Onision. Can we sympathize? Why do we still care?

when I look at an inn I see him lying to
himself much more than you lies to the public he can never admit that he's wrong he can never never admit that he's lying he can never really accept that it's his fault you have this tragic contradiction where he pretends to be light-hearted he pretends to be a comedian but the reality of who he is is this overly harsh castigating moralizing punitive authoritarian character he hates himself he hates humanity he's constantly including short bursts of brutal and erratic violence in his videos for no reason and it's not clear if he finds this therapeutic himself or if this is meant to shock or disgust the audience he's really fiddling while Rome burns and that's that's been the case he's celebrating he's exalting in his own rumination at every stage of his of his story so it's a very sad spectacle but one that as I say makes me reflect on meaningful things in my own life and I think meaningful philosophical questions for for us all I had been intending to make a video talking about truth and lies and honesty and the meaning of these things in my own life the ways in which initia kneel your pattern of being both publicly and privately dishonest makes me reflect on these philosophical questions my own life but you know my girlfriend asked me a very simple question that's probably a lot more relatable for you in the audience and maybe more useful for you to hear the answer to a girlfriend asked me why do you care about Anacin at all why are you interested why are you still interested in following this story or in making videos discussing this story indeed some of you support me on patreon might want to know why are you not reading Aristotle instead why you're making more YouTube videos about politics it's all well believe it or not in some ways what's rewarding and interesting to me in examining and it's Ian's choices in life is quite similar to the sense of dramatic tension I have in reading the political philosophy of Aristotle some of you will relate to that some of you won't when I read history when I read political philosophy and even sometimes when I read overtly political fiction there's a sense of tension for me as a reader that's not created intentionally by the author but that arises from my awareness that if I were in the historical situation if I were in the hypothetical situation being prevented I would do the exact opposite of what the character from the book is TWIC so I mean I don't watch horror movies but I think that's kind of like the sense of somebody sitting in the audience at a horror movie saying no no no don't open the door don't do that you know do do the exact opposite of what the characters are inevitably going to do um in a reasonably profound way that's how I feel in watching a nisshin's life fall apart again and again I'm looking at a guy who has quite a long list of things in common with me you know I probably discovered his YouTube channel around the time I was newly divorced and he was divorced he's now gone on to remarry I guess I in effect have also gone on to receive um an isiand was one of the absolute first guys to come here on YouTube and do the the vegetarian advocacy thing an in was absolutely the original voice of the vegetarian versus anti vegetarian debate a lot of you will not remember that many many years ago anisia debated vegetarianism with the amazing atheist and that was really part of the creation of this whole genre of videos that I spent five years of my life in I'm vegan retina vegetarian but nevertheless he's one of the guys who defined that that genre and that was part of the the ascent to fame not just of a and the amazing atheist but of YouTube itself as a platform it was really showing people hey this is a type of self-expression this is a type of debate and this is a type of political activism or advocacy for a cause that hadn't existed in the world before that didn't exist on cable TV news it didn't exist on you know talk radio this was something new and different and it really is in that category that I've lived my life what category do we mean I basically sit down here and do overly honest monologues about my life and the things I care about even if it's even if it's something relatively dry and academic like Aristotle I mean that's what I've got to offer I'm not an expert in in ancient Greek really it's my it's it's the emotion and the honesty and the immediacy I bring to it that makes my commentary on the philosophy of Aristotle worth worth hearing more than its any any technical expertise I bring to that field you know I make no false pretensions about that but across the board whether I'm talking with my sex life or otherwise and I mean if you've been watching the cheat YouTube channel for a long time you guys know I also live very much in the same kind of gilded cage that it is Ian lives in because YouTube really has been for the past five years my career I know it may sound absurd it's not a choice I made when I started doing this I had a very very different career in myself but um many other things didn't work out and YouTube did now I'm in the position to say at this point I literally pay my rent with the income from YouTube and from my donors on patreon and even though my rent is very modest as you can guess from the echoing sound that's in this apartment you know my rent is cheap but nevertheless that really puts me in a rare class of people who gets to come on camera and talk about their feelings and talk about politics and earn money doing it and earn enough to pay their rent so it's a hobby that in some ways took over my life as other ambitions in my life became impossible to pursue long story short so there are many different ways in which I can sympathetically relate to anisia I'm vegan he's vegetarian we were both divorced and we both have the strange mix of opportunities and hopelessness of being stuck in this youtube format as a career there's a lot I can relate to there and of course he and I both have the sexual opportunities that YouTube micro Fame presents to you I know a lot of you won't believe me but it doesn't matter if there's only one woman out of a thousand who finds me attractive YouTube is exactly the sort of venue where that one woman out of a thousand will get in touch with you and that can change your life and I think it's fair to say in the case of someone like anisia you can see the way in which it can uh do a cupped and devastate your life he's really fiddling while Rome burns and that's that's been the case he's celebrating he's exalting in his own ruination at every stage of his of his story so it's a very sad spectacle but one that as I say makes me reflect on meaningful things in my own life and I think meaningful philosophical questions for for us all so yeah there's this tremendous sense of tension for me in examining any given crossroads in his life and feeling the same way I do when I see Aristotle making excuses for slavery like Aristotle he tells you what's wrong with slavery six different ways and then in his conclusion he says like well so slavery is wrong but you know it's necessary for society so we're gonna do it anyway so here's an excuse for no no no no if I were writing this book you know I'd do the opposite and mail thing I mean Aristotle didn't know how famous he'd be after his death I would literally be think about how the whole history of the world would be different if you'd come to the conclusion that you yourself fellow tonight that's up oh the strange dramatic tension Aristotle also gives you a complete the damning argument against monarchy which could have been much more influential historically but he can't go all the way with it because he's in a situation where he's personally dependent on Alexander the Great he's personally a friend of Alexander the Great as his client and Alexander the Great's father was a patron of Aristotle's father before it's a complex political situation and whether or not he's forced to compromise he chooses to compromise and I'm sitting here on the edge of my seat feeling this sense of tension and dread because if I were in Aristotle's position as an author or as a political leader or political activist in a sense I should be doing the exact opposite when I look at an in I see him lying to himself much more than he lies to the public you know he's intensely passionate about delivering to you this message that he couldn't possibly be happier with the fact that the woman he married now describes herself as a man that he couldn't possibly be happier with the fact that she's having surgery to actually alter her body so that she looks less like a woman and looks more like a man we have many indications many cracks in the facade indicating that no of course he's desperately unhappy with that and apparently he directly said to her and Sarah the obvious truth that really he wants to be in a relationship with a biological woman who looks and acts like a biological woman that he one of his reasons for wanting this three-way relationship was to begin a relationship with a woman who had the body of a woman as his wife goes through the transition to becoming his husband apparently you know both a physical surgical and psychological or behavioral change so you know this is not even the most dramatic example possible if I were in his situation I'd be doing the exact opposite I wouldn't be lying to myself or the public I wouldn't be lying to my wife or husband in this way there's this weird rattling tragical quality even as he's smiling intently at the camera even as he's insisting passionately that his marriage is the happiest marriage possible and it's wonderful you can see that it's killing him you can see the contradictions he lives with and then of course it's not surprising he's somewhat violently acts out now what I've just said is probably more sympathetic than anything I've ever heard anyone else say on the internet either in writing or you know in a YouTube video in the YouTube monologue I said many times on this channel sympathy is an analytical tool it's not worthwhile to sympathize with someone just for the sake of that sympathy what's really worthwhile is to use sympathy as a way of understanding others understanding the problems they're facing and under understanding ourselves initia he's the guy who invented the YouTube vegan debate the ethical debate about veganism he's a guy who to some extent invented or redefined this whole earnest monologue genre on the platform and he's a guy who for better and for worse you know lived you know by lived by trying to convince himself that he wasn't the only one who found his sense of humor funny and of course the greatest tragedy of all is that almost nobody else appreciates his sensory work except for him I'm not gonna say he's never had a video I found funny but I would guess that fewer than one out of a hundred of his videos or to my taste or to anyone else's taste but his own he does proves many many hundreds of videos so I know once in a while he has a head once in a while he has something that really makes people laugh but again you have this tragic contradiction where he pretends to be light-hearted he pretends to be a comedian but the reality of who he is is this overly harsh castigating moralizing punitive authoritarian character he hates himself he hates humanity he's constantly including short bursts of brutal and erratic violence in his videos for no reason and it's not clear if he finds this therapeutic himself or if this is meant to shock or disgust the audience or if he feels any sense of disgust himself you know but again it's almost as if his frustration with his own lack of a sense of humor you know and when he's chosen to play the role of the professional comedian this leads to again these kinds of violent contradictions in acting out parallel to his stated philosophical commitment to being absolutely honest at all times when he's overtly flagrantly been caught lying again and again and again and he doesn't respond to that by being humbled or feeling humiliated even during some of the most dramatic and bizarre you know twists and turns in the road when his current wife Lainie briefly moved out and was she filed divorce paperwork against him and someone he can never admit that he's wrong he can never never admit that he's lying he can never really accept that it's his fault you know the whole world is his canvas and yet he's obsessed with using that canvas to paint a flattering portrait of himself so that is short is the character of a nishan someone who might have a few shallow things in common with on the surface but where my alienation from him is so profound it's so extreme I have so little in common with him when you move past that surface that you know for me he's really an instructive glimpse into a whole side of human nature that I find so alien that I can barely admit to myself it really exists [Music]