In the 6th century BC, in a city named Croton, Pythagoras was building himself a cult.
Throughout the ages, countless rituals, customs, ideas, and beliefs have been attributed to this cult. One of the most notable is a prohibition on eating beans. Beans? Yes, beans.
No one really knows why. Some say it was for health reasons. Others suggest it was simply because beans make people fart, and that was seen as a bad sign. Another theory suggests that beans and humans were thought to be related, so eating beans was perceived as almost like eating human flesh.
Food was a ‘thing’ in the cult. Beans weren’t the only form of nutrition Pythagoras taught his followers to abstain from. Meat, fish, eggs, and alcohol were a no-go. Instead, they followed a vegetarian diet.
The reason Pythagoras was so focused on diet relates directly to his belief in the transmigration of souls, which is essentially reincarnation, and also explains why his followers had to refrain from wearing animal skins as clothing.
Pythagoras thought that after a body dies, the soul lives on. And the soul could go from human to human, but also from human to animal and vice versa. One day, he saw someone beating a puppy. He intervened and said, “Stop! Don’t hit it! It’s the soul of a friend of mine. I knew it when I heard it cry.”
And that’s why eating meat was not allowed. After all, you never knew if you were eating your grandma for dinner.
And Pythagoras even claimed to remember some of his own past lives. He claimed to have lived as Aethalides, son of the god Hermes, as well as Euphorbus, a hero of the Trojan War, and as Pyrrhus, a fisherman.
Within the cult, personal possessions were also not allowed; everything was shared, which surely stood in sharp contrast to the lives of many Greeks who often accumulated a lot of wealth.
So, the cult was a countermovement; they sought to live better lives, different from the norm, going against the grain. They opposed the decadence and moral decline around them, choosing instead moderation and simplicity. They wanted to purify themselves.
This week's video explores Pythagoras and his curious cult.
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Have you been watching (or reading) a lot of news lately? Does it leave you feeling anxious, sad, or even hopeless?
Philosopher Henry David Thoreau wasn’t a big fan of the news, as he saw it as a major distraction from what he truly deemed important: a close relationship with nature, one’s direct environment, and God. He felt that the things people read in newspapers every day were repetitive; it’s always the same stuff.
For example, if you’ve read about one or two robberies, one or two shootings, haven’t you read about all of them? Why do we need to know about every single one? And why do we need to stay updated about every single one of them happening in areas where we never go or live?
So, when Thoreau discusses the repetitive nature of the news, I can see where he’s coming from. In terms of knowledge, does the news actually bring something new? Does watching the news give us profound insights? Does it expand our horizons? Or is it just repetitive, superficial, drivel that’s unnecessary for us to function in our daily lives?
Is the news, whether we get it from newspapers, television, social media, or YouTube videos, closer to knowledge or closer to noise?
This week’s video on the Einzelgänger YouTube channel will address “the news“ and how to worry less about it.
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Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes believed that the Earth and, therefore, the universe (as far as they had a concept of it) had started from something: some fundamental force. They called this source of everything “arche,” which we could loosely translate as “first principle”.
As it’s a first principle, the arche must have been something big, something so overarching and great that everything could be derived from it. And with everything I mean everything: the trees, the oceans, the mountains, people, animals, your noisy neighbor, and so forth.
The arche had to be credible (at least, for that period). It had to be rationally sound and consistent with what we can observe in nature, instead of being based on the ancient Greek version of… “trust me, bro”. So, appealing to the conventional gods was not sufficient. Saying that Poseidon was the cause of earthquakes or Zeus the cause of lightning was inadequate.
Even though Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes agreed on the first principle underlying everything, they didn’t agree on what it actually was. All three of them had their own speculations and unique explanations for what they came up with.
Their theories were pretty interesting. Sure, most of it is clearly incorrect. But it’s important to remember that they were pioneers whose efforts profoundly influenced the course of human thought in the West. And therefore, they deserve our attention.
This week's episode explores the first Western philosophers: Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes.
Stay tuned!
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Recording some nature footage for the upcoming episodes.
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Dear subscribers,
I’ve decided to step away from this channel for the foreseeable future.
The platform has changed a lot, and so have I.
To share a bit more: I’ve been feeling increasingly drained.
I have been struggling to create new content for Einzelgänger. I haven’t felt that creative drive for quite some time, perhaps because it is time for something new.
Another factor is that I don’t feel much at home on YouTube anymore (changing algorithms, chasing views, flooded with AI channels).
I don’t know if I’ll return (or in what form), but I won’t rule it out.
Thank you to everyone who supported this journey. I’m deeply grateful.
Until next time,
Einzel
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Taoism for Inner Peace is now available. Get it at a special price until the end of March. For more information, check: einzelganger.co/tao/
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Taoist philosophy teaches that everything is in constant flux—the universe’s natural state. All things are interdependent; every action triggers an effect, and every effect sparks a response. Life follows its course: death follows birth, and aging begins from the moment we’re born. We are placed in a world beyond our control, facing the realities of human existence.
Yet, people often struggle to accept change. We embrace it when it suits us but resist when it doesn’t. We see change as good, but only if it happens on our terms. So, we spend our lives trying to control fate, forcing the world to bend to our will. We resist reality, trying to impose our will on its natural flow. We want to fight it. We want not to give an inch.
While the Western world sees a ‘hard stance’ as a sign of strength, Taoists recognize that such rigidity can just as easily be a weakness. A famous example from Lao Tzu is the brittle, dry plant—its inflexibility leads to its downfall, while softness is its true strength.
The idea of non-resistance stems from the power of softness and flexibility. Often, it’s wiser to flow with events rather than resist, even when resistance feels like an instinctive choice.
Resisting reality rarely works. What must happen happens. We can’t stop it. That doesn’t mean we cannot influence our circumstances, but we don’t control the outcome. If we did, we’d all be millionaires, every Joe would find his Jane, and hardship wouldn’t exist. But life doesn’t work that way. And often, resisting isn’t just futile. It could also make things worse.
This week’s (upcoming) video explores the Taoist concept of non-resistance.
Stay tuned!
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Capitalism as we know it has been dying a slow death, according to Yanis Varoufakis (economist and former Minister of Finance of Greece). And instead of moving toward a better system, we’ve fallen into something much worse: technofeudalism.
Technofeudalism describes a society where feudal lords and serfs re-emerge, but this time within a technologically advanced landscape. A key difference is that technofeudalism isn’t about land but cloud space. And the feudalists in a technofeudal society are, therefore, “cloudalists.”
Varoufakis compares the early Internet to the medieval commons—land no one truly owned where peasants could freely grow food. Over time, landlords fenced off these commons for private use, known as the “enclosures,” leaving peasants dependent on the landlords to access land and make a living.
Now, like these landlords enclosed the common lands, Big Tech enclosed the internet. As the early internet consisted of numerous independent spaces, Big Tech turned it into giant enclosures, owned by powerful platforms, home to millions of technofeudal serfs, sustained by the low-wage workers, Varoufakis calls “cloud proles.”
The shift from capitalism to technofeudalism has many consequences, not just for how we work or conduct business but also for our lives as a whole.
This week’s (upcoming) video explores technofeudalism, how it affects our lives, and how we can deal with it.
Stay tuned!
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When society is in decay, could walking away be the best option?
It’s not just seclusion but also a renunciation of society that characterizes hermits. They realize they cannot change the world. But they can distance themselves from it.
Whether it’s corruption, wicked people in the government, moral decay, or today’s self-exploiting achievement society: they’re done with it. It has nothing more to offer them. The juice simply isn’t worth the squeeze.
Just look at the world today: tensions between powerful nations, deepening polarization, rampant greed, and a small group of ultrarich individuals holding most of the power.
Have you had thoughts lately such as, “I don’t want to be part of this anymore” or “I wish I could just walk away from all this?” Well, you’re not alone. Renunciation of society is a universal phenomenon; the hermits have been doing it for ages!
Based on their accounts, many hermits find their lives improving in solitude. Moreover, people have consulted them for advice as long as they’ve been around. So, people sought guidance for living within society from those who turned their backs on it. That’s ironic, isn’t it? Apparently, people see something of value in the hermit’s existence.
So, what makes the hermit’s life valuable? What do hermits find in solitude?
This week’s (upcoming) video explores the hermit's philosophy, history, motivations, and whether there is a modern approach to becoming one.
Stay tuned!
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The French existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre believed that, aside from our biological features, humans come into existence without a predefined essence. Unlike forks and trains, we are fundamentally free to create our own identity and define our own purpose. We exist first; essence comes afterward. As Sartre stated:
“Man simply is. Not that he is simply what he conceives himself to be, but he is what he wills, and as he conceives himself after already existing – as he wills to be after that leap towards existence. Man is nothing else but that which he makes of himself. That is the first principle of existentialism.” (Sartre, Existentialism Is a Humanism).
So, what we’re left with is an inherently undetermined existence. Life, thus, is like an empty canvas. There are no fixed rules to this game. There are no definite goals. There’s no overarching purpose. Morals and ethics are all manmade; none are final or absolute. Any claim of a universally right path, a presupposed way of living, is false. The only truth is the empty canvas and our conscious ability to fill it in.
It’s the “nothingness” of our consciousness, the absence of fixed content, that allows us to create our essence, to paint our canvasses however we like: a trait that is typically human. It sets us apart from other existing objects and beings. To explain this further, Sartre distinguished two modes of existence: being-in-itself and being-for-itself.
This week’s (upcoming) video explores Sartre’s existentialism, the nature of consciousness, freedom, and responsibility.
Stay tuned!
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The slowest philosophy channel on Earth.
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Email: info(@)einzelganger.co
Einzelgänger is under the supervision of the Dutch Regulatory Media Authority (Commissariaat voor de Media).
*Disclaimer: The material provided by Einzelgänger isn't a clinical/medical service or replacement of mental health professionals, nor an academic resource.
28 November 2018