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