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June 23, 2006 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
23:53
296 How To Change Your Emotions (Part 2)
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Good afternoon, people.
It's time for one of the extraordinarily rare but still occasionally cited midday podcasts.
I'm going to have lunch with an ex-boss of mine, a super, super fellow, and I thought I would, since I'm driving down, give it a shot.
And so, let's continue on with our topic from this morning.
Why, oh why, oh why don't people do the right thing when they know it's the right thing, and they claim it as a virtue, but they just don't make the connection?
Well, there's lots of reasons, and we've gone over some of them this morning.
Notably, and this is perhaps more to refresh me than you, because you might be listening to these quite in sequence, and so I'm finishing one podcast and then refreshing you within ten seconds of the next podcast, but who knows?
Maybe you're going out of sequence, you naughty little thing, in which case there will be lots of spankings.
Anyway, so people avoid this kind of stuff with their family, because they just don't want to experience the pain.
They don't want to experience the pain.
Because the argument for morality is that family is everything and you're always loyal to family, right?
That's the argument for morality as it is portrayed in the old family unit.
And that, of course, gives people a rather challenging environment from which to focus on dealing with things in an objective manner.
So, the argument for morality that loyalty to family is a virtue continually clashes with the value, or the negative value, that often occurs with People who are facing a family sort of history of family trauma or whatever, family problems. So this is one of the main reasons.
And the reason why people gravitate towards this argument for morality is it gets them to avoid dealing with this kind of pain, right?
So not only is the argument for morality make them feel pumped up and virtuous about complying with perhaps not the best people in the world, but also...
Not only, but also, they get to avoid dealing with pain that they should really deal with.
And what do they get as a sort of sad reward package for all of this?
They get futile lives full of complaints.
So there is a downside, right?
If you don't recognize that there's a downside, then there's no motivation to change.
Now, I would sort of argue that there's another fundamental problem With the issue of how to change in your life, how to bring about change that you recognize as valuable.
So if you are a philosopher of any stripe or hue, then you recognize that you should live your life according to certain kinds of values around honor and integrity and courage and truth and all that kind of stuff.
So you will recognize that that's an important thing to live your life by.
Those are important standards to live your life by.
And then the question is, what is going to make you do that?
What is going to make you accept the pain and the challenge and the problems in the short run of doing all of that?
It's like if you've got a really unhealthy lifestyle, You're eating chips and watching soccer and not exercising.
It's going to be a certain amount of challenge to change that.
You've got a certain amount of inertia going on there, both physically, emotionally, and psychologically, so it's going to take a little while to retrain your will to more easily do the things that are right.
Now, I think the fundamental problem that people have with changing is the problem of motivation.
It's the problem of motivation.
People will often say, in their mind's eye, or in their mind's ear, or using their mind's tongue, some damn bad metaphor with the mind, they'll say, I know that I should do things, but I'm not going to do them because I'm going to wait until I want to do them.
This is sort of one of the chicken and the egg problems that occurs for people when they're contemplating some kind of personal change or improvement in the way that they're living.
And that, of course, poses a significant problem to people just because it doesn't seem to work.
And I'm not characterizing anyone in particular here, and it certainly could be myself as of up to five years ago, or four years, six years ago, but it would be something like this.
I'm going to go on the board and I'm going to argue passionately about virtue and pacifism and the need for integrity and the need for honesty, and I'm going to argue for all of that stuff very passionately But I'm going to date someone who doesn't really have those kinds of attributes,
and then when anybody questions this, I'm going to say, well, you don't want to be a purist, and you don't want to be somebody who's intolerant, you don't want to be too picky, it's okay that somebody has the capacity to and seemingly some sort of will to change and become more ethical, so I'm, you know... All that kind of stuff.
And then when you get back on the boards and you see someone who is proposing as an ethical truth or a philosophical truth something that maybe even your girlfriend says directly, well, you're then going to flame that, I mean, to one degree or another, you might then flame that person and say, well, that's just not true.
And then if somebody knew that and said, well, your girlfriend holds those same beliefs, then you're going to say, well, nobody's perfect.
So you're going to be constantly bouncing back and forth between a variety of contradictory positions because it's very unusual that somebody has the same I mean, it certainly wasn't the case for me.
I think I'm getting there, pretty close to getting there, but it's still a little bit of a ways off.
I'm still sort of ironing out some challenges about integrity at a professional level, but we'll sort of see how that shapes up.
It's worthwhile. You don't turn the supertanker around in one day, or even one month sometimes, or a year.
People will say, in general, that I have these standards, but I'm not going to apply them consistently and uniformly across my life.
But I'm also going to get upset with people who don't apply the standards consistently and universally across their lives.
So this is where the problem exists, and it's an interpersonal problem that a lot of libertarians have.
There are very few libertarians who live, or freedom lovers, or objectivists, or anarchists, or whatever, who live life according to their values consistently across the board.
It's a very tough thing to do.
Mostly because of our bad education, I think, not because of anything horrible in human nature or anything.
And so people in general will have this problem that they will end up having inconsistent values, right?
And that is quite a challenge for people, right?
I mean, it certainly is a challenge for me.
Maybe it's not for you, but it is certainly a challenge for me.
Because we have to survive.
I mean, even if we, in our own sort of personal lives, have all of these wonderful ethics and values, we still have to survive in a world that's not exactly shiny in terms of its corruption status.
And so people have these kinds of challenges in their lives, and they often don't do a fantastic job of being honest about them, right?
Contradictions, being honest about them.
So, it turns into a bit of a nitpick fest at times, both externally and internally with people, rather than saying, well, you know, it's a real challenge to live in a corrupt world as a virtuous man or a woman, and so I've made these compromises because I've got to eat, and I've made those compromises because of this or that or the other, And so just being honest about the compromises, to me, that's a pretty important first step, I guess you could say.
But a lot of people aren't particularly comfortable with that.
And so what they do is they become sort of over solicitors of their own contradictions and over intolerance of other people's contradictions.
So they're like, yes, well, they don't live their own lives with perfect virtue, but they feel guilty about it, right?
Like, they still have a standard of perfect virtue.
They feel guilty about it.
They don't accept their own.
So what they do is they project their own guilt at not being consistent or perfectly virtuous.
They project that onto other people.
And then what happens is they then get angry at those other people, right?
I mean, that's sort of standard human nature, right?
The parts of ourselves that we're not honest about, that we disown, are parts of ourselves that we project onto other people and get upset with them, right?
So a parent who was abused as a child...
And then when they're dealing with their own children, well, their own children are obviously vulnerable just by nature of being children, and so that causes pain to arise in the heart of the parent, and so the parent then feels that the child is causing them pain, and they're merely acting in self-defense when they aggress back, and it's all, you know, very silly, but absolutely inevitable, right?
What we disown, we don't control, right?
All we do is we spit it out into the world as a whole, And end up projecting onto others, and it ends up being an unmanageable and dead-end kind of process in terms of growth and honesty and integrity.
And so what happens is...
We generally wait for or want certain kinds of motivation to appear within us.
And then we say, well, I'll be virtuous when virtue comes to me as a desire.
And a lot of people don't even get to that stage, right?
Because they say, prior to being virtuous, they say, well, I am virtuous, and therefore there's nothing that needs to come to me.
And these things, if anybody questions my virtue, I'm going to call them non-virtuous, right?
I'm going to call them intolerant or absolutists or all of the shit that floats around when people start talking about ethics and feel guilty.
All of the inevitable crap that floats around in those kinds of situations, people just fling it around like monkey poo at the zoo.
And so people sort of, even if they don't admit it, it never happens.
If they do admit it, but they sort of say, well, I have to wait for my motivation to change in this particular environment so that I want to be good, and then I'll sort of go by that.
And that, I think, is going to have a particular reversal of cause and effect in terms of how the mind works, which I'll go into now and see if it doesn't make some sense to you.
So, the unconscious is an integrating capacity or agency within your mind, and it sort of aims to make sure that you act with some kind of consistency.
This is sort of the point of the emotions and the unconscious is to not give you contradictory information.
So, for instance, if you want to move your arm, if you want to bend your arm, muscles only work through contraction, and so if you want to straighten your arm, if it's bent, then you contract your tricep and you relax.
Your bicep.
So that's sort of how that works.
And the same thing is true, of course, not just in the body, but also in the mind.
So your unconscious does not want to give you completely contradictory information.
If you try and do two things at once, if you have the impulses to do two things at once, then you're going to become, well, paralyzed.
And that's not... That's double plus ungood, right?
That's not going to be very healthy or helpful for you in terms of getting anything done.
So your unconscious does not want to end up paralyzing you, and so it's going to try and give you relatively consistent kinds of information, kinds of impulses, so that you don't get sort of stuck in the middle.
Now, given that your unconscious is going to try and give you consistent stuff, then if you have contradictory principles, it's going to have to compartmentalize, right?
So, let's say that you believe in integrity, and then when you're sort of on the board, you are dealing with issues of integrity, and you're asking questions, and you're criticizing people around issues of integrity and truth.
Well, then you have one particular aspect of your personality, one fragment of your personality that is very much concerned with the truth and integrity.
Now then, on the other hand, We're good to go.
Well, you're going to end up fragmenting your personality.
So you're going to create these separate aspects of your personality.
It's called splitting, sort of in the technical sense, in psychological terms.
You're going to have these different spheres of your personality that all operate sort of in...
It's like the multi-boot OS, right?
It's a really geeky metaphor.
You're going to have these different aspects of your personality that operate in different spheres, right?
And the way that your unconscious knows what your value set is...
It's how you act.
Words are cheap.
Words are cheap.
You can say anything you want.
And everybody always talks about virtue from that standpoint.
But your unconscious will know what your values are for real.
Your emotions know what your values are for real by how you act.
I mean, if you want to change how you feel, you first have to change what you do.
Thinking about it isn't going to make a damn bit of difference.
All it's going to do is further fragment your personality.
So if you think about sort of integrity and so on, then the question is, so sort of what do you do?
What do you do? And feeling follows action.
Feeling will follow action, because action is how we absolutely know what is of value to us.
So, I'll give you an example, and this is going to sound a little self-serving, so forgive me, but I think it's important, and it's certainly something that I feel strongly about, so let's take a look at it from this standpoint.
So, let's say that you're thinking of donating to Free Domain Radio 50 bucks.
And you say, well, you know, I'm getting a lot of value.
This is a pretty unique resource and I don't know anything out there that provides quite the depth and scope that this show does.
I could be wrong, but that's sort of my belief.
Well, you've got this, you know, you say, well, I value philosophy.
Freedom Aid Radio is a good philosophical resource and the boards and blah, blah, blah.
So, I value philosophy.
And you've got 50 bucks sitting, burning a hole in your pocket.
And your unconscious is going to watch what you do.
Your unconscious is going to watch what you do.
So if you say, you know, I do value philosophy, but I'm going to buy two CDs instead of donate 50 bucks to Freedom Aid Radio.
This could be anything. We're just using this as an example.
Ha ha! So what happens is your unconscious then says, okay, so we say that we value philosophy, but we're choosing to buy two CDs instead of donate to free domain radio.
So obviously we value philosophy, but we don't really.
We value philosophy some infinite degree less, or some degree less, from 0.1 to infinity, some degree less than with these two CDs, right?
Or you can say, I could donate $50 to Free Domain Radio, but I'm going to buy two books instead on whatever, right?
Or you're going to say, I'm thinking of donating $50 to Free Domain Radio, but I'm going to go out for dinner.
Or I'm going to go out and have drinks instead.
I mean, there's nothing wrong, of course, with going out and having drinks, and there's nothing wrong with buying CDs.
But... What you're clearly communicating to your feelings is that you value a couple of drinks over philosophy.
And this is not to say that Free Domain Radio is philosophy.
We're just using this as an example.
It could be anything. You are saying to your feelings, you're saying to your unconscious, based on your actions, that, yeah, I guess I value philosophy, but not really.
So, and the problem with that is that, and if you say that sort of openly and honestly, if you say, well, I kind of value philosophy somewhere below a couple of drinks and two CDs and, you know, whatever you can buy for 50 bucks.
I value philosophy, but kind of less than that.
But then you say philosophy is very important, then obviously what you're doing is splitting yourself, right?
So my concern is your sort of psychic integrity.
And I'm just going to talk about this particular issue.
I'm sorry that it's something where you feel that my self-interest is bound up in it.
I mean, I guess it is, right?
But to be perfectly honest, the money that's been donated to me is still sitting in PayPal.
Because I don't really need to buy anything.
So it's not like I... Boy, if I get another amount of X, right?
I mean, I've used it to buy some stuff from AdSpace, Free Domain Radio.
I've used it for Google AdWords.
I've used it to upgrade the server for Free Domain Radio because we're getting so many bandwidth hits.
So the money is still sitting there.
So please don't think that I'm trying to get money so I can go buy me an X, Y, Z. But if you say philosophy is important to you, then...
If you take 50 bucks and do whatever, assuming 50 bucks you've got to eat, right?
You've got to have shelter, so I'm not talking about that.
I'm talking about your discretionary spending, right?
So if you're going to take your 50 bucks and you're going to buy something else with it, then whatever else you buy is what you're clearly communicating to your unconscious as, you know, this is how valuable I find philosophy to be.
However, if... If somebody were to say to you, is philosophy important?
Yes. Is Free Domain Radio a good, if not great, avenue for a philosophical discussion?
Yes, it is very good to great, which I think would be a fair...
I think we are. I think combined as a team, we're very good to great.
And so if somebody says that to you, right, then you either have to say, well, yeah, philosophy is important, but, you know, frankly, it's not as important as two CDs.
Or, yeah, philosophy is important, but free domain radio isn't really very good, right?
It's not two CDs worth of philosophy.
Well, then what's happening is you can be perfectly consistent and then you don't need to debate, but then, of course, the question is why are you listening to, why is everyone listening to so many podcasts?
Why is everyone listening to so many podcasts if it's not good stuff that's of high value to them?
And so my concern is that, yes, if you donate, like if you're listening to a lot of podcasts and you donate, then you're going to be happier, right?
Because your emotions are going to follow your actions.
So if you say and believe that philosophy is important and that Freedom Aid Radio is a unique philosophical resource, then if you donate, you're actually living with integrity, which is going to make you happy.
Because if you don't donate, what happens is you end up with just another split, right?
Just another hypocritical split in your personality, which I guarantee you is not going to make you happy and is going to undermine your capacity to enjoy philosophy and to say with some degree of authenticity and integrity, yes, I do value philosophy.
Free Domain Radio is a great resource of philosophy, and so I'm going to at least spend sort of two CDs worth of resources on Free Domain Radio.
I'm just taking this as a very concrete example.
If I called you on the phone or somebody called you on the phone and said, is philosophy important?
Is the truth important? Is understanding integrity and honesty important?
Yes. Well, is Freedom Aid Radio a good resource for that?
Yes. Is it worth two CDs?
No. Well, you've got a kind of problem there, right?
And the problem is not, well, Steph doesn't get as much money.
Obviously, that's not a problem. That's an absolute catastrophe!
But that's not the issue.
The issue is that you're not living in a way that is consistent.
Right? And that is going to put you in the worst of both worlds, right?
The important thing is to live consistently.
So, if you say, well, philosophy isn't important, blah, blah, blah, well, then we don't have any problems, because you're not downloading pre-domain radio shows, and so it doesn't...
You know, you're not even listening to this, right?
So it's the people who are on show, what is it, 295 or something.
The people who are currently in this particular situation are the people who obviously are hungry for the truth and philosophical insights which we're developing in this show.
Well, obviously it's of high value and high importance to you, but if it doesn't add up in your actual actions to a couple of CDs, then you're kind of living in a split kind of way, right?
You're kind of living in a split way, and it's not going to make you happy.
Because what you're doing is saying verbally, yes, it's very important to me, but your actions to your unconscious communicate clearly that it's really not important to you at all.
I mean, on the hierarchy of things that you will spend money on, it's pitifully low, right?
I mean, it's pitifully low.
And that's not going to make you happy, right?
I'm not going to try and appeal to you to donate because you owe me or you should feel guilty if you don't or whatever, right?
I don't think that's very freeing or very motivating.
But if you want to live with integrity, which is not because integrity is some wonderful thing in and of itself, but because it's going to make you happy.
And bring you peace and contentment and self-respect and all this kind of stuff.
If you're going to live your values, Andrew, this is far along in the podcast series, then I think what I'm going to try and sell you for, you know, ye olde $50 donation, what I'm going to try and sell you is, you know, living your values, right?
Living with integrity and the happiness that that's going to bring.
And if you don't do that, like if you say, well, philosophy is really important and Freedom Aid Radio is a great resource, I'm going to keep listening to it, but you don't donate...
Then two things are going to occur.
One is that your actions are going to very much inform your unconscious of how Sort of, I guess you could say hypocritical, but how much you really do value rather than how much you say you value, right?
Some people say, oh, I love my kids, but you yell at them.
It's like you judge people, right?
Actions speak louder than words.
So you're going to be communicating to yourself exactly how important philosophy is and the truth is and integrity is, right?
Which is going to have pretty significant effects on your emotions, right?
I mean, we're trying to get the emotions in line with our values, right?
The only way we do that is through consistent action.
And the other thing that occurs when people do that is they communicate to my unconscious very clearly what sort of value they're placing on free domain radio, right?
So I've got all these great reviews and people say it's the best thing since sliced bread, but all I can do is judge not what people say, but by how they act.
So that's another important consideration to understand, that you're communicating to your unconscious about your actual values, but you're also communicating to my unconscious about my actual values.
Now, don't get me wrong. I don't have any huge complaints about donations.
I think they should be a little higher, but I don't consider it the end of the world, because people are still coming along, and they've got like 150 podcasts to get through before I end up getting donations, or at least people understand the request for donations, although if they've come to the board, they've seen that.
It's in my signature, and it's also on the main page of the board.
But it really is around this idea of living consistently and allowing your emotions to become more consistent by making your actions confluent with your values.
And so I think that's something that's an important thing to understand, that if you do want to change your life, you want to start by changing your actions and then your emotions will flow after that.
That's why we have this thing which we need called willpower, which will get me a whole bunch of flaming emails from the compatibilists and the determinists.
But hey, that's part of the fun of it.
So thank you so much for listening.
Need I say I look forward to your donations?
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