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May 29, 2008 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
30:30
1078 Tension (Part 2)

The storm before the calm... :)

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Hi, everybody. It's Steph.
Hope that you're doing well. It is Friday, the 30th of May, 2008.
End of the month, if you get this.
And it is, in fact, Friday, the 30th of May.
If you could throw a few bucks my way, I would hugely appreciate it.
So this is Tension Part 2.
This is a shorter and, perhaps, dare I say, less stressful podcast around this problem that has been occurring with tension.
And everyday anarchy and the free accessibility of these books.
So, whenever we get wrapped up in personal or immediate tension, my strong suggestion is always to float up out of your own body and perform some astral travel I like to call the big picture-o-rama.
And what I mean by that is to look at the grand sweep of history, the grand sweep of human thought, so that we can place ourselves, you know, like that brick, that single brick in the wall of China.
We can place ourselves in the sweep of this human thought.
And that should give us some comfort, I think.
That should give us some certainty, some peace.
I think, with the whole process.
So let me tell you what I think the antidote to tension.
Tension is, in many, many ways, and I experience it too, so this is, again, I'm not up in here in any ivory tower, but tension is, in many ways, synonymous with pettiness.
And pettiness is putting the fears of others above the glories and honors of your own desires.
Rational, legitimate desires, we all know that.
So what I'd like to say, my friends, is that someday, somewhere, somehow, someone is going to take this prize.
And what is the prize?
Well, the prize is reintroducing Philosophy to the world in a way that is actionable, that is powerful, that is positive, that is liberating, that is freeing, that is glorious, that is honorable, that is exciting, that is thrilling, that is...
World's changing.
Someone's going to do it someday, somewhere, somehow.
Someone's going to do it. And my question to you, to me, just about every day is, well...
If someone's going to do it sometime, why not us now?
Why not? Why not?
It's going to happen someday.
Someday, philosophy is going to erupt like a geyser and is going to shower its goodies on the planet.
Someday, rational thought, rational ethics is going to triumph over the irrationality, pettiness, and fear-mongering of the wee folk.
Someday it's going to happen. Someday it's going to happen.
Why not now?
Why not us? So, you know, let's think of that Prince song.
So, when you call up that shrink in Beverly Hills, you know, doctor, everything's going to be all right.
So when you look at communicating everyday anarchy, communicating philosophy, communicating free domain radio, communicating your thoughts, however you're going to do it, communicating that which you are passionate about to those around you, When you consider that and you feel fear and you feel tension, your sphincter doth clench, yay, turning your tighty-whities into a kind of philosophical diamond.
When you fear all of that, as we all do, and we all understand that, just remember that the glory is going to go to someone.
The glory of reawakening philosophy in a personal sense is gonna go to someone.
Someone gets that medal, so to speak.
Someone is going to get that glory.
And why not be part of that number?
I mean, if you drop the baton, if you don't communicate about philosophy to people with joy, with enthusiasm, with excitement, With passion.
Out of a love for people.
And that is the challenge, right?
I mean, that is the real challenge with this kind of stuff.
It's that, well, obviously we know people treat philosophers somewhat akin to mentally retarded and rabid dogs.
And finding the love to communicate to people out of love When they're being offensive is understandable, but I just view it like when people get mad in this kind of way, it's just like a child having a temper tantrum in a store.
I don't see an adult.
I see a two-year-old or a three-year-old with their face screwed up and beet red and stomping their little feet.
And this doesn't mean that it's condescending.
I'm going to treat them as lesser.
A guy came into the chat room last night that's going out in the newsletter today.
He came in the chat room last night saying, oh, Steph's ideas are ridiculous.
You have to dissociate from all statists.
You have to defoo from everyone. And he buys his grocery from a statist grocer and hypocrite.
And yeah, you can take that personally, I guess, if you want, but my approach is like, this person is in pain.
That doesn't mean I can always do that, right?
And even in this conversation, I faltered to some degree, and thanks so much to Ducky for saving this, but...
Trying to help them heal the hurt.
This guy, it turned out that he had a father who had military friends who he would talk to about his passion for anarchism, for truth, for philosophy.
His father would not agree, and then his father would completely, quote, forget about it when he went to talk to his buddies again.
This guy was in agony.
Anybody who comes in who's pissed off about philosophy is in a kind of agony.
It is torn. And the fact that we say that your values are directly actionable in your personal life and that you have no control over the state and you have no control over social policies and you have no control over foreign policy or war or any of these sorts of things or what is taught in universities or what your professors say or what your teachers say or what your family believes.
You have no control over any of that and you can put your case forward as best you can out of love for them and out of a desire to share the joy that you have.
But at the end of it, it's not up to you.
This is the respect that we give to sovereign thought, to sovereign individuals, to sovereign consciousness, that it's their choice whether they want to take the pill.
It's their choice whether they want to take the pill.
And if they prefer to be sick, if they prefer the matrix, if they prefer all of that, that's their choice.
And we, who pride ourselves on our empirical and scientific natures and approaches, I think have to recognize that.
To be true to that, we have to recognize that as just a basic fact that we cannot alter.
An oncologist doesn't get very far by pretending that cancer does not exist.
And we as philosophers, as empiricists, as rationalists are not going to get very far if we imagine that wishing can change the world.
What is it they say?
If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.
And We're not going to be able to change everyone.
We're not going to be able to change that many people.
But someday it's going to change, and someday it's all going to alter.
And there will still be crazy people, and there will still be manipulative psychics and superstitious religiosity and so on.
But it doesn't matter, because it's the dominant paradigm that matters.
And the dominant paradigm right now is a kind of self-loathing retardation.
And it's hard, hard to reach through that hostility, hard to reach past those biting jaws to fix the cavities of incoherent thought.
And you don't have to.
But it's not going to change unless we act.
The world is inert, like personality is inert, like relationships are inert.
Nothing changes without massive effort in the world, in the personality, in families, in relationships of every kind.
Nothing changes without massive effort.
And nothing is going to change unless we are admired.
And that is not going to happen unless we admire ourselves.
Which means to act in the face of fear.
Not despite fear, not ignoring, but act in the face of fear.
Send the stuff around. Find out the truth about your relationships.
Share what you love with people.
And everybody wants to.
I know you all want to.
Because if you didn't want to, You wouldn't feel stressed.
Like if I put a podcast out saying, everybody take a running leap off the edge of the Grand Canyon, there wouldn't be a whole lot of tension out there.
It'd just be like, wow, he's nuts.
I can't believe it didn't happen before.
I knew it was coming. I knew it!
But there'd be no tension if I suggested doing things that people didn't want.
The tension, the fear, It's directly proportional to the desire for heroism, for bravery, for courage, for world-changing actions.
World-changing actions.
To be at the beginning of this, because this multiplies in a way that has never been possible before.
This multiplies. This is instantly accessible.
Books, audiobooks, podcasts, videos, whatever you want to call it, the board, your emails, whatever.
Stuff you write. Immediately multipliable around the world.
We've never had a better chance to use this incredible power of replication, which is only a few years old.
We've never had a chance.
And if we don't do it, who's going to do it?
I mean, don't think the Christians aren't interested.
Don't think the statists aren't interested.
Don't think the politicians aren't interested in working through it.
And if we don't grab these customers, who will?
And if we don't grab these customers, it might be 50 or 100 or 500 or 1,000 years before it happens again.
And why would we want to surrender that glory to other people?
And there is this reality around where we are, which is why there's so much tension in the community, in my opinion, one of the reasons.
And that reality is that This stream doth runneth oh so mostly quickly.
The current that we're on is so strong we cannot paddle back up the river.
We cannot paddle.
This is like a luge run.
You don't go back, right, when you're in a luge, when you're whitewater rafting, when you're skiing something semi-vertical.
Dodging Sonny Bono's nuclear shadow.
But there's no going back.
And this is what everybody's so tense about.
Everybody knew this is where it was coming.
True Salves knew where it was coming to.
I certainly had talked about handing out the books for free.
I had certainly talked about Everyday Anarchy being the first book for general consumption.
Everybody knew what was coming, and of course I've said it from the very beginning.
And this always comes right before a breakthrough.
This always comes right before a breakthrough, before a really powerful sea change in the personality.
There's always this Huge tension that occurs.
This overwhelming toss and turn, sleepless, stomach in knots, hands sweaty, punchiness, hostility, fear, frustration.
This is what always occurs when another state goes through the heart of the historical false self.
This is always the fear that comes before the growth.
And the process, if you've been involved in this process for a while now, and of course if you're up here, unless you're totally randomly slicing and dicing and picking, if you're up here, the stratosphere of podcasts 1077 or 1078, then the process has taken on a life of its own.
The unconscious takes on a life of its own.
It becomes like, if you feed your body around the age of 11 or 12, you will get puberty.
That process is beyond your conscious control.
You have fed yourself philosophy now to such a degree that the process of authentication, the process of becoming who you are, the process of building courage, the process of building a kind of world-changing approach to your relationships is underway.
I mean, we do philosophy at first, like we dabble and we tease, and then philosophy just kind of rears up and BAM! Philosophy does us, and sometimes, yea, verily like a troop of Vikings, sometimes.
So there's no turning back.
And the process is underway, and you can relax into your attention.
You can relax into what is coming next.
You can relax and accept that some of the process that philosophy is doing, some of the rewiring of your personality, some of the undoing of your illusions, some of the confrontations with your fears, is beyond your control.
It's something that is just going to unroll and is just going to let happen.
And remember, you don't have to do a damn thing.
You don't have to send the books out.
You don't have to tell anyone about FDR. I can be your slutty and embarrassing mistress, as can philosophy.
You can do all of that.
But the reason that there's such tension is everybody knows that this courage is coming.
Everyone knows that there is a rumble in the ground and there is a shivering in the water in the clear cups on the dashboard and that the courage is coming like a Tyrannosaurus.
The courage is coming to rend the illusions from your relationships.
and that what is left shaking in the aftermath in the nuclear shadow of that event we all know is going to be very different from what has come before because that kind of transition doesn't leave much standing that was there before and we know that and we feel tense because it's irresistible because it's outside of our control because one day we're going to wake up we know we know we know one day we're going to wake up with the courage to speak honestly truthfully and passionately about our love of philosophy And to take no substitutes for intimacy.
No substitutes for truth, for honor, for integrity.
No substitutes for benevolence, for charity, for love.
And that we will wake up one morning, and that morning is not far for you.
I am sure of that. Weeks.
Maybe a month or two, but that morning is not far for you.
You wake up one day. And you just won't care that much about the falsehoods of the people that you were supposed to be loving, about the lies and manipulations of those you were supposed to be having loyalty for.
You just won't care that much.
You will reach the nirvana of wisdom, which is no longer hatred.
Of vice. It's no longer disgusted vice.
It's no longer horror. It's simply boredom with vice, with corruption, with lies, with the grinding repetition of defensiveness and attacks and putting you down.
And you will see the frightened and angry children In the bitter and denigrating cages.
And that they don't want to be free.
you can open the door and they will simply slam it shut and call you their prison guard and you will give them wings and they will chew them off and scream that you have denied them flight and
And all these defenses that everybody has against the truth will just be so grindingly boring and repetitive That the true nature of courage will become clear that the true nature of courage is to elevate yourself above pettiness to the point where pettiness just seems utterly untempting, boring, pointless, futile.
And that comes from an acceptance of mortality and a desire, I think, to take your place in the pantheon of heroes, of the heroes of truth, of those who have moved the unwilling race forward.
Despite endless attacks and calumnies and put-downs.
But all of that stuff is just so little.
It's just so little. It's so tiny.
It's so fearful. And it's so boring.
It's so boring.
After a while, it's exactly like watching the same show over and over and over and over and over and over again.
In a room that is steadily darkening When you're not even allowed to shift on the couch.
At some point, you're simply going to be so screaming with understimulation that you will do anything to change.
And it's getting the repetition that the future will be the same as the past.
It gives us courage. Recognizing that those who have denied the truth we have spoken for months or years will continue in the future to deny the truth that is spoken.
And not because they can find a better truth and not because they can disprove that truth, but just because They're frightened of what the truth means to them, that they will then have to speak the truth.
But if you're afraid to speak the truth to them because they're afraid of having to speak the truth to others, then the only thing that you can do is lead by example and show that you're not afraid of being attacked for the truth, of being rejected for the truth, of being ostracized and put down for the truth.
That's the only way that you can get the message across.
The only way that we can...
What's the phrase?
The only way that we can light up others with courage is to be a beacon of courage yourself and that fundamentally has to do with recognizing that fear is ultimately just so boring.
It's just so boring.
It's like doing grade two over and over again.
Yeah, I guess you start to feel competent, but man, oh man, is there ever no progress and just an endless repetition.
And you start to see people as knee-jerk reaction machines.
It's stimulus response.
It's input. It's output. Truth.
Attack. Truth. Attack. Truth.
Attack. Truth. Attack. That there's no souls there.
There's machines. Of petty put-downs, fear, manipulation.
Their unarmed turrets, their landmines, attack without thought, out of fear.
And if you finally get through to that place where you're completely bored of this kind of repetition, and once you get that it's going to be the same over and over again, it's not going to change.
Not going to change. Once you get completely bored of this repetition and you disengage from the people who are like that, then what happens is, of course, some people will become bored with their own repetition and will yearn for something to change.
There's a huge amount of discomfort that needs to be evoked in people.
Not created, just evoked in people.
Nobody's proud of being a knee-jerk attack machine.
Nobody's proud of being a dumbass stimulus response, flick-the-nerve-ending-the-leg-comes-up kind of human being.
And if you recognize and experience the grinding and dull repetition of all that kind of crap, then there's a possibility, there's a little possibility that they will also recognize how boring and repetitive it is.
How boring and how repetitive it is.
And how there's not an intervening thought and there's not an intervening consideration and there's not any kind of conscious intervention in the stimulus response.
You bring the truth, they attack it.
You're passionate, they're mad at your passion.
You're happy, they're irritable.
You propose something, they pull it down.
As long as you continue to participate in that utterly boring, predictable, and empty set of rituals, as long as you continue to participate in that and be afraid of it, then you're simply helping to enslave them, right? If you want to help somebody to get over their temper, or at least give them that chance, What do you do?
Well, of course, what you fundamentally do is remain profoundly unimpressed by the fact that they're angry.
Because it's boring. It's just silly.
You know, it's that thing, it's like, hey, you know, I don't know why you would think this kind of silliness would work with me.
Save it for somebody who doesn't have a sense who they are and what they're about.
But if you take all of that together and accept that this tension of imminent change, of imminent breakthrough for you, for the community, for this conversation, for philosophy, for the race, for humanity, if you accept that for the race, for humanity, if you accept that this is just going to unfold and you don't have to will it, You don't have to will it.
There's a point that we do all of this.
Preparation. There's a reason for all of this preparation.
There's a reason that you don't just show up at the Olympics and hurl a javelin and accidentally take down some mascot or someone in the crowd.
There's a reason that you practice for years.
So that one day you simply wake up and you can do it.
And that is coming.
And that is when you rely on your true self, when you rely on your instincts, when you rely on your gut, when you rely on your feelings that have been well trained through these past few years.
That you can kind of let it go and let your instincts take you.
Because they know how to set people free.
We have instincts for enslavement, as we've all seen with these listener conversations, parent conversations, that we all have these instincts for enslavement.
But we also have incredible instincts for liberation, for liberating others.
Amazing, incredible, powerful, deep, effective instincts for the liberation of others.
And you can't think through it, and you can't plan it, and you can't plot it, and you can't graph it.
That which sets other people free is fundamentally, after being trained with rationality, self-knowledge, and philosophy, is fundamentally instinctual.
And it's letting go of that and accepting the wisdom of the deep brain.
That is part of the tension.
Because we know that we're going to be trying to set other people free with our interactions with them, and that's something we've been talking about for the last few months here in this conversation.
We know, but we don't know how to.
So it's like an impossible situation, but we don't have to know how to.
Nobody trains abusive parents on how to put down their children, but they're all exquisitely great at it, right?
There's no school of politics where politicians are trained exactly what phrases to use to stir patriotism and support for the genocide of the military.
But they know exactly what to say.
We have instincts for enslavement, and as a countervailing weight and force, we have instincts For liberation.
We know the push and pull, the back and forth, the interaction, the withdrawal, the challenge, the empathy, the confrontation, the sympathy.
We know exactly how to leave somebody free of the false self instinctually.
And it's letting go of that conscious focus and let's have a rational argument.
If someone's interested, if they're not interested, there's nothing we can do.
But trust the training.
Trust the practice. Trust everything that you've learned over the past few years.
You don't have to will or force this next stage.
You can relax into growth.
You can relax into the next thing.
You can relax into courage.
You don't have to will it. You don't have to force it.
You're just going to wake up one day with the incredible ability to liberate people because you're unimpressed and bored by their defenses.
They don't scare you. They don't frighten you.
It doesn't mean never, right? But not enough to engage.
And that by refusing to engage with people's defenses, those defenses collapse.
And for some people, that will be an increase in rage and frustration because now they feel helpless fundamentally and finally.
In that Randian sense or in the social metaphysics, when they can't manipulate other people, they feel helpless, like you've cut off their arms.
But some, a few people, a few people will be thrilled and excited.
Most people, when you unlock the door, get angry.
Because they feel like you've just shown them that they're in a cage.
But a few people who didn't even know it will rush at the bars, throw them wide, and launch themselves almost into the sky.
And those people you can find.
And the efficiency of the courage, of the big picture, of the boredom with defenses, the amazing power that that will give you to free people, I promise you will make up for all of the hell and difficulty I promise you will make up for all of the hell and difficulty that philosophy puts you through Because it's in Olympics where the gold is eternal.
You don't win it and then go home. It's an Olympics where the gold is eternal.
And it's the joy of changing other people and inspiring them to growth.
That is the fiercest and most amazing joy in the world.
It beats love because without it you can't have or give love.
So, get the word out there.
I know this sounds perhaps like boosterism, but I think you understand where I'm coming from.
You never know who's going to be on the other end.
You send an email with the EA video in it.
They send it to someone. They send it to someone who might have a million dollars to invest in philosophy.
Who might have such a thing.
Some trustafarian looking to do some good with perhaps illicit money.
You just, you never know.
But you can relax into the next stage.
You can relax into growth.
The tension comes because we're trying to control something that is going to happen anyway.
The courage is going to come to you.
The certainty and the positivity to be able to really take a stand and be a force for truth and virtue and philosophy in this world, that's going to happen to you anyway.
It doesn't matter whether you want it or not consciously.
It doesn't matter whether you think you're going to have it or not.
It's going to happen for you anyway.
After a certain amount of training, the skills simply take on a life of their own.
And so when I talk about having courage in the face of pettiness, in the face of attacks from those around you, in the face of challenges in your personal relationships, it sounds like I'm asking you to spend the rest of your life holding up a car, but it's not true.
And you know this deep down, otherwise there wouldn't be any tension.
It's not an impossible situation, because I'm just some guy on the internet, so there couldn't be tension.
I can't create impossible situations for you.
But the pettiness is trying to control the depth.
The pettiness in you, which you have to let go of, I would suggest, is in trying to restrain the depth and power of the change that is coming.
Of the abilities that you are going to have, of that Keanu Reeves fly-to-the-sky scene at the end of the Matrix.
This is what happens. When we train our instincts for a long time and then when we are confronted with how we can use them to the benefit of the world.
Just trust in yourself.
Trust in your instincts. Trust in your instinctual capacity to liberate others.
And work empirically.
And listen to yourself.
RTR with your own tension.
It is The trembling before a volcano of great growth.
And I think we should be absolutely thrilled.
And the time frame is just about right.
It was about this length of time for me, about this length of time for other people that I've known.
And now it's your turn to become a sort of god.
So relax. It's going to happen.
Thank you so much. I look forward to your donations.
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