All Episodes
Previous Next
March 12, 2007 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
32:06
678 Everything You Do Is... (video available)

...the most powerful way to finish this sentence.

| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Good afternoon everybody. Hope you're doing well.
It's Steph. It is 2.22 on the 12th of March, 2007.
And I hope you're doing most excellently.
I would like to continue on with the topic that...
It came up yesterday on the Sunday afternoon call-in show.
It's something that I've been working with for a year or two, and it's on the list of things to talk about for Free Domain Radio, but it came out for a variety of important reasons yesterday, and if you haven't listened to the show, you might want to drop past Free Domain Radio and give it a shot.
It's the Sunday call-in show for March 11, 2007, Naturellement.
And I would like to talk about the topic that came up, because I do think it's quite interesting, and it's very advanced.
This, be deep, mojo!
And so I wanted to go over it to see if it made sense to you.
It is a very challenging topic, but it's something that, if you get the hang of it, can be just indescribably...
Liberating. So, for want of more introduction, let us continue.
The question is really one around confidence.
And it sort of came up between my wife and I about...
I think it was about two years ago.
She was just starting out.
She's founding a clinic. She's a psychological associate.
She's now director of her own clinic.
And she was founding the clinic and getting it up and running.
And it's just a nerve-wracking time if you've ever been an entrepreneur.
It's a rather exciting and stressful time.
And she was starting to do well, but was still nervous and so on.
And for a variety of reasons, sort of within my own career, I began to talk to her in sort of the following terms.
This is what I talked about, and perhaps it resonates with you.
I said, you know, there are so many people in the world who are completely wrong, and yet who do not seem to doubt themselves, like in a sort of fundamental way.
There's people who believe in gods and goblins and countries, and there are patriots, there are people who believe in the virtue of the military, and so there are people who are just completely and totally wrong.
But likely because they are embedded in a social reality rather than an empirical reality that supports those notions that they have, they just don't doubt.
There are people who don't doubt that their own mother or father are saints or saintesses, and they just feel that that virtue is without need for explanation, cannot be questioned, and unfortunately requires little empirical evidence in the form of how they were treated by the parents.
But they are absolutely certain to all intents and appearances, and yet those of us who are rational thinkers, those of us who reason from first principles and so on, why is it that we must always feel doubt and insecurity?
And it was a pretty fundamental question.
And I said, there's sort of three scenarios.
Either doubt and insecurity is the hallmark of maturity, knowledge, and wisdom, in which case, boy, we're nerve-wracked, but we sure are wise.
Or, B, it is possible to achieve certainty and to feel, not just to achieve it intellectually, but to feel it emotionally, to feel certainty emotionally.
In which case, when do we expect it to happen?
Is it going to just happen like puberty happened?
Like you just wake up one day and you go, hey, I'm totally certain now.
And we'll get to what in relation to what in a second.
But do you sort of wake up one day and say, yeah, I'm certain now.
There it is, right? Or the third possibility is that complete certainty is impossible, but there's still a gradation.
There's still a gradation that we can become more certain.
And this was a very sort of essential question.
And when we began sort of thinking about it and talking about it, lo those many moons ago, we sort of came to the conclusion that certainty is possible.
That certainty and confidence and security in...
We'll get to in what in a second?
But security...
And a sense of personal efficacy is possible.
Now, since it is possible, and I am the big 4-0 this year, or was, I guess, late last year, since certainty is possible, do we wait until we're 80?
Like, is it the last breath that we have on this planet?
One where we go, oh, now I'm certain.
And then we wander off to take the big dirt nap.
But why, if certainty is possible, why wait till later?
Why wait till later? And it has always struck me as sort of sad that the most rational are the least sure, it seems like, or the least assertive, or the least confident.
And confidence sometimes seems to inversely scale with intelligence and wisdom.
And I think that that's true, but I think it's something that needs to be broken through.
I think of it like as an inverted bell curve, right?
So you start with a lot of confidence at the top when you don't know anything.
As you start to learn stuff, you realize how little you know, and you go through the Socrates dip, we call it, or we can call it.
And in the Socrates dip, we realize how little we know and that all of our prior conclusions were incorrect.
All of the certainties that we had in the past were in fact castles planted in air.
Trees and forests and wheat planted on clouds when we thought it was solid ground.
And that's very disorienting if you've gone through that process as a philosopher or as a thinker.
But then you begin to reorient your beliefs more towards empirical reality using the scientific method and not accepting any social fibs as metaphysics or epistemological basis for believing anything.
You sort of assume that people are, for want of a better phrase, misleading you not necessarily through ill intent but through faking knowledge where there is no knowledge.
And the reference for knowledge is compared to what?
Compared to what everybody else believes.
Everybody else believes that the United States is a noble country founded on virtue that only makes mistakes in foreign policy because sometimes it's too idealistic.
Okay, maybe that's not one of your beliefs, but it's a fairly common belief.
And why? Why is it a belief? Well, because lots of people talk about it.
Have you reasoned it from first principles?
Is there evidence? Have you derived it from what has actually occurred over the last 150 years and what the 14 or so regime changes the U.S. has...
Well, anyway, I don't want to get into foreign policy, but the things that you believe, my country right or wrong...
My parents are virtuous. God exists.
My priest cares about me.
My teachers were interested in me learning.
There's no violence in the welfare state.
There's no violence in public education.
It's all virtuous. All the things that we believe just because it's what everybody else believes and we're told.
When you dig into that and you begin to find out the truth, the blood mixed into the mortar that is the foundation of our social structure, it's kind of disorienting, right?
And you go through this process of great doubt and great insecurity.
But then I think you've got to do a dead cat bounce, like you just have to.
You have to scale up the other side of the canyon of doubt and reach a higher and firmer plane than you ever were on before.
And that has a lot to do with accepting a pretty basic idea that is dangerous for a lot of people, but I think if you've come this far in the podcast series, maybe not if you're only on the videos, go listen to the podcast, I think you'll enjoy them, but if you've come this far Then I think you might be ready for at least one of the deepest insights or truths that I can share with you, at least that I've learned so far in my life.
And that is, maybe, maybe, you're just right.
Maybe you're just right.
Maybe you're just right.
Now, this came for me from looking back over my life and realizing the way that I had threaded my way through a very dangerous minefield of my childhood, wherein I had two crazy family members, a mother and a brother, and another crazy family member at a greater distance, my father.
There was violence.
There was unpleasantness. There was screaming.
There was throwing things. There was insanity.
There was institutionalization.
There was just a mess all around.
And I got through that.
And I made the right decisions.
I didn't know that I was making the right decisions.
I didn't even know what those decisions were, but instinctually, at my gut, I was threading my way through this exquisitely complicated, multidimensional minefield.
With snipers, and bats with human heads.
Now, of course, nothing else in my life is ever really going to be that stressful, unless it evokes the stress of those times.
But if I could do that, if I can fly through shrapnel, surely I can walk across the street.
And this idea that maybe you're right, maybe who you are is just fundamentally correct, and maybe the decisions that you've made in your life are fundamentally correct.
It's very important and it's a real twist of perspective.
And I'll give you some examples from my own life.
Not because you care anything about my life, but just because it may resonate with some examples from your life.
So when I was about 20, I spent two years at the National Theatre School in Montreal studying acting and playwriting.
And I started off with a bang.
I did well. But then I began to feel sort of uneasy.
And I didn't feel like I related to the people around me.
And I began to not enjoy what I was doing.
Some years later, I was a graduate student at the University of Toronto.
I did a master's degree in history.
And I was sort of interested in going on to be an academic and a professor and so on.
But again, I sort of had the same thing.
thing and again it feels sort of uneasy around people and I felt like it didn't really fit in right when you talk about truth rationality objectivity and frankly you're pro-capitalism pro-free markets uh you're not exactly I mean I guess unless you're at some Austrian economic school you are not exactly in the most warm and receptive of companies when you are a grad student or any kind of student in the arts.
So I began to feel sort of uneasy and didn't really enjoy it and felt myself becoming alienated from that as well.
And now this is sort of occurring in the business world, right?
That I've worked in the business world for, I don't know, 12 or 13 years.
And I've had some decent successes in my share of good and bad times.
But now I'm sort of feeling the same thing.
Which is like, eh.
Don't really feel like I'm at one with the people that I'm working with or even at point one with the people that I'm working with.
They're just interested in crushing your hand when they shake it and talking about how successful they are.
When you become sort of somewhat deeply steeped in wisdom, as I've aimed to do, it's a little hard to take that stuff kind of seriously and it's kind of dull to be around.
So, again, I'm sort of going through this phase where I'm sort of not even totally willingly being ejected from a particular environment just through my sort of base emotional apparatus, what you might call the true self or your gut or your instincts or whatever.
And when I look back on these things, and for those who haven't heard this, if you're just dipping in, I've decided to...
Take the show full-time for reasons that we don't have to get into right here, which I've talked about in podcasts before.
And, oh, by the way, Mr.
R, who sent me just the most scrumptious and delicious donation last night, I can't tell you how much I appreciate that and how much that means to me.
And I certainly...
I enormously appreciate your appreciation of the value of this conversation, and I just think it's absolutely wonderful, and thank you so much.
That makes this decision to do this full-time so much easier, and thank you, thank you, thank you for that.
But when I look back on what got me here, what got me to this technology, to this communication, to this conversation, I couldn't have done it any earlier, to a small degree because the technology didn't really exist, and to a larger, much larger degree because I just wasn't smart enough or wise enough yet.
Too much stuff that I didn't know, too many mistakes that I was still making.
And I think, I mean, I'm still making mistakes now, but I don't think they're major and fundamental.
I could be wrong, but I'm certainly willing to hear any arguments for the contrary, but...
So when I look back on these things, given that I have the potential to have these conversations about philosophy on many, many different levels with some very, very intelligent people.
The listeners are gods of the intellect, I'm telling you.
Brilliant! But given that I'm able to have these conversations, would it have made much sense for me to be an actor and show up on CSI Miami mouthing some load of nonsense that other people were writing?
Doesn't really make sense.
Doesn't really make sense.
As a professor, to what degree would I be able to say the things that are very controversial?
I believe that they are true, but very controversial, explosively controversial.
How much freedom would I have?
How much would I feel restrained?
Restrained by the general social milieu that I was operating in.
I think it would have been pretty tough to say, well, I'm going to possibly sacrifice my whole career by going at the moral basis of the military.
Or whatever else that is.
And I would have not got to the whole family thing because I would have spent my time with economics and history and politics and so on.
I wouldn't have got to the core of what we're talking about here, which is family stuff, which is...
Courtesy of my brilliant wife and I think has really pushed this show over the top in terms of relevance and actionability, to use a gross business term.
So when I look back at the things that I withdrew from or that my energy to focus on and achieve in dissipated away from, I can sort of see that there was a map.
I didn't know it. I just knew that this wasn't the right place.
This wasn't the right place.
And this happened over and over again in my life.
This is not quite the right place.
Oh, this is not quite the right place.
It happened in terms of publishing as well.
I took courses in writing, had enormously positive feedback for my novels, one of which is published.
You can get it on my website, the other which you can get, another couple of which you can get through donations, one of which I've read as an audiobook, or at least most of it, and I'm sorry, I will get back to finishing it as soon as I can go full-time.
But at the same time, it was the writers and the agents.
I just didn't feel that good around them.
I just didn't feel positive and enthusiastic and excited and happy.
And I couldn't make them that way either.
So, a fair amount of my life has been me wanting to do stuff at a certain level and then at a deeper level.
Ending up not wanting to do it.
And then feeling like, oh gee, I guess I was wrong or I guess I'm...
I'm a failure. I'm too insecure or something.
Whatever it is that I would come up with that would explain that away.
But in hindsight, and I don't think this is just, you know, covering up the scar tissue, I think that really and truly what occurred was that this was not the right place for me.
These were not the right places for me.
In my novel, The God of Atheists, one of the key things that occurs is somebody has a show which is broadcast through a webcam.
I had never thought of doing it for myself.
It was just a plot device in the novel, and I think a fine one.
But when I look back on all of the things that were working for me, and even before I did this podcast, occasionally I would just out loud work through arguments in my car without any recording.
So, in a sense, I was sort of getting ready for this my whole life, and in a sense, I tried other things which were useful.
I mean, it's not that theater training and voice training has been bad for this show.
I mean, I think it's really helped me keep some energy alive and project that out in a way that's positive.
It's not fake, it's real, but I mean, it's more connected for me because of the work I did in theater.
Lots of body work, lots of voice work, and so on.
The work that I did in graduate school and in undergraduate was essential for developing the historical framework which gives me some factual credibility for the stuff that I'm talking about.
That was all essential. The business world was very important for me to get a deeper understanding of market forces and what the free market really means and the strengths and weaknesses of people within the free market because I was sort of turned on to thinking by Ayn Rand, as a lot of people are, but she's got a bit of a hero worship for the business people and I have had a chance To not follow down that road as completely and have a more clear assessment, which I think has helped a lot.
So, I kind of was right.
I kind of was right in a very fundamental way, even though it didn't feel right at the time.
It was right that it didn't feel right, these various areas that I was going into.
It was important that I go there, and it was important that I not stay there.
And I would sort of invite you to look at your life through this kind of lens, this kind of possibility.
That it may be the case that you're just right.
That where you are is just right.
and that the only thing that's wrong with it is thinking that it should be different, or that it's the mark of a failure, it's the mark of a problem, or anything like that.
So, I'd like to invite you to think about this, right?
So, if you think back sort of about your childhood.
And the choices that you made, maybe the things that you feel good about, maybe the things that you feel bad about, and so on.
I'd like you to sort of imagine tearing open a little hole in the space-time continuum and being able to dial a phone call back to sort of your younger self.
Well, what advice would you give to yourself when you were younger that would have substantially changed what you were doing right now?
Like, would I say to myself, oh, you shouldn't have done this when you were a kid, you shouldn't have done that, you should have tried this, you should have done that, you should have tried the other?
Whenever I think about those alternate paths that I might have taken as a kid, I just see nothing but more problems arising from pursuing those paths.
If I'd sought emancipation, if I'd given myself up for adoption, if I'd phoned the police, if I'd have whatever, right?
Or if I'd fought back more strenuously or if I'd taken it out on other kids.
All of those things seem to me to lead to more problems rather than to solutions.
So I can't really give myself any advice when I think about myself as a kid that would have been different.
All I can say is, Magnifico!
Like, well done. That's sort of what I can think of in terms of what I managed to survive and how I managed to flourish through this incredibly difficult childhood.
So, to me, it's like kudos-o-rama.
Like, good stuff. So, everything I did was right as a kid because I couldn't go back and give myself better advice now.
And when I was a teenager...
Again, thinking back, I can't really say, well, you should have or shouldn't have, this and that and the other.
Because everything I see that is a solution to a problem just ends up creating more problems on the other side.
So, I just can't give myself a whole load of shoulda, woulda, couldas back then that would have made an appreciable difference.
Even the things that I did that were mistakes.
I would not say don't go to theatre school.
I wouldn't say don't go to graduate school.
I wouldn't say don't start a company.
I wouldn't say don't get into the business world.
I wouldn't say any of those things.
Those things were essential to make me who I am.
and they've combined to create this conversation that we're having now.
So kind of like everything that I did was right.
it.
That's a very strange perspective for me.
At least it was when I first began to try it on.
Because what it does is it sets you free of the imp or the devil of second guessing.
Should I have done this? Should I have done that?
Would it have been better if I did this?
Oh, I should have studied more for that.
Oh, I should have trained more for this.
Oh, I should have been better prepared for that.
Oh, I should have gone back to school.
Oh, I should have... Maybe not.
Maybe not. I'm just saying possibly.
I'm not talking if you're like a godforsaken rapist or something, a child abuser, then yeah, of course.
But I'm just talking about the majority of us, right, who haven't committed these kinds of heinous crimes or whatever.
Maybe, just maybe, we're completely right.
Maybe everything we do is right.
Maybe everything we do is right.
Now here's where people get messed up, I think.
And they say, oh yeah, Steffa, what are you talking about?
Everything is right. So if you're saying, oh, everything I do is right, then I could just go and pretend to be a surgeon and cut open someone's head and pretend to do brain surgery when I can't.
Is that right? It's like, no, but that's not what I'm talking about.
Nice try. But that's not what I'm talking about.
What I'm talking about...
Everything I do is right.
I trust my judgment, which means that I'm not going to have an impulse to go and fake being a brain surgeon and cut people's heads open and get them killed.
I trust that I'm not going to want to do that.
If I take the lid of second-guessing and doubt and insecurity and worry off my personality, if I take that lid off, what comes out?
Some devilish, world-rending genie?
I don't think so. I think it's like, ah, finally I'm having one-tenth of one percent of the certainty that your average religious or statist nutjob has.
And that really is, I think, a responsible way to rise to the challenge of philosophy.
It's a responsible way to rise to the challenge of philosophy.
Because the challenge of philosophy is it teaches you that you don't really know anything.
And that's fine, and you don't want to get stuck in the Socratic trough, right?
You don't want to get stuck in that place where you say, well, I don't know anything, and therefore I'm insecure about everything.
You want to climb, and it can be a horrendously difficult climb, you want to climb up the other side of that Hole with no bottom.
That abyss, as Nietzsche says, ah, when you look into the abyss, the abyss also looks into you.
I love those fortune cookie aphorisms of which Nietzsche was justly famous for, although not justly praised for.
But it's irresponsible to me.
It's great to go down into the trough of doubt, to take the deep dive into the Mariana Trench of don't have a clue, but you've got to climb up the other side.
And climbing up the other side has a lot to do with hurling up this grappling hook to the top called everything I do is right.
Everything I do is right. I trust my judgment.
If I got into a fight with someone, that was the right thing to do.
If I decided to back down from a fight with someone, that was the right thing to do.
I know it sounds mad, and when I first thought of it and began to try applying it in my life, there was this feeling of like, oh, so basically I can just make up whatever I want and say anything that I do is right, and I am the standard of virtue, truth, justice, and honor, and decency, right?
But I've not found that to be the case, because when I look back and analyze the things that I do, I think that I am right.
I mean, I spoke a lot of junk about war when I was younger, but I didn't write about it or podcast about it.
So it was even right to not do that.
So if you try this experiment and you say, okay, well, if I could open up the old spice-tame continuum and talk to my younger self, what advice would if I could open up the old spice-tame continuum and talk to my younger self, what Not general things like be more brave, because that doesn't mean anything, right?
It's just like, you know, be better.
Like, okay, so what?
What does that mean, right? It's like going to a doctor.
The doctor says, well, just get healthier.
Well, that's very good, but I don't know what that means.
Can you give me something just a little more specific?
That might be beautiful.
So you have to give yourself sort of specific things.
And, yeah, there may be some things, right?
But if you look back and you say...
Let me give you an example.
Like, I was in a seven-year relationship that was pretty bad.
In some ways. It was great at times, but it was pretty bad in some ways.
And a part of me, I was just sort of thinking about this, and part of me says, okay, well, I should have not...
And it was on and off, right?
We were on and off for years and dated other people in the middle and so on.
And so part of me is saying, well, I should not have been involved in that relationship.
But then I sort of think about that, and I basically would have to phone back and say, dude, younger Steph.
This is not a good relationship.
And I would say, younger Steph, why?
And I'd say, well, because this person is not...
Well, we don't have to get into it all, right?
But let's just say that the reason that I was in that relationship and was blind to the problems within it was because those problems were the same as the problems that were in my family that I was blind to.
This is back years and years ago when I was in business with my brother and I was still having lunch with my mother every week and it was just embedded with in-laws through my brother and just a real mess, right?
So, if I'd have said, well, you should end this relationship, but why?
Well, because of X, Y, and Z. Then my younger self would have said, well, how does that then relate to my family and my friends and this and that and the other?
And I said, well, you know, it's the same.
It's the same deal. It's the same thing.
So, sorry, sucks butt.
They're all going to have to go as well, as they did end up going.
Most of my friends, this relationship, my family, my business career, all of it had to go when I really began to dig deep into virtue and philosophy.
So, would I have said to myself at this age, well, you've just started out this company, but you're going to have to quit.
You're going to have to get some other job because you haven't made enough money from selling the company to take some time off.
You're going to have to get rid of your family, most of your friends, this relationship, blah-de-blah-de-blah.
Well, I wouldn't have been ready. But even if I had been ready, I wouldn't have believed me.
Like, my younger self would have just said, okay, older self, dude, you're just, like, messing with my head here.
That's not true. So, because everything was so embedded and enmeshed, when you pull one brick out of this wall thinking, well, that's better, now I can see, the whole damn thing comes down.
down, it's a house of cards.
So this was a symptom of a much deeper blindness in my life as a whole.
Excuse me.
So how could I have?
How could I have?
You know, it's like saying to a six-year-old, I'm going to put you on a rack so that you can get taller.
It's like, can I just wait for puberty when it's a little more organic?
Because I think this might do me more harm than good.
And this is sort of the gentleness which you can take about your own historical learning curve.
You pull a rose out and it just dies.
It doesn't grow. You have to water it and then it grows organically.
And that's self-growth as well. That's self-knowledge, wisdom.
You can't take the height of a 16-year-old, graft it back to the height of a 6-year-old, and say, dude, you're really short.
I mean, you can, but it's just not rational, because that's not where things are.
So, this is a general sort of idea.
I'd really suggest playing around with it if you can.
It really is fascinating and incredibly liberating.
Just try this on for size, that everything you do is right.
That everything you do is just right.
Just right. Just try it on.
I bet you when you get it emotionally, it's incredibly emotional.
It's very liberating.
It's frightening. Because it feels like there's this uncorking of restraint, and doubt is a form of restraint, but there's this uncorking of restraint that is going to lead you to go and, I don't know, molest goats or something like that, but it's not.
It's not what happens. And this is sort of the basis of anarchistic philosophy.
Anarchism means without rulers.
And the whole purpose of this podcast series and these videos is to try and convince you that it's not about politics.
It's not about the church.
It's not about even fundamentally your family, although that's a pretty significant aspect.
But fundamentally, without rulers is without terrorizing yourself, without being a self-terrorist.
Without being a self-god, or a self-priest, or a self-father, or a self-mother, a self-teacher, a self-authority, but simply to be yourself, not to split yourself into authority and obeyer.
But to be without rulers within yourself and to trust that in the same way when you take restraints off a free market it flourishes, that when you take restraints off yourself, when you take fear and doubt away from yourself, you flourish, you grow, you swell with knowledge and wisdom and possibility and joy.
And it is a trippy concept.
It is a trippy idea.
But just try it on.
For funsies, what can it do? Try it for a week.
Try it for a week. Where's the harm?
What's it going to do? Where's the harm?
Try it on for a week. Just say, hey, everything I do is right.
Everything is do is right. I don't need to bully myself.
I don't need to rule myself in this sense.
Everything I do is right. Because maybe it is.
I really think that it is. Thank you so much for listening.
▲
Export Selection