ok so this blew up WAY more than i thought it would so i thought i would plug some videos i like covering a similar topic as this one: *"self-centredness is NOT 'self-care': losing the human face online" by oliSUNvia:* ua-cam.com/video/ess1HfZzxss/v-deo.html&pp=ygUJb2xpc3Vudmlh *"The 'Mean Girl' to Nurse Pipeline" by Not Even Emily:* ua-cam.com/video/m1JOXI6i9OA/v-deo.html&ab_channel=NotEvenEmily i've never had a video get this many views this quickly, but most of all i'm thankful for all the praise and interesting discussion in the comments. it sounds like i've made a lot of people feel validated, and these comments make me feel the same way. genuinely thanks. ❤ also follow me on twitter: twitter.com/ZoomerTalk
Great video man. It blew up because so many people have been feeling this sentiment building, even if they haven't watched VS. It's a message many people (myself included) benefit from hearing in a concise, crystalized video like this.
@niggy9-11 I know im just a random person online but I just wanted to say i genuinely hope you can find a way out of the darkness you're in. See if talking to a therapist helps, or maybe a friend. Hope you have a good day and know that there are people in your life who truly love you
Misguided stoicism, a mindset that you see plenty of people end up having, is so fascinating since as far as i know all the groundbreaking stoics were all virtue ethics guys, and controlling emotion was about making a habit of having positive emotions, not being blank all day long.
Yeah. There's a big difference between the philosophy of stoicism and how the adjective "stoic" is typically used today. I don't view real stoicism as being about denying or suppressing your emotions, it's about elevating reason above your emotions, so that your emotions don't control you.
@@thenew4559 Exactly, stoicism is about realizing that bad stuff happens all the time and it is not going to stop. You can't control it so focus on what you can control and you can control being a better person than yesterday.
Well happiness is ethereal, not concrete, the tweet saying there's no benefit to being good is probably coming from a place where indeed no good deed went unpunished in the concrete sense. No wealth, status, or improvement of circumstance seen as the result of good behavior. If stoicism = rolling with the punches that are going to come despite your goodness, then you need some measure of it to stick with goodness until that happiness is achieved or else you'll be swayed by circumstance back to the path you perceive as the one that will fulfill those aforementioned lower-order achievements.
@@thenew4559 You understand stoicism. Anyone suggesting stoicism is a rejection or suppression of emotions doesn't understand stoicism and any "stoic" who is only rejecting and/or suppressing their emotions is not an actual stoic. Stoics feel, they just don't let their feelings dictate how they think or act.
That's essentially what optimistic nihilism is. It's recognizing that no meaning at all means all the meaning you even care to make. Terry Pratchett said it best in Discworld.
The thing is, that was never really in dispute. People kind of misinterpreted the "toxic masculinity" thing to mean "masculinity bad" instead of "masculinity in certain contexts is bad".
This is the incorrect. Be a person that can and will do good. You can't be weak and a good person. You can't be naive and be a good person. You can't be lazy and be a good person. You can't be accepting and be a good person. A good person defends their home from interlopers. Is smart enough to know when they are being manipulated. Is powerful enough to stop criminals when needed. But when all the injustices are removed? They go back to being kind to their neighbors. That is being what a good person is. Not a weak person that is manipulated and controlled by others. That is a bad person. A cowardly person.
A good person can be weak and naive, also weak and naive people can be heroes too. I want to know if you really want to change your mindset, or came here to try and sway other people into your beliefs.
@@theravenousrabbit3671 This can be true and can also not be true. A manipulated person can still be a great human being and help others while being under control. A weak person may get beat and never fight back, but still be a good person and help others. Im afraid you mixed up a regular good person and andrew tate
@@Psecteri don't understand, you have a weird definition of good, how does being naive lead to you being a good person, what is good, trying to please others?
Big respect for this one. People are happiest when happy together. And thats where true value lies. Thanks for the vid. I heard you and more people will
You cant trust a bad, unhappy person. Being a good person is about mutual trust. If you become such a person which other people KNOW wont betray them simply because of the way you are, then you have achieved the goal of being a good person. Bad people dont trust other bad people, and because they must assume everybody else is just as nasty as them in order to protect themselves from other bad people, that means they dont see the integrity in good people, and dont benefit from that mutual trust. That is why being a good person is good for you. The smartest good people know when to trust and when to avoid. Some particularly evil people are so far gone that they must be avoided. Maybe thats what evil is: an inability to see good in others.
Let me make youur face hit another wall: Why is that we find to be good what we find good? Or in other words, adapted to your position, why we can only live with ourselves with making what we call "good"? I got an answer. A Materialist, answer.
@@KozelPraiseGOELROwe define "good" based on our empathy. We also define "good" based on our worldwiev, how things "should be". If you simply attempt to call "good" anything that does not align with both, you might be soon starting to pay the price of self-deceit. And losing one's integrity is no fun. Also, we evolved as social creatures, so the need for our actions to be justified is evolutionary. "Materialistic answers" do not always cut it when it comes to social studies. We are irrational beings, after all.
Agreed. Personally, I see no other benefit, and even disadvantages of being good to others. But not being good feels terrible. For a few months I bullied someone in school. It started automatically, everyone pushed me to participate. I was the one getting bullied severely before so I participated and got treated better by my classmates. When I realized what I‘ve done I stopped. I knew it was the right choice but my classmates tried to make me regret it. They made fun of me when I told them that I won’t participate in the bullying anymore. After that, I became the victim again for the following years. Since then I have developed pretty bad trust issues regarding people now. It‘s difficult for me to view people as „good“, because many really aren‘t. So many people are two faced and only wait for others to show weakness, even if that weakness is „not being an a**hole“
@@tlotro625hmmm now that's gotten me thinking~ If we define "good" based on our empathy, someone who lacks all empathy (doesn't necessarily have to be a sadistic person, could be an apathetic one) could find acts that other more empathetic people would consider "bad." If we also define "good" based on our worldviews, then people who have a "violent" worldview, such as those with a culture based around bloodshed or people who lived lives purely centered around survival/self-preservation against other people, could probably still live lives without regrets concerning bloodshed, being true to their nature. People who choose and live life without caring for others could theoretically live lives happier than those who do care. Being solely focused on their wellbeing, focused purely on their goals. Should one like that live today, despite not caring how they affect the lives others, could they change how some things worked? Do absurd things? If they set their minds only to their goals? Spitballin is fun~ Airing out the nonsense in my head feels neat~
@@otherevan296 About your first paragraph... You are right. There are even historical examples, like berserkers. Tho, yes, many people like that were shunned and driven out of settlements... in the better case... So, about the current times... If such a person realizes the concept of social consequences for their actions and not chooses violence as their goal, they can be pretty "successful" in some areas of life, like corporate management or politics, where empathy and ethics are treated more like obstacles... I believe I have roasted a whole socio-economic class... Anyway, as long as their goal does not require anything they can't do, they can be successful. But, the jury is still out on the topic of changing the world, since I still don't know what could motivate such a person towards a goal any greater than their own wellfare and prosperity. This is interesting.
"You don't owe anyone anything" is honestly perfectly fine. It's precisely because we don't owe anyone anything that we are free to do as we want. I want to be a good person because I want to be a good person. Doing that makes me feel happy, it gives me a sense of satisfaction. That's just who I am.
i think forgiveness is a big part of being a morally good person, something that is heavy in vinland saga's story. The most important person to forgive, is yourself. We all deserve forgiveness, and it starts at you. To forgive oneself is to learn true forgiveness, i don't think you will truly forgive anyone until you forgive yourself. And you can see this is something he struggles with, he doesn't know how to forgive himself, so he cant forgive the retainers for destroying their crops, he couldnt forgive canute for killing askeladd in that moment. And he couldn't forgive himself for what happened to his father. Forgiveness is the first step for becoming better. To forgive is to give a second chance, to wipe the slate clean, and i believe we all deserve such forgiveness when we decide to become better people.
yes!! one of the biggest catalysts for thorfinn's more positive view towards everyone else is his own realization that even though he had done bad stuff in the past, he can still do good now and work to become a "true warrior." logically this realization should extend to other people as well
No one deserves forgiveness. No one deserves anything. That is what makes it so impactfull to begin with. If we deserved to be forgiven then that would imply our actions were not our own. That we are entitled to it and have somehow veen slighted when we do not recieve it. No one deserves to be forgiven. Yet it is a gift given freely all the same.
It's a good message, but i disagree with forgiveness being the first step for becoming better. Based on person, context and situation, that first step can be different for each human being
I think if there were no benefits to being a good person, that would make being a good person all the more admirable. It means that you're doing something purely because it's the right thing, and not for personal gain. "I have no enemies" has become my personal motto since I've seen this show. And that is an especially radical position in our current political climate
@@shadow7988 What's the opposite of irrelevant and harmless? Relevant and harmful. Which is actually just an evil person. Pretty much every dictator was relevant and harmful. Every peaceful, loving person on the planet, you don't hear about. They are "irrelevant" and "harmless".
@@FlingGibstopper 'Being relevant is evil'. I'm guessing you grew up in a Christian environment? I hate to break it to you but this is literally how all of human history, no, all of NATURE has worked since the beginning of time. No civilization is formed purely out of cooperation and goodwill, it's formed under force of arms. All politics is carried out under the authority of violence. All governance is carried out under the authority of violence. Clearly, being 'relevant and harmful' is incredibly subjective, but at least you're actually doing something other than just existing and consooming. It can't be evil if it's just the state of reality. A passive object will always be subject to the whims of an active object, regardless of any suppositions of morality. Building a morality system around doing nothing and being harmless isn't just kind of pathetic, but in reality it's not even feasible or even doable. To exist you have to eat other living things, by default you do harm.
@@FlingGibstopper I think that being a coward is not much better than being a tyrant. It's a refusal to accept what you are as a human, and work to actually improve yourself. When a toxic pseudo-stoic pretends that all empathy is a failure of self control, it is not much different from a "pacifist" claiming that it's always wrong to fight, even against tyrants. People who do nothing are not better than people who cause harm.
@@shadow7988what having enemies means is not letting people walk over you or use you, it’s that you harbor no ill will towards anybody. You can fight to defend yourself, but you don’t hate the person you’re fighting, you don’t wish anything bad happens to them, you’re simply preventing yourself or others from being harmed. You can be annoyed by a person talking, but you don’t want to actively want something to happen to them.
Morality is hard, all you can do is trust your gut and learn from your mistakes, try to be better than you were yesterday. Treat those around you well and most will return the favor. Also try to use social media less. That’s another huge step towards being a good person.
I disagree completely. You don't have to wait for mistakes, you can think in depth about the consequences of your actions BEFORE doing something. Also genuine ethical behavior is about benefiting those, who can't return the favour. Benefiting future people, who will live after you die, or animals, for example.
@@MrCmon113 untrue. Genuine ethical behavior is benefiting EVERYONE, present AND future. Yes, even your "enemies", but you know in the show there's a saying called "I have no enemies". If you are unable to do good to even those you don't like, at least do not cause harm. Morality really isn't hard. All you have to ask yourself is "If they did this to me, would it hurt me?". "If I did this for them, would they be happy?". You need to ask both questions however, because the first one is more egotistical, so it's a two parter.
@@FUMEXEBecause there is no point, why hurt people? If you help them than they can eventually help others, making a better world and in turn making you a better person
In the moral code I follow, Being good improves my compactly to sustain and improve my life, the moral is the practical. So being good has lots of benefits.
@@equaltoreality8028 Maybe pragmatically, but it's undeniable that the root of self-sacrifical altruism is something that is undeniably beautiful. It's hypocritical and unpractical, but nevertheless, the dream in and of itself is not a mistake
"undeniable that the root of self-sacrifical altruism is something that is undeniably beautiful." That's the most batshit insane thing I have ever heard. There is nothing beautiful about something so self destructive. That's actually pretty horrendous if you think about it. No wonder the world is going to hell if most people think like that. If you think about it, how can you have an ever improving world when most people just want to self destruct?
Honestly this video is just what I needed right now. I’ve gone through a lot of traumatizing and mentally and emotionally draining events these past few years, and I’ve been feeling like there’s no point in living or having faith in people or the world anymore. That being said, I’m trying my best not to give up and still be kind to others.
I've suffered immensely during my so far 21 years of life, I have seen things you people wouldn't imagine to exist, I've felt the grief of losing the few people who believed in me, I have felt immense amounts of physical pain, endured immense amounts of abuse of a type the algorithm doesn't allow me to say, I have felt immense loneliness that left a psychological strain, I have felt the betrayal of those I deemed closer to me, I have felt injustice, ridicule, cowardice and I know how it feels to be cut and stabbed(literally and metaphorically), my life has been a rough one...so why didn´t I ended up becoming a monster? why didn't I get on some glorified cop-assisted suicide path? because of three things that allowed me to hang in there initially, then two more things after, the first three things that allowed me to hold on to myself were: the memory of my late mentors that were my Grandfather and my Uncle the things they taught me and the respect I had for them and the values they imparted in me prevented me from doing anything that could or would disgrace their memory and make them disappointed, the second thing has to do with the first: discipline with my training and routine, I trained a few combat sports disciplines from a very young age due to my mentor's encouragement, that discipline kept me sane even on the razor's edge, the third was...a girl, my Gf...someone I was in love with and got taken away from me by a car crash...out of all the relationships I've had...she was the only one who genuinely loved me and I did not wish to do anything she would not have been proud of, these things kept me sane but what really brought me out of the pit were my friends who i made completely by chance and over time encouraged me to get back to more serious training, to let go of many dark things and the other thing was a priest that brought me back to my religion which is Catholic Apostolic Roman Christianity, the combination of these two taught me to be kind to others again and how being kind to others while improving one's self is its own reward. Whoever you are, whenever you may be, whatever your situation is..there's a future for everyone, and it's never too late to start to do the right thing, not until the very last moment before you're dead, so please, if you read it so far...don´t give up being good and kind and do not give up your life: if Thorfinn and Guts kept going, so can you.
for a lot of people life makes it feel easier to become apathetic and jaded, but it's never impossible to fight against that and hold onto your positive self. sad to hear how much you've struggled but it's also inspirational to hear that you've continued to move forward, keep fighting ❤
I just like being a good person. And I think if everyone tried their best at being a good person it would make for a world that would suck less, so that change has to start somewhere.
for one thing, I want to say that this is an excellent video that gets it's message across incredibly well! I was literally just going "hell yes" through the whole thing. a note about Thorkell: I think you're right about Thorkell not really having much introspection... but the kind of sad thing about him is that he's not well set up for long term happiness because of that "stuck in the present" mindset. Thorkell is stronger than anyone... he's the strongest individual guy we see being active in the main story. and he loves entertaining himself with the challenges of war. like, basically this guy needs more enrichment in his enclosure, because whenever he gets bored, there's mass murder. but the thing about all of that, is that the world doesn't actually have an endless war to give him. eventually, if you tax the world of too many essentials to human life, everybody just gets too tired to keep it up. you can actually run yourself fresh out of fights to be had, eventually. Thorkell's existence is unsustainable, and careening toward an endpoint of either extreme dissatisfaction, or death. our jolly idiot won't realize it until he's petulantly demanding more from the earth he's scorched, but he will probably persist past the point of people's ability to entertain him with bloodshed. and that's really the truth behind the concept of Valhalla. there's that scene where Thorfinn and Askeladd are talking in the early morning, looking out over the English countryside, and Askeladd speaks plainly, saying that someday Thorfinn will beat him. Thorfinn is growing stronger as he grows up, and Askeladd will one day decline in his old age. Askeladd will know that he has no more business on earth when it all catches up to him. that's what Valhalla is. these men aren't comfortable being vulnerable, but we are all rendered vulnerable at some point. it could be due to illness, or disability, or even just finding someone stronger than us who wishes to do us harm. but someday we will find ourselves vulnerable, even if it's just due to the passage of time. and these men can't handle that, so they obfuscate it by dying before they get there. so where does that leave the strongest guy?
@@Gedeongedza thank you... honestly, I just want someone to teach Thorkell knitting or something. like... get that man a hobby that challenges him in a different way. make him calm down.😔
@@smoqueed44 I mean... that kind of entirely misses the point. like, first of all, Thorkell is the type of warrior to maintain a sense of pride about what he spends his time doing, and he cares about the way that he dies. we're literally introduced to him when he joins the English, for no reason other than the fact that they're weak, because he wanted to fight someone stronger. for better or for worse, he values the idea of dying in battle, rather than some other more mundane way. if this was only about having enough food, money, women, and resources to live, then yeah, Thorkell's existence would be about as simple as any given one of Askeladd's men. who, mind you, are still set up to fall into ruin as people... if, by happenstance, they manage to survive into old age. if their health starts declining, to the point where they need someone to help them in any way, their only hope is to look pitiful in front of somebody charitable who doesn't know what they've done all their lives. they've spent their whole existence burning every bridge they ever could've built, before the first board was ever set. who is supposed to have sympathy for them? and this is what I'm talking about, really. everybody loves spouting off about how, if you happen to be a tough guy in a world like this, you can grind the world beneath your heel, and if anybody gets mad at you... what are they gonna do? in truth... nothing! those individual people will die beneath your heel, just like you thought they would. but in doing that, you forfeit the entire content of your life. Thorkell only works as a character because there is actually, legitimately _nothing_ that he would be sad to lose, if a warrior took it from him in a fair fight. he has no right to keep a single thing. and that means that, if the battle aspect of his life, which he is so uniquely proficient at, evaporates someday for any reason... he has absolutely nothing left. like, classic example... what if Thorfinn had blinded him in both eyes during their duel? that would severely impact his ability to do literally anything. it'd be a fair consequence... Thorkell's done enough to earn the wound, and a warrior gave it to him fair and square, but even with such life altering damage, it'd still leave him perfectly capable of living. what would he do at that point? have the patience to learn how to live with a severe handicap? have someone battle him until he dies, just for the sake of ending it all? rely on others to help him make up for his loss of sight? retire? what can you do if all your attempts to die are just some form of giving up, but all your attempts to live will involve admitting that you're weak, needy, or vulnerable? and if he doesn't have the ability to do the one thing he's spent his whole life doing so far... then what on earth is left to matter to him? and keep in mind... vulnerable people still find ways to live their lives every single day. if you can't find the strength to continue life while vulnerable, then you're really just a sniveling little crybaby. oh, you miss having the power to destroy everything, and take whatever you want, and screw people over for no reason? welcome to the way normal people have always lived. helplessness doesn't feel good? tough shit. some people were born without a choice in that matter, and they live anyway. what else were they supposed to do? if you're still talking about pillaging at this point, that's just another deflection. the fact is, it is impossible for that to last forever, and it should never have begun in the first place. if you'll accept that it's cruel to others, then that's reason enough. but the one doing the pillaging is rendering their own life into hell as well... they just don't know it yet.
Hey, man, thanks for your vid! I recently had an argument whether it's better to live in a world of egoists or altruists. I stood with the altruist side, imagining that every human is a good person. It later became clear, that my oponent was having trouble with empathy. "Care only for the close ones, and no one else. You are always more valuable to you then anyone under any circumstance". I'm just glad, that we sorted this one out. She realised that in the world of egoists, if you have nothing to give in return, you will recieve nothing (duh). Sometimes we require help from others when we can't "afford" it. But being able to recieve help is sole purpose of living in society. To me, it's what makes us human. Monkey Stronger Together!
Sounds like it was an interesting discussion! It should be obvious that a world filled with altruists would be the better one, but the problem with the real world is that we have a mix of altruists and egoists and so the altruists tend to get trampled on. The solution, though, has to be for more altruists to appear, and not more egoists. Monke together strong
I believe it is the greatest quality a person can possess. Above intellect, above even willpower lays the divine quality of morality. (And as an agnostic, I do not use that term lightly lol) Intellect allows you to learn, and do things you could not before. In a sense it is power. Willpower is greater still. It gives you the drive to actually act and learn in the first place, without which intellect is useless. (If you don't do anything, it doesn't really matter what you _can_ do.) And goodness sits above them all, for it tells you _how_ to act. And I think most can agree it is better to not act at all than to act maliciously. Then you're just subtracting good from the world instead of doing the opposite. If you simply strive to be a good person, you may not always benefit in all societal structures, but you are already a greater man than most. And you'll probably feel way happier for it. I'm very glad so many people on the internet seem to agree, and that appreciation for goodness is not dead. This generation gives me hope once more. In short, without unnecessarily long sentences: Goodness = good lol Have a grand one mates, keep bein' cool.
Or you can work on finding what gives you drive regardless of fuzzy moral principles that have no basis in anything tangible. I help people because I want to, not because of some moral stance. Good or bad is just a matter of whether or not it's good or bad for you - for most people this is to some social end, but that's not always the case. And being antisocial doesn't mean you're bad to other people either, a mathematician driven by his interest in modular math could be very helpful to the world without ever caring about his impact on the world. Not to mention that the idea that people should do good things for their own gain is ultimately a better justification for simply doing what's good for you and makes you satisfied regardless of whether that's good for others, since the approach is fundamentally self centered. Basically, Nietzsche was right.
@@cokesucker9520 Helping people because you want to is also moral, and very much commendable. I don't believe you have to have a specific set of principles or an ideology to possess the quality of morality. That's a very modern view of things that I find unnecessarily tribal in a way. The belief that being good=good, and an appreciation for the ethical is more than enough. I'd argue it's even better. If you act purely in a self-centered manner without any thoughts of what is right or what could harm others, you may help the world yes. You may also just as well severely harm it. Many have. I'd argue most of the suffering in our world stems from it. It is no way for a society to live. I maintain that ethics should be valued by all. It's been a long time since I studied Nietzche, and I don't think I did so all too thoroughly. But while he was undoubtably very wise, and his thoughts were deeply profound, I do recall disagreeing with him on many of his thoughts on morality specifically. (The whole sheep and wolves thing never appealed much to me, and morality coming only from religion is just blatantly false.) I'll have to read up on him again.
@@sirreginaldfishingtonxvii6149 Nietzsche is largely disinterested in the moral question. He is mostly concerned with the why and not the what. I don't think he said anything to imply that morality only came from religion, but he did say that the modern moral landscape in the west is deeply rooted in it - which is absolutely true. More or less his concern is with external vs internal motivations. The ideal for him is that all of our motives should be derived from inside ourselves, which means that any conclusion reached by doing so is acceptable. The idea of the bird of prey and the lambs, is that really the strong don't hate the weak - but the inverse is true. Being weak isn't evil, but it is less desirable than being strong - regardless of what you want to do with that strength. Ultimately, it's this strong central identity that he was pushing against - in his time and place it was German nationalism. The idea that we're all one big group that should act together for the benefit of the whole - a herd protecting itself from interlopers: an idea that was used to justify purging outliers. So in some sense what he was talking about was a bit bigger than this discussion. I'm electing to ignore your comments on the potential sources of suffering in the world, since they seem detached from reality in such significant ways that I question your grasp on history - but you're free to elaborate further since I might not be seeing your greater point. TL;DR: Nietzsche wanted people to find themselves, instead of relying on group identity and morals.
@@cokesucker9520 I can't help but disagree with him. There are many conclusions you can come through by seeking within yourself. But there is no reason to why those conclusions should be correct simply because you arrived to them internally. You may require yet more introspection. You may have been blocked from truth through past trauma or personal issues. You may come to the conclusion that your purpose involves mutilation of others for your own pleasure. I don't think that would mean you are right. I'm no fan of simply following herd mentality, but morality does not require herd mentality. Far from it, I would say they're often opposed. I also don't think Nietzche said that they were inherently intertwined though. As you say, his thoughts on the matter there are a bit bigger than this discussion. I would argue there have been two sorts of suffering throughout history. There is the natural (disease, predators, etc.) and the manmade. Natural suffering has decreased significantly in recent times in many parts of the world, to the extent that for many today I believe manmade suffering eclipses it. Manmade suffering is derived sometimes from ignorance, but often from greed, manipulation, personal flaws, and selfishness. The tyrant and the dictator ruling over their people with an iron fist, the megacorporation exploiting the poor and the weak in the search for infinite wealth. On a smaller scale: The child predator. Are these not all driven by selfish motivations? With a lack for concern about others? Were they truly concerned with morality, with acting in one's own best interests only while not so horribly harming others, there would no doubt be less suffering in the world. I don't see how there wouldn't be. I have nothing against finding yourself, on the contrary. But that does not have to exclude being good to your fellow man. It _shouldn't_ exclude being good to your fellow man. You don't have to subscribe to some ideology or have some fuzzy set of principles, a natural care for your fellows and a will not to do harm is more than enough. (...Man I could really use a formal education in this stuff. English isn't my first language, and expressing myself when it comes to academia and philosophy gets rather difficult rather fast.)
@@sirreginaldfishingtonxvii6149 Mao tried to resolve food supply issues by getting rid of what was seen as a pest, but in reality was actually a predator to the pests. This killed tens of millions of people. Was the intention good? Yes. Was there suffering anyways? Of course. Morality has nothing to do with the material conditions in the here and now - we mostly just trade one set of negatives for another regardless of the intentions of the people involved. It used to be that people would die from disease, famine, and exposure now we kill ourselves at unprecedented rates - which itself implies an even larger number of people who are miserable but don't make the jump. Any of the things invented that you might consider good have made this exchange. The point is, that we're always ignorant in the grand scheme of things - so all that man made misery due to said ignorance will never truly dissipate, even with the most selfless and moral actors. On the issue of selfishness, Nietzsche is mostly unconcerned with whether or not a person is selfish. A person could surmise internally that they gain joy and satisfaction from giving to others and have no conflict with the Nietzschen ideal - there's a whole section early in the Gay Science that goes on about how nobility isn't about any particular trait, but is instead about why you present those traits. As an aside, your misunderstandings are making me realize that it's very hard to explain Nietzsche in this context, since there's a whole collection of ideas that support each other to build his conclusions. Each time you respond I realize that I need to explain a layer deeper than I did in the previous response.
I had this kind of mindset before,I think it was because in the time I was living in a moment where I got betrayed by so many people I trusted, I just couldn't understand why, it seemed to me that being the good guy wasn't right, that the person who does whatever he does is always happier... Once you go in the hole of emptyness and sadness that is being a bad person, you will understand why it's not good to be that way, everything just gets darker, you feel bad with yourself, you get alone, you get empty... Even if you are betrayed, at the very least you will have someone to count on, while being a bad guy, you just die inside... Great video btw, it's an important subject to be talked about, people these days need to understand what truly means to be "good" also happier, your video made me think, and that's a really good think, Great job dude 👍 (also, I'll definitely watch that anime)
Thank you for finally voicing my own thoughts about our generation. I also think a large part of it, is that there's probably not so many people who actually believe this, but more so a vocal minority of people who genuinely believe this, backed by people who don't really believe it but are vulnerable and hurt in life and going through a bad time, and unfortunately this is what they cling to. The reason people see characters like Thorkell and think "See? This proves that the ideal way of being is to be unapologetically selfish." miss the reason why they think that in the first place, they don't resonate with Thorkell because he's a ruthless monster, they resonate because he's a HAPPY ruthless monster, which is even more unlikely to happen and mistakes the forest for the trees. Anyone COULD be infectiously, unapologetically happy about anything- Most of us don't have that gift or can't tap into that mindset of boundless, infectious energy on a regular basis, it's either a natural talent or a highly developed emotional skill that most just don't develop. But the point is, that's fun for fictional evil villains, sure, but it doesn't really help the rest of us because simply put, we're not built for that. People evolved to live in communities, we're social creatures who are only truly capable of thriving in tightly knit and loving tribes and families, not to say there aren't outliers, but they're the exception, not the rule, and people who think that being self-centered and driven is the path to happiness miss the fundamental thing which makes being a good person important. The world is much bigger than any one person, and even bigger than any group of people, but history shows that if you have a group, if you have that love and kindness, you have a much better chance of weathering the storms in life than if you tried to spite the world and do everything yourself. It's easier to hold on as a collective. While individuals easily get washed away by the tides. That's what people misinterpret as "There are no benefits to being a good person", not all of us are lucky enough to find our tribe early on, and often we get bitter because of it, which creates a self-fulfilling prophecy. Most of us think we're good people, when in reality we're all just people by default. There are no benefits to being a lonely person. There are many highly successful, absolutely awful people- But you'll never see them alone, because they run businesses, they have teams, and people who work under them, because a ship with a crooked captain will still sail as long as the captain doesn't do something so horrible that it either sinks the ship or causes the crew to mutiny. That's the reality people miss. But even a good crew member will do far more than a bad captain will, and a good captain even more so. Those are the people who weather storms for the entire group, who make sure that when the "captain" cuts budget for the second time this year, the people below them still get to feed their family because they're willing to take a smaller share. The people who when "the captain" goes around and starts beating and abusing his own crew, will be there for them and comfort and protect them. Because the thing is, with having a horrible captain, they're easily replaceable and quite easy to overthrow. Because strength in numbers will always beat one bad man. But if a bad man is able to keep people from having hope, or believing in themselves, and they spread all sorts of mistrust among people so they don't trust each other- Then the bad captain looks better by comparison, not because they are, but because they're the one who created the environment without anyone noticing. If one person notices though, and does something, the crew takes control, and the captain goes down. You can choose the crew that you join, on rare occasions you may even start your own crew or get the chance to join as captain. But you don't have the choice of simultaneously being alone and being immune to the tides. Not even the greatest crew is immune to the tides of the world, the world we sit on is mostly made of water after all. But we're greater than the sum of our parts when we truly band together, it's what we're built and evolved for. So I'll leave with this, maybe you're someone like me, and you're still struggling to find or make your crew, don't give up, and don't grow bitter, an equally important part of sailing through life is to keep spirits and morale high. The important thing to remember is that, no matter how alone you feel, you're part of something bigger than yourself already, you just don't realize it yet. There's loads of people just like us, just like you, who would be more than willing to accept you as you are, all you gotta do is ask, which really is the hardest part. It's hard to be open because you don't always know what you might let in, but there's always far more good in the world than there is bad. The good are naturally prone to banding together and supporting each other. There may be some leeches in the water, but we have plenty of doctors and hunters out here making sure that we minimize them, so try not to let it get to you too much if you find some getting attached to you, they need you far more than you need them. TLDR: Be good people, look for good people, be good together. Have a great day.
You kinda forget the point that in this day and age we dont need another person the way in the old times used to, capitalism in itself is based on the individual person, not the community
@@pepper0075 Capitalism or no capitalism, humans are still undeniably social creatures, sure, we may be bad at socializing sometimes, but we're evolved to be part of a bigger group, just look at the effects of solitary confinement on prisoners, or how loneliness is heavily correlated with symptoms of depression. Even setting aside emotional needs, I think anyone who would say that capitalism is individualistic fundamentally doesn't understand how capitalism works in practical terms. A capitalist society doesn't work if you don't interact with other people, and if you try to screw people over in a capitalist society, they'll come back for justice, most often in the form of a group with more power than you. Not only is community emotionally healthy, it's also logically practical. I will say capitalism isn't idealistic by any means, but it's not individualistic either, it's a system of currency which flows endlessly from one person to the next. In a way, capitalism is a way of connecting people through trade, rather than through altruism, although some people try to find ways of making capitalism altruistic.
Right. Long winded way to say "wow I really love the herd it's so awesome". If someone doesn't love the herd, what are you gonna do about it? Love them?
@@waffleyumboyr5342 That would be the idea, yeah. So long as people aren't assholes, why not be nice? Besides, it's not that I'm a social person, I just know well enough from experience that the people who tend to avoid being part of a "group", are often just people who have been hurt by others too many times to keep caring. Very few people are objectively awful or anti-social. Most of us are just trying to get by, so I don't see any point in making life harder for others. Who knows, you might actually get something out of being nice to someone. If not, it's not like it cost you anything. Have a good day mate. Even if you try to have a bad one out of spite.
really good analysis on thorkell, many people think they need to shut down their emotions so they can live within the moments but it's that lack of emotion that makes us constantly need to scratch that itch
While I agree with many of your points, I feel as though you didn’t emphasize the importance of putting your foot down and pushing toxic people out of your life. If you are surrounded by people that are constantly stepping over your boundaries, you won’t learn how to stand up for yourself; you’ll only end up people pleasing. It’s important to find balance in both being a good person and being able to give up on people that bring out the worst in you as well as take advantage of your kindness.
Helping others is actually proven to improve mental health. It's the best way to recover from PTSD as he would naturally have PTSD after being a child soldier
"If the only thing keeping a person decent is the expectation of divine reward, then, brother, that person is a piece of shit." - Rust Cohle (True Detective S1 by Nic Pizzolatto) It shouldn't be a question of whether there is anything to be gained from being a good person or not; it should be a question of whether there even is any need for some kind of reward to exist in order for someone to be good. That's what people mean when they say that it is its own reward.
I always say that having a hypocritical person that acts good out of self interest is better than not having one, since that's one more person who does (even if occasionally) good
@@SennkenOh, absolutely. It's still a good deed regardless of any technicalities; it's just that in all likelihood a person who does good for his own benefit and nothing else is eventually going to stop if he finds out that he no longer has anything to gain from it. It's not sustainable with that mindset.
Tell that to the homeless person where all their kindness and goodness have brought them to a fringe of society where nobody cares about them and would prefer that they're dead. It's only it's own reward when you're privilege is speaking. You have money to live well enough to not feel punished for being the good person. Not to mention the amount of people that think they're a good person when they cause problems for others to benefit themselves.
@@SherrifOfNottingham Firstly you can't just arbitrarily attribute someone being homeless to them being "too good" somehow, usually it's way more complicated than to be simplified like that. Secondly obviously your own survival takes precedence over your other less important needs, that isn't even something that needs to be said in my opinion, but you can still be a kind or good person even in spite of your circumstances, you seem to be treating it as if being a kind person relies on your material wealth, when it doesn't. And thirdly, your final point to me has no relevance because you're just describing a purely self-interested person that harms others for their own gain, just because they think they're good people means nothing, almost everybody considers themselves to be a good person it doesn't make it true, so I don't really get your point.
@@Dell-ol6hb you misread what I wrote, I'm saying there's a hypothetical homeless person who is kind and good, but receives nothing for it. Our society doesn't care about people who are kind or good, and a majority of the time those who are truly kind or good without need of a reward, will forget to be good to themselves, because rarely is the favor returned.
"The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either -- but right through every human heart -- and through all human hearts." - Alexander Solzhenitsyn
@@jonirischx8925 instead of resorting to buzzwords (ad hominems), criticize what he is saying. You’re letting your ideology do your thinking for you, rather than thinking for yourself. Solzhenitsyn was a complex man whose worldview was shaped by his life as a slave-laborer in Siberia, he both spoke a lot of truths and was wrong about some things.
Just because you're too (willfully?) uneducated to know the meaning of certain words, does not make them 'buzzwords'. Love it when people out themselves and their ignorance, thinking it's some kind of rebuttal...
@@LuisSilva-vq9lr I’ve read the entirety of Gulag Archipelago, and I don’t particularly care about Jordan Peterson. Feel free to criticize the quote I gave above, but you’re just deflecting and trying to criticize me via guilt by association, because you associate my quote with someone who your ideology tells you to dislike.
Honestly, ATLA has a great quote coming from the Giant Lion Turtle: "The true mind can weather all the lies and illusions without being lost. The true heart can touch the poison of hatred without being harmed. Since beginning less time, darkness thrives in the void, but always yields to purifying light". That "light" is, imo, just be good and kind, no matter how much the world falls into the stoic and cruel and uncaring nature, be that light.
Sometimes being good doesn't make you happy you might not make others better, no matter how much you try. Sometimes you might be good and only suffer while failing everything you attempt. Sometimes you might be good and hated by everyone while others shift the blame of the most evil people on you. I believe good is way more deeper than what I saw in this video. I'm thinking about tragic good, those who sarcificed for others to maybe have a normal life while knowing that they won't survive till their future. Some sacrifice for others in vain, some won't be remembered yet they still chosen good while knowing this. What about those who had only suffering in return for being a good person yet they never gave up on being good?
Yeah, that's true. I personally took this video as more of a general thing, and not necessarily including situations in which the good ends up causing little to no benefit to oneself or others.
@@lifadysi9418Isn't self-satisfaction and peace in mind the best benefit? I remember when I used to flow with rage and that me from what I can say now was not stable nor at peace. Yes! I fought against bullies for my physically weaker classmates, yet*I know the person I was then was not happy with myself.
I really needed this video. I've been feeling that sentiment for about the last 6 months because it seemed like I never had people care about me even when I always cared about others. I realized later they were bad people, but I needed to still be a good person even if it was hard because deep down I knew it was still in my nature.
First, the appearance of being a good person, the reputation, does have tangible benefits. To be trusted has benefits. That being said, many people simply try to appear good. And it works for them. Until they get caught doing something evil. The benefit of being good, is that it promotes goodness in the lives around you and you gain the reputation of a good person without risk of being exposed, because there is nothing to expose. The best way to appear good is to be good and train yourself to be good. Do something enough times and it becomes just who you are.
@@lucidvisions9965 Oh, that's a good question. Reputation is easier to maintain than to build. Having no reputation is better than having ill repute. If everyone thinks you are bad because of past experience, or past deeds, or even malevolent rumors targeting you, then you can't receive the benefits of appearing good. This can create a choice. Do the hard labor to rebuild the foundation over time of being good, fixing the reputation, and reap the benefits in the future, or not bother with that, and take the shorter term benefits of being underhanded others already think of you as that, and just live without others trust. There are of course, different levels/types of reputation and trust. Familial, Romantic/Sexual, Financial, Friendships, productive, and many more. Having your reputation tarnished in one can affect others, but not always to the same degree. Being good, also means being reliable and has discretion/tact and actively training yourself to be able to help others, not just 'having a good heart' in the moment.
On the closing thoughts: A lot of people wound up like that due to a mix of social media and increased information availability. It's become the easiest it's ever been in history to know just how little influence you, as a person, actually have on the grand scale of things. It's easy to see just how much people are punished for being good people and doing the right thing. It's easy to see the strings pulling the puppets shunting all responsibility for the shittiness of the world on us. The people least able to do anything about it. It's very hard to know a lot about how things work and the state of the world and believe that the best answer, if not the only answer that remains, is violence or aggresive, all-consuming nihilism.
There are lots of benefits to being a good person, you don’t fee like crap for putting others down, you don’t hate who you are, and you know what has to be done and so can be decisive. There’s more than that but the point is there’s benefits.
Dude your video truly hits home. All my life I’ve done acts of kindness small things like helping an elderly lady with really bad cataracts find her sons home. To returning peoples lost dogs and countless other good deeds. These days I feel my kindness slipping away I was a prior Marine while my whole platoon was on steroids I was the only one that was actually natural. Constantly berated by a plethora of comments. Long story short I see what your talking about with how society is shifting to a dog eat dog mentality and I can’t help but feel troubled. I know that acts of kindness are meant to be self fulfilling but at times I’m like “god damn could I just catch a break” I’m always thankful for my good health, relationship and any blessings that give me a reason to keep pushing forward but, I’m just asking for that one win that makes me realize it’s all worth it. For example like every other American I’m living check to check but if I had like Bill Gates funding I feel like I’d be more impactful than just the events I stated above, granted they are good but I wanna be able to help millions. As I’ve grown older my outlook on being good becomes even more bleak. Crime is rising, looks like anyone from from any generation after a boomer or a gen X will ever own a house and let’s be frank the American dream is dying. But enough of the doom and gloom I hope you have a good day great video.
I literally feel the best I ever do when I help people, I’m fucking sick of “nihilists”. Being good to others builds trust, and trust is one of the most important things in this world that so many people lack. The lack of trust is literally the reason why so many world issues exist. And for those saying “there is no point to life” here is my response. Exactly, life literally has no meaning. we exist due to billions of years of evolution that all started due to pure luck of a rock floating around a star in the perfect position with the perfect amount of specific resources and somehow in a primordial soup life started forming. Life has no meaning, and that is PRECISELY why life is meaningful. Every person can determine with their own free will what meaning their life has and what they want to do with it. I myself want to be good because I derive pleasure from it, but I also want to be good because I want others to be happy as well. And that also includes the fact that I will fight whoever chooses to harm others. I am a fighter BECAUSE I am a lover.
@JANAY_TV The world isn't s#!&, it has both good things and bad things occurring on a daily basis - and depending on what you choose to focus on it can either lead you to prioritize positive developments or negative transpirings. That is what optimism is; the choice to primarily focus on the good stuff, as opposed to indulging in the bad - it is a far superior outlook to have on the world if your goal is eudaimonia.
@JANAY_TVThe world is not great but we can obtain the power to make it better for everyone, starting with treating others better and thinking about what a better future can be.
Very, very well put. And this is a battle to be continuously fought. Emerging from hell once does not mean you cannot redescend to its depths. I think I have, in several points, embodied the mindset of Thorfinn at the end of season 2, though I am not currently in that state. Thank you for reminding me and putting into words why this show is so powerful, and why it is worth it to strive to be better and look outward.
being able to know you’re a morally good person who does bad things in order to protect the innocent is the biggest reward a person can have, protecting the weak is what I stand for and I absolutely hate those who bash on others who can’t defend themselves, not my kind of thing.
@@Stevejones-qe6hi Because it's the right thing to do? Does being a dick bring you happiness or something? Go to a psychologist dude. Its not entirely about you either.
A better way to put it would be that there is no exclusive benefit to being a good person. There will always be a time where doing the right thing is a personal sacrifice, and that is simply a part of being good.
there is an interesting perspective that being good is done mostly to appear harmless, most people don't have any real power or influence on big things around them, hell many people don't even have influence on their own lives or people they live with, if they did many would become ''evil'' because now they can actually act out their supressed feelings and emotions. That's not to say it's good to do so but that's how people are. being good, at least to me, means being strong and acting on your own self interests but also helping others to do the same, it also means recognizing some people as your ''enemies'' to be mistrusted and to view as harmful beings not just to you but also your loved ones and people in general. one of the issues I have with Thorfin is his pacifism, it's depicted as noble and good but it's just the opposite of his other darker side, if we acted like that in real life we would be handing over the world to evil and violent forces, in many ways we already have which is probably why you see this type of thought being promoted in the world because we live in a world where ''you must be good but others can be evil'' that breeds resentment and apathy which is what is seen in the world today. if we want to see a world of peace, justice, love and improvement we can't ignore the reality of the world, stoic philosophy is probably closest to this mindset properly but it is also the hardest.
A measure for someone's goodness is how much effort they are putting into helping those, who can't possibly repay them. If you are nice to a rich person, that's not much evidence for goodness. If you attack a slaughterhouse worker to free some pigs, that's very strong evidence for your goodness.
@@MrCmon113 that does not sound good at all, there is no crime or harm being done. The problem is that today in the west a lot of harm is done to people by the government, academia and laws that benefit criminals, doing good means fighting evil, not people who are just doing their jobs for a service for people, they don't even get paid very much.
agreed, while some are being "good" like in this vid or manga, other people just do what they want to do, and few of them control other people's lives. there really is no benefit for being a good person except maybe, just maybe you will make yourself and people around you feel good. That's just all.
There enough misery in the world. I don't need to add to it. But if my acts of kindness help other have a better day then maybe they won't feel the need to spread more misery. I don't do good for my own benefit, but so that the lives of others are just a little nicer. And if they are happier then it will be easier for them to act out of kindness. I know there are people who are pointless to help as no help will ever be enough to get them to a good point (I had to cut one out I was related to.) But the many people I have helped though the years remind me that kindness is rarely wasted. My goal in life is simply to spread as much happiness as I can. This include my own.
Being good to others definitely has rewards, otherwise I wouldn't question myself whenever I help someone, because there's the possibility I'm subconsciously doing it because I want to be liked, not because it's the right thing to do
I am currently on my road of Happiness. I hit my own personal rock bottom this year when i let my ex control my life, controlled who i was cause she was telling me "i love you". But once my mother told me how ive been changing and that she didn't like it. And when i tell you that made something in my mind click you don't understand my mother is my WORLD I'd be gone without her, so for her to feel hurt from who i was becoming made me leave that relationship so fast just for my ex to say "i love you!". And i just walked away i don't need to say anything to a thing that has no humanity. And now ive been changing for the better and my mum told me how proud she is and i CRIED HARD MAN. i didn't let that bad experience with my ex break me i let it build me and now i can now say i smile everyday knowing that im becoming happy!.
I really liked the vid. Aristotle inspired stoicism and I live my life with stoic values. I always looked at Vinland saga among other shows, with a stoic lens and I thought it was interesting hearing you describe concepts that I've for a long time believed to be true. Thorfinn was absorbed from a young age in a mindset where bad things would happen to him so he would retaliate and do bad things justifying and repressing it in his head, but after his purpose is taken away; in his emptiness or numbness of emotions, he begins to think. i thought it was funny you added a whole segment about Thorkell because I've thought LITERALLY THE EXACT SAME THING ABOUT HIM! also the way you explained how sometimes you need to be violent but you should never want to be, is something I previously thought but now agree with even more. "careful when you wrestle with monsters, lest ye become one".
Looking at that statement(?), I always think of the most selfish thing I can think of. >I want to be happy >I become happy by improving lifes of others / seeing those improve In a way, it is selfish selflessness, and I don't mind it.
@@Chadius_Thundercock I'd say that it comes down to the intend and by wanting something, I want to fullfill my want. I'd say it is selfish in the first degree.
@@CodyCLI it's called mental gymnastics, clearing out a Hoovertown to build some low rent housing is seen as a good deed... Despite the fact that you just cleared out hundreds of homeless people to only give them MAYBE 20% of a home that they'll have to pay rent for. Doing "good" for others can be paved with cruelty and evil without the charitable chump even realizing it. The abstract ideal of doing something selfless is it's own reward has the problem of helping people in the wrong way because you don't actually care about them or their well being. You care about the "high" you get off of helping them, I remember a guy who took a first class flight across the country to shake hands with a homeless person to get that high, and when I tried to point out how he flew over the heads of millions of homeless people to get there spending thousands of meals worth of money for the flight and months of rent for a somebody to stay the weekend at their hotel. This is an obvious example but it really shows how caring about that self satisfaction from helping people can come from doing something extremely unhelpful. A true good deed has no reward, and our society is built around discouraging this in its entirety, look at how we actually treat the homeless in america. We ship them around and drop them in other cities potentially separating them from areas they know and understand for a new place that they don't know where they have all the same problems, we have shelters with extremely strict rules that are engineered to prevent them from being able to get a job while forcing them to fill out job applications so they can secure the funding, we call the cops to move them "somewhere else" even though they have nowhere to go. The issue with our society is not that being good has no reward, it's that you are actively punished for being good. That's why religion has all these tests of faith as they call it, being good is inherently selfless and when you don't have spare to give you're giving what you don't have. As more and more people end up homeless we'll start to see that homelessness is caused by our society's obsession with being rewarded for doing something.
Just to show how stupid this is, even a nigga working under Hitler could just come up with the excuse, "well, I do what Hitler says because it's what he says" no need to think about it and be critical, just be a sheep and do, do, doooo!
This was the best explanation of why Vinland Saga is so great! I wouldn't call Vinland Saga the greatest story/anime ever but to me its my favorite ever simply because its made me a better person and relate to it soo much!
Trampling over others can help you achieve success but so can a lot of other things. Being a good person does not benefit anyone but yourself. A selfish society that doesnt care about anyone isnt really worthwhile, because once you reach the bottom and you will reach it, there wont be anyone there to help you out. Success itself is meaningless, simply because you have money does not change anything about what or who you are. Also viewing it through a psychological lense, you will be much happier to be a good person that strives to grow and learn from their failure and pain. Humans are social creatures, we will always find joy in others. So being a selfish person is only to your diservice, because nobody wants to be with a selfish person. Whats right or wrong is dictated essentially by whats best for people and society in general in my eyes, you might help someone and never see the fruits of that labor but there might be someone else, that helped another person and because that person got help, they decided to help you at some point in your life, its a you take what you give but in a more logical sense. (sorry for the long comment, this is just me trying to express this thought id had for a while now).
One quote i think of from Big Man Marcus is “If you did a good thing, and fared well by it, why would you seek a third reward?” So doing a good thing obviously brings more good into the world, and is good for you as well (as a member of that world) You fared well by it, so people let you do that thing without conflict and maybe even with appreciation, and that is good for you Why would you seek a THIRD reward, aka i need “monie or i need wahmen or i need moar powa” There is also the basic problem that a lot of people just have a more self centered mindset and dont see themselves as part of a greater whole, and so cant imagine that doing something for the benefit of OTHERS as being a beneficial. Like, no man is an island bro, there are lots of benefits to being a good person, just not always specifically benefiting you as an individual
I work in caregiving, specifically with kids. These kids are a lot like Thorkell. I often feel like my voice of reason goes unheard to the people I work with, and I reflect a lot on whether or not I'm at this job out of self-righteousness, or because I genuinely want to be a good person. On that note, It's hard to see so many of our heroes, fictional or otherwise, get butchered and turned into monsters by compromised people, and when you vocalize those concerns, they fall on deaf ears or on people who act like children and continue with the same behaviors forever and ever. So, this video was absolutely necessary for me tonight because I broke down crying for the first time in a truly long time instead of suppressing it. While I do feel guilt by default a lot of the time, it is indeed a gift because it allows me self-reflection on my actions, no matter how small. I'd rather comes across as insecure than be one of those people I despise who do not think twice about how casually they do wrong.
being good to others and helping others means you can also be good to and help yourself! THATS the benefit you get, plus being good and and making others feel good around you will just elevate your self esteem and confidence, give you a sense of purpose, which is what leads to true fulfilling happiness( has much more impact in a time when most ppl are cold )
i think the flower person doesn't understand that "benefits" doesn't always mean happiness, for them, it probably just means success or something like that. But the true "benefit" you get for being a good person is not something material, it is happiness...
Saying there is no benefit to being a good person is essentially admitting that you let yourself be effected by things outside of your control. 1. I held the door open for someone and they didn't say thank you, day ruined 2. I put the shopping cart back into its area and I didnt get a standing ovation from the entire supermarket, day ruined 3. A guy told me a story about his vacation that I believed and it turns out he was lying, it doesnt effect me in any way but my day is still ruined People are too result focused and too quickly decide when things are "good" or "bad", anything outside of the choices you yourself make, is indifferent. 1. You held the door open for someone, when you did not need to, good job 2. You passed the good person litmus test by putting back the shopping cart, good job 3. You believed a completely fabricated story, its okay because the story holds no bearing on your life, well done. "And god laid down this law, if you want some good, get it from yourself" -Epictetus
You're definitely correct. Imo the desire to not be controlled by external events should come from a place of pursuing wellness as opposed to pride, as pride is a purely destructive mindset and all of the benefits of pride can be achieved in other ways.
Never have I come across an explanation for this phenomenon that exuded the feeling of eudaimonia in me such as this one did. I’ve seen so many “it’s good therefore it’s good” arguments or “you should just do it for its own sake” mentalities, but I completely agree with the statement that these thought processes simply aren’t how humans fundamentally work. As humans we aren’t meant to be immovably selfless. No species would ever survive like that because they wouldn’t care about their own survival over the benefit of everyone and everything else. Humans, like any other organism, prioritize their own wellbeings first; and despite what the edgelords would like to believe, apart of that involves seeing those around us happier. Maybe it derives from the past need to stay in groups and packs for survival or something similar, it doesn’t matter. The result is that now, its just a human characteristic that everyone possesses from birth. Being a “good” person simply satisfies a portion of the criteria for attaining true fulfillment and personal wellbeing, which is why it’s necessary to not neglect it. As stated in the video, everything is done for the sake of eudaimonia, and being a “good” person is simply a necessity for it. Not for “the greater good”, “it’s own sake”, “the need to be selfless”, but for us. It’s done for ourselves, so that we don’t feel dogshit all the time, or whenever we’re sobered up to properly think anyway.
without any reflection on it I arrived at the point of being "good" for the sake of being "good" and this video really puts that into perspective for me, and why things have been going so much better in life. Massive respect for even making this video or having the thought for its topic in the first place, I think its super important that more people think about it. Having been around mainly negative people my whole life, I fell into the mindset of self preservation and apathy, and then something broke it. I'm not really sure what, maybe my brain said it was safe, maybe it was transitioning with horomones, maybe it was finding a video like this. That single change led to me finding a loving girlfriend, realizing the toxicity of my friends, of my actions, and of the people who moulded my brain. My happiness with her is rubbing off on the people around me, and back to her. It's dragged me out of a pit and made me see the light in living again after having been in an emotionally neglectful, and hateful family my whole life. It's given me the motivation to actually better myself for the sake of her and the people who interact with me. It's given me the motivation to actually dig myself out of the pit I'm in.
The benefit to being good is happiness. We all try to do all evil things to get what makes us happy but never be happy, it's only when we give do we get happiness.
@@Stevejones-qe6hi Even then, life is generally easier if you are a "good" person. People will appreciate you more if they know they can rely on you. Then, they will help you back, and you can also rely on those people, thus improving everyone's life. But this only works if everyone is working for each other's good. If you stop being good to them, they will stop being good to you. So, in theory at least, it's still for your own good, even if for some reason you don't enjoy it. That said, if you do not get any enjoyment at all from helping others, and especially if you enjoy hurting them, perhaps you should go to a mental health professional and take a test for anti-social personality disorder or other mental illnesses. It might explain your different way of seeing things...
@@thebettafish3239 "In theory" just like in theory commmunism works. Don't be fooled, even if you are the kindest person on earth, it only takes 1 day of not wanting to be good for people to see you as the meanest. If you keep being "good" and "nice" people will take you for granted, there won't be anyone there for you because "OH, they are always good, they are always fine." Even the word, "nice" comes from the word "nescius" that means literally "stupid or moronic". All of this comes down to manipulation.
Thank you so much for saying "[these problems are] in our CURRENT SOCIETY". It's such a relief to see someone actually talking about philosophy in a historical context. Too often, people will say "oh [ x bad thing] is just human nature" or some other idealist/metaphysical crap.
Im glad I got this video recommened to me! This video is really good dude! Also nice touch adding kero kero bonito - you know how it is. Great song choice!!
As someone who has read piles of textbooks on the topic of finding happiness and meaning, the biggest leason i have learnt is that being a good person, helping others, wanting the good of others and trying to improve the world are in themselves a big reward. Like, when you do these activities, purely for the sake of doing these activities, then you feel a profound sense of paychological well being. You just do. Ofcourse, that doesnt mean tou have to become a philanthropist to be happy, there are other means to also garner meaning, but yeah, being a good person is a BIG one.
"I say that man is entitled to his own happiness. And that he must achieve it himself. But that he cannot demand that others give up their lives to make him happy. And nor should he wish to sacrifice himself for the happiness of others. I hold that man should have self-esteem" --Ayn Rand "So the part of the reason that people go watch Anti-Heroes and Villains is because there's a part of them crying out for the incorporation of the monster within them which is what gives them strength of character and self-respect because it's impossible to respect yourself until you grow teeth...A harmless man is not a good man. A good man is a very dangerous man who has that voluntary control" --Dr. Jordan Peterson "Goodness is not goodness that seeks advantage. Good is good in the final hour, in the deepest pit, without hope, without witness, without reward. Virtue is only virtue in extremis" --Doctor Who
Damn. Can I get a HELLLLLL YEAHHHHH!!!!!! This is a fantastic take. Ethics was my favorite class that I took in college because it came at a time I was getting depressed and aimless, and it gave me a sense of purpose that nothing before had. It's so fitting that Thorfinn went through that same journey, in a way. I kinda needed to see this video just to reinforce the concept in my mind again. Anyway. I love you too. Mwah.
Thorkell is a character that constantly seeks fun and is able to do so with his fighting skills and large build. He's the equivalent of one being drowned in pleasure. He doesn't feel the horror of war because he is alsost incapable of being hurt and has no one around him he cares about. That being said, Thorkell still faces some form of regret. Although he doesn't fully realize it yet, the reason he is so invested in finding out what a true warrior is, is because he lacks meaning in his life. There is no meaning in fighting eachother, there is no meaning in war. All the true warriors he has met all have found their meaning in life, to make the world a better place. Ironically, the thing that Thorkell seeks to become requires him to let go off the one thing he can't let go of, which is his pleasure in war.
A little delusion goes along way, believing you're a "good person" for avenging your father is a very real thing, and ignoring all the bad things you do to get to that good deed is really easy.
I believe the main reason for this "no value in being good" sentiment is that cruel/bad people are often seem to benefit much more for their actions, because they are willing to do things that good people are not to achieve their goal. Good people are disadvantaged in that way. The people with the most freedom, power, and wealth in society are cruel and willing to take from others. Since a prerequisite of being good is sacrificing your time, energy, or money for the sake of others. It's wrong to say being good has no value however, as forming bonds with others and improving society as a whole does benefit you greatly. Society is built and sustained on the backs of good people returning their kindness to each other. Humans evolved as social creatures because it was the most beneficial method of survival. Unfortunately as a side effect; bad people often have an easier time, because there are so many they can take advantage of who will not or cannot reciprocate. Though they will only be able to rely of themselves since they will have no bonds made out of friendship. Bad people can only profit because good people exist in abundance. When corruption and greed are widespread, civilization collapses.
Bad people don't actually benefit from their actions more than good people, actually. It's a façade, what they gain in material benefit - they lose in spiritual benefit. At the end of the day, they will be unsatisfied with 10 million dollars, and a good person will be satisfied with a penny.
A very good video man, i love the way you balance the philosophical smart stuff with actually funny jokes, which I honestly did not expect. I think you are talented and should keep up the work, I really hope you will get more attention in the future
I appreciate you going into more depth with Thorkell. I see a lot of people who only see him as a jolly little psycho, when he’s actually a bit more complex than that.
Work has destroyed all my goodwill for mankind. I've been exploited so often that I no longer do anything unless it's based on equal exchange. Or benefiting me, to make up for all the losses I had. I'm trying to keep that mindset only applying to my connections at work, but after a decade, it affected my private life too.
It's amazing how people still keep up this pretense of "morality" when we live in a society where we are literally enslaved by debt, forced to work for the bare minimum just to survive. Hope is a terrifying drug.
People think that being good means being weak and naive. Many also believe that being good cant be possible during dark times. These are some of the biggest lies ever told.
people tend to forget that it's also important to not only be kind to others but to yourself as well. and when i say this, i mean being responsible for your wellbeing, setting healthy boundaries & trying to reflect or ask yourself what things you value or a special interest/goal you wanted to do in life.
Doing your best to be a good person is objectively better. Others will like you, trust you, and essentially will always be happy to offer you help or opportunities. You can’t get far alone no matter how great you are. In my entire life there was only one person who did not reciprocate, the last I heard of em they were pretty much at the very bottom.
If you are a good person, then seeing others happy and thriving will make you happier. But if it brings you no joy, you may just be pretending to be one. Yes, the path of kindness isn't always easy. You will face struggles and overcome barriers, but isn't that like everyone else's journey, good or bad? And in the end, seeing the fruit of your kindness reflected in the smiles of others brings a deep sense of satisfaction. Isn't that reward enough? That's how I convince myself to choose goodness, instead of expecting a reward that I might get in the afterlife.
my ultimate goal is to be able to have a couch in front of a beautiful lake and be able to sit there day to night, without having to worry about food and money because i have the money and time to do such useless things.
I think that is a nice dream but it can get boring quickly Jordan Peterson talks about how the idea of retirement in the beach with a martini would bore you in the first 2 weeks
@@picklerick8971 for me the goal isn't to do nothing, it's to be free from the things that distract you from what you love. if i could retire like that it wouldn't stop me from making my weird art in fact i would be able to make so much more
There are benefits to being a good person, if you are mostly a neutral or a bad person. If we dig deep, there are no benefits to being any kind of person. People see you being good, then see you do another good, they think it's normal. People see you being bad, then see you do another bad, they think it's normal. Now, change that a bit. People see you being good, then see you do bad, they think something bad happened to you and try to make you good again. People see you being bad, then see you do good, they think you changed and acknowledge you did good. Complicate and mix things up a bit and you get yourself the true answer. You can apply this to most social stuff... What you are already doing is expected. What you do better, either considered that you changed for the good or for the bad and gets acknowledged depending on what you were doing before. There are no benefits to stay the same to the people you already know. You always need to come up with new sh*t. This doesn't apply to most people though, like 90% of watching this video probably. Social interactions between average huımans is "immersive," enough to make this rare. Average human is still primitive despite whatever their ideas or goals or the way they interact. They lack the ability to look at things from different perspectives or rather lack the ability to see things from the eyes of / ideas / experiences of others', basically lack empathy. This is why even psychiatrist, therapists, physiologists or sociologists fail or try really hard to cure depression or rely on medicine to cure depression. Sometimes one person really understanding you / showing that they understand you, or a simple good thing in your life only lasting for mere seconds, worths thousands of sessions with whatever paid help you are getting. Though not every person is the same.
There are people in this world who are genuine with their thoughts be it good, bad, neutral or complex. And they are not afraid of speaking it. These are the people who managed to break the unspoken social rules created by thousands of artifical social rules. We are not divine species. The rules are created by other humans. Bad things are bad because others say so. We think sh*t is bad, but that's what people say so... What they will say 200 years later? Do we agree with them because we have deep understanding on the topic? Do we agree with them because they are popular or the media made them popular? Maybe they are telling the truth but the humanity in general, is not capable of achieving it. Is it okay to push it even though we are not ready? Are these rules executed properly? From rewards to punishments? Do the governments execute them properly? Do our body execute these properly? Do we see everything? Do we realize the impact of what we think obvious?
In my country, the official translation of Indians means Redskins. We basically identify them using their skin color, that's the official word and we use it for 300 hours. Nobody stops and thinks about the implication. We don't call Asians as "Yellowskins," or westerns as "Whiteskins." Even the sensitive people stop and think for a moment, saying "yeah what the fuck?" when you point this out. We forgot to stop and think for a moment, about anything. Who is doing the thinking? What influences us to think certain things?
I love you too and I love the idea that numbing your feelings is actually weakness because you're afraid to face your emotion. I used to think ignoring your feelings is strength, but facing them is way more challenging.
I hate that so many people have/support a belief like "There are no benefits to being a good person", but I love that you made this video that explains why it's wrong, especially including Vinland Saga in it so much. I often think about morality and love anime, so it's especially enjoyable to see videos about morality that also closely reference anime. Thanks for making this video.
@unravelmysoul1598 It is wrong. There are benefits to being a good person, at least in some circumstances, but you're free to think otherwise even though that isn't reality.
ok so this blew up WAY more than i thought it would so i thought i would plug some videos i like covering a similar topic as this one:
*"self-centredness is NOT 'self-care': losing the human face online" by oliSUNvia:*
ua-cam.com/video/ess1HfZzxss/v-deo.html&pp=ygUJb2xpc3Vudmlh
*"The 'Mean Girl' to Nurse Pipeline" by Not Even Emily:*
ua-cam.com/video/m1JOXI6i9OA/v-deo.html&ab_channel=NotEvenEmily
i've never had a video get this many views this quickly, but most of all i'm thankful for all the praise and interesting discussion in the comments. it sounds like i've made a lot of people feel validated, and these comments make me feel the same way. genuinely thanks. ❤
also follow me on twitter:
twitter.com/ZoomerTalk
@niggy9-11 no??? surely there are people you know who are not your mother
pedestrian
@niggy9-11You should love yourself NOW *thunder & lightning sfx*
Great video man. It blew up because so many people have been feeling this sentiment building, even if they haven't watched VS. It's a message many people (myself included) benefit from hearing in a concise, crystalized video like this.
@niggy9-11 I know im just a random person online but I just wanted to say i genuinely hope you can find a way out of the darkness you're in. See if talking to a therapist helps, or maybe a friend. Hope you have a good day and know that there are people in your life who truly love you
Misguided stoicism, a mindset that you see plenty of people end up having, is so fascinating since as far as i know all the groundbreaking stoics were all virtue ethics guys, and controlling emotion was about making a habit of having positive emotions, not being blank all day long.
Yeah. There's a big difference between the philosophy of stoicism and how the adjective "stoic" is typically used today. I don't view real stoicism as being about denying or suppressing your emotions, it's about elevating reason above your emotions, so that your emotions don't control you.
@@thenew4559 Exactly, stoicism is about realizing that bad stuff happens all the time and it is not going to stop. You can't control it so focus on what you can control and you can control being a better person than yesterday.
Well happiness is ethereal, not concrete, the tweet saying there's no benefit to being good is probably coming from a place where indeed no good deed went unpunished in the concrete sense. No wealth, status, or improvement of circumstance seen as the result of good behavior. If stoicism = rolling with the punches that are going to come despite your goodness, then you need some measure of it to stick with goodness until that happiness is achieved or else you'll be swayed by circumstance back to the path you perceive as the one that will fulfill those aforementioned lower-order achievements.
@@thenew4559 You understand stoicism. Anyone suggesting stoicism is a rejection or suppression of emotions doesn't understand stoicism and any "stoic" who is only rejecting and/or suppressing their emotions is not an actual stoic. Stoics feel, they just don't let their feelings dictate how they think or act.
Holy shit, today I learned that I am not a "robot". I am a stoic.
Well I'll be damned.
“Acts of goodness are not always wise, and acts of evil are not always foolish. But regardless. We shall always strive to be good." - Martyr Logarius
Bloodborne gaming
If you truly believe that the universe is an inherently cruel and uncaring place, then being a good person is the biggest middle finger to it all.
Thats a good mindset to have
Fuck yes❤
until the same universe broke those fingers and shove it down your throat
"The world is meaningless!"
"Fuck you, have a good day!"
That's essentially what optimistic nihilism is.
It's recognizing that no meaning at all means all the meaning you even care to make.
Terry Pratchett said it best in Discworld.
I like that people are starting to come around to the idea that masculinity can actually pair pretty well with empathy and kindness.
It's called "seeing through the propaganda"
@@jackandrews9982 Sadly, some idiots still ascribe to the “alpha male” mentality.
Literally "It always has been" meme moment
we nicemaxxing now cuh
The thing is, that was never really in dispute. People kind of misinterpreted the "toxic masculinity" thing to mean "masculinity bad" instead of "masculinity in certain contexts is bad".
Being a good person = being happier, having a better mindset, less stress, and making people around you have the same effects
This is the incorrect. Be a person that can and will do good.
You can't be weak and a good person. You can't be naive and be a good person. You can't be lazy and be a good person. You can't be accepting and be a good person.
A good person defends their home from interlopers. Is smart enough to know when they are being manipulated. Is powerful enough to stop criminals when needed. But when all the injustices are removed? They go back to being kind to their neighbors. That is being what a good person is.
Not a weak person that is manipulated and controlled by others. That is a bad person. A cowardly person.
@@theravenousrabbit3671 your definition of a good person is a hero
A good person can be weak and naive, also weak and naive people can be heroes too.
I want to know if you really want to change your mindset, or came here to try and sway other people into your beliefs.
@@theravenousrabbit3671 This can be true and can also not be true. A manipulated person can still be a great human being and help others while being under control.
A weak person may get beat and never fight back, but still be a good person and help others.
Im afraid you mixed up a regular good person and andrew tate
@@Psecteri don't understand, you have a weird definition of good, how does being naive lead to you being a good person, what is good, trying to please others?
Big respect for this one. People are happiest when happy together. And thats where true value lies. Thanks for the vid. I heard you and more people will
You know what would make me happy?😈
@@lemonke5341me filling you with liquid❤
@@ls200076
GET PREGNANT
GET PREGNANT
I also encourage the *good thing*
Please now validate me as a person.
@@ls200076 False it's the opposite i want to fill you
NEVER STOP BEING A GOOD PERSON BECAUSE OF BAD PEOPLE.
More people need to hear this one ^
And you can exploit the weakness of bad people. ;) 100% moral.
@@HarbingerOfFinalitymakes sense when you're a actual sociopath or selfish
I am still a good person.... *_The Legendary Dark Hero._*
Edmund Burke said, 'The only thing necessary for the triumph [of evil] is for good men to do nothing. '
Being good is it's own reward and its true
Also, when you build a reputation of helping people, people will naturally want to help you.
-An Eagle Scout (me)
is this a play on a gerbert johnson line?
@@vortigan9068 maybe Lion El'Jonson
You cant trust a bad, unhappy person. Being a good person is about mutual trust. If you become such a person which other people KNOW wont betray them simply because of the way you are, then you have achieved the goal of being a good person. Bad people dont trust other bad people, and because they must assume everybody else is just as nasty as them in order to protect themselves from other bad people, that means they dont see the integrity in good people, and dont benefit from that mutual trust.
That is why being a good person is good for you. The smartest good people know when to trust and when to avoid. Some particularly evil people are so far gone that they must be avoided. Maybe thats what evil is: an inability to see good in others.
@@vortigan9068average gerby viewer
Being a good person allows you to be able to live with yourself. And for that; it gives the greatest thing it can
Let me make youur face hit another wall:
Why is that we find to be good what we find good? Or in other words, adapted to your position, why we can only live with ourselves with making what we call "good"?
I got an answer. A Materialist, answer.
@@KozelPraiseGOELROwe define "good" based on our empathy. We also define "good" based on our worldwiev, how things "should be".
If you simply attempt to call "good" anything that does not align with both, you might be soon starting to pay the price of self-deceit. And losing one's integrity is no fun.
Also, we evolved as social creatures, so the need for our actions to be justified is evolutionary.
"Materialistic answers" do not always cut it when it comes to social studies. We are irrational beings, after all.
Agreed. Personally, I see no other benefit, and even disadvantages of being good to others. But not being good feels terrible.
For a few months I bullied someone in school. It started automatically, everyone pushed me to participate. I was the one getting bullied severely before so I participated and got treated better by my classmates.
When I realized what I‘ve done I stopped. I knew it was the right choice but my classmates tried to make me regret it. They made fun of me when I told them that I won’t participate in the bullying anymore. After that, I became the victim again for the following years. Since then I have developed pretty bad trust issues regarding people now. It‘s difficult for me to view people as „good“, because many really aren‘t. So many people are two faced and only wait for others to show weakness, even if that weakness is „not being an a**hole“
@@tlotro625hmmm now that's gotten me thinking~
If we define "good" based on our empathy, someone who lacks all empathy (doesn't necessarily have to be a sadistic person, could be an apathetic one) could find acts that other more empathetic people would consider "bad." If we also define "good" based on our worldviews, then people who have a "violent" worldview, such as those with a culture based around bloodshed or people who lived lives purely centered around survival/self-preservation against other people, could probably still live lives without regrets concerning bloodshed, being true to their nature.
People who choose and live life without caring for others could theoretically live lives happier than those who do care. Being solely focused on their wellbeing, focused purely on their goals. Should one like that live today, despite not caring how they affect the lives others, could they change how some things worked? Do absurd things? If they set their minds only to their goals?
Spitballin is fun~ Airing out the nonsense in my head feels neat~
@@otherevan296
About your first paragraph... You are right. There are even historical examples, like berserkers. Tho, yes, many people like that were shunned and driven out of settlements... in the better case...
So, about the current times... If such a person realizes the concept of social consequences for their actions and not chooses violence as their goal, they can be pretty "successful" in some areas of life, like corporate management or politics, where empathy and ethics are treated more like obstacles... I believe I have roasted a whole socio-economic class... Anyway, as long as their goal does not require anything they can't do, they can be successful. But, the jury is still out on the topic of changing the world, since I still don't know what could motivate such a person towards a goal any greater than their own wellfare and prosperity.
This is interesting.
Being good doesn't mean being inconsequential or being a pushover, a good person must have assertiveness and gravity.
Those are more the qualities of a good leader than just a good person
A peaceful man capable of great violence.
This line of thinking is how you get benevolent dictators.
@@neetfreek9921
I'd rather be ruled by lawful evil than Chaotic Good.
@@UtubeH8tr Welp, it’s a good thing alignment isn’t applicable to reality then.
"You don't owe anyone anything" is honestly perfectly fine.
It's precisely because we don't owe anyone anything that we are free to do as we want.
I want to be a good person because I want to be a good person.
Doing that makes me feel happy, it gives me a sense of satisfaction.
That's just who I am.
Keep it, Bro :)
i think forgiveness is a big part of being a morally good person, something that is heavy in vinland saga's story. The most important person to forgive, is yourself. We all deserve forgiveness, and it starts at you. To forgive oneself is to learn true forgiveness, i don't think you will truly forgive anyone until you forgive yourself. And you can see this is something he struggles with, he doesn't know how to forgive himself, so he cant forgive the retainers for destroying their crops, he couldnt forgive canute for killing askeladd in that moment. And he couldn't forgive himself for what happened to his father. Forgiveness is the first step for becoming better. To forgive is to give a second chance, to wipe the slate clean, and i believe we all deserve such forgiveness when we decide to become better people.
yes!! one of the biggest catalysts for thorfinn's more positive view towards everyone else is his own realization that even though he had done bad stuff in the past, he can still do good now and work to become a "true warrior." logically this realization should extend to other people as well
No one deserves forgiveness. No one deserves anything. That is what makes it so impactfull to begin with. If we deserved to be forgiven then that would imply our actions were not our own. That we are entitled to it and have somehow veen slighted when we do not recieve it.
No one deserves to be forgiven. Yet it is a gift given freely all the same.
@@HennryHammerheadI like that
It's a good message, but i disagree with forgiveness being the first step for becoming better.
Based on person, context and situation, that first step can be different for each human being
@@MKL874 I think being a better and good person has no steps. Just guides to follow.
Finished Vinland Saga yesterday and I have decided not to hate. We gonna make the world a better place boys 🗿
Yessir💪💪
good luck lmao
We have no enemies
It's cute you think that's possible
@@thisgoddamusernamestoodamnlongit is
I think if there were no benefits to being a good person, that would make being a good person all the more admirable. It means that you're doing something purely because it's the right thing, and not for personal gain.
"I have no enemies" has become my personal motto since I've seen this show. And that is an especially radical position in our current political climate
If you have no enemies, it just means you're irrelevant and harmless. It doesn't mean you're a 'good person'.
@@shadow7988 What's the opposite of irrelevant and harmless? Relevant and harmful. Which is actually just an evil person. Pretty much every dictator was relevant and harmful. Every peaceful, loving person on the planet, you don't hear about. They are "irrelevant" and "harmless".
@@FlingGibstopper 'Being relevant is evil'. I'm guessing you grew up in a Christian environment? I hate to break it to you but this is literally how all of human history, no, all of NATURE has worked since the beginning of time. No civilization is formed purely out of cooperation and goodwill, it's formed under force of arms. All politics is carried out under the authority of violence. All governance is carried out under the authority of violence.
Clearly, being 'relevant and harmful' is incredibly subjective, but at least you're actually doing something other than just existing and consooming. It can't be evil if it's just the state of reality. A passive object will always be subject to the whims of an active object, regardless of any suppositions of morality. Building a morality system around doing nothing and being harmless isn't just kind of pathetic, but in reality it's not even feasible or even doable. To exist you have to eat other living things, by default you do harm.
@@FlingGibstopper I think that being a coward is not much better than being a tyrant. It's a refusal to accept what you are as a human, and work to actually improve yourself.
When a toxic pseudo-stoic pretends that all empathy is a failure of self control, it is not much different from a "pacifist" claiming that it's always wrong to fight, even against tyrants.
People who do nothing are not better than people who cause harm.
@@shadow7988what having enemies means is not letting people walk over you or use you, it’s that you harbor no ill will towards anybody. You can fight to defend yourself, but you don’t hate the person you’re fighting, you don’t wish anything bad happens to them, you’re simply preventing yourself or others from being harmed. You can be annoyed by a person talking, but you don’t want to actively want something to happen to them.
Morality is hard, all you can do is trust your gut and learn from your mistakes, try to be better than you were yesterday.
Treat those around you well and most will return the favor.
Also try to use social media less. That’s another huge step towards being a good person.
I disagree completely.
You don't have to wait for mistakes, you can think in depth about the consequences of your actions BEFORE doing something.
Also genuine ethical behavior is about benefiting those, who can't return the favour. Benefiting future people, who will live after you die, or animals, for example.
@@MrCmon113 untrue. Genuine ethical behavior is benefiting EVERYONE, present AND future. Yes, even your "enemies", but you know in the show there's a saying called "I have no enemies". If you are unable to do good to even those you don't like, at least do not cause harm.
Morality really isn't hard. All you have to ask yourself is "If they did this to me, would it hurt me?". "If I did this for them, would they be happy?". You need to ask both questions however, because the first one is more egotistical, so it's a two parter.
@@krulak292 why not cause harm if they deserve it? why choose to be the bigger person? genuine question
@@FUMEXE for your own soul.
@@FUMEXEBecause there is no point, why hurt people? If you help them than they can eventually help others, making a better world and in turn making you a better person
The fact that there are "no benefits" is precisely what makes it so beautiful
In the moral code I follow, Being good improves my compactly to sustain and improve my life, the moral is the practical. So being good has lots of benefits.
@@equaltoreality8028 well sure, but what I mean to say is that the selflessness of good deeds is exactly what makes them desirable
@@NoMoreWhat-Ifs Any conception of 'good' which involved destroying ones self to 'help' others needs a fundamental rethink.
@@equaltoreality8028 Maybe pragmatically, but it's undeniable that the root of self-sacrifical altruism is something that is undeniably beautiful. It's hypocritical and unpractical, but nevertheless, the dream in and of itself is not a mistake
"undeniable that the root of self-sacrifical altruism is something that is undeniably beautiful."
That's the most batshit insane thing I have ever heard. There is nothing beautiful about something so self destructive. That's actually pretty horrendous if you think about it. No wonder the world is going to hell if most people think like that. If you think about it, how can you have an ever improving world when most people just want to self destruct?
Honestly this video is just what I needed right now. I’ve gone through a lot of traumatizing and mentally and emotionally draining events these past few years, and I’ve been feeling like there’s no point in living or having faith in people or the world anymore. That being said, I’m trying my best not to give up and still be kind to others.
keep fighting dude! absolutely keep trying to be as kind as you can while still looking out for your own well-being
I've suffered immensely during my so far 21 years of life, I have seen things you people wouldn't imagine to exist, I've felt the grief of losing the few people who believed in me, I have felt immense amounts of physical pain, endured immense amounts of abuse of a type the algorithm doesn't allow me to say, I have felt immense loneliness that left a psychological strain, I have felt the betrayal of those I deemed closer to me, I have felt injustice, ridicule, cowardice and I know how it feels to be cut and stabbed(literally and metaphorically), my life has been a rough one...so why didn´t I ended up becoming a monster? why didn't I get on some glorified cop-assisted suicide path? because of three things that allowed me to hang in there initially, then two more things after, the first three things that allowed me to hold on to myself were: the memory of my late mentors that were my Grandfather and my Uncle the things they taught me and the respect I had for them and the values they imparted in me prevented me from doing anything that could or would disgrace their memory and make them disappointed, the second thing has to do with the first: discipline with my training and routine, I trained a few combat sports disciplines from a very young age due to my mentor's encouragement, that discipline kept me sane even on the razor's edge, the third was...a girl, my Gf...someone I was in love with and got taken away from me by a car crash...out of all the relationships I've had...she was the only one who genuinely loved me and I did not wish to do anything she would not have been proud of, these things kept me sane but what really brought me out of the pit were my friends who i made completely by chance and over time encouraged me to get back to more serious training, to let go of many dark things and the other thing was a priest that brought me back to my religion which is Catholic Apostolic Roman Christianity, the combination of these two taught me to be kind to others again and how being kind to others while improving one's self is its own reward.
Whoever you are, whenever you may be, whatever your situation is..there's a future for everyone, and it's never too late to start to do the right thing, not until the very last moment before you're dead, so please, if you read it so far...don´t give up being good and kind and do not give up your life: if Thorfinn and Guts kept going, so can you.
Berserk reference💀💀💀💀
@@patukka3336 I mean I couldn't resist but I'm actually speaking of my life as well, genuinely.
I hope to be like your brother but this world is corrupting me, I will try to change for the better
for a lot of people life makes it feel easier to become apathetic and jaded, but it's never impossible to fight against that and hold onto your positive self. sad to hear how much you've struggled but it's also inspirational to hear that you've continued to move forward, keep fighting ❤
@@Leandro.5827 you can do so.
do not give up
I just like being a good person. And I think if everyone tried their best at being a good person it would make for a world that would suck less, so that change has to start somewhere.
real as hell. be the good you want to see in the world
Bruh, based "I just like being a good person" enjoyer😂😂😂👍👍👍
What if I enjoy making others lives worse?
@@Stevejones-qe6hi Well you see, that's when we take out a rhetorical device called a big stick and engage in a kind of debate called violence
@@Stevejones-qe6hi There is this special place called “therapy” go there
for one thing, I want to say that this is an excellent video that gets it's message across incredibly well! I was literally just going "hell yes" through the whole thing.
a note about Thorkell: I think you're right about Thorkell not really having much introspection... but the kind of sad thing about him is that he's not well set up for long term happiness because of that "stuck in the present" mindset. Thorkell is stronger than anyone... he's the strongest individual guy we see being active in the main story. and he loves entertaining himself with the challenges of war. like, basically this guy needs more enrichment in his enclosure, because whenever he gets bored, there's mass murder.
but the thing about all of that, is that the world doesn't actually have an endless war to give him. eventually, if you tax the world of too many essentials to human life, everybody just gets too tired to keep it up. you can actually run yourself fresh out of fights to be had, eventually. Thorkell's existence is unsustainable, and careening toward an endpoint of either extreme dissatisfaction, or death. our jolly idiot won't realize it until he's petulantly demanding more from the earth he's scorched, but he will probably persist past the point of people's ability to entertain him with bloodshed.
and that's really the truth behind the concept of Valhalla. there's that scene where Thorfinn and Askeladd are talking in the early morning, looking out over the English countryside, and Askeladd speaks plainly, saying that someday Thorfinn will beat him. Thorfinn is growing stronger as he grows up, and Askeladd will one day decline in his old age. Askeladd will know that he has no more business on earth when it all catches up to him.
that's what Valhalla is. these men aren't comfortable being vulnerable, but we are all rendered vulnerable at some point. it could be due to illness, or disability, or even just finding someone stronger than us who wishes to do us harm. but someday we will find ourselves vulnerable, even if it's just due to the passage of time. and these men can't handle that, so they obfuscate it by dying before they get there.
so where does that leave the strongest guy?
Man, you just made me feel a new level of empathy towards the "just looking for a good fight" strongest character in the story guy trope.
Fuckin props
@@Gedeongedza thank you... honestly, I just want someone to teach Thorkell knitting or something. like... get that man a hobby that challenges him in a different way. make him calm down.😔
Well, when nobody else can fight wars, he can just endlessly pillage helpless villages for plunder and women. Sounds like a good life to me.
@@smoqueed44 I mean... that kind of entirely misses the point.
like, first of all, Thorkell is the type of warrior to maintain a sense of pride about what he spends his time doing, and he cares about the way that he dies. we're literally introduced to him when he joins the English, for no reason other than the fact that they're weak, because he wanted to fight someone stronger. for better or for worse, he values the idea of dying in battle, rather than some other more mundane way. if this was only about having enough food, money, women, and resources to live, then yeah, Thorkell's existence would be about as simple as any given one of Askeladd's men.
who, mind you, are still set up to fall into ruin as people... if, by happenstance, they manage to survive into old age. if their health starts declining, to the point where they need someone to help them in any way, their only hope is to look pitiful in front of somebody charitable who doesn't know what they've done all their lives. they've spent their whole existence burning every bridge they ever could've built, before the first board was ever set. who is supposed to have sympathy for them?
and this is what I'm talking about, really. everybody loves spouting off about how, if you happen to be a tough guy in a world like this, you can grind the world beneath your heel, and if anybody gets mad at you... what are they gonna do? in truth... nothing! those individual people will die beneath your heel, just like you thought they would. but in doing that, you forfeit the entire content of your life. Thorkell only works as a character because there is actually, legitimately _nothing_ that he would be sad to lose, if a warrior took it from him in a fair fight. he has no right to keep a single thing. and that means that, if the battle aspect of his life, which he is so uniquely proficient at, evaporates someday for any reason... he has absolutely nothing left.
like, classic example... what if Thorfinn had blinded him in both eyes during their duel? that would severely impact his ability to do literally anything. it'd be a fair consequence... Thorkell's done enough to earn the wound, and a warrior gave it to him fair and square, but even with such life altering damage, it'd still leave him perfectly capable of living. what would he do at that point? have the patience to learn how to live with a severe handicap? have someone battle him until he dies, just for the sake of ending it all? rely on others to help him make up for his loss of sight? retire? what can you do if all your attempts to die are just some form of giving up, but all your attempts to live will involve admitting that you're weak, needy, or vulnerable? and if he doesn't have the ability to do the one thing he's spent his whole life doing so far... then what on earth is left to matter to him?
and keep in mind... vulnerable people still find ways to live their lives every single day. if you can't find the strength to continue life while vulnerable, then you're really just a sniveling little crybaby. oh, you miss having the power to destroy everything, and take whatever you want, and screw people over for no reason? welcome to the way normal people have always lived. helplessness doesn't feel good? tough shit. some people were born without a choice in that matter, and they live anyway. what else were they supposed to do?
if you're still talking about pillaging at this point, that's just another deflection. the fact is, it is impossible for that to last forever, and it should never have begun in the first place. if you'll accept that it's cruel to others, then that's reason enough. but the one doing the pillaging is rendering their own life into hell as well... they just don't know it yet.
@@kamuyking551 That's a TL;DR if I ever saw one.
Hey, man, thanks for your vid! I recently had an argument whether it's better to live in a world of egoists or altruists. I stood with the altruist side, imagining that every human is a good person. It later became clear, that my oponent was having trouble with empathy. "Care only for the close ones, and no one else. You are always more valuable to you then anyone under any circumstance". I'm just glad, that we sorted this one out. She realised that in the world of egoists, if you have nothing to give in return, you will recieve nothing (duh). Sometimes we require help from others when we can't "afford" it. But being able to recieve help is sole purpose of living in society. To me, it's what makes us human. Monkey Stronger Together!
Sounds like it was an interesting discussion! It should be obvious that a world filled with altruists would be the better one, but the problem with the real world is that we have a mix of altruists and egoists and so the altruists tend to get trampled on. The solution, though, has to be for more altruists to appear, and not more egoists. Monke together strong
I believe it is the greatest quality a person can possess. Above intellect, above even willpower lays the divine quality of morality. (And as an agnostic, I do not use that term lightly lol)
Intellect allows you to learn, and do things you could not before. In a sense it is power. Willpower is greater still. It gives you the drive to actually act and learn in the first place, without which intellect is useless. (If you don't do anything, it doesn't really matter what you _can_ do.)
And goodness sits above them all, for it tells you _how_ to act. And I think most can agree it is better to not act at all than to act maliciously. Then you're just subtracting good from the world instead of doing the opposite.
If you simply strive to be a good person, you may not always benefit in all societal structures, but you are already a greater man than most. And you'll probably feel way happier for it.
I'm very glad so many people on the internet seem to agree, and that appreciation for goodness is not dead. This generation gives me hope once more.
In short, without unnecessarily long sentences: Goodness = good lol
Have a grand one mates, keep bein' cool.
Or you can work on finding what gives you drive regardless of fuzzy moral principles that have no basis in anything tangible. I help people because I want to, not because of some moral stance. Good or bad is just a matter of whether or not it's good or bad for you - for most people this is to some social end, but that's not always the case. And being antisocial doesn't mean you're bad to other people either, a mathematician driven by his interest in modular math could be very helpful to the world without ever caring about his impact on the world. Not to mention that the idea that people should do good things for their own gain is ultimately a better justification for simply doing what's good for you and makes you satisfied regardless of whether that's good for others, since the approach is fundamentally self centered. Basically, Nietzsche was right.
@@cokesucker9520 Helping people because you want to is also moral, and very much commendable. I don't believe you have to have a specific set of principles or an ideology to possess the quality of morality. That's a very modern view of things that I find unnecessarily tribal in a way.
The belief that being good=good, and an appreciation for the ethical is more than enough. I'd argue it's even better.
If you act purely in a self-centered manner without any thoughts of what is right or what could harm others, you may help the world yes. You may also just as well severely harm it. Many have. I'd argue most of the suffering in our world stems from it.
It is no way for a society to live. I maintain that ethics should be valued by all.
It's been a long time since I studied Nietzche, and I don't think I did so all too thoroughly. But while he was undoubtably very wise, and his thoughts were deeply profound, I do recall disagreeing with him on many of his thoughts on morality specifically. (The whole sheep and wolves thing never appealed much to me, and morality coming only from religion is just blatantly false.) I'll have to read up on him again.
@@sirreginaldfishingtonxvii6149 Nietzsche is largely disinterested in the moral question. He is mostly concerned with the why and not the what. I don't think he said anything to imply that morality only came from religion, but he did say that the modern moral landscape in the west is deeply rooted in it - which is absolutely true.
More or less his concern is with external vs internal motivations. The ideal for him is that all of our motives should be derived from inside ourselves, which means that any conclusion reached by doing so is acceptable. The idea of the bird of prey and the lambs, is that really the strong don't hate the weak - but the inverse is true. Being weak isn't evil, but it is less desirable than being strong - regardless of what you want to do with that strength.
Ultimately, it's this strong central identity that he was pushing against - in his time and place it was German nationalism. The idea that we're all one big group that should act together for the benefit of the whole - a herd protecting itself from interlopers: an idea that was used to justify purging outliers. So in some sense what he was talking about was a bit bigger than this discussion.
I'm electing to ignore your comments on the potential sources of suffering in the world, since they seem detached from reality in such significant ways that I question your grasp on history - but you're free to elaborate further since I might not be seeing your greater point.
TL;DR: Nietzsche wanted people to find themselves, instead of relying on group identity and morals.
@@cokesucker9520 I can't help but disagree with him. There are many conclusions you can come through by seeking within yourself. But there is no reason to why those conclusions should be correct simply because you arrived to them internally.
You may require yet more introspection. You may have been blocked from truth through past trauma or personal issues. You may come to the conclusion that your purpose involves mutilation of others for your own pleasure. I don't think that would mean you are right.
I'm no fan of simply following herd mentality, but morality does not require herd mentality. Far from it, I would say they're often opposed. I also don't think Nietzche said that they were inherently intertwined though. As you say, his thoughts on the matter there are a bit bigger than this discussion.
I would argue there have been two sorts of suffering throughout history. There is the natural (disease, predators, etc.) and the manmade. Natural suffering has decreased significantly in recent times in many parts of the world, to the extent that for many today I believe manmade suffering eclipses it.
Manmade suffering is derived sometimes from ignorance, but often from greed, manipulation, personal flaws, and selfishness. The tyrant and the dictator ruling over their people with an iron fist, the megacorporation exploiting the poor and the weak in the search for infinite wealth. On a smaller scale: The child predator. Are these not all driven by selfish motivations? With a lack for concern about others?
Were they truly concerned with morality, with acting in one's own best interests only while not so horribly harming others, there would no doubt be less suffering in the world. I don't see how there wouldn't be.
I have nothing against finding yourself, on the contrary. But that does not have to exclude being good to your fellow man. It _shouldn't_ exclude being good to your fellow man. You don't have to subscribe to some ideology or have some fuzzy set of principles, a natural care for your fellows and a will not to do harm is more than enough.
(...Man I could really use a formal education in this stuff. English isn't my first language, and expressing myself when it comes to academia and philosophy gets rather difficult rather fast.)
@@sirreginaldfishingtonxvii6149 Mao tried to resolve food supply issues by getting rid of what was seen as a pest, but in reality was actually a predator to the pests. This killed tens of millions of people. Was the intention good? Yes. Was there suffering anyways? Of course. Morality has nothing to do with the material conditions in the here and now - we mostly just trade one set of negatives for another regardless of the intentions of the people involved. It used to be that people would die from disease, famine, and exposure now we kill ourselves at unprecedented rates - which itself implies an even larger number of people who are miserable but don't make the jump. Any of the things invented that you might consider good have made this exchange. The point is, that we're always ignorant in the grand scheme of things - so all that man made misery due to said ignorance will never truly dissipate, even with the most selfless and moral actors.
On the issue of selfishness, Nietzsche is mostly unconcerned with whether or not a person is selfish. A person could surmise internally that they gain joy and satisfaction from giving to others and have no conflict with the Nietzschen ideal - there's a whole section early in the Gay Science that goes on about how nobility isn't about any particular trait, but is instead about why you present those traits.
As an aside, your misunderstandings are making me realize that it's very hard to explain Nietzsche in this context, since there's a whole collection of ideas that support each other to build his conclusions. Each time you respond I realize that I need to explain a layer deeper than I did in the previous response.
9:22 That Thorkell montage threw me off guard💀
I had this kind of mindset before,I think it was because in the time I was living in a moment where I got betrayed by so many people I trusted, I just couldn't understand why, it seemed to me that being the good guy wasn't right, that the person who does whatever he does is always happier...
Once you go in the hole of emptyness and sadness that is being a bad person, you will understand why it's not good to be that way, everything just gets darker, you feel bad with yourself, you get alone, you get empty... Even if you are betrayed, at the very least you will have someone to count on, while being a bad guy, you just die inside...
Great video btw, it's an important subject to be talked about, people these days need to understand what truly means to be "good" also happier, your video made me think, and that's a really good think, Great job dude 👍 (also, I'll definitely watch that anime)
glad you were able to get out of that head space dude, and thanks for the great comment!
I understand, the mindset after ur trust gets broken way too many times
Or you can just become a leech and find joy in making others suffer.
So, the answer is "just be happy, bro", right? lol what a joke
@@I_am_a_human_not_a_commodity If that's your conclusion to all this then I can conclude you didn't listen to anything the video said.
Thank you for finally voicing my own thoughts about our generation.
I also think a large part of it, is that there's probably not so many people who actually believe this, but more so a vocal minority of people who genuinely believe this, backed by people who don't really believe it but are vulnerable and hurt in life and going through a bad time, and unfortunately this is what they cling to.
The reason people see characters like Thorkell and think "See? This proves that the ideal way of being is to be unapologetically selfish." miss the reason why they think that in the first place, they don't resonate with Thorkell because he's a ruthless monster, they resonate because he's a HAPPY ruthless monster, which is even more unlikely to happen and mistakes the forest for the trees.
Anyone COULD be infectiously, unapologetically happy about anything-
Most of us don't have that gift or can't tap into that mindset of boundless, infectious energy on a regular basis, it's either a natural talent or a highly developed emotional skill that most just don't develop.
But the point is, that's fun for fictional evil villains, sure, but it doesn't really help the rest of us because simply put, we're not built for that.
People evolved to live in communities, we're social creatures who are only truly capable of thriving in tightly knit and loving tribes and families, not to say there aren't outliers, but they're the exception, not the rule, and people who think that being self-centered and driven is the path to happiness miss the fundamental thing which makes being a good person important.
The world is much bigger than any one person, and even bigger than any group of people, but history shows that if you have a group, if you have that love and kindness, you have a much better chance of weathering the storms in life than if you tried to spite the world and do everything yourself.
It's easier to hold on as a collective.
While individuals easily get washed away by the tides.
That's what people misinterpret as "There are no benefits to being a good person", not all of us are lucky enough to find our tribe early on, and often we get bitter because of it, which creates a self-fulfilling prophecy. Most of us think we're good people, when in reality we're all just people by default.
There are no benefits to being a lonely person. There are many highly successful, absolutely awful people-
But you'll never see them alone, because they run businesses, they have teams, and people who work under them, because a ship with a crooked captain will still sail as long as the captain doesn't do something so horrible that it either sinks the ship or causes the crew to mutiny.
That's the reality people miss.
But even a good crew member will do far more than a bad captain will, and a good captain even more so. Those are the people who weather storms for the entire group, who make sure that when the "captain" cuts budget for the second time this year, the people below them still get to feed their family because they're willing to take a smaller share.
The people who when "the captain" goes around and starts beating and abusing his own crew, will be there for them and comfort and protect them.
Because the thing is, with having a horrible captain, they're easily replaceable and quite easy to overthrow.
Because strength in numbers will always beat one bad man.
But if a bad man is able to keep people from having hope, or believing in themselves, and they spread all sorts of mistrust among people so they don't trust each other-
Then the bad captain looks better by comparison, not because they are, but because they're the one who created the environment without anyone noticing.
If one person notices though, and does something, the crew takes control, and the captain goes down.
You can choose the crew that you join, on rare occasions you may even start your own crew or get the chance to join as captain.
But you don't have the choice of simultaneously being alone and being immune to the tides.
Not even the greatest crew is immune to the tides of the world, the world we sit on is mostly made of water after all.
But we're greater than the sum of our parts when we truly band together, it's what we're built and evolved for.
So I'll leave with this, maybe you're someone like me, and you're still struggling to find or make your crew, don't give up, and don't grow bitter, an equally important part of sailing through life is to keep spirits and morale high. The important thing to remember is that, no matter how alone you feel, you're part of something bigger than yourself already, you just don't realize it yet. There's loads of people just like us, just like you, who would be more than willing to accept you as you are, all you gotta do is ask, which really is the hardest part. It's hard to be open because you don't always know what you might let in, but there's always far more good in the world than there is bad. The good are naturally prone to banding together and supporting each other. There may be some leeches in the water, but we have plenty of doctors and hunters out here making sure that we minimize them, so try not to let it get to you too much if you find some getting attached to you, they need you far more than you need them.
TLDR:
Be good people, look for good people, be good together.
Have a great day.
You kinda forget the point that in this day and age we dont need another person the way in the old times used to, capitalism in itself is based on the individual person, not the community
@@pepper0075 Capitalism or no capitalism, humans are still undeniably social creatures, sure, we may be bad at socializing sometimes, but we're evolved to be part of a bigger group, just look at the effects of solitary confinement on prisoners, or how loneliness is heavily correlated with symptoms of depression.
Even setting aside emotional needs, I think anyone who would say that capitalism is individualistic fundamentally doesn't understand how capitalism works in practical terms. A capitalist society doesn't work if you don't interact with other people, and if you try to screw people over in a capitalist society, they'll come back for justice, most often in the form of a group with more power than you.
Not only is community emotionally healthy, it's also logically practical.
I will say capitalism isn't idealistic by any means, but it's not individualistic either, it's a system of currency which flows endlessly from one person to the next.
In a way, capitalism is a way of connecting people through trade, rather than through altruism, although some people try to find ways of making capitalism altruistic.
Right. Long winded way to say "wow I really love the herd it's so awesome". If someone doesn't love the herd, what are you gonna do about it? Love them?
@@waffleyumboyr5342 That would be the idea, yeah. So long as people aren't assholes, why not be nice? Besides, it's not that I'm a social person, I just know well enough from experience that the people who tend to avoid being part of a "group", are often just people who have been hurt by others too many times to keep caring. Very few people are objectively awful or anti-social.
Most of us are just trying to get by, so I don't see any point in making life harder for others. Who knows, you might actually get something out of being nice to someone. If not, it's not like it cost you anything.
Have a good day mate. Even if you try to have a bad one out of spite.
BACK. AT. IT, MAN! LOVE THIS!!!
really good analysis on thorkell, many people think they need to shut down their emotions so they can live within the moments but it's that lack of emotion that makes us constantly need to scratch that itch
While I agree with many of your points, I feel as though you didn’t emphasize the importance of putting your foot down and pushing toxic people out of your life. If you are surrounded by people that are constantly stepping over your boundaries, you won’t learn how to stand up for yourself; you’ll only end up people pleasing. It’s important to find balance in both being a good person and being able to give up on people that bring out the worst in you as well as take advantage of your kindness.
Helping others is actually proven to improve mental health. It's the best way to recover from PTSD as he would naturally have PTSD after being a child soldier
"If the only thing keeping a person decent is the expectation of divine reward, then, brother, that person is a piece of shit." - Rust Cohle (True Detective S1 by Nic Pizzolatto)
It shouldn't be a question of whether there is anything to be gained from being a good person or not; it should be a question of whether there even is any need for some kind of reward to exist in order for someone to be good. That's what people mean when they say that it is its own reward.
I always say that having a hypocritical person that acts good out of self interest is better than not having one, since that's one more person who does (even if occasionally) good
@@SennkenOh, absolutely. It's still a good deed regardless of any technicalities; it's just that in all likelihood a person who does good for his own benefit and nothing else is eventually going to stop if he finds out that he no longer has anything to gain from it. It's not sustainable with that mindset.
Tell that to the homeless person where all their kindness and goodness have brought them to a fringe of society where nobody cares about them and would prefer that they're dead. It's only it's own reward when you're privilege is speaking. You have money to live well enough to not feel punished for being the good person.
Not to mention the amount of people that think they're a good person when they cause problems for others to benefit themselves.
@@SherrifOfNottingham Firstly you can't just arbitrarily attribute someone being homeless to them being "too good" somehow, usually it's way more complicated than to be simplified like that. Secondly obviously your own survival takes precedence over your other less important needs, that isn't even something that needs to be said in my opinion, but you can still be a kind or good person even in spite of your circumstances, you seem to be treating it as if being a kind person relies on your material wealth, when it doesn't. And thirdly, your final point to me has no relevance because you're just describing a purely self-interested person that harms others for their own gain, just because they think they're good people means nothing, almost everybody considers themselves to be a good person it doesn't make it true, so I don't really get your point.
@@Dell-ol6hb you misread what I wrote, I'm saying there's a hypothetical homeless person who is kind and good, but receives nothing for it.
Our society doesn't care about people who are kind or good, and a majority of the time those who are truly kind or good without need of a reward, will forget to be good to themselves, because rarely is the favor returned.
"The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either -- but right through every human heart -- and through all human hearts." - Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Ah, citing the views of a reactionary, anti-semitic hypernationalist about what a good person is. gg 👍
@@jonirischx8925 All those buzzwords just to whine
@@jonirischx8925 instead of resorting to buzzwords (ad hominems), criticize what he is saying. You’re letting your ideology do your thinking for you, rather than thinking for yourself. Solzhenitsyn was a complex man whose worldview was shaped by his life as a slave-laborer in Siberia, he both spoke a lot of truths and was wrong about some things.
Just because you're too (willfully?) uneducated to know the meaning of certain words, does not make them 'buzzwords'. Love it when people out themselves and their ignorance, thinking it's some kind of rebuttal...
@@LuisSilva-vq9lr I’ve read the entirety of Gulag Archipelago, and I don’t particularly care about Jordan Peterson. Feel free to criticize the quote I gave above, but you’re just deflecting and trying to criticize me via guilt by association, because you associate my quote with someone who your ideology tells you to dislike.
Honestly, ATLA has a great quote coming from the Giant Lion Turtle: "The true mind can weather all the lies and illusions without being lost. The true heart can touch the poison of hatred without being harmed. Since beginning less time, darkness thrives in the void, but always yields to purifying light". That "light" is, imo, just be good and kind, no matter how much the world falls into the stoic and cruel and uncaring nature, be that light.
this is a great connection, i've always loved the ending of ATLA and the lion turtle gives so many good quotes like that
Sometimes being good doesn't make you happy you might not make others better, no matter how much you try. Sometimes you might be good and only suffer while failing everything you attempt. Sometimes you might be good and hated by everyone while others shift the blame of the most evil people on you. I believe good is way more deeper than what I saw in this video. I'm thinking about tragic good, those who sarcificed for others to maybe have a normal life while knowing that they won't survive till their future. Some sacrifice for others in vain, some won't be remembered yet they still chosen good while knowing this. What about those who had only suffering in return for being a good person yet they never gave up on being good?
Yeah, that's true. I personally took this video as more of a general thing, and not necessarily including situations in which the good ends up causing little to no benefit to oneself or others.
@@lifadysi9418Isn't self-satisfaction and peace in mind the best benefit?
I remember when I used to flow with rage and that me from what I can say now was not stable nor at peace. Yes! I fought against bullies for my physically weaker classmates, yet*I know the person I was then was not happy with myself.
I really needed this video. I've been feeling that sentiment for about the last 6 months because it seemed like I never had people care about me even when I always cared about others.
I realized later they were bad people, but I needed to still be a good person even if it was hard because deep down I knew it was still in my nature.
First, the appearance of being a good person, the reputation, does have tangible benefits. To be trusted has benefits.
That being said, many people simply try to appear good. And it works for them. Until they get caught doing something evil.
The benefit of being good, is that it promotes goodness in the lives around you and you gain the reputation of a good person without risk of being exposed, because there is nothing to expose. The best way to appear good is to be good and train yourself to be good. Do something enough times and it becomes just who you are.
what about when your rep is tarnished
@@lucidvisions9965 Oh, that's a good question. Reputation is easier to maintain than to build. Having no reputation is better than having ill repute. If everyone thinks you are bad because of past experience, or past deeds, or even malevolent rumors targeting you, then you can't receive the benefits of appearing good.
This can create a choice. Do the hard labor to rebuild the foundation over time of being good, fixing the reputation, and reap the benefits in the future, or not bother with that, and take the shorter term benefits of being underhanded others already think of you as that, and just live without others trust.
There are of course, different levels/types of reputation and trust. Familial, Romantic/Sexual, Financial, Friendships, productive, and many more. Having your reputation tarnished in one can affect others, but not always to the same degree. Being good, also means being reliable and has discretion/tact and actively training yourself to be able to help others, not just 'having a good heart' in the moment.
On the closing thoughts: A lot of people wound up like that due to a mix of social media and increased information availability. It's become the easiest it's ever been in history to know just how little influence you, as a person, actually have on the grand scale of things. It's easy to see just how much people are punished for being good people and doing the right thing. It's easy to see the strings pulling the puppets shunting all responsibility for the shittiness of the world on us. The people least able to do anything about it.
It's very hard to know a lot about how things work and the state of the world and believe that the best answer, if not the only answer that remains, is violence or aggresive, all-consuming nihilism.
I love your usage of Rome total war soundtrack
There are lots of benefits to being a good person, you don’t fee like crap for putting others down, you don’t hate who you are, and you know what has to be done and so can be decisive. There’s more than that but the point is there’s benefits.
Dude your video truly hits home. All my life I’ve done acts of kindness small things like helping an elderly lady with really bad cataracts find her sons home. To returning peoples lost dogs and countless other good deeds. These days I feel my kindness slipping away I was a prior Marine while my whole platoon was on steroids I was the only one that was actually natural. Constantly berated by a plethora of comments. Long story short I see what your talking about with how society is shifting to a dog eat dog mentality and I can’t help but feel troubled.
I know that acts of kindness are meant to be self fulfilling but at times I’m like “god damn could I just catch a break” I’m always thankful for my good health, relationship and any blessings that give me a reason to keep pushing forward but, I’m just asking for that one win that makes me realize it’s all worth it. For example like every other American I’m living check to check but if I had like Bill Gates funding I feel like I’d be more impactful than just the events I stated above, granted they are good but I wanna be able to help millions. As I’ve grown older my outlook on being good becomes even more bleak. Crime is rising, looks like anyone from from any generation after a boomer or a gen X will ever own a house and let’s be frank the American dream is dying. But enough of the doom and gloom I hope you have a good day great video.
I literally feel the best I ever do when I help people, I’m fucking sick of “nihilists”.
Being good to others builds trust, and trust is one of the most important things in this world that so many people lack. The lack of trust is literally the reason why so many world issues exist.
And for those saying “there is no point to life” here is my response.
Exactly, life literally has no meaning. we exist due to billions of years of evolution that all started due to pure luck of a rock floating around a star in the perfect position with the perfect amount of specific resources and somehow in a primordial soup life started forming.
Life has no meaning, and that is PRECISELY why life is meaningful. Every person can determine with their own free will what meaning their life has and what they want to do with it.
I myself want to be good because I derive pleasure from it, but I also want to be good because I want others to be happy as well. And that also includes the fact that I will fight whoever chooses to harm others. I am a fighter BECAUSE I am a lover.
This is called optimistic nihilism; the disbelief in objective meaning, but the belief in subjective meaning.
@JANAY_TV The world is literally improving in meaningful ways, this is just factually untrue. I don't think you watched the video.
@JANAY_TV Meaningful relative to the shared goals of humanity.
@JANAY_TV The world isn't s#!&, it has both good things and bad things occurring on a daily basis - and depending on what you choose to focus on it can either lead you to prioritize positive developments or negative transpirings. That is what optimism is; the choice to primarily focus on the good stuff, as opposed to indulging in the bad - it is a far superior outlook to have on the world if your goal is eudaimonia.
@JANAY_TVThe world is not great but we can obtain the power to make it better for everyone, starting with treating others better and thinking about what a better future can be.
Very, very well put. And this is a battle to be continuously fought. Emerging from hell once does not mean you cannot redescend to its depths. I think I have, in several points, embodied the mindset of Thorfinn at the end of season 2, though I am not currently in that state.
Thank you for reminding me and putting into words why this show is so powerful, and why it is worth it to strive to be better and look outward.
this guy singlehandedly succeeded in gathering all the nice people in a single place - here and now. I salute all of you and wish you all the best!
Morality is not required for happiness. Self improvement is, but not morality.
😂😂
"Socrates, whom you may know from Epic Rap Battles of history" had me rolling 😂😂😂😂😂
being able to know you’re a morally good person who does bad things in order to protect the innocent is the biggest reward a person can have, protecting the weak is what I stand for and I absolutely hate those who bash on others who can’t defend themselves, not my kind of thing.
Why should I be moral if it brings me no happiness?
@@Stevejones-qe6hi It does? If you feel emotionless being a good person seek help dude
This right here is what I’ve been looking for, thank you.
@@Stevejones-qe6hi Because it's the right thing to do? Does being a dick bring you happiness or something? Go to a psychologist dude. Its not entirely about you either.
@basic6735 ah yes, shun those different than you. You truly are shining beacon of morality 😂
A better way to put it would be that there is no exclusive benefit to being a good person. There will always be a time where doing the right thing is a personal sacrifice, and that is simply a part of being good.
there is an interesting perspective that being good is done mostly to appear harmless, most people don't have any real power or influence on big things around them, hell many people don't even have influence on their own lives or people they live with, if they did many would become ''evil'' because now they can actually act out their supressed feelings and emotions.
That's not to say it's good to do so but that's how people are.
being good, at least to me, means being strong and acting on your own self interests but also helping others to do the same, it also means recognizing some people as your ''enemies'' to be mistrusted and to view as harmful beings not just to you but also your loved ones and people in general.
one of the issues I have with Thorfin is his pacifism, it's depicted as noble and good but it's just the opposite of his other darker side, if we acted like that in real life we would be handing over the world to evil and violent forces, in many ways we already have which is probably why you see this type of thought being promoted in the world because we live in a world where ''you must be good but others can be evil'' that breeds resentment and apathy which is what is seen in the world today.
if we want to see a world of peace, justice, love and improvement we can't ignore the reality of the world, stoic philosophy is probably closest to this mindset properly but it is also the hardest.
A measure for someone's goodness is how much effort they are putting into helping those, who can't possibly repay them.
If you are nice to a rich person, that's not much evidence for goodness.
If you attack a slaughterhouse worker to free some pigs, that's very strong evidence for your goodness.
@@MrCmon113 that does not sound good at all, there is no crime or harm being done.
The problem is that today in the west a lot of harm is done to people by the government, academia and laws that benefit criminals, doing good means fighting evil, not people who are just doing their jobs for a service for people, they don't even get paid very much.
agreed, while some are being "good" like in this vid or manga, other people just do what they want to do, and few of them control other people's lives. there really is no benefit for being a good person except maybe, just maybe you will make yourself and people around you feel good. That's just all.
You attack a slaughterhouse worker, which now means his family starves since he can't work.@@MrCmon113
There enough misery in the world. I don't need to add to it. But if my acts of kindness help other have a better day then maybe they won't feel the need to spread more misery. I don't do good for my own benefit, but so that the lives of others are just a little nicer. And if they are happier then it will be easier for them to act out of kindness. I know there are people who are pointless to help as no help will ever be enough to get them to a good point (I had to cut one out I was related to.) But the many people I have helped though the years remind me that kindness is rarely wasted.
My goal in life is simply to spread as much happiness as I can. This include my own.
Being good to others definitely has rewards, otherwise I wouldn't question myself whenever I help someone, because there's the possibility I'm subconsciously doing it because I want to be liked, not because it's the right thing to do
I am currently on my road of Happiness. I hit my own personal rock bottom this year when i let my ex control my life, controlled who i was cause she was telling me "i love you". But once my mother told me how ive been changing and that she didn't like it. And when i tell you that made something in my mind click you don't understand my mother is my WORLD I'd be gone without her, so for her to feel hurt from who i was becoming made me leave that relationship so fast just for my ex to say "i love you!". And i just walked away i don't need to say anything to a thing that has no humanity. And now ive been changing for the better and my mum told me how proud she is and i CRIED HARD MAN. i didn't let that bad experience with my ex break me i let it build me and now i can now say i smile everyday knowing that im becoming happy!.
I really liked the vid. Aristotle inspired stoicism and I live my life with stoic values. I always looked at Vinland saga among other shows, with a stoic lens and I thought it was interesting hearing you describe concepts that I've for a long time believed to be true. Thorfinn was absorbed from a young age in a mindset where bad things would happen to him so he would retaliate and do bad things justifying and repressing it in his head, but after his purpose is taken away; in his emptiness or numbness of emotions, he begins to think. i thought it was funny you added a whole segment about Thorkell because I've thought LITERALLY THE EXACT SAME THING ABOUT HIM! also the way you explained how sometimes you need to be violent but you should never want to be, is something I previously thought but now agree with even more. "careful when you wrestle with monsters, lest ye become one".
Love the cheeky RTW music in the background
Looking at that statement(?), I always think of the most selfish thing I can think of.
>I want to be happy
>I become happy by improving lifes of others / seeing those improve
In a way, it is selfish selflessness, and I don't mind it.
If you’re helping others by helping yourself, is it selfish?
@@Chadius_Thundercock I'd say that it comes down to the intend and by wanting something, I want to fullfill my want. I'd say it is selfish in the first degree.
@@Flamme-Sanabi So you think its selfish that it makes me happy when I help others? Who loses?
@@CodyCLI I do, yes. It is selfish, but others benefit from it as well.
@@CodyCLI it's called mental gymnastics, clearing out a Hoovertown to build some low rent housing is seen as a good deed... Despite the fact that you just cleared out hundreds of homeless people to only give them MAYBE 20% of a home that they'll have to pay rent for. Doing "good" for others can be paved with cruelty and evil without the charitable chump even realizing it.
The abstract ideal of doing something selfless is it's own reward has the problem of helping people in the wrong way because you don't actually care about them or their well being. You care about the "high" you get off of helping them, I remember a guy who took a first class flight across the country to shake hands with a homeless person to get that high, and when I tried to point out how he flew over the heads of millions of homeless people to get there spending thousands of meals worth of money for the flight and months of rent for a somebody to stay the weekend at their hotel. This is an obvious example but it really shows how caring about that self satisfaction from helping people can come from doing something extremely unhelpful.
A true good deed has no reward, and our society is built around discouraging this in its entirety, look at how we actually treat the homeless in america. We ship them around and drop them in other cities potentially separating them from areas they know and understand for a new place that they don't know where they have all the same problems, we have shelters with extremely strict rules that are engineered to prevent them from being able to get a job while forcing them to fill out job applications so they can secure the funding, we call the cops to move them "somewhere else" even though they have nowhere to go.
The issue with our society is not that being good has no reward, it's that you are actively punished for being good. That's why religion has all these tests of faith as they call it, being good is inherently selfless and when you don't have spare to give you're giving what you don't have. As more and more people end up homeless we'll start to see that homelessness is caused by our society's obsession with being rewarded for doing something.
Kero Kero Bonito playing in the background of a video like this just fits so well. I can't even explain it
You do what's right, because its right. That's all you need to believe in sometimes.
Just to show how stupid this is, even a nigga working under Hitler could just come up with the excuse, "well, I do what Hitler says because it's what he says" no need to think about it and be critical, just be a sheep and do, do, doooo!
8:41 transition threw me for a loop that I enjoyed 😂
This was the best explanation of why Vinland Saga is so great! I wouldn't call Vinland Saga the greatest story/anime ever but to me its my favorite ever simply because its made me a better person and relate to it soo much!
I will always remember this video, Vinland Saga has a special place in my heart. Thank you for spreading your positive message.
Trampling over others can help you achieve success but so can a lot of other things. Being a good person does not benefit anyone but yourself. A selfish society that doesnt care about anyone isnt really worthwhile, because once you reach the bottom and you will reach it, there wont be anyone there to help you out. Success itself is meaningless, simply because you have money does not change anything about what or who you are. Also viewing it through a psychological lense, you will be much happier to be a good person that strives to grow and learn from their failure and pain. Humans are social creatures, we will always find joy in others. So being a selfish person is only to your diservice, because nobody wants to be with a selfish person. Whats right or wrong is dictated essentially by whats best for people and society in general in my eyes, you might help someone and never see the fruits of that labor but there might be someone else, that helped another person and because that person got help, they decided to help you at some point in your life, its a you take what you give but in a more logical sense. (sorry for the long comment, this is just me trying to express this thought id had for a while now).
I wouldn't waste my time trying to make others happy if I dont think they're worth the effort.
Tysm! This vid gave me a burst of enthusiasm which I needed. I finally found power to publish my tale!
One quote i think of from Big Man Marcus is “If you did a good thing, and fared well by it, why would you seek a third reward?”
So doing a good thing obviously brings more good into the world, and is good for you as well (as a member of that world)
You fared well by it, so people let you do that thing without conflict and maybe even with appreciation, and that is good for you
Why would you seek a THIRD reward, aka i need “monie or i need wahmen or i need moar powa”
There is also the basic problem that a lot of people just have a more self centered mindset and dont see themselves as part of a greater whole, and so cant imagine that doing something for the benefit of OTHERS as being a beneficial. Like, no man is an island bro, there are lots of benefits to being a good person, just not always specifically benefiting you as an individual
Wow this video is really high quality comparing it to the amount of views and subscribers, you are really underrated man, great video
thanks so much!
@@chryysanth You're welcome, it was a good watch
I work in caregiving, specifically with kids. These kids are a lot like Thorkell. I often feel like my voice of reason goes unheard to the people I work with, and I reflect a lot on whether or not I'm at this job out of self-righteousness, or because I genuinely want to be a good person. On that note, It's hard to see so many of our heroes, fictional or otherwise, get butchered and turned into monsters by compromised people, and when you vocalize those concerns, they fall on deaf ears or on people who act like children and continue with the same behaviors forever and ever. So, this video was absolutely necessary for me tonight because I broke down crying for the first time in a truly long time instead of suppressing it. While I do feel guilt by default a lot of the time, it is indeed a gift because it allows me self-reflection on my actions, no matter how small. I'd rather comes across as insecure than be one of those people I despise who do not think twice about how casually they do wrong.
I LOVE VINLAND SAGA SO MUCH it actually drives you and help you know what healing and forgiving yourself is
being good to others and helping others means you can also be good to and help yourself! THATS the benefit you get, plus being good and and making others feel good around you will just elevate your self esteem and confidence, give you a sense of purpose, which is what leads to true fulfilling happiness( has much more impact in a time when most ppl are cold )
i think the flower person doesn't understand that "benefits" doesn't always mean happiness, for them, it probably just means success or something like that. But the true "benefit" you get for being a good person is not something material, it is happiness...
Isn't that the point?
Being a good person brings no reward, that's why it's admirable when people do good things.
Saying there is no benefit to being a good person is essentially admitting that you let yourself be effected by things outside of your control.
1. I held the door open for someone and they didn't say thank you, day ruined
2. I put the shopping cart back into its area and I didnt get a standing ovation from the entire supermarket, day ruined
3. A guy told me a story about his vacation that I believed and it turns out he was lying, it doesnt effect me in any way but my day is still ruined
People are too result focused and too quickly decide when things are "good" or "bad", anything outside of the choices you yourself make, is indifferent.
1. You held the door open for someone, when you did not need to, good job
2. You passed the good person litmus test by putting back the shopping cart, good job
3. You believed a completely fabricated story, its okay because the story holds no bearing on your life, well done.
"And god laid down this law, if you want some good, get it from yourself" -Epictetus
You're definitely correct. Imo the desire to not be controlled by external events should come from a place of pursuing wellness as opposed to pride, as pride is a purely destructive mindset and all of the benefits of pride can be achieved in other ways.
Your video got me thinking and writing. Thank you!
lovely to hear that, thanks for the comment!
Never have I come across an explanation for this phenomenon that exuded the feeling of eudaimonia in me such as this one did. I’ve seen so many “it’s good therefore it’s good” arguments or “you should just do it for its own sake” mentalities, but I completely agree with the statement that these thought processes simply aren’t how humans fundamentally work. As humans we aren’t meant to be immovably selfless. No species would ever survive like that because they wouldn’t care about their own survival over the benefit of everyone and everything else. Humans, like any other organism, prioritize their own wellbeings first; and despite what the edgelords would like to believe, apart of that involves seeing those around us happier. Maybe it derives from the past need to stay in groups and packs for survival or something similar, it doesn’t matter. The result is that now, its just a human characteristic that everyone possesses from birth. Being a “good” person simply satisfies a portion of the criteria for attaining true fulfillment and personal wellbeing, which is why it’s necessary to not neglect it. As stated in the video, everything is done for the sake of eudaimonia, and being a “good” person is simply a necessity for it. Not for “the greater good”, “it’s own sake”, “the need to be selfless”, but for us. It’s done for ourselves, so that we don’t feel dogshit all the time, or whenever we’re sobered up to properly think anyway.
without any reflection on it I arrived at the point of being "good" for the sake of being "good" and this video really puts that into perspective for me, and why things have been going so much better in life. Massive respect for even making this video or having the thought for its topic in the first place, I think its super important that more people think about it.
Having been around mainly negative people my whole life, I fell into the mindset of self preservation and apathy, and then something broke it. I'm not really sure what, maybe my brain said it was safe, maybe it was transitioning with horomones, maybe it was finding a video like this.
That single change led to me finding a loving girlfriend, realizing the toxicity of my friends, of my actions, and of the people who moulded my brain. My happiness with her is rubbing off on the people around me, and back to her. It's dragged me out of a pit and made me see the light in living again after having been in an emotionally neglectful, and hateful family my whole life. It's given me the motivation to actually better myself for the sake of her and the people who interact with me. It's given me the motivation to actually dig myself out of the pit I'm in.
The benefit to being good is happiness. We all try to do all evil things to get what makes us happy but never be happy, it's only when we give do we get happiness.
What if being "good" doesn't bring me happiness?
@@Stevejones-qe6hi Even then, life is generally easier if you are a "good" person. People will appreciate you more if they know they can rely on you. Then, they will help you back, and you can also rely on those people, thus improving everyone's life. But this only works if everyone is working for each other's good. If you stop being good to them, they will stop being good to you. So, in theory at least, it's still for your own good, even if for some reason you don't enjoy it.
That said, if you do not get any enjoyment at all from helping others, and especially if you enjoy hurting them, perhaps you should go to a mental health professional and take a test for anti-social personality disorder or other mental illnesses. It might explain your different way of seeing things...
Happiness is a bs concept.
@@thebettafish3239 "In theory" just like in theory commmunism works.
Don't be fooled, even if you are the kindest person on earth, it only takes 1 day of not wanting to be good for people to see you as the meanest.
If you keep being "good" and "nice" people will take you for granted, there won't be anyone there for you because "OH, they are always good, they are always fine."
Even the word, "nice" comes from the word "nescius" that means literally "stupid or moronic".
All of this comes down to manipulation.
@@Stevejones-qe6hibeing good doesn’t bring me happiness either
The only thing I dont like about this video is how short it is. I want MORE. keep up the good work.
Thank you so much for saying "[these problems are] in our CURRENT SOCIETY".
It's such a relief to see someone actually talking about philosophy in a historical context. Too often, people will say "oh [ x bad thing] is just human nature" or some other idealist/metaphysical crap.
YES the "it's just human nature" thing is so annoying
Honestly the stupidest argument I’ve ever heard, they say “it’s just human nature” as if a part of human nature isn’t literally being good
@@basic6735 Human nature.
human nature human nature human nature
sorry i couldn’t resist
Being nice because you like it makes those “nothing matters” type of person seethe
Im glad I got this video recommened to me! This video is really good dude! Also nice touch adding kero kero bonito - you know how it is. Great song choice!!
really glad you liked it! and yeah i love kkb
As someone who has read piles of textbooks on the topic of finding happiness and meaning, the biggest leason i have learnt is that being a good person, helping others, wanting the good of others and trying to improve the world are in themselves a big reward. Like, when you do these activities, purely for the sake of doing these activities, then you feel a profound sense of paychological well being. You just do. Ofcourse, that doesnt mean tou have to become a philanthropist to be happy, there are other means to also garner meaning, but yeah, being a good person is a BIG one.
I love the Max0r vibes brother, keep the good stuff coming.
"I say that man is entitled to his own happiness. And that he must achieve it himself. But that he cannot demand that others give up their lives to make him happy. And nor should he wish to sacrifice himself for the happiness of others. I hold that man should have self-esteem" --Ayn Rand
"So the part of the reason that people go watch Anti-Heroes and Villains is because there's a part of them crying out for the incorporation of the monster within them which is what gives them strength of character and self-respect because it's impossible to respect yourself until you grow teeth...A harmless man is not a good man. A good man is a very dangerous man who has that voluntary control" --Dr. Jordan Peterson
"Goodness is not goodness that seeks advantage. Good is good in the final hour, in the deepest pit, without hope, without witness, without reward. Virtue is only virtue in extremis" --Doctor Who
Damn. Can I get a HELLLLLL YEAHHHHH!!!!!! This is a fantastic take. Ethics was my favorite class that I took in college because it came at a time I was getting depressed and aimless, and it gave me a sense of purpose that nothing before had. It's so fitting that Thorfinn went through that same journey, in a way. I kinda needed to see this video just to reinforce the concept in my mind again.
Anyway. I love you too. Mwah.
Thorkell is a character that constantly seeks fun and is able to do so with his fighting skills and large build. He's the equivalent of one being drowned in pleasure. He doesn't feel the horror of war because he is alsost incapable of being hurt and has no one around him he cares about. That being said, Thorkell still faces some form of regret. Although he doesn't fully realize it yet, the reason he is so invested in finding out what a true warrior is, is because he lacks meaning in his life. There is no meaning in fighting eachother, there is no meaning in war. All the true warriors he has met all have found their meaning in life, to make the world a better place. Ironically, the thing that Thorkell seeks to become requires him to let go off the one thing he can't let go of, which is his pleasure in war.
Not just for others, but also for yourself, your concience is much more at peace when you're a good person
A little delusion goes along way, believing you're a "good person" for avenging your father is a very real thing, and ignoring all the bad things you do to get to that good deed is really easy.
I believe the main reason for this "no value in being good" sentiment is that cruel/bad people are often seem to benefit much more for their actions, because they are willing to do things that good people are not to achieve their goal. Good people are disadvantaged in that way. The people with the most freedom, power, and wealth in society are cruel and willing to take from others. Since a prerequisite of being good is sacrificing your time, energy, or money for the sake of others.
It's wrong to say being good has no value however, as forming bonds with others and improving society as a whole does benefit you greatly. Society is built and sustained on the backs of good people returning their kindness to each other. Humans evolved as social creatures because it was the most beneficial method of survival.
Unfortunately as a side effect; bad people often have an easier time, because there are so many they can take advantage of who will not or cannot reciprocate. Though they will only be able to rely of themselves since they will have no bonds made out of friendship. Bad people can only profit because good people exist in abundance. When corruption and greed are widespread, civilization collapses.
Bad people don't actually benefit from their actions more than good people, actually. It's a façade, what they gain in material benefit - they lose in spiritual benefit. At the end of the day, they will be unsatisfied with 10 million dollars, and a good person will be satisfied with a penny.
A very good video man, i love the way you balance the philosophical smart stuff with actually funny jokes, which I honestly did not expect. I think you are talented and should keep up the work, I really hope you will get more attention in the future
I appreciate you going into more depth with Thorkell. I see a lot of people who only see him as a jolly little psycho, when he’s actually a bit more complex than that.
Dude this was an incredible video, well written, paced and edited, earned a sub. Keep up the work and I'm certain you'll blow up
Work has destroyed all my goodwill for mankind. I've been exploited so often that I no longer do anything unless it's based on equal exchange. Or benefiting me, to make up for all the losses I had. I'm trying to keep that mindset only applying to my connections at work, but after a decade, it affected my private life too.
It's amazing how people still keep up this pretense of "morality" when we live in a society where we are literally enslaved by debt, forced to work for the bare minimum just to survive. Hope is a terrifying drug.
@@waffleyumboyr5342 nihilism is one hell of a drug
People think that being good means being weak and naive. Many also believe that being good cant be possible during dark times.
These are some of the biggest lies ever told.
people tend to forget that it's also important to not only be kind to others but to yourself as well. and when i say this, i mean being responsible for your wellbeing, setting healthy boundaries & trying to reflect or ask yourself what things you value or a special interest/goal you wanted to do in life.
Doing your best to be a good person is objectively better. Others will like you, trust you, and essentially will always be happy to offer you help or opportunities. You can’t get far alone no matter how great you are. In my entire life there was only one person who did not reciprocate, the last I heard of em they were pretty much at the very bottom.
Underrated asf you deserve a million subs
If you are a good person, then seeing others happy and thriving will make you happier. But if it brings you no joy, you may just be pretending to be one. Yes, the path of kindness isn't always easy. You will face struggles and overcome barriers, but isn't that like everyone else's journey, good or bad? And in the end, seeing the fruit of your kindness reflected in the smiles of others brings a deep sense of satisfaction. Isn't that reward enough? That's how I convince myself to choose goodness, instead of expecting a reward that I might get in the afterlife.
my ultimate goal is to be able to have a couch in front of a beautiful lake and be able to sit there day to night, without having to worry about food and money because i have the money and time to do such useless things.
truly the dream
I think that is a nice dream but it can get boring quickly Jordan Peterson talks about how the idea of retirement in the beach with a martini would bore you in the first 2 weeks
@@picklerick8971 for me the goal isn't to do nothing, it's to be free from the things that distract you from what you love. if i could retire like that it wouldn't stop me from making my weird art in fact i would be able to make so much more
@@picklerick8971i would rather be bored than rot in some random alley and be eaten by rats if i stop working myself to death
Same but mine is to just look at an night sky,i hope we can achieve these goals one day
There are benefits to being a good person, if you are mostly a neutral or a bad person.
If we dig deep, there are no benefits to being any kind of person.
People see you being good, then see you do another good, they think it's normal.
People see you being bad, then see you do another bad, they think it's normal.
Now, change that a bit.
People see you being good, then see you do bad, they think something bad happened to you and try to make you good again.
People see you being bad, then see you do good, they think you changed and acknowledge you did good.
Complicate and mix things up a bit and you get yourself the true answer. You can apply this to most social stuff...
What you are already doing is expected. What you do better, either considered that you changed for the good or for the bad and gets acknowledged depending on what you were doing before.
There are no benefits to stay the same to the people you already know. You always need to come up with new sh*t.
This doesn't apply to most people though, like 90% of watching this video probably. Social interactions between average huımans is "immersive," enough to make this rare.
Average human is still primitive despite whatever their ideas or goals or the way they interact. They lack the ability to look at things from different perspectives or rather lack the ability to see things from the eyes of / ideas / experiences of others', basically lack empathy.
This is why even psychiatrist, therapists, physiologists or sociologists fail or try really hard to cure depression or rely on medicine to cure depression.
Sometimes one person really understanding you / showing that they understand you, or a simple good thing in your life only lasting for mere seconds, worths thousands of sessions with whatever paid help you are getting.
Though not every person is the same.
There are people in this world who are genuine with their thoughts be it good, bad, neutral or complex. And they are not afraid of speaking it.
These are the people who managed to break the unspoken social rules created by thousands of artifical social rules.
We are not divine species. The rules are created by other humans. Bad things are bad because others say so. We think sh*t is bad, but that's what people say so...
What they will say 200 years later?
Do we agree with them because we have deep understanding on the topic? Do we agree with them because they are popular or the media made them popular?
Maybe they are telling the truth but the humanity in general, is not capable of achieving it. Is it okay to push it even though we are not ready?
Are these rules executed properly? From rewards to punishments? Do the governments execute them properly? Do our body execute these properly?
Do we see everything? Do we realize the impact of what we think obvious?
In my country, the official translation of Indians means Redskins.
We basically identify them using their skin color, that's the official word and we use it for 300 hours.
Nobody stops and thinks about the implication. We don't call Asians as "Yellowskins," or westerns as "Whiteskins."
Even the sensitive people stop and think for a moment, saying "yeah what the fuck?" when you point this out.
We forgot to stop and think for a moment, about anything. Who is doing the thinking? What influences us to think certain things?
Really thought he could hit with the KKB and not have us notice
you know how it is 😈
real
U don’t understand how much this helped me thank you
glad to help dude
Now this is a Chad video. Congrats to you. Very well put.
I love you too and I love the idea that numbing your feelings is actually weakness because you're afraid to face your emotion. I used to think ignoring your feelings is strength, but facing them is way more challenging.
I hate that so many people have/support a belief like "There are no benefits to being a good person", but I love that you made this video that explains why it's wrong, especially including Vinland Saga in it so much. I often think about morality and love anime, so it's especially enjoyable to see videos about morality that also closely reference anime. Thanks for making this video.
It’s not wrong though
@unravelmysoul1598 It is wrong. There are benefits to being a good person, at least in some circumstances, but you're free to think otherwise even though that isn't reality.
I really love the use of Rome total war 1 soundtrack, it's really good
HELL YES i'm so glad someone noticed
Being a good person means living in a world with one more good persons.