WWB Audio Review

Flux: Takeaways

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A few more minutes for core takeaways.

This week:

Flux.

Flux is impermanence. To understand it, think about change.

This week’s idea is flux: the simple but unsettling idea that everything changes. It’s a fitting place to begin the renewed Weekly Wisdom Builder, now a research-and-learn branch of my TST Weekly Column. Rather than racing through topics, each week pauses on a single idea and explores it. Flux felt like the right starting point—not just as a concept, but as a reminder that change itself can be a source of wisdom.

This week’s reflections draw on Heraclitus and the ancient roots of impermanence, touching on everything from the constellations above us to the brief stretch of time each of us occupies here on Earth.

Here are the six core takeaways that forged the depths of this week’s column.

1.

Heraclitus

born circa 535 BCE

circa 535 to 475 BCE, likely aged about 60 years old

Heraclitus lived around 500 BCE in the Greek city of Ephesus, and he saw something most people miss: nothing ever truly stands still. Rivers flow. Fires burn. Lives change. Even the things that look solid are only holding their shape for a while. Heraclitus wrote in sharp, almost cryptic fragments, not essays, which earned him the nickname the Dark Philosopher. But beneath the mystery was a clear idea—reality is not made of fixed things, but of processes in motion. Order still exists, he argued, but it comes from tension and balance, not permanence. Two and a half millennia later, physics quietly agrees.

2.

“Everything is in flux.”

Heraclitus
500 BCE

Heraclitus’ claim that “everything is in flux” captures a deep truth shared by both metaphysics and classical physics. The world appears stable only because change often happens gradually. Beneath every solid object, fixed identity, and steady law lies continuous motion, transformation, and becoming. What endures is not stillness, but patterned change.

3.

Will the night sky have stars nearly forever?

Every star you see at night belongs to the Milky Way — some can see a few of the closest galaxies. All gravitationally bound and unaffected by cosmic expansion. For centuries, humans assumed the night sky was eternal and unchanging. Modern cosmology reveals a subtler truth: while the universe expands, gravity preserves the stars.

4.

What does existence before essence mean?

The idea of existence before essence is most closely associated with modern existentialism, especially Jean-Paul Sartre. It rejects the notion of a soul or destiny and instead places responsibility on the individual to shape who they become. In contrast, essence before existence claims identity or purpose precedes birth. At its core, this debate lives in metaphysics, asking whether identity is discovered or created, and whether meaning is inherited or earned.

5.

Is cause and effect certain?

Reasoning is one of the Five Thought Tools, it demands we question whether we’re seeing real causation, or just a misleading correlation. Always ask: What’s the evidence? Hume said, repeated observation shows habit, not logical necessity.

6.

Who were the Presocratic Philosophers?

The presocratic philosophers were the first to perform simple science, observation of nature. Figures like Thales, Anaximander, Pythagoras, Parmenides, Heraclitus, and Democritus pursued truth through reason and observation. The later sophists, by contrast, focused on persuasive skill.

That’s it. The end.