The Philosophy of Stupidity: Video Games vs. Books vs. Reality.

on the internet when I'm telling people
things they already want to hear they seem to find me real easy to understand and what I'm delivering a message they don't want to hear what I'm giving people advice that's inconvenient to them the challenges their ego the challenges what's convenient in their lives that challenges their enjoyment of things they enjoy all of a sudden what I'm saying seems to get real mysterious seems to get real abstruse seems getting real hard to understand so I know I have a lot of experience of this now over 1,000 videos on YouTube and when you say something as simple as you know what there's a big difference between reading philosophy like Aristotle and playing video games oh it's so abstruse how what are you really saying where are you going with this what are the implications this argument really really how do you define I had several people writing in to say that my claim was logically flawed so the claim that when I look back at my childhood playing zilean on the Sega Master System when I look back and I think about that memory and the time spent the hours invested in that and then I try to play the same video game today I compare that and the value that my life - again I think it was actually age 19 and age 39 but 20 years apart reading the same book of philosophy Beres though and I comment on that and I reflect that and I say to the camera I hope you make the right choice I hope you do the right thing with your time and your honor I hope you don't end up with a lifetime of regrets having sat at a desk Lemieux whoa whoa wait a minute wait a minute wait how do you define book and what do you really mean here how do you define how do you find waste of time logically this is really hard oh well you know um this is a slippery slope fallacy some people wrote in to say right this reminds me of some some advice in attitudes about about romance about human relationships in England I heard this all the time so melissa hasn't spent that much time with the bird British guys all the time would say like well you know you can never make a woman happy you can never make another person happy you can never be responsible for someone else's happiness so and here's the weak part so why even try so there's great phrase in England a lot of British guys live by this keeper keen treat her mean this is a justification for basically just being awful to your girlfriend and and and the principle the thing is that each person should only be interested in their own happiness in their own why because you can't make another person happy yes slippery slope fallacy huh you think so you think I mean this is this is a different policy this is you can't be a hundred percent perfect so why even try to be fifty percent positive Y B Y B 50 percent or 80 percent Y even find out how close to hundred percent you can come why even try why try hard right if you can't be one percent right and we hear this all the time and vegan isn't mine so one of the main counter arguments was well you could never be perfect you could never devote all of your time to positive things like humanitarian work and philosophy and and learning so why even try and again like the relationship to me it's very parallel to what the discourse about dating and romance in England when I was there that I really I heard and also read read in newspapers and magazines you saw the extension of that discourse going on in popular culture um well you know their conclusion is that they should be completely devoted to their own self-indulgence to their own enjoyment whether that's through playing video games or do anything else but if if they were to read a book they would only find reading a book justifiable on the same grounds as being a form of escapism self-indulgence entertainment and their horror and their incomprehension is that I'm not just calling into question video games I'm calling it a question all self-indulgence all entertainment I'm saying entertainment is childish entertainment is for children and you know video games are merely one example they happen to be the example that we have on a mass scale a problem with addiction to with people spending 20 hours a week and more than 20 hours a week playing I don't think we have a problem with people doing pottery for more than 20 hours a week in this sort of thing um enjoyment enjoyment in the context of a world where you could be taking on adult responsibilities without responsibilities for your own area addition your own education making yourself a better person or making the world a better place how much can you enjoy watering the lawn and gardening when you know that behind you your house is on fire your neighbor is walking down the street and sees you there with your hose smiling watering the lawn maybe you got your travel out you're digging working on the rose garden and your neighbor says to you what are you doing what do you think how can you enjoy yourself it's not just that you're doing it is that you're enjoying yourself doing it well the roof of your house is on fire you only have so much water in this hose are you only so much time and so much energy why don't you turn around and start spraying the water at the roof of your house why don't you try to to save your house from the fire how can you how can you do this look guys after you emerge from a pretty primitive level of ignorance and self-absorption you must realize that in this life somebody's house somewhere is always on fire and yeah it seems more absurd when it's when it's your house but you know I gave a positive example I talked about this guy rarely who's out getting involved in humanitarian work in Syria and it's it's neighboring countries and I said you guys he's not Syrian it's not his problem it's not his fight and I said he could have thrown a dart of the map and helped you know he could be in Ethiopia he could be you know guys was I don't know Switzer there's you know what even that I'm joking but you know I've there are poor people in Switzerland there are social problems where there are political struggles in Switzerland you could make a positive difference in supposed one too and you could start doing research and humanitarian work and probably learn a lot so it's known also so yeah in principle you can throw it okay not Antarctica maybe well it's not the map and almost anywhere you know you could get positively positively involved right and yeah you know um this is part of my perception of the world philosophically before I was involved in veganism and before I was involved in Buddhism but it fits very well with Tara badda Buddhism and and veganism and all the rest of it you know the world is on fire the world is on fire ecologically the world is on fire in terms of social inequality poverty the world is on fire in terms of war in all directions at all times and there's always urging crucial need for you to do whatever is you can and what you can do may be trivial but this have made many many videos talking with us and I know even rohui himself sent me feel about this the ultimate product is not peace the ultimate product is not that you end the war in syria and create Brotherhood and goodwill between men the ultimate product is not that you end poverty right the impact you have may be infinitesimal right the part is you the part is what kind of person do you want to be do you want to be the self-indulgent fatuous person who's standing there water his garden smiling and laughing working with his trowel planting rose bushes whatever you want to say do you want to be the person fiddling while Rome burns do you want to be the person playing video games do you want to look back and say yeah what did I do with that decade yeah yeah yeah there was the war in Afghanistan there was the war in Iraq and there was Syria and there was a look whatever we Cambodia Japan everyone's there there are problems everywhere I mean certainly even within Japan you know a peaceful and in some ways economic social country believe me there were issues you could be dig into and you could be learning this is my [ __ ] ethical point here do you want to be the person who spent that decade whether it's the last decade or the next decade just devoted to your own self-indulgence and enjoyment because if that's who you are I can tell you right now who you're gonna become five years from now in ten years now and for those of you who were reading in the comment session you I think you saw every single time I asked vegan gains about that he didn't want to answer that question I said Richard who do you want to be who do you want to become five years from now ten years from now and how are you gonna get there is it gonna be by playing video games is it gonna be by living a life of reckless self-indulgence and doing whatever it is you want to do whatever you want to do it I mean for me part of becoming the person I want to be actually does involve reading Aristotle as ridiculous as that sounds listen I talked about this you know which was eight years ago whatever maybe one year ago now but you remember I said to you you know I made a list of the most important sources from ancient Greece and Rome and I said what you got to realize is everybody everybody who's made a difference in Western civilization even Bill Clinton they've all read the books on this list you know it's kind of mind-blowing when you think about it some of those major works in the history of political philosophy yet Bill Clinton may seem like a really shallow guy but you know you look at you even though just a list of University of courses he went through and so on whatever the prime ministers of England everyone it's been - a quote unquote greats program that came to Cambridge in Oxford there's a whole social elite out there and they know these books and you don't so you can you could take away the different you can level the playing field right now just by getting up to speed with the foundations of democracy political philosophy and so on and so forth sure in some small way reading Aristotle really did matter for me becoming the the person I wanted to be and some of those things you get into them without knowing what they're most people who commit to studying Buddhist philosophy they don't really know what they're studying and tell us do you late you know they have a vague idea maybe from watching kung fu movies legitimately for many people's their first encounter with Buddhist philosophy they think okay I'm gonna commit so much time and so much effort to reading put its philosophy then you find out after what Buddhist philosophy really is I think that's a special true with religion and religious philosophy right creativity and destruction in many contexts are one and the same thing when you take a block of stone and you remove what you don't want from it what remains is a statue in the image you've chosen to create Who I am now at 40 years old is the product of in the sense creative destruction there are aspects of my character I don't like is the person I was when I was 16 years old 18 years old even 25 years old and yeah you know what some of those things I've taken away and some of those things probably were the habit they were produced through the habit of playing video games back when I was 11 or what have you or they were just the product of childish ignorance and the upbringing I had and the parents I had and the culture I was raised in all kinds of things I can't change it I don't have control over right in a sense we're making it easy just in talking about Aristotle target was like positive that you you grab onto an add to your body of knowledge and in not talking about the things we subtract we delete we take away but one in the same image of a man can be described positively if you're sketching it out with a pencil on paper or if you're carving it away from a block of stone right it can be the same the same image and what we're doing in choosing who we want to be and then making the sacrifices and commitments and effort and energy to become that person sure its destructive sure if if Richard wanted to step up and be a better person he'd have a lot to lose he have to lose a lot of the things that have become comforts to him that have become a crutch and there's no doubt that's why the reaction am I saying something so simple and so plain is what what can I say is so surreal is so observed people don't want to hear it's it's simply advice nobody wants to hear I could end the video there but let's just let's just address one more one more issue that was was raised some people wrote in really sincerely claiming that there is no difference between reading a book daemul reading philosophy reading Aristotle and playing a video game let's let's treat that as a sincere objection what if there's someone who's so ignorant and their experience this life is so limited that they have only read books that were of such extraordinarily low educational value that they really were just as bad as playing video game you know what if there's someone who listen to that video and when I talk about reading flaws of Aristotle age 19 I'm reading it again age 39 they can't relate where for them the most meaningful thing in their lives actually has been playing video games and they really genuinely don't know what I'm talking about when I say that reading a book studying history politics languages or getting out in the world and doing real things through humanitarian work that they actually don't know because look books are on a spectrum there are some books so meaningless that they are just as much of a waste of your time as playing video games and there are some books so meaningful and that are such a productive educational use of your time that it blows my mind to to hear them compared to the video games sure there's a there's a spectrum out there right and you know if you don't really have that experience and what can I tell you I pity you but here's what you should be able to get there isn't just a distinction here between meaningful and meaningless there isn't just a distinction here between great art and vacuous entertainment right the other distinction I'm trying to get at here is between real and fake and that's why I talked about heroism right that's why I talked about going out in the real world and doing real things because ultimately what I'm asking you to do is not to act out the fantasy of being a hero in a video game but to take seriously the potential you have to be a protagonist in your own life to reject easy virtue in a simulated world that lets you design a cities well let's just stick with that example city building games have you ever thought about how much work would be for you to go down a City Hall whatever city you're living in and just get involved in a few political issues local level pollution and the river city planning for you to have an impact on the future of your city politically in real life how many years of hard and humbling work that might be and what that might do to you and what kind of person you might become playing video games is easy playing video games is entertaining and many people correctly discerned that my philosophy is basically E&T entertainment anti self-indulgence I'd say that my ethical system is based on inverse Peten ism because from my perspective I don't understand how you can stand there smiling and enjoying gardening in your lawn when you know right behind you your own house is on fire and if you're so selfish that you only care about your own house I see that as a terrible myopia of our times why can't you just look over the fence why can't you look at your neighbor's house why can't you look down the block yeah through the magic of the internet it's easier than ever to know we don't live in a global utopia somebody's house somewhere is burning down and there's a real question of justifying living a life of self-indulgence living a life for your own entertainment as an adult when you're 5 years old it's different five year old on an airplane or a train sure my daughter plays video games sitting next to me on the train when there's really nothing else productive she can do at five years old there comes a time to put childish things away and just start to get seriously interested in responsibility as an adult and that responsibility is not just to make the world a better place it's to make yourself a better person