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June 23, 2006 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
39:14
297 Aggression Versus Assertion
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Good afternoon, everybody.
Hope you're doing well. It's Steph. It is five o'clock on a Saturday.
The regular crowd shuffles in.
No, I'm not going to do the whole song.
Not for you, because I am the ramblin' man, not the piano man.
So I hope you had a great week.
I'm going to talk a personalized podcast to the person who has donated a good chunk of change and an enormous amount to the boards.
This is going out to Greg.
Thank you so much for all of your support and all of your wisdom on the boards.
Very impressive, I think.
I think this is a person who really gets what I was talking about in my last podcast.
So if you haven't heard the last podcast, then I'm only slightly more incomprehensible than usual and we'll consider that to be progress.
So the question is around assertiveness versus aggressiveness or assertiveness versus aggression.
And they're different. Thanks so much for listening.
I look forward to your donations. You really didn't think it was going to be that succinct, did you?
I tell you something funny.
I think it's funny anyway. So, when Christine and I are having dinner, sometimes she'll say to me, or often she'll say to me, so what did you podcast about today?
And so I'll say, well, I've podcasted about how people should value philosophy more than a couple of CDs.
There's this long pause.
And I suddenly think back and I go, I know the podcast was a whole lot longer than that, but Why?
So I guess after the podcast, what I should do is I should do the podcast in the car without hooking up the computer.
So I think this is maybe what I'll start doing from now on.
I'll do the podcast. At the beginning of the day and at the end of the day as I'm driving, and I won't record them into my computer.
What I will do, though, is when Christina says, what did you podcast on today?
Then I'll say, one second, I'll turn on the microphone, I'll say, I podcasted about how the government is kind of like the family, is kind of like the state, and we should change that.
We should change our relationships to them.
Actually, that's pretty much the whole podcast series, come to think of it.
Okay, maybe I'll have trouble justifying a request for 50 cents per podcast for that.
So let's just go back into the tiny little self-comforting hole of quality is quantity and call ourselves content.
So, aggression and assertion have two very, very distinct, I think, functions and purposes and are two very different agencies or stances ethically.
So, let's just talk a little bit about them.
And I'm cribbing some stuff from general psychological theory.
And so, this is not all my stuff, of course.
I mean, very little of it is, according to the determinants.
Oh, no more jabs at determinants.
I'm going to spank myself while we drive and podcast at the same time.
It should be quite memorable. Anyway, so aggression is when you're up in somebody's face, right?
So you are assaulting somebody else's values or their personal space, psychological space, something they love.
You are absolutely in their face.
And this can happen in a number of different ways.
It can be all the way from a full-out physical assault Or it can be something as significant and passive-aggressive as the language that you choose.
And I face this, of course, in my own little way, pretty constantly, because I get a lot of feedback, both on the boards and in emails, about what it is that I'm doing.
So, to take an example of assertiveness, if somebody says to me, well, you're just a crazy absolutist, Who's intolerant.
Well, that's an act of aggression.
And an act of aggression in return would be, twinkle, twinkle, little star, what you say is what you are.
And that I have really cut back on, because it's quite a lot to type, rather than sort of what I work with now, which is nana nana boo boo, which you can spell just about however you want, but I go with the French boo boo, B-O-U, because it seems to fit with my last name.
So, aggression is when somebody says to you, in some sort of ad hominem way, you are a selfish bastard who doesn't care about the poor.
And that would be an act of aggression.
Now, an act of assertiveness back would be something like...
That's not the case, but if you believe that it is the case, perhaps you can tell me where that might be occurring, where I said or whatever.
That would be an assertive thing back.
A cowering thing back would be something like, I didn't mean that.
How could you say that?
So you're bothered, you're flustered, you're upset, and you are internalizing what that person is saying.
And we all have a habit of doing this because of how we were raised in public schools and blah, blah, blah.
So if somebody says to you, you are...
Oh, you like free domain radio?
That guy's a total cultist!
And you then say, really?
What is it that makes you think that he fits the definition of a cult?
Other than the enormous Astrodome forehead, the ability to levitate, and the UFO thing.
And the person will then, right?
So that's one thing. But if you say, oh, it's not a cult, that's bullshit, people just say that because they can't handle the truth, right?
Then this is two aggressions sort of facing each other.
And this is why I talk about curiosity, right?
Curiosity is very assertive. Curiosity is very assertive.
Now, if you meet aggression with aggression, you get precisely nowhere.
And what you've done is, you know, a dog has come and peed in your yard, but rather than shooing him back to his old side, you've thrown him over the fence and now you're peeing on your neighbor's fence.
To me, it doesn't elevate the discussion overly much to inject that kind of counterattack into the environment or into the debate.
But assertiveness would simply be to put the dog back on his own side so that you protect your own property from being milched or pooed or peed or something like that.
And that would be assertiveness.
Aggression is, you know, hit the dog and throw it over the fence and scream at your neighbor.
Of course, aggression in the term of the dog is a little bit of a loosey-goosey one, so erase that metaphor.
Wait, my verbal commands aren't working.
Come up with good podcasts.
Grow hair. Shorten my commute.
Well, none of these seem to be working, so we'll just go back to our regularly scheduled show.
So, assertiveness is if somebody comes and attacks you, then what you do is, and this is true of martial arts as well, you use the attacker's momentum against them, to sort of throw them down or whatever.
So, if somebody comes rushing at you with some sort of aggressive thing, then you simply ask them why they believe that's to be the case.
If you take it as something to be fought back, then you give it life.
You give it life. So, sort of an example in this situation is I was watching a Dr.
Phil the other day with Christina and There was this woman who went out with a guy and it turned out to be he wasn't a nice guy.
And what he did was he spread a rumor that she was, in fact, a man.
She'd been born a man. She'd gone through a sex change operation.
So, of course, all of this went around the town and caused her problems and so on.
And so this is a pretty aggressive way to deal with someone.
It's passive-aggressive, right?
Spread rumors around them rather than confronting them face-to-face.
It's pretty passive-aggressive.
But... What this woman did was she put up a website where she showed her birth certificate and this and that and the other, all of which caused intolerable delights, nearly intolerable delights to the people spreading the rumors, right?
So you start to engage them and you start to whatever.
So what she did was she did both things, and both things sort of have to be there for you to respond in an aggressive way to somebody who's being aggressive towards you.
One is that you have to at some point believe that this is a problem, right?
That what the person is saying is true.
Now, if you don't believe that what this person is saying is true, like obviously this woman who was accused of, or the rumor was spread that she was a man, she didn't believe that it was true, right?
She just sort of, I guess, looked down or see if her toilet seat is up or whatever.
But... What she did do, she made the second mistake.
Usually it's both. Sometimes it's only one.
Now, the second mistake is that she assumed that anybody who believed this was worth a damn.
So anybody who listens to, ooh, did you know that so-and-so was born a man and then treats her differently?
I mean, this is obviously not somebody who is worth anything of your time or anything of your intellectual energy.
So, by putting up a website and publishing her birth certificate and this and that, she kind of gave the story legs, right?
She's responding to it, and now people say she's so upset by it.
She's obviously defending against it.
Then you can always get a birth certificate faked, and these could be a picture of some other girl we don't know.
So, unless you went and had a court case with everybody who's spreading slander about you, and even then, right, they could just go and say, well, you know, where there's smoke, there's fire.
She's reacting, and so blah, blah, blah.
There must be something to it, or whatever.
And... Of course, you know, to a small degree, bad stuff is written about me on boards and in emails.
And what am I going to do, right?
I sit there and, ah, you know, I must not get a podcast done or post on the board where we have good friendly conversations which really get somewhere.
Instead, what I'm going to do is start spending all my time and energy trying to disprove somebody who's obviously hostile, right?
If somebody's hostile and aggressive towards you, then they're not interested in the truth, right?
They're interested in sort of hurting you, right?
So if you're in a debate and somebody says that, you say, well, there shouldn't be a government.
It's just to understand how aggression kind of comes in.
Whenever people start talking about you explicitly or implicitly, instead of the idea, then there's a kind of aggression going on.
So you say, we shouldn't have a government.
And they say, well, if we don't have a government, society will fall apart and it's never going to happen.
It's completely impractical.
Right? Well, what are they saying?
Well, they're saying that you haven't...
And they're saying it like that, right?
Like straight back at you. Well, I've got to tell you, I don't think it's oversensitive to get the implication there, which is that you are not too bright, right?
Because they come up with a solution instantly, right?
Like, if Einstein sits down with me in, I don't know, what is it, 1908 or 1910, and says to me, here's the theory of relativity, this is what I'm working on, and I say, oh, it'll never work because of this, that, and the other.
And then Einstein works through all the math and goes, oh my god, you're right!
All my characters sound English these days, but that's okay.
I'm sure that's fine. I believe it was Albert Einstein Smith was actually the name.
But anyway, so...
If I just glance at it and can immediately perceive that it's ridiculous, then obviously I may not be saying that Albert Einstein is dumb, but as sure as hell I'm saying that I'm far, far, far, far, far, far smarter than he is.
So I'm like a math teacher who's looking at a rather self-drooling 4-year-old scribbling out 2 plus 2 is 5, and I glance at that and say, no, that's not the case at all.
Now, I'm not doing it in a very nice way, But that's the implication.
When somebody says to you, no, no, no, no, that argument is just ridiculous.
Well, they're saying you're ridiculous, you're not too bright.
And, of course, if they say it's never going to happen, it's completely impractical, then they're saying that you're a dreamer, that you're impractical, you're not logical, you're not sensible.
There's a whole lot of meta-narratives or meta-context that goes on in these kinds of communications.
And I think it's important to understand them.
I really do think it's important to understand them.
Because otherwise, if you don't understand what's going on in these kinds of communications, then you're just going to get either angry and fire back because you feel all of these slights.
Like, your unconscious picks up at all of this.
All of the innuendos and the slights and all of the stuff that goes on when you're debating with people, and you can see this on assembly quite a bit, When you're debating with all of these people, you see all of this, oh, that's ridiculous, oh, that's never going to happen, oh, that's totally impractical, and this and that.
None of which, of course, are logical arguments or mean a damn thing when it comes to propositions, but all of which are picked up perfectly by your unconscious in terms of slights.
Now, if you're still unsure of something like anarchism, let's just say that you're a market anarchist, and you haven't kind of worked it through, and it does take a long, long, long, long time to work it through, so don't feel like you have to rush it or you're somehow behind everyone else if it's taking you a while.
And so let's just say you're debating it with someone, and you say, well, I think we shouldn't have a government, and they say that's a ridiculous idea.
Society would immediately descend into civil war, and it's completely impractical.
And who would take care of the poor?
Well, what are they doing?
They're saying that you're a complete idiot.
They're saying that you're a total, complete moron.
And that's sort of an important thing to understand.
Because if you don't understand that that's what they're doing, then you're going to be faced with difficult things.
So they're poking a sharp stick into your ribs.
A very sharp stick into your ribs.
But they're doing it even more horribly than that.
But they're sort of giving you this absolute contemptuous view of yourself.
And the question is, how are you going to deal with that?
Well, of course, one of the things that you can do is you can get angry and say, oh yeah, you know what's completely impractical?
You know what's completely stupid?
It's the idea of a state. Now, what's happening is you're calling them stupid.
So they call you stupid, you call them stupid, and where do you get?
Well, if you're two stupid people, then you shouldn't be debating.
If there's one stupid people and one not-so-stupid person, then if the stupid person is not curious, then the not-so-stupid person should not be debating with them.
And if there are two intelligent people calling each other stupid, then...
Well, they're kind of stupid, right?
So there's no real good way to deal with that matrix.
What I would say you could do in response is you can do one of two things, right?
I guess one of three things. One is that you can defend your position.
The other is that you can ask the person for proof of what they're saying.
And the third thing which you can do, which I rarely do but can be very helpful if you're dealing with somebody who's really, really aggressive, then you just say, look, I'm actually quite hurt and angry by what you're saying here.
So you call them on it.
You don't let them get away with calling you stupid in a passive-aggressive way.
You just don't do that.
And you can do it any way you want.
That's just sort of my suggestions. If somebody repeatedly says something to me that implies that I'm sort of stupid or defended or immature or irrational or something without giving me any proof and in a way that's condescending or contemptuous, then at some point I'm going to say, look, the way that you're treating me is as if I'm stupid.
Now, if you genuinely thought that I was stupid, then you'd be kinder.
If you are a math teacher dealing with this self-drooling 4-year-old who writes 2 plus 2 is 5, you don't say, look, it's really simple.
It's just like this. And you sort of angrily write out what they say and just write in 2 plus 2 is 4, because that's pretty cruel, right?
It's not helping them. What you want to do with a kid who's having trouble with math is not snap at them or imply that they're idiots, or he's an idiot, but just help them through, help them understand, be curious about where his block is, and all that kind of stuff, right?
That's what you do in a situation where you're genuinely dealing with somebody who's not very bright, right?
But what somebody who's being aggressive is going to do is going to say, That's a stupid idea.
Only an idiot would believe that.
You're stupid. Like, in one form or another, it's going to be an ad hominem thing.
And so, what I do, which can be helpful, if you like, is I react assertively.
So I don't back down.
I don't say, I'm not stupid, right?
Because, of course, that's debating about whether you're stupid or not, which is, well, I think we know the word I'm going to use.
But, and you also don't say, oh yeah, well you're stupid, right?
Because then what you're saying is that calling somebody stupid is an effective negotiating technique.
You just wish you'd thought of it first, right?
And that's not, I don't think, the best way to approach it.
And so when people say to me, you're an absolutist, you're a cult leader, you're this, you're that, well, I just, okay, well, eh.
Tell me how that's the case.
Tell me what I've missed in my thinking that you have seized on so intelligently and so quickly.
Tell me what it is that I've missed and help me to learn how not to be in error.
Because I'm in agreement with them.
Look, if I'm a cult leader, I don't want to do that.
So tell me how you've come to this conclusion that I've missed.
And that would be wonderful.
And of course, with maybe one or two exceptions, the I don't know how many hundreds and hundreds of emails that I've gotten with this kind of stuff, people just say, I'll get back to you on that.
Right? Or they come up with something that's much more civilized, right?
Because a bully is going to come and rush at you with aggressive stuff, intimating that you're stupid or blind or emotionally retarded or, you know, whatever sort of stupid stuff they're going to say that's insulting or whatever.
And then you say, well, that's fascinating, right?
Just don't react to it like it's got any truth in it, right?
And you say, oh, that's interesting.
Well, please tell me how it is that you've come to that conclusion that I am, say, the Antichrist.
I mean, do I have a Is there something on the back of my head that I haven't seen because I haven't swiveled it around my webcam?
Am I occasionally podcasting in ancient Aramaic and don't know it?
Is there something that's going on?
You've taken the first sentence of every podcast and it's spelt out some demonic message, like donate to Freedom Aid Radio, your soul, or something like that.
Help me understand how it is that I'm the Antichrist, because, boy, if I was, I could get some seriously cool speaking fees.
But anyway, so you just ask.
Well, if it's true, right?
I mean, that's important. But if you react, and that's an assertive reaction, right?
Or it's perfectly valid to say, I don't like the way that you're talking to me, so I'm not going to continue this conversation.
I mean, that's a perfect, that's an assertive thing to do, right?
Backing, I mean, they say, oh, you're just running away, oh, you're just backing down, blah, blah, blah, which just helps you to further understand why it's a good idea not to talk to this person, right?
So if somebody comes at you and says, basically, that's a stupid belief, only an idiot would believe that, or it's so obvious that it wouldn't work, I can't believe that you don't see it, or you're making an ass of yourself and you know it, or something like that, something like that, just say, you know, that's not really the tone that I like in debates, right? And nobody's paying me a lot of money to subject myself to this, so I'm going to respectfully bow out of the conversation and leave you to it.
It's perfectly valid.
Perfectly valid. You can even, I mean, if this is the question around your family, if you've got an aggressive family and they're phoning you, phoning you, phoning you, just don't return their calls.
Just hide out.
It's perfectly valid. You don't owe anyone any responses.
Whatever doesn't give you pleasure, don't...
Don't do it, right? Don't do it.
Balancing long-term and short-term and blah-blah-blah.
But, you know, just don't do it, right?
So that's sort of a way that you can respond to people who are being aggressive.
Because the challenge with people who are aggressive towards you is that we've all been aggressed against to various degrees in our families or in schools or whatever, and a lot of it's passive aggression, which is even more damaging.
With open aggression, at least there's wounds and scars, but this sort of passive-aggressive manipulation makes you as angry, but you don't have the same objective kind of verification, so it's harder.
It's more insidious, right? I want a guy to punch me, not to slowly poison me, right?
Because at least I can run away from the punch.
But if you have been in this situation, which we all have, where we've been aggressed against, then when people say stuff to us, what they're doing is they're sort of searching for buttons that will make us react.
So when people say to me, they say to me, oh, you're an intolerant absolutist.
And I say, oh, well, that's interesting.
Can you help me understand where my intolerance is?
Like, who should I be more tolerant of?
And they say, well, you should be more tolerant of your parents.
They made mistakes and so on, right?
I'm like, okay, well, that's interesting.
So if I should be more tolerant of my parents, who should I not?
Like, should I be tolerant towards everyone?
Yes. Well, are you tolerant towards me right now?
I mean, these questions, they're so easy.
They're so easy to solve, right?
Somebody gets really angry at me being, you know, intolerant of my parents.
Well, obviously, they're just being intolerant.
I mean, if they can't see that, then obviously they have a couple of screws loose and need to maybe look in the mirror a little bit.
So, I mean, there's so many different ways that you can respond to these arguments, but just with questions, right?
All you do, all of...
My God, I did go into ancient Aramaic, I think, for a moment there.
But all I've ever been talking about is extract the principles and reverse them, right?
That's the argument for morality, right?
So, you should be more tolerant of your parents.
It's like, okay, so you should be tolerant of people even if they're doing things that you find offensive, right?
Like, say, beating you up.
Yes, you should be, right?
It's like, well, then why are you trying to change me?
I mean, I'm doing something that you disagree with called being intolerant, and you're being intolerant towards that, so aren't you doing exactly what you're telling me not to do?
It's a perfectly valid response to that kind of question.
And, I mean, there's lots of other...
Should I be intolerant towards pedophiles and murderers and blah, blah, blah?
What's the principle? Well, the principle is you should be tolerant towards everyone, right?
It's like, okay, well, if I'm supposed to be tolerant towards everyone, then I'm going to treat my parents equally to everyone else...
I don't see everybody in the whole world other than a few people, so statistically my parents, if I'm going to treat them like everyone else, then I'm not going to see them, right?
I mean, that would be the valid thing to do.
It's like, no, no, no, you should prefer your parents.
It's like, okay, well, should I prefer my parents because...
They're just my parents. There's some innate value in giving birth that raises your elevated moral status to the point where I should admire them and be preferential towards them and so on.
Just because of this birth relationship, well, that's fascinating.
So tell me what changed in my parents that when they gave birth to me, sort of biologically, it makes them a different kind of human being or tell me why it is that I have to respect the fact that they had sex or, you know, what it is.
Oh, well, they gave you stuff and it's like, well, sure, but they chose to...
Me being born was an unchosen obligation.
Having children was a chosen obligation.
So if I can do things for you, suppose I come and mow your lawn, can they then ask you to come and mow my lawn and say, well, I already mowed your lawn.
Well, it's an unchosen obligation.
There's nothing in return. So it's all just a matter of look for the principles and reverse them and expand them and understand them.
Well, you're supposed to love your parents.
Well, what does love mean for you? Well, you know, they're your parents.
Well, do I love people who are evil to me or people who hurt me and my interests?
In which case, shouldn't I just find some sociopath and get involved with them and love them, right?
Because if you love people who do you wrong, then your parents, you can always find people who do you more wrong, right?
So chase after and have an affair with, you know, I guess you'd get into a pen pal relationship with Charles Manson or something.
I mean, there's always someone, right? So If that negative value is a value, then why should I stop at my parents?
So, you know, there's lots of things.
Just help me understand.
Explain it to me like I'm three years old.
I'm perfectly willing to be corrected, but not to be corrected by you manipulating me.
I'm not going to...
I mean, you can come rushing at me with a sword, and all I'm going to do is...
You know, with the guise of helping me, and all I'm going to do...
It's parry. I'm just going to parry.
I'm not going to fight back. Why the hell would I want to?
Life's too short. But I'm definitely going to parry.
So just asking for definitions is perfectly reasonable.
You say I'm intolerant.
Well, help me understand what you mean by intolerant.
And it usually turns out to be you are doing something which I want to do, but I'm too cowardly to do, i.e.
break with my family, and it causes me great discomfort, and I associate that with you, so I'm going to lash out at you.
I mean, frankly, that's what often happens.
I mean, not always, but often it's something else.
Occasionally it's something else, but that's what you're going to get back.
Or somebody might say, well, you're just intolerant and closed-minded and blah, blah, blah.
Help me understand what that means.
Well, it usually turns out to having any kind of judgment at all.
It's a bad thing, right?
So you should not exist.
You should not evaluate. You should not judge.
Yet I should still judge my parents as having value, blah, blah, blah.
It's all a complete contradiction and a mess, right?
So it's just a matter of...
Assertiveness is just saying, oh, okay, so you want to correct me on something fantastic.
But if you want to correct me, then you should have some criteria, right?
Because I can't just... You know, everybody who says, like, I can't just walk down the street and some crazy guy says, you're an ostrich, and then I walk around clucking, right?
I mean, that doesn't make any sense, right?
So you say, well, I can't... Somebody just says, you're this.
I can't just sort of accept that, because then I'm just running around, everyone's saying everything, and I'm just running around.
It doesn't do me any good.
So... Help me understand what it means.
I want to understand when you say intolerant, what does it mean?
Help me understand. Because we may be using the word in two very different ways.
So just help me understand.
Now, this is the best way to get people off your back.
So if you get angry at them back and you start flaming them or whatever, then it just escalates and you get bitter and you get upset and you get self-righteous and your health suffers a little bit.
Your blood pressure goes up and all that.
It's no good. Philosophy is supposed to help you and make you happier.
So... If somebody comes rushing at you with an attack or an accusation, then you just say, well, tell me what you mean.
That's called having ego strength.
There's something that Eleanor Roosevelt said that I'm sure you've heard of before, but I mentioned it again.
In this context, it sort of seems to make sense.
No one can make you feel bad without your consent.
Nobody has the capacity to reach into your head and make you feel bad.
I think that's overstated.
I think that's overstated because, of course, it doesn't bring into the parental equation and the fact that with the parental equation comes everybody else who acts like your parents for the rest of your life.
That's the scar tissue that you're left with for the rest of your life.
So if a woman comes into my office and starts screaming at me, some client, I mean, I can't imagine that that would happen, but if it did, then I'd be absolutely terrified because I spent 15 years getting screamed at by my mom, and you just can't, right?
You can't resist that kind of history.
It would be crazy. You can't pluck 15 years of biochemical and neurological memories out of your brain as if this had never happened.
So... For sure, you're going to be stuck with all of that.
So, it's not like nobody can make you feel bad without your consent.
It's a useful idea. It goes far too far, of course, but it's a useful thing to think about.
So, if somebody comes up to me and says, only stupid people have mohawks like yours...
And it's not like Mohawk Thursday.
Then am I going to be angry at them or upset or offended?
No, I'm just going to say, what a bizarre non sequitur.
Do you see a Mohawk?
Like, am I missing something?
Did I change bodies again?
And not Heidi Klum with a...
Anyway, we won't get into that.
Because there may be children listening.
But if somebody says something to you that's patently false...
Your green hair is the stupidest thing I've ever seen, assuming you don't have green hair.
Well, you're not going to get angry at them, right?
If somebody comes to me and says, only idiots wear that mohawk, am I going to say, oh yeah?
Well, only idiots make up stories about idiots wearing mohawks when those don't have mohawks and they're not idiots anyway.
What does that mean? Does that mean that I'm agreeing that I have a mohawk?
I mean, what are you talking about?
And if somebody says, you know, you have stupid-looking green hair, then, you know, what are you going to say?
No, it's not stupid-looking.
Although it's blonde, too, and I'm bald.
But, I mean, it doesn't make sense.
Somebody says something that's faintly false.
So the only time that we react in an aggressive manner, or feel the urge to, is when somebody says something about herself that...
We are sensitive about because we believe it, to some degree.
So when I was younger, I had a great deal of trouble arguing against the proposition that the poor won't be taken care of in the libertarian society, and that's because I'd seen so much systemic poverty in my life that I couldn't quite get around to figuring all that out.
So there were all of these issues around that, and I had trouble.
Because, you know, I was like, yeah, I kind of agree with you.
But, of course, I was a bit of an ideologue, so I'd be like, no, it's not the case.
This is totally simple. It's easy.
Rather than saying, you know, emotionally, I think I agree and I understand.
And there's a part of me that agrees.
That's sort of being honest, and through honesty you get freedom and all those other good things.
But if someone says to you, you're a coward, Or intimates that you're a coward.
Oh, you're all brave about talking about the war up in Canada, right?
And then if you feel like, yeah, maybe that is kind of cowardly, then what you can say is, yeah, that is kind of cowardly.
Or I can certainly understand why you might think that's kind of cowardly, but help me understand what you mean by bravery.
Because that person might define bravery as taking good money from good people at the point of a gun to go and shoot good people that a bad person points at.
That might be their definition of courage.
So you definitely want to get an understanding of what it is that people are talking about so that you can sort of make sense of what it is that they're saying.
But if you do feel that you're a coward in some manner and somebody says to you, you're a coward, right?
Then what happens is their false self and your false self join hands across the water, so to speak, and your false self swells in reaction and aggressive defensiveness and so on.
Whereas your true self might be saying, you know, I... I think that there is some cowardly aspects to our personality, right?
So you generally will tend to get angry about something that you partly believe is true.
So when I was an actor, I did some roles well, I did some roles not so well, but I didn't admit that to myself.
I thought, a great actor can do anything, any sort of role.
And so when I did something not well and people said, you know, I don't think that was the best thing, I'd be like, oh yeah?
Well, I have all these, I had a cold, whatever, right?
I mean, it's badly written and all that kind of nonsense.
Whereas if I just said, you know, yeah, that's not my thing, right?
I don't really do that very well.
That wasn't a character that I really got into or understood or sympathized with or anything like that.
Well, that's an important thing to understand as well, right?
So if somebody gets under your skin in that way, so they make an accusation towards you or intimate something about you, and you get really angry or hot and bothered or whatever, you lash back, well, I would say that that's a pretty good clue that you kind of agree with them at some level.
And what you're doing is you're projecting the part of you that agrees with them back onto them and getting angry at it, whereas you might want to say, you know, that really stings me.
And maybe that's something that I should look into because I'm not going to get stung by someone saying that's a stupid only idiot to wear that mohawk because I don't have a mohawk.
I'm just going to look at that person like, what are you talking about?
What does that have to do with anything?
Once you get into a more secure self-esteem, a sense of self, or a stronger ego, then you can, of course, afford to be curious because you're not being defensive about stuff.
You have a criteria for yourself and for others.
You have to have the same criteria for both.
For yourself, you're going to say...
If I have an opinion about myself, I really do need to kind of base it on some kind of reality, some kind of logical fact.
So if I say, oh, I'm a coward, then I kind of need to say, okay, well, what's my criteria?
What's my definition of cowardice?
How have I pursued it? What options could I have had?
Is it possible? Do I have this impossible standard or whatever?
So you really need to do that, I think, with yourself.
And once you've done that with yourself, then you can more easily do that with others, right?
So I was in therapy for two years and had a lot of tough questions for myself posed to me by my therapist, or series of therapists, because of course whenever a therapist would pose me a tough question, I would get intolerant and in case I've been led and put them at the bottom of Lake Ontario, but that's nothing I need to really talk about on air.
But I think you get the idea.
I had tough questions after myself and had to define my own values for myself relative to my opinion of myself.
So I had always been accused, my brother was always accusing me of playing the victim.
And what he meant by that was that I would blame other people for things that went wrong and pretend that they had all the power and that I was merely a victim and blah, blah, blah.
And, you know, so in exploring that, well, what is a victim?
A victim is somebody who doesn't have any choice.
Well, when was I a victim? When I was a child, right?
I was a child, didn't have any choice, didn't choose my parents, couldn't get away, blah, blah, blah.
So then I say, okay, well, was I victimized in this situation?
Yes. Who was I victimized by?
By my brother. Am I a victim in my relationship with my brother?
Well, no. Why? Because I have a choice now, right?
I couldn't get away from him when I was younger, but I do now, right?
So my brother was right.
I was playing, to some degree, playing the victim.
And the only way to solve that was to stop seeing my brother.
I mean, after a number of conversations around this where I tried to get my point across and didn't get anywhere, then you say, okay, well...
You're right. I am playing the victim because I'm not actually a victim here.
I'm an adult with free will, and I'm not going to play the victim anymore.
And what that means is that I'm not going to see you anymore.
And that was sort of the way that it worked for me, and it worked out absolutely beautifully, and I'd highly recommend it to relationships that you can't fix and can't enjoy.
Well, you know, just dump them like yesterday's grinds.
And another girl that I was going out with had this refrain, yo, you're not in touch with your feelings, blah, blah, blah, right?
And of course, she was right.
I wasn't in touch with my feelings.
And when I got in touch with my feelings, I found out that I... I didn't actually respect her too much.
And so I ended the relationship.
So, you know, it's worth taking criticisms and seeing if they're true and so on.
But there always has to be a criteria of proof, right?
Otherwise, it's just an aspersion, right?
Otherwise, it's just a, you know, you're an evil shade of blue, right?
Or whatever, right? It doesn't really mean anything.
Well, what is evil blue? What does blue have to do with anything?
And that's, of course, the purpose of philosophy is to give you ego strength, right?
To give you a criteria of self-regard that is not subjective, right?
Because if it's subjective, then it just becomes a matter of willpower, right?
So you get somebody who's really sociopathic.
They're always going to win against a virtuous person who is not integrated in this way or who doesn't have these criteria of proof because, you know, Hitler's going to be screaming away at the podium and the voice of reason is going to be a whole lot softer.
So to avoid getting shouted down, the important thing in my view is to use the philosophy to get the objective criteria for vice and virtue and adjust your behavior accordingly by giving free domain radio at least one kidney and possibly a child.
And so you want to make sure you have these criteria so that you can't just be dumped on, so to speak.
You can't just, you know, you're much more resistant to people just sort of...
Intimating things about you or hinting about things about you and hoping that you'll do the rest of the job yourself.
So they say, yeah, you're a coward.
Or they intimate.
That seems like a rather cowardly position or do some passive-aggressive bullshit thing like that.
And then what they're hoping for is you're going to sit there and go, yeah, I am a coward.
And you either get a flame back, in which case they're right.
They've hit a nerve. And they feel justified in calling you a coward because it's like, well, look how much he's reacting.
I must have hit a nerve there.
Or you back down, in which case they can say, like I'm cowardly, in a cowardly manner, and say, oh, that's cowardly.
But if you're just like, well, that's interesting, maybe I am, maybe I'm not, but maybe you can help me understand what you mean by cowardice and how it is that I'm exhibiting that and, you know, how that's universal and what you mean you must be a real expert on cowardice to be able to call someone on a board, like to use, to intimate that there's cowardice involved, so help me understand, you must be really wise this way, and so on.
And of course, you know they're not, right?
But what you're doing is you're just, you know, being curious and asking.
And that's assertive, right?
You're not backing down, but you're not attacking back.
And then if the person just continues to be a jerk, then you just say, okay, well, obviously you and I have different standards of how we deal with things, and I don't really get off on these kinds of conversations.
Maybe you do, but I'm not going to continue this, right?
I mean, that's perfectly valid, right?
I mean, that's a very sensible thing to do when you're in that kind of situation, in my view.
So there's quite a bit of difference between aggression and assertiveness, right?
Assertiveness is overrunning somebody else's boundaries, psychological or physical, and assertiveness is not allowing that to happen, right?
It's simply not allowing that to happen.
It doesn't mean that you fight back and claw down the other person or get mad at them or anything like that, but you just say, no, it's not up to me, it's not up to you, it's up to proof, it's up to truth, and if you can't make the case, then you've got to take a step back, and if you don't want to take a step back, Then I'm taking a step all the way out of here, because it's not up to me, it's not up to you, so it's not personal.
But if you want to call me a coward, then you do have to have some definition of what that means, because otherwise you're not trying to help me, you're just attempting to break me down, which is not something that I would spend a lot of time hanging around.
Thank you so much for listening. Look forward to your donations as always.
We're on for the Sunday, 4pm chat.
Same time, same bat time, same bat channel.
Thank you, Niels, for keeping the server up.
At least I assume you will. If not, send me an email, let me know.
I'll find an alternative. We are going to try skype.com.
Download that client.
There's a Mac version. There's a Windows version.
Sorry to the Linux heads, but we're just having too much problem with sound and audio quality in TeamSpeak.
Sorry, Niels, I don't need your TeamSpeak server.
Let me take you in a slow rotation of my opinion.
Sorry. We're going to do skype.
I'll put it up on the boards. Thank you so much for listening.
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