The Golden One - July 13, 2019


Stoicism - Sir Gawain and the Green Knight： Kind or Severe You Must Engage Your Fate

Topics
stoicism
Hosted by
Marcus Follin
Mentioned
Gawain Survive Dejaiva King Arthur Arthurian
Jason Momoa 'Dad Bod'？ The Truth About Fitness Pictures and Before-and-After Pictures Q&A. Accusations of Being a Liberal. Army Questions. Study Questions. Training Questions.

Episode Stats


Length

6 minutes

Words per minute

157.74

Word count

1,002

Sentence count

76

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged

Toxicity

1

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode I talk about the classic Arthurian poem, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and how it relates to Stoicism. I also read out some quotes from the poem and give a brief summary of the main theme of the poem.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Greetings Laddingtons! Today I thought to talk a bit about stoicism but before I begin to do so
00:00:07.980 I would like to offer a heartfelt thank you and shout out to everyone who contributed both with
00:00:14.460 music and with financial contributions. I have ordered a microphone so it will hopefully arrive
00:00:20.400 any day now and then it will start the project of Swedish history. So again thank you for
00:00:29.580 that. Now I got this fine tome of knowledge from my lovely wife because she knows I'm a great fan of
00:00:37.180 the Arthurian myth and it's called Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and it's a poem from the Middle Ages.
00:00:45.840 I have made a video about the Green Knight with my friend Survive Dejaiva. We'll link it in the
00:00:50.920 description box below as well so you can hear his take on it but basically what the story is about
00:00:56.320 is a challenge being offered by the Green Knight. He comes to the court of King Arthur and offers a
00:01:03.920 challenge. Only Sir Gawain has the courage to take up the challenge and basically Sir Gawain can aim a
00:01:10.240 blow with a sword at the Green Knight and he decapitates him. The Green Knight doesn't die but
00:01:15.760 he takes up his head and rides off with his head but survives and the challenge is that he in turn,
00:01:23.080 the Green Knight, can decapitate Sir Gawain the coming year. And I will spoil the story but he
00:01:32.200 doesn't decapitate Sir Gawain but he only nicks him in the next so it has a happy ending. But I thought
00:01:37.720 to read out two quotes from this book. First and foremost just an epic description of the Green Knight
00:01:44.020 because yeah it's epic. And then to the stoic quote which is the main reason for making this video.
00:01:52.020 And also another note when I read these sort of things I'm always on the lookout for epic quotes
00:01:57.940 to motivate you all with and motivate myself with. And also about the Green Knight which I say in my
00:02:05.380 previous video the first time I got acquainted with the Green Knight was actually via Warhammer Fantasy
00:02:12.020 because the faction Bretonnia which is basically somewhat based upon french middle ages and
00:02:18.260 Arthurian legend they have a character called the Green Knight also. So if you have played
00:02:23.540 either the tabletop game or Warhammer Total War you might be familiar with the Green Knight.
00:02:30.020 Either way I think it's a really cool character but here is how he's being described in this poem.
00:02:35.860 Anyway I can say he was the mightiest of men and astride his horse a handsome knight as well.
00:02:42.820 But if he was broad of back and chest his build mid-body was elegantly slender. His face befitting
00:02:49.940 his form his bold liniments cut clean. But the hue of his every feature stunned them. As could be seen
00:02:58.020 not only was this creature colossal he was bright green. And I suppose a rhyme there as well because
00:03:04.260 yeah it's a poem. But on to the main quote I just wanted to quote that because it was epic.
00:03:13.460 So this is in my view at least in my humble opinion a somewhat stoic quote. So Gawain knows he will
00:03:21.620 probably die the coming year because he will get the Green Knight will get a free shot at his neck 0.87
00:03:27.620 basically. So he says in a conversation he says Gawain put on a good chair. Why should I hesitate?
00:03:34.420 He said. Kind or severe we must engage our fate. And this goes into not a fatalistic mindset perhaps
00:03:44.020 but a mindset which approaches life approaches any circumstance in a way that it is what it is. The
00:03:52.500 world looks the way it does. It doesn't matter if you fall into despair. It won't change anything. It won't
00:03:58.820 make anything better. And the first time I got acquainted with stoicism was actually in the army. An
00:04:06.420 introductory speech by a major. He said get familiar with this mindset because there will come a lot of
00:04:13.860 times where you are tired, hungry, you're cold etc. You are in a position which is not comfortable. It is
00:04:20.740 not comfortable at all. But it will certainly not be more comfortable if you actively think about it.
00:04:26.980 So the best way to approach these uncomfortable situations if you are tired, cold, hungry, wet,
00:04:33.860 out in a military exercise for example. It doesn't get better if you think about it. So just accept it
00:04:41.860 for what it is. It's supposed to be that way. It's supposed to be in a certain way. It's nothing
00:04:46.820 you can change. You can't change the weather. You can make certain endeavors to get warmer. You can make
00:04:52.900 you can do push-ups for example. These sort of things. But the things you can't change don't focus
00:04:58.820 all too much about it. And that's also a key principle of stoicism. Focus on the things you can change.
00:05:06.180 If you can't change something don't fret overly much about it. Focus on the things you can change.
00:05:11.300 And do it to the best of your ability. But for things such as the weather or the state of other
00:05:17.700 things maybe you can change a little bit. Do so. But if you can't change the whole world by yourself
00:05:23.940 don't let it consume you. And this is especially important now when we have a lot of guys in the west
00:05:29.460 who are black billed. Because political repressions. Because of censorship. Because of the great
00:05:35.300 replacement and everything like that. Do the things you can change. Do the things you can do. But don't
00:05:42.180 stress overly much about the things you can't change. So approach your fate with good cheer. Because kind
00:05:49.140 or severe. You must accept it. So anyway I thought to share that little perhaps motivating quote from
00:05:58.180 this fine tome of knowledge right here. So anyway thank you for watching. And have a great rest of your day. XOXO, BOO!
00:06:19.140 XOXO, BOO! 1.00