 Hi everyone, it's MJ the fellow act tree and welcome to another philosophy vlog Now the idea was to do these things monthly, but March. I was just a little bit sick April didn't have that much inspiration So thought let me only do these when you know an idea comes across my head That's worth talking about for 30 minutes. So today's video We're gonna be talking about the philosophy around Success and I guess it's an interesting one that I want to bring up at the moment because in my own personal life I'm busy transitioning into a bit of a startup that I'm creating Starting a new venture and of course I want to be very Mindful of the fact that you know when they say nine out of ten startups fail Just kind of like be very cautious about that also the past six months I've been working for somebody else's startup which has failed So I'm seeing that statistic play out and of course, you know coming from the actual perspective We like to look at the empirical evidence of the past and say okay How likely is the future gonna be based on what has already happened? so all of that kind of got me got me thinking and it's also not a New thought of mine when I was a little bit younger. I kind of wrote a a little book I don't think I ever published it Never really finished it was supposed to have these four sections It was called the night's death and the devil and it's this weird story about this kind of like Anti-hero or this person who thinks that they're the hero So it's kind of like mocking or a bit of a parody of the hero's journey So it's this person who's told by the Oracle that they're the chosen one And they're given this blade of truth and they're gonna go and assassinate this tyrannical ruler and you know Save the day only for them to get caught by one of the knights of the kingdom arrested and Throne into the dungeon and in the dungeon They meet this character called death who tells them the the truth about reality and the truth about the reality Is that success is unlikely and that failure is the most? Probable outcome for the majority of us But the idea is that this truth is hidden from society to benefit society So the whole idea is that society Lies to us tells us that we have a high chance of success start your own business You'll be you know rich this will work out if you put in the effort you'll get the results You know we get told this this narrative from society so that we do participate. We are enthusiastic We do put in the effort and yes, most of us will fail But the few of us who get lucky and do succeed, you know push humanity in the right direction So it's almost like we're sacrificing a whole bunch of people So that you know the few that get lucky they say the Elon Musk's the Steve Jobs the Bill Gates push us forward Whereas your average Joe The startup that he kind of gets himself into Ultimately fails and he's in a worse state than before it So the whole idea with the story was that this oracle was telling every single passer-by that they were You know the they were the hero They were the chosen one and was just handing out random blades to all of them Hoping that one of them would get lucky Pass all the nights and assassinate the tyrannical king and the idea in the story is that ultimately somebody does that and You know everybody then writes this great story about this other person And it's this really awesome epic that everybody reads and it just reinforces the notion that hey We're all special. We're all gonna do something meaningful in our lives But what I also wanted to to explore in the book is that the blame is not purely on Society, you know and sometimes we tend to do that we tend to you know turn society or personify it into this big huge thing that we kind of like Struggle against, you know, how many times do we say? Oh, I don't want to do this because what will people think of me And I always like to challenge my friends who say something like that by saying like when you say people Who do you actually mean? You know like name the individuals and once they do this like the first five names that come to their mind I'm like are their opinions really that important to you that it's gonna prevent you from doing what you want to do So let's say an actually wanting to get into the startup might say Oh, you know, I can't understand the profession and I can say well, you know Who's who you really worried about and they might mention their boss a friend or two and then realize? Yeah, why should those people's views hold them back from what they really really want to do? So it's this idea of you know one taking society and Deconstructing it into its little pieces and seeing that it's not that scary after all But also putting a little bit of the blame on ourselves because how often do we want to you know Read or watch movies where the hero fails think about especially in our Western culture There hasn't really been a movie. I guess other than infinity one That's why I think it was so fresh and so awe-inspiring and maybe also game of thrones where the heroes die You know, it was such a just a position to what we're normally seeing that I think you know Is that uniqueness that novelty that really intrigued us But you look at the majority of movies the hero wins The villain is defeated and against all these extreme odds You know the the world is saved and I guess it's because that's just our personal taste We like watching a story where victory is the conclusion not defeat so we tend to skew to only see these really good positive stories and then we apply it to ourselves thinking hey If I put in the effort if I take the risk, I'm gonna be successful Now like I say from a society point of view, this is a very very good Illusion for us to have as a collective because with it it makes people take risks it makes people push and yes a lot of them if not the majority fail But those few that do succeed as I say it pushes our species forward. So collectively it is very very good Individually though it can be incredibly Devastating, you know, here we are in the actuarial profession I've spoken to a lot of students who deal with with failure I myself also failed a few actuarial exams and it really like challenges your Identity failure especially as actress because a whole lot we've been told oh, you're smart You're smart you're smart and then we fail in an exam and that's basically Getting told no, you're not as smart as you thought you were and then we're like well flip if I'm not smart Then what am I we had this whole identity crisis and yeah We get really anxious around around failure and this last week. I was in Joberg at an actuarial conference with a bunch of of young actresses who are still writing some of their exams They're still dealing with failure. They've gotten some bad marks and I can see it really really upsets them and You know exams failing at exams is one thing failing in work failing in your career failing at a startup The penalties a lot more because you tend to invest a lot more time money energy and effort Into these things and then for them to fail it can really really be devastating on You know one's one's personality and Or psyche maybe that's a better better word than personality because I'm just thinking like I think that's one of the big differences between South African culture and an American culture well I mean, you know, it's maybe wrong to to put both those cultures under the country Banner because in both of the countries there's so many different subcultures that are incredibly different But one thing that I've noticed about South Africans is that Failure really stings we really really don't like failure like it really got we take it personally We take it bad. Whereas in America you tend to get that thing about oh, no Just file for bankruptcy start again and VCs the venture capses They like investing in entrepreneurs who've failed a few times because they've you know got their school lessons and Americans seem like I said, I'm generalizing here But they seem to be able to cope with failure that's kind of the narrative that I've absorbed a lot better than than South Africans and You look at the the position of the two countries America is the global superpower and South Africa can barely keep their lights on so Hopefully my lights stay on for the duration of of this video But you know, that's that's and look of course it goes to a multitude of other factors But I'm sure that also plays into it this idea that American culture. It's a Katie take risks It's okay to fail, you know keep trying until you get to that American dream Whereas in South Africa, that seems to be a lot of shame around failure Which kind of makes us a bit hesitant to to try so like I say it's one of these things where It's such a strange concept because on the one hand, you know You would hate to give this message to to the world like let's say if I knew that this YouTube video Was going to be watched by everybody in the world then I would probably delete it because like I say it's a good Illusion it's a good life for us to collectively believe that we are likely to succeed in our endeavors However, because like I say, I know that only a few hundred people will watch this and it tends to be Tends to be actually to our dealing, you know with failure and the ones who've made you put the most pressure on themselves To succeed I think it's important for us to like I say Use our actuarial knowledge to reflect on the past look at history and see that failure is a lot more common Than what the media and the movies and the stories that we read, you know make it out to be and Hopefully by being aware of it. We're not gonna stop We're not gonna be like the proverbial ostrich that puts his head in the sand and you know Gives up or takes their foot off the pedal But instead we can be a little bit more mindful when we enter into to startups a little bit more humble and I guess, you know looking at You know coming from the startup where what had happened was that the CEO had hired too many people I mean there were there were what there were three actress in a company that only really needed one there was like 10 sales people were again only needed one again a tech team of 10 Okay, maybe you know the tech team needs to be big especially because it was being built in in crypto But it was like it was a lot of people that they hire There was a lot of marketing spend there was a lot of going to conventions and international travel and all these things before a product had really been conceptualized and You know my critique of it would be that a lot of the expenditure was was wasteful and I want to be very very mindful of that when I now come into my own startup is make sure that expenses are Very much, you know keep a keep a close eye on it Of course you go to as they say spend money to make money And I don't want to have a completely closed off wallet But I also want to be mindful of the fact that hey success is not guaranteed You know I want to also play the longevity game make sure that you know There's enough money for this company to survive that it can keep doing what it wants to do So I think there's a lot of wisdom in knowing this truth Individually and still you know venturing out being mindful like okay look failure is probably the most likely thing so Implements some risk management and don't be destroyed, you know when or if Defeat does happen So that's kind of like like I say a little bit of the message But it's always interesting when you've got this collective lie that is beneficial for humanity But as an individual it can sometimes be better to to know how things actually actually are and I guess that's all I really wanted to speak about in in today's video And I know the idea was to make these these things 30 minutes long and I've kind of haven't even reached halfway But I think let me maybe sum it up instead of me waffling and repeating myself and going in a little bit of a circle We'll maybe end it off there and then if I get another Another idea on some philosophical topic. I'll maybe release another video This month as as well so we can try play a little bit of catch-up for the ones that we missed But as always thank you so much for watching and I will see you guys in the next video In fact, I might even record the next video for the actuarial Vlog now where I'll talk a little bit more about about AI which is still still the flavor of the year But until then hope you're keeping well and like I say don't let failure defeat you. Cheers