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March 13, 2008 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:20:42
1010 Mr Nihilist... (A Listener Convo)

I try to rope in a true nihilist.

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Time Text
Hello, can you hear me? Hi.
Hey, what's up? How's it going?
Alright. How are you?
I'm not too bad. I just wanted to let you know that I have a backup gentleman who's listening in, a long-time listener, actually employee, and he's here to do a backup recording because I'm using a new computer, so I want to make sure that it records, kind of thing, so I hope you don't mind. No, that's alright.
Okay, well, so you have this character, we'll call him Nihil, right?
This sort of aspect of yourself that is, well, sort of fittingly nihilistic compared to the name.
Is that right? Yeah, yeah.
Basically, it was my main way of thinking or main modus of operandi when I was...
For a long time.
And it's a character that I haven't really quite...
I didn't really think that it was a separate character or anything different from what was probably my own opinion.
I guess until I started listening to a lot of your podcasts.
Right. And what's your sort of understanding of the approach that I take with regards to this?
Just want to make sure that we're on the same page or starting from the same premises.
More or less, the way that I interpreted it was that it was kind of the kind of more malevolent voice, I guess, or these kind of harsher tones that I had were more kind of imprinted by a kind of more abusive family life, less so something that I just came up with my own.
From more or less like...
When we're younger, we're not going to just come up with, I guess, these more kind of, I guess, darker thoughts or more, I guess, vicious thoughts, especially inward toward ourselves.
I don't think anyone's born wanting to attack themselves.
And I guess my interpretation of it was that it was kind of...
More or less... You were saying that it was more imprinted from your parents, imprinted from their hostility or things that they weren't able to deal with.
I don't know if that's a completely correct interpretation, but that was my interpretation.
Oh, that's damn good.
That's good. Yeah, I mean, to just touch that up a tad, my general approach or my experience or understanding is that when you are provoked into situations where you will be experiencing a strong emotion, but you are never allowed to express or act on that emotion then the that emotion kind of gets lodged within us you know like something that we can't digest or throw up or crap out kind of thing so if you're in a situation where you are attacked then you're going to feel fear and you're going to feel anger and like from your parents and then if you are not allowed to either express that fear and or anger or act on it Then what happens is it just gets kind of lodged and messed up within you and sort of takes on a life of its own,
if that makes sense. And that's something that we need to reintegrate when we get to a safer place in life.
Yeah, definitely, definitely.
Not quite as eloquently in my mind, but yeah, yeah, more or less I agree.
What you mean probably is like with less rambling and flourishing language.
But this character scares you, right?
Because you tell me that you fear, or the fear that you feel about this person.
Well, the way that he operates is it's all about – well, I guess I should probably talk about some of the other things that I've been talking about on the board.
But I had this thing once I kind of realized Christianity was kind of ridiculous.
I kind of drifted into this new idea of complete rebellion and complete rebellion being the direct opposite of Christianity, which was this kind of Satanist tent, which was more of an amoral doctrine built on – Kind of secular ideas, but more negative so and completely amoral that, you know, just do whatever feels good, blah, blah, blah.
Yeah, it's sort of hedonism, right?
Like there is judgment outside yourself, and therefore whatever gives you pleasure is the good, so to speak, right?
Yeah. Yeah, it's kind of a bastardized Epicureanism, and then I think they take the kind of will to power, the same thing that you would find in like, I guess, Nietzsche a little bit, and they would talk about that a lot.
But more or less, it was kind of like, you know, it helped me flip the coin of Christianity on my mind, so I became more, I guess it was more abrasive, you know, if you People, instead of doing the whole forgiveness thing,
or the whole, you know, I'm sorry for blah, blah, blah, or someone hits you, turn the other cheek, their doctrine was like, well, someone hits you, you know, hit them back, and with more force, so that next time they try something, they'll think about it, or something like that.
If not necessarily physically, but more mentally.
But basically, the way that he operates is kind of like, You go after what you want, worldly desires, based on just like, I guess you could say, just based on lust and things that feel good in the moment.
This kind of quick satisfaction, or as you say, short-term gains, usually within...
I spent a lot of time doing that.
And then after that, there's this distaste for humanity because you feel parasitical at the same point, but at the other token, you know that other people around you are doing the same kind of thing.
They're only coming in to take stuff from you, and the only reason why they're friendly to you is to take things from you.
And they kind of like, okay, I will, you know, dangle the carrot in front of you, but eventually I will, you know, need you for something.
I'll have to take something from you.
And certainly, like, I had a relationship where I was with this girl, and...
She was kind of into this whole, I guess, goth scene or whatever, and at the time I had found her very attractive and interesting, and she was more attractive than most girls that I would have thought in the past I would have been able to be with.
So I adopted this kind of more satanic doctrine and ideals, and that I guess in some way boosted my confidence to be able to approach her.
And finding out that later on in the relationship, she was really kind of just using me because I was at the age – I was a legal drinking age, and she was just like a year away or maybe two years away.
And she was kind of – and when I would hang out with her, she'd ask me if I could bring her booze or rent videos and stuff like that.
And it was kind of like not necessarily interested in me per se as a person because we'd hang out and we'd talk.
But every now and then, she'd just pick up the phone and start talking to a friend for another 30 minutes, and I'm like standing there and – But she was very attractive and by a lot of other people's standards was very attractive.
So the whole thing was just, I guess, this kind of acquiring of something that, you know, not for the sake of, you know, a true virtue, but just for the sake of trying to grab someone for...
I guess to make yourself feel better or for the pleasure of the moment or short-term gains of having a trophy girlfriend.
And I guess that kind of is what he did in that main part of my life.
And then it was more...
And sorry, I'm not sure that I understand.
The he here is this Niall aspect of yourself.
Okay, sorry. And then after that, it's...
After realizing that this relationship was really not working out, and eventually what happened is she just broke up with me because obviously I wasn't able to continue to provide.
She got drinking age and I wasn't of any use anymore, so I was kind of off with that.
So after that, basically the inward...
Turn more to, like, kind of this, I guess, psychotic self-destruction in the fact that I started cutting at a certain period just because he doesn't, I guess, the feeling that most people aren't there to be,
you know, supportive or caring or anything, that they really only want to take something for you is kind of more like you wanting to just, I don't know, Break away, I guess, break away from that and realize that the world in of itself is just that humanity in of itself is just this kind of self-destroying force that's never going to correct itself.
So, more or less, it's like, why bother continuing to try to, I guess, try to communicate and be open with people.
And I tried a lot of times with different relationships to Be more open with people.
I've met another girl who was into death metal.
I was also into black metal and death metal at the same time, which is very, very aggressive, dealing with a lot of hate issues with humanity and everything.
I get into a relationship with her, and she already has a boyfriend, so we're just hanging out, doing whatever.
But her, like myself, we're kind of into this kind of hating humanity, so it became more and more pronounced, my disgust for just the way that life works, the way that people think.
And I became more like, I guess, more or less wanted to...
I guess, not deal with humanity, not deal with society.
And also, the more the voices come in because of the way I view my family, because there was always something wrong with me.
I was always... The kid that was always in trouble being the first one.
Parents were harshly religious, so there was always something wrong with me there.
Just stealing cookies and lying about it was kind of punishable by beating or something like that.
It would be like spanking for just lying or sneaking television or something like that.
I guess on top of that...
I'm trying to see if I have everything in there yet.
But there was kind of that distaste for the family, distaste for other people not understanding who I was, and also the second addition to feeling disenfranchised from society, not only because I had a very minority of a minority thought...
into more of the darker alternatives, personalities, and subcultures of society, but at the same time also feeling that I was ousted.
This was also built a lot by my father, but feeling ousted because I was a minority, feeling that I was kind of like, you know, less than, less than, less than subhuman because even my family wasn't very comforting about that.
And at one point, I believe, I got really kind of disgusted when my parents, they had raised me a lot in a lot of, I guess, what you would call or what they would call predominantly upper class or mid-upper class white neighborhoods.
And Then, once I reached a certain age, when I was in about high school, we sat down at the dinner table.
This is something I really will never forget.
My parents were just...
Including my sister was sitting there, and I have a younger sister.
But they sat there, and they were telling me I was...
There's like, well, Ty, you don't quite fit in with – the reason why you don't quite fit in and the reason why you don't quite find many people is because, well, you act white.
And my sister goes, yeah, you're kind of – my little sister, who they pretty much indoctrinated by that point, she was fairly – I don't think she – she later apologized for her words, but earlier she said, yeah, you're an Oreo.
And – So I kind of felt ousted on my family's side.
I felt ousted on the outside of society.
I felt ousted... I wanted to interrupt so that people can understand what that means, right?
That just means you're black on the outside, but you're acting white on the inside, right?
And that's considered a real slur, right, in the black community?
Yeah. Yeah, sorry, sorry.
Yeah, yeah. And so I felt ousted on...
Well, I still feel kind of ousted on all sides.
And this kind of disgust...
And this kind of just more or less sickness of seeing all these...
Seeing everyone just differentiate people on the basis of...
I don't know, just because of a different personality trait, because I've acquired something that they thought was supposedly supposed to be the most productive thing for me.
They said, well, we raised you in these neighborhoods because we thought that this would make you a better person.
It would be a safer neighborhood, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And now you're going to tease me and make fun of me because I turned out the way you...
were trying to make me that way.
I don't – so that in itself irritated me.
So I got disgusted with them, disgusted with society with the way it treated me because even though I tried to fit in and I tried to do the whole – even though I was into metal and I was into black metal and I was into like goth music and stuff like that, I always had this kind of feeling that I – and really just most places I go, I kind of feel this feeling of not fitting in and – And either for one reason or another, I feel like I'm excluded.
And it just kind of made me want to, I guess, be more violent inwardly because it was just like, why bother?
Why are you fighting this so hard?
They obviously don't care.
They obviously don't give a crap.
There's, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah.
But yeah. Okay, can you just tell me a little bit about the history that you had in terms of religion?
Well, the way it first started out was we used to go to churches in Michigan.
We used to be in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
And these were predominantly white churches with a few minorities thrown in.
And my parents, we would go there.
And I was perfectly fine there.
I didn't know anything about religion at that point.
I was just kind of like, I'm a kid.
I go here. There are more kids.
We go. We play. Who cares about the whole religion part?
And then... And predominantly, it got a little bit more forceful as I got a little bit older, and my parents, for some reason, I guess, were feeling disenfranchised from the churches that they were going to, and started dragging me to all-black churches, which was a concept I, when I first went there, I still didn't understand.
Um... But, um, they would basically take me there and it was kind of this, um, creation of this, uh, I guess my dad's kind of more racist views in my opinion, um, and the culmination of religion and being indoctrinated into believing, you know, being, you needed to have this kind of strong religious moral background and, um, I guess...
And kind of pulling me into something that to me at the time when they pulled me in there, I kind of felt foreign.
How it took place in the home was more of just lying at any cost was definitely wrong.
And for that price, you would get – my parents did the whole spanking thing.
thing, they'd get a belt and they'd beat you.
And then other times, if you didn't go to church, there was like, you were going to be punished by some way.
You had to go to church no matter what.
We'd have Bible studies at home.
It was a constant, constant, I wasn't allowed to watch certain TV shows, wasn't allowed to go to certain functions.
It was really kind of, I guess, isolating in a way.
And the excuse was, well, my other friends get to do this.
And they were like, well, we're not like your other friend's parents.
And so it was kind of very, very much kind of, you believe this?
Do you believe this?
Well, not do you, but you will believe this, blah, blah, blah.
And if you don't, well, you're going to go to hell, and I'm going to use every intelligent trick in the book to try to manipulate your mind into feeling guilty about not believing in this and how you're going to go to hell.
And it wasn't until probably I was in my 17 or 18 when I started – I became extremely religious.
I have to say that what they were doing worked.
Yeah. As I became extremely religious and extremely into God, I started to...
The kids at school, I was joining with these little Christian clubs at school, and I was trying to, I guess, proselytize to some of the other kids.
But what kind of woke me out of it, I guess you could say, was...
When I was talking to those kids, I started hanging out with them a little bit, and...
Predominantly these were like the...
I wouldn't tell my parents obviously, but these were predominantly like the stoners or the goth people or the questionable human beings.
So I would hang out with them, and I'd realize that there really wasn't anything inherently evil about them other than the fact that they just didn't believe in God and weren't interested in any of that other stuff.
They weren't inherently as horrible as the Bible talks about how other people are outside of Christianity.
Also, another thing, I think I got so deep into it, I fasted for about – At least a week.
Which means I drank nothing but tea and Gatorade and didn't eat any food.
When you say deep into it, do you mean deep into Christianity or the God stuff?
Christianity. Sorry, go on.
And, uh, and so I, I, I kind of fasted a lot and, uh, well, I fasted for about a week and, um, started to read the Bible, uh, like a whole, a whole lot and I just sat down and went through the whole thing.
And, uh, By the end of it, ironically, or I guess incidentally, I kind of felt like God was a giant prick.
And after realizing that, I was kind of like, well...
No matter what I do, I'm going to be wrong.
Because no matter what action, whatever normal action that comes out of my body, there's no possible way for me to be this Christ-like human being.
And I was just kind of like, well, this doesn't work.
I mean, well, you know what?
So my first intonation was, okay, well, I'll give God his due, blah, blah, blah, blah.
But... You know what?
Just send me to hell anyway because I'm not going to be able to live my life this way at all.
And from then on...
Technically God is not a giant prick because that's actually an insult to giant pricks.
God is an infinite prick, which is a whole...
I'm with you there, but please go on.
But... So, after that, it was kind of like, well, you know what?
And I still believed that there was a god at this point, but I just believed he was a prick.
So, I was kind of like, well, you know, my dialogue to god was like this.
It's like, you know what?
I'm asking you to destroy me.
You know, my thing was, like, I obviously can't do anything good.
I'm obviously not a good person.
Just get rid of me.
And if you don't get rid of me, then by God, I'm coming after you.
And so...
So after that, I decided to...
I kind of switched from there.
And... I kind of did the whole Satanism thing.
And that kind of was the whole God didn't exist.
I didn't really have any...
It was kind of just like this contrary fight to that.
Now, and I'm sorry, I just want to make sure that we get to the topic.
And this is really, really great, what you've been telling me.
But I just want to start probing, if you don't mind, where it is that you think about this stuff before we get to this character of yours.
Is that okay? Okay.
Now, you do realize this all has nothing to do with God, right?
Yeah. So, in your mind, or from your approach, what is this emotional investment, what is it really to do with?
Well, to me it feels like, I don't know, I kind of feel like...
If I were to look backwards and pay attention to what was going on in my family, I kind of feel like maybe this was feelings that I was getting from my parents, kind of just these feelings of inadequacy, because I could never really come up to their standards.
And I could never actually...
I guess never really be a good person in their mind.
I don't know. That's kind of the way that I see it.
It was more these kind of feelings of inadequacy that were kind of enforced by my parents.
Your level of insight is fantastic.
I just wanted to sort of gauge that to get a sense of where you were.
Just to analogize it so that we can encapsulate it, at least in this conversation.
It sort of runs a little like this, in my opinion.
If my mom and my dad tell me that leprechauns are trying to kill me, and if I put my foot wrong or disobey them once, then leprechauns are going to strangle me in my sleep.
Now, when I finally realize that there is no such thing as a leprechauns, I'm going to be enraged, right?
Yeah. But not at leprechauns.
Because they don't exist, right?
Right. So who am I going to be enraged at?
My parents. Exactly.
So all of this stuff that you think is, or at least that you describe as being related to some sort of god or deity or Zeus or Yahweh or whatever, I mean, it's all nonsense as far as there is no such thing as those things.
So when you're told a lie, when you stop believing that lie, you are angry simply at having been told a lie, right?
Yeah. Especially since your parents...
As you said earlier, talk about truth and not lying as a primary moral goal, right?
Yeah. I got beat a lot of times for not telling the truth.
Now, tell me why it is, if you don't mind, and this is, I think, the third or fourth time that you've done this sort of in this conversation, that you begin to giggle when you talk about being assaulted as a child.
I mean, that seems kind of counterintuitive to me, if that makes sense.
Yeah, it... Well, I kind of just...
When every time I would get...
Every time I would get beaten, it's just kind of...
I don't know. I don't know.
It feels like it's a defense mechanism to not have to feel the pain that I was...
I mean, it's kind of like, yeah, yeah, I was beaten.
Yeah, everybody gets beaten by their parents.
It's kind of just like this way of going, yeah, I guess that's kind of what's happening.
I don't know.
Sorry to interrupt, but do you understand the relationship, which is complex, but do you understand the relationship between laughing at your pain and your pain manifesting itself as this Nihil character?
No, not really.
Okay, well, if you genuinely were terrified at being assaulted by your protectors as a child, lied to, bullied, manipulated, controlled, humiliated and so on, which was all terrifying and horrifying and monstrous, right? If you laugh at that pain, clearly the pain doesn't go away, right?
Yeah. But you reject the pain and you laugh at the pain, which means that you are inhabiting, I'm not saying that you're abusive, but you are inhabiting the role of an abuser if you laugh at your own pain.
Because a sadist takes, like, giggles when people are hurt, right?
Yeah. And this doesn't mean that you're a sadist or anything like that.
But you take on the role of an abuser to yourself.
When you laugh at your own legitimate and horrifying pain, right?
Yeah. I mean, you went through some seriously scary shit, right?
Yeah. And seriously crazy-making shit, too, right?
Because it wasn't just like you had parents who got drunk and punched you because they were whatever, right?
But this was systematic, cult-like indoctrination and control, right?
Yeah. Yeah.
And this is cold-ass, calculated stuff, right?
Yep. So, that's kind of, in my view, this is kind of stone evil, right?
I mean, to some degree, we can almost forgive the mere angry hedonist who just gets mad and yells at someone or whatever, right?
But this is controlled, manipulated, consistent, and persistent indoctrination, right?
Yeah. So, that's some, you know, frankly badass stuff, right?
Yeah. So if you laugh at your own pain, it doesn't serve you, right?
To laugh at that which genuinely hurts you, right?
Yeah. So who does it serve?
Parents. Right.
So if you become your parents to yourself...
as part of your personality.
It cannot inform your decisions and your pain will take vengeance upon you in the form of self-destructive behavior.
Hmm.
It doesn't go away, right?
It doesn't Just because you laugh at it and minimize it and pretend that it's not a big deal and pretend like it's funny, the pain doesn't go away, but it comes back and it bites you in the ass with other kinds of behavior that's kind of out of your control, right?
Like the cutting, like the nihilism and so on.
And, of course, it is not a solution, though I fully understand the journey, I think, right?
I mean, if I can be so bold as to say...
But it's not a solution when you have been controlled and used and manipulated and exploited by your parents.
It is not a solution that is fundamentally against that evil to say, I am now going to control, manipulate and exploit other people.
Does this make sense?
Yeah. Because it hasn't worked, right?
Yeah. It hasn't gotten you out of a cycle of unhappiness, right?
No. And so if I can just go on for a minute or two more, just by the way, since I'm using a new computer, is the sound coming through okay?
Yeah, a couple times you kind of break up a little bit and it gets a little distorted, but yeah, most of the time you're clear.
Okay, good. Well, we'll try and live with that.
So what happened, in my opinion, is something like this.
Your parents owned this thing called morality, soulfulness, ethics, virtue, higher calling, whatever it is.
They owned that as a definition in your mind.
And they used that in a negative and horrifying, horrible and destructive manner to control and humiliate and abuse you.
And so, when you got older, You decided to fight their ownership of morality, not by questioning the root of that morality, but by acting in opposition to their definition.
Exactly. If their definition of morality is forgiveness and self-abasement, then I'm not going to forgive but rather be aggressive, and I'm not going to self-abase but rather exploit others, right?
Exactly. If their definition of virtue is being a lamb, I will be a lion, right?
Exactly. And that doesn't work, right?
Right. Because they still own the definition of morality.
Yeah. Does that make sense?
Yeah. They've stopped this world where you are either an exploiter or you're exploited, right?
Yeah. And you say, well, fuck that, I'm not going to be exploited.
Yeah. So I'm going to be an exploiter.
But that falls into the trap, right?
Yeah. Yeah.
And also what it does, of course, is that it erodes your respect for yourself and for other people to look at them as hypocritical, shallow, materialistic self-feeders, gluttony feeders on stimuli, right?
Yeah. That's not much of a higher calling, right?
That's not much of a, you know, there's beauty, truth, and power, and wonder in the human soul, right?
Exactly, yeah.
Because they owned the definition of ethics and the soul and the higher calling.
You no longer believed in that, so you threw the whole damn thing out, right?
Yeah. Does that sort of ring true at all, or make sense?
Yeah, definitely, definitely.
And as you were pursuing that...
This nihilistic approach to things.
If my parents do not have virtue, then there is no such thing as virtue, right?
That's the pit.
All too many of us. I was a moral relativist for a long, long time.
I even wrote a paper on...
They had this paper we were supposed to write about what do we believe is bullshit, called a bullshit paper, and I said the idea of right and wrong or morals.
Well, and to be a relativist is to say that there is no such thing as ethics, right?
There is no such thing. And therefore, in the Nietzschean view, ethics are that which is invented by the weak to control the strong, right?
Exactly. Right.
So, you developed as a reaction to an exploitive moral system a hatred of ethics, because ethics is that which is invented to control and humiliate the strong by the weak, right?
Yeah. So, I guess, when you ran into what it is that I'm talking about, there is a...
I mean, certainly, I think there's a kind of toughness to what we do in this conversation, because I sure as hell don't tell people to lie down and take it, right?
Yeah, definitely.
But at the same time, so when we attempt to redefine ethics from the root-up, and we attempt to...
I don't know if you've read On Truth, but this would be a good book for you to read as far as that goes.
Yeah, yeah, I read it.
I have UPB and RTR, so...
Oh, good stuff. Okay, good.
That can fast-forward relatively quickly, then.
So then, the question then becomes, how do you develop something that is higher?
But you're kind of allergic to that.
So if you look at a higher ethical goal in your life, your defenses kick in.
Like the moment that ethics come up, you're like, oh, fuck.
Here comes the exploitation.
Yeah. So you're kind of barred off from the beauty and the wonder of that kind of stuff.
Because as you approach it, this wall of fire comes up.
Called, if you keep going, you're going to be exploited, right?
Yeah, definitely.
Okay, so with that in mind, the characters that I talk about in this ecosystem idea, the idea that we are an ecosystem of different character traits, all of which are required for healthy functioning, the one flaw that these Characters have within us.
They always are founded on one logical flaw.
And sometimes it can be really hard to figure out what it is because they're damn good.
They're damn convincing, right? So we can take this a number of ways if you want.
What I think would be the most useful would be for me to cross-examine this Nihil character if you can roleplay and find out where his logical flaw is.
I believe I can do that.
Alright, so we'll give it a shot?
Alright. Okay, so if you can just step into, or let this character talk, and step into this mindset, and give me his argument, or your argument, because he's part of you, this argument that he has about the world and the people in it.
Uh... Um...
You know, it's kind of totally annoying.
I really do apologize for this.
My other computer, which doesn't distort my voice, has been free.
Can I call you back in like 30 seconds?
Yeah, sure, sure. So, yeah, sorry, if you can then give me the case that Nihil would make about the world and ethics and people and truth.
Well, um...
Most of the world is full of people that are just out there to manipulate you, to take things from you.
Most of the time, when you're dealing with other people, they'll walk up to you and they'll say hello or they'll try to be kind to you, but it's all just part of this kind of facade that they put on.
The virtue that people say that they have is really just kind of a part of this...
I don't know. It's more a part of this kind of system that helps them feed off of other people.
I guess taking religion, for example, is the way that it's used is basically to use you to make you feel as if you have – you can't exist without the preacher.
You can't exist without the church.
You can't live unless you have some sort of connection to this Bible and also give all your money to us too.
And it's the same thing with most men and women.
I mean, men, usually they're talking to you.
They're hanging out with you. They're saying, you know, I want to be your friend.
I want to get to know you.
But really what they're trying to do is find someone with similar ethics or the way that they think so that they can, you know, basically justify all the, you know, stupid ideas that they have about the world.
And... Sometimes, like one of my past – one of the past friendships that we've had, usually they would take our – they would hang out with us, not necessarily – or deal with us, not necessarily because of our personality or who we were, but because this person was like, oh, well, I hang out with you.
And they literally said this to us, was that they hang out with you because – Yeah, I just need to show people that I'm not racist.
I have a black friend. Or to take the opposite side of it.
Black people hang out with you so that they can feel a part of this great unity, this great oneness.
And it's not necessarily because they appreciate you for who you are because the moment we open our mouth and say anything that is about our personality, they don't care or they find it weird or they find it different.
The only real purpose that they have is to justify the same prejudices and ideals that they have of humanity so that they can pull you into some kind of collective ideal system that will drag you into being submissive to whatever they want.
You don't get a chance to be an individual in this world and any chances that you have to be an individual are basically taken away by other people.
I mean they have – society is built on stereotypes, built on ways of how people are supposed to think, how you're supposed to dress, how you're supposed to act.
If you go against any grainline of any of those, you're considered a complete – you're considered weak or freakish or the, I guess, lone wolf, and they'll cast you out to the side until you die for some reason.
So why try to, I guess, fit in with the rest of society?
Why try to – Why try to feel any sympathy for what they're doing?
Because they know what they're doing.
They know that they don't care about you.
You of the individual.
You of who you are. I mean, so maybe you're able to help and talk to a few people, and maybe they're there to listen to you.
But, you know, 10 to 20 years from now, no one's going to care.
No one's going to care that you came around, or no one's going to give a crap if you ever existed.
It's not—it's no big—it's really no big deal.
You really—you know, we're basically flecks of dust on this, you know, on a giant rock that's spinning around this huge— I mean there's really nothing – there's nothing you – You can do about it.
You can't just walk up to them and say, you know, or protest, because protesters, they show it on the news.
Every time a protester goes up and says, I want a better world, I want a better this, what do the police do?
They bring out the bats and the rubber bullets and shoot it, or sometimes live ammo, right into their legs.
I mean... You're trying to get intimacy from people.
Do they really want intimacy or do they just want someone they can cling to so they can feel like they're important to someone?
And is it really you that they're after or just someone who can tolerate their bullcrap long enough until they die?
I mean, what's the point?
Why open yourself up?
Why give yourself that?
Why not just take what you need, survive on who you are and do what What you want and take care of yourself because no one else is going to care.
No one else is going to give a crap.
And you might as well...
You might as well just, you know...
Follow your own goals and be separate from society.
But use society to your advantage, so to speak.
Allow people to do things.
Allow them to use their own stupidity and their own weakness and use that to your advantage so that you can better help yourself through society.
Not necessarily having to no longer protest and tell them, no, no, no, I don't like it.
You know, smile, laugh, say it's okay, it's cool, it's great.
Use their own stupidity to be the anvil on top of their own head when it comes down.
But you'll be fine. Because you didn't give out the one last thing that you've got.
And that is your own sense of trust and belief in yourself.
And even still, I mean, if you really like yourself, if you really care about yourself, why would you continue to subject yourself to this pain?
Enjoy it for the infinite.
Blip of time that you have, even if it's smaller, but enjoy all of it.
And if you self-destruct, more the better, because you no longer have to deal with the rest of these assholes on this planet.
I think that's pretty much about it.
Now, if you don't mind, I'd like to talk to this character as if it's this character.
Again, I know this is kind of freaky shit, but just if we can give it a shot, it would be great because I think I get the logical contradiction.
Now, talking to this character, Mr.
Nyhill, do you want me to give you the short version or the long version?
And what I mean by that is, do you want me to tell you how you're not telling me the truth, or do you want me to teach you how you're not telling me the truth?
Give me the long version, Molly.
Okay, so you feel a lot of anger towards humanity as a whole, exploitation, stupidity, corruption, weakness, and all these kinds of things, right?
Yeah. So, would it be fair to say that you have high standards?
Yeah. Right?
Now, we don't generally call a man unhealthy if he dies at 100, right?
No, no.
Say, shit, that guy had a long life, right?
Yeah, yeah.
So, you have standards which condemn the vast majority of human beings for their stupidity, right?
Yeah. Let's say that you're completely right.
Maybe you are, right?
Maybe you are. I mean, look, you're a smart fellow and you've got great language skills and clearly you can see deeply and with great perceptivity into the hypocrisies and manipulations of other people.
So I'm going to go with the idea.
I'm not going to try and argue you out of your perspective.
I'm going to go with the idea that you're completely and totally right.
Does that sound reasonable? Oh yeah, definitely reasonable.
Yeah, sure it does, right?
Nobody's going to dislike it when I agree with them, right?
Of course not, of course not.
Now, what percentage of people do you, because you said most, and I wasn't sure if you meant most or if you actually meant all, but you were just trying to be semi-reasonable.
Trying to be semi-reasonable, but yeah, most if not all.
Okay, so if you can give me your gut sense of what percentage of people fall into these categories that you talk about.
99.9%.
99.9%.
Okay. Now, can I assume that you are not one of these people?
Um, sometimes I feel like it, sometimes I don't, but most on the whole, I don't think that I'm that bad.
I think that I've pretty much, I think that I'm just reacting to all the other idiots out there, and more or less, I don't think I'm the bad guy, so yes, I'd say that 1% would probably be me.
Well, and even if you are a, quote, bad guy, there's no such thing as badness, so the label wouldn't apply it, right?
Yeah, exactly. Other people will say good and bad and right and wrong, but they're just trying to exploit you, right?
Yeah. Right, so what I mean is that when you call 99.9% of the people stupid, you don't include yourself in that category, right?
Yeah, definitely.
You think you're smart? Yes.
I think you're smart too, right?
So hopefully I'm not in that 0.1%, but we'll find out if I am or not, right?
Now, having somebody else...
Sort of face-to-face or person-to-person that you would consider not in that 99.9%.
Have I met anyone who I don't think is in that 99.9%?
Have you ever met anyone face-to-face that you think is as smart as you are?
No.
I think that that's a very honest answer, which is good.
Not that you have to be honest, because there's no such thing as right and wrong, but I appreciate it nonetheless.
I appreciate you throwing the crumbs.
Okay, so you are the smartest person in the world, and I am perfectly, perfectly willing to go with that as a premise.
Okay. Well, I mean, that is your belief, right?
That you're the smartest person in the world, that you've met.
Probably, yeah. I mean, perhaps not in quantitative knowledge, but in quality of knowledge, yes.
Well, in terms of lifting this hypocritical fog that covers up the actual predations of society, you and maybe Nietzsche are pretty much down with it, right?
Something like that, yeah. Yeah, I mean, you see...
I think that you're kind of being polite to me, which I was not expecting, which is nice, but don't, right?
Like, I want you to unfurl the full glory of your own perception of yourself, right?
So, I genuinely think and feel, and you may be right, I genuinely think and feel that you think and feel that you're the smartest person around, right?
Yeah. So, don't give me any false modesty.
That's all I'm asking. Like, just go for it, right?
Be as big as you think you are.
Okay. Does that seem reasonable?
You don't have to spend my feelings.
Like, I'm not going to get offended, right?
Because I think that you are very smart, so I've got no problem with that as an approach.
Okay. So, do you think that you're the smartest person around?
Yes. Completely?
Yes. Fantastic.
Okay, that's great. That's great.
Let's go with the belief that you are, in fact, the smartest person around.
Okay. Alright.
Now, would we accept that you're smart because you accurately process reality?
Yes, definitely.
Because you think that you see through the fogs and manipulations of society to the core of exploitation, right?
Definitely. So you're not fooled in the war of words.
You're not fooled when people kick the sand of abstractions into your face.
You see all through that to what they're actually doing, right?
Yeah. So you pass the Platonic illusion and straight to the core and the reality, right?
Yeah. Now, would you say that if it could be proven that there were areas where you were not accurately perceiving reality...
That it would be worth adapting your considerable intelligence to take that into account?
Yes, though I don't believe there are, sure.
No, no, I'm not saying there are, I'm just saying if magically these things could be created, right?
Yeah, yeah, sure, sure, sure.
Okay. Now, when you judge humanity according to a standard...
Do you believe that that standard exists completely independently of humanity's capacities?
And what I mean by that is, let's say that you are able to live to be 200 years old.
Is it reasonable to say that other people are sickly because they only get to live to be 100 years old?
I would say they're doing something wrong, so yeah, I guess there would be something wrong, because if I'm living to 200 and they're only living to 100, they're obviously doing something wrong.
Okay. Now, what if you get to live to 100, but other people only get to live to 90?
Would you say that they're sickly, or would you say that they just didn't quite have the lucky genes or whatever, or they didn't get hit by a bus or something?
Um... I honestly, I mean, people can still be careful and stuff like that.
So if I live to be 100 and everybody else only lives to 90, again, I still think there's something wrong with them because they're obviously not being observant enough or taking in the knowledge enough in order to...
Get to live that long.
I mean, there is a certain amount of compensation.
Yeah, maybe a few of them don't have the right amount of genes in order to last as long as I could, but on the whole, if everybody is going down to 90, then probably there's something wrong there.
Okay, got it. Now, let's say that you are the tallest man in the world.
You are, I don't know, whatever it is, 8 feet 5 or some nonsense, right?
You are the tallest man in the world.
Is it fair to say that everyone else is short?
Well, I guess they'd have to be.
I mean, they'd have to be short because I'm tall.
If I'm tall, then they're short.
So yeah, they're all short.
Okay, fantastic.
Fantastic. So for you, you do not derive the concept of an average height from an average, but rather only relative to your own height, right?
Exactly. So everyone else is shorter.
Sorry, everyone else is not just shorter, but short.
Because you are the standard of height, and anyone who doesn't reach your standard of height is short, right?
Yes.
Do you think that a short person is responsible for being short?
Hmm.
Well, as a matter of genetics, I don't think they're responsible for being short if...
If it's genetic, then probably they just have weak genetics, and genes don't have IQs or anything, so I don't think it's possible for them to be completely responsible for being short, no.
Okay, so that's great. So short is a physical limitation based on genes, right?
Yes. Right.
Now, so in a sense, they're not short and responsible for being short.
They're shorter than you, right?
Yes. Okay, great.
Now, if everyone but you is less intelligent than you, do you believe that they have the capacity to be as intelligent as you, or do they not have that capacity to be as intelligent as you?
I believe they have the capacity, but in a way that they refuse to have.
That or they're just too weak or too easily.
So I guess in a way they really don't.
But I mean, there's the ability, but that ability is not applied.
So I don't think that they have really the true ability to achieve that, no.
Okay, here's the core question.
How do you know they have this ability?
Well, sometimes I've seen people who actually are starting to make strides away from the others and they're starting to look at the world a little bit differently, but then they sink right back into the same sinkholes and they don't seem to ever evolve, I guess, mentally or in their thinking.
Right, so this is like saying a short man can jump up but then he goes back down, right?
Yes. But you can't blame him for going back down because he's short, right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So what I'm saying is that you have a thesis that you're the smartest guy in the world and other people could be as smart as you are but they just choose not to and I'm asking what's the evidence, right?
Because if I say, I'm 8'5", and anybody who wants to be 8'5", can be 8'5", but people just choose to say, at 5'10", I would need to provide some evidence for that, right?
I mean, you don't want to be bigoted.
You don't want to just have opinions that you just have, right?
You want to have evidence, right? Yeah.
So, what's the evidence that your standard called, everyone but you, is stupid?
What is the evidence that they're capable of not being stupid?
Because, I'm sorry, just to make this clear, if they can't not be stupid, they can't be stupid, right?
Yeah. Because that's just an unjust measure, right?
That's like calling anyone who's not 20 feet tall short.
Well, they can't be 20 feet tall, so you can't call them short.
Compared to what, right?
Yeah. Yeah.
So, what's the evidence?
Now, evidence that I would accept, and I think you would consider reasonable evidence too, evidence that I would accept would be something like, well, I have been able to take somebody from stupid to intelligent.
Their ability to perceptively see the flaws in society to a point where I have been able to see them and be able to understand them and expound upon them and act upon them as well as I have.
They have not been able to do that?
No. I mean...
If no one has been able to do it, how is it that they're deficient?
Like, what's the evidence that it's even possible for them to do it?
And the reason that I bring this up is that earlier your, I don't know, friend had said that what he hated was unjust standards that could never be achieved, right?
Yeah, yeah. Now, you don't want to be that guy.
I mean, you may be the smartest guy in the world, and I'm totally happy with that.
You may have seen to the core of society, but you don't want to be the guy who sets up unjust standards, like the titanic prick god, who sets up unjust standards and then uses them to lacerate everyone else, right?
When they're unjust standards.
Let's have just standards, absolutely, and fault people for not achieving them.
That's very clever, Molly.
I said, that's very clever, Molly.
That's very clever. You know, every now and then I can pull at least one rabbit out of my ass.
Let's put it down. I'm just rooting around to see if there are any more up there.
So I might just get carrots and play come get see.
But you don't want to be that guy, right?
You don't want to be that guy who comes up with these unjust standards and then just beats the hell out of everyone for failing to achieve them, right?
Yeah, yeah. That's true.
Because that's not going to make you happy, right?
Right, right.
Also, if it is possible for people to achieve what you achieve, it's not going to work to, like, okay, let me back up for a sec.
When you were a kid, did it motivate you to be called stupid and weak?
No, no, not at all.
Did it make you want to grow?
Did it make you want to launch yourself into space this way?
No, not at all.
Right, so clearly you have a standard which you don't have, and we can continue to examine it, but you have a standard for people that you don't have any evidence that they can achieve.
So, so far it seems to be an unjust standard.
And you're also using language that actively bars people from achieving the standard that you say they should by calling them stupid and weak and manipulative and blah blah blah blah, right?
Yeah, yeah. So it would seem to me that your goal is not to have people meet your standard, right?
Hmm. I guess that could possibly be my goal.
Though I don't think I'm...
It's not that they can't.
I think that they just aren't reaching it or can't.
Not that I don't want them to.
I just don't think they're able to do it.
But yeah, yeah. Well, but if you have a standard that you believe that people can achieve, and then you kind of, it's kind of abusive to call people stupid and weak, right?
Because if they are in fact stupid and weak, it's kind of abusive to call them that, because they can't be any different, right?
Yeah. Yeah.
Right? They can't be any different.
If someone can't be any different, you can't abuse them for who they are.
You can't have a standard that is different from who they are, right?
Yeah. Does that make sense?
Yeah. If they can achieve something, then you, I think, have the right to say, there's a higher standard that you should achieve.
But then, if you want to rationally help them achieve that standard, you should encourage them, right?
Yeah. But if you have a standard that just about nobody can achieve, except you, who achieved it innately, right?
You didn't... I mean, look at that in a sec, right?
You're just born this way, right?
Yeah. But if you have a standard out there that other people...
Can't achieve, it's unjust to call them stupid and weak.
If they can achieve it, then calling them stupid and weak is abusive, right?
Yeah, I guess it is.
Well, tell me if it's not.
I don't want to railroad you.
God knows you're going to haunt my dreams and get me in my sleep or something.
So I want to be sure that we are trying to...
Because what I'm trying to do is give you...
Because what I really get, Mr.
Nyhill, from your conversation is a staggering amount of frustration.
I think that you are by far the most idealistic aspect of this personality.
I think that you see a world that is a complete and total paradise with no gods and no governments and no exploitation.
And I think it drives you completely mad that you can't get there.
Wow, how did you? Yeah, yeah, that's okay.
Don't you just start dying to get to that world, but every time you try to create it, you scare everyone off, right?
Oh yeah, definitely.
That's like mad, crazy frustrating, right?
Yeah. So I'd like to give you the opportunity to sort of come out of the cave without everybody running screaming, right?
So you can actually start to work to create this world.
Because you love this world in your heart of hearts.
And you desperately want people to be smarter.
And you desperately want people to be better.
And you desperately want people to wake up.
You are by far the most optimistic and idealistic aspect of this personality, in my opinion.
Because nihilism comes from disappointed hopes.
It's sour grapes.
I want this beautiful world.
I'm never going to get it, so I'm going to damn the world that is, right?
Hell yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And I would like to give you some ways to help achieve this world so that you don't feel frustration and lash out at the world because you can't help it in the way you want to.
Okay. Like if you've got a doctor and you've got a cure for cancer and every time you try and give people the pill they bite you on the hand, that gets mighty frustrating after a while, right?
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Because you do see very deeply into the core of society, and you do see a lot of the lies, but you don't know how to liberate people from those lies, and so you get really frustrated, and you feel like people are just stupid and reject you all the time, right? Yeah.
Yeah. Right.
And that's because you grew up in an environment where ideals were used to abuse people, right?
Yeah, yeah.
Where ideals were unattainable, and the failure to attain these impossible ideals resulted in abuse, right?
Yeah. And you see, in a way, with all the best intentions on the planet and in the world, you see how that is the situation you are creating for others now, impossible ideals that you rage at them for not meeting.
Yeah, it is a little bit clearer, yeah.
And the reason that the ideals are impossible to meet is because you rage at them.
It's a self-fulfilling prophecy.
These ideals, people will never meet, so they're completely stupid.
But the moment you call them stupid, they no longer want to meet your ideals.
Do you see how it's the same thing?
It's not a cause and effect, right?
Right, right.
Right.
Hmm.
Hmm.
And you, I think, so desperately want this beautiful world to come into being that if I could give you some clues or some tips on how to work from a place of positivity and actually begin to achieve what it is that you so desperately want...
that would be a whole lot better than sitting there in the bitter corner throwing nanchucks at the planet, right?
Yeah, yeah, probably.
You don't want to be the cranky, bitter-ass old guy on the lawn saying, kids, get off my lawn.
You don't want to be that scary Boo Radley character, right?
You want to be somebody who can actually work to achieve the kind of beauty that you see in your heart of hearts as possible in the world, right?
Yes, yes. Yeah.
Definitely. So, the first thing that you've got to do, in my humble opinion, and I do think that you are an incredibly intelligent aspect of the personality and an incredibly idealistic one, the first thing that you have to do is start rejecting people.
Because I genuinely believe that in your world, everyone but you is corrupt and possibly stupid.
Yeah, yeah.
So what you've got to do is change your world, right?
Yeah. So that you can start interacting with people who might actually listen.
Because I believe that you're totally right.
Nobody around you listens to you.
You are a freak relative to everyone else, right?
I totally... I believe that that is true.
I don't think you're crazy, right? Yeah.
Yeah. But the problem is, that's become something that you're so used to, you don't look for anything else, right?
Yeah. Yeah.
And the other thing that's true is that if you...
Fall prey to the temptation to lash out at people for failing to meet your ideals.
You will only end up with insecure and manipulative people around you.
Because nobody with any real self-esteem who's capable of listening to the brilliance that you have, nobody will want to be sitting around being called stupid and weak, right?
Yeah. So you're actually driving away the kind of people that you most want to meet, right?
Huh. Yeah, I guess I am.
And you're trapping yourself in this underworld of other people who are also angry or bitter or weak or destructive, right?
Yeah. Yeah.
And it's kind of driving you a little crazy, and I don't know that you see a way out of that, other than more anger and more frustration, which is only going to make it worse, right?
Yeah. Definitely.
Sorry, go ahead. I was just going to say it's more kind of like, well, if you can't fix it, then, you know, just go out in a blaze.
Right, but your desire to go out in a blaze is why you can't fix it.
Hmm. Right?
Yeah. Because you both believe that the world can be an amazingly better place, and you at the same time completely despair that it can come about.
So it's a tortuous situation, right?
Yeah. Yeah.
Because that's what I got, and I'm just going to read you back a few of the things that I mentioned, right?
People will lie to your face to exploit you.
They'll pretend to be positive so that they can take things from you.
People will befriend you because they want to show that they're not racist, which is completely racist, right?
People claim that they want intimacy, but they just want someone to cling to because of their own stupidity and weakness, and that you have protected the most important thing to you, which is you don't give out a sense of trust and belief in yourself, right?
And that kind of world, which is full of exploitive predators, is what a psychologist would call projection, right?
Which is that if you go around using your incredible intelligence, not to help educate the world, but to damn it!
And abuse it. You're actually a predator, right?
Yeah. And so a predator is going to see predators everywhere, right?
And is actually going to feel uncomfortable putting down his weapons, right?
Yeah. But if you have this amazing ability, and I believe that you do, and if you have this deep-seeing, far-reaching, all-powerful intellect, which I think is an amazing aspect of you, If you are somebody who can heal others with the touch of his hand, then punching is not really a good use of your powers, right?
We have to work with the world as it is, if we want to be rational and empirical, right?
If there's no soap in the world, telling people to wash their hands isn't going to make any sense, right?
Yeah.
So we have to work with the world as it is in order to improve it.
We have to accept the world as it is.
And what that means is that I don't think that we can impose artificial standards on the world and damn everyone for not meeting them, right?
Right.
That's what Christians do.
I mean, we can go into a million hours, which we won't, about what Christians do.
You have to accept Jesus Christ in order to be saved.
Well, what about Socrates, who never knew Jesus?
What about some guy in Pygmy in Borneo who's never even heard of God?
It's not reasonable to have that standard, right?
To damn people to hell for things beyond their control is a Christian approach, right?
Yeah. Yeah, it is.
You don't want to be that guy, right?
No. Not in the slightest.
Okay, so let me just break the roleplay here, and I just wanted to get a sense of what you got from that, or how you feel at the moment.
Um... I'm kind of feeling more like I should think about.
I should ponder more.
I'm feeling better.
I'm feeling less tense.
And a little more relaxed.
Less, I guess you could say, angry.
Yeah, I mean, Mr. Niall actually doesn't want to hurt people.
He wants to help people, right? He's just frustrated.
Yeah. For the most part, it seems like that.
Yeah. Definitely.
More or less, I guess, he was more or less just frustrated with society as a whole, and that, I guess, like you said, kind of turned into this sadistic attacking because no one would listen, so if they won't listen, then, you know, might as well just do, right?
He didn't have another approach, right?
Yeah, right, right. No, that is tough, for sure.
I mean, when we desperately want something, and every time we try to achieve it, we make it worse, that is just a tortuous situation to be in, right?
Right. Definitely.
That's where the majority of nihilism comes from, is a desperate kind of idealism that is so frustrated that it turns rancid, right?
Yeah. Yeah.
Extremely. Just...
A guy who desperately wants to go out with some woman, but every time he approaches her, he scares her off.
At some point, he's just going to start hating her, right?
Because he's so... Right.
Right. Yeah.
And so, just so you understand, right, the methodology that I try to use in these internal Socratic debates, or as I call it, the RTR with yourself, or with the Miko system...
Is that he's got totally valid points, but there's a logical flaw somewhere.
Okay. Right?
And this part of the engaging with yourself is to accept that he has something valuable to bring to the table, because if you just reject him, he's just going to get mad at him, right?
Yeah, yeah.
And that wasn't working for you, right?
No. That wasn't working for you to get up and rejecting him because he just got mad at him, right?
Yeah, a lot more angry, yeah.
So that is a situation where there's no...
So you have to take the opposite approach, right?
If what you're doing is heading you...
Like if you want to go north and every time you hit the gas you go south, you've got to turn the car around, right?
You've got to do the opposite. Yeah.
So instead of rejecting that which frightens you, you have to accept and negotiate with that which frightens you and give it respect, right?
Right. Because like anyone, if you listen to them with respect, then they will actually tell you what's on their mind and it de-escalates the tension quite a bit, right?
Right. And I've done this, I mean, I have my own nihilist, right?
But who's very helpful, because this guy can spot bullshit six million miles away through lead, right?
Yeah. So you need him, right?
He's your early warning system.
He's your guy who's like, okay, this person's full of bullshit, let's go elsewhere, right?
Yeah. But what you've had him do is, like, this person's full of bullshit, so let's attack him, right?
Or if no one's going to attack himself, right?
Right, right. But if you listen to him and allow him to help you steer clear of people who are dangerous or destructive or a waste of your considerable talents and energies, then he will be happy.
He will be satisfied, right?
Right. Right.
Yeah. You sound full of depth.
Well, no, it's...
I'm just kind of pondering at the same time about a lot of things, a lot of relationships.
The reason why I tried to contact you about this is because there are a lot of relationships and things in my life right now that I could either go one way or another.
And I'm just...
It was just...
I guess it's like, well, yeah, I guess I need to use him in that way, but I guess he was so used to attacking people, he almost got a liking to it.
I mean, because there are some people who...
I'll give you an example.
A gentleman that I go to...
He's into this whole punk music thing and there's these clubs where I'm going to meet more people like this last girlfriend I had that was only into me because I could get her booze and stuff.
But he's kind of...
It kind of wants me to go hang out with him there, and he and a lot of other people like to drink and smoke a lot, and I tried to quit smoking, and I pretty much quit it for a long time and all that other stuff.
But it seemed like Nihil actually wanted to go there just to feel better about those types of, I guess, about that situation, that kind of self-destruction and attack.
Sorry to interrupt, but he's totally going to want to get his hate on from time to time, right?
Do you remember this thing about Simon the Boxer in RTR? I haven't gotten that.
I'm in like 76 pages up in RTR. When you get to the Simon the Boxer thing, substitute anger at the world for boxing, and this hopefully will make some sense.
Because he's full of anger and frustration, when you take away that which frustrates him, he's going to go in search of it, because that's what he does.
He processes anger and frustration.
He expresses anger and frustration.
Now, he wants to be as free of that As you do, but he's a little bit addicted to it, right?
So he's going to draw you into that place where people are going to be shallow and hypocritical and bad so that he can rage against them, right?
But you're going to have to say to him, look, we want to change the world or we want to help affect the world in a more positive way.
So you don't want to be that guy who says the world is bad and so I'm only going to hang around with bad people to justify my belief, right?
Because that's not empirical and that's not reasonable, right?
Right. In fact, I'm going to want to try and find the exact opposite of my core premise to see if it's true, if it holds true or not, right?
Right, right. Definitely.
Yeah, you've got to watch that. You can rationally evaluate and judge this kind of stuff too, and you can also talk about what feeling is it That occurs for you.
So when you consider going to the punk guys or the smoker guys or the drinker guys or whatever, what is the feeling that is associated with that?
Is it happiness? Is it eagerness?
Is it optimism? Or is it kind of a little darker?
It's darker. Definitely darker.
Right, so that's the feeling that at least your early warning system is working, and that's a good thing, right?
You're not driving without headlights, right?
So that feeling that occurs for you that is familiar and dark and a little sick and so on, right?
Well, that's kind of a warning, right?
Right, right. Now, can you tell me what you were feeling before you and I talked on this call?
Um, well, I had had a talk with Niho earlier and I was feeling kind of nervous because his talk with me was, now I'm going to show you how this new guy you've gotten interested in is completely full of shit.
And I was like, I hope not.
But, yeah, there was kind of that nervousness, not knowing what was going to happen.
I don't think, at least I don't get the sense, based on just our cursory exchanges before the conversation, I didn't get the sense, like I got the sense that you were nervous, and I got the sense that there was a little bit of excitement and there was some fear, but I didn't get the sense like you were coming in to fulfill all of your prior beliefs and so on.
I didn't get the sense that you felt like you were heading to a dark place, but to an uncertain place.
Yeah, it was definitely uncertain.
That was the whole thing. I mean, my main idea was that I really wanted there to be an answer.
I wanted there to be some way for me to reason out my thoughts, and that this just couldn't...
I'm looking for more positive answers, too, instead of living in this more destructive nature.
And I guess the...
War inside was more of, you know, I'm looking for this, I'm hopeful like this, but I do this a lot, but, you know, and I was like, I'm hoping that, you know, when we speak that Nihil, so to speak, would be less, would, I guess, not be...
I guess not come out the same, I guess.
Come out the same destructive, same anger, same angst.
Yeah, I was sort of genuinely looking for something that would help me perceive or help my perception so that I could, I guess, overall have a more healthy outlook on life.
Right, and that feeling that you had before talking to me is not the same as the feeling you have when contemplating going out with the smoking, drinking punk guys, right?
Right, right. So you have some indication from your emotional apparatus about that which is horrible but familiar and that which is, in a sense, horrible but unfamiliar.
There's a difference there that's really important for you to take note of.
Okay, yeah.
And as far as your expectations of the call relative to the call, do you feel that at least some of the hopes or objectives...
Now, again, there's no...
It's not like, hey, look, we talked for half an hour or whatever, right?
Everything's fine. Right?
You have to keep up this process of self-negotiation.
And don't piss off Mr.
Nihil, right? So don't let him out with me and then repress and ignore him from now on because he'll get even more pissed off, right?
So now that you've opened the door, you really have to, I think, take on the responsibility Of engaging with him and listening to him and giving him respect, but also being firm with him when he goes off on a tangent or is doing something or saying something that's irrational.
So I don't promise or pretend any kind of quick fixes.
This is the beginning of a long process.
But relative to your expectations of how the call was going to go, how did you find that the call actually went?
Much better than my expectations.
Much better than my expectations.
And a lot different than, yeah, just a lot different than what I expected.
The darkest parts of ourselves are actually not that scary when we listen to them.
When we fight them and we put them down, then they are, you know, what happens is we get into this vicious cycle.
We try to control ourselves, and then ourselves rebel, and then we feel that, my God, they're rebelling.
I have to control them more. This is statism, right?
This is the fundamental premise of the government, right?
Yeah. That we're evil and we have to be controlled.
The more that we control those aspects of ourselves, the darker and more hostile they become, and therefore the more we feel.
But if you listen in a sort of open and respectful manner, which doesn't mean you agree with everything, then the unconscious no longer becomes this big scary demon, right?
It becomes like a Keebler elf that wants to help us.
You know, it's sort of ridiculous, but that's not the way that it works.
Right, right. But I'm calling Mr.
Niall the Keebler Ralph. Don't haunt my dreams, Mr.
Niall. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. Okay, well listen, let me stop here, if that's alright with you.
I'm going to send you a copy of this recording.
I personally think this would be enormously helpful for other people to hear, and I've studiously avoided your name and so on.
But have a listen to it, and let me know what you think.
Okay. How do I... Where would I check for it or how do I do that?
Just send me an email.
Okay. It's on the board and I will return to you a link that you can download and listen to it and then if you can let me know if I can release it or if not what parts need to be edited I'd really appreciate that.
Okay. Okay.
Thanks. I really do appreciate it and thanks for doing the roleplay which I know can be a bit freaky but you did a great job.
Yeah, and thank you.
I really appreciate it.
Hey, you're welcome. I'll talk to you soon.
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