I was just at the park on my daily run and this is at my local park so there's a playground
and I just go so I can run around it a couple laps and there's some exercise equipment at
that park.
But I usually go around and every once in a while there's people there.
So often times there's parents with their kids playing at the park.
And this one day in particular I saw one parent at the park with her kid.
Kid was probably four or five years old.
Very happy, very excited kid.
Playing around, running around, screaming.
Super excited.
And she was, the kid was just doing cool things.
You know what kids do.
And she was trying to get her mom's attention.
She was like, mom, look, look.
Mom, watch me.
Like, or mom, play with me.
And I was just, I glanced over and I saw the mom was just completely absorbed by her phone,
completely immersed in her phone.
Now I have no, now I, it does not bother me.
Now I'm not trying to, I'm not trying to tell this mom how she should behave around
her kid, but, and I'm also not trying to knock at this mom.
What I'm trying to say is that we live in a society where this is actually normal.
And if you find this offensive, if you find this story offensive in any way, this video
is not for you.
So you should probably just click off.
But we live in a society where mediocrity is normal.
And we live in a society where it's normal to completely ignore your kids.
It's normal to show your kids that it's acceptable to be completely immersed in this electronic
device that is extremely harmful for you.
It's completely acceptable and normal in this society to sit outside in a park and ignore
your child while your child is having a great time.
That is just not right.
I don't think that's right.
Now maybe this is just because I'm coming from a different perspective.
Maybe it's because I am trying to strive for more.
Maybe not everyone is like that, but I disagree because I think that it's human nature to
strive for excellence.
And I think that the reason why this is a normal occurrence is because our society has
created the most perfect environment for this type of behavior to be available.
Now let me explain that environment piece a little bit further.
Ancient Greece, they had an environment of arete, arete, however it's pronounced.
And this means excellence in any aspect.
Arete is basically how the Greeks thought.
This was the common collective amongst all the Greeks was excellence.
They didn't ignore their kids.
They weren't completely immersed.
Now, obviously there was no phones back then, but they were not completely immersed in unhealthy
habits.
There was no mediocrity because it was not acceptable.
It was not tolerated and the culture and environment around Greece at that time made
it a perfect environment for arete.
Excellence.
And so in our society, we go outside and we see someone on their phone immersed.
Someone listening to music immersed.
We see people who thirds of the population I think is overweight.
What is this?
People have unhealthy lifestyles, unhealthy eating habits, drinking alcohol, smoking.
Everywhere you go, there's someone smoking.
Vaping everywhere I go in my school, every single bathroom smells like weed.
This is not the individual's fault entirely.
Yes.
It is the individual's fault for choosing these things, but the culture and the environment
allows it to happen.
There's a stark difference between the culture of ancient Greece and the culture of modern
day America.
The difference is that of ancient Greece is arete, striving for excellence.
It's not normal to be average.
It's not normal to just get by.
It's not normal to be overweight.
It's not normal to be any of this stuff.
And actually up to recently, a couple hundred years ago, it wasn't normal to be overweight
in America.
I was just reading in a book about how there was a circus and one of the characters in
a circus was a overweight person.
Like a circus.
That is a place where you show off weird things or unusual things, but now it's become normal.
So what's going on here?
Let me go back to what I was saying about how I'm coming from a different perspective,
obviously.
I'm coming from a perspective where I am striving for excellence and I consider myself different
and I don't affiliate myself with these people.
I don't consider myself similar to these people.
But I will say I used to have this lifestyle.
I used to watch TikTok all day.
I used to eat unhealthy.
I used to play video games all day.
I used to be immersed in my AirPods.
I used to do all this stuff.
And you know what I realized after doing all that?
It sucks.
It is the worst thing ever.
That was probably the lowest moments of my life when I was doing these bad habits.
That's how I know that people don't like it.
But the thing is, they don't want to change because the culture around them still finds
it acceptable.