https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=npYKmwC1UHE
So when people are using the term problematic, what is it that they’re actually saying? Well, that’s the sort of pattern that we navigate here on Navigating Patterns. So let’s figure this out. If you listen closely to when people are using that word problematic, what they seem to be doing is turning an event or a fact into a problem, something to be solved. Now, I think you’re going to find this in most, if not all, cases of the use of this word. And the thing is, it’s almost always just a denial of your free will and choice to not make it into a problem. You can say something like, the war in Ukraine is problematic. Okay, the thing is, if you live in the US, it’s really not a problem for you at all. It just isn’t. It could become one. That is a fair statement, but it’s not right now. Trying to figure it out isn’t a problem, because you don’t need to. You could say, figuring out who should do what in the war in Ukraine is problematic. Okay, do you mean there’s a lot of nuance? It’s a difficult decision, but it’s not a problem that you have to engage in. Even if you say in Ukraine, right, the problem for you might be food or bombs going off over your head, or the death or impending death of a loved one. Those are problems, right? The war is not problematic for you. There are problems because you’re in a war. Those are very different statements. And the reason why I’m doing this video is to point out the way we’re destroying our language and ruining it and misusing words and coming up with terminology to create issues that don’t need to be there. You can think of a war that is far away that you are not involved in as a problem if you wish. You could think of it as a problem in the world, if you wish, but I don’t think that’s helpful. I don’t know how that could ever be helpful. And it’s usually a manipulation. So you could say the fact that we burn fossil fuels is problematic because it’s destroying the climate. That is technically true. It is destroying the climate. Is that a problem? That depends on whether or not you think it’s solvable. So you could say, well, yeah, you can just get rid of fossil fuel use, and then we won’t be destroying the climate. But that’s silly. We’d still be destroying the climate. So you’re not really solving the problem you claim to be solving. That’s a hint, by the way. You may be swapping that problem out for a different problem. You may be throwing that problem down to something else. But if it’s not solvable, is it a problem? And this is where I find the word problematic to be problematic. Ha ha. The use of that term is the creation of a problem where none need exist. You don’t need to make the fact that our existence has an impact on the climate into a problem, right? Because our impact could be positive, for example. Now, we could have long discussions about how we could have a positive impact on climate. That would depend on a bunch of definitions, ultimately. And maybe that’s a worthwhile conversation to have. I don’t tend to think so. I don’t know how much we should be worrying about that, given the actual problems we have to overcome in the world that have nothing to do with climate and our actual problems because they can be solved, whereas we have an impact on the climate. You can view it as positive or negative. You can skew it positive or negative, too. You could kind of push it one way or the other. But that doesn’t mean it’s a problem. And that doesn’t mean you’re a problem. And that doesn’t mean we’re a problem. That just means that we’re born into a world that we are intertwined and connected with. When you deny that connection, or you make that connection into a problem, you are basically contributing to the intimacy crisis. I will do a video on the intimacy crisis. At some point, I do have two, right? I do have one on this channel with Catherine. It was a lovely conversation. I love Catherine. And that’s got quite a few views, although it could use more. And then I have, I think it’s over a thousand views on my conversation on the intimacy crisis with Andrea with the bangs on her channel. And she’s lovely. What a wonderful host. She’s amazing. She should check that one out, even though it has more than enough views. It’s a wonderful conversation. This idea that we’re using the language to cause a crisis, to create a crisis that need not exist. That’s what I’m objecting to with the use of the word problematic. Now, I’m not saying you should never use the word problematic. But maybe, first off, maybe it’s worth considering. Do we ever need this term? Is this required for communication? Or is it an improper way to communicate? Because I can say gobbledygook. I just did. Did I communicate? I can say problematic. Did I communicate? It’s a worthwhile question. Every time someone says something, that doesn’t mean they’re communicating anything. They could just be saying something to fill empty space. There’s a video I’ll be doing, a video on space. That’s why I don’t think the use of this word is efficacious. It’s not a useful word to use in most circumstances. And you should beware of people that use it. Now, some of the people that use it will be parroting or mimicking other people that use it because it’s fashionable or they don’t know any better. And that’s fair enough. But there are very smart people out there who are definitely, I can assure you, using this word to manipulate you, you, and it’s working, by the way. That’s why I’m doing this video, because it’s working. And I don’t think it should work. I think those people are probably not good actors. Maybe they’re not bad actors. Maybe they’re not evil. But they’re not good. And that’s good enough for me to raise a red flag. And that’s what this is for. In order for a problem to be a problem, it has to have a solution. Things without solutions are not problems, because you cannot solve them. Very simple formula, I know. And it may be too simple, but I don’t think so. I think it’s important to have simple, easy to grasp concepts to communicate. And that form of communication is useful. Grief is not a problem. Everybody goes through grief of various forms in various times in their lives and in various ways. Grief is not universal in our experience. It may be universally experienced. Notice what I did there. That’s actually an important distinction in the language that matters a lot. So the way I experience grief and the way you experience grief, suppose we both lost our mothers, is different. But we both experience grief. There is a commonality there. But grief isn’t a problem, because you can’t solve it. You have to go through it. It’s more of a process. And we talk about it that way. So when you classify it and say, unfortunately, Dr. John Breveke classifies it this way as a perennial problem, it’s not a perennial problem. It’s a process that probably every human goes through, or almost every human. And that’s an important distinction, because we don’t want to problematize. We don’t want to make problematic everything. We don’t want to turn things into problems when they don’t have solutions, because it causes us anxiety. And it makes us stressed. And it overloads us cognitively and then makes us prone to error and to brainwashing. That’s right. Brainwashing. And I will get into cognitive overload. That is a video that is on the docket for sure. And the importance of not getting cognitively overloaded, because you will get brainwashed. I don’t care what your IQ is. I don’t care what facts you have available to you. I don’t care what kind of community you’re in. I don’t care. You get cognitively overloaded, you will be brainwashed easily by anyone. And I do mean anyone that walks along. They don’t need skills. That’s very important to know. And usage of things like problematic make everybody who hears those words more prone to brainwashing. And that’s why I’m pretty serious about being very careful with language, right? Be precise with your speech, as Dr. Peterson says. But also in explaining to people, no, really, you have limits. Your brain has limits, and they’re not the same even hour to hour, much less day to day. And if you get cognitively overloaded, you’re prone to brainwashing immediately. And it could be totally accidental on the part of the person brainwashing you. That sucks. But it’s important to know that that can happen to you, because it happens to you, for sure. I don’t care who you are. It’s happened to me many times. I remember watching a show years ago on the moon landing. And one of the thesis out there about the moon landing is it’s faked. This whole show is devoted to the faking of the moon landing. And one of the tactics that they use is that they use bad framing all over the place, right? And they just tell you a bunch of things that you can’t verify. It’s one right after the other, right after the other. And they cognitively overloaded me until they said something I knew a lot about was photography. I’m not a professional photographer, but it’s a hobby of mine. I’ve had cameras for years. I love cameras. I love taking pictures. And they made a comment about photography that involved aperture size and how much light gets in. And it’s all stuff I know just enough about to be dangerous. And I was like, wait a minute. And then I went back and reviewed some of the other statements they made and found out, well, they’re just making false statements. And so their entire thesis about the moon landing is that here’s a problem with the story that NASA tells about the moon landing. And here’s another problem of the story that NASA tells about the moon land, right? And so they’re creating problems all over the place. None of those things were problems, by the way. None of them. A few of them were unexplained. Some of them were unexplainable. Like, hey, we just don’t have the information yet. We don’t have the data yet to create the information to create the knowledge. We just don’t have it. That’s not a problem, right? It’s just a situation you find yourself in perpetually. Everything in the future is unknown by definition. And therefore, it’s not a problem, right? It’s just something you’re going to explore, something that’s going to happen. And so when you make so many problems and you stack them up, you cause anxiety, you overload the person mentally, and the next thing you know, you’re convincing them that shadows are always parallel. That’s what got me. They told me shadows weren’t parallel. Sorry. Shadows were always parallel. And they showed me they weren’t parallel on the moon. And I went, wow, they might be on to something, right? Because it only takes a single fact to sort of knock the whole thing out. Until they said the camera thing, and then I was like, whoa, wait a minute. And then I went and looked into our shadows always parallel. Of course, they’re not. There’s lots of situations where shadows aren’t parallel for lots of very good reasons. And then it’s like, oh, they lied to me. Yes, they lied to me. They lied to me by telling and told me there was a problem. It’s one thing to lie to you to say like true plus two equals five. That’s one type of lie. There’s another thing to lie to you when they say you can’t use math because two plus two equals five. Now you’ve created a problem where there wasn’t a problem. If somebody lies to you, it’s not really a problem. You go, okay, they’re a liar and move on with your life. But if somebody tells you all of math is broken, that’s a problem. The use of the word problematic is the generic statement of this. It’s taking a thing in the world. It might be a process. It might be a fact. It might be some information. It might be just the way the world is. And turning it into a problem. Telling you, no, no, this is a problem. And the problem with a problem is that you need to pay attention to it. It immediately creates and invokes anxiety and stress in the listener. So we need to watch out for this word. And again, look, not everybody using the word problematic is some evil genius trying to take over the world. But some of them are, by the way. Those exist. And they’re out there. And they’re using that word deliberately. Whether they’re, how aware of it they are, I’m not. I don’t care. I’m a pragmatist. I don’t care. I care about effects outside of, we’ll say, my own head and your own head. I care about effects that sort of affect more than one person at a time. Those are important. So, you know, if somebody’s using the word problematic and they’re destroying the world, I don’t care if they’re aware of it. I don’t care if they’re evil. I don’t care. I care that they’re doing it. And I care to combat the effects. So look out for that word. And be aware of what’s happening to you when you hear it. And try to combat it by avoiding those people. Right? There’s a lot of people who catastrophize. Right? And using the word problematic is a form of catastrophization where you’re just making everything into a catastrophe. The climate, economics, inflation, the collapse of the family, the fact that no one’s going to church anymore, whatever. I mean, anything can be turned into a catastrophe. Global warming, any, which doesn’t exist. Anything. Anything at all. And that’s part of the issue is that it’s very easy to overload you cognitively by turning things into a problem, even when they’re just facts of life. Like boys and girls exist and they’re different. Men and women exist and they’re different. Adults are not children and they’re different. And they’re different. Those can all be seen as problems. Right? Only if you, T. loss, if your end goal, your aim is to make everything equal, but they can be made into problems. Or it’s a problem that nobody acknowledges your feelings. It’s like, well, maybe, but it’s pretty constant. So if I think of that as a problem, I’m going to get overloaded pretty quickly. And I hope that I have helped you and caused you more anxiety and having to watch for the word problematic and other forms of this sort of anxiety, cognitive overload trick that everyone’s playing. And I don’t want you to panic about it. I just want you to be aware so you can protect yourself and hopefully help others, right? And protect them too. I hope you found this helpful. And I want to thank you for your time and attention.