Philosophy: about a person's behaviour and outlook

Hello everyone, my name is Praasilos also known as pro. In this video I will be reading from the analcts of confucious and making comments on some of the sayings of confucious that I have picked specifically for this video. The overarching theme of the sayings that I have selected is about a person's disposition. It is about how they carry themselves and what their outlook is. I am commenting on Confucious not as an expert on this specific sage or on Confucianism at large, but simply as a means of having a frame of reference, as a means of starting a discussion. And thus, these are just my opinions, opinions that I could have elaborated on independent of the analyts here. Okay? So I could have talked about these issues without reference to confucious whatsoever. But I think this helps us have a frame of reference. Uh this specific book is a gift from a friend of mine in China. And what it has is the original text in Chinese. Maybe I can show you actually uh the original text in Chinese. Let's see here. I have the slip of paper with the sayings that I will be commenting on. So there is the original text in Chinese, a translation of it in English, then the modern Chinese version as well as some comments from the editor. me, I generally ignore the comments because they will provide they will usually provide historical context which is useful if you have a keen interest in confusious the person the historical figure. Uh but for me personally they tend to just add noise uh to what I am doing because I am interested in uh the philosophical points. I am interested in having a discussion about the issues as such and of course confucious the person is important but in this regard is not essential. This also goes to the point of the translation because of course a translation will never be 100% of the original but because I am interested in the general idea I think that I am not losing as much by reading the English version of it with the provise of course that sometimes the wording is really important hopefully here it isn't that important but we will see If uh I say something wrong based on something that is wrong in the translation, what can we do? Mistakes happen and we have to deal with them as we go. So, uh these are some of the sayings that I will be commenting on and I have another slip here. I don't think I will get to all of them, but let's h start and uh see where we go. Uh starting with the saying number 9.7. So 9.7 means chapter nine saying number seven. Zila said the master said I did not hold an official post so I have developed many basic skills. The master here is in reference to Confucious and thus Zela this person here is a disciple of Confucious. They would refer to their teacher as master. And thus here is Confucious saying what he is saying which is that he did not hold an official post. So he wasn't uh employed in the service of the administration in public office and thus he didn't specialize in one area but instead developed developed sorry many basic skills. We can think of confucious as basically saying that I am street smart. In other words, I have learned a lot by doing various jobs in everyday life. Not specializing in [clears throat] any given one of them, but understanding the underlying principles or the underpinnings of whatever it is that I was doing and thus the basic skills. A basic skill for example this is something I have also talked about in the past about basic powers. A basic skill will be something like consistency. Like consistency is not something that is the domain of a specialist that belongs to a specific field of endeavor or to a given specialization to a given um field of science. Let's say it's something that applies everywhere in everything we do. Consistency in this example will be useful whether you are doing theoretical physics or whether you are just uh farming the land or training dogs or whatever it is you are doing from the most advanced intellectual issues to the most common uh forms of manual labor. Consistency is key because when you are doing things with consistency, you are doing them well and you are doing them in a manner that ultimately is sustainable. If you have inconsistency in what you are doing, meaning if you go through highs and lows and you have this rush of enthusiasm and now you do stuff and then uh you go into a deep valley of disappointment and disengagement. If you are like that, chances are that first you don't feel good about yourself and second you cannot have results that are reliable. Maybe they will be good if you happen to be really excited and you did something great but generally you cannot rely on them. Whereas if you are consistent, you know that there is a baseline of reliability because you are doing something over and over and over. You are not experiencing friction. You are not experiencing continuous disappointments and thus we can expect that at least this baseline is okay. There are many such basic skills, right? So there are many um basic forms of conducting ourselves that are useful no matter what we do. For example, being honest with yourself. Being honest with yourself is not about telling others that you are honest. It's not that. Of course, you can do that, but it's not that. Being honest with yourself is having a fair assessment of what you are doing. like do I actually know this or not or um how am I feeling about what I am doing regardless of what the social expectations are, what the norms are, what I ought to be doing. So regardless of all that, what do I actually feel about this specific state of affairs? Being able to answer that to yourself, it doesn't have to be something you do in public. Being able to answer that is ultimately empowering because it grants you clarity. You can decide about what to do from a position of certitude, from a position of stability where you have understood what your emotional uh foundation is like how do you feel about it and based on that you have what effectively is a tie breaker. So if there are competing um options that at least reasonably seem equally good then you have a clear tie breaker which is what is your gut feeling about them? What would you rather do? And that is a basic power that ultimately keeps you fresh. It keeps you going because you will be choosing that which doesn't undo you, that which doesn't damage you and take away from your vitality. So, Confucious here is saying that I am street smart. The opposite of being street smart is book smart. And the books smart will basically mean somebody who has read a lot on a given topic but hasn't experienced the relevant phenomena. For example, imagine somebody will read a lot about um interpersonal affairs about making friends or dating or having a family and so on, right? But they have not experienced any of that. Maybe they have a good uh grasp of the theory but their understanding of people is an idealized understanding. It's not about actual people in imperfect circumstances but of um a caricature of a person essentially a person that works within the confines of a model. A person that is devoid of complexity. person that is good enough to be charted on some uh model and uh for you to draw figures and such, but a person that actually doesn't exist. And this is true for a lot of what a book will give you. It will give you the map of the territory at best, but not the territory as such. And no matter how good the mapping is, it is never what is being mapped. Okay? And it's important to understand this distinction because if we pay too much attention to the book smartness that we should all have, of course, but if we pay too much attention to that, then we lose touch and we forget that we have to go out there. We have to touch grass as it were. We have to have a rooting. We have to be firmly rooted in the actuality of things. And by the way, I see my dogs. They are behind me. They are just playing around and they are having a good time. One of them is here. This is Milan. You may have seen them in other videos. I have four dogs. Anyway, what uh Confucious is saying here is that people who have a a formal position, a a public uh post who work for the administration will tend to be experts in a specific domain. For example, the government will employ people who are experts in finance and they will work for the ministry of financial affairs or the central bank. The government will have people who are experts in agriculture and they will be overseeing um agricultural activities and farming uh and so on. There there will be people who are experts in weapons systems and uh they will be checking how the relevant industries are performing and what kind of regulations should be respected and all this. Being an expert in uh any of those fields is of course important and you have to be good at it so that your uh contribution to the social work as a whole is um uh useful is fruitful. uh but doing that for a career means that ultimately you'll have a very narrow focus and this narrow focus can inadvertently uh blot out other perspectives which are important and if you are not mindful of that effect that what effectively is a a tunnel vision effect if you are not mindful of that you will think that you know more than what you actually do. And in a sense, despite your attitude, you will be intolerant of these other perspectives. You will be ignorant of them and thus you will not factor them in to whatever value judgment you make. So Confucious here is at the other end where he has been places, he has seen things, he has experienced people how they actually are and thus he can have a more rounded understanding of the world. This is not about what is better and what is worse, but about understanding the mechanics of how different states of affairs will work. I hear a car. I see my dogs are barking. Um, I guess it's some tourist or whatever. It's a sunny day today after many days of continuous rainfall. So, they have gone to the mountains. Or it could be some laborers. They just go to check their vineyards and there is that but not a problem. So basically Confucious says that I am the way I am because of the circumstances of my life and this is an important part of it which is that we are the product of our experiences. We are the product of a life of stimuli, a lifetime of stimuli. And it's not like I am just the person I choose to be. It's not as simple as that. Is rather that I am the person that is in the process of becoming through all these experiences that we have. And if our experiences are always of the narrowly focused sort then chances are that we will also have that kind of perspective and maybe it's not necessarily that we will have it but maybe it is what we will get and uh at the other end if we have a different kind of life we will have a different kind of perspective that is the idea let's go from 9.7 to 918. And let's see what Confucious uh has to say about this. Uh let's see where is 918. Se uh I said 18. Yes, 18. 18. So let's see. 18. 918. The master said, I have never seen a man who loves virtue as much as he does a beauty. And uh this is clear. We can uh think of this in everyday life where um people will have an easy time telling you what the standard is of whatever topic. Uh the standard in a moral sense but also the standard in things they want to do in their life in aspirations they have. For example, somebody wants to develop a certain habit. And let's say write a journal entry once a day. That is the standard. That is the virtue in a very broad sense. Okay. But saying that is easy. actually doing it is more difficult because what is easy is uh not the commitment to a standard but the baseline behavior which is a behavior that is um driven by and consistent with our base drives and this is of course understandable. This is how we are as animals. We have uh a base um animal level, a base humanity if you want which is uh of the instincts. We want to be fed, we want to feel safe, we have um a sexual drive and so on. So this is the base and once those are met or anyhow uh once we go beyond those then we start thinking in terms of higher order goals like oh I want to have a habits or I want to study or I want to uh understand morality in whatever way I understand it and commit to it. So these are of a certain level of enlightenment as we say where here enlightenment is usually understood as the ability to ascend from our animal condition to a more spiritual being. Of course, we can never be purely spiritual because we are always embodied. And in this body that we are, we will always have experiences of hunger, of fear, uncertainty, uh the will to dominate, uh the will to compete and so on and um sexual attraction and all that. We do not overcome them and just become pure spirit. Even if we are a really spiritual person, we still have all the sensations of the body. Maybe if we are very well disciplined, we have control over them, but we are not above them. So what Confucious is saying here is that most people most of the time will appreciate a beauty. So they will be attracted to another person rather than virtue. And in a sense this is a good thing. It is a good thing because if we have all these philosophers around society doesn't work. Society doesn't work if everybody is looking towards the heavens and thinking about virtue and morality and spirituality in the very high uh sense. Society works when you have people that do the basics and you have all sorts of different people. There is diversity and among this diversity there will be few people relatively speaking who will have a propensity for spirituality that is greater than the propensity of for spirituality that other people have. And this creates a certain balance in society where you have people who are more into uh doing things and others who are more into thinking things through and ultimately this balances out. If we are all monks for example then who will uh provide for food like uh in many traditions monks depend for their food for their sustenance on donations on contributions from other people. But if nobody is out there farming uh or foraging then where will the food come from? So ultimately there will be no monks or there will be a different kind of monk who necessarily is also a farmer and then you have to add to that where do the clothes come from and so you will have to have a monk who is a farmer and a a maker of clothes and so on for anything else you can imagine who will make the houses and who will provide the materials etc. So and then just to say this where will all that expertise come from if nobody has been doing that in society what Confucious then is saying here is not necessarily an indictment like oh people are so bad they don't care about virtue they only care about other people who are attractive to them. uh I think what Confucious means here is that there is a certain numbers game. There is a certain distribution of inclinations of proclivities in society and this is a fact of life that we have to accept. And if you are an intellectual, if you are somebody who has a more spiritually um developed side, you have to come to terms with the fact that your life will be at least in this regard rather lonely. I'm not saying that you are condemned to loneliness and you will suffer and it's a terrible life. I'm not saying that. But you have to accept that there will be very very few people doing that sort of thing. There will be more people doing other things and that's okay. And uh let's continue. And it is also okay just to say this. It is also okay because there is a propensity also for elitism. like people who are a bit more intellectual will have uh this elitist view where it's like oh I am so good I'm so smart so sophisticated the others are not the others are animals they are vulgar they are really bad right and that is ultimately a misconception that is ultimately wrong because there is a distribution ution that is natural and nature has a certain equilibrium that works. When you think that you are better just because you are on one end of that distribution, you simply misunderstand the workings of the world. You think that if everybody was like you, then that would be a good world. But in reality, that wouldn't really work. So, it's important to understand how the world works and to look around and to see that nothing from the smallest to the largest, nothing is useless. Like here where I am, this grass that you see right behind me, you may say, "Oh, it's just grass. It's not a tree, right? It's not an oak tree, a massive tree." But this grass is essential in the functioning of the entire ecosystem because this grass is what keeps the soil in place so that it is not eroded from rainwater. And if the soil is eroded from rainwater, how will there be trees eventually? Okay. So for there to be a large tree, this magnificent tree, there is this modest grass right there and they are all important in the world in the workings of the world. So there is that. I hear again this car probably it's some laborers and the dogs are barking and that's what they are supposed to do. So that's good. They should bark so that I can continue with my video like drive them out of here. Uh let's see where are we? So let me take a look. One second. I think we are good. Yeah, it's fine. It's fine. So they they passed through here. Uh so let me see. I have marked here um saying number 919. Yeah. [laughter] So the dogs are really making a commotion. That's great. Um let me see if I want to comment on this uh now. Okay, let's actually comment on this. So saying 919 the master said let's take piling up earth to make a hill for example. When I need only one basket of earth to complete the whole work, but I stop, it is none other than I who made the stop. Again, let's take the leveling up of land for example. I may add only one basket of earth. It is a step forward and it is none other than I who have taken that step. What uh the master here is emphasizing, what Confucious here is talking about is the fact that we have to have uh responsibility. We have to um take uh responsibility for our actions both when we do something and when we fail to do something when we uh don't uh commit to what we have set out to do. And the reason this is important is because of uh also what was said earlier of um the basic um how was he saying it? Of course I call it basic power but I think confusious says something else here basic uh facts or basic knowledge you know what I'm saying like the one I started with 9.7 anyway it relates to that because a basic power I said earlier is uh consistency it's this uh commitment and when you are consistent you ultimately are saying that I recognize that what I am doing requires upkeep. And I recognize that if I do what I must, it will be done. And if I don't do what I must, it will not be done. There is a tendency for um people to campaign for change and to be like, oh, the government should do such and such. For example, I will use an example that is common nowadays. The government should teach uh children to avoid social media and to not use the phone all day, says the parent. Meanwhile, the parent is glued to the phone. And so the question is, okay, you are advocating for somebody else to fix your own failings. You don't want to fix your own failings. You are not doing anything about them, but you are complaining that there are things that need to be fixed. And even though you have the power to fix them, this is not a systemic issue. It's something that can start from an individual initiative. You pretend as if you are not to blame, as if there is nothing you can do to change your world. This is something that you will see a lot if you get in the world of politics. I used to work in politics. I used to work at the European Parliament. I was um one of those experts uh on matters of law making. I was um doing the backstage work of the legislative process. Of course, it's not politicians who do that. politicians do the talking but uh their assistants do the actual uh work behind the scenes. Anyway, when you are in that world, you will see a lot of this externalization of responsibility like, oh me, I don't need to change anything. It's others that should do it. And once others do it, then we will have what we ought to have. And this is consistent with what was said earlier about I know a lot of people who love beauty but who don't like virtue because it's easy here to say what the virtue is and that's what we call virtue signaling. It's easy to say oh we ought to be doing such and such and then the question is okay what are you doing about it? Of course there are issues where thoroughgoing reforms need to be implemented. Issues where we have to have a concerted action among all the stakeholders. Issues where indeed the government has to do something about them. But we tend to think that the government should be doing everything and maybe not the government others. Who those others are will depend on the specific but it's never about what should I be doing? What is within my grasp? What is within the purview that I have here? What is subject to my initiative? what will change as a consequence of my actions and then if I do that I am already leading by example and so when I go to tell other people for example if it's something that I need to convince my neighbors about or my fellow citizens about I am speaking from a position of experience and also I am the embodiment of the change I want to see. If for example I tell my fellow citizens that hey we shouldn't be addicted to phones. I am not just saying it. I am doing it. I am not sitting at the table and I'm glued to my phone. I am actually establishing eye contact. The phone is in my pocket. That sort of thing. That is convincing because now I am what I say. I don't just talk because talk is cheap. In the same way that it's very easy for me to say I will be doing such and such every day. That's very easy to say whatever such and such is. But can you actually do it? There is the basic power. Can you actually commit to doing it every day? Can you actually get out of your comfort zone? Can you actually push against the inertia and do it? Then yes then you can speak but then you don't talk much about it in a sense that is elitist because you understand from a position of experience how difficult it is. You understand from a position of experience how much effort it takes to start something. It's not easy. But you also understand that once you commit to something eventually it gets easier and easier because it becomes second nature. So there is that. Let's uh continue. So I was on 919 and now I want to go to 930. Let's see what is 9:30 about. Um Mhm. 9:30. Let's see. Okay. Very 9:30. The master said, "Those who learn together will not necessarily gain the truth alike. Those who gain the truth together will not necessarily adhere to it alike. Those who adhere to the truth together will not necessarily act with flexible adaptability alike. In other words, what Confucious is saying is that there is diversity among people and even if we have the same kind of education for everybody that doesn't guarantee the same outcomes. If we have let's say a controlled environment where everybody gets to experience the same inputs that doesn't mean we will get the same outputs and this is important for what I said earlier where we have to appreciate the fact that there is a distribution of competences in society that different people are endowed with different talents different skills And that we should not those of us who think that we ought to be telling people what to do. We should not operate from a position of elitism from a position of thinking that oh now we can direct and we can pass judgment and we can tell others how wrong they are or how they ought to be doing things. So, Confucious is here saying remember remember this basic fact of life. It's not like in the books to connect it also to the point of book smart. It's not like in the books where for example in a democracy everybody is a citizen in a democracy everybody is informed and so on. That doesn't happen in the real world. Some are more informed than others. Some are more active than others. Some are more persuasive and influential than others and so on. We have to understand the differences among people and be tolerant of them because every difference ultimately has a role to play in the grand scheme of things. And if we don't understand the grand scheme of things, that's okay because we don't have the God view of the world. We have our own individual view, but we have to recognize that our perspective is just one of many and we are oblivious to many of the important facts of life and their underlying mechanics. Let's see what else do I have here. So, let's continue and I have a meeting soon. It's unfortunate. So uh I didn't realize that uh it was uh getting so late. So uh let's go. So I have here uh 1216. So we went from chapter 9 to chapter 12 now. And uh let's read uh this and I think that's a really nice one as well. So the master said, "A virtuous man is happy to support others in fulfilling their nice vi wishes but not their evil ones. A base man does the opposite. You may have heard uh this um uh expression where it's like um a god that will grant you every wish would be a wicked god kind of thing. And I think it's ultimately that like a god that would simply give you what you want would ultimately be feeding into your inability to understand uh things. your inability to think things through, your inability to actually understand what your needs are. And if you always get what you want, even though it's something that you don't really need, it's something that can harm you. And we are often misled. There is something to be said about modern society where in our modern world we have a consumerrist uh economic uh model an organization of society where everything virtually everything is available on demand and that creates a certain expectation where it's like I want something I just get it and this is turbocharged in The digital affairs we have such as through social media where there is an immediate feedback loop and the kind of digital consumption we have the kind of digital diet we have is one of bitesized stimuli. So there is a very short feedback loop of the stimulus and the gratification you get out of it. And uh there is this expression of you get the dopamine hit or eventually you are a dopamine junkie because you are online all the time and you do this uh short bursts of dopamine all the time over and over again. The point is that we are not conditioned to waiting for things. We are not conditioned to actually um operating from a position of calm. When you are in the moment of a certain desire, a certain want, it's your emotional side that is taking over. It's your emotional side that is speaking. And this emotional side is a little bit like a child in the sense that it doesn't have a sense of the long term. It has a sense of I want my toys right now and if you don't give them to me I will start crying making noise and being obnoxious. Of course there are many wants that have to be satisfied in a short term timely manner but not every want is like that. There is a sense where we have to think about the context. We have to think about the prevailing conditions and thinking about them makes us actually appreciate a real ones. You will see that there are people who are for example addicted because that's actually what they are addicted to buying things. They are hoarding things that they don't need. For example, I have a custom mechanical keyboard. And when I was researching about this keyboard, it's an ergonomic keyboard. I I have it because I had an issue with a certain injury. I have recovered fully. But anyway, when I was researching about this keyboard, I found this uh website where there are people who comment on what they call a hobby. And many of them will post a collection of theirs which includes like a 100 keyboards and maybe 500 sets of different key caps. And it's like are you actually using all that? What is this anymore? And they will have like uh five sets of the same uh keyboard or the same set of key caps. And it's like you will call it a collection but that's ultimately a rationalization like ultimately you cannot control your spending uh habits and that is because there is an instant feedback loop again like it's very easy to click and you buy. It's the same with rage bait on social media. Like you see something that is obviously misconstrued, exaggerated, etc., but it triggers you and you respond right away. And a phenomenon that is very common is for for people to publish something and then delete it afterwards. So they delete it afterwards because they understand that what they said is not well uh thought through or not thought at all. they don't consider it. It's uh not respectful. It's not who they are ultimately and basically it was their base self uh speaking. If there was now some friction there, if it was a bit harder for you to actually post your incendiary comments, chances are you would never do it. Like if you had like a five minute delay or if you had to go out for a walk for let's say 10 minutes and then come back chances are you would be calmer and you would ultimately say you know what it's not worth it. So the world we have now the world of consumerism on demand of experiences on demand even if they are virtual is ultimately like an evil god. It's ultimately like this God that gives you exactly what you ask for, but what you ask for is harmful to you. It's not what you need. So many times we wish for things that we shouldn't be getting. And what Confucious is saying here is that ultimately somebody who appreciates you, somebody who values you and loves you, somebody who wants you to be well will ultimately not grant you every wish. They will say no. They will grant you those wishes that elevate you and they will not give you that which pushes you further down. And this is also true for so-called content creators. And actually I will close with this because I have a meeting folks and I will not be able to comment on the other points which is a pity. Uh I will close on this. So this is also true. The the fact of um not giving people what they want but giving them what they need is also true for so-called content creators. It's something I do for example which is like people will want bite-sized content so-called and they will want a specific kind of content. It can be inflammatory. It can be controversial. It can be edgy. Of course, I can do all of that. But what I choose to do instead is long form content, down to earth content, content that does not feed into the memes. Because what you keep joking about ultimately is what becomes reality. And the memes are no longer memes. They are facts. They are states of affairs. So the memes of those memes will be ever more egregious. What I want then is to not give people what they think they need they want but to give them that which inspires them to aspire to their highest. And of course this means that it won't be popular. It won't be easy money. It won't be the conduit to the good life. The good life for me. I mean in this case it will be something that is ultimately not spectacular. It's ultimately not beautiful or catchy or easy to consume, easy to monetize. Because ultimately what I care about is to talk about virtue and to show it and to demonstrate how it is. And of course, what better demonstration than for all my content to be exactly what I am doing, to be exactly that, the content that does not lure you in to your uh vices, that does not bring forward your vices, that does not elicit in you an angry response, that does not elicit in you rage, indignation, frustration that does not give you what you have been hearing over and over again and you uh repeat without ever committing anything into action. It is the content that asks you ultimately to do that which is a little bit more difficult, that which requires a little bit more effort. effort such as the effort I am putting into this video where I am looking at the camera. I don't have any notes. It's just the paper slip and I am commenting at length on these topics. This is because I have been putting in this kind of effort for a long time in thinking things through, in trying to understand the phenomena, in trying to reason about them, but also in putting my ideas into action, putting my ideas to work and being the kind of person that I want to see and not asking the world, the government, the people, the society, the religious leaders and so on to fix the world for me. Of course, if they can do that, the better, but I will not wait for them. I will do my part in the meantime. That's all for today, folks. Let's call it a day because I have a meeting. So, thank you very much for your attention. I had more to comment on, but maybe next time. Take care and goodbye for now.

In this ~50-minute video, I reference some of the sayings of Confucius to comment on the overarching theme of a person's behaviour and outlook. The comments I make are ultimately what I think about certain issues: I am not an expert on Confucius or Confucianism and am simply using the _Analects_ as a way to frame the presentation. The first big topic is about the distinction of "street smart" versus "book smart". I explain how the experiences of one's life influence or condition their perspective. In this context, I introduce the idea of basic powers, which I mention again in various parts of the video, as I connect the dots. The second is the distribution of competences in society and how people are different. This relates to how some tend to be more interested in spirituality than others. I note how this is a fact of life. I explain, in this regard, how elitism is misguided. The third issue is about personal responsibility and the more general idea of embodying the change you wish to see. I provide relevant examples. The fourth and final point is on giving people what they need, though not necessarily what they want. I elaborate at length, while drawing connections to other thoughts I expressed. * * * Find all my publications on my website (philosophy, poems, essays, Emacs programming, selfie pictures, and more): https://protesilaos.com