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Feb. 19, 2008 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
32:00
986 Life Lessons from the Dead (listener convo)
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Hello? Hi. Hey, Steph, how's it going?
Too bad, sorry about that. No problem.
So, you have death on the mind.
Yeah, I guess it just...
Concerning our discussion earlier, you know, I had sort of brought these points up, like some points about atheism and with my girlfriend, and I was kind of getting to a point where it was frustrating, you know, I couldn't really get my points across the way I wanted to,
and then just last night, She had her stepfather pass away unexpectedly and I just thought maybe it would be a good idea to sort of show that atheists can be compassionate and caring and understanding and provide value when it comes to death.
When it comes to dealing with death, not when it comes to death.
I was just having some troubles Deciding sort of an approach that might be appropriate and I was just really looking out for what other people had found helpful and useful in dealing with this sort of subject.
Right, right.
If that makes any sense.
No, it totally makes sense and I would say in fact that Only atheists can provide a real processing of death because when we layer things over with fantasy, we can't process them emotionally.
It's like a drug to get rid of emotional pain.
It erases or eradicates it.
And there are two fundamental fantasies I found around death that causes people to become emotionally stunted with regards to processing death.
The first is don't speak ill of the dead.
That to me is the first illusion that people really get hung up on around death.
And the second is...
That when we perceive or believe or fantasize that there's a better place that people are going to, we don't learn the necessary lessons that death is supposed to teach us, in my view.
There's no proofs for any of this.
It's just my particular opinion.
So let me spend a minute or two on those, and then you can tell me if that's helpful.
Sure. So...
When somebody dies...
Suddenly, in particular, right?
Then that's the time that we can actually have a processing of their life, right?
Because their life is finished and there's nothing more that you can say to the person.
So we can actually process that.
And death, fundamentally, the processing of death is not about the past, but it's about the future.
Again, this is all just my opinion.
It's not about the past, it's about the future.
So, a friend of mine's mother died relatively recently, I guess, and he had a great deal of trouble processing some of the less positive aspects of her life.
And there were some positive aspects, like all of us, there were some not so positive aspects.
But a real wall came down wherein we could not say, well, here was the good and here was the bad, and what can we learn and process from this life?
Not for the past, because the past is dead and gone, obviously, and can't be changed in ourselves and certainly not in the dead person.
And he could have gotten some enormously great lessons out of the mistakes that his mother made and the mistakes that he made in his relationship with his mother, and he could have used that to turn the future around.
But he didn't want to do that because you couldn't speak ill of the dead.
Now, he didn't particularly believe that she was going to a better place.
But when you layer that belief or opinion on top of the don't speak ill of the dead, then you have this fantasy that they've gone to a better place or that they're watching or, you know, whatever.
I mean, it goes on various levels of this, to like a full brain haunting to just a vague better place kind of thing.
But when we allow that kind of stuff to infect our history and our processing of a death...
Then we don't learn the lessons.
What can we learn from death?
How does death enrich our life?
Well, death enriches our life by reminding us that all of this will pass.
The good, the bad, the joyous, the dismal, the intimate, the alienated.
Everything that we have is going to pass.
It reminds us that there is a really grim and savage biological bookend at the end of our journey.
When we get or understand that life is short, there are no do-overs, and we don't go to a better place, then I believe that at least what it spurs me to do is to invest more fully in the moment, invest more fully in the present, and to be less patient.
With bullshit, to put it in a blunt way.
To be less patient with people who waste my time.
To be less patient with people who are living as if they have an eternity in which to correct their mistakes.
And we don't. We don't have an eternity.
Life is both long and short.
Life is long enough that you want to plan for it and make sensible use of your gifts and talents and get an education, in my view.
But it's short enough that we can't...
Invest in relationships that are going nowhere or going down.
We can, but that's based on the fantasy that we've got forever.
So if we really get that death is it, like you're done.
You're a radio that's been unplugged.
There are no voices left. There are no voices that are floated in anywhere else.
They throw you into a wet hole in the ground and they throw mud in your eye and you don't even notice because it's inconceivable to us.
You can say sleep without dreaming or whatever, but it is simply an end.
I will have no more consciousness of myself after I am dead than I had of myself before I was born.
I will remember the 24th century, or I will experience the 24th century as clearly as I experienced the 18th century, which was, of course, not at all.
So, I think that if we process death and we understand that death is it, Then we invest in that which brings quality and rational virtue and happiness to our life.
We have less patience with fools and so we can eject them from our life and really focus on those relationships and those activities that are deep and rich and meaningful for us because there isn't any kind of do-overs, any kind of second chance, any kind of capacity to address or redress mistakes in the future.
We don't get to live again. We don't, you know, we don't go on the reincarnation carousel.
We just die.
We just become meat.
And dead, unconscious, not conscious, not alive, meat.
And if we understand that that is coming, right, that death is taking its step towards us every single day, it's one less day to live.
Then we can really invest and be rich in our relationships in the present.
And we can not put things off that we need to do, like confront negative relationships and either improve them or get rid of them.
If we forget that we're going to die, then our days become much less rich, much less interesting.
And then we end up with the worst thing in the world, for me.
The worst thing in the world is regret.
And the worst regrets...
People always say the worst regrets are the things that you wanted to do but didn't do.
I don't think that's the case. I think the worst regrets are the things that you didn't want to do that you did do.
You know, like spend time with people who are boring or negative or destructive or whatever, right?
I think that if your girlfriend processes her relationship with her stepfather and how he lived his life based on his beliefs, then she can have a much richer and deeper and better time of her life in the future.
And that is, if there's a gift that reaches from the grave to us, it is that lifeline.
That life is short and then we're dead.
And so don't waste your time with negative or destructive or difficult or those kinds of situations.
Don't be a coward in the face of what you truly desire.
And that is the gift, I think, that the dead give us, that death gives us that gift of really loving our life and not wasting it.
But if we believe, if we numb ourselves to that stock reality of the biological bookend at the end of our life, if we numb ourselves to that, either by, you know, don't speak ill of the dead and...
By that I don't mean cut them down for no reason, but assess their lives rationally, assess your relationship with them so that you can improve your future relationships.
If we don't speak ill of the dead or don't assess them from a rational standpoint, and if we fantasize that somehow things continue, then all that happens is we put things off.
It's like getting an infinite extension on an essay paper.
You're never going to write it without a deadline, and there really is in life a fundamental deadline which helps us get things done properly.
That otherwise we would put off that are necessary and beneficial.
Does that ring or make any sense to you?
Yeah, that really does.
You know, when you said that, you know, don't speak ill of the dead, you know, she did kind of mention that, like, I haven't met her mother or the stepfather, and now I guess I've missed that opportunity, so I really don't know for sure.
But she does sort of speak Like she's sort of walking on glass about, you know, they used to, like, apparently they bickered a little bit, and, um, but she'd always follow that up, like, well, since, since last night,
you know, she'd always follow that up, but they, but they really did love each other, you know, she'd say, well, they bickered, but, but, you know, so it was, It was kind of like what you're saying, you know, she was really scared to say, yeah, they bickered, and I think that's wrong, or yeah, they bickered, and, you know, really analyze it for what it was.
You know, it feels like she was always like...
Wrapping it in two positives whenever she spoke about a negative that did occur.
Right, right, right.
So it does feel like that.
And I've experienced that in the past.
When somebody dies, you never want to speak negatively about them, I have found.
So that really did...
I think you raise a really good point.
You can still look objectively on their life and pull a lot of lessons out of what you saw and how they lived it.
Right. Sorry to interrupt, but it's very interesting to me, and this is a very, very common thing, that people say, well, we had our differences, but we loved each other nonetheless.
Yeah. Well, but to me, that is, the Greek technical term is crap.
I mean, that fundamentally is not learning the lessons of death, in my opinion, right?
It's not learning the lessons of death.
So, if you and I have a relationship, let's say, and we're friends or whatever, then if we're conscious, like, because people always say when somebody dies, well, we bickered a lot, and now I can't even remember about what, right?
Yeah. Yeah.
Like, there's always this feeling of like, well, we bickered, but really we loved each other, right?
Or, you know, yes, we had our differences, but deep down, you know, there's nothing we wouldn't do for each other and all that.
And that to me is just crap.
It's total nonsense.
Because if we're really conscious of death, of the end of things, then we have a choice, right?
Yeah. We then would not say, I love you and I'm going to bicker with you, right?
Because if at the end of somebody's life, if after they're dead and gone, you say, well, we bickered, but deep down we really loved each other.
It's like, well, what the hell were you bickering for then?
Yeah, then why were you bickering?
Then why were you bickering, right?
And you could only have been bickering if you thought you could put off the love thing forever.
Because you have forever and you're going to meet in heaven or whatever.
I don't know what nonsense people say to themselves about that.
But it allows them to live in this limbo, this null zone between real love and ditching people who you don't like.
Because I don't keep people in my life that I bicker with.
I mean, what a complete waste of this incredible gift of breath and thought and life.
So to me, it's either get it good or get it gone.
If I'm bickering with someone, then what the hell is the point afterwards saying, after they're dead, saying, gee, I don't even know why we bickered.
It's almost an insult.
In their life, right?
If you don't know why you're bickering with someone, stop bickering with them, right?
I mean, if you say after they're dead, well, I really love them and I don't even know what we were bickering about, then what you did was you tortured them with bickering when they were alive, and now you forgive them when it's too late to do anything about it, and they don't benefit from it at all, and neither do you.
Like, to me, that just makes no sense at all.
Does that... Yeah, it's sort of like either deal with it or move on and ditch the relationship.
Yeah, I do hear what you're sort of putting down there and it does make a lot of sense.
If your girlfriend were to ever bicker with you, then you could say to her, look, when I'm dead, are you going to say that you don't even remember why you're fighting with me now?
Yeah. And if that's the case, then just stop fighting with me now.
Right? If it means that little that after somebody's dead, you say, well, I don't even know why we were fighting.
Then use that.
See, that's what I mean. Use death to enrich your life, right?
So if you're going to say, look, if I drop dead tomorrow, would you even remember what we were fighting about today?
Or would you say, well, you know, yes, we had these arguments.
I can't even remember about what.
They didn't mean anything. They didn't make any sense because I really loved him.
Well, live like that now then.
Don't wait until after somebody's dead.
You know what I mean? Yeah.
It's like holding off a Heimlich maneuver until three days after somebody's choked to death and then grappling them in the coffin.
It's just ridiculous. Mm-hmm.
And if your girlfriend were to understand that, and it's not picking on your girlfriend, this is anybody, right?
But if your girlfriend would understand that, right, to use that perspective from her stepfather and say, if you really love somebody and you can't even remember what you bickered about, then the bickering is a stupid and futile waste of your energies, so stop doing it.
That would be a lesson that you could get.
That's how death redeems life.
give to us who are still breathing, right?
Which is perspective and the antidote to, death is the antidote to pettiness, fundamentally, right?
Yeah.
So it's a thing where, I mean, I sometimes think, right, I get involved in a dispute, I'm going to say, well, am I even going to think of this on my deathbed as some huge regret or something I mean, it's like, no, well then drop it, right?
It's okay to live from your deathbed backwards and let that guide your perspective a little bit.
I mean, to me, right? To be conscious of death helps enrich life.
Because the great danger of death is that it drowns us in sentimentality, right?
Yeah, yeah. Like, we can just say the words after somebody died.
Well, but we really loved each other.
And it's like, if that were true, I don't know that you would need to say it.
And if you're saying it, it means that you're giving yourself an easy out, right?
It's easy to say after somebody dead, well, yes, but we really loved each other.
But the thing is, is to rationally evaluate how you acted with that person when they were alive, and when he was alive, right?
So if your girlfriend bickered with her stepdad quite a bit, then what does it mean?
Sorry, it was the...
She said that her mom and her stepdad bickered.
I don't think she bickered, but she noticed that in their relationship, and she...
Sorry, I might have confused you there.
Oh, no, no problem. I mean, it doesn't matter.
Yeah, but either way, yeah.
Yeah, she can say the same thing to her mom, because maybe she and her mom bickers, right?
Like, if her mom bickered with her stepdad, then quite likely her mom's bickering with her too, right?
So she can sit down and say, look, there are things that if you really loved...
Your husband, she said to her mom, if you really loved your husband, then bickering with him was not good.
But people, they want to avoid that feeling, right?
Because when you look back and somebody's dead and you miss them, let's say there's real genuine love and you miss them terribly, and you look back at all the thousands of hours you pissed away into the void by bickering with them about stupid shit, right?
Then you feel this titanic wrench of regret, right?
mythology called, yes, we bickered, but we really loved each other, it's all over, you know, there's nothing that sentimentality, they don't look back and say, well, if I knew he was going to die suddenly, or if I remembered that he was going to die, would I have bickered with him for all those years?
And again, I'm not saying they were like the ultimate bickertons, just looking at this as a possibility.
Yeah, you know, learning from the death and objectively looking at how the person lived You know, I think it ties back to how you were saying, you know, never speak, you know, ill of the dead.
Yeah, and people don't care that much about the dead in that sense.
What they're saying is, don't speak ill of myself.
I don't want to look at anything that I did that was negative or detrimental, or wasted time, or produced negative things where they weren't necessary, right?
I mean, the number of real conflicts in our life is pretty minimal, but the number of bickerton nonsense that people make up is perpetual, right?
It's like this Chinese water torture of discontent that people live their lives under.
Yeah. Yeah. So your daughter can, sorry, let me get my generations correct.
Your girlfriend can talk to your mom, sorry, your girlfriend can talk to her mom and can say, well, you know, how do you feel about all this bickering now, right?
When you look back and you think of what was so important at the time, now when you look back at it, Do you understand and was it worthwhile to do all of that bickering, right?
And the painful thing is to look back and say, man, I pissed away.
I don't know how much time bickering for no reason.
That's really, really painful, of course, and people naturally would want to avoid that.
So why would you want to go through that?
Well, you'd want to go through that because there's the benefit.
There's the benefit of not doing it in the future.
Yeah. Yeah, you know, like if...
It's the cost analysis, right?
You're sacrificing your short-term pain stimulus for a long-term happiness, right?
You're sacrificing the long-term gain to avoid the short-term pain.
Sorry, I had that mixed up.
So, yeah. I would see her saying, whoa, I'm not going to do that.
I'm not going to bring this up with my mom.
But yeah, if explained properly, there's so much to gain from it.
Yeah, because if she were to sit down with her mom and they were to go through this very painful process, and it is a horrible thing to look back and look at how much time we piss away in stupid conflicts that don't mean anything.
Vanity exercises, defensiveness, outmanship, all of that crap, right?
It's horrible to look at them.
It's like being stuck in a tiny prison with mosquitoes.
It's just a stupid waste of time.
And if your girlfriend and her mother were to go through that process of evaluating that, then they would have something that they could refer to in their own conflicts with each other.
So that if your girlfriend gets upset with her mom, she can say, well, three weeks after my mom's dead, am I going to sit back and say, gee, I really wish I'd won this fight?
No, well, no, of course not, right?
Or she may say, look, my mom is going to continually push my buttons.
At the end of my life, am I going to be really happy that I just hung around someone I accidentally happened to be related to who made my life miserable?
No, of course not, right?
So, to me, death gives you that gift of either get it good or get it gone in terms of your relationships.
That there's not an infinity of time to correct your mistakes and to have a better life.
Every moment that you spend unhappy now doesn't get tacked on at the end of your life as some bonus round.
I mean, it's just done and miserable and wasted.
Yeah, you know, I think that's a really good perspective to have, you know.
And I know, you know, while I haven't had that totally laid out for me, or the thoughts totally processed, like you described them, I have often used that, you know, like, you know, in the end, like, you know, 50 years from now, after my death, is this really going to matter?
You know, and is that something I want to be known for?
Or, you know, does that matter?
And I think, yeah, you know, I think that is something, That would be a useful tool to sort of bring up.
It also...
I'm sorry, I don't want to cut you off if you had something else you wanted to do.
No, that's fine. I'm just sort of rambling.
the basis of the show.
But the other thing that I would say is that I have a fair amount of, let's just say, somewhat negative feelings towards people who have bullshit, easy, one-sided, quote, relationships, somewhat negative feelings towards people who have bullshit, easy, one-sided, quote, So, you know, the stereotypical thing is the woman with cats, right?
Because cats aren't reciprocal, they're not demanding, they don't challenge you emotionally or intellectually, they're just, you know, it's blind, dumb, biological affection, quote, affection, right?
I dislike that.
In fact, if I could rip the cats out of the arms of every spinster in the world, I'm sure that we would get a big step forward in human relations, but you can't get rid of people's cheap substitutes for real relationships.
In the same way, I dislike people who have...
I remember when I was doing my masters, this girl, who was very smart, very nice girl, was interested in me romantically.
And we talked about this a little bit.
And she was a Christian, right?
And she talked about her love for Jesus and so on, right?
And I said, well, you know, with all due respect, there's just no way I can go out with you.
And she was really surprised, right?
She didn't know I was an atheist. And I said, well, I can't compete with Jesus.
If Jesus is perfect and always gives you what you want and always listens and always tells you exactly what you want to hear and is perfect, then I'm forever going to be coming short.
I'm forever going to be way down on the list.
Since I can't be close to perfect, then I'm forever going to be coming short.
I'm forever going to be way, way, way second to this fantasy relationship, which is fundamentally, to me, with your own narcissism because there is no such thing as Jesus.
So you have this narcissistic relationship with an idealized guy who's just in your own head, and where am I going to fit in all of that?
Nowhere, right? So, I just recognize, to me, that's another bullshit one-sided imaginary relationship, right?
So, I just, I have a real problem with people.
And I have the same thing with patriots who are like, you know, my country, you know, America, right or wrong.
It's just, it's a one-sided, non-challenging bullshit relationship, quote relationship.
It's not a real relationship at all.
People have it with gods and they have it with countries and they have it sometimes with their race or their class.
I mean, it's just, but to me, I really, really dislike it.
And in the same way, if you believe that people live forever, then you can have closure in an imaginary way with them after they're dead, right?
So if you believe that they're out there, that they can hear you, that they're floating over you and smiling and all that creepy, haunting shit, then you can continue to have a relationship, a quote relationship with them after they're dead.
And not only is that going to take away from the relationship you have with them when they're alive, because you can just get all the closure and this and that when they're dead, but...
It also diminishes from your other relationships with people who are actually alive, because there is no spirit, there are no ghosts, there are no gods, any of this kind of stuff, right?
So it diminishes your capacity to invest in adult, equal, mature, reciprocal relationships.
Our parents do this, mothers sometimes, in particular with young children and so on.
Oh, my baby, I had my baby because my baby's going to love me.
It's like, no, it's not going to work that way, right?
So I don't like it when people have imaginary relationships.
I think it eats out their capacity and lowers their tolerance for the challenges of a mature adult reciprocal relationship.
And so when people say, well, they live on somehow, somewhere, even if they say inner minds and hearts or whatever nonsense they come up with, it's like, no, they're dead.
Your relationship with that person is now totally and completely done.
Anything that you say that you think they're going to hear or there's some, it's not happening.
You're only talking to yourself.
It is not a relationship anymore, any more than somebody praying to God is having a relationship with some sort of sky ghost.
And so, again, pulling that sentimentality, that self-serving, treacly kind of sentimentality away from people, I think compels them or raises the stakes in terms of them having a real relationship with the person in the moment.
Because if you get that after the person is dead, they can't hear you, there's no closure that you can have with that person for real, then you're going to be more compelled to invest in that relationship in the present, in my mind.
Yeah, no, that makes perfect sense over here, too.
It's kind of like what you were saying before, your memories of the 24th century are the same as your memories of the 16th century, non-existent.
Right, and when the person's dead, there's no relationship, there's no reciprocity, there's no talking to them and thinking about them as if you, I mean, it's deluded, right?
I mean, it's fantastical in a terrible way.
Yeah, so put your efforts in when they actually can do something, not when they mean nothing.
Yeah, I mean, so much of this post-death sentimentality is like throwing a Big Mac into the grave of a guy who died of starvation.
You know, it's like, why don't you give him the Big Mac while he's still alive, right?
Yeah. Can't eat it now or he's dead, right?
Yeah, yeah, it's not going to make a difference.
Yeah. So I think, I mean, in my mind, there's nothing that we can do about the dead and there's nothing that we can do about our relationships that have occurred in the past because the past is irrevocable and it's gone and our memory gets fuzzy anyway, right? So what does it matter, right?
The important thing is to look into the death that has just happened and swing it forward to look at the black hole that is moving towards you and me and everybody that we know irrevocably and irreversibly.
It is moving towards us like a black bowling ball on the rails, right?
I mean, it's moving towards us.
Yes.
It's out of existence.
Given that we have that knowledge, what is it that we're going to do in terms of investing in our relationships?
In terms of taking the high road that we sometimes need to in relationships, in terms of being big, in terms of being grand, in terms of being admirable, in terms of being noble, in terms of being courageous and having integrity and being honest and living large?
What are we going to do, given that that...
It's like that Indiana Jones ball at the beginning of the first movie, right?
That's rolling towards us.
And it's... Era of Arkham's going to wipe us all out, and what are we going to do with the time that we have?
That, to me, is the gift that death gives us.
If we live forever, we procrastinate everything, and life would become dismal, boring, and unsatisfying.
So death is the ultimate prioritization, right?
Given that I'm going to die, what moves to the top of my list?
And I think that's why I said that only atheists, only secular materialists can get real value from death, can get a non-fantastical, non-narcissistic, non-sentimental view, but can actually use death to really enhance the days that we all have left.
Only people who refuse to go into the The deadly womb of illusion can actually get richness and truth out of the, I mean, the tyranny of death, the disasters that befall us all.
Yeah. Oh, Steph, huge thanks.
You know, like, just what you've said in the last half hour is really helpful for me.
I don't want to go on.
I mean, it's obviously a big topic, but you've got enough to sit on.
Is there anything else that you wanted to talk about with regards to this topic in particular?
Um, you know, it gives me some, you know, it helps me, you know, you've processed some of the things I've been feeling and thinking, and giving me, you know, I think now I have some actual, you know, processed material to To actually, you know, I don't want to say dish out, but, you know, to utilize.
Yeah, inflict. Yeah, yeah.
Now I've got my argument straight.
I'm ready to attack. No, I just, I think I can now sort of formulate an approach on how I want to...
You know, discuss these things and show the value of this way of thinking and seeking the truth and knowing that there's nothing coming after.
So live in the moment right now and make use of it because our time here is short.
Yes. The death is fundamentally not about those who are in the ground because their struggle is over.
Death is about those of us who are still the sunny side of the six-foot pit because it's our lives that still have left to live and the lessons that we can learn from the dead, right?
Seize the day, love with greatness.
That is what we get out of death.
It's not about looking at the past and those who are dead, but looking into the future, to the life that we have.
Yeah. No, I... I appreciate your time.
I really find this helpful.
I really do. I'm glad. Do you mind if I use this as a video or podcast or whatever?
Absolutely. Absolutely.
Go for it. You know, I appreciate you taking the time to talk to me.
That's a great topic. I appreciate you bringing it up.
I wanted to talk about this with the guy who posted it on the board six months ago, but he never got back to me, so I'm glad that you reminded me.
It's a very important topic, of course.
Yeah, you know, and I think those two things to focus on, you know, like it's okay to analyze the life of people who have passed on and see the negative and change for the better and, you know, realize that, you know, once you're done, you're done.
And regret is the fertilizer of new life, right?
Regret is that which allows us to turn our life around and avoid regret in the future.
And if we avoid it, we avoid change.
It doesn't help. For sure.
Please, share this with whoever will find value with it.
Thanks very much and do let me know how things go with your girlfriend.
This is very important. Absolutely.
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