Its All What You Make of It

hello my name is muhammad ali

and uh i will be discussing

the absurdity of existence and trying to

define normal within a modern context

uh to begin i’d i’d like to imagine

yourself 40 000 years ago long time ago

i know but 40 000 years ago

you’re in northern europe during the

spring

the winter snows have ended and the

moisture from the slowly melting

permafrost beneath your leather boots

leaves

a chill in your bones the wind is biting

although the sun

shines warmly and you’re surrounded by

your tribesmen

following a mammoth herd trying to find

enough food for yourself

for the coming month through a hunt that

spans

days tracking the stocking and

eventually

killing a few of the beasts you haul

your food back to the campsite where the

tribe will

live for the coming weeks before moving

again

continuously following the wandering

herd of deer

mammoth and buffalo

this is how your parents live this is

how their parents lived

how your children and their children

will live

and this is how you live because

this is all you know

that is until one day where you realize

that by

growing certain plant species you can

vastly

vastly increase the amount of food that

you can cultivate this means that you

and your tribe will also be able to

support

more people you’ll be able to support

more children if

other wandering bands come near you you

will be able to support them as well

to optimize the amount of food you grow

you create tools and to optimize the

amount of food that you can keep count

of you create organizations to

organize the farmers to organize those

you create organizations that organize

the organizers of the farmers

and continue adding to this chain and

eventually congratulations you’ve

made a society very rudimental of course

but

a society are there other societies out

there

maybe with different philosophies on

life different

politics different leaders different

rulers different gods

well i’m sorry but you have to defeat

them or

your way of life will perish

create weapons and shields defense

systems and offensive systems

strategies based on the tactics of your

forefathers

continue this for thousands of years and

empires are born

the persians the egyptians the mayans

the inca the greek

the chinese muslims french british

spanish

and dutch all wanting to impose their

theories of what was best for humankind

on the world

then came the industrial revolution and

mankind became slaves

not to each other but to machine masters

free from work we had

no idea what to do with our free time so

we invented

space travel we invented the internet we

invented

computers and we invented tiny little

rectangles that

contain the entire summation of human

knowledge

in our pockets

taking all of that into account i would

i’d like to ask you one question

what did caveman know how to play angry

bird

probably not and that’s a strange

question because it has an obvious

answer

if i if i time traveled 40 000 years in

the past

and i handed a caveman a tiny rectangle

with a moving screen where you could

drag an icon and it would shoot across

the screen

killing a little green pig in a house

made of wood and glass he would be

firstly absolutely confused as to what

the purpose of such a thing would be and

secondly

absolutely confused as to what the

purpose of such a thing would be

because to a caveman what is a phone it

serves no purpose

it doesn’t help with killing enemies it

doesn’t help with killing mammoths it

doesn’t help defending the tribe and it

doesn’t provide anything to value so

why would you need it

to a caveman a form a phone is uh

completely useless yet to me it’s it’s

it’s something that i pick up and use

daily

hourly even it is the most

normal part of my existence

a similar example can be taken by a 14th

century peasant

if i went back in time and i handed that

peasant a dorito chip

they would taste more flavor in that one

chip

than they would have ever experienced in

their entire

lives

that’s a crazy thought yet to me i can

i can maybe take a five minute walk down

to my local grocery store and pick up a

bag of doritos anytime i want

so what is what is the similarity

between me and the caveman

between the caveman and the peasant and

between the peasant and me

besides all being human of course

the one commonality between all of us

is that we change that

is the one thing that marks the entirety

of

human existence is that we constantly

innovate we constantly bring in new

ideas to help

to help better ourselves

now cases could be made that

modern existence is is something that is

absolutely and utterly regrettable

warfare has acceded to new types and

forms never before seen but

to be true nobody knew was what a

phalanx was until until the greeks

invented it

phones and and computers have distracted

us to an extent that we’ve never seen

before

causing mental health issues and

problems on

societal skills

a study conducted by the nih found that

one in five

americans one in five

have some form of mental illness

now pre-industrial revolution

levels were significantly lower but then

again

pre-industrial revolution toilets were

pretty bad

not going to lie so

although although we might be extremely

depressed

and and fidgety and worried about

things that we have no reason to worry

about at least we have toilets

then again i’ve i’ve never heard of a

depressed mongolian

um another another study

conducted by harvard found that

the the the levels of of depression or

mental illness in general in mongolia

were

extremely low

extremely low now this should be because

of their

nomadic lifestyle this could be that the

majority of the time they spend in that

country is

well spent herding animals

milking goats making cheese

sounds like a like a like a fun life

the difference between i feel the

majority

of us raised in the west or

educated and and

westernized countries is that

we have a prevailing sense of a lack of

purpose

and that ultimately is the abnormality

of our existence

never before and never on such a

widespread scale have we seen

the amount of people who feel

lost who feel

alone who feel troubled who feel like

they don’t

have a path to walk because in all

fairness there probably is none

the caveman knew what he had to do and

so did the peasant

but there are so many different options

to choose from

for us there are so many

avenues and routes that we can take that

simply put just weren’t available any

to anyone before us and that has left us

very very angry that’s left us extremely

upset

because we don’t know what to do

sure yeah you can go and become a doctor

and that’ll make you enough money

to live comfortably get a house in the

hollywood hills maybe go on vacation to

bora bora every other week that’s fine

but are you satisfied

sure you can become an accountant live

in a small apartment

outside brooklyn maybe have a have a new

gaming console that you and your buddies

play every weekend

that’s great but are you content

the realization that there is more to

life than

whatever materialistic things have been

granted to us

is utterly shocking because we were

taught

that getting these things would make us

happy and we’re just

not happy

and that’s not normal

to to to to take into account differing

perspectives

darwin’s theories of natural selection

and evolution state that

the only reason

that any species of animal exists

is to try to reproduce

is to try to pre it’s it’s to try to

forward the best genes of the current

generation to the next one

to to to optimize the success

of that species reproducing again in the

future

now obviously i think we can conclude

that

most of us have more to life than just

reproducing

because we don’t just want to have

babies

we want to be happy and sure for some

people that can mean having babies but

more than that

the quote to quote a great

movie um

our great war is a spiritual one

our our great depression

is our lives me me personally i

i i’ve i’ve spent hours constantly

scrolling

through useless memes on instagram

or looking at updates

on snapchat or or trying to find videos

to watch

on youtube when i could be thinking

about

how weird it is to be alive how

fundamentally

crazy that is

and and and that lack of

focus on

friendly put ourselves in general

has created an extremely negative

mindset

within humankind as a whole

because we weren’t born to be this way

we weren’t born to have attention spans

that last

15 seconds we weren’t born to have our

thumbs

constantly scrolling upwards slowly

and slowly until our muscles

get weak

we were created to have fun to to

maximize the dopamine output because

that

demonstrates that we would be the most

fit to continue on

our species and we’re just not seeing

that anymore

frankly put humankind

is grinding to a standstill

our logic is profound because we’ve

innovated basically as far as we can at

this point

given our current technological status

and yet

we’re just not satisfied

that dissatisfaction with our life is

truly the most riveting thing

i feel about our

existence because if we are dissatisfied

then

what’s the point

because an ant lives in an ant hill

that’s

that’s what he does maybe he goes

outside he cuts up some leaves maybe he

defends it from a couple other bugs

that’s great

that’s what an ant does to the universe

it doesn’t matter it doesn’t matter what

i do at all to the universe i’m just

a infinitely small speck of dust

on an infinitely small planet in an

infinitely small solar system

orbiting uh completely

well to its scale

small star it’s indifferent to me

and that’s normal for the universe just

as living in an ant hill is normal to an

end

but both the universe and the ant

aren’t blessed with one gift that we all

have

sure you didn’t you can you can look up

at the stars

and you can feel puny compared to them

it’s something that’s

really easy to feel because i felt it

but it’s important after taking that

into the account

that you also have something that not

even the greatest stars have

you can look upon the universe and you

can see its beauty

you can see trillions of stars and

galaxies gust clouds

spiraling away from us asteroids and

planets

just as equally large and beautiful as

our own

i’m sure you can feel small

you can feel infinitely small

but you have to remember that you must

also feel important

because sure you’re dust

you live 70 80 90 maybe 100 years

and then you’re gone you may you’ll

maybe be remembered by your

grandchildren a couple

dozen maybe a century down the line

and then you’ll be forgotten but

but you are alive

you are something as equally as

important as

any star as any galaxy

and as any ant any leaf on any tree

any speck of water in the ocean

you are the universe

and the universe is you and as cheesy as

i know that may sound

it’s true

so

what is normal

well i don’t know i’m still figuring

that out

and i hope you figure it out too but

to any extent

normal is whatever you decide it to be

however deep you want to look inside

yourself however you want to find your

purpose

that is normal

normal is what you make of it

thank you