"Men Need To Beware Modern Sirens"

[00:00:00]This is uh a good time for Homer to come back for that reason, I think. Well, because I think that this is um Yeah.

[00:00:08]There is a There is a kind of moral simplicity in a lot of ways to Homer, but he he tells the story from multiple perspectives. Partly because he's just like Nolan, you know, he's got a a wide audience. Homer is uh you know, these epic poets travel from city to city. They're going from Aeolus to Sparta to wherever Ithaca and they have different people of different classes and different tastes everywhere.

[00:00:35]And this you know, they got to get a story about Odysseus to work for a lot of different people. Some people are going to want to take the side of uh of of of Odysseus or some people are going to see themselves in the suitors or uh maybe that's not a great example, but you know, some people are going to say, "Hey, this is a lying bastard." And other people are going to say, "No, he did what he had to do." And and that's kind of that's on you. Like to draw out the message is is not so much the poet's job. I mean, he can have his own opinion, but really his job is to is to help you get charmed, get disengaged like Odysseus does for the Phaeacians, like the bards do in the story.

[00:01:16]And I think also, if I could kind of allegorize a little bit, the Sirens in particular that we didn't go into too much.

[00:01:23]I think they're really it's a timely image because you know, for me I I I kind of autobiographizes Odysseus going to the Sirens. All right, the Sirens are these divine They're kind of like bad bards. They're these women who sing whatever they sing [clears throat] and they they make you just want to go and listen to them.

[00:01:45]And piled up in front of the Sirens' island is just rotting bones of people who who started listening and they could just never leave and they starved and died.

[00:01:55]And I think the reason that Odysseus wants [clears throat] to hear is because he's this man of great curiosity. And And when they actually speak to him, Homer No, Odysseus tells them the Phaeacians. He tells what the Sirens told him. And the Sirens say, "We can tell you the story of everything that happened at Troy. All the things that you didn't know And I'm paraphrasing, but like all the things you didn't know about the backstory, what was going on at Troy, all of the different, you know, perspectives of the generals that you were trying to guess at, but you just couldn't know. Well, we know them.

[00:02:31]We know everything that happens on Earth. We They can give him infinite knowledge.

[00:02:37]That, whether or not they would say the same thing to his crew, that's what they're saying to him. And this is the thing that a man of those kind of proclivities wants most in life. Or at least he knows [clears throat] the power of that insider knowledge, that special insight into the universe, the the moly.

[00:02:55]He's seen how powerful it is to know the secrets of a little plant. That kind of power in you. What if I could find out something interesting that I could apply to my morning routine from the Sirens?

[00:03:06]And it, you know, for me, I think it's also the temptation of being an academic is one of the reasons I left academia cuz Well, it was one of the reasons I was in it because I had this I should tell me more, tell me more, tell me more. I want to read more. I want to find out the the the end of that story or Oh, jeez, five more books I need to read. And and that can if you if you follow that too far, you end up potentially a a rotting pile of bones at the feet of the Sirens and never getting home and never doing what you need to do. It's the kind of temptation of of knowledge. And you know, maybe there's a person or two in your audience that can relate to the temptation of the university, but we can all relate to the the doom scroll. Like And it's often it's not just like it's not stupid humor all the time. A lot of it is you're you're you tell yourself I'm going to get some insight on, you know, what what the Bitcoin price is going to do from this Iran thing. And oh, well, how can I ignore that blah blah blah. And it's it's it's all it all seems actionable. It's it's it's constructed such >> It feels important.

[00:04:09]>> It feels important. It's designed to feel important because it's risen up in the algorithm. And I think this is really speaks to a profound uh inclination that people have, a temptation that people face that leads them not just to inaction, as you know, but but to unreflection, too.

[00:04:28]>> Well, certainly if you're permanently unabsorbed, you have very little time to do reflect.

[00:04:33]>> Mhm.

[00:04:33]>> You know, if the fire hose of new information is cocking you in the face, you don't have that much time to think about what you've already ingested, said Bonnie.

[00:04:43]And when >> At Y's age.

[00:04:46]>> Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, the philosopher B Blue.

[00:04:50]Um that that sense of I'm drowning in information. I don't know what to do about it. This is a line that I had a I built Thompson this this old informations expert from worked at three-letter agencies, US like army. He was basically the special forces Q from James Bond. And um he would help them to get to where they needed he would take phones apart and all this sort of stuff. And I was asking him my current working theory is not that most of the propaganda and most of it even the information online is trying to make people convinced of any one narrative, it's to drown them in so much information that they become apathetic and they just sort of give up entirely. Now, that might be that at some point in future that apathy can be uh, formed into something useful and sort of thrust forward in like some vector.

[00:05:50]Um, but for the most part, I think when you when you firehose people with information after long enough, they just go, "I dude, I'm [ __ ] I I have no idea." Like if you try and go down any rabbit hole, any conspiracy rabbit hole, for every one that you find out, there is an equal and opposite Is that the physics of the conspiracy system? For every conspiracy, there is an equal and opposite conspiracy, which is even deeper, and then there's an equal and opposite one. The The iceberg never stops. It just comes out the other side of the planet, and that's the tip of the other side of the iceberg. So, yeah, this this endless ouroboros of just looking at uncertainty and information and and and uh, yeah, I think I'm certainly feeling I'm feeling detoxed. Feeling somewhat salved after after getting in touch with something that's got a bit more like firm foundations, so >> And this is what you got to think is so appealing to a uh, a a person like Alcinous, maybe, or a person like Odysseus, or like a a guy like Julius Caesar, about a great story like that, because they've just got information coming in them and decisions to make and all the time and a long narrative is a way of is a way of slowing down your brain and reflecting. It's It's But it's not just entertainment. It's It has It has something useful in there. That narrative structure, you're We're like programmed to in ingest and and process information in that way much more um, effectively in long form, when it's when it's put into a story, yeah.

[00:07:23]Because we can remember it, and we can actually store that framework of Here's what happened with Odysseus, and then we can draw lessons out of it years and years later that that we need, because we have that that archetypal uh, narrative within us. And I think this is one of the reasons why an oral culture like the Greeks spent so much time on these kinds of stories that about heroes about somebody to emulate and mind you they're not they're not simplistic I mean like the Odyssey doesn't is you know he makes a lot of mistakes.

[00:07:58]>> Yeah.

[00:07:59]>> You can debate about his actions. The Greeks would debate about his actions. I mean a lot of the later Greeks thought he was a bad guy. He was he was a liar. He's a cheater.

[00:08:07]A lot of the later Greeks thought he was the greatest hero. I mean the >> There's it admits of debate and if you brought back >> real hero stories that didn't always have them having a math addict addiction on the side or you know banging their secretary in secret.

[00:08:25]>> You could still have complexity. You don't have to undermine everybody with a kind of secret mob story or very open mob story. I think we need more of that to get through what we're what we're facing a lot of us at least.

[00:08:38]>> You might not believe me but this is what peak sleep optimization looks like. Not talking about the nightgown.

[00:08:45]It's just for sex appeal. I'm talking about my eight sleep. The eight sleep pod five comes with a smart cover you throw on your mattress that actively cools or heats each side of the bed up to 20°. And now they've added the world's first temperature regulating duvet and pillow case. So you've got 360° coverage for deep uninterrupted rest. It's like being Walt Disney without the cryogenic chamber.

[00:09:06]And the racism. Best of all, their autopilot feature learns your sleep patterns and makes adjustments to improve your sleep in real time. It even detects when you're snoring and lifts your head a few inches to help you breathe better. That's why eight sleep has been clinically proven to add up to 1 hour of quality sleep per night. They have a 30-day sleep trial so you can buy it and sleep on it for 29 nights. If you don't like it, they will give you your money back. Plus, they ship internationally. Right now, you can get up to $350 off the pod five by going to the link in the description below or heading to eightsleep.com/modernwisdom and using the code modernwisdom@checkout. That's eightsleep.com/modernwisdom.

[00:09:40]and modernwisdom at checkout. Congratulations, you made it to the end of the clip and the full length episode is available right here.

[00:09:49]Go on.