https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=GeWurTn4-e8
Hello, doing something a little bit different here today. No script, just something occurred to me. Wanted to put it down. This is about formation. What is it? What does it mean? How did that happen to you? So what I’m talking about formation, there’s a form that is manifest in something, right, or as the result of something or many things maybe. And we become informed, right? We become form. What did that for you though? How did that happen? What are the things that you engaged with throughout your life up until we’ll say this point that formed you? Was it a book that you read? Was it a TV show that you loved? Was it a relationship? It’s probably all of these things. But what were those things? And this is a good way to find, you know, the buzzword nowadays is still trauma. And most people’s definition of trauma is completely useless because everybody experiences their definition of trauma throughout their lives. So we’re really talking about it’s not unique to you. The contrast for trauma is knowing what you’re informed by. So if you know, for example, that every time you see a flower, it reminds you of a book that you read and the image you had of a flower in that book. When you see something else and you can’t reference it back to something that formed that memory, that emotion, that sense that you’re getting, that intuition, there’s a way to find something that maybe you need to explore further because it’s something that’s having an impact on you that you can’t trace back to its roots. Now, I don’t think it’s necessary to trace everything back to its roots, but it’s something to watch out for. This is especially useful with things like anger. Now, I’m not one of these people who’s no one should ever get angry. That’s nonsense. That’s anybody tells you that I should run away from their soothsayer. I’ve got a video on on soothsayers, by the way. Two, two, because I get a live stream. You check out the live streams. The monologues are quite good, if I do say so myself. This is what I’ve been told. Anger is an important signal. You should know where it’s coming from. You should know what’s driving your anger, right? Because something formed you into the thing that would get angry in that circumstance. You should know what it is. Either it’s something you can’t change and therefore you need to avoid. Fair enough. That’s going to happen to you. You have limits. Some of those limits mean you need to avoid certain situations or certain things or certain people. I need to avoid having candy in my house. That’s important. Or even being around other people’s candy, because I will either all. I will. It’s just the law of the universe, as far as I can tell. Other people have no problem regulating their candy intake. I think they’re defective, but what formed you to be angry, to not be able to resist candy, to be the kind of person that’s patient under fire, you know, when things are really difficult? What formed you to act the way you act in certain situations? Knowing what makes you angry, again, you can either avoid it or resolve it. If you can’t resolve it, you can avoid it. There are options here. If you don’t know what formed you, if you don’t know what informed you, informed your anger, either triggered it in the moment or triggered it back in the past, it’s harder for you to take control of it. And it’s harder for you to take ownership of it and therefore responsibility for it. But you are responsible as an agent for your actions. So your formation is important. A lot of my more philosophically sounding ideas, because I find philosophy mostly reprehensible, especially modern philosophy, come from science fiction. They don’t come from reading the classics. I didn’t read the Western canon on purpose. I knew what I was doing. I haven’t read Canterbury Tales. I’ve read one Shakespeare play and I had to, otherwise I wouldn’t have. That was horrible. I am like Pentameter is a blight upon my soul. Just thinking about it hurts me. There’s formation there. So I’ve watched classic Star Trek. I’ve watched Blake Seven, the greatest sci-fi series of all time. I’ve watched The Prisoner, another great non sci-fi, I argue, series. Knows too much about the world. I’ve watched the first two. Knows too much about the UK. Very good stuff though. That informed me. It formed me as a person in terms of my virtues and my values and how I behave and interact with them. I read Tolkien as a child. Actually it was read to me for the most part. I read it again later in life. Those things formed me. I don’t always know exactly the right reference. I can tell you my stoic attitude towards life and my seeming ruthlessness, which I define as efficiency applied to people. That is the best way to define the word ruthless. That comes from Blake Seven for sure. There’s no question about it. I know where that comes from. If I had a proclivity to it before then, fair enough. But that’s where it comes from. I adopted it for a reason. That reason is because of the participatory experience I saw with what was happening. Not so much with what was said. Good philosophy is embodied. The ancient Greeks knew this. They were wrestlers. They understood this. They were also like Socrates was a hoplite. He was a warrior. Philosophers don’t talk. They act. Philosophy is in your action. The descriptions of your actions are cute and interesting and irrelevant. Largely. Not entirely. But almost entirely. What forms the great thinkers? Other actions. Because actions are the thing that form you. You know what doesn’t form you? Speech. Speech does not form you. I’m not saying it doesn’t have an impact. I’m not saying it can’t do anything for you. I’m not saying that reading a book doesn’t make things click in your head and that that isn’t important. But what actually forms you is your participation in the world. Your action. Your action. Your action. You’re an agent. You can take an action. Right? It’s discernment, judgment, action. Right? What are you discerning? You’re discerning boundaries. You’re discerning hopefully virtues and values when you’re looking up. If you’re not doing that, you’re going to see the cross. You’re going to see equality. Your formation of your actions is in your action. Your formation of your actions is informed by participation. If you punch somebody and they punch you back, it’s a signal. It informs you. Right? Probably informs your face to a bloody nose or something like that. And you say, huh, is it worth it punching somebody if they’re going to punch me back? I know if somebody’s going to punch you back. I mean, some people pretend they do and they get surprised. Sometimes people are right because sometimes you’re right. Sometimes by accident, though, you weren’t really right. Just sort of circumstances. It all depends. I mean, I’ve seen people hit other people and go, oh, you’re not going to hit me back. And I was like, well, no, he’s sick today. But I bet if you hit him tomorrow, he’s going to whack you when he feels better. So how does that happen? I’ve explained to people before like, oh, you can hit me and I might not hit you back today. Is that a chance you’re willing to take? I don’t get hit very often for that reason. It’s good to be a berserker. Yeah. Wild cards are good. Ups the risk ratio. I think I’ve seen people, sometimes through language again, that there might be consequences for their actions. They might not be immediate. They might be a lot more severe than they’re thinking of. The approach of informing people as to their options, for example, I don’t consider threats. I think threats are largely things that you have some question about in your mind as to whether or not you’ll do or engage in. I don’t threaten people. I do give them options and consequences. And I carry out those consequences and those options are pretty accurate. Are they 100 percent? Nothing’s 100 percent. Not interested in 100 percent. Interested in mostly correct though. The reason why I’m like that is because life has informed me that consequences are important. And if you’re not enforcing consequences on other people, they’re going to walk all over you for sure. And, you know, sometimes you let people walk all over you. I do that quite frequently, actually. Because sometimes it’s not worth the fight. Right. Sometimes, however, it doesn’t matter the outcome, you have to fight back. I’m informed of that by the experiences of my life, by participation in my life. Right. And just like the ancient Greek philosophers, just like you see played out in classic Star Trek, and Babylon 5, another excellent sci-fi series, Crusade, another excellent sci-fi series, Andromeda, Andromeda is great. A little too much philosophy last season is terrible. The rest of it is pretty well written. It’s not the discussions around the actions only. It’s what actions get taken in the moment. And there’s a lot of sci-fi, a lot of stories and books in particular. They’re not resolving the moral and ethical conundrums at the rate of discussion. They’re resolving them by circumnavigating them in discussion and then taking an action. And sometimes that action is the opposite of what was discussed. You probably didn’t notice that, but it informed you. And that’s the thing. We’re informed all the times by all kinds of things. And often we get misinformed. So we’ll say something completely bizarre and contradictory and paradoxical like Socrates is famous for saying, I know, I know nothing. And I recently bothered to look into this, knowing full well that was a bad plan, because I wasn’t going to be happy. Socrates didn’t say any such thing. It’s wrong. I knew that. I knew that. I knew Socrates wasn’t contradictory and paradoxical, because of course not. It doesn’t make any sense for a philosopher’s caliber to be paradoxical. If you see a paradox, it’s because your worldview is wrong and needs to change. It is the limits of something. You don’t have to change it. You can live with paradox. Sure, you’re going to live with paradoxes anyway, but you should know that’s a limit. Socrates was comparing himself to somebody else and saying, at least I know what I don’t know and this other person doesn’t. Basically what he said. I’m paraphrasing, obviously, but you can look that up. It’s out there. It took me about 20-25 minutes to find it all, but it’s there. You can do it. You can do it with the Googley thing. It’s not that hard. It’s the apologia, where he says it, by the way, as quoted by Plato. If that informs you, oh, the great Socrates stated this paradox, but that isn’t what happened. That’s a problem. I’ve seen a lot of shows where I’ve engaged with them, and the message that I got was the opposite of what other people got. I’m trying to go back to those movies, TV shows, books, whatever, and look again or listen to music again, listen to the lyrics. It’s interesting what people get formed by, which parts they pay attention to and which they leave out. One of my great formations growing up was National Public Radio. I was a big fan of PBS and National Public Radio. Growing up in Boston, which is sort of the home of such things, it’s kind of a big deal, and it’s kind of everywhere where it was when I was growing up. There was a particular show like Frontline, which was very good, although I couldn’t watch too much Frontline because it would just make me too angry. I would notice that with NPR pieces and with Frontline and with Nova, people would miss the most important parts, just blow right past them. No formation. A lot of what’s on navigating patterns is that. By the way, you probably didn’t notice this pattern, right? This is a pattern that you should pay attention to. The usage of language in particular, because this is about cultural cognitive grammar, the usage of language is super important. How are people actually using the words? Not what do you think they mean or what do they think they mean, but how are they using the words? What is their participation with the words they’re using? Not how they define those words or what they say those words mean, but how they’re using them determines the meaning. And that’s not a subtle difference, although I can see why it might be. And there are lots of examples of this. One example that everybody in the United States missed, as near as I can tell, and I do mean everybody, the housing crisis. Countrywide Bank, which was the big fall guy for all the bad banking things in the 2008 housing crisis, was part of the savings and loans scandal, and they changed their name, but it was the same group of people, and they moved counties to get around being approached or being scrutinized by the regulators. A lot of people don’t know that. It’s kind of important to realize. The Flint water crisis. The EPA regulates water in the United States, guys. They do. If a municipality creates a water system, the EPA is supposed to check that water system to make sure that the municipality is doing the right thing. If you engage with the Flint crisis on, say, a PBS special or something, which is out there, by the way, you will soon realize, because they will tell you flat out, not only did the EPA know, but the EPA higher-ups did nothing. And then when the whole thing was released, the higher-up of the EPA said, who cares about a few poor children in Flint in public on TV? And she got fired, by the way, which is one upside, I guess. Blaming the—and that was a Democratic regime at the time. It was Obama’s regime. A lot of people miss these things. They’re being formed by a story that doesn’t resemble what happened. They’re being informed by parts of what they’re hearing and not all of it. That’s why it’s important to pay attention to the usage, the participation of the words, how they’re actually using the words, not what they say they mean when they use them, not the definitions, not the definitions they agree upon, not the definitions that you and them agree upon, not the definitions in the dictionary, but how they’re actually using the language. That mode of participation tells you what formed them, and it gives you an idea of what their telos or their goal or their reasoning is, right? Their reason for doing something or saying something. It’s very easy to say you want to help the poor, but if every time you help the poor you make them poorer, you’re not helping them. And if no one’s pushing back and saying, I know you want to help the poor, but you’re making it worse, they’re going to keep doing it. Maybe innocently, I don’t know. I also don’t care because I’m a pragmatist. That’s what formed me repeatedly being in an environment where I was told things and the opposite of what those things were was happening around me. And that formed me into the type of person that cares a lot about reality, capital T truth, or maybe capital T true, because maybe there’s no capital T truth that might be idolatry or something. Still up in the air about that, but capital T truth sounds a lot like objective material reality, which I don’t think exists. I care a lot about engagement in beauty. So paying attention to goodness, paying attention to the true and the beautiful. And noticing who else does that. A lot of people just skate through life and they’re just formed as little robots to go through and go to work and make money and do whatever they do. Be selfish. Take care of certain people and not others, whatever they’re doing. And they seek their own narrative. They’re not seeking a narrative outside the one in their head, because they’ve been formed by the narrative in their head. And when that narrative doesn’t follow the true, suppose you believe all one group is evil and then you meet one from the group and they’re not evil. It’s like, whoa, your worldview is wrong. You’re not going where things take you anymore. You’ve been formed by something that you are a slave to, effectively. That’s why formation is important. What’s forming you? What things are you missing when you hear something that bothers you? Are you noticing that you’re bothered? Are you exploring why that is? And again, maybe you can’t find out why it is, but it’s worth knowing. Oh, whatever I hear about the whatever political party doing something wrong, I get upset. Okay, maybe you should. Do you get upset at the party or the other person that’s giving you this information? It matters. What is your goal? Is your goal to transform and get better? Should it be? Or should your goal be to stay in your bubble and be comfortable? What’s your formation? Are you formed to seek out the true, the good, and the beautiful? Are you formed to pay attention to virtues and values? Or are you just formed to play out this character in your head that’s maybe the hero, like the Batman or the Superman? That video deserves more views, really, guys. Really. What kind of narrative capture are you playing out? Because narrative capture is important. These are things to think about. What formed you? What informed you? What formation did you take? And from where? You know, maybe you read a book that you thought was pretty good, but it actually has a terrible message, and you didn’t even notice because you were 17 or something. And that happens. A lot of people accuse Ayn Rand of that. Like, all these 17-year-old males read now Alice Sharg and the Fountainhead, or hopefully both. And they come out selfish and mean. I’ve never seen that happen. I’m sure it does happen, but maybe not so much. I’d be way more worried about people reading Nietzsche, given the history of what’s been done with his philosophy. What formed you? That’s what I think you need to pay attention to. And figure out what formed other people. And maybe it was good, maybe it was bad. Maybe it was trauma that formed you, and you don’t even realize it. And maybe you want to believe, like, why was always exactly the way I am now? No, you weren’t. And you’re not going to be the same tomorrow. So you should pay attention and curate your signal, and figure out what’s forming you now. And what form do you want to be in the future? Do you want to be a better person? Or do you want to be formed by video games, pornography, drugs, endless bouts of meditation? It matters. It matters to the world. So that’s why I wanted to cover formation. What’s driving you? You know, there’s lots of strange formation out there. I mean, I’ve made a case before that a lot of the, we’ll say, negative British authors who were writing about the horrors of the Industrial Revolution in England had an outsized impact on the US. The outsized impact on the US, with the US was acting very much as though the things that they were writing about in England were happening in the US or had happened in the US when nothing like that happened in the US, for the most part. Not entirely, but we didn’t pollute our environment anywhere near to the degree that England did in our Industrial Revolution. Part of it is just because we have a much bigger country. It’s so much bigger. Part of it is we were a lot more aware because England’s Industrial Revolution came first and people saw the horrors and read about them. We’re still trying to make up for the horrors of orphanages, which were never as bad in the US as they were in England. That formed us as a nation. It informed us as a people. We’re still formed by it. We were formed by One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, which, you know, great book, interesting movie adaptation, completely overblown. Not that there’s no truth in it. Sure, there’s plenty of abuse all over the place, everywhere, all the time, in all institutions, by the way. But also worse to close all the mental hospitals. We know that now. We didn’t know that in the 70s. Fair enough. We know that now. We know that was a mistake. Now we have homeless people instead. Large group of homeless people are mentally ill, followed closely by drug addicts. These stories formed the closures of those hospitals. They formed our attitudes about industrial waste, about orphanages, about poverty, which in some cases never happened. At least not to us. Just not to say it’s bad that we were on the watch, on the lookout for it or whatever. But you have to be aware of what forms you and what’s going to form you in the future. And I like what Jonathan Pigeot says, the world is attention. And what you pay attention to forms you. You are informed by those things to which you attend. And you can’t attend to everything. You can’t attend to most things. You probably only attend to a tiny number of things. So just be careful which ones you attend to. And I’ve hoped that this little experiment, and it is an experiment, so leave me a comment. Let me know. Boy, this Scripless stuff is terrible. Or this Scripless stuff is great. Or whatever. Share something, if you could. Let me know what you got out of this information that I tried to indoctrinate you with to some extent. And thank you for your time and attention.