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March 18, 2007 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
59:17
689 Stef's Resentment

Attempting to dislodge the chip on my shoulder

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Hello everybody, it's Steph. It's time to go walkies!
Walkies! Come on everybody! Let's go to walkies!
Walkies! It's Sunday the 16th, I think it is, of March 2007 and I'm wrapped up secure and tight here.
Hopefully the sound will come through, but I wanted to make sure that in this howling spring wind up here in Canada, although it is a beautiful day outside, The green baby head of spring is coming out of the wintry orifice of the grim season of snow, so there is great cause for celebration.
There is much running of snow in the streets, and the land is awakening to pure joy, so I hope that you're doing well.
I spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out all of this Visual Studio 2005 stuff to get the new interface on the...
at least a demo of the new interface for the shows on the web.
And that's available on the board at freedomainradio.com forward slash B-O-A-R-D. And you can come and have a look.
It's under the general headings. You can also vote for our new logo, which I quite like.
You can let me know what you think about that.
There's going to be some redesign as I sort of prepare for this full-time business occupation.
Just getting some housekeeping underway now that we're hitting 700 podcasts.
I really wanted to have the opportunity to provide an interface for navigating through them, saving selections, and ideally, hopefully next weekend, having the capacity or the ability to email selections to other people.
So if you know somebody who's interested in the relationship stuff or dream analysis, you can email them a subset of podcasts, and that will be embedded in the email so that they can just try the ones they like rather than saying, hey, this is a great site you should try.
And they get sort of confronted with 700-odd podcasts, and where would they even begin?
Who knows? A bit overwhelming. So that's the idea behind that, and thanks again to the people who sent me in the categorization so that I could jam them in and take credit.
So yesterday, or last night rather, I had a very interesting thought.
Interesting to me, anyway. Hopefully you feel the same way.
And the thought was something like this.
Do you know, I have had in my life what I would consider to be some pretty significant obstacles.
And I'm not trying to whine here, I'm just sort of trying to get out of whining, so to speak.
I'm trying to get out of resentment or trying to get out of the chip on my shoulder that I have about Certain aspects of the world and my relationship to it and its relationship to me.
And the reason I'm sharing this is that I think it may be more common than just me, so perhaps it will be of use for you as well.
You can let me know. But I'm trying to sort of think about, as I aim to do this unusual and strange thing of becoming a full-time internet philosopher, an occupation that is being invented, yay, verily, as we speak.
As I aim towards this really challenging goal of creating a profession at the same time as occupying it, I want to make sure that I identify, and I think this is good practice when you embark on just about anything new,
I wanted to identify any emotional issues that I might have that would thwart where it is that I want to get to, and pretty much for the first time in my life, and this is half surprising, And how embedded self-knowledge is and how hard it is to see at times.
Almost immediately popped into my head this pretty basic fact that I have a fairly large chip on my shoulder.
And you know what they say.
Oh, bad joke coming. Praise yourself.
A chip on the shoulder is evidence of wood higher up.
Oh, somebody told that to me once and then went into the bad joke category of which all jokes that are Not good go, and none of the jokes that are good stick, so...
That I have a sort of chip on my shoulder about the difficulties of trying to be a person who lives or thinks or speaks or breathes with integrity in a world that is hostile to that.
And... I have, I think for many, many years, though I have always, always struggled on That song, I get knocked down, I get back up again, and something about pissing the night away, which I don't quite understand,
but that song, I think, has certainly been apt for me, that I am rejected, and I come back, and nobody wants to pay any attention to my novels, and I keep writing more, and I get rejected, nobody wants to mentor me in university, so I continue to philosophize, and so on and so on, and so...
And as an actor, right?
I mean, even if you look at...
I don't know if you've listened to any of The God of Atheists.
A couple of thousand people have by now.
A few more than have donated, but we shan't complain too much.
But... I think I did a fairly decent job of reading that, and that's sort of the artistic side of things that I've always sort of enjoyed.
But even that aspect of things, you just keep plugging away, right?
Never ever give up, as Churchill says.
So, I have...
I've sort of been knocked down and rejected in 20 years of failure, of perpetual failure in the realm of the arts and academics and literature, which is sort of the three things that I focused on.
And in the business world, I've had more success, but even that has a ceiling for it.
And the ceiling is really that I'm just not that interested in the business world anymore relative to this conversation.
So that's not really anybody else's fault but mine, so I can't really complain about that.
But I have certainly found that the resentment that I think I have accumulated, lo, these decades of rejection and scorn and being ignored and so on, which I think has actually felt worse since I've started to gain some, you know, sort of finally, and thanks to technology and thanks to you, my magnificent listeners, I finally began to gain some real traction, right?
As long as you continue to be ignored and scorned and this and that, then I guess part of you can sort of say, well, it sure feels like I have something to offer.
It sure feels like I could write a good book or two, and it sure feels like I have some nuggets of truth to sprinkle out.
But, well, obviously the world doesn't feel that way, and There's something that I'm missing.
But now that I have some sort of traction in this, I'm just sort of looking at the statistics for March, even so far, sort of first half of March, a couple of hundred thousand pings on the MP3 files.
I don't know how many of those are repeat pings because we've had some issues with the server in terms of the number of people who can access it and so on, but I don't know.
But still, I mean, it's a continual growth thing, and I've got to think that we have one of the more successful podcasts on the planet.
And I would say not just successful in terms of, I don't know, related to things like English as a Second Language, the podcast, or Dignation, or Dignation, or some of the other podcasts which are more specialized and more jokey, and some of the ones that are more solely political and less philosophical and personal and psychological.
So I think we have...
Well, in my mind, we have the most successful podcasts on the planet in terms of content and also in terms of growing reach.
I think that's very nice. I don't have any idea how many listeners there are in total.
We have over 600 members on the board in less than, gosh, less than a year for sure, and it's been growing fairly rapidly.
And I don't know how many people are on the board versus just listening to the show.
But, uh, I gotta think that not a huge number of people actually end up registering on the board.
They might browse or whatever, so...
I don't know, 1% of people end up on the board?
That's, uh... That's a pretty healthy chunk of people, 60,000 people.
Hello, hello, welcome.
Thank you for listening. So, now that I have some sort of sense that I do, as I sort of always felt in my heart of hearts, and...
I felt that when I was sort of alone with my novels or alone with my thoughts that I was writing or thinking, that there was great value.
But the fact that it never gained any traction in the world beyond, with others, kept that resentment muted, I guess.
And so I've just sort of noticed that Mr.
Crankypants is making the scene a little bit.
And I think there is that old statement, Johnson, I think it was, Samuel Johnson, who said, a banker is a person who, after you have struggled to reach the shore, ladens you down with life rafts and life jackets and help of kind that you don't need anymore because you've already made it to shore.
And that, of course, is true. I mean, you need the money, you can't get the money.
Nothing wrong with it. It's a point of fact.
And it's interesting to me that the resentment that I had not felt As keenly in the past, but not feeling that resentment also gave me less sense of the powers of which I was capable of.
Keeping that fundamental conflict between myself and the world sort of muted.
Sort of like, well, you know, there's a mismatch.
I still think I have value, but I'll keep looking.
And the fact that I wasn't really able or willing to bring my values really into my life in the way that I have now...
Over the past few years.
It actually was less frustrating for me, in a sense, or I felt less upset or resentful when I was not having any reach.
I hate to say success because that's just such a silly term with regards to a philosophical conversation, but effect or reach or impact or conversations that have deep value and meaning.
When I wasn't able to achieve any of that, then...
I actually felt less resentful.
So now that I've had some, you know, success, finally, after only 25 years of working in philosophy, I find that I feel more keenly the rejection that I faced in the past, if that makes any sense, right?
I mean, if everyone tells you that you're hateful or unlovable or cold or emotionally weird or whatever, right?
And then one great person finds you warm and vibrant and loving and beautiful and this and that, and somebody who you would really respect, then the doubt that you would have felt over the years prior gets alleviated to a pretty significant degree.
For the rest of my life, God forbid, if Christina got hit by a bus tomorrow, for the rest of my life I would know that I could be loved.
and that I could love with great joy and intensity and depth and no one would be able to tell me that I was not lovable or could not be loved or was not capable of love or you know all the stuff that people try to sort of quote help you with by attacking the very foundations of your self-esteem and it only really takes one great person to love you for you to know that you can be loved and that you can love and if you've been told for 20 or 25 years That you're incapable of love,
that you're too cold, that you're too this, that you're too whatever, and then you get involved or swept over or rammed by a great love, then the disorientation that you felt in the past relative to what you were being told versus what you felt,
I always sort of felt Since I was a little, little kid, I always felt with relationships that, like, really, how hard can it be?
Just be nice. I see people fighting and fussing and getting mad and yelling and slamming doors and this and that.
Even when I was a little kid, it just never made much sense to me.
It's like, just be nice.
I mean, just be nice.
It's not that complicated.
There's other stuff that you need, but first and foremost is just be nice.
And... When I got into relationships when I was younger and all this sort of criticism that goes on when you get attacked with this, that, and the other because you're considered to be emotionally unavailable as opposed to, hey, you're yelling at me, of course I'm emotionally unavailable.
You don't take your armor up when people are swinging swords, right?
But you get sort of blamed for all of this kind of stuff.
And once you realize that you both have and can and can be loved, then...
The resentment and the disorientation sort of falls away and it's replaced with more of a resentment.
So that's sort of where I feel that I've gotten to...
I have achieved resentment.
Which, you know, what a thing to be proud of.
And kind of in a way, I am.
And I'll sort of tell you why.
Maybe this will mean something to you in your life as well because I think that those of us who have struggled and striven for some truth and rationality in this world Have been faced with a significant degree of opprobrium and hostility, and I'll sort of talk to you about the way that I see, which is not easy, and I don't know when I'm going to actually get there, but the way at least that I see the glimmer out of the cave.
Not even quite the glimmer yet, a slight bit of light over there.
No, not there, there. Okay, yeah, there.
So, the disorientation and the feeling of confusion That kept me from openly loathing the world and also openly succumbing to the dangers of megalomania and narcissism.
I'm right. It's me against the world.
The world is corrupt. I am perfect.
Blah, blah, blah. That stuff, which I guess I've never been particularly comfortable with.
But that was my sort of defense, was to be confused and to split and just to say, well, there's my own private world, Steph-land, Steph-universe, wherein the Poems and the stories and the novels that I write.
Actually, not the stories. Never liked those.
But the poems and the novels that I write have meaning and are part of, I think, some pretty good, if not great, literature.
And the thoughts that I have are valid and important and powerful and so on that have real value.
That's sort of Steph universe.
And then the rest of the planet is like nothing to do with that.
In any way, shape, or form.
And it is completely opposed to that and ignores that completely and so on.
So I just kind of kept these two worlds pretty much completely separate from each other.
Never the twain should meet. And I lived in a private world of what I consider to be truth and integrity and value.
And then I passed from that world into a public world of confusion and humor and dismay and No value, non-value, let's go see a movie.
That kind of world, the world of small talk and strange resentments and very funny jokes at times.
I passed into that world and left all of the former world, my world, behind.
And I did not try to match these two worlds together.
And The God of Atheists as a novel has something quite significantly to do with all of that.
Sorry, we're just along the road for a few minutes and then I shall be plunging back into the woods and there shall only be the occasional roar of bear.
So now that this deaf world, in a sense, has become the world, I've connected to that in terms of the world, and now that I have a tribe of able and brilliant people to talk with, wherein the value of the conversation is recognized and admitted, though occasionally withdrawn from on all sides.
Now that that has occurred, the resentment that formerly I just dissociated from and split into these two worlds, and the closest that I would come to it would be a form of dismal confusion and frustration, but the resentment is now stronger within me than it was before.
Like I said, if you've told you not lovable your whole life and then somebody who's of great value adores you, then the resentment that you felt, which was more unconscious for being told these silly and destructive things, would really come to the forefront.
And you would, of course, then begin to really think about and question the motives of the people who told you all these terrible things, or who told you that you were all these terrible things, unlovable and unwise and broken and all this kind of stuff.
You would begin to really question their motives, which is why depth in philosophy is refinement in social circumstances.
Depth in truth is diminishment in relationships, because people tell you all these terrible things, you find out, and this conversation is part about all of us together finding out that everything that we've been told about ourselves is a lie by other people.
Not everything, but most things.
And finding a place wherein we do have real value, where people who are Obviously intelligent and well-intentioned for the most part and eloquent and thoughtful find value in what we say then it does begin to bring into a sharper relief the nonsense and the malignancy of that nonsense that we were told for so many years you know about ourselves and so on so for me The resentment is the barrier.
The resentment is my great and God-unholy challenge.
To recover from this resentment with regards to the world is my enormous, deep, wild challenge.
And I'm going to talk a little bit, with your kind permission, About how I think I'm going to try and tackle this beast, this devil of many arms and fluid skin.
And you can let me know if you think I'm picking up the right sword or I'm just going into grim battle armed with good intentions and limp spaghetti noodles.
So... How do I recover from the resentment?
The way that I think I can do it.
The way that I think I can do it.
Without, I have a very strong, if I have any cynicism in my soul, I have a very strong cynicism towards think positive.
I have a very strong cynicism towards think positive, you know, that theory of attraction that the universe is at your command.
You just have to write down what you want.
You have to picture driving that new car, and the universe will find a way to provide you that new car.
Like, that kind of stuff has just enough truth in it to be dangerous, in that your attitude towards yourself and your success will cause other people, usually those of weaker wills, to fall into line.
But the universe is not a genie.
Your wish is my command.
The universe is inert and people respond to confidence and to sometimes the subtle emotional pressure that comes from you just really wanting something and feeling entitled about expecting to receive it.
So I feel very strongly cynical about this idea of, well, just think happy thoughts.
That has always struck me as a way of just blaming people for their own misfortunes.
And, of course, I... Strongly to my dying day shall defend my innocence and helplessness as a child.
And I'm not sure at what age the universe begins to bend to you and your consciousness, but I don't find that it really occurs about the age of 6 or 5 or 4.
Didn't really seem to happen at 12 or 13.
Began, of course, to become more responsive when I became more free as in my late teens and early 20s.
But I did not find that the universe was bending to my will when I was younger, when I desperately wanted it to, so I have a very strong skepticism slash cynicism towards the theory of attraction, the universal law of attraction, whatever it's called, which to me just seems like a way of saying that entitlement will cause people to give you things, and that's good.
And I just don't think it's, I don't think that's valid in any way, shape, or form.
So, I can't fight the demon with mere good intentions.
I can't fight the demon with positive thoughts.
I can't fight resentment with think positive.
Let's wait for these cars to go by.
You know, they say we're almost out of the woods, but we're almost into the woods, my friends, on this brisk, beautiful spring morning, where one could almost imagine if the world wasn't full of people how beautiful it could be.
So, the way that I think I can find a way to love...
Oh, that's going to be tough.
Let me not go there yet.
That's going to be a bit of a journey.
The way that I think I can best approach this question of how to have a positive relationship with the decades of rejection and struggle is to look at it this way.
And I apologize.
This is going to seem metaphorical, verging on mythological.
And I apologize up front.
I'm perfectly aware that it is but a metaphor.
But for me, it's a useful metaphor, and perhaps it will be for you as well.
And if you have a better one, I'm not just all forehead, I'm all ears.
So the world needs a healer.
The world is a being that needs a healer.
See, I told you it was going to be metaphorical.
Vertical, mythological. The world is a being that needs a healer.
Gaia needs a band-aid. And I'm just going to say, for sake of an argument, for sake of what works for me metaphorically, I'm not saying any of it's true, the world is a being that needs a healer.
You could say this as a social organism, that mankind is an entity that needs a healer.
And I, and perhaps you, are chosen to be that healer.
And we need to be planted and we need to grow into being that healer.
Now, we can't be a false healer.
We can't be a healer who says the same thing that all the other nonsensical healers have said throughout history.
Worship God, be patriotic, go to war.
Have a welfare state, whatever nonsense people come up with.
And so, the universe was patient, the world was patient with me, as I struggled and twisted and turned to do anything that I could to avoid this responsibility.
In that sort of Prince Hal, Henry V kind of way.
But the world was patient with me.
And it simply opposed me, gently.
Oh, so you want to be an actor?
Well, no. You can try.
I'm not going to give you so little success that you will lose the desire to try, that you will end up with despair.
I'm going to give you just enough success to keep you moving, but not so much success that you don't continue to grow or question.
So I'm going to let you get into a very exclusive theater school where only 1% of the applications are accepted.
But, and I'm going to let you do some very interesting acting and let you work on some very interesting voice and body stuff and gymnastics and all that kind of stuff and sword fighting and so on.
I'm going to let you do all of that, which is going to be great for the future when I need you, but I'm not going to give you the opportunity to succeed at that.
Give you a taste, get you moving, get you trained in some stuff that will be useful for later, but I am not going to Let you succeed.
Now, of course, theater school was great for me, because being British, I had a relationship with my body that's sort of like a jolly green giant on a Shetland pony, right?
It's all about the intellect and not about the body, and you can't trust the instincts, and your rational mind is the only thing that matters, and so on, right?
So there's no rationality in instincts, which is something that I learned a lot through theater school, insofar as you can't think your way through acting.
You have to be passionate about it, too.
And there is a lot of truth in the body.
That's how actors, particularly on stage, that's how actors work.
So, the next thing, of course, and I won't go through the whole history just to give you a taste, right?
That I went to go and do a history, and I got some real success there.
The very first essay that I wrote was read out to a class of a couple of hundred people as an ideal essay on the village of Montailloux.
And I had some real success there.
I did some more acting.
I enjoyed that. And so then I went to graduate school and learned a lot and got to do some really wonderful studying and got to really parse my way through some ideas that were the foundation of what later became, many years later, more than ten years later,
became Free Domain Radio. An essential part of my growth, sort of my intellectual growth, But something that did not continue or pan out.
Nobody was interested in talking to me.
And, of course, in hindsight, I can sort of understand that.
I can sort of understand that in hindsight because nobody could contribute to me.
I mean, I really was on a journey that only I could go through.
There was nobody who was further ahead who could lead me somewhere.
I mean, if you're Orville and Wilbur Wright creating the first airplane, you don't...
Drop down the street and say to somebody, how do you build an airplane?
Because they'll say, what the hell is an airplane?
We don't know even what that is.
So, if you're out there in Kitty Hawk, you're kind of ice-breaking through.
There's nobody ahead who's carving a chair.
You're going first, and you're way ahead of most people.
So, I can sort of understand how no one could mentor me.
Because where I was heading intellectually, and even where I was...
Was not any place that anyone could go before.
I wasn't just the Randroid.
I wasn't just the Randian guy.
And I wasn't the art guy.
And I wasn't just the history guy.
And I wasn't just the philosopher.
And I was an amalgam of a lot of different things that, for me at least, were unprecedented.
And I don't know that anyone could really have helped me in the idea of being mentored.
When you're an innovator, it's something that you yearn for, but you can't have.
So... It makes sense that I would have gone there.
It makes sense that I would not have succeeded in the way that I had, like, three professors vying to do my thesis.
And again, this is all in The God of Atheists.
All the stuff that's, I think, great in art is the stuff that you've really earned through blood, sweat, and tears.
So, in hindsight, although I wanted people to take an interest in what I was doing, I really was speaking a language that, or in pursuit of a truth or a language that I don't know had a lot of precedents, or at least none that I'd seen before.
So, I just couldn't find a mentor, and of course now, not just now, but I mean, for some time, thinking back on it, it's sort of more clear to me why that was the case.
And then the business world, well...
I enjoyed the business world enormously.
I had a great time in the software world in the 90s.
It was a thrilling and exciting frontier town to live in, but the problem with ethics that I found in the business world, and maybe it's not the case in other aspects of business, but in particular the aspect of the business world around software, promises, specs, projects, and so on, which I've also talked about before, there's just too little integrity.
There's too much Dollar hunger in the business world.
And too little belief, at least in those I've worked with, too little belief in taking the patient time to build a strong business that can grow.
And I'm sure there are good businesses out there.
It's just that I've not really worked there.
And the businesses that I have worked at in larger contexts, like IBM and digital and so on, well, yeah, I mean, there's more integrity in the process, but there's just a lot more cold politicking and Status and all this kind of stuff that's kind of gross.
And of course, this is what Ayn Rand, I don't think, really understood about the business world, that if the problem is philosophy, the solution is not business.
She had a worship on for the businessman, which, I mean, some businessman or woman made the Rio and made the Zen Vision M that I'm Recording into and so on.
So from a practical standpoint, I think that's wonderful.
But if the problem is philosophy, the solution cannot be business.
You can have integrity in how you build a bridge.
That does not mean that you have integrity in your life.
The people who built concentration camps had integrity with how those were built.
Not quite the same as having integrity in your life.
So, The solution is not business.
So I had some real success in business.
It was the first time I had real success and I was very happy and proud of what I achieved and had some great relationships with my employees and co-workers and not so much with the bosses and investors, but the answer is not business.
I thought it might be, but it wasn't.
So then, of course, I left the business world and went full-time, full-tilt boogie into writing.
Took a writing course, got an agent, got a spectacular review Of the God of Atheists and thought, well, that's it.
I'm set. I'll go get a job.
But when a PhD reviewer calls your novel the great Canadian novel and it needs to be published without further delay and one of the best books he's ever read, you think that maybe you've got a shot at getting published because, again, I just wasn't somebody who really understood the nature of the world and my relationship to it.
So, On the strength of the initial reception and potential of the God of Atheists, I worked myself like crazy, producing thousands and thousands of pages of a novel in, well, not a novel, a series of novels, one trilogy and another novel, in about a year and a half.
And then, over the next six to eight months, wrote a semi-fiction novel about an island that emerges from the sea, wherein A society is founded without a government.
Actually, it wasn't founded without a government.
I was still a minochist at this time, but this is sort of how I worked out all the stuff that ended up with the start of my articles, sort of the ones that went up under Rockwell.
But I thought, wow, this is it.
I've hit my stride. I've gotten fantastic reviews.
This quite famous Canadian writer who was my mentor, or at least my writing instructor, said that my writing was Nabokovian and Vivid and startling and original and powerful, all this kind of stuff, you think?
And she said, oh, I'll introduce you to my agent.
And it's like, it's been a long time coming.
So I was economically pleased about all of that.
And then, of course, all that fizzled. So again, this is the universe or the world in this metaphorical way.
The world just sort of saying, yeah, but that's not right.
That's not right. The truth that you need to get to is always over the next hill.
Until now. Until now.
That you must keep slogging.
Though your toes are falling off and your fingers are frozen, you must keep slogging.
Though the snow seems ever higher, though the incline is ever steeper, you must keep slogging along.
You cannot rest. You cannot stop.
And if I had succeeded at any of the things that I'd wanted to succeed, and this is really where the demon and I square off in the chamber.
If I had succeeded, At the things that I wanted to succeed at, then I would have stopped.
I would have stopped. I wrote my first novel when I was 24 called Revolutions.
Actually, that was my second novel.
No, that was my third novel.
My first novel was about the First World War, and it was called The Jealous War.
My second novel was about life in boarding school.
I never finished that.
It's too close to my childhood to finish it.
My third novel was Revolutions, and I don't know, I've written a whole bunch ever since.
And Revolutions, I thought, was a I'm still proud of it.
I think it's a very good book, very interesting book.
And in it, of course, it's interesting because the lead character is an anarchist.
And it's about humanizing, the humanization of an anarchist, of a sociopathic anarchist.
So, that novel eventually got published and is selling, but obviously he didn't have the kind of, oh, Spielberg's calling, he wants to make a movie or anything like that.
Now, if I had gotten that published when I was 24, and of course, if I had gotten that and it had been successful in the way that I wanted to be successful, in the way that I would not accept any success lesser than, then what would happen?
Would I have continued to push?
No, of course not. When you're looking to find shelter in a storm and you come across A beautiful hotel, and you don't say, well, it's only a four-star hotel, I'm plunging back out into the blizzard to risk my death to look for a five-star hotel somewhere further up the Himalayas.
No. You go there, and you rest, and that's where you live.
If the storm never abates, in fact, if it gets worse.
The worst thing for the world would have been for me to be successful earlier in life in Something other than philosophy.
If the world is a being that needs a healer, then the world could never have let me be successful in that field.
Further back, if I had been very successful as an actor, then that would have been my life.
And I would have stopped there.
And I would have worked on my acting, and I would have continued to read, and I would have done this, and I would have done that.
But I would not have pushed on in blind and steadfast and Unstoppable dedication to continue to pursue the knowledge that I could not consume, the knowledge that I could not understand, why I was not succeeding.
I would not have continued with that.
Why would I have? I would have succeeded.
I would have found my profession, whether it were to be actor or writer or academic or business person or all of the other things that I have tried in my life.
I would have found my profession.
And having found my profession, I would have stopped the pursuit.
Naturally. The race is over.
You can stop running now.
Why would I have these a new wife?
But I did not succeed at these things, and it wasn't because I didn't want to, and it was not because I sabotaged myself.
I didn't, like, not show up to meetings, you know, or come to job interviews wearing only sausage links around my neck.
I did not do any of those things.
I genuinely and deeply threw myself into these tasks and genuinely, deeply wanted to succeed, but did not.
I could not. Now, I had just enough success to let me want to continue.
Again, that's part of the whole delicacy of the world that needs a healer, that is coaxing me along.
I received enough success to make me want to continue, to make me believe that I could succeed at something I just had to find that right combination to open the safe.
I had to find the right combination to open this mystery safe.
Because for me, it always felt like a great first date, no callback.
I mean, it's a little bit more complicated than that, but that's sort of what I felt like.
So then, I kept pushing and kept pushing and kept pushing.
Thank you.
Kept pushing forward, kept trying to understand, kept refining, kept going over the principles, kept returning to the 2 plus 2 is 4 aspect of mathematics, kept working, kept working, kept pushing.
Because I had not found a home.
I had not found a home.
I had not found a place where I was satisfied with the form and the content of the communication.
And where I felt I could not do any more good, any better good, any greater good.
That's really, I think, when I'm looking back at it now, that's what I really wanted most of all, was to be in a place where I felt I could not do any better.
There are people who make, you know, the hundreds of movies get made every year, and...
What good do they really achieve in the world?
Well... I don't think that much.
What good did even fun films, which I like, Indiana Jones, what good did it do?
Did it arrest the flow of corruption?
Did it identify the roots of evil?
Did it ennoble and place powerful weapons in the hands of good people?
Did it break down the barriers of dissociation and disconnection between people?
No. Even films with more emotional content, more psychological content, like Good Will Hunting, does it do anything to help people understand the roots of violence in the state?
No. No, it does not.
So even if I had had that level of success, and this Van Affleck-Matt Damon unholy duality of, for me at least, a disaster piece theater that occurred after their success, where they just ended up doing stupid spy films and Crap like that.
That's an example, right?
I mean, these guys had some real talents and real power and had their success.
Do they want it right?
No, because that's a solitary profession.
They want to be out being praised and having trailers and having assistants and getting scripts.
Oh, you have something to say.
Let us bribe you into silence.
Let us have you speak other people's words when yours are much more powerful.
Neither of them has been in a film as good as the one they wrote.
And that's what they've been doing for the last, I don't know, eight years, seven years.
So, if I had succeeded where I wanted to, I would not have kept pushing, and I would not have gotten to where I don't think I could do any greater good, which is where I am now, which is why I'm giving up my profession and career and Which is no sacrifice, no sacrifice, to do this because now I am in a place where I feel I can speak the truth in a way that...
I can't tell you how wonderful it is to have a direct relationship with the consumers, to not have agents, to not have publishers, to not have television studios, to not have radio stations, to not have the government, to not have the CRTC, to not have the FCC or any of this sort of nonsense going on, but to be able to speak to you directly.
through this incredible medium, this technology, that has eliminated the middleman in the most essential conversations.
And so I hope that this narrative has not been too dull, The purpose of it really is to help me frame and I think productively understand this occurrence or what has happened for me in my life that can cause me to be grateful For 25 years of failure and rejection, scorn, indifference.
No, not 20. 20 to 25.
Depends where you start the count.
But a hell of a long time.
That's a life sentence in most countries.
So, how do I square off against the demon of resentment?
How do I shrug off the chip on my shoulder?
Well, I mean, it could be something as blandly understandable as that which does not kill you makes you stronger, but it certainly didn't make Nietzsche stronger, and Nietzsche did not do his part to rid the world of corruption.
In fact, he accelerated it to a large degree.
That's too harsh. I'll take that back and talk about that another time.
But if...
I had not achieved the successes that I did, however paltry they were in the scope of larger things, I would not have had the encouragement or the strength to keep going.
If I had succeeded at any time prior to when I did finally succeed in a way that I identify as success, I'm not Rupert Murdoch, but neither am I Rush Limbaugh, but I had succeeded in what is for me a much more fundamental and essential Way, which is that I have complete creative control over what it is that I'm doing.
I have a direct relationship with the listenership, and there are no committees on Free Domain Radio.
There's you and there's me, brothers and sisters.
There's you and there's me.
And that is something that is pretty much unprecedented for me, and I think even throughout history, to be able to have no A middleman between yourself and your audience to be able to speak directly to people is just an unbelievable thing.
So, when I did finally achieve the kind of success that I wanted, when I did finally achieve the kind of success that really meant something to me, wherein I did not feel I could do any greater good.
Could I do greater good by being on television?
Well, no, I could never be on television.
Not in its current state.
State being the key. I could never be on television.
Because too many people would be offended, too many people would be upset, the advertisers wouldn't want to have anything to do with me.
So, no, I could never be on television.
Could I be on radio? No, of course not.
Same reason. I'd be accused of hate crimes, hate speech, I would be attacked by X, Y, and Z, and of course it would be controversial for any Advertiser to want to get involved.
Satellite radio? Well, it's a possibility, and it's certainly something that I'll be looking into, but I won't be holding my breath.
But this conversation, this conversation here that we're able to have is true success for me in every sense of the word.
Could I have saved myself for you?
Could I have kept myself pure for you if I had been offered success in the past?
No. No, no, no, a thousand times, no.
I could not have, I would not have, I would have slaughterly abandoned myself to a life of fame, success, wealth and pleasure, and the world would have lost someone who I think can really help the world.
And I would have just been another notorious at the time and anonymous in history casualty of the endless machine of corruption and silencing that occurs through Bribery and attention and notoriety claim.
So, I have been landed by the world like a tiny little thread can land a giant swordfish, a marlin, a great white shark, a catadon carcarius, if you will. The world It has landed me in the position that I am in, in an incredibly skillful manner.
It has known when to let me run, when to reel me in, when I need to tug, when I need to go, and I have been most exquisitely landed on this boat from the depths wherein I hid and yearned for the surface but could not reach it.
I have now gone beyond anything I could have dreamed of.
And it has been the most expert piece of fishing that has gotten me to where I am, to where we are.
I could not have planned it.
I would not have planned it. I would have taken the goodies if I had been offered them in any substantial manner.
I would have taken the goodies and run with them and run with them like the wind.
I would not have held out and kept myself pure for this conversation and I would not have This conversation, it was absolutely essential, you see, that I have no reputation.
It was absolutely essential that I had no reputation, that I had no investment in any existing structure.
Were I to have succeeded as a professor, would I be doing these podcasts?
Good God, no. Good God, no.
Because the cost-benefit would be ludicrous, ludicrously unbalanced.
And there's a reason that professors don't do this sort of stuff.
What do you gain? You don't do it for the money, I'll tell you that.
No, I'm certainly happy to take it.
You don't do it for the money.
You don't do it for the fame.
You certainly don't do it for the glory.
What do you do it for? Well, for me, I know why I do it, which we don't have to get into now.
But a professor, what would a professor conceivably gain From doing a podcast about philosophical, moral, political, social, psychological, religious truth.
And artistic truth.
What would a professor gain?
He could have everything to lose.
Could be the laughingstock of his comrades, could be the laughingstock of his students, could get his organization sued, could be accused of hate speech, could achieve such a great degree of notoriety that would lose his professional reputation, might find all of his Articles being oddly turned away because he was a populist philosopher and therefore not an academic one and therefore not worthy of any serious academic reviews.
We could do a career-destroying move and then where do you go?
I had to have nothing to lose to do these.
I had to have nothing to lose to do these.
And I think you also had to not know me in any way, shape or form.
If I was some, I don't know, famous movie star who then decided to start doing a podcast about philosophy...
It would be impossible to think about the ideas themselves very easily and objectively because you'd be thinking about the person and not the content.
I had to be unknown and I had to have nothing to lose and I had to have no professional affiliations and I had to be educated and I had to have the trust of my instincts and I had to be vocally trained and I had to be all of these things.
It is A perfect forging of a perfect weapon, and one which I didn't like at all, right?
I mean, the steel that goes into the sword does not like the heat of the furnace.
And that was the case for me, and the steel, no matter how beautifully it gleams afterwards and what a powerful sword it becomes, has the option, as do I, as have I, to resent the forging.
But when I think about it, it could not have been planned better.
It could not have been planned better.
There is no conceivable way that I can think of, and maybe you can, I certainly would be happy to hear any thoughts you had on this.
There's no conceivable way that I could have taken a straighter path to where I am, so that my awakening occurred...
At the same time that the technology was available to have this conversation for the first time in human history.
The first time, not the first philosophical conversation.
This conversation.
This methodology of communication.
People don't take university courses from unknown people, right?
Hey, I'm running a non-accredited degree program in my basement.
Want to sign up? Thanks.
No. So you had to not know me, and it had to be fun.
It had to be a lock for you.
It had to be, yeah, yeah, no, I got some time to kill on my commute.
So let's listen to this crazy British guy.
It had to be that. It had to be.
Because I had to kind of sneak up on you, right?
I had to kind of sneak up on you.
Just as I had to kind of sneak up on myself.
But it could not be obvious, and it could not be telegraphed, and it could not be foreshadowed, this conversation.
Because nobody would sort of know in the whole stretch of it now that we're on this high number who would have started.
So the unknown aspect of it combined with the, I think to some degree, the skill and energy of the presentation and so on, all of that had to come together and it could not have come together because if I had been a name that you would have been willing to take a course from, I would have had a reputation to lose and I never would have had that name to begin with if I had the ideas that I had.
So all of this, all of it had to be, I think, and I can't think of a single ingredient that was not essential.
All of it had to be in this aspect.
All of it had to come together like this.
And yet I still resent it.
I still resent it.
It's certainly better and it's a helpful path for me.
And maybe you know some trick that I'm not aware of to make this stuff help lever the chip off my shoulder.
It's great to be able to understand it this way, and I feel little glimmerings of this kind of acceptance, and even love for how it is that I ended up doing this, which for me is the most satisfying thing that I could conceivably do.
I know it takes a little time for intellectual understanding to reach emotional acceptance, and this has just been like 24 hours for me, but I still resent you.
This is how shallow I am.
I'm like, okay, well, I could have this incredibly deep and wonderful, amazing conversation with these fabulous and brilliant souls around the world that we come together and are in hot pursuit of the first truths and the deepest truths that we can gather as a species and Yet, I could also be at the Playboy Mansion as a famous actor.
I mean, this is the depth of which I am capable of, or something like that, or something like that, because those of you who are taking this road know that it rains frogs and spears at times, and there are gouts of flames and rodents of unusual size, and all of that sort of stuff, and yeah, there are times when you yearn for the bland normality of Social invisibility, like fading into the woodwork of social conformity.
We all, I mean, I don't know, I certainly want that from time to time.
If I had a, I don't know, a million bucks in the bank and a couple of book deals on the way, I mean, yeah, it's tempting.
Oh God! I mean, I wouldn't do it now.
It would still be a struggle. I wouldn't do it now.
But for most of my life, I would have taken that.
Oh my God, I would have taken that in a shot, in a heartbeat.
If they had said to me, you have to change the God of Atheists so it does not say these negative things about the family, oh, I'm no Howard Rock.
I would have been utterly tempted. Utterly tempted.
But it would have been awful, of course, because I deep down, I would have stopped sleeping again for sure, because deep down I would know that the only way that I could make it successful would be to make it evil, right?
To make it a corrupting work, to make it a work that...
Only added to the illusions and self-destructive fantasies in society.
That's the only way that I could have made it successful, to turn it into like a sisterhood of the traveling pants bullshit or something.
So, success in truth, success in virtue, is the opposite of success in the world.
When the world is not virtuous, I mean, we've talked about that relatively recently, so I still believe in that.
Now, the last thing I sort of, given that I can't quite make my way through to the entire emotional state of, thank God I was rejected, the last thing that I'd like to talk about is just sort of clean up the metaphorical thing.
Of course the world is not a being that wants a healer, and I'm perfectly aware of that.
Most fundamentally, I think that the guidance that occurred, occurred from my, you know, the true self, the self, the sort of authentic self.
I think that's the guiding part of me that It allowed me these successes and then erased my emotional investment in where I was so that I no longer wanted to do it.
The same thing has happened recently in the business world, has happened in the academic world, has happened in the artistic world, in the theater world, and in the world of writing and so on, novel writing.
And pursuing these things has all done great things for me.
And then abandoning these things has done great things for me, but it has been a very hard row to hoe, so to speak.
So I'm perfectly aware, of course, that the world is not a being that needs a healer, but I do believe that in the realm of mythology is sometimes how we identify and talk about the deeper psychic impulses and truths that we have despite our own illusions.
As I say, Edmund says, I would be good despite my own nature.
And I will be good despite my own shallowness.
I will be good despite my temptation for easy bucks and fame and all of that.
And I don't think I would be nearly as tempted now, but I'm telling you, brothers, if it had been ten years ago, oh, I would have sold my soul for a song, I think.
Thank God nobody gave me an offer.
That was even remotely tempting.
So I hope this is helpful.
If you have any other suggestions about how it is I can dislodge this chip, I think that it is going to be an impediment to where it is that I'd like to get to in terms of the communication changes that are going to go on with the new Free Domain Radio after I go full-time in a couple of weeks.
And another note, and I'll bury it down here right at the end, as I mentioned on the show today too, That I'm going to go on vacation in two weeks.
Thank you so much for listening.
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