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March 27, 2008 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
53:28
1024 Stef's Psych Theories Nutshelled (Listener Convo)

A new listener convo about the basics.

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Hello? Hello? Hello?
Can you hear me? I sure can.
I can.
Fantastic. Fantastic.
So, welcome, and glad to be able to chat with you.
Just so you know, this stuff is recorded, and if you don't mind, you'll have a chance to listen to it before I do anything with it, but if you don't mind, and we think that this is useful for other people, if I could release it as a podcast, that would be great, but you get a final say on that.
Yeah, that's fine. So you are an objectivist and you find that the objectivist approach leaves something to be desired from an introspection or a psychological standpoint.
Is that right? I do.
I think that Objectivism, you know, originally when Ayn Rand was still friendly and whatever with Nathaniel Brandon, that they kind of had that psychological aspect in the movement.
But once that kind of went awry, I feel that there's There's definitely a lot lacking, and I know Nathaniel Brandon himself has gone on to continue with his work and everything, but I feel like objectivism has a lot of shoulds and not a lot of hows.
Right, right, right.
So tell me a bit more about that.
I think that's quite interesting.
Well, you know, it's really exciting to read Ayn Rand's writing when you're young and you're already very much inclined to those kind of individualistic and libertarian insight, which is what I was.
I was kind of a disintegrated version of that philosophy.
And so I was really excited about it, interested in it, and it certainly helped me Organize a lot of my ideas in a more systematic way, but then of course that gives you a more stringent set of objectives and it kind of lays out for you where some of the things that you did in the past aren't really as beneficial or as good as you kind of thought them to be and I guess I guess the way to put it is when you have like very explicit values,
you put more pressure on yourself and there's not really a part of objectivism that kind of helps you move forward and apply, you know, ideas to your life and extricate bad parts of yourself besides saying, well, you should do it this way, so just do it this way because that's what's rational.
Well, it's kind of hard to just say, oh, well, it's rational to do this and I'm just going to do it because it just doesn't work that way.
Right, right, right. And of course, Nathaniel Brandon had some significant criticisms of the Randian approach to psychology, right?
Mm-hmm. And Ayn Rand herself said that she basically had no understanding of psychology at all, right?
Yes, exactly. You can see that in the lack of sophistication, psychological sophistication in her writing, right?
Well, because the thing is that psychological reactions, it's all very deep-rooted, and her answer to everything is very...
Abstract and intellectual. Like I said, it's just like, well, that's rational, so that's what you should do and just keep trying to be rational.
And there's this huge psychological gap between where you are now And what you have to do in order to have the state of mind that facilitates those kind of rational behaviors.
Because your mind is warped through your life and your childhood to behave a certain way.
And then explicitly thinking, well, okay, this is right and this is wrong, doesn't change the way that you react whatsoever.
It just gives you more trauma because you have a I don't know, a schism between your actions and your kind of psychological reactions and then what you have currently found to be the most reasonable thing to do.
And there's always kind of a conflict between the two.
Right, and I think that anybody who's worked with or has some understanding of the nature of something like Chemical addictions or certain kinds of psychological addictions like addictions to sex or to gambling or whatever realizes that you don't just say to these people, well, it's bad for you, so don't do it, right?
It doesn't work, right?
And I think that sometimes philosophy and objectivism, I think, is a little more like this than even some other philosophies.
It has a certain amount of, I think, as you sort of characterize it, finger wagging, you know, like just be rational.
But of course, that's just like saying don't drink to an alcoholic.
It doesn't actually get to the root causes and complexities of the issues.
I absolutely agree.
And that's kind of the problem I'm coming across because when it comes to the abstract, you know, real root of the philosophy, I agree with it.
I agree with objectivism.
I don't agree with some of the applications of objectivism, like the, it's homosexuality, this or that.
I mean, all those kind of applications, I agree.
I have my own opinions on those.
But the root philosophy I agree with.
But there is, you know, like everyone, I have kind of these weird tics, these psychological tics from my youth, and I'm still young, I'm still 21, so I'm still kind of figuring everything out.
And there's just some things about me that I really don't like and because they're emotional and because they're so deep-rooted, I find introspection to be incredibly difficult and I have really I really wasn't introspective as a kid in a kind of systematic way.
And I kind of don't even know where to start.
I don't know where they're coming from.
Like in your procrastination video, you commented about someone who chides themselves for chiding themselves, saying, you're being too hard on yourself.
Stop being so hard on yourself.
I do that all the time.
I really do.
And it's kind of this...
I'm so hard on myself and then I'm hard on myself for being hard on myself and I never know kind of how to stop the cycle besides going to sleep and then waking up five hours later and being like okay my whole body has like disintegrated the stress so I don't have to think about it anymore but in the moment I never know how to deal with it.
Right, right. And of course, when it comes to what we experience as freedom in our daily life, objectivism and other kinds of rational philosophies do nothing for us, right?
I mean, you know, people get all mad about taxes, right?
And of course we should be.
I mean, taxes and evil and so on, and we should remind people of that and make that case clear.
but you know if we got rid of all taxes tomorrow people would still be in the prisons of their heads right which is where these repetitive thoughts these dissatisfactions and so on continue to in a sense sort of eat away at us and and we're not free to live richly in the present even if we got rid of all taxation we would not solve the problem of a lack of liberty in just about everyone's life right yes
And to me, focusing on the Ron Paul stuff, the external solutions to this, that and the other, is putting the cart before the horse.
I think that we will get rid of the state and gods and all this sort of nonsense when people are free within their own minds.
Because what happens in the world is a reflection, in my view, of what happens in our own minds, if that makes sense.
That's exactly where I stand.
I think there needs to be change within the psychology of the culture in order for there to be a proper political system that follows suit.
Because that's what happened with the Enlightenment.
I mean, Enlightenment ideas is what gave birth to the U.S., not the other way around.
Right. No, that's a good point.
That's a very good point. So what's your family history like?
What was it like growing up?
And tell me a little bit about your family and what it was like there.
My parents were divorced.
But my mother and father still got along.
They just married young and they were kind of more like friends than anything.
So there was never really a deep sexual desire in their relationship.
So it kind of fell apart.
And having a kid is hard and they were young and kind of whatever.
They still get along well.
I lived with my mother and my stepdad.
My stepdad was kind of a hard ass.
You know, he was...
Kind of from the poor side and made his money and is really like no nonsense.
He's never physical or violent but it was he was always kind of the one that would make me do yard work that I didn't want to do or like in the procrastination video when you talk about the slave Like, child metaphor.
He would be the slave driver.
He would be the, okay, come on and go out and help me rake leaves.
And I'd be like, oh, fuck you, dad.
And, you know, my mom would always kind of side with me and always be really placating.
And then my real dad, I would see quasi-frequently.
My mom always wanted me to see him more than I wanted to see him because I just saw it as being kind of a disruption because I had a dad.
I had my stepdad who was my father figure, but I still get along well with my dad.
And as I get older, I respect him more because he's a great business person and he's pretty successful and smart and, you know, worldly.
I don't know. I have a pretty good relationship with them all.
I was never treated very badly.
My family's very wealthy, so that was never a problem.
I was never extremely spoiled, nor was I extremely needy.
I don't really...
I went to boarding school for high school, so I left home at 14.
Sorry, go ahead.
Did you want to go to boarding?
Oh, yeah, I did.
I did. I'm very intellectual, and I always have been.
We are living in Reno, and I'm sure you could imagine that Nevada schools are not any good.
Their private school options were all religious, and I'm an atheist and always have been.
And so I kind of got it into my head of going to boarding school because I had this like romanticized vision of ivy-covered buildings and holding Caulfield and all that kind of shit.
And so I was like, yeah, I want to go to boarding school, you know, 14 years old.
My mom's like, okay, whatever. But they're all very supportive.
And of course, everyone was kind of like, great, if she goes to boarding school, she can go straight into an Ivy League.
And, you know, kind of being from a more wealthy family that kind of plays more of a role, I guess, is, at least in their life, is like the status thing.
I never really bought into it, but I wanted to go for the intellectual aspect, for being back East, for being on my own.
I always thought that that was really cool.
But even when I got to, you know, I went to the third best high school in the whole country, and I was still like that intellectual freak, like, you know, wanting to talk about intellectual things in the cafeteria at lunch.
Everyone would be like, come on, class is over.
What are you doing? So I didn't really find what I was looking for.
Right. So if I could do it over again, I wouldn't have left because I thought that I'd find something that you really just don't find among young kids.
I mean, very infrequently will you find someone who's really young and seriously dedicated to intellectualism as a personal joy and not as a drudging person.
You know, have to do. And as I've gotten older, it's become more drudging to me, and I read less.
And really, that's another problem, is I feel like I've kind of lost that spark.
Right. Right.
Now, I'm going to just ask a couple of questions, if you don't mind.
My general methodology for this kind of stuff is I work from what evidence people give me and not what they say about their relationships.
And one of the things that struck me was that you said that your stepdad was kind of like a slave driver and he'd tell you to do something and you'd say, fuck off and blah, blah, blah.
Right.
Yeah.
And then you said, but we have a good relationship.
And I'm having a little trouble just putting if you can help me understand how those two things go together.
I guess, I mean, I guess if I had a poor relationship with anybody, any of my parents, it would be him.
We've had a lot of under-the-surface issues with each other.
I think it's partly because he resents my intelligence or my wealthy upbringing because that's exactly the opposite of him.
Hands-on and not very cerebral and so I think that there's just been a lot of clashing and then I think it's also like an authority power trip because my mom would always side with me on things and so there was always kind of that strain but all in all I mean he's very supportive and kind and loving and generous and considering that I had been away from home for so long A lot of the turmoil of teenhood wasn't even there because they weren't even there to really be good or bad.
It was just like, oh, I got an A on a test.
Oh, good job, honey. We're so proud of you.
But then it's like, okay, bye.
I'll call you next week.
And then there was no parents.
So whether I'm just simplifying it in my mind or whether there was just...
So long of a time that I've actually lived with my parents.
I don't know, they're good at being, you know, supportive and whatever, but I always kind of appreciated my stepdad for making me Kind of the idea like, oh, a hard day's work and the worth of a dollar and everything.
Like, I learned that from my stepdad.
I didn't learn that from my parents because they had no thought in their mind to show me that because they're wealthy and my stepdad isn't.
So he wanted to show me that side of it, too.
So I appreciate that.
So it's a give and take. Okay, and I'm still just trying to piece this out because you said that he resents you for your intellectualism and your wealthy upbringing and so on, and that there have been lots of clashes and problems, and of course you indicated that you would swear at him.
Like that to me would be evidence of not a great relationship.
Just objectively from the outside, if you hear that kind of stuff, you'd say, well, that doesn't seem to be a great relationship.
So the examples that you've given me – and to me, this has a lot to do with the self-criticism stuff.
So there is sort of a point to this.
But you said – so the examples that you've given me have been negative.
But then you said, well, he's supportive, kind, loving and generous.
And I'm not, again, it's sort of like saying it was 98 degrees and I was freezing to death, right?
They just don't quite mesh.
So if you could tell me a little bit more about the virtues that he brings to the relationship, other than the tough economic lessons which reality can teach you, right?
I mean, you don't need parents to teach that, right?
But what is it that behaviors or actions that would support the thesis that there's supportive, kind, loving and generous aspects to your relationship with your stepfather?
I mean, you have a point.
I can see what you're saying.
I'm not saying I'm right. I mean, I don't know, right?
No, no, no. I'm looking for the evidence, right?
Obviously, I wouldn't be placating you by saying that.
I wouldn't say it if I didn't think it.
Right, right. I mean, that's a very good point.
I guess, for me, I've never put much currency in parenthood, so I've never really expected that much money.
So I've never really thought about it, I guess.
You know, the generous thing, you know, oh, he'll help me if I need X, Y, and Z, or, you know, he'll call me if he's worried about me, or if I'm sick, or, you know, just kind of like the very obvious, you know, oh, I heard you got an A in your class, I'm so proud of you, and oh, you've lost five pounds and you look great, and just kind of more superficial things.
Right, right. We wanted anything more.
Sorry, if you could just repeat that last sentence.
You just cut out for a sec. Oh, I don't even...
I guess I never really expected or needed much from my parents.
Sure, and I have no opinion about the relationship itself.
It's just that the adjectives don't match the description.
That's all I'm saying, right? If it's nighttime and you say it's really bright out, then it's either not nighttime or it's not bright.
So, I think in my opinion, this again, this is just my nonsense opinion, right?
So, you can take it, throw it out if it's not of any use.
But I think that we live in two worlds.
As human beings.
And to me it's highly unfortunate that we live in two worlds.
I don't think that it's innate to human beings or to our mind or our development.
But we live in two worlds.
We live in a world of reality and we live in what I often call a world of mythology.
Of stories that we make up about the experiences that we have.
And that's what I got a sense of when you were talking about your relationship with your stepfather.
Was that you had the actual things that occurred, the facts of the relationship, and then you had the story or the mythology or the adjectives about the relationship, you know, kind, loving, supporting, close, and all this kind of stuff.
And I think for me, the first step in real introspection is to say, what are the facts of my experience?
Not... What can I say to myself or to others about my experience, but what are the facts about my experience?
And I'll give you another example to do with your mother, if this would help illustrate it.
So, you said that your mother was supportive of you, right?
Mm-hmm. But she married a man who, I think by any reasonably objective use of the term, kind of bullied you, right?
Not outwardly. Well, but didn't he tell you to do stuff and then you'd swear at him?
Yeah. I mean, occasionally, like once, you know, every blue moon.
I mean, it wasn't a – but I see what you're saying, but that's – yeah.
Like, sorry, there's tons of ways to motivate children without just telling them to do stuff, right?
Mm-hmm. I mean, you can make it fun, you can be curious about why they don't want to do it.
I mean, there's tons of ways to get kids to do stuff, as there is, as you know, in the free market, to get people to do stuff that doesn't involve bullying them, right?
Yes. So, when you say that your mother was supportive of you, or took your side, it's hard to understand how, if she married a man who bullied you and kept him around, and I'm not saying she should, it doesn't matter, I'm not saying she should have divorced or anything like that, But she chose a man who ended up bullying you, right?
So, to take a silly metaphor, if I introduce a poison into your diet and then give you an antidote, that's not the same as being really concerned about your health, right?
That's true. So if she chose and voluntarily married a guy who bullied you, but then took your side, that to me would not be the definition of supportive, which is to introduce a bully into your life and then try to defend you against him.
Yes, it's definitely not as effective as extricating the poison.
Well, yeah. I mean, she could have either not brought the bully into your line.
Again, I know that I'm one-dimensionalizing the whole relationship, and I understand there's lots of complexity, but we're just doing a first few broad strokes, right?
But she could have not introduced this bully into your life.
She could have said to him, this is not how my daughter is going to be treated.
You either get this right or go to therapy or figure out what your issues are.
get this right.
I don't want my daughter to grow up with somebody who resents her intelligence and resents the accidental wealth of her upbringing.
It's not her fault she's really bright and brilliant.
It's not her fault that she grew up in a rich family.
Your resentments are inappropriate to bring to bear on my daughter.
That's one option that she could have gone through.
So rather than defending you in the moment, she could have gone to the root cause of the problem and either not married the guy or basically said, you need to go and deal with this stuff with the professional so that you don't inflict it on my daughter.
The problem with that...
The problem with that is that she would have to explicitly understand all the information that would be needed to make those kind of judgment calls, and she, like most people, like everyone I know, doesn't.
So I can't blame her for that.
Oh, no, no, no, no. See, I can't agree with you on this, and this is where...
The majority of people and I part ways on this, and this is totally fine if you don't believe me.
But I've had hundreds of these conversations over the last couple of years, and it's always been exactly the same.
So I'm not just working from theory.
This is also from real evidence.
There is absolutely no doubt in my mind whatsoever that your mother was completely aware that your stepdad was bullying you and that it was not good.
Well, to that extent, of course.
But that's... Go ahead.
Okay. I mean, that's just a fact, right?
I mean, if you were to sit down with your mother and you were to say, Mom, do you think it's a good way to motivate people to bully them?
She would, of course, say...
No. Right.
So she's perfectly aware that it's not positive behavior, right?
Mm-hmm. Now, she would say, if you were to sit down with your mom and you were to say, Mom, if I have a psychological problem, should I try to simply bear down and get rid of the symptoms or should I try to get to the root of the problem?
The latter? Yeah, she would say you should get to the root of the problem rather than just try and clamp down on the symptoms, right?
So she has full theoretical and empirical knowledge that you were being bullied and that her solution was not good.
Okay. I'll buy that.
Well, and I just actually just released the PDF of my first book for free.
It's on the website of freedobainradio.com.
It's only 70 pages. You can read it in an hour and a half.
And you could probably read it in an hour and process it in even less time.
But this is specifically about this topic, so I won't drone on about it here.
But you get that book for free.
I'd really recommend having a...
They flip through it. So, this is, and all of this is about is not to say your parents were bad or anything like that, but instead of having stories about what happened, it's just important to focus on the realities of what happened.
Your mom introduced one man into your life who left.
She introduced another man into your life who bullied you.
Now, those are not absolutes.
Those are not things that she is not responsible for.
That doesn't mean that she's like the Wicked Witch of the West, but she did not introduce a positive influence into your life.
And again, I'm not saying completely negative or anything like that, but it's just about...
I think where we get real anxiety, in my opinion, is when we have empirical facts, but we make up stories that comfort us and also forgive other people who maybe there's more complexity to it than just wishing a forgiveness.
When we have facts of our experience, but we make up stories in opposition to those facts, we get disoriented and we get confused and often we will get anxious and often we get kind of worn down, if that makes sense, because we're constantly chafing against the story, is constantly chafing against the reality, if that makes sense. is constantly chafing against the reality, if that makes sense.
Yes.
Thank you.
Thank you.
So as far as introspection goes, that's sort of where I start.
It's to write down the things that happen.
And not the adjectives, but just the facts, right?
The old Joe Friday thing, right?
You know, just the facts. And that's usually a great place to start.
And it usually leads to some very surprising areas, right?
And then, of course, my particular approach is once we have some sense of the facts of our own experience and we have things that are upsetting to us, Now, then what we do is we obey our parents, right? Because I'm sure that your mother prefers you to tell the truth than to not tell the truth, right?
Yes. Like when you were a kid, she didn't say, make sure you never tell the truth to me.
I want to hear nothing but lies, right?
Of course. Right.
So if you have things about your history that are upsetting to you, Then I always find that it's important, I think it can be essential, to sit down with your parents and talk to them about the things that bothered you, right? Now, this is a very, very tricky moment in just about every family, right?
Because, well, I won't go into the stuff that's in the book, but it is a very tricky moment.
And The reason we don't do it is because we have a theory about how our parents are going to react.
So if you sat down and you said, you know, there were some things that I have problems with or things that I didn't like and so on, what do you think your parents would do?
Probably deny it, come to their own, don't.
Defense with weak arguments and emotionalism and then we wouldn't get anywhere.
They'd be resentful for a while and then it would all blow over because they would delete it from their memory.
Right. And I think that you are not alone in either that theory, or if that is what comes to pass, that experience.
In fact, it seems to be a near-universal template for parents to simply deny, reject, minimize, obfuscate, fog, and so on, right?
Hmm. Now, that's pretty important information to have, right?
Yes. Why?
Is it? But why?
Yes, it is, but why?
I mean, personally, what's going through my mind right now is I don't give a shit about my parents.
I'm just trying to...
I would rather be sitting across the table from myself and analyzing my own actions versus mythology without having to...
I totally understand that, and you're completely wrong.
I'm so sorry to say that so bluntly, but you're not correct in that, although I can certainly understand why it would be comprehensible, and there's no reason for you to believe me when I tell you that you're not right, so I'll just make a quick case, and you can tell me if it makes any sense.
Someone taught you to not be open and honest and vulnerable about your experiences, right?
I'm supposing someone did.
I mean someone, whether it was myself or someone else.
Well, you didn't teach yourself to do that, right?
Kids are not born.
If you look at a baby, a baby is not subtle about his emotional experiences.
When he's happy, he gurgles.
When he's hungry, he cries.
The connection between stimulus and response is very direct and very honest.
You can't really use the word honest with a baby because it's instinctual, but we're born with that open feedback about our experiences which we provide to other people sometimes for half the damn night when we're a baby, right?
Yes. So somewhere between then and now, you were taught that your emotional experiences had to be set aside for the comfort or the vanity of other people, right?
I suppose so. I don't want to go too far, and I certainly don't want to put words in your mouth, so if that's not the case...
I'm not going to obviously agree to it 100% unless I think about it at length, but I'm not going to sit here in silence while I unravel it.
So I'm tentatively agreeing because it sounds to be kind of right, but I'm not going to 100% agree until I completely wrap my mind around it.
Well, and you don't have to wrap your mind around it.
I think that all you have to do, if I have a thesis that says that your genuine emotional experiences, if they're not pleasing to other people, will be rejected or attacked or minimized or whatever, there's no need to think about it.
All you have to do is try it with your family, right?
Okay. You say that you're very intellectual, and I have no doubt that you are.
And one of the challenges that intellectuals have is we'd rather think about stuff than put it to the test, right?
Yes. Sometimes.
Sometimes, for sure. Particularly when it's emotionally challenging, right?
And this is about the most emotionally challenging conversation on the planet.
Not you and I, but you and your parents and so on.
So, there's no need to think about it like a theory.
If the thesis, and you, I think, described it very well earlier when you described exactly what would happen, if you were honest about some of the problems that you had with your family, you described very well what would happen.
There's no need to think about it in particular because you won't be able to come to a conclusion, right?
We're all about science and empiricism here, right?
So, we just look for the actual evidence of what happens in the interaction.
So, you can put it to the test.
Very easily. Now, if you put it to the test and you say to your parents, I'm having some difficulties in my life, and I think it stems from X, Y, and Z when I was a kid.
I don't know for sure, but I think it does.
And I have yet another book on this called Real-Time Relationships, which you might want to...
In fact, I'd strongly suggest just have a look at it before you have this conversation.
But if you were to do that and your parents did...
Fog and dismiss and minimize and defend and avoid and all of that kind of stuff, then you would know for sure that they taught you that your emotions were not valid if they weren't pleasant or convenient to other people, right? Yes.
So, if that's the case, and we had already talked earlier about the importance of getting to the root of the issues rather than masking the symptoms, it is impossible, I would say, to understand any disconnects you might have with your own emotional experience unless you get to the root of how this occurred, how this began, how it was reinforced, and how it sustained itself over the years.
Okay. Again, I'm not saying 100% agreement, but does that roughly sort of follow?
Yes, it does. It's essentially the part of Freud that I agree with.
Go on. Well, that what happens to you in your childhood affects your psychological well-being in your adulthood and most of the time it's masked and you don't know it.
Right. And that's actually, I mean, certainly Freud was the originator of that theory.
It has been, I mean, there's two basic things in psychology which are indisputable.
I mean, there's lots of stuff which you can dispute, the relevance of dreams and so on, but there are two things in psychology that are irrefutable.
The one is that early childhood experiences shape dysfunction or function later in life.
That's a given and that's actually measured, right?
You can see that.
You can see the difference in brain formation from children who have even identical twins, one of whom has gone through a lot of emotional stress at the hands of his family and one who has not.
You can see the brain difference.
I mean, that's pretty empirical. So that's the first thing, which is that early childhood experiences, which are inflicted by parents almost always, I mean, authority figures.
That has a huge effect on the personality.
That's the one sort of axiom of psychology.
And the second axiom is that a rejection of genuine emotional experiences leads to depression or dysfunction of other kinds.
So those are sort of the two things, and that's really all I'm talking about here, right?
That early childhood experiences and how it conditions us and our relationship to others and ourselves has a huge effect on our lives.
It's undoable, right?
It can be fixed, but it takes work.
And the second is that if we are taught that our emotional experiences...
Are only valid if they're pleasing to other people.
Then we are divided against ourself, right?
Our feelings are then divided into good feelings, which other people like, like happiness or affection at the right time or, you know, whatever, obedience or whatever, conformity.
Whatever it is that people find pleasing or nice, I guess, about us.
And I think women get this a little bit more than men, in my opinion, but...
In fact, a lot more. So there are nice feelings, and then there are bad feelings, right?
The feelings which are inconvenient to other people, like anger or resentment or certain kinds of sadness that manifests itself in very strong ways, and we've been depressions.
Then those feelings are bad because they're inconvenient.
For other people, but a holistic or I would say organic view of the psyche is to say that all of our feelings are good, right?
Just because all of our feelings are good doesn't mean that we enjoy them all equally, but as we all know, a toothache, a pain in the tooth that is infected, is highly, highly advantageous to us, because if we didn't feel that, I mean, our whole jaw would get infected, we could die, right? So although a toothache is unpleasant, it is a very, very essential part to the maintenance of health.
And though feelings of anger or shame or rage or whatever, although those feelings can be unpleasant, they are an essential part of a healthy functioning mind and body and the whole thing sort of rolled into one.
So that's really all that I'm talking about.
Sorry, go ahead. Oh, so you're just saying that emotions, regardless of what they are, are inherently good because they are indicative of something else that's going on inside you?
That should have your attention Is that what you're saying, essentially?
Yeah, for sure. And a lot of anxiety and a lot of what is called self-management in a bad way.
I mean, there's self-management in a good way, which is although I feel angry, I'm still not going to punch someone.
I mean, that to me is self-management in a good way.
But there's self-management in a bad way, right?
And the reason that we went through this whole bush, thicket, whatever you want to call it, is because at the beginning you'd said that You, you know, you get down on yourself, and then you get down on yourself for getting down on yourself.
So, in a sense, what we have here is good you and bad you, right?
Like, the you that really wants to flourish and do well and so on, and then the you that wants to, I don't know, drag you down to the psychological gutter and, you know, abuse you and put you down and get mad at you and so on.
That being divided against ourself comes from You know, parents paying picky choosy whack-a-mole with their feelings, saying, this feeling I like, this is good, ooh, that feeling is bad, you shouldn't have that feeling, and so on.
And so we get split, right?
I mean, the bad feelings we have to repress as inconvenient to others, but they don't go away, right?
We can't... I mean, the other sort of thing about psychology is that repression doesn't solve the problem, right?
It just eliminates the symptoms and, in fact, just drives them underground.
It's like taking heroin for a toothache.
You may get rid of the pain, but you're not getting rid of the infection.
So that aspect of things, when we are divided against ourselves, comes directly from the degree of acceptance that we had For all of our aspects as children, for the angry side,
for the jealous side, for the hostile side, for the rebellious side, for the disobedient side, for the oppositional side, for even the sides of our personalities that were sort of, quote, inconvenient for others, the degree to which what we now perceive of as negative in ourselves was accepted by our parents is the degree to which We lose the capacity to self-attack,
right? Because we only learn to self-attack because we are attacked by others in one form or another or we are rejected or opposed by others.
That's something that we internalize from an external source if that makes sense.
Yes. And that's why I'm sort of saying that if you have this challenge...
Where you oppose yourself.
That you have to look back through time to that which was opposed in you when you were a child.
Because that really is the genesis of it.
I see what you're saying.
That all my...
My trying to control my own emotions and beat up on myself internally is just a mirroring of what happened to me when I was younger.
And I think in one of your videos you were saying that it's easier for someone to control their own emotions in themselves than have someone else do it for them.
It's like not as traumatizing.
So I can see...
I can see that.
Yeah, and in the book Real-Time Relationships, I have a whole chapter devoted to the genesis of this, funnily enough, between a mother and a daughter, which may be of interest to you as well.
And there's a metaphor in there about Simon the Boxer, which is around how we get addicted to controlling ourselves because we don't need control over our environment.
So, yeah, I would say that that's a good place to start as far as being able to undo the...
Because, of course, if you self-attack, you then get very open to being manipulated by others, right?
Because you can't be manipulated or controlled by others, except with direct violence, which isn't really a big issue for us.
You can't be controlled or manipulated by other people unless you're willing to self-attack, right?
I guess I guess so If somebody just walks up to you and says, like somebody walks up to me and says, I hate your mohawk, man.
Well, I'm pretty bald, right?
So, I mean, I'm like, okay.
I mean, they're not saying anything about me, right?
Uh-huh. Yes.
And in the same way, if somebody comes, so I'm not going to self-attack and say, my God, my mohawk is really bad because I've got all the mohawk of an egg, right?
Yeah. But if someone comes up to me and says, Steph, you should not be giving psychological advice to people because you're not a licensed professional, right?
Well... I mean, Freud wasn't a psychologist and Socrates didn't have a PhD in philosophy, right?
So it doesn't matter to me particularly whether or not – and of course Einstein wasn't a professor when he came up with the theory of relativity.
So it doesn't matter to me particularly whether I have a statist piece of paper that sort of, quote, proves my expertise in these areas.
So I'm not going to self-attack on that, right?
But if I did feel bad about my lack of sort of state-given credentials, then I would get down on myself and I would feel bad.
But because I'm not willing to self-attack on that, other people who come up and say that kind of stuff is just like, you know, hey, I mean, I don't charge.
People just voluntarily donate if they find what I'm doing worthwhile.
I don't claim to be anything other than who I am.
This is just advice that has been powerful and useful for me, and it's powerful and useful to other people.
So because I won't self-attack, people don't try.
I mean, they used to try that sort of stuff with me, but they don't, right?
So learning how not to self-attack is very, very essential in terms of getting positive and beneficial relationships around you.
So would you say that that theory could also be applied to self-doubt?
Is self-doubt just a corollary to self-attack?
Without a doubt, because I'm never going to feel particularly secure if my right arm a couple of times a day just lashes out and punches me in the nose, right?
Okay.
Right?
I'm going to feel kind of like, man, I better tie this sucker down or I'm going to get a bloody nose, right?
So if I am prone to self-attack, then I'm constantly going to be jumpy because I'm kind of locked in a cage with a hungry lion, right?
Yes.
So that's going to make me doubly jumpy and so on, right?
And of course, the lion smells fear, which means it's going to attack more.
There's all of this stuff that rolls out from this self-attack, right?
Yes. And so, yeah, I would say for sure.
And of course, if we have divided ourselves, and the funny thing is that rationalists are as prone to this as religious people, but at least religious people have the relief of Satan as a psychological entity where they can really project stuff out of themselves.
But... But rationalists do this a lot.
If you have divided your emotions into good emotions and bad emotions, then you will never be able to trust your feelings because you won't know whether in a sense they're coming from the angels or the devils, if that makes sense.
Yes. That when I get angry, it's for damn good reason, right?
I mean, I've been tentative about it.
I've worked through it and so on.
I'm married to a psychologist too, so it helps a lot.
But I found that I can't even remember the last time...
That I got unjustly angry.
So you learn to trust even the uncomfortable emotions.
If I feel scared or anxious, it's because somebody is being manipulative and destructive and I can't do anything to alter it because it's their thing and they won't listen.
So those negative feelings are really good.
We want the anxiety when we walk close to the cliff edge so that we walk back from the cliff edge.
So I think that if we learn to trust all of the emotional apparatus that we have developed over the millennia, Then we have self-trust because we don't believe that there's any part of us that is working against us, if that makes sense.
It does. I think that's the quickest I've ever said all that crap, so I think that's actually good, the personal best, right?
And you're shocked it wasn't more rambly, is that right?
No, some are better than others.
Right. See, you've even divided them into good podcasts and bad.
I'm just kidding. Is that a good intro?
I mean, I don't want to overwhelm you with, you know, every theory under the planet, and Lord knows there are enough podcasts, and you can check out the little wizard at freedomainradio.com that will point you right towards the psychology podcast.
But is that enough, sort of at least for my approach to the intro of why this stuff is so important?
Yes. I think the thing that I'm thinking about the most and trying to figure out in my head is when you were talking about how, you know, rationalists have good emotions and bad emotions.
But what I find, especially with rationalists as opposed to religious people, because religious people have good, you know, this action or emotion is good, qua good, no matter when.
But rationalists, and this in my part especially, it's more like Anger can be good if you're angry at the right thing, but if I'm getting angry at the wrong thing, then it's bad.
And I can identify what it is that I'm getting angry at, and I can identify that I shouldn't be angry about it, or even jealous.
Like if I meet someone who is really blowing me away at an argument and I can't argue very well, I'll get angry.
But I know I shouldn't get angry because There's nothing to get angry about.
They have a good argument and whatever.
No, no, no. See, again, I've got to interrupt you there because you don't know that for sure.
They might be manipulative.
Let me put it this way.
I have disagreed with a number of things that you've said in the course of this conversation, right?
Okay. And you have disagreed with a number of things that I've said, right?
Yes. Do you feel angry?
Yes. No. I'm not talking about in concretes.
I'm talking more about in the idea of this emotion is appropriate when it's based on the appropriate thing, but I still have emotions that the emotions themselves aren't good or bad.
It's just what I'm reacting to and explicitly knowing that I shouldn't feel this way about this, but I can't stop myself from feeling it.
And it's like I have bad computer code.
But you don't know that it's bad computer code, in my humble opinion.
So if somebody is debating with you and they may be slightly condescending, they may be using slightly inflammatory language, they might be sneering a little bit, they might be dismissive of all of your prior learning, there may be little subtle things that are going on.
That are immensely important, that your emotional apparatus is picking up on, right?
Because if somebody simply had a really great argument, and let me be vain for a moment and say that my stuff is a really great argument in this conversation, just for the sake of an example.
If somebody has a really great argument and is winning you over or whatever, that's a good thing, isn't it?
I mean, we should be interested in the truth, not our opinions.
And if somebody has a better argument, we should adhere to that, right?
So if you feel angry in an argument, I don't think that you know for sure as yet that it's an entirely irrational response.
It may be a perfectly rational response.
It would take exploration and curiosity to find that out, right?
So if somebody really pisses me off when I'm debating with him, then I will say to him, I feel really upset by this debate.
I don't know if it's you or if it's me or whatever, but I can't really concentrate on what we're saying because I'm feeling this emotion.
Now, if the person I'm debating with says...
That's really interesting because I kind of sensed that there was this irritation going on, but I was just plowing.
And we can have a real conversation about our experience of the conversation, right?
And that's called being honest, in my opinion.
Just plowing on and pretending that your feelings are bad is being dishonest, in my opinion.
But if the person, if I say, I'm feeling really upset by this debate, and I don't know exactly why, and he says, well, Steph, the reason that you're upset by this debate is I'm crushing your paltry arguments like little pomegranates in the hand of King Kong, right?
Then I'm like, oh, I know why I'm upset, because you're a jerk, right?
Right, so it turns out that my feeling is then valid, right?
Right. And that's why vulnerability and honesty is always so powerful, right?
Yes. Because it's what we use to test the thesis of our feelings.
That makes sense. So, yeah, so staying curious and not jumping to conclusions about, right, because we as rationalists, we hate people who jump to conclusions about stuff, right?
Like, the eye is really complex, therefore there must be a God, right?
I mean, people who jump to those kinds of conclusions drive us completely insane, but I think we need to have that same approach to our own feelings, right?
I don't know exactly why I'm feeling what I'm feeling, but I'm not going to judge it as good or bad or appropriate or inappropriate until I spend some time exploring it, right?
I think that's a good way.
I find myself at that point and I never really know how to get past it.
Why am I feeling this way?
Why am I feeling this way?
I don't know. I don't know.
Why are you feeling this way? I don't know.
I know I'm feeling it, but I don't know what I'm feeling it about and I can never really get past that.
Right, and there are a few questions that are always helpful to ask in those situations, which is, is this a familiar feeling?
Like, we all have those sickly familiar feelings that we get, right?
Where it's like, oh, I've been here before, right?
And we say, okay, when was the first time that I felt this?
Is this a feeling that I have felt throughout my life?
When I first felt this feeling, or at least the first time I can remember feeling this feeling, what was happening?
Have I ever talked to my family about this feeling?
And if you haven't, then there's a good indication there of a place which is not acceptable to your family or whatever, right?
So there's things that you can do so that you sort of get out of your head and start looking for the evidence, which is, of course, again, what rationalists are supposed to be very good at doing, but psychologically we often don't, right?
That is true. Sorry, I'm writing these down.
Well, you've got this as a recording, right?
I'll send this to you even if we have a publishing in, which I hope you will let me do.
I think it's useful stuff here for other people, but don't worry.
You've got this. You can have this forever if you want.
Okay, great. Yeah, I'm a post-it person.
Oh, good. Okay. You can't post a podcast.
Yeah. But, you know, I don't mean to plug the books, and, you know, if you don't want to buy them, I'll send them to you for free, and you can just pay me if you find them useful.
They're on the website, but, you know, I've poured a lot of energy into trying to...
The Untruth one is for free, and if you find that useful, pick up the other ones.
There's one on the secular proof of ethics.
I was never satisfied, but the objective is proof of ethics, so I took my own swing at it.
But the one I think that would be really helpful for you is the Real-Time Relationships book, which is really around the sort of honesty and vulnerability in relationships, which is the most efficient way to just keep good people in your life and not so much with the bad people.
I'm not saying – I don't know what your relationships are like, but certainly we can all use tweaks in that area, right?
Mm-hmm. Well, that's what I am – that's the one I have been looking at, so – Yeah, take it.
Look, buy it. If you think it sucks, total refund.
Like, there's no risk for you, right?
Buy it and you can use it for fish wrapping if you don't like it.
I give you all your money back. So, you know, just give it a shot and take it for a spin.
And, you know, I haven't handed out a refund yet.
I sold a hell of a lot of copies.
So, you know, to me, it's risk-free.
Just give it a shot. The only risk, of course, is that some of the stuff that's in it can be kind of grueling.
But I hope that it's a good kind of pain, right?
Alright.
Well, I'm considering that, so...
Great. Well, I'll tell you what, I will.
If you can just go into the chat window and just whisper your email ad to me, then I'll upload this.
You can have a listen to it.
I would certainly humbly beg for you to consider letting me release this as a podcast because I think that it's a good synthesis or encapsulation.
And God knows after a thousand podcasts, encapsulation is not a bad thing for me to be doing.
So I hope that it would be helpful.
But have a listen to it and let me know if that's possible.
Okay. Great. Thank you for your help.
You're very welcome. I'll talk to you soon.
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