Patrick Mosher argues that overcoming personal inertia requires first identifying what is egregiously wrong in your community. He defines ignorance not as unknown unknowns but as actively ignoring what you see, and traces how constant fear-laden news pushes people into shutdown. His concrete ask: spend 30 seconds writing down one thing you see as wrong.
Chapters
talk about this. To start a movement, the theme today is you have to overcome your own inertia. Inertia. That's my first thing. You have to overcome your own inertia. And, uh, I must— I'm a geek. Inertia is a scientific term. And the definition of it is a property of matter which continues at a state of rest unless that state is changed by a force. Oh, a property of matter which continues at a state of rest. A thing will stay at a state of rest unless that state is changed by force. We don't like to use terms like force.
Yeah, but you know what?
Okay, if we get all polite and nice with each other, nothing's going to change. And by the way, force is also a physics term— mass times acceleration. We need to apply some acceleration to our masses, to our people. So that's what force is. It's just saying, hey, I need to go into this thing and move it faster. Mhm. That's what that means. So let's offer some acceleration. Okay, so that's what inertia is. So there are 3 requirements to overcome your inertia. Oh, here's the first one. I love this.
I I needed this today, Patrick. How did you know?
The requirement is, whoa, what is egregiously wrong in the world, in your community, on your project? What is egregiously wrong? I love this one because I just love saying egregiously.
I know, that's a great word.
Isn't it good? I love that word because you can't say it fast. You have to say it really—
No, you have to— egregiously. Yeah, that's—
because you got to get that— you got to get that I in there. It's not— it's egregiously wrong.
Oh yeah, yeah, you got to get that I in there. That's a lot of syllables.
It is, it is. But egregious, right? It's egregious. It's like, ugh, you know. So, so the thing about this, um, this requirement, it puts fire in your belly. You know, that's what it is. Um, when I was doing a mastermind, uh, we were working on stuff and they were like, what are you fighting for? It was very like physical. I was like, wow. And then 3 months later they said, what's the enemy? What's the enemy of your thing? Now, you know, you're all peace, love, and harmony and stuff.
It's like, so think about the enemy. Whoa, that's a—
but your enemy, you named them. It's the zombies out there. It's the soul zombies out there, the soul-eating zombies out there. They're your enemy. It's not people, it's what they do, right? And so I was thinking, like, wisdom was my thing. What's the enemy of wisdom? And I came up with a bunch of words, and then I said, ignorance. Ignorance is the enemy of wisdom. Yeah, I'm here to fight ignorance in the world. So for the next few months, I was like, I need to fight ignorance. And where's the ignorance out there? And I was looking at social media posts like, that's ignorant.
That's ignorant. That's ignorant.
That's ignorant. That's ignorant. And so I was like, yes, I love to fight because I'm a good Irish boy. Let's fight the fight. Let's bring it out. And it took about 3 months for me to realize the root word of ignorance is to ignore, which means that you have to recognize the presence of the thing in order to ignore it. So I've heard a lot of people say the enemy of wisdom is, I don't know what I don't know. That's not ignorance, and that's not the enemy of wisdom. I just don't know what I don't know. That's a whole— there's a whole bunch of stuff I don't know. I'm not ignorant of those. Ignorance is when I see something and I ignore it. And then even now, when I recognized that, I started to cry because I realized, what did I do about the conflicts in the world today? What did I do to defend life today? What did I do to, uh, help somebody out today? Did I pass a hitchhiker on the road? Did I pass somebody that was broken down on the road? Did I not help somebody pick up something up? Did I, you know, in the cafeteria, did I not pick up that spoon that was on the floor? Did I not? Did I not? Did I know? And I realized I am living in ignorance. I'm living in ignorance. We're all living in ignorance because we don't do something about everything that's in our face, and so I ignore it. And that is soul-eating. And it's not, you know, no longer I'm going like, that's ignorant, that's ignorant. I'm like, I'm ignorant.
Yeah, I—
and that's the place I need to go, is my ignorance. And how do we cope with that? And I, my hypothesis with that is, is, um, this is why, you know, students these days have such a difficult time of, you know, getting smartphones in 5th, 6th grade. They had the whole world opened up to them of school shootings and all sorts of stuff. There's all sorts of fear put in front of them. And that's what media, you know, does well right now is put fear in front of us. Breaking news. This is broken, you know.
Breaking news, that's broken.
Breaking news, I'm not sure what's broken, but something's got to be broken. So I'm gonna make you—
because it's breaking news.
That's just breaking news. And so part of that is like, oh man. So, so that makes me sit back, or I think about that and go, wow, that's egregiously wrong. That's what I feel about, is that we all have to live with that ignorance. And, uh, I've had to come to what are the coping mechanisms people have for that, because people shut down and they become zombies because there's no— because there's no other alternative presented. So part of my thing with this is, you know, something's egregiously wrong. Yeah, we're living in a state of ignorance in our world. And that is the enemy of wisdom. And I have to recognize that, that it's in me. So good. So, uh, so given that, take 30 seconds and write down what do you see that's egregiously wrong.
