once again the title of this video is brought To Us by our ancient Roman Emperor friend Marcus aelius who says we love ourselves the most but we value the opinions of others over our own and especially if you're familiar with this channel you should not be surprised at all anymore that these concerns and issues that we think are quote unquote modern have been with us for thousands of years have been with the Ancients and they there sort of Timeless problems that require Timeless Solutions what is the Timeless issue that lies behind this I would say
it's our need for consistency when we Act behave in a certain way and when we say certain things but then we change our minds because our minds have evolved we have found out something that was that is truer than what we thought was true before and necessarily we would have to say different things and act differently because we now believe differently but whenever we Act act and speak differently people call us inconsistent they call us Hypocrites they tell us that we've changed and they tell us that one day we say one thing and another day
another as if this is a bad thing and so in order to please them in order to appear consistent in order to appear non- hypocritical we stick to our old beliefs we stick to that which has long been updated and which no longer serves us because we think it's more important for others to approve of us and they only approve of us or disapprove of US based on our actions and not even based on our actions but based on their consistency a typical example that all of us are guilty of that all of us have
done are doing and perhaps will do again is sticking to friendships so-called friendships that were established a long time ago be it by convenience or just falsehood or some mutual benefit whatever it may be or for very good true and honest intentions that have been established in that way a long time ago but a lot has happened since then we have grown the other person has grown or we have grown and the other person hasn't grown or the other person has grown and we haven't grown whatever it may be things have changed and we see
that this friendship is no longer serving us and it's not serving the other person and with serving I mean in the best way not that there's some sort of profit to be had but serving in the in the highest sense of two intellects adding to each other's intellects becoming better becoming broader becoming more inclusive becoming more understanding with more insights into life into themselves into each other when that has stopped happening we continue the Friendship out of what we call loyalty because when others see us being friends with someone and then at some point not
being friends anymore they think oh what happened did this person do something to spoil that friendship because in our minds friendships only end because one somehow deceives the other or does some kind of Injustice and that's why the relationship goes sour and the friendship ends but most friendships the ones that end and the ones that should end but don't end are actually in that state because growth has happened more in one person than the other or growth has happened in both but in different directions there is many ways to truth as there are people and
it's not always the same way that is compatible in a friendship one might decide so whether that's the case or not and and one is totally free to do this and of course everything's about resources we all have 24 hours in a day we cannot have an infinite amount of anything and that includes friendships and if one friendship has come to the point where it's consuming all the same resources ources but really if we had met this person today with our current mind that friendship would have never been established probably in the first place it
was a friendship born of the of the insights and beliefs and opinions that we and this other person had at the time that the friendship was established and again that might have been a long time ago and a lot of things have changed a lot of things should change change is good change is necessary but we call it loyalty and we stay in it and when not that anyone does this but when someone else or we ourselves ask ourselves you know what is it about this friendship that I cherish that is again broadening deepening me
as a person what am I in it for what are all these resources how do I justify this very finite amount of time on Earth that I have and and spending it in this way what people will often say most of the time if not almost always is wow we we've been friends for such and such a long time who've been friends for 20 years this person is my longtime friend this person is very loyal if you've met someone today said hey if someone tolds you hey you you guys should be friends why because you're
both very loyal okay that would not be a reason and of course the other argument that you've been longtime friends doesn't even apply to a new friendship so there's really sometimes no reason but out of our sense for consistency we say this must continue for the only reason that it has continued so far and it's the same with our beliefs and opinions about the mostl important grandest things in in in our life in life period about the universe about what we know about it we don't want to say we don't believe in this anymore and
something that we've been such a supporter of and talked about so much and told everyone about it and and publicly attached ourselves to it it's become too small it's become confining it's become wrong it's become unbearable but most people would rather stay in that unbearable State for the rest of their lives than Say Hey I was wrong I have changed I can't stand behind this anymore I don't think like this anymore I'll try to explain it to you but call me a hypocrite if you like tell me that I've changed and tell me that you
don't recognize me anymore all you want but I need to do what I discovered I need to do what I know to be the truest thing to the best of my abilities we will never know the truth period we will never be able to be objectively certain about anything but we can know is that this new insight is truer than the former belief and that's all we can do and that's the best we can do and no one's asking for us to do anything than the best that we can do but it is important that
we do the best and not the most consistent thing so again consistency in that way is pretty much the worst thing we can do for ourselves but consistency in another way is the best thing we can do for ourselves as long as we switch consistency not to a consistency in word and deed but to a consistency in effort if we are always consistent in our effort we will have the best life that we can have it will stay truest to ourselves truly true consistency is not in word indeed true consistency should be an effort my
effort of trying to understand my effort of examining myself my effort of consistently renewing myself my effort in exploring my effort in learning that's where my consistency should be otherwise we end up where we've been before where we where we keep saying that the sun revolves around the earth and not the Earth around the Sun if we stay consistent to that belief we will become wrong and we will become ignorant and we will become false and we will become faulty but if we are consistent in our effort then we will say yes I I used
to believe that the sun revolves around the Earth but now I see that the sun does not revolve around the earth the Earth revolves around the Sun that's where a consistency should lie and this again is a perfect example how philosophy seems to be full of contradictions where we say consistency is both the worst thing as well as the best thing you can do for yourself it sounds like a contradiction it sounds like a paradox but it's not it's it only seems that way because Society has been telling us that not only consistency is good
which it is but that consistency is the highest form of consistency is a consistency in word and deed in seeming the same and staying the same rather than a consistency and effort and this is what philosophy brings us it brings us that Timeless truth that was obscured by tradition by culture Often by convention this is just how it's done so we're going to keep doing it and they call Truth by the same name but it really it's the opposite of Truth they call consistency consistency but it's defined in the worst way possible it's a confining
consistency rather than a broadening consistency which is what consistency really should be and I believe this is why as Marcus Aurelius aptly points out that we love ourselves the most but we value the opinions of others over our own this is why is this false consistency that we're chasing and again as Socrates says an unexamined life is a life not worth living this is exactly the kind of insight that philosophy gives us if we are open to examination and there is nothing thing better for examining ourselves and coming to these insights that are life changing
literally then to come to them by reading and then by writing because when we read we hear these voices we hear Marcus orelus we hear Socrates we hear all the people that we talk about on the channel so many times but often our attention is not quite there or we hear the good word but we're not we're exposed to society and our own outdated misguided beliefs much more than we are exposed to the words of these people when we read them for TW 10 minutes 20 minutes 30 minutes even two hours a day they cannot
keep up with the stream that we're in of tradition culture convention our own misguided outdated beliefs that's why when we take those ideas and we don't let go of them and we sit down and we write about them in our own words in our own way in our own journal in our own piece of paper that's when they become real that's when they become our thoughts our beliefs and that's why I started the book club like no other which itself is the newsletter um you can subscribe to the newsletter on the website which is accepting
thee universe.com every week you will get which is what my my journal entry on our current book of the book club like no other which is senica's letters on ethics which are almost made for this exercise every letter is very short senica has a way of bringing these Timeless and Universal ideas is in a very simple language very striking very unavoidable when he confronts you with something like this you just you can't escape it and you and you have to deal with it and you always always always come to a better place a bigger Insight
than you had before so what we do is we read a letter each week one letter and then we write about it and we write about it in a very impersonal way we don't bring our daily lives into it we don't bring our small little concerns into it we we try to retain that big perspective we try to make it Timeless and um again my journal entry is in the newsletter so this is the way we do it together you read my journal entry every week no one reads yours that's private and there's a video
there to explain everything as well once you sign up for the newsletter but that's all you get with the newsletter you get my journal entry on senica's letters of that week you get the newest video you get a quote of the we week you get my reading recommendations which I only pick one a month it's very special and they're they're all lifechanging books what I consider life-changing books and I encourage you to sign up for it and to start this exploration to start this examination of all your truths and beliefs and opinions and to examine
them to see if they still hold up if they do great if they don't also great because you rid yourself of a false belief and there's no other there's no better way than doing it than reading and writing and truly let's let's get out of this confining consistency and let's stop loving ourselves the most but valuing the opinions of others over our own
