Excuses: Quit EVERYTHING, not just Video Games.

is language a method of communicating
ideas yes in part but it's even more important to remember that language is part of the way that we make sense of our own lives in our interior monologues it's the way we understand our own motivations it's the way we plan for the future even just thinking about what you're doing tomorrow the choice of words we use it's not so important it's not so crucial in avoiding offending other people it's very important to be aware of the words you're using when you're reasoning things through privately in your own interior monologue you very much can talk yourself into something you can talk yourself into believing something maybe without noticing that you're doing it in this sense I would you know advise all of you to be much more aware of your choice of words when you're not speaking out loud had two different people writing in to me asking the same question from two very different angles one commenting on discord could join the discussion below one more of a personal friend and private correspondence and whether you word it one way or another the point is this aren't I being terribly unjust in condemning the entire category of what they consider leisure activities self-indulgence fun isn't my view of the world terribly demanding and ascetic isn't it demanding that each and every one of you spend every moment of your day in pursuit of your own highest goals to become the best person you can be in so on and so forth isn't that unreasonable given that they say there's sort of a spectrum of self-indulgence there's a spectrum of pleasures and that there are some things I am in under this spectrum I don't reject the whole spectrum entirely therefore my critique of any one part of the spectrum is is is null and void now I disagree with every single step in this reasoning even the idea that what you call leisure exists on a spectrum I reject the idea that what you call leisure exists frankly if you get topic for another video oh the you know the idea that cocaine is in any way similar to me having sex with my girlfriend completely discursive I completely reject this I regard using cocaine as something self-destructive poisonous toxic causing brain damage I don't even regard it as pleasure right I dispute the most fundamental premise here okay I reject it entirely and I think none of those things are a valid description of having sex with my girlfriend I'm obviously I'm just specifying her so we don't have extraneous its copier I feel I think once in a while people do raise a question well when you say sex what about someone who's a sex addict and has sex with ten thousand people in a year or something like this all right we're leaving that aside so we're talking about within the bounds of normal daily activities of sex I completely reject the analogy I completely reject the line of reasoning that makes this scene plausible to you okay there are people who will talk about other lesser activities whether it be skiing or snowboarding or playing video games I've had many many people writing in to me with this kind of line of reasoning about playing video games like well if you're okay with having sex and you're okay with eating food like choosing eat food that doesn't taste awful as opposed to those then you must admit that video games exist on this same spectrum no no I don't I regard video games for a grown adult as something self-destructive I really do I really do regard the waste of your time when you're playing video games and going skiing as something that is completely different from and not in the same category as having sex with your girlfriend all right so on a really basic level what I'm asking to do here it's not really to question my words or your words but to question your way of thinking because you're already deeply committed to some kind of rationale some kind of self-justification if you think that an adult sitting on the couch playing a child's entertainment video game system playing mario 64 for 12 hours a day if you think that is in any way on the same spectrum with eating food drinking water breathing air or me having sex with my girlfriend you're just profoundly fundamentally wrong and the reason I don't want to really talk about this the reason I don't want to make this video is that you mostly get into semantics in English the word semantics gets a bad name people say oh if it's a semantic discussion somehow it's trivial it's not a real conversation no semantics also matter but it means we're getting down into the kind of boring details of the precise meanings of words and what it is we want mistress okay my friend Mohammed his personal friend of mine he's appeared on the channel in the past I think of him as a very intelligent very gifted guy flawed has his limits you don't no doubt he's not equally gifted uniquely intelligent no areas none of us are and as we've gotten to know each other better interestingly have started to appreciate some of the areas where he has weaknesses or hang-ups limitations okay he really earnestly asked me aren't I wrong in this whole approach to I don't know what you call it anti Hedden ism anti hedonism depending on your accent you know my whole approach to this kind of work ethic I have of you know really looking at every minute of every day of your life and expecting it to be in this sense meaningful productive and rejecting video games and rejecting skiing and rejecting cocaine and all the festivities whole category of excuse making that people get get committed to because he asked the question instead in terms of this isn't it possible for someone to be highly intelligent someone to be brilliant even and nevertheless enjoy doing stupid things sometimes and I said to him no I very fundamentally believe that intelligence is something you're doing all the time and you can't stop it even if you want to you're an intelligent person you can't turn it off even when you sleep and I challenged him with real-world examples that said you Mohammed today could you sit down for three hours and watch football on television and could you enjoy doing that you know like you could dress up in a costume and go to a soccer stadium and pretend to be a soccer fan but I know you I know you're not capable of sitting there in a joint even if you forced yourself to do this you would be sitting there and thinking about Aristotle less you could be so completely detached from this game and what was exciting and interesting to other people you just regard it like you were in a prison cell and set your mind to doing some other productive tasks with us thinking about your work life or your personal life or philosophy or politics I know this particular guy and he immediately conceded the point so yeah that's true he's like no I can't force myself to enjoy watching football I can't do things and let's not just say in the after it's not just something normal people would enjoy he has members of his family he has you know close friends and members of family who really do spend many hours watching sports so I think most of us do most of us know people like that so you know the burden and the misery of really being a brilliant intelligent person is that you can't turn it off it's on all the time all right it infects and informs everything you do with your mind and it's closed off to you forever to enjoy life in the way that stupid people do right and one of the notions that really corrupted my generation growing up in Toronto at the time they did is the idea that you could enjoy these things ironically like you can sit there and tell yourself oh I'm too smart to enjoy watching this TV show but I'm gonna ironically sit here and enjoy no homie if you sit there and watch Seinfeld if you sit there and watch 90 day fiancé there is absolutely no sense in which you can tell yourself I'm too good for this entertainment you're being entertained by it right there's no sense in which you can snort cocaine and tell yourself oh well I'm not like other crackheads better than other people who get high because when I get high I'm doing it ironically okay and for me that goes the whole way down your whole so-called spectrum alright what you call leisure activities I mean obviously there's not every one of the audience but you and you and you some of you in the audience will you call lesser activities I think you're coming to the wrong answers because fundamentally you're asking the wrong questions the question I'm asking is is this activity something that's productive and education on wholesome for me as an adult male intellectual is this something I'm gonna learn and grow from or is this something ultimately toxic self-destructive is it something leading to my betterment or is it leading to my dissolution and if you enjoy doing things that lead to your own dissolution if you enjoy engaging in dissolute activities if you enjoy consciously and intentionally engaging in self-destructive activities if you think it's fun to waste your own time then you really have to sit in the mirror and ask what the kind of person am I and the answer is you are the same type of person as the things that you do if you spend your time sitting on the couch watching sports you're no better than that that's who you are if you spend 12 hours a day playing Mario 64 that is who you are there's no separate judgment there's no special soul you have that somehow untouched by the things you do with your mind and your body you're not just the sum of your parts you're less you got so many days on this earth so many hours in good health and with a clean mind what are you gonna do with it if there's one less person sitting in the stands at that football game if there's one empty seed what goddamn difference is that going to make any group in the world if one fewer person downloads that video game and clicks on a bunch of blinking gems today to make those gems disappear what difference is that going to make in the world all right and then you tell me what's the unique difference you could be making the world if you stop making these excuses if you took your whole goddamn spectrum of so-called pleasures leisure activities and self-indulgence and through it the away and asked you what's the point of living for the next five years next ten years on this planet