The Wiseup Podcast

Today I wanna talk about stoicism.

Zeno of Citium - Athens, 300 B.C.E

It was adopted and welcomed then by the Romans, to the point that their emperor Marcus Aurelius himself was a stoic.

If you want to know more about Marcus Aurelius, read his book “Meditations by Marcus Aurelius”

It wasn’t a book. It was actually a journal in which he wrote down his thoughts during different events like war and the pandemic that took the life of 5 M people.

Nowadays stoicism is becoming so popular and I think we need that, but it’s usually misused to the point that when we say someone is stoic, we either imagine someone that’s emotionless and heartless, or a doormat and that’s not necessarily true.

You can been a doormat if you choose to, but stoic in and of itself doesn’t mean that you should be that.

*in a nutshell stoicism means the art of focusing on what’s within your control and forget about what’s out of your control.

There are a lot of valuable lessons and principles in stoicism but in this episode I will only talk about my favorite ones that I try to implement in my own life everyday.

1- Minimize your expectations from people and the world. This doesn’t mean not to aim and work for things. But suppose you have a job interview tomorrow. In this case, typically you’ll get anxious. 

2- Nothing is good or bad except your mind makes it so. Stoic philosophy puts a great emphasis on perception. Perception is different than feeling. If two people look at the same thing, they will visualize the same thing for the most part, but they will most definitely perceive the thing differently.

3- Don’t base your happiness on things outside of you. This includes gadgets, loved ones, kids.

I a lot of relationships, words are becoming more valuable than actions. The phrase “I love you” is so profound but it’s being thrown left and right to the point that it lost its meaning.

As a stoic, you shouldn’t compromise your integrity and fake love just to appear normal. And if you’re really in love, you don’t have to say it every 3 seconds and wait for the I love you too so you can get your dopamine hit.

4- Accept what’s out of your control and work on what is in your control: “Happiness and freedom begin with a clear understanding of one principle: Some things are within our control, and some things are not.” - Epictetus, The Art Of Living.

5- What’s the worst that can happen?

In any obstacle, think of the worst case scenario. What’s the worst that can happen. In doing so, you’ll be surprised how easy decision making becomes.

Here I’ll tell you something I learned from stoic philosophers with regards to the worst that can happen.

I think of my own death every night I go to sleep. I don’t mean to intellectually acknowledge that I will die one day. I mean to understand that I can die at any given moment.

I do it myself and it helps me take decisions in a split second. It washes away all the irrelevant nonsense only what matters remains.

I know if you’re 25, 35, 45 you probably think you’re too young to think of that but I’m telling you nothing is as liberating than facing this truth. Sooner or later you’ll have to face it. Once you accept it, you’ll be able to make bold decision if needed. And this is not to say you should throw yourself in danger just for the sake of it. You most likely won’t have to face a life or death situation anyway, but that'll help you in situations where you need to speak up, face your demons, give a speech, talk to the girl. The worst thing that can happen is she’ll reject you. Well, you’re mentally prepared for worse, so you go for it.

6- Stoicism puts a great emphasis on being virtuous. 

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I just watched the show True Detective by Matthew Mcconaughey, and this show transformed my thought pattern drastically. This show created a ripple effect of a new chain of thought. We can talk for hours on Arthur Schopenhauer’s thoughts on pessimism, but for this episode I will discuss the ones that were mentioned in the show since it’s what inspired me to read for Schopenhauer the first place. Idea number: 1- Our self consciousness is a Tragic Misstep. That we are hard-wired to seek meaning in our lives when there’s none. There’s no purpose, but the illusion of one. Individually, we think of ourselves as very important, but we don’t know why. Idea number: 1- Our self consciousness is a Tragic Misstep. That we are hard-wired to seek meaning in our lives when there’s none. There’s no purpose, but the illusion of one.  Individually, we think of ourselves as very important, but we don’t know why.  2- Time is a flat circle: This is to say that time is infinite. It doesn’t literally mean that time is a circle of course, as “circle” is a description of physical objects. What’s meant here is that time is infinite, and I’ll explain. And if time is infinite, this means that everything that can happen, no matter how unlikely it is, will happen if you give it enough time. Even if it’s something that has a 0.000000 chance to occur, it will eventually happen. And given that time is infinite, these things (and everything) will happen again, and again. Not once. Not twice, but infinite times. And we are one of these things that could happen. We know that because we are here. This means that you’ve been here before. You listened to me talking about this before, not once, or twice, but infinite times before, and you’ll keep coming here to this point forever! When you die, you cease to exist for a long time, but with enough time (given that time is infinite), you’ll happen again. It will be you in the literal sense. You will experience everything you’ve experienced again and again the exact same way. And it doesn’t mean that this is the only thing that will happen. There will be other versions of you that’ll take different decisions and branch out. 3) The Life Will. We are being pushed by something Schopenhauer called (the life will) that keeps us moving. The Life Will is the only true power that pushes us and gives us the illusion of purpose. Our false sense of meaning and purpose is fueled by the Life Will. It’s  why we fall in love, form relationship, have new plans, projects, and goals for the future. We’re constantly setting new goals and perusing them and there’s only 2 possible outcomes here: A) you fail to achieve the goal which means you suffer, B) you’ll occasionally achieve your goals and feel a briefly. But joy disappears soon to be replaced with new suffering as you set new goals. Our self consciousness deceives us into feeling that we’re special and gives us the illusion of purpose. Incited by the Life Will, we cling to life as hard as we can. If we pause for a moment we find that we’re not the only one that’s being pushed by the Life Will. All organisms do. This includes Animals, birds, insects and micro-organisms. They all push relentlessly all the time. The Life Will is keeping us moving all the time. It’s why we’re never satisfied and content with where we are. We feel a great deal of anxiety if we stop as if we fall apart if we stop moving. Like a planet would fall in its sun if it stops circulating.  https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nietzsche/

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Do you think you know know the history of our first civilizations?

Do you, like most mainstream archaeologists believe that our first civilization started 6K years ago?

For more than a hundred years, we’ve been convinced that the earliest human civilization was Mesopotamia, which was about 6,000 years ago. That was the earliest sign of human civilization we could find, and based on that we were convinced that around that time humans invented agriculture.

Scientists and archaeologists believed that agriculture was the spark of the first civilization and the ones that followed. It gave members of the group more time to reproduce and invent instead of spending all of their time searching for food. With that extra time, agriculture then allowed humans to form larger groups and communities with complex social systems, and that’s how our first civilizations are believed to have begun.

This is what we believed had happened. This is what we teach at schools, documentaries, and books in the present moment. Scientists and archeologists seem to be very confident in their teachings. Their theory won against all the conflicting theories, until 1994.

In 1994, a small rock was discovered by one of the locals that lived in the Southeastern Anatolia Region of Turkey. Archeologist Klaus Schmidt ran to the place and the excavation began. They discovered that that rock that the local saw on a hill was a huge temple, and that hill was a work of man. This hill was made by man to cover this site many many years ago.

They called the site Gobekli Tepe. Tepe in Persian means HILL.

This discovery became the nightmare of some prominent traditional anthropologistsand archeologists, as this discovery proves that theirestimation of when our first civilization began was thousands of years off. This includes the years they spent conducting research, awards they won, books they published and students they taught. To go back from that must be painful.

When we think of science and research, we think of objectivity and unbiased work. This is the ideal science and scientists, but this is never the case. This is not a problem in science or research. The problem is us. We are biased curious creatures with ego and pride, and scientists are people. They hypothesize and they want their hypothesis to be right.

Gobekli Tepe is an archaeological site in the Southeastern Anatolia Region in Turkey. The site is massive. It’s believed to have been intentionally covered by humans (not naturally) around 10,000 BCE, which means around 12,000 years ago. Mind you that it was covered (not built) around this time, and the reason as to why it was covered is unknown yet.

The site is still under excavation. It’s not completely uncovered. What’s uncovered from the site is mind-boggling though. The observable part of Gobekli Tepe contains massive T-shaped stone pillars with protrusions of different animal structures and shapes.

Some of the pillars have depictions of animals that don’t exist in the area. Like pillar 56 has around 55 different animals closely packed together to fit in this pillar. The animals include ducks, snakes, a large bird that’s hunting the snake, a frog. Some of these pillars are as high as 20 ft and weigh up to 10 tons.

why did they cover it 12,000 years go? Why would a hunter-gatherer group build such an incredible structure?

Take the last 500 years for example. There was no electricity, no machine or cars. And Now we have teslas and iPhones. We are hard-wired to invent and create. That’s in our DNA. So the idea that we have been chilling for 200,000 years to then decide to invent and become advanced only in the last thousand or two doesn’t make so much sense to me.

What if before that cataclysmic event 12,000 years ago, our ancestors weren’t primitive cavemen?

What if they had houses and great civilizations?

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Vaccination is a very controversial issue. The public is split in to 2 parties, one that's for it and mandating it, while the others are calling for having a choice as they don't always trust the manufacturers. Throughout the years, many vaccines have proven to be life-saving while some were toxic and sometimes deadly. In this episode I breakdown the concept of vaccines and what they are, and the process through which the vaccine is produced. By the end of this episode you'll have a clear idea of why everyone should have a choice when it comes to vaccines since not taking it won't affect those who choose to take it.

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Are we prepared to deal with an asteroid if we learn of one coming towards us? 

Today we only have theories on how we may be able to intercept an asteroid in the future, but there's no actual technology ready to be used so far. 

I believe that we are living under the mercy of the cosmos. Space is so vast and rocks are flying constantly in the deep space. We are here due to the sheer luck that we haven't been hit by an asteroid since the dinosaurs. 

So far, if we learn of an asteroid coming towards us, all we can do is embrace ourselves. And thinking about that I can't help but think about how divided we are living. We became so obsessed with our borders and countries as if they are given by God. We seem to have forgotten that these borders are manmade and recent, and an asteroid does not care about countries and borders. 

In my opinion, for us to be able to deal with a cataclysmic event like an asteroid, we need to unite and live together in one country called "Planet Earth". I can't help but view our countries, borders, passports, and patriotism as ridiculous at best, and poisonous at worst. They lose their meaning the moment we look at the deep skies. We are on this planet together. The outside space is harsh and violent and could care less about your borders and traditions. And because of that, we need to rethink the way we live our lives on earth today. 

For us to be able to intercept an asteroid, we have to use the synergy of all humans and all resources on earth. Unless we do that, the inevitable asteroid will hit and the beautiful story of mankind will forever be forgotten. 

What also contributes to our divide is our religions. Religions, while they might have been helpful when we were primitive and uncivilized, they are useless today. They only reinforce hate and wars and we need to reconsider how seriously we should take them, as an asteroid could care less about what religion you practice.

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David Icke is one of the biggest conspiracy theorists on earth. He doesn't call himself a "conspiracy theorist", but a "researcher". 

David Icke has plenty of controversial conspiracy theories like the existence and interference of aliens in our lives, reptiles, hunger game plans. 

These theories were not an interest of mine but his opinion on Covid-19 definitely was one. 

Icke believes that there's no such a thing as Covid-19 and that it's all a piece of the grand plan the Elite devising.  He believes that it's a plan to end our social lives as humans and suppress our immune systems as we isolate and practice self-distancing, as well as due to the new technology of 5 G. 

He believes that now is a critical point in human lives and that if humans don't resist the elite plans to sicken them, their future won't be so brite and they will have to answer some questions to the future generations.

In this episode, I will discuss David Icke's views on this matter and say my opinion on it as an objectively and non-conspiratorial way possible.

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اتناول في هذه القناة مواضيع علمية وفلسفية عن الكون وبعض الظواهر العلمية الغريبة. لكنني فكرت مؤخرا بأن اقوم بعمل حلقات باللغة العربية بسبب وجود نقص في هذه المواضيع في الوسائط العربية. أجلت هذا الامر حتى ان تابعت بعض الاحداث التي استفزتني في الوطن العربي وقررت ان انشر اول حلقة باللغة العربية عن هذا الموضوع بلا تخطيط او تحضير مسبق.

في الاونة الاخيرة لقد شاهدت بعض المسلسلات التي تبث على قناة ال(MBC) التي تشوه صورة فلسطين والفلسطينيين وتبث الحقد والكراهية تجاههم من قبل العرب من جهة, وتجمل صورة اسرائيل في الجهة المقابلة. لاحظت ان هذه المسلسلات تصور الفلسطينيين على انهم هم سبب النزاع في الوطن العربي وان اسرائيل هي الدولة المسالمة وأن الفلسطينيين هم ناكرين للجميل ولا يستحقون تضامن اخوتهم العرب.

وشاهدت ايضا فيديو لرجل سعودي يبيح دم الفلسطينيين ويناشد حكام اسرائيل بتطهير الارض المقدسة من الفلسطينيين ويقون ان الاسرائيليين هم اولاد عمومة العرب, اما عن الفلسطينيين فهم لا عرب ولا اسرائيليين ويجب التخلص منهم

ففي هذه الحلقة اتحدث عن سبب انتشار هذه الظاهرة ومن يقف خلف هذه الدعايات الاعلامية الفاسدة وما هو المخطط المستقبلي الاكبر.

سأبدأ بنشر حلقات علمية ممتعة ومثيرة للفضول باللغة العربية من الان. أذا اعجبتك هذه الحلقة فلا تتردد في نشرها وتقييم القناة.

يمكنك ايضا التواصل معي مباشرة على القناة او عبر البريد الالكتروني: [email protected]

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The idea of us being in a simulation ourselves is entertaining indeed. But is it being entertaining enough to consider it plausible?

For us to begin to speculate about being in a simulation, we have to create a virtual reality that mimics our world exactly. The theory says that if we create a virtual reality of the same complexity as our reality, then chances are we probably are in a simulation ourselves.

This is exciting but it's not as simple as it sounds. Don't forget about the first condition of the theory. It says that we have to create that virtual world first. And here's the issue lies.

To create this world that mirrors ours, aren't we supposed to understand our world fully? We have to understand 2 concepts:

1- Matter. We have to understand what matter really is. We humans first found the atom and claimed that it's the smallest building block of our world, thus the name Atom, which means "that which can't be split" in Latin. But soon we discovered the components of the atoms and we're still early in our journey. we are still discovering the matter.

So how are we going to create a digital world that mimics ours if we don't understand the components of matter?

our virtual reality nowadays uses block/Pixels to represent the virtual world, just like videogames. In the past, graphics were so bad that you could see the cubes in the game. Today they are better but they are still using pixels to represent the real world. But our world doesn't have that pixel. No matter how small the pixel is, our world is always smaller...

2- time. Video games use frames that represent moments. The smaller the frame the more natural the flow of the video becomes. Today games look cool but they still have frames nonetheless.

our real world, however, doesn't have that frame that represents moments. You can always think of a shorter time frame. If you claim that the time frame of our world is one-millionth of a second, well what about one-billionth...

3- Consciousness. How do we know that the avatars in the virtual world are conscious? Does making them autonomous enough to assume that they are conscious as a result?

Consciousness is complicated. It's subjective. For all I know, I can't prove that anyone in the world is conscious except myself. You all could be avatars that give the right answers and do the normal things to appear normal for me. It's trivial but you can't prove me wrong. Same way, how do we know that the avatars are self-aware and conscious?

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We think of aliens that are thousands or millions of years ahead of us in terms of evolution and we, therefore, translate that as them being that much more intelligent than us. We think that the fact that their evolutionary journey so long means that they must have reached the point where they become intelligent as if intelligence is the ultimate goal of evolution.

Well, let me tell you something. The universe can care less about our intelligence.

Our self-importance as humans makes us believe that we are special and superior to other animals because we are more intelligent and self-aware. But in the macro, the universe doesn’t give a dam about my intelligence.

Believe me when I say: crocodiles don’t daydream about becoming more intelligent. They have been here for millions of years before us and they’ll probably continue after we are gone, whereas we humans have been here for around 200,000 years. This is a blink of an eye compared to crocodiles.

Our slightly more complex brains have evolved as compensation for our physical weakness. We are not fast or strong. Crocodiles kill animals with their face. We can’t do that. And this strategy doesn’t work for species as soft as we are. We had to plan and think and make weapons to allow us to kill animals and made fire to cook the food.

This understanding of evolution though is very tricky. It leads us to think that evolution somehow has an agenda to make individual species adapt. But it’s not like that.

We can see our evolutionary process because we are here, but that doesn’t mean that mother nature intended for us to become smart. For evolution to take place mother nature has to flex its muscles and present stressors on species. 99.9% of species that existed on earth went extinct and they aren’t here anymore. Mother nature didn’t have plans for them to evolve and neither it did have plans for us. It’s fair!

Mutations don’t mean evolution. Mutations happen randomly and blindly. No agenda. They occur every day but almost all of them don’t survive. The minority that survives is by sheer luck happen to have the mutation that allows them to do so. All by accident.

If you read the book “the selfish gene” by Richard Dawkins you’ll understand clearly. It’s all about the survival of our genes, not bodies. So we reproduce to have new bodies to carry on with our genes.

But don’t cheer yet. We’ve only been here for 200,000 years. We haven’t proven our success. Our intelligence helped us survive so far but it’s negligible compared to other species like crocodiles.

What I’m trying to get into your head that evolution is very random and it doesn’t have an agenda. Nature doesn’t care if we vanish today. Our intelligence has helped us survive just like strong teeth and jaws helped lions survive. If our planet gets hit by a solid asteroid, we will disappear and our short story of 200,000 will be forgotten, and species like rats or cockroaches may prosper and take over the planet.

So why are we so obsessed with intelligence?

When we think of alien life we imagine them being so intelligent and technologically advanced. We think that if their life journey started millions of years before us, the force of evolution will have pushed them to become smarter.

When we study other ancient species, the ancestors of today’s species, we think of them as a transitional species, as if they are primitive. Like they’ve been waiting to become today’s more advanced species.

A clear example of this flawed understanding of evolution is common when we look at our story. We look at Homo Erectus as this awkward species that are not ripe yet. As if they’re daydreaming about becoming us one day. But they were fine and they could care less. We live too short to understand evolution. Thousands and millions of years lose their meaning. We can’t grasp it.

So aliens don’t necessarily have to be smart.

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As you might have guessed it, today I feel quite philosophical, and that’s why I had to insert the word QUITE without needing to. Today I want to talk about time. Now, what the hell is time? One sunrise and one sunset make a day. One day is 24 hours. If we keep dissecting each unit I promise you I won’t be alive when it’s over, because it’s infinite. Once we take a chunk of time and keep zooming in to smaller units, we will never reach a point where we find the smallest time fragment, because there’s always a smaller one. 

Now let’s zoom out to one day. We said that a day is 24 hours and it represents sunrise and sunset. But the sun is always rising at one side of the planet and it’s been the case for 4.5 billion years. 

I don’t want to get into the year rabbit hole. Minutes and seconds are confusing enough. So from our egocentric definition, each individual has his or her own time depending on where you are on the globe. So what’s 1 o’clock for you can’t be exactly one o’clock for me unless we both occupy the same spot at that moment. What part of your body is considered you? 

Let’s assume you said it’s your head. Well in this case, if you’re facing north, there will be a time difference between your shoulder and your right shoulder. And what part of your head are you? So if you noticed, the moment we try to compartmentalize one aspect of life, we fall into these infinite rabbit holes. Time is a made-up concept to help us organize our lives, but it’s not a real thing. Life is dynamic and can only be grasped as is. No chunking and splitting. Science uses arbitrary measurements like meters and cms to help us have consistent measurements, but the universe doesn’t give a dam about minutes or hours meters or cms. 

And any event in the world can only be described in the present continuous tense. As Alan Watts said, if you see a candle flame, you shouldn’t say there’s a flame, but rather there’s flaming because it’s not a static picture. It’s alive and dynamic and changing all the time. And if you see a fist, you should not call it a fist. You should call it FISTING, because what if I open my hand? Where did the first go? We have to pinpoint the moment in time at which the cause took place, which begs the question: What level of magnification is small enough to be identified as a moment? This brings us back to the dilemma of identifying the smallest time unit (the bit of time) that’s considered a moment. The second trap, assuming you successfully found that smallest time block that represents a moment, where do we draw the line that separates the cause from the effect? I’ll give you an example by asking a question When we look at a 5 years old kid, when did that kid become alive? I’m sure it’s before they turned 2. Is it at birth? Trying to see the world as causes and effects are like me giving you goggles that only allows you to see half an inch square of what’s in front of you, then I let a dog pass from left to your right so slowly and close enough that’s almost gonna touch you, then ask you to identify what you’re looking at. The first day you’ll see the head, then neck, shoulders, trunk, legs, tail. We look at the world as causes and effects for the sake of simplicity, but there’s no such thing as a cause and effect. Nothing can be identified as an individual thing without falling for infinite traps. The moment we try to identify one thing, we fall for a huge trap.  Many Buddist monks said to the effect of “if you can say it, then you don’t understand it”

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