The Educated Barbarian: Meditations analysis (part. 3)

hello youtube, welcome to part three of the meditations. today in the educated barbarian episode, we are going to dive deeper into stoicism and the many principles that we can apply to our own life to become better men, to become better warriors, and to just elevate our spirits every week. further in action, "be neither grudging nor selfish nor ill-advised nor constrained. let not your thought be adorned with over much nicety. be not a babbler or a busy body. let the god within direct you as a man, as a manly being, as an elder, as a statesman, a woman and a ruler, standing prepared like one who awaits the recall from life in marching order, requiring neither an oath nor the testimony of any man. and withal be cheerful and independent of the assistance and the peace that comes from others. four it is a man's duty to stand upright, self-supporting, not supported."

this is starting to touch upon the self-reliance and the ability of men to stand by himself, both physically and mentally. because as stated here, you do not depend on the testimony of any man. and that is going to speak for the ability to develop your own ideas and to not wait for people who to give you an approval. a lot of people are like this nowadays, where they will only push an idea, that they will only entertain a certain thought if they believe that society is on their side, if they believe that people are going to be accepting. and the issue is that this is extremely limiting, because if you think about it, if you live in a society that has started to become a moral, then your moral ideas are going to be limited, because they're going to be censored by a society that does not receive them well. and that can be combated if you become a free thinker. and the term freethinker has been soiled and uh corrupted a lot, but essentially a threefinker is someone who is going to be able to explain his friend of thought, which is going to be 100% his. if you have to say, oh ex person told me this or this book told me that, you're not a free thinker, you're just repeating what someone else says, and when what someone else's thought. he also talks about the god within, which as we explain is the divinity within each man that needs to be under control. and the cheerfulness and independence is of course also underlined, and also the peace that comes from other meaning that i i explained that before. but as humans to survive we need to be social, and being social is being accepted by the group. and the reason why we don't like being ostracized and we don't like being put to the sides, because we have a deep instinct that tells us that this means death. because back then, if you were rejected by the tribe, it meant that you were going to die. you were hunting alone, you were not protected, you didn't have a place to sleep around the fire at night, so you are going to die. we are looking that where we live in us in a time that allows men to stand by themselves, meaning that you can much easier, it's much easier for people nowadays to be just who they are. because even if you're rejected by society, in reality understand that the only thing that really hurts is that deep biological fear within you. the actual consequences are much lesser than used to be. of course they still exist, and we need people, we need contact with people to fulfill that need for human connection, but it's not as dire as it used to be. so in terms of tourism, we are better off than what our ancestors were in a sense.

"if in the life of men you find anything better than justice, truth, sobriety, manliness, and in some anything better than the satisfaction of your soul with itself in what it derived, is given to you to follow right reason and with faith in that which is determined beyond your control. if i say you find off better than this, then then turn the order with all your heart and enjoy it as the best that it is to be found. but if nothing seems to you better than the divinity sealed within you, which has concluded all of your impulses, which sifts all of your thoughts, which as socrates said has detached itself from the prompting of sense and devoted itself to god into the love of mankind, if you find every other thing small and worthless compared to this, see that you give place to no other which might turn, divert, or distract you from holding in higher esteem the god which is especially and properly your own."

a long sentence all of that to say that there is a comparison to be had between the stoic lifestyle and other lifestyles. and i do appreciate that thought from marcus aurelius, because a lot of ideologies only truly exist because they suppress the existence of others. and that can be set for political ideas etc. and to me, if your stance in life, if your beliefs need to silence others or need to ignore the existence of others, then they are not sound. to compare that to training, if your method of training can only exist in a vacuum and comparing it to other methods makes it unstable and seems shaky, it means your method of training is bad. and this is interesting because marcus always tells you, hey if you think that there's something better out there, if you think that there are ways of living that are going to make you happier in the long run as a man or as a woman, embrace that. but what he tells you also is compare them objectively. what could be better than being the master of your own destiny? what could be better than being centered? is it the pursuit of pleasure? is it the vastness and the meanness of men? most likely it's not. "for it is not permitted to us to substitute for that which is good in reason or in fact anything, not a group order although such as the praise of the many, power which is all the pursuit of pleasure, so also a a comparison between what could be pleasurable and what would be good." because in real deal of tourism is going to be to reject the pursuit of pleasure, but in a sense that could also be attributed to a type of pleasure seeking behavior, because if it makes you happy it's pleasure. i think that and is the reason why it was important to describe uh in episode one the distinction between crimes of passion and and cold-blooded crimes. what is going to be pleasure, what is decried as pleasures that need to be need to be stopped is those that come from passion, meaning that they are just the natural inclinations of the humans to seek immediate immediate gratification, to seek biological pleasure in a sense. anything that is going to make you feel good in an instant with no effort food or certain acts that you know that you shouldn't indulge in, and you're going to feel bad about it later, which also is a sign that you shouldn't have done it in the first place. but that will for good immediately all of that need to be rejected. and you know you know in a sense the pleasure you get from the rejection of mastering the self is therefore a reason, meaning that if stoicism was just an endless succession of frustration, no one would want to be a stoic. but in reality the mastering of the self, even though it's something that is a payoff that tends to come later, exists, meaning that there is a pleasure associated with that, and it's the pleasure of self-mastery. and across the world that very long message was uh in summary an exhibit of that. it's the comparison of what needs to be resisted to what the resistance is going to create in terms of satisfaction.

"never esteem art of advantage which will oblige you to break your faith or to desert your honor, to hate, to suspect, or to execute any man, to play a part or to set your mind on anything that needs to be hidden by war of curtain. he will do all things prefers the soul, the divinity within him, and the sacred court of his virtues makes no tragic groan or gesture; he needs neither solitude or crowd of spectators; and best of all he will live neither seeking nor shining death."

i want to compare that paragraph to uh the old saying that goes, what you do when you're alone defines you, or what do you do when no one is watching. because in reality, if you have uh structured and scheduled your life correctly, that should be most of the day. meaning that you should spend most of the day alone, because we tend to be able to reflect and we tend to be the most productive alone. it's also the reason why a society that forces us into teams and forces us to work as teams is not necessarily for the productive aspect of it, it's more for the social culling aspect. meaning that for example, your boss knows that you are much more likely to actually do something and you're if you're put into a group, because the most industrious members of the group are going to pull the entire enterprise up and it's going to force it to do something. and for people who actually work in big companies, 20% of the entire workforce does 95% of the job. and it's that reason that forces us to ex to exist within those communities of sort, where we might not be the most productive, but we're forcing the least productive members of actually doing something to actually do something. but for the people who actually are industrious and and for you, for example, if you know that you're productive, that alone time is extremely important because that's when you can be 100% focused. and what is explained here is that to get to that part, to get to that that center, it doesn't require solitude and it doesn't require the approval of others. it just requires the ability to get to that place. and getting to that place is also going to be to completely disconnect yourself with the uh the judgment of others. because if you start concerning yourself with, oh what does ex person think of me when i do that, you're not really in the moment anymore and you're not alone. that's very important. you can be alone in a room and still technically not be at your fullest and not be sent to it, because your mindset is connected to other things, you're thinking about other things. and in reality, i think that there is some irony into being alone but still being tortured by the judgment of others. this is how pernicious it is for the people who truly depend on the the uh the the eyes and the the judgment of other humans, is that even when disconnected from the group they cannot be free from it, because it it follows them. and it also shows you another thing, is that even when they were part of the group in the first place, in reality what really weighed them down was not other people, it was what they perceived to be other people's judgments on them. and that's something to keep in mind: a lot of what tortures you is from you, you made it, no one else did.

"hold in honor the faculty which forms opinions. it depends on this faculty alone that no opinion your soul entertains being consistent with the nature and constitution of the rational being."

so we discussed opinion last time, and the opinion comes from a place. it comes from you. and you can call that the brain, you can call that the mind, you can call that the spirit, whatever, it doesn't really matter. there needs to be a certain level of respect and and honor given to that uh to that which creates the opinion. and i think that what is said here is that the permanence of the opinion comes from this place, and because it is permanent there needs to be no fear connected with the the thought of losing that permanence, because in its nature it is uh it is going to be immortal in a sense. and another thing interesting said here is that it is your job to make sure that you stay consistent with that, meaning that the production of opinion and objective truth and and just truth in reality exists within all of us. and that's an important part, because a lot of people will think that there exists some of our fellow humans that lack that. sometimes you meet somebody and you think that person is not rational, that person cannot think straight, they're stupid. and in reality that's not true. we're all born with it, but some people lose contact with it, meaning that the the voice is still here but they chose to decide to abide by a different voice, be it one of someone else or something that they they captured in their life and they evolved within themselves, which is not the voice of reason anymore. but the the the failure on their part is not that they do not possess the voice of reason, is that they do not, they lost the ability to match their reality with it. and what is said here is that for each opinion that is being produced, as it is matched with reason, you create a pattern of significance and you create a pattern of consistency especially. and that to me is also what being a true story is. a true story is consistent, meaning that you do not need to abide by the same ideas that other people have, but you have to abide by your own ideas. and ideas are interconnected, meaning that if i know your opinion about one thing, most likely i will be able to infer what your opinion about another thing will be. and if it's not, i will want to hear your thread of thought, because it means that you're either being inconsistent or that the consistence of your opinion differs from what could be expected. that that being said, since you cannot read someone else's mind and that i personally believe that people are extremely complicated and special, i also do think that trying to read what the other person is based on one or two opinions is not fair. because that is the group mindset, that is the party mindset, which is if you believe in x you must believe in a, b, c, d, e, easy too. and that is extremely common, and i would encourage you to be very careful with that type of thinking, especially groups that force you into that type of thinking. a lot of groups will take you in by saying, hey you believe in a2, come with us, we believe in a. and then you get in and they tell you, oh by the way you have to believe in b, c and d as well, or else from the part of the group. and they usually justify that by saying if you believe in a you must believe in b and c. and that is what i want to combat, and that's why i'm going sort of going back on what i just said. is making those connections between opinions is fine as long as it is for the sake of your consistency, but never let someone else create your consistency for you. a lot of people will try to do that to manipulate you, and it needs to be resisted.

"remember also that every man lives only this present moment, which is a fleeting instant; the rest of time is either spent or quite unknown. short is the time which each of us has to live, and small the corner of the earth he has to live in. short is the longest spot you must fame, and this preserved thought as succession of poor morals suing themselves to die, men who knew not themselves, far less those who died long ago."

so and that's something that i'm not going to repeat too much because it's extremely common, and i do think that it was a way for marcus aurelius to work on his own mortality, but he tends to repeat him to himself a lot that all men die and that all men are forgotten. and to me that's like a mantra, but there's not much to say about that. what is important and interesting in that paragraph is one the the suffering of time as it impacts humans, because in reality the only thing we have is the present. it's what i have right now talking to you. anything else, even something i just said a minute ago, is a memory, it's in the past, and the rest is in the future which i cannot control. so the only thing in control is the present. and for stoics, for aspiring stories, that's extremely important, because in reality if you're in a control, if you're in control of the presence, it also means you're in control of the past, because the past was the present and you had control back then. so there is no point in lamenting over the past, because a, you can't change it anymore, it will never become the present again, and two, back when it was the present you didn't control it, so now just let it go. and if you want to go even deeper into that, since the present is just around the corner from me, it is going to turn into the present eventually, and so the future by itself is also something we can control, we just cannot project ourselves into the future because if we did it would become the present. see where i'm going, getting there. and that's important because stoicism is going to be widely based on that idea of living in the present, but it doesn't just mean ignoring the future and the past; it means that you are the god and you are the master of the timeline across the board. and one thing i wanted to mention to you in that paragraph is that he says, "small is the corner of the earth he has to live in." and you might think, okay but that doesn't apply to me now. well it actually does apply to you, even though you have the ability to move now much more than he had back then, right? you can take the plane, you can go wherever. in reality the corner where you're going to live still remains small, because the place where you're going to create a life is not going to be the entire globe, it's going to be a very small portion of that. and if you want to go deeper into that, you can also think that back then yeah they knew space was a thing but they had no idea how big it was. we know, so in reality the wood that you live in is much bigger than the wood they lived in. and it doesn't really have an impact on this entire paragraph, but it's interesting just because in reality it puts you the modern stories in a scope that is much greater than those twists of the past. because a, it doesn't really change anything, and two, it means that your control over things is even smaller because you're an even smaller portion of the universe. but it also means it's even greater because the amount of things you can interact with and still have under your control is going to expand over time.

"to these maxims add this: accurately define or describe everything that strikes your imagination, so that you may see and distinguish what it is in its naked essence and what it is in its entirety, that you may tell yourself the proper name of the thing and the names of the part of which it is compounded and into which it will be resolved. nothing makes mind greater than the power to inquire into all things that present themselves in life, and while you examine them to consider, or to consider, consider at the same time of what fashion is the universe and what is the function of it, in those things of what importance they are to the whole and to you."

so two things. first off, it connects what i just said about the universe, right? because regardless of where you live, in reality if you don't have the ability to observe things, you could be just put in a box and your life would be the same. the amount of expansion that your mind is going to undertake is going to depend entirely on your ability and willingness to do so, and to expand your further vision. and that was something that bushido also discussed, which is the idea that it is possible to limit your further vision by focusing too intimately on just looking forward. you need to have a wide panorama in the field of view, both visually for your physical ability to see things, and mentally it needs to be wide open. and the other thing too is that dimension of opinion is back in this paragraph, and it's interesting because i said before that the people who fail to follow the voice of reason are going to still have an ability to to express opinions, but they're going to be factually incorrect because they're going to be illogical. and what is interesting here is that marcus aurelius goes even further in that he says that not only would these people lack that ability to express a correct view, but they could even not not be able to have the view that would create the opinion in the first place, because they don't observe things. and i do think that it's an excellent advice. you might think it's a little bit overkill, but in reality that's what you were born to do, it's to analyze things. so never think that something is above examination. think about all things, even things that you don't think are interesting. try and apply your mind, try and and decorate it. ask questions, and then find answers for all things. and you'll find that for your passion is the thing that you truly love in life, this is going to be the best way to learn new things, because questions are going to create answers, because your mind is going to work on it even if you don't think about it consciously, it's still going to craft things, and eventually it's going to just appear. and to me this is also how you keep getting more intelligent with age. um similarly to muscularity of people, think that at some point you reach a certain level of intelligence and that's it. and to me that is of course completely incorrect. you get smarter with time. it's the reason why also for people who actually do their homework is that when they look back they think, wow i used to be stupid. that's normal, you used to be stupid compared to what you are now. if you didn't have that, if you thought that the you of 10 years ago was just as smart as what you are now, you did something wrong because you stopped progressing. and that progression can only come from observation, always looking at things, always trying to understand where they come from, why they're like this, how they work, how they connect to other things, etc. and i think we're going to finish book three today and then jump on book four next week.

"if you discharge your present duty with firm and zealous yet kindly observance of the laws of reason, if you regard no by gains but but keep pure within you your immortal parts as if obliged to restore it at once to him who gave it, if you hold to this with no further desires or aversions and be content with the natural discharge of your present task and with the heroic sincerity of all you say or other, you will live well and iran no man can hinder you."

so a guide to life, which is pretty much always do your best with no negative energy or feelings, always following your own reason without looking at potential hindrances or damages or efforts that you would have to put in to actually accomplish these things. which means also keeping pure, because that's what purity is. purity is a to b. enact from a to b is pure. enact from a to maybe be if z goes right is not pure, it lost that. it's the trajectory that matters, in my opinion. and it could be also critic critic as simplistic, but you find that corruption really is in the extra steps. meaning that most of the dreams that we have as humans are pure because they're simple, and it's in the creation, it's in the articulation and in the fulfillment of the dream that the impurity comes in. and the issue is that it has to exist in this fashion, because most dreams end up being tough, they end up taking a lot of planning, but you find out that in the planning, as you journey towards the dream, you're going to fire, you're going to just get out of the path because you're going to become corrupted, corrupted you're becoming, you're going to lose sight of what you wanted in the first place. so you need to remain pure by having a single-minded focus, but still apply yourself to the pursuing and to the fulfillment of the dream, if that makes sense. and there's also the idea that what you are is going to return to the the internal eternal being the god, so that you want to leave it as pure as possible, how whatever that means is a little bit uh up to debate. and also the interesting part about this is that if you embrace that, that that simple mindset of the the purity of the soul, you cannot be hindered anymore. because in reality, i explained it before but the only way someone else can stop you, the only way someone else can discourage you, can make you feel bad, is if you include them in the steps. if it's a to b or a to z unless someone says something, then yeah it's going to open the possibility of other people to hinder you. but someone who is just a pure arrow of energy cannot be hindered, because how do you stop that? in reality the only thing that stops men is the fear of what other men are going to think. if you completely get rid of that, it's going to save you a lot of time.

and the last paragraph for this book: "the remains to the good man this special excellence: to welcome with pleasure all that happens or is ordained; not to default the divinity enthroned in his breasts; not to perturbate with a crowd of images, but to preserve it in its tranquility and obey it as a god; to observe truth in all he says and justice in his every action; and though others may not believe that he lives thus in simplicity, modesty and contentment, he neither takes his unbelief amiss from anyone nor quits the road which leads the true end of life at which he ought to arrive pure, calm, ready to take his departure and accommodate it without compulsion to his fate."

so the first few lines of description of the uh the good man i've already discussed in this episode, but the interesting part of this and the reason why i quoted that is because of that sentence: "and though others may not believe that he leaves thus in simplicity, modesty and contentment." so that's important because that's again judgment. but this is not just the judgment that is inflicted upon you, it's doubt, it's rather it is doubt of the ability of men to live in that fashion. and that's when it's so important. i read a sentence by nietzsche recently that says that the higher man source the smallest he looks to other men. and you are going to find that by representing an ideal, by representing something that could be seen as morally superior, it is going to also attract a lot of negative attention from people who fail to live their life like this, who haven't achieved that level of mastery yet, or who even have started to tell themselves that they could never get to that. and the number one instinct of a man who sees a bird is to throw a stone at it to kill it in mid-flight. and sadly it's also something that you're going to experience as you try to elevate yourself. you're going to be slowed down by people, crabs in the bucket, who don't really want you to actually elevate and who don't want you to get more spiritual, because it would mean that they would have to reflect upon themselves. and they want you to just be mediocre, because it's so much easier for them to have you as something they can compare themselves to without feeling bad. and these people need to be ignored at all cost, because they are damaging you, they are slowing you down. and you might have in you a righteous indignation i think that others do not believe you. keep in mind, it doesn't matter the way you lead your life only matters to you, and it should always stay that way. who cares if people who don't believe it? it's your life. them not believing it doesn't change your life, it doesn't make it new or invalid. you are the only actor in this. other people don't get to judge the performance. and it's i know because i struggle with that as well, that it can sometimes be tough, because in reality your indignation and feelings of righteousness come from the fact that you want these people to be able to elevate themselves as well, and you feel as such they are trying to find excuses for themselves. but you cannot change people. you can only be an example and try to lead by example. you cannot tell people what to do. we are hardwired to resist that. the second someone tells one of those men, you should do this to have a better life, they're going to become resistant. in reality, by you saying that you're making it worse for them, because you are now presenting what is beneficial for them as an order, so they're going to resist it with even more vigor. so the best thing to do is just shut your mouth and live your life. and it's important too because it means that he never takes this unbelief amiss from anyone nor quits the road which leads the true end of life. because you will find that when you try to actually get people to join you on the road, what are you doing? you're firing from the road, you're sometimes losing the road, you're getting off of the road. and there might come a day where you're just going to be completely off and you're going to get lost. and you find also that these people don't underestimate their ability to pull you down with them, because in reality as you elevate and you look down on them throwing rocks, there comes a time where you're going to try and reach for them, but they're going to reach for you and they'll grab you and they'll pull you down. this is a hindrance because you're not focused on the path, on the road. and again, we're talking about stoicism here, but remember that bushido spoke about the same thing. you're on the path, and the only way forward is up. you cannot look look behind you, you cannot you cannot regress, you have to keep moving. and that's going to be that.

so this was book three; we're moving on. but the book still has a lot of good surprises for us to read through, a lot of very good advice. i appreciate you following the educated barrier every week. i appreciate every comment. if you want to discuss this weekly reading more in detail, please do so. i would be very happy to respond. thank you for watching. have a good day.