+Nerdwriter1 Hey, be very careful when you do this. Asking people to upvote your video on reddit is against that site's rules, and could risk you and your content getting banned. Sorry to be a downer but I would hate to see you punished because you didn't know the rules!
+Jan Kapuściński Truth!? Really!?? If you mean facts even they are subject always to perception and I like Nerdwriter's view. Yeah I may disagree but the point surely is to interact not close down an argument? Truth can be left to gods or God, whilst discussion can develop humanity?
The idea of the teenager is a very recent one. The concept of a period of life between childhood and adulthood didn't really exist in the popular imagination until after world war 2. Then after the 60's, the concept of a rebellious, angst-ridden teenager searching for meaning became a more grounded archetype.
+ilovekitkats that's a very interesting statement. i think it has a lot to do with the novel catcher in the rye. j.d. salinger invented the teenager? kinda...
+ilovekitkats But the concept of a teenager is supported by scientific research. Teenagers are biologically much different from both children and adults
+leftyfourguns And how do we know such biological changes aren't a result of changes to the human being in recent history? For much of actual history, it wasn't uncommon for people to be married and considered adults and were thrust into the life of adulthood at the ages of 15 and 16.
I think you also have to take into account (regarding the heaviness of child death) is that up until recently (and now only really in 1st world nations), it was/is totally normal for children and infants to die, due to disease or injuries, therefore making adult's reactions to these deaths more detached than they are today. Now, at least in the industrialized world, it is considered unnatural and more surprising to see a child die, making it much more horrific than it once was.
+Mason Brown A conjecture that's been questioned lately. We have record of roman graffiti delighting over the birth of a child, despite the fact that mortality rates for children were very high and presumably that joy should have been muted at best. See also Abraham Lincoln's profound grief at the loss of his son, etc. I would check out the nursery chapter of 'At Home' by Bill Bryson for more references to parental grief in early history.
+twig collins While it is true that Romans were delighted, also keep in mind Roman culture at that time. People didn't want to have large families for a variety of reasons, including economic. It was to the point that some people who did have kids sometimes abandoned their children to death. As for Lincoln grieving his son, again, it really has to do with the times and the culture. The effect of Christianity on certain nations introduced the belief that children were always a gift. Also, during the mid-1800s, the child mortality rate was beginning to see its decline (at least in America and England) and by the end of the 1800s, it would be in rapid decline thanks to the increasingly richer economies and better medical facilities.
***** I'm not sure that parents cared less about their kids, I think child mortality was just higher and it was kind of a "shit happens" kind of deal rather than the modern type deal where kids receive vaccines, excellent care for broken bones, and antibiotics
An old video so idk if you'll read this, but the pitfalls of Eurocentrism strike again with your discussion of "ambition". By the 8th century CE, the Tang dynasty in China made widespread use of a standardized exam system as the method for hiring and promoting officials. Anyone of even modest means with access to a tutor had a shot, and would often be expected to cultivate ambition and rigorous study schedules to gain wealth and prestige for their family. Anyway I love your videos and would love to see you pull more from some Eastern histories or philosophies.
Yes, the wedding ring. I think most people would guess that it's, in fact, a product of history (since marriage is mostly viewed as a social construction), but within a small time frame, you're absolutely right.
I'm also fascinated by a generation that will grow up with no concept of life without smartphones. That stuff is gamechanger, and they just won't be able to comprehend life without it.
Hamilton Cline They certainly will be able to /comprehend/ life without smartphones. Whether they'll be able to /live/ without it is another question. It won't be for many, many generations that people can't comprehend life w/o technology, or conceive of technology as timeless. Digital technology is an inherently historical concept; we understand as a product of man in the 20th century. I don't think that will ever change, but maybe I'm underestimating our ability to forget.
Man, I don't know. You hang around with any 5-10 year olds? They "get" books, but they wonder why that low tech exists. My niblings grew up with my sister's iphone and an ipad. There are computers everywhere, and they have a large television that they watch mickey mouse on at any time of the day. I don't think they will be able to comprehend that a time existed without these things. It's like imagining there was a time before pencils? What? Really?
+Nerdwriter1 I just started watching your videos too, and I think you have plenty of room to grow on RU-vid with intelligent videos. Just look at Vsauce. Every one of his videos has at least a million views, with most being millions of views higher than that. The great part about RU-vid is that, since it is not cable TV, all of the content which would normally be cancelled due to the general population not understanding it has a place to thrive. There are so many people, myself included, who solely watch the intelligent content because this is one of the only places we can get it. So don't be discouraged. You're videos are awesome! And eventually I am certain that you can be up there with the amount of subscribers you deserve to have. Keep up the hard work!
I don't think timeless means that something has always been there, but rather that the concept is so easy to understand that no matter what time you came from you can understand it while being so powerful that it has a big potential of staying present until the distant future.
Nerdwriter1, I love your channel and content but that ending really rubbed me the wrong way. Inviting on a female friend, saying she wants to speak and then not letting her speak seems like a slap in the face to all the women who go through that experience all the time in their everyday lives.
The part about the social ladder isn't right. That climbing it was impossible is only true for Europe in the 14th-16th century. The social hierarchy with the nobility on top wasn't entirely established before the late Middle Ages. And even then you could become rich and influential through trade like some families in the Italian city-states (e.g. Venice) and the Hanse towns. Going further back in history, in ancient Rome a freed slave could become a respected citizen. Last but not least, you shouldn't forget there were societies outside of Europe that functioned in their own way.
Hell, you have peasants like Basil I going from being a peasant to creating a dynasty that rules Europes perhaps most powerful country for hundreds of years.
True, but in Europe I would still probably point to Pico della Mirandola's work in transforming the idea of the Great Chain of Being combined with the influence of the Black Death and the concept of the Danse Macabre that followed as the combined point when the medieval European sense of fixed class underwent a serious shift. Even if this was not the invention of ambition simply, it certainly did shake things up. I would probably point to Sidhartha Gautama (Buddha) in the 6th century BCE as the "inventor" of the first clear iteration of ambition in public consciousness. His path-based model of progressive enlightenment blew the caste system wide open and gave people a spiritual path of self improvement that was open to literally everyone if they just put in the right kind of diligent work. This allowed him to redefine the term Aryan/Nobleman from a caste/racial designation into a sign of spiritual progress. If you want something more directly political, I would point to the Confucian national exam system, which would allow any Chinese person to educate and subsequently elevate himself from poverty through any level in the governmental bureaucracy, as subsequently the highest levels of wealth and power. This started as early as the Han dynasty (200 BCE), even though it did not hit full steam till later.
Yes, exactly. One of the big problems in the Roman Empire was that every general had the ambition to be emperor, and most of those generals didn't start out as generals. Societies have varied in social mobility, and modern society by no means has the most mobility.
Love your videos. But you're wrong about ambition. It was a virtue in Roman times too... And probably in Greek... And probably in Egypt too. Social mobility wasn't invented in Europe in the Middle Ages.
Do you have any evidence that that's true? Greece, Egypt and even Rome had closed social hierarchies and they all had aristocracies, slavery, and limited citizenship and privileges to minorities.
+William Burke Rome has numerous examples of men rising out of their social classes. Cicero called himself a Novus Homo, a new man, as he was born into an equestrian family and on his own merits was able to rise to Consul and thus aristocracy. In the later empire there are several emperors that came from humble beginnings outside of the city or Italy that rose either through military conquest or political machinations to become emperor. A slave could be manumitted and released from bondage and while he or she couldn't become citizens (again depending on the period) their children could. The idea of a minority is problematic in the ancient world as they did not understand or define race the same way we do today and may not have been a barrier to social mobility.
William Burke See the box on page 126 of "The Roman Army: A Social and Institutional History" by Pat Southern for just a couple of examples. See also the social backgrounds of Diocletian and Justin I. You'll find plenty of other examples of 'great men' rising from humble origins in Greek and Egyptian society. You just have to google around a bit. The notion that ambition didn't exist in ancient Rome is the most laughable, however, as the upper echelons of society were practically founded on it.
While they had closed social hierarchies, and so your average peasant rising to consulship would be extremely weird and upsetting, they certainly acknowledged and encouraged ambition within the social classes. If you were a slave, you could work towards manumission and maybe end up a wealthy merchant, and no one would take that as some sort of insult towards the natural order of things. And republican Rome's political system more or less hinged on a Darwinist competition between the elite for the highest offices.
I just LOVE the way you express things. I find it kind of similar to how I express my thoughts as well, at least when I have an idea completely structured out instead of sort of creating the concept as I speak
2:54 Except not really. During the Roman Empire slaves could become freedmen, non-citizens could become citizens, and those skilled in battle could rise through the ranks in the Roman Legions. Freed slaves only had partial rights but their children were full Roman citizens capable of reaching high places: some became city councilors, for example.
Evan. These are some amazing viewpoints that you are sharing and I can't be more happy to have stumbled upon this channel earlier today. I love it. Keep sharing and I hope to soon be in a position to help out crowdfounding.
Hey Nerdwriter, first i love your stuff and all, but i think in this video you could have made something better. The Archetype of a happy childhood is clearly articulated by Jean Jaques Rousseau in his novel Emile. The Purity of a child has been around since then, but on the other hand, Rousseau was kind of revolutionary with that thought and of course most children still had to work.
But we also see traditional cultures where the idea of carefree childhood is well cemented. Is it not possible that there are beliefs central to humanity that are at times disrupted by external factors like, for instance, the industrial revolution? After all, if people truly didn't see the idea of children as laborers to be a violation of a child's right to be a child, why did they organize against the practice and ultimately move congress to pass child labor laws? I would argue that we have always been guided by a basic set of moral principles, just that these principles are in conflict with the circumstances of the world around us and how they cause us to rationalize the violation of those principles.
americanslime exactly what i was thinking, and also the part where he mentions "many if not all of these things are historical excidents" is completely wrong. If they were mere excidents the path that humanity took would be more random. Things like Women right, African Americans right, lgbt rights are not historical excidents they are a shift in our veiwpoint of the world, our veiw the people around us and are moving n a defined direction.
Actually before children worked in industrial settings they worked at home on the farm, family business, etc. Children working was quite normal through out history. Child labor laws/denormalization of child labor only came about when there was already declining numbers of kids workin in those settings and families with income high enough to support themselves with out it.
I'm quite impressed by your channel and the breadth and width of the subjects you approach. I first found your channel through your concise Snowpiercer analysis, but you have a excellent production and thoughtful insight. Keep it up!
The system of Pros and Cons wasn't Ben Franklin invention. There is similar description in D.Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (1719) and he is mensioning it as well-known and common practise.
At 2:56 the frontmost archer has a dagger with a guard shaped like balls. Which makes as much sense as the author's feeble attempt to squeeze the notion of "social ladder" into the meaning of 'ambition'. The two ideas have never been directly tied. "Social mobility" is indeed a relatively recent concept. But 'ambition' basically means a desire for more achievement, more resources, more useful connections, and more favours. More of anything of value, generally speaking. Not only in modern languages, but as far as its etymology can be tracked. And as such, the concept is truly timeless.
I think the quote about the new born child's death is more a reflection of high child mortality rates.If you actually go to places where one in five or more infants die, you do see that people just sort of say that 'God willed it' or 'It was meant to be', but it's still hugely emotional for the parents. Especially, actually if the child gets older, because they come to expect it less.
i love, love, love all your videos. honestly, can't express how refreshing it is to be stimulated intellectually. however- may i give 1 constructive criticism comment? i believe reducing the amount of hand movement in the shots of you would give us more of a chance to see your facial expressions and really hear the influence of your voice. thank you thank you! please continue posting!
Brand spanking new subscriber here. Just thought I'd add my voice to masses and say great job. Creating content this well made (and thought!) is definitely going to pay off. Look forward to seeing your videos in my news feed. :)
nerdwriter, you are an incredibly talented individual, who strives to view the life experience without the subjective limitations placed upon us by society. You are a role model.
As has been remarked already, up until the twentieth century child mortality rates were relatively high, even in the "industrialized" world. Most adults however must have still felt that there was something special about children, otherwise the motivation to protect them from over-exploitation would have been hard to bring about. Books by Charles Dickens such as "The Adventures of Oliver Twist" or Mark Twain's "Adventures of Tom Sawyer" would seem to prove the idealization of childhood. Such idealization just took a while to manifest into economic or political policy... probably because of the lack of guarantee that any child would make it past a tenth birthday.
You take subject matter that I already love and turn it on it's head. Thank you. I particularly liked your videos on Pan's Labyrinth, Children of Men and Nighthawks. Keep doing what you're doing because you are gonna go places.
While the thesis of your argument (that not everything we think is timeless is timeless) is indeed true, and while some of your examples have value, some of them are very off. You are mixing up the idea of concepts and the words we use for those concepts. Just because a certain word for a concept is something that is historically new doesn't mean the idea behind a concept didn't exist before and didn't exist behind different words/phrases/expressions. While it is true that words like ambition were used in the negative sense (along with words like passion), stories of people desiring glory, honor, and increase are present among even common folk in history depending where you look (it really depended on the culture and time period). Also, child labor dropped to 10% before the introduction of child labor laws due to the rapidly improving economies of first world nations. A little known fact is that the unions wanted the child labor laws passed in order to get the 10% out and get their union workers into those jobs. Also, while it is true that social mobility's first appearance is difficult to ascertain, it did exist before the Middle Ages. And while I know the image was a joke, Jesus is probably not a good example and it would have been better to use something like Zeus as many Greek philosophers believed slavery to be something in-born due to the gods. Even the Old Testament in the Book of Proverbs encourages studious work, the ability to make increasingly better farms, and attributes increase and plenty "both in the city and the country" to God, with the only reminder to remember to leave food for the poor (ie. it was encouraged that people leave the outer hedges of their crops unharvested so that the poor passing by would have something to take). Even the New Testament isn't critical toward gain and increase, but is only critical of that gain being at the expense of one's spiritual life, moral life, and one's giving to the poor.
ZerogunRivale Good comment, and covered some of the more misleading examples used in the video. You saved me having to write a much longer comment on how social mobility in the Middle Ages was, depending on which nation you are talking about, very much a possibility. Even the ancient Romans had a certain amount of social mobility available to slaves who distinguished themselves. Possibly less common than now, but on the other hand, how much social mobility do we *actually* have now, and how much have we just fallen for the idea that we all might be able to make it big someday?
yes, no one mentions how zero did exist before it was first written down. it existed but not in a mathematical operation sense. if you have no food to eat, you have zero food available.
I second the people in the comments who think you should have a podcast because I usually only hear you while my eyes and hands do other stuff like laundry, cooking, etc. It's like listening to a short audiobook that explores things that I myself might while my mind wanders..but in a more passive (thereby less mentally intensive) way. Of course you are gifted with a very soothing voice and you use it well with the background scores you choose and the way you pace yourself. You should really give podcasts a thought. And hopefully have it be a cross between what you do and what crash course does, like a velvety cherry pie of your voice held together by the dough of a good topic for exploration. Let it have fewer facts than crash course fits in and more interpretation of the facts or musings.
You are also bound to culture just as much as time. A "pros and cons" list is a very American thing. As far as I am aware, we in Europe and in South America don't use this at all. In fact, this may be biased, but I don't really see what makes it a better method of decision. Again, social mobility being so fixed before the Tudors is extremely Anglo-centric. Also another issue is the point about children. When mentioning how the death of children was a tax to pay, the point was to show that infant and child mortality rates were high. Had there been a school-shooting, people would be just as much taken aback by the nature of the violence and its intent. In fact, the romanticising of children can be traced back to Rousseau more than anyone, added to the fact that infant and child mortality rates dropped in the early 20th-century and you have the formula for the way we treat children today.
The Mayan had created a zero. I know you talk about ethics and pop culture mostly, but you could actually do the Mayan number system which I think would be dope and the only one watching it
Love the channel so much, but I think the one on ambition is a bit off- for example in Roman times you could move above your station to gain money, power and influence. A good example I've enjoyed studying is the story of Sejanus, rising far above his 'eques' rank during the reign of Tiberius as emperor. Seriously though I love your channel so much. That Lord of the Rings music video made me joyous. Keep going man!
The creation of a social ladder and the qualities bestowed upon children have no doubt brought positives into our present. But I can also see plenty of negatives. Puts into perspective the word "progress" as a simple moniker attached to what in reality is merely change, in order to make it seem as something positive. Something that may be simply connected to our way of moving through life. Literally moving, as in walking. No one walks backward, so progress is good, and the opposite must therefore be bad. Thing is, change is change, and things may change for the worse, as they certainly have throughout history. We need to rein in this obsession with progress for progress' sake because progress is good, and recognize that it merely is change, and as such it may go either way.
Does "timeless" really mean that it has always existed? Or does it just mean that it is something that is so basic it won't ever be replaced by some new version/technology? Theater is timeless, even if certain types of things we do in theater may be limited in their use to certain eras?
I'm talking about concepts that feel timeless to us but are actually relatively recent phenomena. What I'm interested in is the normalization of aspects of reality, how things get folded in to our conception of how things/people work.
Nicholas Bollaert ,ikr , timeless is as you explained in the second option , it's something that never becomes out dated .never out of style .He misused the word .
Prior to the invention of modern medicine the death of children was fearly normal. That's why in the mid to late 1800's you would get familys with sometimes as many as 8 children all with the same name. Because contemporary wisdom said most of them would die and it was more important to the family that the name survive.
I bet that giving the same name was so that Georges, the drunk father, will remember who are those children. Seriously, ambition is as old as brains. You can see the submissive wolf who will happily take the place of dominant as soon as alpha male get wounded... in the last hunt... or in direct fight. Does anybody seriously believe that a mother didn't like her child as much as today because that culture was not invented yet? Can you find a single human community where a mother don't love her own child? I hope that the author get a chance to travel outside of his village to get a chance to discover what every human share from our biological heritage. Please, try to see more than Disneyland when you go see foreigners.
Christian Gingras *Does anybody seriously believe that a mother didn't like her child as much as today because that culture was not invented yet?* It isn't really about a culture that was invented. It's more like a situation that happens when certain factors come into play. In places and times where child mortality was high it was too emotionally draining to get invested in very young children. When child mortality is low people won't hesitate to become invested in all of there children as they expect them to grow up.
Hi! So you both make some really good points but I think ultimately you're both right. Christian Gingras made the point of the wolf but that point was ultimately null and void because a pack of wolves does not have a "divinely ordained" system as would be the situation of certain human civilizations of the middle ages. This system was maintained not only by the upper class but by the threat of damnation (something you mentioned later on!). People could not intermarry with someone above or below their station (at least not with the blessing of those around them), a person of lower station could not bring themselves up economically by getting an education or working their way up a trade - they may perhaps be better off but the barrier remained. Wolves... do not have this system. They have something of a familial system with the parents of most of the cubs within the pack playing "Alpha" roles if you will, but in reality the dynamics between an alpha and the average member of their pack tend to be something akin to elder/parent/guardian to child/junior member of family/junior of extended family. When a member of the alpha pair, who have the most freedom and privileges, dies, then the remaining alpha will mate with another member of the pack thus creating a new alpha. Of course, this would be a coveted position as the alpha pair have the most freedom and thus are allowed the most offspring (they have a tendency as social carnivores to "suppress reproduction among others in the pack"). But it is far more likely that cubs within the pack grow up and then separate themselves from the pack to create their own and thus become alpha's in their own right. This does not mean that there aren't displays of social dominance but they don't tend to play out with "the submissive wolf" taking the place as the alpha male. Simply put, it doesn't work that way and you're wrong. This said I don't think you're wrong about motherhood and the relationship that mother's have with children. I do think that motherhood, with exceptions of course, does tend to be a loving force everywhere and everywhen (haha) in the world (again keeping in mind the exceptions). This said this love would be especially pronounced in upper-middle to upper classes where children were sources of not only financial income (by marrying their children off to other rich kids) but also displays of their wealth ("look at the classes I could afford my child! look at how accomplished he has become!"). That is not to say that these characters didn't love their children simply because they were... well, their offspring after all, but simply that they could, literally, afford to love their children more (if you equate love with doing the best you can for children). In contrast, parents below a certain income (i.e a huge portion of the population in the middle ages) did not have the luxury of being able to invest as much in their children (they simply did not have the money) - this did not mean they did not love them. It means that loving their children meant working a ridiculous amount of hours and ensuring that they had something to eat and a roof over their heads as opposed to the gifts (of opulence, if you will, haha) we prefer today. WHAT IM TRYING TO SAY IN MY RAMBLING WAY, is that parents did not have the time to sit around to, if you will allow me the use of your incredible grandmother as an example, mourn for three dead children for long periods of time or gnash their teeth or beat their chest and wail when they had 17 other very alive children to feed and clothe and care for. The mind and human spirit is incredibly resilient especially when you consider having a reason or purpose or 17 of them, and your grandmother seems to have an overabundance of love and spirit just from the way you talk of her. This said Disthron is right to mention the emotional toll of children in areas of high child mortality. There are several rites and rituals that are only performed when the child reached an age where it was believed that the danger had passed. I don't have too many examples of this. Many naming ceremonies tend to happen early on so that children have a name or acknowledged by god so that they may reach heaven. There are also of course coming of age ceremonies which I suppose are tangentially related. At 15 many roman boys had a coming of age ceremony as half the roman children would've died before they reached that age. People would have to be a little stronger and more familiar with child death than we are today, because they are faced with it so often. The next point is made by C.G again. this time around you mention the dog scenario. The problem with this scenario is that the people with the single dog who love it so much they would do anything for it, clearly have enough money to dish out the care for this dog. In this scenario they'd be relatively well off because the dog is not providing them with any means of income or real tangible value - he is simply loved. However the dog breeders or sellers or what have you make a living of their dogs, the more they have the better. At the end of the day that means more dough coming in right? If we replace the metaphor of the dogs with children... it doesn't make sense? why did you introduce this scenario? This simply demonstrates that due to the loss of future revenue by the death of their child (especially if they're child was already working) they'd have to work all the harder to care for the rest of their children. I really don't understand why you introduced this scenario into the debaate. All in all, good debate
As to children and how "callous" people seemed back then to their deaths--infant mortality rates were extremely high. Before the advent of modern medicine in the early 20th century children died very young and very often. To compensate, people would have lots of children, but a few would almost always perish before the age of 5. Parents, therefore, didn't become too emotionally attached until children reached an age where it was much harder for them to die of childhood diseases.
I'm glad you included Leibniz when you referred to calculus because he is often over shadowed by Newton even though he developed the first calculus methods independent of Newton.
Great video, glad to see you're back. I took your advice on your other video and suscribed to Every Frame A Painting, which I LOVED, are there any other channels like that you can suggest? Can't wait for the next video!
social movility was a thing in the past not a recent invention (just look at the life of justinian the easter roman emperor) it was just rare and was lost in the european middle ages.
If you want a full treatment of the ideas being discussed here read Phenomenology of Perception by Merleau-Ponty, one of the great philosophical treatise of all time. Hey Neardwriter1 are you familiar with that work?
People often talk about how certain cars are "timeless" in their design. As someone who loves cars, motorcycles, planes and boats (among other things that can be driven or ridden) I completely disagree. How anyone can think that such a controlled area of design as the automobile can be timeless is beyond comprehension to me. This is probably because I use a different definition of "timeless" than most people. When I say timeless I mean "with no traits/characteristics that makes [the supposed timeless thing] easily placeable into a past time, period or era." Cars are in that regard, to me, the EASIEST thing to place. When it comes to drawn art it is a very different matter.
"I'm not making a value judgement on these shifts in our culture. For me, it's extremely humbling to know that my conception of human nature is merely a reflection of a moment in history. Many, if not all, of these things are historical accidents. Not some great fulfilment of the way humanity was always going to advance."
Weeeeell, you can make an argument that "childhood," "ambition," etc. are naturally occurring and a direct result of humanity, just that the circumstances exist in such a way that we add extra qualities towards how we expect to find these concepts practiced.
I think for childhood it depends on the interpretation of the word. If you mean the period of time in life of early psychological development, then it has existed from the beginning of human existence. However, if you’re referring to the concept of children being “innocent” and “pure”, it’s not so timeless.
Ambition in the way that it is seen as "ambition to improve yourself and achieve stuff" and the economic and "human capital" connotations it has today was not around in history: you just worked to survive, and if you were in power you just thought about what to do with it because that was your duty
Just one question, about the concept of childhood : in his 'Hyperion', Friedrich Hölderlin talks a lot about how "divine" children are, and -correct me if I am mistaken- but if I remember correctly, other writers circling around classical romanticism and the Age of enlightenment do so too. Now I know that children were at that time working with their parents from a very young age, but can't we still push the concept of childhood as the age of purity a bit further than the 20th century? Anyway, great video as usual!
I would never forget them. Masters of Doom and Destruction, Princes of Peace and Beauty. But Page was great on his own, with that violin bow. Let's not make crazy assertions here.
The only band that will always feel timeless to me is Rush. Unlike most bands from the 70's and 80's, their music doesn't feel like it came from that era, it just exists.
wouldn't it be hilarious (for us, you silly boy, not for you!) if after all the work you put into making this video, every single one of the comments you got said, along with Jacob Bradley, "So what lens did you end up getting?" Heee.
you cant divide by zero. You can approach a division by zero, but if you approach from the positive reals or the negative reals the limit either approaches a positive infinity or a negative infinity...
I heard that the term "teenager" didn't exist until the 1960's. You were either a child or an adult, so you had no excuse for your behaviour being "puberty", because then you were just a child. That's why many cultures have a rite of passage where a child becomes an adult, WITHOUT the teenager phase. Sounds much more orderly.
You ever see an ad before a video and want to make a comment about it but then realize you can't because you can't comment on something not everyone saw
Funny thing, ambition (in Spanish "ambición") it's still use as a negative word in the Spanish language. The meaning is still the same, but usually it's used more as a term close to greed than anything else. It was a surprise to me when I first saw a poster with the legend "ambition" as a positive term.
Huh. I had long associated pro/con weighted calculation with the Utilitarian Calculation method popularized by John Stuart Mill in the early 1860s. Apparently Franklin beat him to it.
Franklin, 1772? Robinson Crusoe was using pros and cons list in 1709 Daniel Defoe's book. So yeah, good ol' Ben definitely wasn't the first one to write it down.
Hi! Great topic and video :) I just have one thing to say (constructive criticism coming right up): your transition from number to sex (around the 2nd minute) is very quick, in what appears to be a string of sentences that flows slightly too fast. Maybe a pause (in your speech) after mentioning Leibniz and Newton? Or perhaps 2 sentences that would introduce what follows (homosexuality and heterosexuality). You only used one sentence so that makes the transition a little to quick and my neck kind of snapped ^_^ not to worry though, I’ll be just fine ;D Keep up the good work, I love your videos and always look forward to the next one :)
I really like your videos, that's why I watched them all. This is the first one I had the feeling to provide criticism for. Some of the concepts you explain as not being timeless should also be examined as non-universal. Some Americans have a tendency to assume whatever is ruling their society must be universal - such as the pro/con list. Also, I wish Maya said all those things about you herself. She must have her own voice!
I know this video is quite old but everything you were saying reminds me of the work of Michel Foucault. For example in his book 'The Order of Things' he argues that the concept of mankind and human nature that we have today only really date back to the 19th century and the work of philosopher Immanuel Kant. People view the concept of what it is to be intrinsic and unchanging, but in reality it is a fairly recent idea (in his opinion).
Hey man, i really like your channel. Just one note, i don't find it appealing to imitate the style of the other youtube channels (I like the ones where you just set beside your desk and talk to us). I highly admire your videos on cinema and i would appreciate it if you could make one on Terrence Malick. Thank you.
Great Video Essay, but I have one problem with it. During the ancient (or really, pre Fall of Rome) world, classes were far less strict. Similarly, the strive to accomplish something is innate to humanity.
I don't know whether you are really involved in philosophy, but as far as I know, the conception itself of looking into the past for acknowledging the composition of our own present it is owe to Hegel. And all the critical theories developed forward on time are also owed to him, as we commonly think that we can only criticize the present as a reflect of the events happened in the past. So you are simply applying a quite old concept of historical analysis (a fascinating one indeed), and "re-discovering" that "timeless things are no such a thing". But I am afraid, this is something that may become intuitive to you, just because such a notion exists since the late XVIII century (again, applying a hegelian analysis), and has been applied by many like Marx, Foucault or Horkheimer. This a beautiful area to explore the limits of morality and our preconceptions of the world. Nice video though :)
Now the meaning of 'childhood' is changing. It's and idealized version of your life as a child than can be destroyed by Hollywood. So many people I know have had their "childhoods" destroyed. Such a shame.
i realy enjoy your videos, but i cant stop myself from pointing out an important historical error: it was Al-Khawarizmi الخوارزمي (formerly Latinized as Algoritmi, from wich comes the word algorithm) that first discovered the number "ZERO". he was a Persian scholar who produced works in mathematics, astronomy, and geography and Around 820 AD he even was appointed as the astronomer and head of the library of "the House of Wisdom" in Baghdad.
Actually, the ancients had a concept of childhood pretty similar to ours, as well as the concept of upward social mobility. But those were lost (along with so many other things) with the fall of Rome, and revived again with the classically-based humanism of the Renaissance. And as for Victorians looking on with aloofness upon the deaths of their children, I submit this into evidence... www.sheredelight.com/Holl_Death-of-Her-First-Born.jpg Nor did they approve of child labor - that would have been the medievals. Usually Nerdwriter is pretty spot-on but this time, well, the research could have been a little better conducted.
It's pulp culture BS that Benjamin Franklin discovered the pro/con list. He might be a famous user of the technique but people have been discussing pro/cons of an action/work etc since millenia, even before Plato's dialogues. Even the name harks back to the latin "pro et contra".
Must!... resist!...temptation... to be.. a prude!! Nobody divides by zero. They just take limits as things approach zero. Gah, that felt awesome! Sorry, but I couldn't resist!
