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Feb. 27, 2007 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
37:36
661 Teenage Depression Part 1 Threat

The genesis of the fall

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Good morning everybody.
Hope you're doing well. Good staff.
It is 8.18 in the a.m.
on the 28th of February 2007.
And I read a very interesting post, and thank you so much everyone for being so gracious and generous and honest with your experiences and feelings on this board.
And this is heady and deep alchemy that we are involved in here, and the frankness and the vulnerability, which is to say the emotional strength that people display by giving me And others, of course, who read it, such wonderful, wonderful insights into their own histories and that kind of frankness and honesty.
I know it's not easy, but boy, is it amazing in terms of what it helps other people to understand and the commonality of humanity that we all possess, which is so often obscured through the False self-manoeuvring, manipulation, and one-happenship that goes on in society.
So... I wanted to...
podcast on a post that a user put in but it was very personal and I just asked his permission before doing it so we we may get to the material we may not but I will tell you this that I will start with a little bit of a theory or a background as to the problem that a lot of people face in their lives which is around teenage depression so we'll put out the sort of theory and then we'll see when we get to the actual post how well it fits With the theory,
Sid's reading the guy's post this morning, so I'm not going to be cooking the experiment.
So, in my view, and I can't explain depression, obviously, in all of its manifestations and circumstances, and some of it is biochemical and And I myself do not manifest distress as depression.
I manifest unhappiness or stress or negative things in irritability.
Two major responses to this kind of stuff.
But I do know that with depression, and I'm trying to think, I certainly have had times, obviously times, where I felt sad and empty for weeks or occasionally months at a time, but it's never been in any way debilitating for me, and it's been something that I've sort of been in hot pursuit of trying to understand.
But I would not say that I have experienced a major episode of depression at my To the point of suicidality, to the point of institutionalization, to the point of electroshock therapy.
So pretty radical and extreme.
And certainly by that standard I've not experienced any of that.
And I'm not saying this is true of anyone on the board, but there has been some talk about teenage depression, and I'd like to sort of throw out some ideas about why I think it And in conjunction with that,
doing a two-for-one podcast topic-orama, I wanted to throw in, there's been a mild debate about people like Washington and Jefferson on the boards and people regarding them as heroes and so on,
and I resist that with all my might, and I may do that rightly or I may do that wrongly, but I resist that heroism, the heroizing of other people, I resist that with all my It's not because I don't believe in heroes and it's not because I don't believe there's courage and greatness in the world.
I just try as much as I possibly can not to externalize it because I feel that leads my own reservoir of heroism.
To worship, I mean, as I posted on the boards, we must, we must, we must strive as hard as we can to get rid of the gods in history as much and as greatly and as deeply as the gods in the sky.
when people look back upon Jefferson, they don't have much recollection, and obviously this is the great problem with history, that we have no knowledge of Jefferson except words.
No video footage from him.
Anything like that.
And other than the DNA evidence, that seems fairly compelling that he...
And I have to say it, I mean, I hate to put it less delicately, but it doesn't seem to me to be, you know, the guy I think lived for the last 40 years of his life without a wife, never remarried, had a slave woman, his own slave, he had 187 slaves, which he inherited and also which he That is.
And fathered children with this woman.
And people say, well, there's no evidence of that.
And, well, there seems to be strong DNA evidence.
But let me tell you something.
I mean, I know that you want to worship this guy and so on, but I'll just give you some basic facts of human nature, which I'm sure you're fully aware of, but there's just a certain kind of reverence here which is blinding you to it.
Which is that if a man is unmarried and travels with a female companion, they're having sex.
If a man travels with a female companion for any length of time and she's not involved with anyone else, they're having sex.
If she stays with him for decades Just be friends with your slave, right?
I mean, she's a concubine. She is a slave.
And because slaves can't consent to sex, or not consent to sex, non-consensual sex is right.
It doesn't mean that he was lurking in alleyways and jumping, you know, but in a sense it's even worse, right?
Because it's repeated, institutionalized, and non-consensual sex resulting in pregnancies or multiple pregnancies or whatever.
And But people say, well, you know, he was a flawed human being.
He didn't quite live up to his own ideals.
He was torn about slavery and this and that.
And that's all fine. I mean, of course.
I mean, he's not the worst guy in the world.
But this is not a matter or an issue of...
I think John Adams freed his slave, right?
This is not an issue that he didn't know how to use an electric razor because it hadn't been invented yet.
He himself wrote that all men are created equal.
He himself railed against slavery and did not free his slaves and did not marry an equal, but married in a sense, in a common law kind of sense.
You know what? I'm not even going to go there because you can't even say you marry a slave.
He did not choose to marry a woman who was his equal, or who was intelligent, or who was heroic.
He chose to have as his companion an uneducated, dependent slave.
That doesn't say very much for his self-esteem, right?
That really doesn't say very much.
If I talk about self-esteem, We need for equals.
And hopefully betters, right?
I mean, there's nothing better than learning for a better.
But then I went to Russia to trawl among the disgusting mining towns for a bride.
You would probably find that a little hypocritical.
And I don't mind if people say, well, yes, he wrote some great words and declaration of independence.
He wrote some Well, that's fine, but then he's an artist, right?
Then he's an artist.
Or he's a moralist, if you like, but he's not a moral man.
Those who teach but don't practice are hypocritical, right?
I mean, just sort of fundamentally.
He was an artist, right?
He spoke, well, he was an actor.
And we know this. We know this from seeing all of this amazing acting that goes on on stage and screen.
We see Martin Sheen play a president, very presidential.
He appears to be a president.
He gives great speeches. He has that cock-eyed optimistic grin.
He's a genius. Except he's not.
He's Martin Sheen, who raised Charlie Sheen, who beat his wife.
So people just act good.
Just watch an episode of The West Wing and you get the whole thing.
They just act good. They just act well.
They just appear noble.
But it's by a man's actions that his soul is judged, not by his words.
Words are a dime a dozen, word talk is cheap, we all know the bromides.
And of course, if all we knew about Ayn Rand was Ayn Rand's own writing about herself, about how she lives the life that she preaches, and how she has dedicated herself to rationality, and how her life, as she puts it, is the next sentence after her books, and that sentence is, And I mean it!
But she married a man who appeared to be a dismal and empty failure, who was a failed actor, who never got any kind of career going, and who certainly just sat there smiling classically while his wife expounded and expounded and expounded, and she attached herself to those who were intellectually dependent upon her and worshipped her.
And all of this, and of course the All of this indicates an unstable narcissistic and dictatorial personality, which is not too shocking, right, to see coming out of Soviet Russia and from the Jewish culture, right? I mean, particularly Russia, which is kind of So if all we knew, if we didn't know the facts, right, all we knew was, and we would say, wow, she was a hero.
She was exactly like John Dole.
But it's not true. It's not true.
And it's important to know that it's not true.
It's important to know if somebody can't live up to his or her own ideals, it's important.
And if they don't admit that they can't live up to their own ideals, that's important too.
That's important too.
It means that they don't really believe what they're saying.
It's just a posture. It's a kind of art form for them.
It sounds good. They're striking a noble pose, right?
They're putting on a uniform and claiming to be in the military, but they're putting on a uniform the way an actor puts on makeup.
And does this mean that the American experiment was a dismal failure?
Well, yes, of course it was.
I mean, absolutely no question that the American experiment was Dismal failure.
I mean, good heavens, people.
The words and the deeds, as is always the case with government, that the words and the deeds have nothing to do with each other.
All men are created equal, but only a certain small section of the population gets to vote, and there is still slavery that is allowed.
And there's a civil war within, what, 70 years, 80 years.
600,000 people killed.
There's public schools in less than 100 years.
And then there's more wars, and then there's, you know, I mean, it took 120 years.
130 years.
Actually, no, it took 120 years for the first toppling of the foreign government in Hawaii to be achieved.
Before America became just another stupid-ass, bullying, vainglorious, overpatriotic, despotic imperial nation.
It was a complete and total failure, relative to the words.
And what do words really mean?
You write down, I'm a good guy.
You could get Paul Bernardo or Charles Manson to write down, I'm a good guy.
It would take them all of three seconds.
Saying all men are created equal.
Anyone could write that down.
Anyone. Anyone.
You could train a monkey to write that down.
Does that mean that the monkey is a great philosopher?
No, because the monkey doesn't treat everyone like they're equal.
And I'm not doing this to smash the concept of heroism at all.
I'm not making these arguments to smash the concept of heroism.
I don't want...
I prize and treasure the concept of heroism.
I just don't want you to pour it into historical figures.
Or gods. Or presidents.
Or any of these ridiculous vessels.
I want you to hoard your concept of heroism for yourself.
For yourself! I don't want you to drain off heroism and hand it out to others.
I want you to keep it for yourself.
To hoard it. Like a miser.
And to grow into it and to radiate it and to broadcast it and to beam it out across this benighted world.
I want you to hang on to heroism for yourself and not to pour it into rapist slave owners or George Washington who was a general who got, you know, I don't know how many thousands and thousands of people killed for the sake of setting up just another state.
And forget about the words.
Look at the reality.
Why was the American Republic put in place in the shape that it was?
Come on! We know human nature doesn't change that much.
The reason it was a small government was because it was a new government.
The reason that it was a small government was because there was not an existing infrastructure.
The reason that it was a small government was because it was almost impossible to collect taxes.
You know that human beings justify everything that they do.
Ex post facto, after the fact.
We can only create a small government?
Hell, let's make small government a virtue.
Oh, we can make a bigger government?
Hell, let's make a big government a virtue.
I mean, this is what has happened throughout the American experiment through every world, throughout the world, through every country.
People look at the bullshit, evil power that they can get away with, And they say, well, whatever we can get away with, that's what's good.
If we can only get away with a small government, then small government is good.
If we can get away with a big government, then big government is good.
Whatever people can get away with becomes the virtuous.
I mean, this is not too shocking, not too surprising.
There was no eruption of magical heroism a couple of hundred years ago, but then mysteriously faded away.
There were a lot of words, and those words were useful, and those words were important.
And if you want to worship, fine, worship the words, that's fine.
I would still counsel not to, but it's a heck of a lot better than worshipping the individuals.
That you must say for yourself.
Don't give away your treasures, especially If you reject heroism onto others, I think, I believe, takes it off yourself.
It takes some responsibility off yourself.
And don't you feel a little bit that when you worship someone that you measure yourself as small relative to them?
Don't you feel that when you do that, when you measure yourself against a hero, that you diminish yourself against?
And that's why I'm saying don't bleed off your own capacity for greatness.
Don't project it onto others.
Don't diminish yourself by creating secular gods and founding fathers.
What a load of crap. Don't diminish your own glory, your own depth, your own power, your own heroism.
By imagining there are gods who walk the earth.
Or even demigods.
Or even giants.
You are that.
You. You are that.
And take the responsibility for that, I would suggest.
And don't worship the past.
And don't worship slave owners.
And don't worship Washington the general.
And look at the long term of what happened from their experiment and don't think that it's because other people failed to experiment.
That experiment fails everywhere.
It's not the fault of individuals.
The experiment of the state.
And to tie into this question of depression, for me at least, sort of fundamentally, what happens when we become teenagers?
I'm going to speak more particularly to the men here, but I don't know enough about the female experience, but I would certainly, I think I can speak with some credibility towards the male experience.
When we are toddlers and when we're going through the latency period of childhood, we can be small without cost.
We can be obedient and small without cost.
But the propulsion to greatness Occurs at puberty.
Puberty is nature's signal that you're no longer a child, that you are now a man, that you must no longer be obedient, but you must now be in authority yourself.
The extended adolescence that goes on for people into their 20s walks us beyond words, at least beyond this podcast's words.
But it's nature that you're now an adult, that you're now grown.
Physically, right? You can reproduce, right?
Which means that you are now supposed to take some authority for yourself and no longer be obedient.
You're supposed to stride into the world and claim what's yours and be heroic and be great and be grand and learn and teach and be loving and be wise and be strong and be fight and stride the world like a colossus.
That's what nature's commandment is.
That's why your strength doubles.
That's why your height shoots up.
That's why your voice goes growling.
Let's go hedgehog. And what scope is allowed?
All of this great new grandeur and power.
All this depth and wisdom and capacity for wisdom.
This strength and this sexuality.
Where does it all go?
Well, you get stuck in a little chair in a little row for hour after hour after hour listening to fools drone on.
You are electric, alive, glowing with potential, with energy.
And you are forcibly confined in a tiny little chair with tiny little people.
Thank you.
If you put a child in a suit of armor designed for a seven-year-old and you keep it in there, you keep the child in there until the child is 16, what is going to happen to his bone structure?
What is going to happen to him?
He's going to become extraordinarily uncomfortable and distorted when you don't let the natural play of growth go on.
Keeping early teens men in the little boxes of public schools or private schools is ridiculous.
It's hellish. And the greater your capacity, most often, the greater your depression.
For me it was irritability.
For others it's depression.
For others it's acting out.
But we don't want to stay so small.
We don't want to stay so crushed into nothing.
We don't want to be so confined in these tiny little cages of meaninglessness.
And I'm just talking about school.
Oh lord, the parents.
Ah, the parents.
Okay.
Allergic they are to death.
Allergic they are to potential.
allergic they are to heroism and size and conquering not others but fantasy who react so often to any proclamation of depth or curiosity or any pursuit of wisdom or knowledge or any ambition beyond the parochial
Who react with scornful and little jokes.
Who smash down any leaf that grows beyond the hedge.
Who chortle and giggle and diminish and crush.
Any aspiration beyond their own.
And if you came from an intellectual family or an educated family or whatever, then all they do is they don't crush your ambitions in an intellectual sense, they just crush your curiosity.
So if your parents went to Harvard, they of course are going to say, "You should go to Harvard, right?" So they'll encourage that ambition, but let's see what happens when you start to talk to them about the violence inherited in the state of social programs.
They see the vanity that they wish to harvest, the accolades that they wish to harvest.
They see all of that vanishing in a glowing chasm of white-hot curiosity.
Because if you're an anarcho-capitalist, you ain't going to Harvard, my friend.
I mean, or if you go, you ain't gonna stay.
You ain't gonna graduate.
Somebody posted on the boards yesterday that there's some book that Oprah is really keen on, which is all about how, you know, if you wish for things you magically create them.
I mean, there's probably not a whole lot more to it, but that's sort of the essence.
And she quotes the woman who wrote this book.
It's 100 pages long. And it has some short title, but it's about, you know, you visualize things and then you achieve them.
It's, of course, completely insane magical thinking.
And create entitled narcissists, but we don't have to go into all of that, I think, to get the general idea.
But people say, oh, you should write a hundred page book A projectile that is full-time FDR, but I think it's important to understand that because this book is successful, my odds of success are much less.
I mean, because people prefer this kind of stuff, just sort of magical wishy-thinky crap, to any kind of real or disciplined philosophical examination.
The more crap this crap crowds out, Good stuff, right?
Bad money crowds out good money.
And bad philosophy or non-philosophy or magical narcissistic wish fulfillment, non-philosophy, mysticism, the mysticism of desire, Crowds out rational constraints and a healthy approach to integrity and virtue.
And, of course, it's much more pleasant for people to read that they can win the lottery if they only really want to, rather than saying you need to confront the people in your life who are doing you harm by your own standards.
That's going to make them pretty uncomfortable, right?
People want to... And it's not because people are innately...
To look for imaginary comforts rather than to confront real challenges and grow their body.
The infantilization of the species continues and continues and continues.
And, of course, this occurs, this self-condemnation, this war of the self.
This natural size, this natural grandeur that I think is the birthright of every human being.
This is, I mean, if I were to put our nature, adaptable and grand, I would say.
I mean, the depth of wisdom that is available in everyone's dreams.
Everyone's dreams, right? The portrait that is painted of the real world that they live in rather than the social world that they pretend is real.
It's all delineated and somewhat obscure at times, but it's all clearly delineated in the wisdom that is within us.
I'm not teaching you anything you don't know. I'm just saying that what you do know needs to be consistent and asking the questions about consistency.
I'm not teaching you anything you don't know.
This is not invention.
This is archaeology. As I said before, this is not us creating principles.
This is us uncovering and revealing principles.
You see a cornerstone of an ancient Mayan I don't know what they would be called, ziggurat, and you just uncover it.
You don't build the ziggurat, you just uncover it.
And it's a delicate and difficult process, but we are not inventing principles here, we're just uncovering them.
So the natural wisdom and grandeur that we possess as human souls runs, bang, smack dab into the petty, tiny, terrified, narcissistic, reactionary, controlling Tiny little despotisms, infinitely tiny and infinitely despotic prejudices of others against any kind of depth or grandeur.
These people who live these little frightened, tiny lives, who are frightened of everything, mock any kind of depth or grandeur.
Why? Because they themselves have depth and grandeur which they have betrayed.
Because they take the easy and lazy and corrupt road Of crushing others, of diminishing others rather than assuming their own natural proportions.
This is the one-armed king who, rather than getting a prosthetic, cuts off the arms of everyone in the kingdom.
Cuts off at least one arm of everyone in the kingdom.
I bet you this is how the tonsure started.
You know, that monk fringe around there.
They sort of shave off the bald spot.
And there was just some guy with a bald spot who didn't like it, who shaved it off, and who said, well, now this is a sign of piety to God.
I mean, this is how these things start.
Some guy with a bald spot now, monks have to have these bald spots until the end of time.
So this collision as we grow into the depth, and the children are capable of this depth as well, but it's easier to get away with it when you're much smaller.
Particularly when you're smaller than your parents, right?
I mean, and this is why I think it's a little more for men than for women, right?
The men have the strength You're looking up at your mom, but you're looking down at your mom, and that's the moment.
Whether that's psychologically or physically, it doesn't really matter whether your mom is some sort of Amazon and you're not.
But there is that moment where you are just stronger than your parents, and it occurs at puberty.
Puberty is shortly thereafter.
I am now stronger than my parents.
I'm physically stronger, and I am also closer to the original truth.
I'm less corrupted, right, because you're closer to the original.
As we talked about in the last podcast, you're closer to the original perceptions of reality that accrue to you as a child, as an infant.
You're less corrupted, you have more capacity, more potential, and you are stronger, deeper, and in a sense wiser.
And this is of course the time when your parents, logically and rationally, should begin to relinquish their control Over your behavior, which should never be strong, right?
It should be based on principles rather than, you know, sort of fear and all that.
We don't have to get into parenting now.
There's a thread on the board where people are going to talk about it, I'm sure, at great length, But this is where your family should be like the bed of the space shuttle as it flies up into the sky, right? It should contain your energy in the way that the base underneath the space shuttle contains and focuses the energy of the thruster rockets.
Your family should help you shape and contain the power of your potential as you rise like a rocket into the sky of society.
But what do they do? You're just thundering, fully fueled rocket, ready to rise, ready to thunder into the sky.
And all they do is they say, there's no rocket, and secretly, when you sleep, they shred and destroy the mechanism, right?
They cut the fuel lines, they drain the fuel, they just wish to keep you in it.
They push it over, they bury it.
What rocket? Well, they know enough about the rocket that they need to break it, right?
They know enough about your grandeur and potential that they need to mock it so they can see it clearly.
Clearly! We do not fight what we do not consider an enemy.
And so the constant mockery and diminishment and scorn and eye-rolling and all of that that goes on with us, with our teachers and with our elders and with our priests and with our governors Frightened little mousy controls that are layered over the grandeur of the souls.
All of the sabotage of the thundering rocket potential.
This is all because the rocket is perfectly seen by those who have power over us, by those who are small.
Oh my god. Let's pull that right in front of me.
Nice driving.
It's all perfectly seen.
The rocket is shredding the rocket, sabotaging the rocket, pretending there is no rocket, is the fundamental activity of the entire community, the entire culture, the entire society must constantly defuse the teenage boy.
The drive to adulthood and independence must be broken.
How the hell else are you going to pay taxes for the rest of your life?
How can you be allowed to grow up when you are going to be infantilized by the state for the rest of your life?
How can the state continue if you ever become a fully actualized or even partially actualized independent adult?
How can a hero submit to bureaucrats?
How can a thundering, rocketing sky god submit to little regulations?
Thank you.
How can a hero sit in a little row and listen to little people for lots of years?
But you can't be allowed to grow up, and it is right at the pubescent area, right around 12, 13, 14, 15, that you must be absolutely smashed, that you must have your potential wrecked!
They used to hobble the slaves so the slaves couldn't run.
Well, here they just do it emotionally so that you will remain enthralled and independent and small.
Independent, sorry.
You will remain enthralled and dependent for the rest of your life.
You're not allowed to outgrow your authority, and your authority, because it wants to control you and feast upon you and exploit you, is petty and ridiculous and tiny and corrupt by definition.
They put the fences around the cows, but they can't put the fences around us.
Why? Because we need to go to work so that we can produce the money for the rulers and the teachers and the priests and yes, of course, the parents.
To take. This is the great genius of the modern state.
This is the terrifying advancement from slavery and feudalism and other of these kinds of systems, right?
In the past they lashed you to the land, And you produce so little that they could live but not well.
You're rulers, the aristocrats, and so on.
They last you, they controlled you, they change you to themselves or to the land.
And you produced very little because it was only your body that they could control.
The great genius of modern statism, and you can see this occurring around the world in China, places like that.
Oh wow, the Chinese are finally getting interested in freedom.
No, they finally figured out, the government's finally figured out that if they crush you mentally but free you physically, they get much more.
It's pillage. Much more to pillage.
So, they can't confine you physically, they just must hobble you mentally, leave enough of your faculties intact, and leave enough economic freedom for you to go out and produce all of the goodies that they can steal.
And through the stealing of those additional goodies, they can buy nuclear weapons and all of the other paraphernalia.
Have enough money to arm the troops.
So the power of the state grows with the economic freedom of the individual, right?
And there's this great arc, and of course then it crashes and so on.
But that's the genius, right?
That's the amazing thing. And we all get this unconsciously when we are teenagers, right?
That this is the moment of great danger for society.
This is when, if society doesn't crush us, we will not grow up to be productive livestock.
We're there for the service and the pleasure of others, right?
Everybody who is any kind of authority over us, all of the priests and political leaders and parents, all these people, they want to exploit us.
And the best way to exploit us is to crush us mentally and leave us somewhat free economically.
The shreds of free market that still exists is the fertilizer that grows, the taxation.
This is why there's certain kinds of economic freedoms that are spreading throughout the world.
China, India, and places, right?
It's not because people believe in the free market.
They just say that, right? Because that's how they're going to maximize their income.
But what is really happening is that people have figured out that if you let your people be more free, they will produce far more in terms of taxation.
They've learned that lesson from the West, at least.
They've learned that lesson from places like America.
So, this process of humbling us mentally, of not allowing us to light the rockets of our heroic beings, this is what we encounter.
This is what we see.
This is what we experience when we hit puberty.
And this is why people end up in institutions, and this is why, especially those who have depth and grandeur, And this is why there's so much medication and this is why everything is just so horrible.
And the school, of course, public schools are much more geared towards girls than boys because girls are nice and polite and don't cause much trouble, whereas boys...
Can cause all the trouble in the world, right?
The aging leaders are always terrified of the strapping and vital youths, and they must crush them into insignificance and obedience, and this occurs by endlessly grinding down their capacity for strength and heroism and their potential and their desire for great things by laughter and mockery and all the petty little goblin snipes that occur from those in authority that whittle us down to a little convenient toothpick.
Thank you so much for listening. Been a little dry on the old donation front this week, so if you find these things of all of use, do yourself a favor and do me a favor and toss some cash over the fence.
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