Newton is famously quoted as saying, “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.”
Knowledge is cumulative. Every human builds upon existing knowledge. If I am using a computer to write this blog post today, it is because of the thousands of years of incremental innovation that others have done: From tally marks, abacus, mechanical calculators, transistors to the modern computers. No single person could have possibly created all these things.
I write this remembering all the people on whose work and knowledge I have been building my life.
Peter Joseph
Peter is that person who, amidst all the chaos of the World, makes the most sense to me. He is a musician, filmmaker and activist. He is the creator of the famous Zeitgeist movies. His knowledge and his articulate presentation have presented me with a worldview that is so insightful that I could not go back to my previous version of my worldview. As a (soon-to-be) psychologist, I am impressed by his grasp on psychological concepts like feedback loops and groupthink. I consider him to be my mentor. He has heavily inspired my overarching view of reality (whatever the word ‘reality’ means).
Check out his website, the Zeitgeist movies, The Zeitgeist Movement, Culture in Decline and Revolution Now!.
Sandeep Maheshwari
I discovered him when I was in my 11th grade. He was the voice which went against the grain. Sandeep is a photographer by profession and a motivational speaker by passion.
The video of his which made the most impact on me is The Unbelievable Power of Belief. The video features a question and answer session with an individual, but also a film depicting Sandeep’s narration. It’s a story of a boy who goes through the process of choosing his career.
Fortunately, I found this video at the correct time, as it helped me get clarity about my own career choice. I had been passionate about computers since my childhood and choosing Computer Science Engineering was a pretty obvious choice for me. After about a year of watching this video, I first found about psychology and it piqued my interest. When the time came to finally choose a career path, I started analysing both these paths and the concepts mentioned in the video helped my immensely. Fast-forward 5 years, I have completed Bachelor’s in Psychology and Master’s in Clinical and Counseling Psychology and I am very content with my choice.
Check out his YouTube channel and his site.
Neil deGrasse Tyson 🪐
.jpg "Norwegian University of Science and Technology, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons")
He is an astrophysicist and a science educator. He taught me how to be the bridge between science and the people. It is so inspiring to see him dedicate his time and efforts into making videos, doing lectures, interacting with the public and teaching them about science in a way that makes it sound so cool and interesting.
His show StarTalk is worth mentioning. He and his co-host Chuck Nice have nerdy and awesome conversations.
Luke Smith
He is a linguist and he makes videos related to GNU/Linux, Free and Open Source software and other tech topics. He is the person who has inspired me to create a personal minimalist website and “be an Internet landlord and not a peasant”. I also enjoy listening to his views on philosophy and prepping.
He has recently started two new sites: Based.cooking and LandChad.net.
Based.cooking is the result of his frustrating experience of trying to find some recipes online and facing extremely bloated, poorly designed sites filled with ads and trackers. After deciding to take matters into his own hands, he created this minimalist recipe site where anyone can submit recipes.
LandChad can be best described by its own introduction:
This is LandChad.net, a site dedicated to turning internet peasants into Internet Landlords by showing them how to setup websites, email servers, chat servers and everything in between. Starting a website is something that can be done in a lazy afternoon and costs pocket change. Most of the internet’s problems could be solved if more people had their own personal platforms, so the objective of this site is to guide any normal person through the process of installing a website.”
Check out his site.
Other notable mentions
Jacque Fresco from The Venus Project, Elon Musk, Aaron Schwartz, Nelson Quest, Benjamin Zander and Prof. Rubeus Hagrid 😉.