https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=ia3wHLaG0yw
Hello and welcome to Navigating Patterns. What I’d like to discuss today is a concept that a friend of mine brought to my attention on the Waiting for a Meaning Crisis Discord server, Corey, who’s a really interesting character and he’s a pretty good guy despite being Canadian. Hey, what Corey was asking me about was systems, right? So he’s hearing a bunch of people talking about systems and he’s sort of curious, what do people mean? What’s going on here? I don’t understand their use of this term. Can you help me out? Can you do a video on it? So of course I agreed, I get most of my video ideas from tracking people in the Discord server, tracking people in person, looking around, seeing how people are using phrases and terms and so that’s what I’d like to discuss today. And now, as always, these are my definitions. If you like them, there you go. If you don’t like them, don’t use them. If they’re not intelligible to you, then throw them out or better yet, modify them for your own use. So when people use system, right, they say, oh, the system’s got me, what are they talking about here? What is the essence of what they’re trying to get at? Well, I think that really what they’re trying to do is assign agency, right? And agency requires intelligibility and so I’ve got a video on intelligibility. So that’s something you could check out and you’re probably trying to get for control. And so my intelligibility control video might help to sort of explain this a bit, but intelligibility is that sense that you know what’s going on well enough to predict it or well enough to explain something in the world so that you don’t have to worry about it quite so much, compress it down to, you know, oh, that’s just the system that creates money, okay? That’s the system that makes toast. Toaster is the system that makes toast, right? So this is the sort of thing that we’re using the word system for when we use it. And a lot of people will invent systems, they’ll just make them up and that helps them to get a sense for that cognitive outsourcing and so they don’t have to really deal with it and that allows them to feel comfortable and safe. So one example of this is like capitalism. It’s the system of money that holds us down and capitalism’s not a system. That’s a bad definition of capitalism. There is a better way to understand capitalism, but it’s not really a system. It’s not an economic system. It’s not any of those things. Another one’s government, right? Government, what’s the government, what’s the government all about? I don’t know. The government’s a lot of systems and some of them are in competition so I would argue that it’s not one system. A lot of people talk about corporate system. You know, oh, the corporate system’s holding me down, man. The work system, it’s holding me down. If I didn’t have to do the work system, I could just get money magically, right? And yeah, I mean, platforms. I logged into the YouTube system, man. The YouTube system’s got us all wrapped up. You know, the Facebook, yeah, right, and this is how the people are using them. So like why do they do that and what’s a better way to think about them? Well, like again, I think they’re doing it really so they don’t have to understand something complicated or complex, right? And there’s a video on complicated and complex coming too. That way they can do this simplification and feel like they understand a world that maybe they don’t understand quite as well as they need to. And you know, is there a better way to think about systems? And I would say generally, we’re just overusing the word and the better way to think about them is to understand when we’re using the word correctly. Some things are systems. There are plenty of systems in the world. But systems are usually there to help us because they’re built by us. And the way people are using them is, oh, there’s nothing I can do about it. Like I’m too small, the system’s too big, and so I have no choice. It’s really about agency, ultimately. So when you would do something now to a system, you can assign an agency and then you can do something with that agency. You can say, you know what? That agency is just a pernicious thing, like a beast that’s stalking me or trying to make me do something or manipulating me or preventing me, right? Preventing me from doing something. Most systems, that’s how people couch them. But really, you know, we are giving up our sense of control, right? We’re pretending that we don’t have control over it. But like I said, systems are things we create and we actually do have quite a bit of control over them and they’re usually there to help us. Not in all cases, and sometimes they’re there deliberately to slow us down, but you know what? Sometimes we need to be slowed down. And so some systems are slow for a reason. As far as using systems as excuses, though, it’s usually an excuse not to do something. Oh, I can’t do that. The system won’t let me. Won’t let me get what I want. There’s no way I could, I mean, it’s just too big, right? You know, or maybe it’s an excuse for doing something you did or being who you are or, well, yeah, you know, man, I was a worker, but the corporate system made it impossible for me to like make a real living and it was just cheaper to stop working and easier, right? I mean, people, actually I’ve heard people do that. People definitely do that. That happens. But another way people use system is to explain other people’s behavior. It’s like, oh, you know what? It’s not his fault, it’s the system. The system did this to him and now he’s a jerk. He wasn’t a jerk before, but the system, once you get into that system, it makes you that way. Or maybe whole groups of people, you know, all those people would be fine if they weren’t part of that political system. Is politics a system? I don’t know. Politics, system, hmm. There is a political system, but there’s probably not one. So you can use the political system as a reason that some politician started acting in a way that you thought was counter to the way they should be acting. People use that all the time. And the deep thing that’s sort of hiding here is that there’s a bunch of people out there, I think, that really need to be held back for their own personal righteousness, for their own, they have a need to feel powerless in order to justify their resentment, their anger, and or their rage, right? And you know, these are psychological issues fundamentally, but this happens. People act this way. They’re very filled with rage, some of them, or resentment or anger or whatever, and they need some justification for it because maybe they know they failed. Maybe they know it’s their fault. Maybe they know they could have done something and they don’t wanna blame themselves, so they start lashing out and blaming other people or systems. And you may say, like, G-Mark, you’re painting a bleak picture here, buddy. Like, throw me a line. Fair enough. So what do we do? What do we do? Like, how do we deal with this? Because we’re gonna run into these people, I mean, Cory, running into them all over the place. I’m telling Cory to move. Like, Canada sucks, man. But that’s not a very practical solution. So we can only meet this with love, really, with forgiveness, with a desire to point people towards the good, right, or towards a positive thing, a positive affect, right, and away from their own self-imposed misery. That’s ultimately all we can do. And then you may say, well, okay, how do you do that? And yeah, how do you do that? But I think we can only point people by exemplification, right, we have to be the thing that we want to point people to, because we’re in front of them and they’re there with us. And by showing them how we do it and telling them what we do, we can point in that way. I had a boss, yeah, years ago, at work, and he was one of these smiley, happy people who was always just bounced around happy. And I asked him, I’m like, what, you know, what’s the deal? Like, first of all, the place sucked to work at. It was a tough job. And he met everything with a smile and happiness. And I’m still not like that, working on it. And he said, look, I think the key is joy. And I was like, what? I barely ever heard the word joy. And he said, yeah, I wake up with joy and I try to keep joy in mind all day. And so like he was exemplifying a joyful person every day, all day, all the time. And it was a beautiful thing. He was lovely to work for. And that’s the key, right? We do it, we tell people about it as we’re doing it. And maybe they get pointed in the direction that they need to, to get out of their anger, resentment, loneliness, fear, whatever it is, right? Maybe they just have this rage and they need to be pointed away from the rage and towards the joy, towards the potential, towards the light of potential. Be good to those who are angry and resentful and full of rage and fear and anger. They don’t deserve it, right? But we deserve their rage even less. And maybe they’ll unleash it into the world even if we’re good to them, but maybe not. And maybe even if they do, we’ve done our best to make the world better by exemplifying and pointing out what we’re doing. And maybe that’s all we can do. Maybe that’s the best we can do. And maybe it won’t work out most of the time, but maybe it’ll work out enough of the time. And maybe it doesn’t matter because maybe all we can ever do is make the world better. And so I wanna encourage you to, when you find these people, you don’t have to argue with them, but you can show them alternatives and help them to discover in themselves what’s missing, what’s hurt, what’s angry, what’s resentful, where their rage is so that they can relate to it differently and transform it from something bad into something good. And yeah, most of the time, probably this isn’t gonna work, but we have to do what we have to do for our fellow beings because we’re all stuck here together anyway. And hopefully, again, what I’m trying to do with these videos is help you to not only understand this just for yourself, very important, but also recognize when people are stuck with these definitions or incomplete definitions or unhelpful definitions and help to show them a better way to relate to the world, right? Using your own language and your own skills and abilities and your own relationships, because I can’t relate to everybody. I can probably relate to a small number of people. So we’re all in this together. And to that end, I hope you’ll take this seriously, play with these ideas, really come to grips with them and grapple with them, make them your own, and meet these people with the love maybe that they don’t deserve. And as always, I’d like to thank you for your time and attention.