sure of that theory & make daring big predictions. They're the worst. E.g. bill crystal a man who makes his living writing & talking about the news predicted Iraq would be a two-month war & that Barack Obama would not win a single primary over Hillary Clinton. Yet, he has a thriving career on cable news.
Foxes: experts who would hem & haw about the future considering a wide variety of data points and perspectives. They have a better track record than the hedgehogs & unlike them, become more accurate as they accumulate more knowledge. But, foxes mostly do not make for entertaining cable news guests
Whether you're making advanced computer models or just trying to give better advice, the steps are the same: you predict, see the results & adjust the formula. Therein lies the problem with hedgehogs: there's no iterative process there's no accountability.
Figure out when people are predicting for sport like on tv and if they have any incentive at all to revise their bold proclamations when they're incessantly wrong.
The Wirecard Fraud - A $2 Billion Disaster
How did their stock price fall from 100 euros a share to less than 2 within 9 days? How did 2.1 B go missing? This was a tale of lies, accounting manipulation, hacking, attacks on journalists, an arrested former ceo & a missing executive.
Firm provided online payment services acting as an intermediary between consumers & producers. Online money transfers were fast, safe & convenient. Riding off the back of the e-commerce boom the company became a giant in 5 years. CEO marcus braun became a billionaire. They had developed a core business in managing the payments of online gambling & adult content. Via m&a they moved into banking & were issuing their own credit cards.
Marcus braun, the ‘Steve Jobs of Germany’ had global ambitions. In a company Christmas party in 2009 he stated that english would now become the company's official language but this drew awkward reactions as only half of the staff at the time spoke english. Speaking at tech conferences he began sporting the classic black turtleneck. He had grown the company to a top 30 stock in Germany, making Wirecard a rare european tech success story. But Braun seemed disjointed from the rest of the company. He created a barrier between himself & most of the company, working on a floor only accessible by senior members, living a rediculous lifestyle.
Investors truly believed that this was a new found german fintech version of steve jobs. But not everyone was believing the hype. Toby Clothier head of Mirabraud’s security strategy team recalls his impressions of braun “the thing we found odd was his obsession with certain words his all-time favorite word was strong we know this because we counted. Other favorites were machine learning & ecosystem. If you are very gullible then you might say he's a tech visionary but if you look closer it was all gobbledygook.”
In 2017 braun told investors that the latest AI was used to process & analyze data in wirecard systems when actually wirecard staff were merely using excel to organize the info.
Another skeptic henrik lieber met braun & asked about the strategy & tech of Wirecard. He received ‘abstract’ & ‘evasive” answers almost as if they were being pre-written / read out by a machine. With the red flags, hendrick’s fund sold all of their wirecard shares weeks later.
Braun liked to remind people of his power coming from his 7% share. He reportedly checked the share price on his phone often & would give verbal blasts to senior management if the price fell. He would take out large loans using his shares as collateral.
KPMG released a scathing report on wirecard's financials in April of 2020. At a recorded town hall meeting, braun can be seen fuming with rage. How did it get there: 1st time that wirecard faced scrutiny was in 2008. Auditors from ernst and young were called to review allegations in the company's balance sheets but strangely the 2 whistleblowers were prosecuted by german authorities due to undisclosed stock positions. They were more busy with pursuing journalists who wrote about the dodgy business practices of wirecard. Reasoning was these 2 would write bad about wirecard, then short before the news breaks.
As wirecard grew, so did the questions. Reports of financial irregularities surfaced & there were claims that the company's operations were far smaller than what they appeared on paper. it also seemed no matter how the economy was doing wirecard was always thriving. in 2015 it was reported that there was a 250 million euro gap in the company's balance sheet the equivalent of three years of profit for the company wirecard dismissed this as short seller backed propaganda & analysts agreed.
In 2016 claims surfaced that the company was involved in money laundering. Wirecard denied all allegations but this drew investigations from both the german financial watchdog & private agencies. Then, over the next few years journalists & short sellers who had spoken negatively about wirecard's operations began to systematically receive phishing emails designed to compromise their computers. It hasn't been completely verified that wirecard was responsible. In 2018 the company pushed into the dax 30 index. Thus, wirecard became an automatic stock in the portfolio of countless german pension funds. At their peak Wirecard was worth 28billion dollars but it was the start of 2019 when things started to escalate. There was an internal investigation at wirecard singapore office over fraud: money had supposedly been sent to india & back in order to falsely increase number of transactions to seem like more business was done.
To process payments in countries where wirecard didn't have a license, they would use third-party companies. Some of these were in Singapore, Dubai but most importantly the philippines. Strangely the Philippines office was shared with a bus company. Since wirecard didn't have an operating license in these regions, the idea was that these foreign companies would do the payment processing for wirecard & wirecard would receive a commission. This ended up being a huge part of wirecard's business, pretty much all of its profit, 1.9billion euros / 2 billion us dollars worth. investigators found that there was no money coming into wirecard's munich bank it was curious but wirecard explained it away to the auditors that there was actually a set of accounts managed at two banks in the philippines so the investigators went to the philippines. Upon arriving to visit wirecard's partner company in the philippines the financial times reported having found a retired man & his family who was surprised to find out that their home was supposedly a branch of a multinational company. Wirecard were furious & sued the financial times for ”misuse of trade secrets”.
A month later, in a strange vote of confidence, softbank invested a further 900 M euros into wirecard. Towards end of 2019 wirecard appoints kpmg to perform an audit to prove that all allegations were groundless. 6 months later, in early 2020 kpmg reports it cannot verify ”the lion's share of wirecard's profits over the last 2 years.” Marcus braun vigorously denied all claims of wrong doing & then in June 2020 german police raided the munich HQ.
What wirecard had claimed the whole time was that they were using third parties to process payments. these third parties would then give wirecard a commission netting them two billion dollars and the majority of their profit. Reality was it all appears to be an accounting sham. The 2 billion dollars wasn't in the philippines. the banks that were supposed to beholding the wirecard money told investigators that they had no idea what they were talking about the bank stated that this money simply didn't exist.
Over the next week marcus braun resigns & he's arrested shortly after. Wirecard then makes a statement they admit that the money probably never existed in the first place. shortly after they filed for insolvency. jan martileck wirecard's former COO & marcus's right-hand man has vanished. German pensioners have lost money. other payment companies owned by wirecard were thrown into chaos
The story raises questions of the effectiveness of regulators, auditors, rating agencies & financial watchdogs. Was there corruption involved to have this go on for over a decade? “nobody apparently looked really into the business model neither the regulator nor the analysts. apparently wirecard was always shielded somewhat as the poster child of being a tech company in germany which we don't have too many of.“
How To Become A Modern Polymath
Be physically fit & have energy to explore things. Explore passions / obsessions & go deep. Educate yourself. Knowledge expands your horizons & gives you meaning. Observe yourself.
How to Make Money on the Internet: 5 Different Methods
Freelancing: online portfolio. Affilaite marketing via clickable links to products. Programatic ads: e.g. YouTube Adsense. Brand deals: ads by creators. AIDA: Get attention, then get them interested then desire then action. Selling your own products.
How is Money Created? – Everything You Need to Know
Focus will be on US as it is the world reserve currency. How is money created? Who's going to pay it back? 3 ways that money is created & consequences. True origins of wealth inequality.
Physical Money by the Government
In practice, it is outsourced to the central bank Royal Mint but controlled by the government. Physical money: paper money or coins. Accounts for ~3 to 8% of economy. Created to meet obligations of private banks: when at an ATM to withdraw cash, banks need to ensure they have enough. A $10 note takes $0.03 to print thus, $9.97 profit added as tax revenue of the government (seigniorage). This reduces government debt & taxpayer burden but governments cannot always print physical money. If the politician running the office creates money at will, there is a massive conflict of interest. There'll be an urge to keep printing to fulfil campaign promises / fund wars & excessive printing leads to massive devaluation. Loss in purchasing power of money over time is inflation e.g. of runaway inflation: Argentina, Zimbabwe & Venezuela. Money can be thought of as a measuring stick of value that is highly elastic & can change depending on supply. Gold was the measuring stick of value gold, kind of like a physical anchor keeping the money supply in check & governments responsible until 1971 when President Nixon announced that US would no longer convert dollars to gold at a fixed value. Since then, money; the measuring stick of value has become elastic. As USD backs all other currencies as a reserve currency Nixon's decision changed the world. Despite politicians supposedly not being able to influence money creation it's happening anyway.
Private Banks & Debt Based Money
Vast amount of money created today is done by the private banking sector. In most developed economies ~97% of money supply is created digitally by banks & thus, most money in the world is privatised. Banks invented digital money when they managed to persuade lawmakers after many early bank runs. A bank run is an event where depositors try to get their money out all at once but the banks do not have it. From these events banks argued that they should be legally allowed to create more deposits than actually exist based upon debt. This is how governments outsourced to the creation of digital money. Idea of using debt as money begins much earlier. In 1704 the English Parliament passed the promissory notes Act. E.g. it is a written promise saying you will pay back the $20 borrowed. Under the law this piece of paper was as good as $20 dollars. Today we digitised this agreement & call it debt. Banks were then free to create & destroy debt, hence money from themselves rented out at interest. The whole world's economy is based upon these promises. When you go to a bank to borrow some money, the banking license gives that bank the ability to create money every time they issue a loan. This is done via the double accounting system. E.g. if you buy a $500,000 house, bank creates $500,000 in their account & you have $500,000 in debt that is the promise to pay it back with interest. This $500,000 debt can enter the wider economic system as when you purchased the house, the owner of that house can use that fresh debt created by the bank, that they received from you to buy other things in the economy. Thus, in our current system, more debt leads to more growth. Key point: debt is money, just from a different POV (asset to lender; liability of debt to borrower) When a bank issues a loan, it is not another’s savings nor is it money from the bank. It is brand-new money created digitally, a digital representation of the government's money which you can spend. Bank benefits from this brand-new money as they charge interest. When loan is repaid, debt disappears & the money also disappears but the bank's profit from the interest remains. RE & property markets are the largest tools for creating digital money as banks decided that it is the safest yet most profitable form of creating debt as inability to repay the loan means banks can take the houses. In developed nations, vast amounts of money is backed by the mortgage market. E.g. Australia: Banks have abandoned investment into the wider economy & have shifted focus to investments in housing, pushing up housing prices as people take on more debts to buy houses that could not have afforded but banks make more money. This cycle over decades has created one of the biggest property bubbles on the planet (simply look at household debt to GDP ratio)
When you deposit cash into a bank, banks become the legal owner of that money. Banks keep 10% of deposits on reserve & can loan out 90% to someone else. That other person can deposit that money into another bank and so on (fractional reserve lending). E.g. initial deposit of $100 with 10% reserve requirement can lead to $1000 in total money circulation. This was how it worked until 26 Mar 2020. Now there is a 0% reserve requirement. Federal Reserve: “This action eliminated reserve requirements for all depository institutions.” Banks can now create infinite money with no reserves & it does not stop there. When banks hold your deposit they can, along with hedge funds, gamble with it via investments in financial instruments like derivatives & securities for superior returns. Problem today: banks are playing with so many derivatives, sometimes stacked on top of each other with leverage multiplying factors that nobody actually knows how much money is tied up in this gambling. Estimates put the derivative market at over one quadrillion dollars, over 10 times the global economy. In booms, everyone takes on debt (loans) & they spend it on things that they normally cannot afford. This causes economic growth. Eventually people cannot afford to take on more debt & cannot pay it back. Bank stop lending & defaults start to take place & economy takes a downturn. This is natural & has happened for centuries but in 2008 everything changed. The world did not want to go through the pain of a downturn & some analysts mark this as the point that the real economy died. In 2008, banks became so large, intertwined & integral to supply of money that when were about to collapse, governments had to use the central banks to bail them out. Banks create 97% of all money as debt & if this cannot be paid back, it can cause a systemic failure; a risk of collapse of the entire global monetary system. Since 2008, the economy was dead but has been on life support ever since. A decade of hyper low interest rates, which basically made the cost of borrowing money free, have caused market distortions so large that has compounded the entire problem. There were short-term gains for the consequence of long term pain. When private banks make risky bets & incur losses central banks can rescue them with their infinite wallet as mentioned by Fed Chairman Jerome Powell in an interview for CNBC’s a 60 Minutes. We have to pay these debts back. All of this money that's being created is like that piece of paper we saw with the promise on it except is signed by all of us and we signed that we're going to pay this back through taxation us and our future generations. Governments don't actually support the people. It's the people that support government's via taxation. Taxation & trade are the 2 major ways that governments can raise money to pay back the central bank loans with interest. When governments use the central bank's to bail out private banks for their risky behaviour, government's are left with the debt which eventually has to be paid back by the taxpayers in the future. Recap: private banks create ~ 97% of money it by creating loans which is debt. They can to an extent spend & gamble consumer deposits as they legally own it. Too big to fail banks are backed up by the central bank creating a moral hazard.
Central Bank Digital Money
Most insane form of money creation. Quantitative easing (QE) is a new form of money that was invented by the Japanese central bank in 1989, popularized by the Federal Reserve in US during the 2008 crisis. Central bank creates money in order to issue loans directly to the banking sector, large corporations, & the public. It is a way of flooding money into the economy during extreme events like the financial crisis of 2008. Thus, central bank's balance sheets have gone completely out of control in order to prop up the economy a little bit longer. In 2008, the 700 billion dollar bailout of QE was very controversial. It was thought to be a one-off emergency scenario but over the next decade, the Federal Reserve was unable to reverse it. Significance: debt of America from 1776 to 2008 was less than a trillion dollars. By 2014, that number was 4.4 trillion & since covid, 3 trillion was added in 3 months. US central bank is creating hundreds of billions of dollars in mere hours & it is seeming to have less of an effect as it continues. Central banks use their magic money to buy the equivalent amount of bonds from the government via the bond market (which exists to lend money to corporations / governments) Although the stock market gets more press, the bond market is bigger. A bond: same as debt but is issued by a government / corporation. Central banks which have no savings can create money to buy these bonds. Can a central bank go bankrupt? According to the European Central Bank’s paper in 2016, “central banks are protected from insolvency due to their ability to create more money..” Governments cannot raise money except for raising taxes but owed trillions to central banks. The hope is that the borrowed money can kick-start the economy but something else is happening. When central banks buy bonds given by the government / corporations they can end up owning a lot of the world's assets e.g. balance sheet of the Japanese central bank is bigger than the entire GDP of Japan. They own 80% of their stock market. The Swiss central bank owns 90 billion in American stocks. Central banks are creating money out of nothing & they cannot go bankrupt but yet they buy real assets. There are consequences. These central bank interventions remove stock markets from reality. During the 20th century, the stock market used to reflect the economy. But recently, the US stock market has become nearly 2 times bigger than the nations GDP which makes no sense. Central bank intervention is why on 20 April 2013, 30 million became unemployed in US but the stock market had its best month since 1987. Central bank printed trillions, gave it to banks & hedge funds with ~ 0% interest. This money made it straight into the stock market while the real economy barely got any help. Money creation from this has led to inflation globally in housing prices & stock markets. The printed money ends up in all of these assets pushing up the prices so the few people who own large amounts of stocks end up ridiculously wealthy, while there's no growth in the real economy. Rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Since 1980s wealth of the upper class has been tied to the stock market. Since 2008, stock market became glued to the Federal Reserve. The more they print, the more the stock market goes up & the richer they become. Since 1980, their wealth has grown 420%. When central banks print money, the first recipients of that newly printed money enjoy higher standards of living at the expense of the later recipients of that money after inflation has already taken hold (Cantillon effect). Experts believe that when the rich finally sell their stocks & real estate to buy other assets in times of distress, the rate at which money changes hands in the economy (money velocity) will start to pick up & that is when we will start seeing real inflation in the general economy. Recap: central banks have no savings in their account & cannot go bankrupt, but can create infinite amounts of money by buying government bonds. A bond is an exchange of money for a promise that the government would eventually pay it back with interest this money eventually must be paid back by future citizens of a country either through taxation or inflation.
The Real Solution
Printing money is only a band-aid. Decades ago, societies & nations should have focused on wealth creation rather than excessive housing financialisation & gambling. Banks should have made loans to productive areas of society: small & medium businesses entrepreneurs, education, manufacturing, innovation, R&D. It is riskier for the banks but the benefits lead to more jobs, innovation, competition, living standards in the long run. Governments can collect more taxes from these incomes without necessarily raising taxes. Taxes can then be spent on social programs for those in need. Focusing on wealth creation & productivity takes time effort & hard work. But it is frankly too late for this option. We will have to deal with the consequences of a fragile system. This is all going to lead to something very big & unpleasant over the next decade. A worse stagflation may occur due to excessive amounts of debt & social instability. The mainstream view is that eventually the world will lose faith in USD though some macroeconomists think that USD may actually rise in value as other nations try to sell their goods / exchange falling currencies for the USD as it is the cleanest economy out of a world of falling economies (Dollar Milkshake Theory). Some people think that Digital stable coins will be able to solve a lot of problems. Some still who argue that nations can print infinite amounts of money as long as they keep producing enough goods to pay the interest on the debt that the government owes the central banks (argument here is that the debt actually never has to be paid back, only the interest: modern monetary theory) Its never been tried before. All of the events to come might spawn massive reform. Out of the worst circumstances the best innovations arise. Might be worth thinking about converting some of your money into assets that are not debt based as a form of insurance. Possibly gold as no central bank can print gold. Bank of America & Goldman Sachs have seen Gold's potential & they're calling it the money of last resort. Other central banks like China & Russia have been buying gold in record amounts for years. They understand what's about to happen. If you're younger you may be attracted to cryptocurrencies. Governments & the banking system are starting to take the technology seriously. You could study & invest in assets. People have started to notice that the monetary system is no longer working. It is so ingrained & pervasive that it becomes invisible to see. Nobody ever questioned it. When things started going wrong, they pointed at visible surface level issues but you have to dig deeper. When you do you can see it's an unfortunate & untimely mix of the debt based system, extreme financialisation, moral hazards & a rampant Cantillon effect leading to extreme fragility & massive wealth inequality.
How Ads Got "Woke"
Woke advertising has become an increasingly omnipresent phenomenon in our media landscape. Woke advertising is defined by its invocation of social causes and social movements of a given moment - especially those affiliated with progress and social change. These days, woke ads typically focus on identity-based issues surrounding race, gender, sexuality, disabilities etc.
All advertising is self-interested: companies are just trying to sell stuff to as many people as possible, regardless of skin color, sexual orientation, gender etc. But, economic reasons aside - what if it’s just really bad for society?
Ads, like any form of visual or literary storytelling, have ALWAYS been laden with values. They are reflections of our culture. But as values change, ads naturally do too. As a result, and contrary to popular belief, “woke advertising” is not at all a new phenomenon. It’s pretty old.
The “Torches of Freedom” campaign, 1929 was masterminded by Edward Bernays, who believed that people bought things not based on what they needed, but based on the feelings a given commodity inspired. He organised a stunt to sell cigarettes to women who were typically looked down upon if they smoked outside of their homes. He paid a group of debutantes to light up during New York’s Easter Day Parade & made sure the event was both captured by the press and interpreted as a protest for women’s rights. Cigarettes were now “Torches of Freedom” symbolising female emancipation. The cigarette industry would adapt its ads for the next phase of the women’s movement, 40 years later, when Virginia Slims told women “you’ve come a long way baby” . In these examples, we can see one of the first dangers of “woke” advertising: It dilutes the political message of a movement. Women, who were were not allowed to apply for credit cards without a male undersigner - yet were asked to redirect their attention to buying the the emancipatory cigarette.
A similar phenomenon happened to black Americans. Just like the feminist movement, as the burgeoning civil rights movement made headway, ads began co-opting imagery associated with Black Power. Historian Stuart Ewen: “the advertising industry, seeking markets, has generated a mass culture which reflects the spirits but not the cutting edge of this resistance.”
A Nike ad campaign in the early 90s specifically invokes the pain of women living in a world that judges them overwhelmingly by their appearance. Rather than being judged by “curves,” it reads, a woman should be judged “by who she is and who she is trying to become.” This leads us to another serious problem with woke advertising: If all advertising sells dreams, woke ads tend to sell the dream of respect and equality. Ads sell solutions in this case, Nike is selling the solution to sexism. You’re not buying a running shoe made in a sweatshop, you’re buying equality and respect. A coalition of women’s groups said at the time: 'While the women who wear Nike shoes in the United States are encouraged to perform their personal best, the Indonesian, Vietnamese and Chinese women making the shoes often suffer from inadequate wages, corporal punishment, forced overtime and/or sexual harassment.'
Author Alexandra Chasin explains in her book “Selling Out”, such courting of the queer “market” was said to signal an end to homophobia. This can most visibly be seen in the rise of everything “rainbow” in recent decades, an effective co-opting of the rainbow flag designed by gay activist Gilbert Baker in the late 70s. Everything from rainbow underwear to rainbow Instagram images to celebrate queerness, while really elevating the simple act of buying shit. Chasin when describing rainbow clothes: “the reduction of politics to style implies that consumption can amount to political change.”
Attempts to imbue advertising with woke messaging became increasingly more explicit throughout the 2000s, with the ubiquity of “This is what a feminist looks like” shirts, which literalise the notion that buying the right thing signals your commitment to the cause of women’s rights. And in the past 5 years, as feminism has become increasingly less taboo, advertising that co-opts feminist language has become all but ubiquitous. That’s not surprising: Woke advertising generally supports the status quo, with risk-averse corporations typically choosing to piggyback off of existing social change rather than furthering it.
Corporations have in recent years begun to explicitly draw on black activism. A Proctor and Gamble ad from 2017 shows several black parents talking to their children about the racism they will inevitably encounter. It concludes by imagining a world where such conversations are not necessary. As with women’s ads, these ads draw on real pain, while offering wish fulfillment by imagining a less racist future. Sound a little manipulative? Never is this more apparent than in that widely panned Pepsi ad, in which Kendall Jenner dissolves tensions between the police and protestors with a can of soda. Ironically, this ad functions like a much less subtle version of 1971’s “I’d Like to Buy the World a Coke.” Aired in the midst of the Vietnam War and massive social upheaval, it simply implied that if everyone chilled out with a carbonated beverage - wars and stuff wouldn’t happen. - (Crowd, singing) I'd like to buy the world a Coke / And keep it company! - (Helen) It went on to receive countless accolades, inspired fan mail, and as a song even charted in several countries. But the Jenner Pepsi ad somehow crossed a threshold of believability by making all too obvious the implication: that a Pepsi could end racism...
On the other hand, brands are also eager to exploit the credibility earned by activists to sell more stuff. Advertisers today are dealing with similar issues that they faced from social issues of the last century. But maybe a little more so. Millennial and Gen Z consumers overwhelmingly say that they prefer to buy from brands that share their values or “have a higher” purpose. That is, we want to know that our coffee is helping some farmer in Nicaragua send their kids to school or that our beans do or don’t support the right presidential candidate. But there’s another force pushing this change. Today, products are increasingly disappearing from advertisements, which instead promote the more nebulous “brand.” Scholar Nicki Lisa Cole ties this transformation to the increased outsourcing of production, leaving corporations progressively more detached from the actual products they made. As Cole puts it: “companies used to stand on a product. That was your name, the product you made. But when you don’t actually make the product, you have to come up with something else to sell to people” That thing, of course, is a brand, and in many cases, a hashtag-woke brand. As a result, brands are doing another new thing, something we’ve mentioned in previous videos mentioned in our last advertising video: they’re becoming people. “Woke” people. The rise of social media has enabled a host of new, usually painful, ways for brands to interact with potential consumers. And interact they do, especially if it means making themselves look noble: Brands increasingly are placing themselves in the center of flashpoint cultural issues. A Bloomberg analysis found that, within three weeks of the murder of George Floyd, 76 of the world’s “Top 100” brands had posted at least one corporate statement about racial justice. In this Instagram post, Visa managed to incorporate two phrases iconic to its advertising -- turning its slogan “everywhere you want to be” into “where we want to be” and slyly including part of their messaging: “accepted everywhere.” Meanwhile, Zara, the fast fashion company made infamous in 2016 for profiting off of child labor, posted a black square that mostly yielded impatient comments from customers complaining about late shipping. This queasy moment encapsulates the uneasy relationship between commerce and social justice. While some saw the quote unquote blackout as great for PR, many criticised it as co-opting a campaign conceived by black musicians and activists, who were drowned out amidst a sea of corporate-sponsored and performative black squares. When the CEO of JP Morgan Chase “took a knee” to invoke Colin Kaepernick, diversity consultant Y-Vonne Hutchinson responded by telling the Washington Post that: “There’s a lot of performative allyship going around. Nobody’s asking for a CEO to take a knee. You take the knee after you change your policies.” And of course, as with feminism, it’s not a coincidence that this outpouring of corporate support comes at a time when calls and support for ending police brutality is at an all time high. In other words, they’ll support Black Lives Matter when it's least controversial, most convenient and financially safe to do so.
How To Be The Most Magnetic Person In The Room
Most people start with low energy, quiet voices & small gestures. Set a playful tone from the start with higher energy. Smile more. Be goofy & be genuine & serious when needed. Tease yourself with self burns that have ‘no heat’ (not putting yourself down). It shows confidence. Storytelling: Burns with no heat, present tense stories, variety of voices, smile priming, pauses for punchline. Cliffhanger pauses can be even just 0.5 seconds (mid sentence) triggers curiosity. To prevent being cut off at this pause, use hand gestures showing you are not finished yet. As a likeable listener: ask ‘talk about’ questions. Get them to talk about things they are excited about, proud of, not often asked about. Allow them to speak at length for things they are excited about
Day in the Life of an Investment Banker [The HONEST TRUTH]
Banks may not create physical ‘value’ per say, but their services indirectly does. They help to facilitate services for businesses to create value: e.g. Start up progression: attract capital via investors, grow towards profitability, seeks to go public (IPO), continue to grow, acquire companies for growth.
While they do help big companies get bigger, they actually help small companies as well & when smaller companies get acquired, it may actually be essential for their survival.
Ways classic banking helps companies: M&A, IPO listing, equity finance (issuing shares to find investors), strategic improvement (assess new markets / products)
Typically, most time is spent modelling: e.g. company wants to acquire something. How will financials be affected? Then excel sheet will with formulas, understand if it is beneficial or detrimental. Can look at earnings per share (EPS).
2 projects: live transaction (1 company is in process of buying a company), client servicing (theoretical analysis to answer questions from client)
In a 10 to 15 hour day: client interaction (5 to 6 hours), modelling/Analysis (3 to 4 hours on excel with team to do the math), powerpoint (3 to 4 hours formatting etc)
Hierarchy (bottom up): Analyst Teams of 4 to 6, associate, Vice Pres, Managing Director
STOICISM | The Power Of Indifference (animated)
Emperor Marcus Aurelius was the most powerful man on earth, emperor of Rome & very conscious of the fact that momentary pleasure was available to him without limits. As opposed to his son Commodus, he turned away from orgies, excessive use of alcohol etc. He wrote about his determination & struggle with himself in his memoirs that were never meant to be published, Meditations which founded the philosophical school, Stoicism.
Stoics observed that from the human perspective 2 categories can be distinguished: things that we do not control & things we do control. Stoic philosopher Epictetus’s Enchiridion has a fundamental tenet of Stoicism: most things are simply not up to us. (Think about exterior things like our friends, the economy, things that politicians say, deterioration of our bodies). According to Epictetus, aspects we can control are: our opinions, our own actions OR the position we take towards the world around us.
We should focus on the things within our control. E.g. someone who is severely ill does not have control over the disease. We can mitigate symptoms hoping that the patient recovers. This person can decide which position to take in regards to the situation. When the sickness is fully accepted & possibility of death as well, a human being can be at peace. A calm mind can act in a logical & rational way & probably makes better life choices which might increase the chance of recovery.
Stoic ethics consists of different values. Stoicism points to life in accordance with nature. Nature refers to the greater whole and our role in it as human beings. From our innate potential we have to act for the benefit of the whole. We shouldn’t act against the natural course of things but embrace it. Contrary to what some say, stoics are not beings without emotion. They see emotion as a human characteristic that can be trumped by reason. It is not the emotion itself that decides our mood but the position we take towards that emotion. This way of thinking is quite therapeutic as it makes you more aware of your emotions & you can view them as sensation that comes and goes like the waves of the ocean. This way you won’t get overwhelmed by them.
Marcus Aurelius started days with a negative visualization. He told himself: “Today I shall be meeting with interference, ingratitude, insolence, disloyalty, ill-will, and selfishness – all of them due to the offenders’ ignorance of what is good or evil.” A Stoic often reminds himself that life is temporary which is called memento mori (remember that you will die), so he won’t waste time on trivial things and, and that’s my own twist, don’t take life too serious either.
Another exercise is called “the view from above” that makes us see ourselves from a cosmic view point, so we realise how small and unimportant we are compared to the vastness of the universe. That indifference is a power, the Stoics know very well. Life is short & that’s why it’s important to point our life energy towards essential & important things, and leave unimportant things be. Especially in the current age Stoicism can be a valuable instrument to give our lives guidance, so we don’t drown in a sea of stimuli & distractions.
The Power Of Walking Away
Many feel obligated to give away their time and energy to others. Perhaps they feel the need to prove themselves / have intense desire to be liked. By caring too much about opinions of others, you become their servant. Regain your sovereignty & show the world that you value yourself by ‘walking away’. Walking away seems rude, but sometimes it is essential to exert a sense of power over a situation. You will meet many types of people. Some have difficulties respecting other’s boundaries. Some are clingy & demand lots of your time. Others are cruel assholes that seek to exploit others. Show that you are willing & able to remove yourself from their presence.
The power of ‘walking away’ has 2 great companions. 1) The word ´no´. 2) Direction.
If you often find yourself wasting time to the whims of other people / being taken advantage of / abused by them, you need to overcome the difficulties you have in saying ‘no’ & you need a direction in life. These will allow you to stand firm. When people notice that you lack direction; e.g. in the form of commitment to a personal goal; they will see your time as less valuable than theirs. To them, this legitimises you doing stuff for them instead of for yourself. But, when you are committed to a goal, it shows that you value your time & your life. People will realise that you are spending time in ways that are more important than serving them.
Being tethered to your own path results in you caring less about affairs of others. With self-focus, you will not engage in needy, approval seeking behaviour as you do not need to prove anything to anyone, but yourself. Walk away from abusive people & destructive environments to protect your self-respect & integrity. You make your own decisions.
Walking away creates an abundance mindset. You may not have a lot of money, possessions or friendships, but you are utterly content. You might like & love certain people in your life, but you do not need them. Luxury, a million dollars in the bank, a Lamborghini, a trophy wife… it’s all great, but without these externals you are perfectly fine as well. Willingness to walk away & mean it is your strongest negotiating position, because either way, you win. "If you can't negotiate then you are a servant" - Jordan B. Peterson
How To Be Alone | 4 Healthy Ways
Some avoid solitude while others love & thrive in it. In the individualistic Western society, loneliness is one of the most common reasons for misery that spirals to depression & addiction. Thus, people need to know how to spend their time alone in a healthy way & see it as an opportunity to grow as a person.
Being alone comes in many forms. Hermits spend most of their lives without socialising. More moderate ‘solitude-seekers’ have alone time for specific reasons like meditation, reflection or achieving certain goals. There are cases where loneliness becomes a vessel for mental & physical problems, even death. Term ´lone wolf´ has negative connotations in society, as it used to describe people whose solitude bred hate that led to violence. Regardless, how we spend that time decides the outcome.
1) Be your own best host. When you spend time alone at home, imagine that you are a guest in your own house. How would you treat a guest? How would you talk to a guest? “If you're lonely when you're alone, you're in bad company” said French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre. Apply this self-hospitality: way we talk to ourselves (aka negative thinking) & if we cook ourselves a nice meal with the same love as for others. The preparation of giving ourselves a good time in solitude means taking care of our ego extensions. Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung argued that we become so entangled with our direct environment that it becomes part of ourselves. Thus, taking care of ourselves means taking care of our environment. Spending time alone in a tidy house as a better impact on our mood, than spending time alone in a mess & the act cleaning has a meditative effect on the mind. 2) Realise that we are always connected. Most feel lonely when they are physically alone. On a Saturday night while others party & drink, when dreadful FOMO kicks in, this sense of being separated from the fun, joy & pleasure can really make people suffer. To cope, people indulge in unhealthy pleasures like drinking, drugs or porn to numb the pain of loneliness. Loneliness is just a perception. We can perceive loneliness as a negative & we can perceive certain situation as lonely, though we are not alone. Stoic philosopher Epictetus: “Men are disturbed, not by things, but by the principles and notions which they form concerning things.” Hence, some feel lonely in groups while others feel connected when they are alone. In reality, everything in this world is connected. We are all part of one big, universe, and we are all made from the same stuff. Here on earth, we come from the same soil, breathe the same air, drink the same water. If we realise this, how can we possibly be lonely? 3) Sit with it. Being around people all the time is a great way to avoid what is actually going on in ourselves (avoiding that self-confrontation & suppressing the experience of their inner lives with short-term pleasure) Being alone is an opportunity for introspection: we might find out what is bothering us, what we want to change, etc. Though difficult, doing it can help us in the long run. Awareness of certain anxieties, anger, tension, tiredness, & acceptance of them enables them to eventually dissolve. 4) Chase your dreams. Being around people all the time gravitates us to do as they do & have the same opinions. The herd mentality could be detrimental to achieving goals & dreams. Getting away from the herd, can give us new perspectives by introspection & create opportunity to actually do what we want. When creating something in solitude or doing something you like, you begin to embrace your time alone, finding yourself in a state of joy, a state in which nothing is missing; everything is there, now, in the present moment. It’s the opposite of addiction. It's highly fulfilling. It is quite difficult to feel lonely.
3 Stoic Ways Of Letting Go
In most cases, holding on to things is a waste of energy & overdoing it causes a lot of mental, even physical pain. Stoic philosophy has several ideas that help with letting go:
1) Becoming aware of ‘indifferents’. In Stoic ethics, we can find a system of virtue, vice & ‘indifferents’. Most people hold on to preferred indifferents until these have become the center of their pursuit. Indifferents are anything that is not virtue nor vice. They do not necessarily lead to misery nor to happiness either. Among preferred indifferents are wealth, reputation, material possessions; basically same things that Epictetus points out as not in our control. Moreover, they do not lead to lasting satisfaction, though the mind thinks so. Not having them will not obstruct our ability to be happy. “Whoever has largely surrendered himself to the power of Fortune has made for himself a huge web of disquietude, from which he cannot get free; if one would win a way to safety, there is but one road, – to despise externals and to be contented with that which is honourable. For those who regard anything as better than virtue, or believe that there is any good except virtue, are spreading their arms to gather in that which Fortune tosses abroad, and are anxiously awaiting her favours.” - Lucius Annaeus Serneca. The joy of externals is always temporary & greedy hands often end up with nothing but frustration. Loosen the grip and know that not having these things is not the end of the world.
2) Remember impermanence. The world is out of control. Life comes, life goes. Empires rise, empires fall. Planet Earth will eventually vanish as the Sun swallows it. The house we live in, the money we have in the bank, the people we love: it’s all going down anyway. The preferred indifferents fail to give us lasting satisfaction & do not last. Emperor & Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius observed that change & flux constantly create & recreate the world. “We find ourselves in a river. Which of the things around us should we value when none of them can offer a firm foothold? Like an attachment to a sparrow: we glimpse it and it’s gone. And life itself: like the decoction of blood, the drawing in of air. We expel the power of breathing we drew in at birth (just yesterday or the day before), breathing it out like the air we exhale at each moment.” Why hold on tightly to things that are in constant flux?
3) Residing in the present moment. Refers to the human obsession with what is in the past & what is yet to come. Understandable as the past is a source of life lessons & the future is something we might want to plan for. But some people live entirely outside the place where life is happening: the present moment. Worries about the future makes them so uptight, even paralysed, while heavy burdens of the past rest on their shoulders. Marcus Aurelius was aware of the human tendency to live outside the present moment. ”The present is the same for everyone; its loss is the same for everyone; and it should be clear that a brief instant is all that is lost. For you can’t lose either the past or the future; how could you lose what you don’t have?” Letting go in this case means letting go of what you do not have. You may have your thoughts about it in your mind, but thoughts are the fabrication of the mind & do not represent the world around you. They are mere illusions, fantasies, calculations. A mind is a great tool. Stoics see rational thinking as a gift that sets humans apart from animals and makes it possible for us to live a life of virtue.
How NOT to Get Offended (Stoic Wisdom for a Thicker Skin)
It’s quite easy to offend people these days. In the age of social media, we get bombarded with crude language & opinions we do not like. That is likely why we see an increase in language policing & censorship. To some extent, this can be a good thing. E.g. protecting minors. But are we getting too thin-skinned? From a Stoic point of view, words of others cannot hurt us unless we let them, as it is our choice.
Seneca the Younger was a statesman, dramatist, satirist & a stoic philosopher. He was concerned with the nature of insults & being offended. In De Constantia Sapientis (On The Firmness Of The Wise Man), he criticised his friend Serenus for wishing that people, in general, should not offend each other. According to Seneca, this is completely unrealistic & not in our control. Instead, we should aim for not being offended, which is in our control.
1) Do not demand the world to be nice. May sound pessimistic but it is not far from the truth. Humans possess the full range of emotions, desires, states of mind, & opinions. It is futile to demand that the world does not offend us. Seneca: ”You are expressing a wish that the whole human race were inoffensive, which may hardly be; moreover, those who would gain by such wrongs not being done are those who would do them, not he who could not suffer from them even if they were done.” This however, does not mean we should put up with toxic people. We can set boundaries & limit our interactions with said people. Accepting that people will be people gives us a much easier existence & we give others the right to exist & speak their minds.
2) Accept the truth, reject nonsense. Seneca on handling insults, jokes etc: “Someone has made a joke about the baldness of my head, the weakness of my eyes, the thinness of my legs, the shortness of my stature; what insult is there in telling me that which everyone sees?” If someone offends you, ask yourself if the thing that you feel offended by is the truth or nonsense. If it is true, why be offended by the truth? If it is nonsense, why be offended by nonsense?
3) Contemplate your ego. Seneca noticed that people think that being insulted is one of the worst things that can happen: “..many think that there is nothing more bitter than insult; thus you will find slaves who prefer to be flogged to being slapped, and who think stripes and death more endurable than insulting words.” Being slapped was a grave insult in the time that Seneca lived. He was a contemporary of Jesus Christ. Hence it is no surprise that the Bible speaks about ‘showing the other cheek’ after being slapped. In this context, ‘slapped’ is an insult. When we are insulted, our ego is attacked. This is a consequence of the story we tell ourselves about ourselves & how the world should be. Hence, we see that in different cultures, people are offended by different things. When something conflicts our story this could lead to feeling offended. Why are we getting offended? What’s the root of this? Is it because of something that has happened in the past? Is it because of a certain ideology? Is it because I’ve been culturally conditioned to be offended by this? It shows much more character if we try & seek the root of our emotional reactions within ourselves, instead of immediately finger-pointing at the outside world. Our own faculty is our own responsibility & what other people think is none of our business.
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