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March 14, 2007 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
33:52
682 Social Metaphysics

Freedom from the fantasies of others...

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Good morning, everybody.
Hope you're doing well. It's Steph, 828, on March the 14th, 2007.
Wednesday, GPR! Sorry for the server issues we've been having.
It is due to my innate cheapness.
Well, somewhat. Right now, for those who are interested in the technical minutiae behind the scenes, right now, the Free Domain Radio website and the message board...
Who will be message board member number 600?
That way we can start a religious cult called the 600 Club.
I can't wait. The message board and the website are being stored on a virtual dedicated server up at GoDaddy.
And the problem is that that only has 10 gigs of space, and there's just no way to up the gigs without going to a total dedicated server which has 120 gigs of space as my own box, and it's thousands upon thousands of dollars.
So I've already spent quite a chunk.
On this virtual dedicated server, and I would get a refund if I upgraded, but to me, that's just kind of overkill, right?
What I need is 20 gigs, right?
Because I have, I think, 7 or 8 gigs worth of podcasts now, even at 40k per second MP3 files, and so that's sort of the main issue.
It's 2 gigs for the message board.
It's a gig for just Windows junk.
And that's why we were sort of running out of space.
So I bought a Linux server for a couple of years, which has a terabyte of storage space.
And so I'm not going to run out of space anytime soon.
No, is it? There's 100 gigs.
100 gigs. Sorry, not a terabyte.
100 gigs. But that's enough podcasts for at least 9 to 12 months.
No, I'm kidding. It's 5 or 7 years worth.
The podcast should be fine. But the problem is that it was down, or it seemed down.
It just said I couldn't reach the site, and people were having problems downloading yesterday.
So I called GoDaddy. I was on the phone with them for quite a while.
And the issue is that there's only a certain number of connections that that, you know, this is the EULA that you should read, but you don't, right?
Eh, it's fine. Click. Agree.
Fine. Sell my soul. Have my kidney.
And so there's a limited number of connections, or a certain number of connections, that that site is limited to.
So, that is why people were having trouble downloading over the last day or two.
So, now that the site is...
I've sort of waited until late last night.
And now that the site is back up, I can check what's been happening.
This number seems alarmingly high to me, so take it with a grain of salt.
It could just be because people were repeatedly trying or there was requests to get the files, but the requests were almost a quarter of a million in the first half of March, or at least up to the 13th.
Almost a quarter million show requests, and we were like 150,000 last month.
So that seems a tad high, and it could just be because people's iTunes or Juice or whatever was just pinging the files trying to get them over and over again, but there certainly is an escalation from last month of the people who want the shows, and that's good.
So, again, I don't want to spend the thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars to get a couple of years' worth of a dedicated server and set the whole dang thing up again.
What I would rather do, what I think I'm going to do, is archive the shows that are less popular on the new server, right?
Because, I mean, you know, there's a barbell of show requests, right?
So there is the shows at the beginning, right?
We had 300 new listeners so far this month in the last sort of 13 days.
So people are working their way through the early stuff, and then, of course, there's a whole herd of people who have made it to the later stuff.
God bless you, my fellow pilgrims!
And those people are pinging their latest shows.
So, of course, in my sort of technical, vague approach, I tried putting the latest shows on freedomainradio.com, figuring that if I just archive the bulk of the older shows on the new file server, then there's no limit, I think, on the number of people who can hit the dedicated server.
So I put them there and people were saying, well, I still can't get them.
And I checked the file name and I checked the location.
I checked the XML file like five times.
Then I remembered that our good friend who's helping me with the web server had put a redirect on FreeDomainRadio to put it to FreeDomainRadioShows.com.
So even though the XML file was pointed at FreeDomainRadio, it was in fact going FreeDomainRadioShows.
So we'll get that sorted out.
And I'm going to guess.
I mean, I don't know.
I don't know how long it's going to be until a total server is needed.
But the people who are pinging the intermittents, like the shows in the middle, like the shows from like 200 to, say, 500, is lower, right?
As sort of people work their way through stuff.
And particularly the Freedom Aid Radio underbar 1 XML is not pinged as much as the other two, which just sort of makes sense.
So I think that, I mean, if I can just keep the most recent 50 shows, say, on the dedicated server where there's no limit and maybe the earlier shows and then put all the rest on the other one, then I'm going to have enough room for at least another year to 18 months without having to lay out the lashings of cash required for a dedicated server.
Anyway, I hope that makes sense to you.
It takes a while to set these things up, transferring everything over, if I were to.
It's not just the money. I mean, yes, I'm stingy with money, but I'm also stingy with time.
And that is at a premium.
And just to keep you informed of what's going on, the great question...
Relatively great. See, there's the big bang, the existence of God.
Number three, I think, pretty much on the big questions of the day, is how is the categorization of the shows coming along?
And I must say, tastily.
There is a tasty little categorization that is going along.
I've solicited people who have categorized the shows on their own.
I've got it all into a database.
I'm working on a web interface, so there will be some way of categorizing the shows.
But just to forewarn you, it may be for people who've donated, and it may be for subscribers.
It may not be for everyone because it's been quite a lot of effort to get this thing up and cooking.
So just to warn you that categorization might be a tasty little extra that comes with a small chunk of change.
So just to let you know, hardened, cold, calloused, mercantilist, robber baron capitalist on the loose who's going to charge a little bit for access to these categorizations.
And at some time, I mean at some point when I get this down, what I would like is to have the capacity to both have categorizations and also save your categorizations based on your login, save the ones that you want, and also generate custom XMLs.
Like if you want to send 12 podcasts to someone you know, then I would like to be able to generate that so you could send them an XML file or at least a...
A site, like a little temporary site where they could get just those podcasts.
I think that would be kind of cool, but that's going to take just a little, little while.
So that's sort of where that's heading.
But the show categorization has come along quite nicely.
There's lots of different ways we can categorize.
We have previews. We have drag and drops.
We have dynamic sorts.
And also, of course, a rating system is key.
A rating system and comments for the podcasts, I think, is important.
It seems to be something that is helpful in YouTube, which has, of course, the rating system, and it has the comments section with replies.
But that's going to need to be fairly tightly integrated into what's going on in the community server interface, which we have a benevolent expert on hand who will probably help with that.
So thanks again for all of that.
So that's just a little bit of sort of tidy up business.
Sorry about this. I know that I could probably deal with most of these issues if I put out the cash and spent the time to move to a total dedicated server with more podcast capacity than I could fill up probably in the remainder of my life.
At some point we may need to go to that, but right now I would rather put my money towards other things.
Teeth whitening, self-tanning, you know, all the stuff that helps make me look like a plastic Ken doll missing his hair through to some sort of horrible radiation on TV. So that's sort of really the goal.
And maybe a toupee.
Actually, I'm just thinking of a huge fro that I think would really...
If I get the self-tanning thing down right, I'm basically just getting a massive fro.
I'm going to look like sort of the butt of a dandelion if the dandelion is full of really wonderful Afro curls.
And then I'm going to sort of switch between mohawking that and jerry curling it.
So that's really, it's going to be a real changing kind of thing, right?
You know, they have these YouTube things where people take pictures of themselves for three years straight.
I'm going to do that, but really just with my Frodo, you know, Rastafarian braids and all that kind of stuff.
So I'm really going to sort of work on that just to help raise my credibility in the eyes of, well, people who matter.
So let's have a chat about a little bit of a continuation of the topic from yesterday with your very kind permission.
We shall chat a little bit more about that.
I really am quite keen on making this point about what Ayn Rand used to call social metaphysics, and this idea that if you take your cues about what is true and right from people, then you will sort of forever be, ooh, here we are working the metaphors together, a dandelion fluff in the wind.
Whatever the social currents are, you'll be bobbing like a cork on the social currents, whichever way things are going.
That's how things are going to go with you.
And that seems to be less of a problem for most people who don't have this sort of built-in hyperintegrity that curses and saves we philosophers.
Most people can just sort of, they swimmingly shrug and go along with what, they have no way of referencing anything other than the social mores or mores of the time.
And mores?
Eels? Manta rays?
Who knows? But they sort of float with it, and they would no more think of changing it than a salmon would think about changing his migratory patterns to go and do this morning.
It just is what it is, and that's what they do, and that's about it.
And most people seem to be fine with that, although, of course, they're not fine with it.
Deep down, they're not fine with it at all.
And you can see this or figure it out relatively easily just by starting to talk to people about philosophy, the truth, virtue, integrity, and so on.
Do you know, there are certain positions that are completely unassailable.
They're completely unassailable, and it would be insane not to believe them if they were true.
If they were true. Completely unassailable.
And it would be crazy not to believe in them if they were true.
So, I mean, if the government were to make a...
Like, if having a government created a far better society than not having a government, and if the price to pay for that was, you know, I don't know, what people the menarchists believe, 5% taxation, I believe that here in Canada, the last time I checked this statistic, which admittedly was some time ago, The entire judicial system and the prison system was about 3 or 4%,
including the police, the law courts, the prisons, and I think the military, but this was of course back in the 90s when the military was relatively small.
It was about 3 or 4% of the budget of the government.
So, if it were true that you could have a great society with a government-run, small, minimal, law court, police, military, prison system, and it cost you like 3 or 4 percent of your taxes, and maybe for another 5 percent you could get the most destitute and poor taken care of, and it all worked well, and there was no problem with the commons, and It wasn't too much of a mental or conceptual leap from where we were and so on and so on and so on.
Well, that would be a fairly unassailable position, I think.
I mean, if you take away sort of the base principle kind of thing.
And this, of course, is where minarchists are coming from.
It's like, yeah, yeah, well, we wrestle the government down to 5% of its current size.
We get all the benefits of government right now.
We don't have to worry about what's going to happen with the private police forces and DROs and private military.
And we don't have to answer any of those uncomfortable questions.
We just need to get the government down.
We still have a government, but it's a smaller government, and it is a better system, and we don't have to invent all of these crazy Tolkien-esque ideas about how a voluntary association is going to solve social problems.
Now, that, of course, is a fairly unassailable position.
It's easier to convince people that government should be smaller than that there should be no government.
It's easier to convince people that large government is inefficient, not that any government is immoral.
So they have practicality on their side.
They have achievability, as they believe, on their side.
They don't have to blow people's minds.
They don't have to answer difficult questions about private militaries and private police forces and general random chaos and a war of all against all and understanding how DRO's economic incentives work for the betterment and peace and negotiability of society.
They don't have to deal with how do you punish people when there are no state prisons.
They don't have to answer any of those questions.
They don't have to blow people's minds so they can get a general agreement that, of course, leads nowhere other than to a bigger state.
But it's a fairly unassailable position from a sort of practicality standpoint and a workability standpoint in terms of debating.
There's that which works in debating and then there's that which works in the world.
And the two are often not particularly related.
What is it that Marlon Brando's character said in A Dry White Season?
Justice and the law are often...
Distant cousins not particularly known to each other.
Here in South Africa, they're not even on speaking terms.
Something like that. That's not a good Brando impersonation, but he was sort of a caricature of himself as he got older anyway, so...
Bloated acting man beast.
So, from that standpoint, who wouldn't want these sorts of things?
I mean, it's much easier to debate with, it has a certain practicality, you get to appeal to the nostalgia for the Founding Fathers, and that just seems like much more beneficial.
It's the same thing with compatibilism, right?
The determinism slash free will thing.
If you can get all of the explanatory benefits of determinism, which are considerable, how does an atom have free will, blah, what is free will, nobody knows, it's all too confusing for words, you get to wash all of that stuff away.
So you get to deal with all of the logical problems that are, I mean, I completely admit, all of the logical and practical, scientific, biological, metaphysical problems that arise when you grant a brain a mind and give it free will.
The brain is atoms and energy.
How does it get free will?
Well, who knows, right? But it seems to be observable.
Anyway, if you like compatibilism, then you say, well, everything is determined, but we have choices.
Right? Because, of course, if everything is determined, then we don't have choices.
If everything is determined, there's no such thing as morality, there's no such thing as belief, and you really can't criticize anyone for anything.
I mean, you just can't.
At least logically. I mean, you can make up whatever you want, right?
But if compatibilism were rational, I mean, if somebody had ever given me a compelling reason as to why we have choice when everything is determined, why a rock can choose wherever it goes when you throw it, even though its course is determined by gravity and physics, air resistance and so on, the strength of your arm, in my case, the girly right throwing arm, Then that would be unassailable, right?
Because then you deal with the messy problem of free will in an atomic, non-spiritual universe.
You don't have to invent the spirit to deal with the problem of free will.
And you get all of that sort of tidied away, but you retain ethics and argumentation and free will and morality...
Sorry, not free will. Morality, choice, belief, all of the things that are associated with free will.
Well, that's an unassailable position.
Who wouldn't want that?
Of course. I mean, if compatibilism were proven to be true...
Or even if somebody could come up with a reason as to why creatures whose foregone actions are determined are still free to make choices, that would be great.
Of course, this is what people say about God.
And I've had compatibilists use this very argument with me.
In unrelated discussions on atheism, the compatibilists will say...
Well, it's immoral for God to judge the actions of men because he knows what those actions are going to be.
So if you know what people's actions are going to be, how can you judge them?
And then I say, well, isn't this true of compatibilism, that if people's actions are predetermined, then you can't judge them?
I mean, you can, but then you're just basing it on an illusion of free will, which you say is not real.
And then all of this stuff gets, to me at least, gets invented about how we...
We don't know the script as we're being fed the lines and we don't know what effect we're going to have and blah, blah, blah, blah, but it doesn't matter.
I mean, I don't know exactly where a rock is going to land when I throw it, but I don't yell at it to change course and that it's doing wrong by going the way it's going because I accept that it's going to land wherever it's going to land regardless of what I say.
I don't know exactly where it's going to land, but I do know that where it's going to land is not affected by me yelling at it.
And anyway, so that's another sort of position where if it were true, it would be unassailable.
And this is, of course, what a lot of people do in debating is they ignore the contradictions of their basic premises and they say, well, this solves all the problems.
And, of course, it would be unassailable, which is why people get so angry at me about free will, because to them it's like it solves every problem, it's perfectly rational, it doesn't introduce this haywire thing of free will, and yet it retains all of the capacity to judge and moralize and debate and work for a better world and all these kinds of things.
And so when I reject that, I mean, boy, oh boy, I mean, second to prostitution, the free will debate was pretty ferocious.
People get really angry.
And of course, I would deliberately provoke people into anger who were determinists, because that just disproves their own thesis, right?
If I say that the rock is going to land wherever it lands when you throw it, and then I get enraged when it lands in a certain place, obviously I don't believe that the rock is going to land.
I take it personally that the rock lands...
If I say I have nothing to do with where the rock lands...
Or if I do, then I'm just another rock hitting it in midair.
I throw two rocks together.
That's what debating is in a deterministic universe.
You throw two rocks together, they hit each other and bounce.
Well, none of those rocks, if they're rational, I could think, would say, well, I'm choosing where I land, I'm choosing where I land.
They were just colliding. We don't know whether the collision is going to land the rocks, but we would accept that it's predetermined.
It's not determined by volition because there's no such thing as volition.
But when determinists get angry at me for my opinions, then they're obviously just rejecting determinism, right?
Then obviously they're about free will and they're blaming me for my rejection of their beliefs.
So I would do that sometimes fairly deliberately just because it would help to understand.
I would hope, although it never really did get that far, not so much for the people who are determinists who seem to be unable to sort of even recognize this basic problem about morality and free will.
They don't change their minds, but of course it's the people who are on the fence who I'm talking to, not the people who are committed to a camp and don't seem to have any ability to change their mind.
And of course they may feel this about me as well.
But the difference is that I hold them responsible for not changing their minds, and I have no mind to change if determinism is true, and therefore I am not responsible.
So they get more angry at me when I'm not responsible than I do at them when they are responsible in my particular view of things.
But that's sort of an unassailable position.
And it's the same thing is sort of true in certain kinds of God.
If you could live forever, which would be cool, I'd love to live forever, if you could live forever, and if some sky ghost was watching out for you and there were no negatives to it, as people say, well, faith gives people comfort, makes them happy.
It makes them believe that they'll be reunited with their loved ones who inflicted religion on them.
Anyway. If you only look at the pluses and none of the negatives, then anything looks great.
It's like in economics. If you say, well, we've got this job stimulus package as $2 billion, it's going to create a million jobs or whatever, 100,000 jobs.
And it's going to reduce unemployment.
Well, what could you conceivably say against that?
Economics is always about looking at the hidden negatives of transactions.
If you have a $2 billion stimulus package, you're destroying far more jobs than you create.
But the people who get the jobs are conscious of and know it and appreciative and happy and will vote for it.
And the people who lose their jobs or who don't get jobs because they would have otherwise been created if this money had not been forcibly redirected.
Those people never know their loss.
They can't trace it to the direct thing, right?
So it's all looking for the hidden costs of things.
And philosophy is always about looking for the hidden costs of things.
I mean, the benefits are obvious to particular forms of belief.
But the hidden costs is really the job of the philosopher to point out, which is why philosophers and economists are so irritating to people.
Because people want to believe that things are just simple, and you just look at it this way, and you just do this, and you just do that, and the benefits are obvious, and what are you copying on about these potential or possible negatives that you can't prove, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Well, in my view, at least, looking at the hidden costs of things is essential.
And, of course, looking at the principles of things is essential.
And that, of course, is a very, very important thing.
Everybody talks about social approval, not sort of explicitly, but implicitly, and really what's going on when people try and tell you what's right or wrong in your life.
For the most part, unless they're rigorously self-examined and rigorously trained philosophers, what they're telling you is, do what I say or I'll disapprove of you.
And of course, the costs of that are hidden, but the benefits of that are clear.
The costs of that are hidden, the benefits of that are clear.
The benefits of conformity are very clear.
You get approval, you get goodies, you get...
Laudits, you get TV shows.
I mean, if you're intelligent and erudite and loquacious, then you get all of these wonderful goodies if you toe the party line when it comes to one of the party lines.
Anarchism is really not a party line.
But if you toe one of the established party lines, you will get many goodies.
So then you can be Ann Coulter.
On some show, talking trash about Quebecers and making snide comments and being just generally irresponsible and irrational.
And you get well paid for it, because you're sort of a public and, I guess, vaguely attractive, if you're into transvestites, figure that puts a positive spin on religious, fundamentalist, statist, empire-based Republican thought processes.
And you'll be well paid for that.
You'll be well paid for talking that kind of trash.
Because people like that kind of trash.
It reinforces them. So the benefits of conformity are very clear.
And when we're children, of course, the benefits of conformity far outweigh the negatives.
Far outweigh the negatives.
Because the negatives are just so enormous.
Just so enormous. The benefits of non-conformity with our parents is psychological destruction, for the most part.
I mean, it really is life or death at that time.
In our lives. So...
That aspect of things is pretty clear.
The benefits are very clear. The costs are somewhat hidden and really only show up as in later life, right?
They show up as vague depression, ennui, fits of anger.
They show up as addictions, as courtingly self-destructive behavior, as loneliness, as codependency, as all of these things that happen when you have to prop up a failed self, these things, a failed state.
Well, the world is full of failed selves.
I mean that by that they have failed themselves, largely because they have been failed by those who parented them or taught them.
The world is full of these failed selves, and those selves then have to sort of prop themselves up.
They have to prop themselves up, and they do this through collectivism.
They do this through beliefs that any philosopher would find bizarre, like religion and patriotism and all the love of family and so on.
But it's all sort of sheer and mere emptiness.
And what happens when you come in contact with one of these people?
Well, I think it's really important to gauge.
And again, you're not going to get to do this, although you do know it unconsciously.
I guarantee you that you know it unconsciously.
It's why you veer away from topics that make people angry or uncomfortable or dismissive or contemptuous or snarky or eye-rolling or whatever.
The signals are all very clear.
But I think it's really important to understand the horror of the existence of those around you, like the fundamental horror of the existence of those around you.
And a huge amount of society, of course, is around a big, continuous, endless advertisement about how this is not horror.
It is not horror to be without a self.
It is not horror. It is not horror to be conformist.
It is not horror to support violence.
It is not horror to believe in gods that don't exist.
It is not agonizing for any of these things.
This is an enormous amount of propaganda and leave-it-to-beaver kind of apple-cheeked, grinning nonsense that is designed to convince you that conformity has no cost.
Or if it does have a cost, it's only because you're conforming to the wrong people.
Conformity to Scientology is weird.
Conformity to Catholicism is beautiful.
And this is what people love to talk about, right?
There's some form of conformity, right?
We had the myth of the golden gun yesterday.
Today is the myth of the golden conformity.
There's some sort of conformity to other people that breeds happiness.
Somewhere, somehow, some conformity will breed happiness.
And, of course, it's all the purest nonsense.
There is no conformity that will breed happiness.
You have to think for yourself. You have to conform to reality and to reason, which is a self-generated and self-sustained activity.
It can't be inherited. The principles can be inherited, like you don't have to invent the scientific method to be a scientist, but you sure as hell do have to follow the scientific method to be a scientist.
So, when these broken souls, when these failed selves...
Come across questions that will reveal that failure, as we talked about yesterday.
The hostility is really extraordinary, and it takes very, very many patterns.
And there's a rigidity in a failed self, right?
There's an extraordinary rigidity in it.
These sort of base questions can't be asked.
And this rigid hostility that we all face is really, really key to understanding how it is that we end up where we end up and why it is that we generate so much hostility.
And it's a very, very hard thing to come across.
And it does take an effort of...
Almost willed self-confidence.
I mean, it's not that willed insofar as if you just take your reference point from reality and empiricism rather than from the emotions of those around you.
Then it's not really that willed a sense of self-confidence, but it really does feel that way when you're starting out.
You know, it's just you and me against the will, right?
Where you say... Well, everybody dislikes my true self.
Everybody dislikes my questions.
Everybody seems hostile when I open my mouth.
Or whenever I open my mouth, people act as if I'm trying to convince them that they should put teapots on their heads and dance the Macarena without dropping it.
Why is this even relevant?
What are you bringing this up for? What's the context for this?
I don't know what you're talking about.
A completely bizarre thing that you're saying.
What on earth are you on about?
This makes no sense.
And so people will just sort of pass it by.
Like you just suddenly, I don't know, ralphed up a bit of bile and spat it on a conference room table.
People will just kind of ignore it with their eyes a little wide and just move on to other topics.
And that sort of the yakking of philosophy that people wish to not deal with It's very fundamental.
And if you push it, they'll just get hostile or further, you know, more contemptuous.
If you take your reference point as their emotions, then, of course, you're just weird and out of context and not firing on all cylinders and strangely obsessed with weird abstracts.
And you don't really know what's important and you don't have a clue and you're out to lunch and you're a space cadet and all these kinds of things, right?
That's, of course, exactly what...
That's how philosophers are inoculated.
That's how they are rendered harmless to society, which is harmful.
This is how the antibodies of the cancer kill the agents that would kill the cancer.
That's how it works.
So to reach past this and to get through to reality, past all of this hostility and indifference and contempt and all this, that and the other, to actually reach reality through all of this is not the easiest thing in the world.
And it requires that you accept an enormous number of things about people and reality that are very hard to accept.
Very hard to accept.
At least it was for me. Maybe it's easier for you.
But you have to accept that people are lying and that they know that they're lying at some unconscious level and that's where the hostility comes from, that people are faking it, that they're just making up the most abysmal nonsense to get through life and in a wide-eyed manner calling it all true and factual and absolute, that they're making extraordinary knowledge and virtue claims that they just don't have any right to and don't have any reason to, and that they know this fundamentally, which is where their hostility comes from.
And let's not even bother with responsibility, but just talk about the etymology of these kinds of things.
So, accepting that you're surrounded by ruined souls, by broken people aping wholeness, by shattered souls faking integrity and hating anybody who asks questions, accepting that is a pretty rough thing.
But you know it deep down.
And if you reject it, you just end up with depression and insecurity.
Because when you reject your knowledge, that is clear and evident.
It's clear and evident. If everybody reacts to you with hostility and negativity, then either you're a really bad person and everyone else is virtuous, or you're a really good person and everyone else is bad.
Those are the only two possibilities.
And the way I think that you can deal with this is just look at the world, right?
Is the world virtuous? Is the world a virtuous place?
And are you doing terrible and immoral things?
It's not that complicated a question.
We just really don't like the answer.
That's the philosophy in a nutshell.
It's not that complicated a question.
It's really easy to answer.
We just don't like the answer. So you just look at the world.
Are the people who reject me really moral good people?
And am I a really bad person?
That's all it really comes down to.
The people who roll their eyes at me and who scorn me are the really good people.
Would moral people scorn a legitimate question?
People who had integrity and curiosity and virtue, would they be hostile towards honest and curious questions of depth?
And is the world a shining example of progressive virtue, and I am sort of the black sunspot on the shining, virtuous, foaming, sunny world of society?
Well, if you are sort of a decent person, you're not out there setting fire to kittens or whatever, and you are surrounded by virtuous, wonderful people who get hostile and negative towards you when you ask questions, then, yeah, okay, then you're the ruined soul.
Everyone else is great and virtuous, and you should try and figure out how to become a better person.
But I guarantee you that's not the case, because, you know, good, honest people, decent, moral people don't even have to be philosophers, but they're not going to roll their eyes at honest questions of depth.
The only people who are hostile towards honest questions of depth are those who don't like the answers that could even come out of it, or don't even like where the questions could lead, because they're faking virtue while performing vice, performing corruption.
So, I mean, it's just a basic swing of perspective that you just kind of have to get a handle on, and I really suggest that this is one of the most important questions, if not the most important question, if you haven't dealt with this already, the most important question for you.
The most important question for you.
Because if you don't know your relationship to the world in terms of virtue and rejection, in terms of acceptance and hostility, if you feel the hostility of others and interpret that as negativity towards yourself, then philosophy, of course, is just going to breed misery.
And really, what's the point of that?
That's not going to get you any kind of joy or happiness.
That's going to be a pretty miserable existence.
And I do want philosophy to bring you joy, but I'm telling you, it's going to bring you a little bit of pain first, which is that you do have to look at the rejection that you have experienced in your life.
You do have to process it relative to people's virtue and vice.
You do have to look at the will, and you have to come to a conclusion.
If you want philosophy to bring you happiness, you have to come to a conclusion about what it means to be virtuous in a corrupt world.
What it means to tell the truth in a world that lies to itself and desperately doesn't want that to come out, but knows it deep down.
Because if you can't come to that conclusion, then you will forever be bewildered, confused, and upset, and feel negative towards yourself, and caught things like depression and insecurity, self-hatred.
You will forever feel all of those sorts of things, and that's a real shame, because that's not the truth of things.
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