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June 14, 2009 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:22:17
1391 Sunday Show 14 June 2009

Happiness.

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Alright, sorry about that.
Great. So, nothing particularly stunning and staggering.
The book is trundling along, but it still is slow and gruesome because there are all of these, well, frankly, repellent facts that need to be looked up.
So, naturally, that's slowing down the massive water cannon of StephBot production.
I did send out a podcast I was enormously pleased with called A Brief History of Hell Itself.
Which is a psychological examination of the concept from pre-Jesus to post-20th century.
And that went out to subscribers.
Thank you again so much to the lovely subscribers who fill my inbox with joy and smatters of cash.
So thank you so much to them.
If you didn't get it but you are a subscriber, sucks to be you.
Please send me your email and I will read it to you over the phone.
So... Anything else?
I don't think so.
Nothing else particularly going on that's wildly exciting.
Some great listener conversations that came out lately, and one which we did on Nate's resume, which is fantastic.
Nate is attempting to join a children's ballet, and so the picture alone of the tutu and the tanning spray is really, really worth it.
So you might want to check that out.
And that's it. So I will now turn the show over to you.
I know we have some people on deck who are very interested to talk about this, that, and, if I remember rightly, the other.
So I turn the show over to you.
Okay, I was having computer issues.
Would it be helpful for me to read the posts, since they were in the Philosopher King board, just to give some context?
Please. What do you think would be best?
Sure, just let me bring it up.
Alright, the first post, which was on...
Friday, I think.
Yeah. Yeah, it was on Friday.
Hi, guys. I've been feeling, for the most part, excellent about the writing thing over the past week or so, ever since the chat with Steph and the subsequent video.
I've had more work lined up than I've ever had, and I finally felt some great advocacy about my work.
Until today. I've absolutely crashed as far as my motivation goes.
One of the projects I'm working on I accepted at half my standard rate, which is totally unmotivating, especially with other projects at my standard rate in my queue at the moment.
I woke myself up extra early today to work on projects, but didn't get any more work done with the extra hours.
I can't bring myself to write another word today, which would be fine if clients weren't waiting for projects.
I'm not late for any, but the clock is ticking.
I know for sure that I want to end one of the projects, the half-right one.
It's just far too stressful, and I can't bring myself to write 50 articles about home security devices.
I still have several projects lined up, which I feel better about completing.
But there's also a part of me, a significant part of me, that just wants to throw in the towel.
It's over, he says. You gave it a good try.
He's not that gentle, though.
When I think about quitting, though, I feel like I'm letting you guys down, and I wonder if I'd also be letting myself down.
You guys have poured a lot of effort into helping me, and I feel bad just giving up.
But I can't bring myself to do this, and it's just not sustainable emotionally or financially.
I've been in survival fight-or-flight mode several times over the past few weeks, and there's absolutely no fun.
I'm really leaning towards giving up in the moment, but I also wanted to solicit feedback.
Do you guys think it's me being small in the face of a challenge, or is it a viable option to give in, knowing I gave it my best?
I feel really sad, really angry, and really terrified when I think about all this.
And by the by, this is an extremely hard post to make.
But since I'm feeling a desire to isolate, I think this is when I need to reach out even more.
I'm really scared of failing, but I'm even more scared of pretending that there's a chance of success when there's not.
And then the next post was, uh, thanks to some chats with some friends and some heavy engaging of my Mika system, especially my shadow voice.
I've come up with the following.
I just ended a two-week dry spell.
I was starved for work. During the second week of this dry spell, I marketed myself like mad more than I've ever marketed myself in a week.
I knew full well that I'd probably get a lot of project offers, especially early this week.
Sorry to interrupt, but just so people know, and it's not due to this, but You and I did have a conversation where I was sort of saying, when you have a lot of work, you still have to market even though we think, oh great, you know, I'll have this work forever and so on.
But because you have to continue marketing while you have work so that you can keep stuff in the pipeline, so to speak.
Yeah, and it was after that IM conversation that I marketed myself like mad.
Like during that week and after that conversation, I was just marketing, marketing, marketing.
And so I knew from experience that lower-paying clients are no fun to work for.
In spite of this, I had my rate just to get work.
I received at least three project offers this week and I accepted them all without thought.
I probably would have accepted more if I had been offered.
In short, I got greedy.
The work I took on was overwhelming.
76 articles plus a 20-page legal document to write.
And I knew going into that that it was going to be overwhelming.
I chose to overwhelm my Mika system, especially my inner child who was often placed into this position years ago.
I didn't consult my Mika system before I took on all this work.
I was acting pretty unconsciously when I did so out of desperation.
And possibly more than desperation.
From there I'm stuck.
I don't know why I overwhelm myself, but I know that I did.
And you find that you can't do the work without the Mecosystems cooperation, right?
Right, and just to summarize my last post, which I don't need to read that whole thing, but I basically had a 20-page Mecosystem conversation yesterday after that second post in which we've all just sort of decided that I need to do a lot more listening to them and a lot less forcing.
And I'm going to have morning meetings with them every morning to see how much work in a day they want to take on, deadlines or no deadlines, just to rebuild trust.
But I'm not sure if you have any more feedback to add as to how I could go about more productive and happier and more relaxed habits.
Well, tell me about what you feel.
I mean, the most dangerous habit, as far as I understand it, is the one where you are taking on a huge amount of work.
And that's not just crazy, right?
Because, I mean, when you didn't have the work, it was really scary, right?
Right. And I think it was like, because I had like a two-week dry spell, and then I accepted like projects that are like, it was like more money than I, like doubled the money I used to earn working at a restaurant in a month, and I accepted that much work for the week.
Right. Just an insane amount.
But I justified it as, okay, I've had two weeks of not working, so I've got to double that.
I've got to make up for that, right?
Right. And there wasn't a sense of moderation, I don't think, at all.
Well, not even I don't think. I know there wasn't a sense of moderation in my actions.
It was like no work or insane, inhuman amount of work.
Right, right.
And when you found yourself unable to do the work, what was it primarily that was the feeling that was associated with that?
And you said you got up early to do the work, but it didn't really take.
What was the feeling associated with that?
It was just a feeling of paralysis.
It was the same feeling that I mentioned at your house about when I said I was just staring at this Excel spreadsheet and I didn't write, right?
And it was the same thing.
I had this... It was like a bunch of articles about home security.
I didn't care about the topics, right?
And frankly, I didn't even know what the topics were when I accepted all the work.
I was that craved for work.
I was just like, yes, work, right?
I'm so not sure what the feeling was when you were looking at this, when you were not working on these, right?
Oh, yeah. It's not coming to me, but I'm thinking it was a fear-based emotion, but I'm not sure more specific than that.
All right. Well, let's go through some possibilities.
I mean, I think we've definitely all been there, so I think we can all understand that.
Was it a sense that the task was impossible, so why bother trying?
Yeah, it was...
Oh, okay. Yeah, it was similar to looking at a huge mountain and being like, well...
Fuck that, right? Yeah, it's like, I have to pick a million coconuts in an hour.
Well, I'm not even going to pick one, because there's just no way.
Like, it's not even remotely possible, so why even bother doing any of it, right?
Right, yeah, that's exactly right.
It was just, because, I mean, however many tens of thousands of words that is that I took on for that week, it was just like, okay, I'm just going to not do that, right?
Right, right, right.
Okay. And was it a million coconuts or was it just a savage amount of work?
Like, it was theoretically possible.
It wasn't like you said, I'll do 10,000 articles by tomorrow, right?
It was a huge amount of work, but it wasn't completely impossible.
Is that right? I've never done that much work in a week, but I know that it's within my limits to do that, just in terms of sheer time and my abilities.
I've never done that much, so I don't know if it's within my kind of ecosystem limits, but it's totally possible to do that much.
Okay, so it wasn't an impossible situation, it was just a very difficult one, right?
Yes, yes, that's accurate.
All right. Again, I always try not to give anyone the feelings, but this is what I'm trying to put myself in that situation.
Part of what I think I would feel if I ended up in that state of paralysis is a lack of ownership over the choices that led to that situation.
Yeah, I was extremely unconscious when I was choosing all that work.
Yeah, because I frankly had put all that work onto my Miko system, so it was the work.
I almost woke up on Friday morning and I was like, fuck, all this work.
I didn't realize it was this much, right?
Right, so then it feels like it's been imposed on you from outside.
Yes, rather than internally chosen.
Right, okay, okay.
I think that's entirely accurate.
All right. So there's a resentment of the clients, a resentment of the situation, and then there's a resentment of yourself, and then there's a feeling of despair and hopelessness, which becomes self-fulfilling, right?
Because if you feel you can't do it, then, hey, you know, you're right.
If you feel like you can do it, you're right.
If you feel like you can't do it, you're right.
Right, right. And it's interesting when you say that about the resentfulness of the client, because even my very favorite client, who's given me She gives me weekly work and she's the one who assigned this work and I had to negotiate a pay raise this week.
I even started to feel resentful of her for like, I almost know, like she did nothing.
She actually gave me very high paying work this week that I'm really, that I was looking forward to when she assigned it to me.
So yeah, the resentfulness for the clients was totally there as well.
And I must say that, and hopefully this will make you laugh, it's a little funny though.
I can understand it wasn't funny at the time.
It is a really nice It's a nice slice of variety within the entrepreneurial world, but instead of complaining about having no work, you're complaining about having work.
It's how entrepreneurs make it different for themselves.
It's a whole different kind of complaining, which is really about as successful as you can get as an entrepreneur.
I just think that's an important thing to remember.
I just thought it was kind of funny, but anyway.
We should move on to solving a problem rather than mocking it.
Well, no, I think you're entirely right.
It's like I'm eyeing you about how awful it is that I don't have any work, right?
And then the next week it's like, fuck too much work, right?
Right, right. That's what I meant earlier when I said there's no sense of moderation in my actions over the past week.
Like there's no, okay, I'd be happy with half as much of work because then it's okay and I can still...
Eat and make rent, right?
Right, right.
But you took on this work, and of course, okay, let me run you through some possibilities here, and you can see if it makes any sense.
And first of all, I mean, the first thing I'd like to say is massive congratulations for the successes that you're having.
It's a tough field, it's a tough economy, you're getting work, you have regular clients, you're getting paid.
I know it's tough, but Congratulations at that level.
And I don't know that you give yourself a lot of credit for that kind of stuff.
I don't think I do either.
Yeah, I think it's really, really important.
Just to, you know, turn it back to me.
Me, I, me. Talk about myself all the time.
I just was mentioning this to Christina yesterday.
That, you know, this week we sleep-trained Isabella.
She slept for seven hours straight last night.
Oh, wow. She's now napping for 90 to 120 minutes twice a day.
She's happy. She's relaxed.
She's even happier than she was before.
And the sleep training was living hell, right?
I mean, because listening to your child cry goes against every conceivable instinct that you have.
So we were talking about, oh, the things we want to do are the things we want to do next.
And I just sort of stopped and I said, you know, we haven't really patted ourselves on the back for solving this terrible sleep problem of six months.
And it is really, really important to take that time and say, damn, I'm good, right?
I've really got some good stuff done.
I'm really, really pleased.
We are constitutionally and biologically tuned to look at deficiencies because that's how we survive, right?
Right. And so we're biologically tuned to look at the negatives.
And that's not an indication of a personality problem.
That's an indication of being a carbon-based life form, right?
Right. Right, right.
That just is biologically how we survive as we look at the negatives.
And that does help us survive, it just doesn't help us really enjoy life very much, right?
Right, right.
Right, so I mean, as you know from being a waiter, right, you go to the customer who wants something, you don't go to the customer who doesn't, right?
Right, right. The whole life is squeaky.
Everything in life is a squeaky wheel situation.
And so it's natural that you're going to look at the negatives.
That is not an indication of a personality problem, in my opinion.
It is just an indication of, you know, having four fingers, a thumb, and some toes, right?
Right. I think that's exactly right.
But thank you for that. That's a good point.
Yeah, that's just important to remember.
You're always going to be drawn to look at the negatives because we are problem-solving machines, and so we're drawn to problems, and we're drawn to But it is really, really important to develop the discipline.
I mean, we're also drawn to chocolate.
That doesn't mean that we should never eat vegetables, right?
I mean, we have to develop the discipline to not just do that which is instinctual, but to do that which actually makes us happy.
And that means to focus on success, right?
Right, right. That's exactly right.
Because we get stuck into the problems of the moment, and our whole life becomes like a series of shit pearls, right?
There's no string. There's just shit pearls, moment-to-moment problems until we're dead.
And I think it's important to lift our head, look at the big picture, and say...
You know, if someone had told me, right, this is a trick that can be very helpful.
If someone told me two weeks ago that I would have this much work, would I be happy or sad?
I think I would have been ecstatic, actually.
Yeah, you'd have been like, damn, that's fantastic, right?
But then you actually get there and you're like, shit, this is terrible, right?
Right. Right.
Because you'll never get the right amount of work.
Never. You'll never get the right amount of work.
Hmm. That doesn't even happen when you have a boss, right?
But that's really important to remember.
Really, really important to remember.
And I think about this, right?
When FDR is as comfortable as an ass full of cactus, I sit there and think, hey, if someone had told me three years ago that I would be able to scrape together a living doing philosophy over the web, would I be happy or sad, right? Well, damn, I'd be overjoyed.
I'd say, you know, give me that, and I won't want anything else in life.
Okay, maybe a baby. Okay, maybe a little more chest hair.
But give me that, and I won't want anything else in life, right?
So I think that's really important.
You have those goals, like, I want more work.
And when you're in that situation, you say, okay, if I'd have known this two weeks ago, would I have chosen this or no work?
And you say, well, I would have chosen this, right?
Right, right. So that's really, have the goals that you want.
When you achieve those goals, remember that that's what you want.
And that you would be unhappy if you didn't have it, right?
So when I'm anxious about donations or listenership or success or whatever, then I sit there and say, well, would I rather be anxious about this or would I rather be anxious about...
My boss being crazy or a business being corrupt or a customer being difficult in a business environment, right?
Well, I would rather have this stress.
And if this is the stress that you really want, then it's not really stress, right?
Right. Like you quit a secure gig as a waiter to get here.
You really, really wanted work.
So you get work.
You've got the work. You've got exactly what you want.
And... Yet you feel that something is being done unto you, right?
You're like a guy who decides to climb Mount Everest using his teeth, you know?
And you train and you quit your job and you spend lots of money to climb Mount Everest with your teeth.
You get to the top and you're like, what the hell am I doing here?
It's fucking cold.
And windy as shit, right?
Right, right. So, this...
If someone had told you when you quit that you would be facing the situation where you'd have more work than sometimes would be comfortable to do, would you say, no, no, I'm going to stay being a waiter then?
No, no, I think I would have been like...
You'd be like, damn, that's the best I could hope for!
Right, right. So, that having been said, I'm not going to try and say that that's magically going to get rid of all your stress, right?
Of course not. But it is a really, really important perspective to have, right?
Right, right. But I think the question that comes up for me, unless you have another thought...
No, no, go ahead. Well, the question that comes up for me is what to do when my Miko system is not kind of satisfied with either way, really.
The Miko system is like, oh, fuck, we want more work, and then, no, we don't want to do this, right?
Well, I don't think you've differentiated the Miko system enough.
Oh, right, right.
In my opinion. So we'll take a swing at that, right?
Because to me, this is my view of your view of your ecosystem, so it could be all kinds of wrong.
But to me, I think you think they're a big herd of bison or a flock of birds that all kind of fly in one direction and they turn and this and that, right?
Well, I do differentiate the voices, but oftentimes it feels like they're all kind of, I guess, against me.
Yeah, well, no, no.
See, the MECO system is composed of friends and enemies.
Right, right. The MECO system is composed of those parts of us that want us to succeed and those parts of us that do not want us to succeed.
Right, right.
Okay. Right, so to take a silly example, right, if you're in a relationship that goes really badly and then you break up, and let's say that you break You have mutual friends or your girlfriend has some way of staying in touch with you.
And she thinks that you're just a bad guy who's incapable of love or whatever, right?
Is she going to be happy or sad if the next relationship you're in turns into a loving, happy, permanent, married with children relationship?
She's going to be really upset.
Yeah, she's going to want you to not succeed because that is going to confirm her thesis that you're a cold-hearted rat bastard incapable of love, right?
Right. So, given that everyone we meet, right, this is why I think it's so important to be discriminatory about who you have in your life, everyone you meet goes in through your ear and takes up permanent residence in your ecosystem.
Right, we invite permanent ghosts into our head when we associate with people.
Right, right. Right, so, and when we are around people who have Who are hostile to our genuine best interests.
And for most of us who have bad families, that would be the family, right?
Originally. So there are people in our heads who want us to fail.
Because they have opposite values, or they have illusions, or they have whatever, they're anti-rational, or they're religious, right?
So atheists shouldn't be happy, and if atheists are happy, that's a problem with religion, so religious people just could be anything, right?
But there are people in our heads who are desperate for us to fail.
And that's a problem, because when we fail, we feel bad because we want to succeed, and when we succeed, The aspects of the mycosystem that are hostile to our success rise up and attack, right?
Or demotivate, or dissociate, or whatever, right?
Right. Now, that having been said, I'm a little curious, because I was seeing my mycosystem as, like, all the voices are kind of against me, or to an extent, like, it's a group against me.
Do you think the reason I saw that was because those are the voices I'm listening to?
Well, yeah. I mean, there is the ecosystem that got you the work, and then there's the ecosystem that doesn't want you to succeed at the work.
Right? We're ambivalent about success.
We're ambivalent about failure.
We're ambivalent about a lot, right?
Right, right. Right?
So, I think that you want to...
I think you want to further differentiate your ecosystem and not think, well, they're all for me.
Oh, no, now they're all against me.
Oh, now I have to enlist them all.
You're never going to enlist your entire ecosystem for anything that you ever do.
Unless, I don't know, you really have to pee.
Then they're all on board, right?
Right, right. But then for me, it's like, because there's the group that kind of wants me to fail, right?
And then my instinct is to just shut them up when I start to succeed and be like, oh, shut up, we're working, right?
But then that makes them stronger.
So I'm trying to figure out how to negotiate with them in such a way that they will feel all right if I'm succeeding.
If that's even possible.
I don't know if I'm asking that correctly.
No, no, I think that's a perfectly reasonable and intelligent question, in my opinion.
So the question is, the aspects of the ecosystem that want you to fail, they would not be innate to your personality, they would be inherited from some earlier time in history, right?
Yeah, yeah. It's the inner parents or whoever it is, right?
The inner teachers or whoever's siblings or the people who have...
It's so weird. I just did a podcast on this.
I don't know if it's going to go out premium or not.
But it's the people who have the opposite values to us, right?
People who are anti-rational, right?
People who are hostile to what it is that we're doing as philosophers.
They want us to fail, right?
For obvious reasons, right?
Because they have the opposite approach to happiness, right?
So if they have the opposite approach to happiness and we're happy, they can't be, right?
It's a zero-sum game, right?
If I think this way is north and you go the opposite way, you have to be going south.
Because if you're going north, I'm completely wrong.
Only one of us is right. If you go in opposite directions, only one can be right.
And the other one isn't just kind of wrong, they're totally wrong.
And so if we say, well, reason, integrity, virtue, courage brings joy, love and happiness...
Then people who are doing the opposite of that obviously don't want us to be happy because it means that they then will never achieve happiness.
In fact, they will achieve the opposite of happiness, right?
Right. But again, as you say, we can't will these voices away.
We're permanently haunted, right?
We cannot will these voices away.
Right, I've tried that before and it doesn't work.
Right, so... Sorry, go ahead.
I was just saying, like, it anti-works.
It does the complete opposite.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. That which we reject strengthens, right?
So, my solution to it, and it's only mine, maybe it'll help others, but this is the way that I do it, right?
So, when I get down to myself about X, Y, and Z, and the voices are...
Right? I say, okay...
What's your solution? I give them a seat at the table.
Tell me what your solution is.
Right, so you don't want...
Right, so I'll give you an example, right?
So when it comes to writing a book, there's stuff that I really love about writing a book, which is the planning of the first draft.
Everything else sucks.
Right? Right.
I love planning a book.
I love the excitement of getting the thoughts shaped out, the table of contents written out.
I love the writing. The actual writing of the first draft is a joyous, exciting, thunderous rollercoaster.
I love it! And everything after that sucks like a wet vacuum.
Right? Oh, I get to do some editing.
Oh, I have to do the cover.
Oh, the PDF is having problems.
Oh, I have to order it. Oh, the page size is a little bit problematic.
All that sort of shit, right?
I mean, I have to order at least five copies of every book, which take like six weeks to get the cover right, because I have to design my own cover.
It depends on the thickness, and if I have to change the thickness of the book, I have to redo the cover.
So everything else sucks.
And then, I hate reading the audiobook.
I really hate it. I hate it, because it's not as fun as a podcast.
I've already read the goddamn text 200 times, and I'm bored of it.
Right, right. And so, I'll sit there, and it's like, Hey, all the fun stuff of the book is behind me, right?
And now it's just dragging a dead dog up a tall cliff to get the book out, right?
And so I sort of want to do something else.
You know, oh, I'll do another podcast.
I'll play a video game. I'll do X, Y, and Z, right?
And when I start to get those feelings, to me, it's like, okay, well, so what's your solution?
The book stays as it is in the second draft phase, and that's it.
No proofreading, no...
Like, we just... We don't ever release it.
It's never a book. Is that the solution, right?
Just saying. So for you, it'd be like, okay, so we don't write anything this week?
Is that the solution? I'm open.
You say, I'm open. I'm open to solutions, right?
Because then, like I can say to my inner, don't want to do the book guy, Hey, no problem.
We'll just pay someone to do it, right?
And then my inner tightwad Scotsman comes out and says, eh, what's that?
Pay? Pay? Never!
Right? Never! So I set those two at battle, right?
Because, you know, I am lazy, but I'm even more cheap.
So it's just to remember that, right?
Right. Yeah, and sorry, somebody mentioned too, because the books are free, it's like...
So it's not even like, well, and look, we get more money, right?
So anyway, there's lots of things about it that are a challenge, right?
Or, you know, I write a little thank you to everyone who donates to me.
And that's not fun.
And it's not because I get a million donations a day.
It's just, you know, after years, it's...
But I say, well...
I remember this. I gave some money to Lou Rockwell's site and never heard a thing about it.
And I just thought, you know, I thought it would be nice at least to get a form letter or a form email or something.
And so I thought, well, you know, so for me it's, you know, I don't know, the hundredth letter this year.
I don't know. I have no idea what the numbers are, right?
But I say, so for me, it's repetitive and the same, but for other people, it's the first time they've donated, particularly for the first time.
But even more so if it's people who've donated in the past, because, you know, the continued support is just beautiful.
So I write that letter because it takes them time to sit there and say, I'd like to donate.
They've got to go to the website.
They've got to log into PayPal.
They've got to decide how much.
They've got to send it. Sometimes they write a little nice note.
And it's how I don't have to go to work for...
Ten hours a day with a commute, right?
So for them, if they're donating once every six months, it's a pretty big deal.
And a thank you seems to me entirely appropriate.
And I genuinely feel it, so I never want to take it for granted.
So I sit there and say, okay, I don't want to write these little thank you notes, right?
And I say, okay, well, what are the options, right?
Do we just stop doing this?
Is that really wise?
Yes. Is that smart?
Is that professional? Is that a genuine expression of my gratitude?
So I say, well, what's your solution?
Do we just not do it? And they're like, no, no, I guess we've got to do it.
And I agree, yeah. So sometimes we don't like to do it, but it is something that is really, really important, to be honest.
And also, I do hugely value the donations that come in.
So I want to be clear to people how much I value it.
So That kind of stuff.
Or like when I want to hand out a subscriber podcast, that's a lot of work because I've got to comb through the people who've signed up and make sure I don't get the people who just canceled and stuff like that, right?
So it's annoying and slow and time-consuming.
Or if I have like nine podcasts to produce, that takes pretty much a day, right?
And it's a day of really, really, really boring work, right?
It's clearing up the noise on either side of the track.
It's It's taking out, it's doing a volume normalization, which sometimes can be quite tricky.
It's taking out any background hums or noises.
It's taking out pauses.
It's, you know, compile it, mp3 it, tag it, upload it, change the XML, update the XML, test everything.
I mean, it's really, really dull, right?
And so, I sort of say, okay, well, what are my options?
Do I just not publish these podcasts, you know?
People open their hearts to me and, you know, they want other people to hear their story if they find it valuable.
So, To me, there's a lot of, you know, 90% of everything is tough, right?
90% of everything is not great, right?
I mean, think of an album, right?
I mean, they spent, what, 12 weeks recording?
I think it was six weeks recording Bohemian Rhapsody, which is like, what, a six-minute song?
I mean, so a lot of it is not singing, right?
A lot of it is not playing music, right?
A lot of it is, well, we've got 32 tracks and no computers, and the tape is running thin, so what are we going to do about that, right?
It's just technical shit, right?
And then the record company doesn't want to release a six-minute single.
So a lot of it, and then they all thought about the, this is going back, right?
They all thought about the royalties, right?
Because Freddie Mercury wrote Bohemian Rhapsody, and the B-side was some piece of crap called Soul Brother or something that was jotted down Like by some guy in the band in 12 minutes.
And so how many people are buying it for Soul Brother and how many people are buying it for Bohemian Rhapsody?
Well, how are you going to work out the royalties?
So it's a lot of fight about that, right?
Think of touring, right? 95% of touring is not prancing around on stage being cheered at and having panties thrown at you.
I can tell you that.
So 90% of everything is not a highlight at all, right?
I mean, the New Hampshire trip was 14 hours of driving each way, sitting through some presentations that weren't entirely scintillating in my opinion, though some people may have felt the same about mine, followed by two hours of a hell of a lot of fun, followed by, you know, me and other people working very hard to produce the video and the audio, which is boring as hell again, right?
So, most of it is crap, right?
But what's the alternative? Do you just say, well, in order to get to the 10% of gold, I'm not going to go through the 90% of sand?
Well, then you just don't get gold.
Right, right. So, you know, if people don't want to do it, right, then say, okay, so what are your options, right?
Because, say, the Amico system, what are your options?
Do we just not do this work?
Are you willing to live with those consequences?
Right? You weren't happy when I was not getting work, and now you're unhappy because we chose to get too much work, And you also, I think, need to be a bit firmer with your MECO system because you were apologizing to your MECO system for piling this work onto it, right? Yeah, yeah.
But that's not fair. Remember, you're not a dictator and they're not a dictator.
It is a democracy in the best sense of the word, right?
So if your MECO system did not complain when you were taking on the work, it has no particular right to start complaining after the deal is done, right?
Hmm. Yeah, I think I tend to be a little passive with my ecosystem at times.
Yeah, you're like, oh, my ecosystem, I must bow down before you and please give me some goodies and blah, blah, blah, right?
Yeah, yeah. So that's important to say, okay, look, why was it that you're complaining so much now?
And I respect that and I do want to hear about alternative solutions and so on, right?
But why is it that you're complaining about it now and you didn't say boo?
In fact, you seemed to be quite enthusiastic when we were taking the work.
Right, right. Because you need to practice negotiating with yourself.
Why? Obviously because that gives you a better relationship with yourself, but so that you can then feel comfortable negotiating with your customers.
Right, right.
And with my friends and people that I'm close to, right?
Right, because if you get used to saying to your ecosystem, well, you can complain now and I'll listen, but But don't get all self-righteous on me because you didn't complain when I was taking the work and I was certainly happy to listen.
In the same way, if a client approves something and then complains later, you're then used to that.
And you can say, well, you didn't complain at the time.
I've closed the account.
I've spent the money and I've moved on.
So I certainly happen to listen to complaints, but you can't come across finger-wagging me because you didn't complain at the time.
So you get used to these negotiations within yourself and then it is much, much easier.
In fact, it becomes... Comfortable to negotiate with other people.
Right, right. Right.
And that is a situation that's actually occurred before, as is probably no surprise to you.
I mean, two weeks after a project, someone said, oh, could you make some revisions?
And I just did them for free.
I closed out my schedule and did the revisions for free.
Right, and that may be the entirely right thing to do.
That may be entirely the right thing to do, but ideally it should be a choice, right?
Right, and it didn't feel like a choice when I did it.
It was just like, oh, well, this is what they want me to do, so hey.
Right, and see, the interesting thing is, I bet you the client isn't really that grateful if you just take it on as an absolute, but if you say, well...
You know, I really don't generally, I don't have a policy of revisiting work when it's closed and paid for, right?
Any more than you can take the car back to the dealership after you've bought it and say, I'd like a sunroof.
And they do it for free.
Because the deal is done, right?
If you wanted a sunroof, you order the sunroof, you pay for it up front.
And if you want it later, it's actually more expensive, right?
Because you've got to cut a hole in the roof and do it right.
Right. Right, so you can say, well, I normally don't have this policy of revising work after everything is done, but I'm going to make an exception in your case because you really are a valued client.
They're going to say what? They're going to be extremely grateful.
Right, whereas if you say, oh, absolutely, yes, I'd be happy to do it, they're going to take it for granted, right?
Right, and it's going to be like, well, that was expected of them, right?
Right, and so you're just training them to not value what you're doing.
Right, right. Whereas if you make it consciously, make an exception, right, then...
I mean, I tell you, when you do make that kind of exception and you're conscious of it and you have the freedom to say no but you say yes, then you saying yes becomes really valuable, right?
Right. In the same way, if there's some girl around who'll go out with absolutely anyone with a pulse, you don't feel that thrilled if she'll go with you to the diner, right?
Right, right. But you have to have the perception that your time is valuable in order for other people to feel grateful for getting it.
Right, that sounds exactly right.
Yeah, so none of this has to be said in the moment, right?
There's nothing more powerful than the phrase, let me think about it, in business, right?
Because one of the things that happens is we'll put a lot of pressure to provide an answer in the moment, right?
We do this in relationships, we do this in dating, but particularly we do it in the business world, right?
But there's nothing wrong with saying, in fact, I think it's entirely right to say, I'm not sure, I'll have to think about it.
Let me mull it over, I will get back to you.
Mm-hmm.
And is that equally true with the ecosystem, right?
Going back to the inner world for a minute, just sort of Hearing everyone out and then saying, okay, I'll be back in about a half hour?
Well, I think that can be a little risky.
Certainly, you don't want to, you know, if a strong aspect of the ecosystem comes up, you don't want to just make that decision immediately.
But saying, I'll come back, as long as you're saying, I'll come back to negotiate in half an hour, I think that's great.
If you say, I'm going to come back with an answer in half an hour, that's not so great, right?
Right, right. And I think also recognize that what you're doing is very difficult.
It's very, very difficult to get yourself going in this kind of career at your age, right?
With no formal training.
It's a really difficult thing to do.
It's a really difficult thing to do.
You don't have an entrepreneur parent or sibling who can help you with this sort of stuff on a regular basis, right?
You don't have business training.
You don't have, as far as I know, formal technical training as a writer.
No. Right?
So what you're doing is very hard.
And I think if you recognize that, then the successes will not be quite as anxiety-provoking, and the failures won't be as stressful.
It's really hard what you're doing.
It's really rewarding, because...
Most entrepreneurs work like rabid dogs chasing their own tails for years before they achieve some sort of comfort and continuity.
I certainly know that was the case for me in the software world.
I can tell you for sure that it was the case for me with Free Domain Radio, right?
I mean, I was working for a long time on philosophy before FDR even came along and on writing and on communicating and Even when FDR started, I was spending nights and weekends writing, recording podcasts, learning how this all worked, long before I even started getting any money.
And then when I started getting any money, I worked for another, what, 18 months before I gave a go with it full-time.
And then after I gave a go with it full-time, I put myself under a huge amount of pressure to write seven books in 18 months, right?
Right, right. And now I feel...
More relaxed about Free Domain Radio.
I feel like it's not on life support.
I feel comfortable with, you know, all of that.
And, you know, of course, Christina got pregnant.
There was the media stuff. There was something that's a challenge, right?
Right, right. Right, and there's, you know, hey, donations are great.
Oh, donations are slow, right?
But now, I feel comfortable that it's...
And that's years after I started, and it's not my first business.
Right, right. Right, so there is this aspect of it, right?
Now, I certainly was not a tenth as mature as you are at your age when I was your age, but you are still, of course, quite young, right?
And so when you're young, in particular, every success feels like a vindication and every failure feels like a catastrophe, right?
That's been my experience, absolutely, yeah.
Right, and that is entirely natural.
One of the best pieces of advice I ever got in my life...
from a guy I was friends with for quite a while, was don't take work so seriously.
It's just a game, too, fundamentally, because, I mean, you're not going to die.
You're not going to starve. You've got friends.
You've got people who will help you out.
You're not alone. This is a guy when I was my first professional programming gig when I was about 27.
I was working in COBOL74, God help me, right?
I didn't know anything about COBOL. And so I was really stressed, and I was writing programs for a trading floor, and traders, if they don't like the way the program works, will literally come into your area and yell at you, right, and get really angry because they just lost a $10,000 bonus because a trade didn't go through fast enough, right? These are the guys. They have to replace their phones every now and then because they pound the receivers into atoms.
They get so angry and upset, right?
So it was a pretty high-stress environment, and this guy and I sort of hit it off, and we were friends for a couple of years.
And we were supposed to have a meeting, so he and I were talking about a particular program we were going to work on, and he just started talking about personal stuff, like his life or whatever, right?
And it was interesting, and I enjoyed it, but I kept getting progressively more anxious, because it's like, no, no, we're supposed to be having a meeting, man.
You know, we're not supposed to be talking about this stuff, right?
Right. And he saw me getting more anxious, and he's like, what are you getting so stressed about?
I'm like, well, why am I supposed to have this meeting?
And he's like, ah, you know, the program will get written.
Don't worry about it, Frank. Don't worry about it.
Don't worry about it. Don't take work so seriously.
It is a game as well.
Now, of course, you know, maybe it's different if you're a heart surgeon or whatever.
It's a bit more of a high-stakes game.
But when we're young, we take everything so seriously because, of course, we come out of a goddamn school system where it's a catastrophe...
If your A's and B's and C's aren't on the line, right?
Right. Where it's a catastrophe.
Like, I used to get this...
Sorry, I know I'm talking too much about myself, but what the hell?
I used to... I had these notebooks when I was a kid, right?
We all did, right? And the first page of the notebook, right, would be like...
Everything would be cursive and nice, and the date would be printed, and it would all be even, right?
And then... Because it was a fresh new notebook, and you wanted it to look good, right?
And then, as you would continue on...
You know, basically, eventually, it would just sort of look like you loaded a shotgun full of spiders and blasted it at a page, right?
Because it really doesn't look like anything particularly legible.
And that's pretty common, right?
That the quality sort of degrades.
And I literally would have teachers, like, stand up and say, you know, look at the quality on the first page and look at the mess and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And everything was so ridiculously high stakes.
You know, it's like... This is not a piece of art.
I'm not publishing this. This is my notes about school.
What the hell does it matter how neat it is?
Can I read it? It's the only important thing, right?
Right, right. But everything was so high stakes when we were kids.
I mean, I remember a vice principal in grade 7.
I don't know what was I grade 7.
12, I think. We had this huge long lecture, of course, about respect for property, and respect for school, and respect for society, and respect for everything, because he was giving us a thesaurus.
You know, and it's like, it's a $2 book that you get in bulk.
You know, it's a $2 book.
It's a $2 book.
Right, right. And I just, you know, looking back at it all, I mean, this is certainly what I... What I plan to do with Isabella, right?
Is that there's so much in life that is not a big deal at all.
At all. You know, like, didn't you remember when you'd be carrying something as a kid that maybe you felt really anxious about dropping it?
Right, right. And if you did drop it, it was like, I remember when I was, my mom came to visit me when I was in boarding school.
And I was running around a fountain and I tripped and I fell into the fountain and I literally thought I was going to get killed.
Why? Because I got wet.
I was just scared of every consequence on the planet.
Everything seemed so unbelievably high stakes.
And I think that's true for a lot of us.
It's really not important.
It's not important whether I get a donation today.
It's not important if I put out a podcast that people don't like.
It's not important.
Now, does that mean that I should just, I don't know, mumble into a microphone and publish it?
No, because I enjoy doing work of high quality.
I enjoy doing podcasts that I'm emotionally, intellectually engaged in, where I feel the My brain lights up with the metaphors and the drive to communicate.
I really enjoy doing a podcast that I'm passionate about and I do not enjoy doing a podcast that I'm bored of.
So I'll try and do a great podcast, but it really doesn't matter at all any of these things.
You know, if you succeed or you fail at this, If somebody likes or doesn't like something that you've written, I swear to God, in ten years you won't even remember it.
In five years, probably, even two, you won't even remember it.
Right. You know, we spend the stress hormones designed for bears coming through our windows on whether somebody likes a piece of writing or likes us.
You know, I like to hold back my fight-or-flight mechanism for life and death situations, and I'm trying not to spend it on, I got a nasty email.
Right, right. Will 400 words get typed onto a page?
Yeah, it doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter.
I mentioned this once before, and I'll just touch on it, and then I promise I'll shut up, right?
right.
But I've just been thinking about this stuff lately.
But, um, I read an article.
Oh man, at least 15 years ago about this woman who was retiring from her jobs.
She was in HR. And she'd been working at this job for like 30 years or whatever.
And she was cleaning out her files.
And, you know, you never throw anything out until you absolutely have to for most people, right?
So she's gone. She's like, oh man, she'd look at the date on some presentation she did like 20 years ago or whatever, right?
Or 25 years ago.
And she'd say... I don't even remember this presentation.
She'd look at the date and she said, oh shit, I remember this.
I was working so hard on this presentation, I was late for my daughter's birthday party.
Now, my presentation was forgotten within a few days, but my daughter still remembers when I was late for her birthday party that year.
Right, right. Right, it's really, really easy to get swallowed up into other people's crazy...
And other people will escalate to get what they want.
That's just what people learn when you live in this hyper-aroused, in every sense of the word, culture that we live in.
Everything's an emergency. Everything's a crisis.
Just look at the lead-up to the evening news.
Could this bicycle pump explode your children?
Everything is a crisis.
Everything is a disaster. Everything is hyper-anxious, hyper-accelerated.
Even the action movies now, I have a tough time watching them because everything is these incredibly fast cuts and this incredibly in-your-face, hyper-stimulated, which fundamentally means decadent and dissociated.
Everything is too much.
And I just think it's really important to live a happy life where we spread some peace and calm and relaxation with others.
To de-escalate things in our life, right?
Right, right. It sounds silly, and it is not easy to do, and I'm certainly not perfect at it, but it's like, does it really matter?
In the big picture, in the arc of my life, given that I have my health, given that I have this great life where I get to talk about philosophy with you beautiful, brilliant people, Fantastic people.
I get to learn a huge amount living in this incredible time with this amazing technology with the biggest and greatest and deepest philosophical conversation the world has ever seen and which I'm incredibly grateful and honored to participate in.
I'm 42.
I've never spent a day in hospital.
I've never broken a bone. I've never been sick, really.
I have a healthy baby.
I have a loving wife.
I have a nice place to live.
I have enough money to live.
I mean, really, if I can't be happy now, what the fuck am I waiting for?
Right, right. And you have taken this incredibly brave chance to use your brain rather than your back, right?
To go from waitering to this highly skilled, highly challenging job.
You're succeeding, right?
You're young, you got the bad people out of your life, you're healthy, Your mood is generally quite good.
You're involved in a highly engaged and highly fascinating journey of philosophical and personal discovery.
You have companions the likes of which you may not have been able to have dreamed of a couple of years ago.
You're not going home and being bullied about yard work every couple of weeks, right?
Your depression seems to be largely lifted, right?
You're not tied to your parents through your educational bills.
You're not taking a course which is going to lend you $60,000 in debt.
If you can't be happy now, what are you waiting for?
How many planets need to align in your life for you to go, aha!
This is the moment that I can be happy.
Right, right. Yeah.
I'm smiling pretty big right now.
That's... Right, and it's so hard because we do get dragged into the disaster scenarios of the moment, right?
But I could just tell you from the annoyingly sage age of 42, looking back on all the shit I was worried about when I was younger, none of it mattered.
But all that happened was I didn't enjoy myself that much because...
I was just kind of stressed.
Because everything was so crucial.
Everything was so important. I didn't have a gauge and I kept waiting for something to occur that was going to make me happy.
That was going to make me content.
But there was always some reason to not be happy and always some reason to be discontent.
Always. Right, right.
All with some problem that you can focus on.
Right? Right, right.
But happiness, this is why I said the other day to a listener, are you prepared to hunt down and kill happiness and bring it to your campfire with your bare teeth and nails if you have to?
Because it's not going to show up on your doorstep and say, bo-wing, with my magic wand, I'm going to make all your troubles go away and you'll be happy.
Right, right.
I guarantee you, you won the lottery tomorrow, you would end up unhappy if that's where you are, because then it would be like, Okay, I've got to find some way to invest all this money.
Oh my God, I've got to figure out what it is I'm going to do with my life if I don't have any financial stress.
Oh my God, the stock market just wiped out $200,000.
I can't believe it, what's happening to my money.
Oh my God, these people are now my friends.
I don't know if they're really my friends or if they just like my money.
It would be that too.
Right. Happiness at some point just becomes...
Like all other things being equal, it just becomes a decision.
I have enough to be happy.
Not everything's perfect, which it never will be.
Wow, right. And not accepting the happiness, you know, you could almost do it if someone's going to pay me $1,000 to be unhappy today.
At least you could understand that, right?
But we're not getting paid for it, right?
It doesn't do anything for us.
It just takes away the precious moments of our life in stress, fear, worry, anxiety, anger, frustration, dissociation, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right?
It doesn't get us anything.
Right, right. That's exactly right.
And the last thing I'll say is if, you know, this won't happen, but if you got some godforsaken illness tomorrow, right, some cancer or something like that, and you fought and you battled and you went into debt and you,
I don't know, you went $100,000 into debt battling this cancer, thought you were going to die, threw up, lost weight, lost hair, And then, after a year, you beat it, and then you won the lottery of $100,000, and you were restored to health and to no more debt, you'd be ecstatic, right?
Yes, yeah. So, in other words, if you return to exactly where you are now from a disaster, you'd be completely overjoyed.
Right, right. So, why not just skip the fucking disaster and be overjoyed anyway?
Right. Right.
Wow. That's exactly right.
If you got exactly what you have right now, after a disaster, you would think, I could not, I couldn't, you would wake up every day, you know, singing a song with a spring in your step saying, God damn, beat that cancer, and I'm not in debt, right?
Right, right.
If I got everything back that I currently have, if it was taken away, if my wife and child were kidnapped, And I did not see them for a month, and I did not know if they were alive or dead.
And then they came home, would I not smother them with kisses for a month?
A year? Ten years?
Be incredibly grateful every day that they're in my life?
I don't have to have them get kidnapped for me to feel that way.
Right, right. Wow, right.
If you got your arm cut off in some horrible machete attack, and they managed to sew it back on, and you went through physio, and you worked it, and you were like, holy shit!
My arm is working again.
Well, you can be happy that your arm works every day, you know what I mean?
Right, right. That's exactly right.
Well, I mean, I really can't thank you enough for this perspective.
This has been really, really helpful and I feel a lot of gratitude for your help, Steph.
I really do. Yeah, let me give you a last image.
This is something I use sometimes.
When the troubles and the worries and the fears and the stresses, the anxieties and all of that, when they're circling my head, I think of them almost like a feast of crows, like a flock of crows.
And my will and my desire and my certainty and my defiance and my absolute conviction That I have the right to be happy is like taking a shotgun to my shoulder and pulling it back and scattering them.
And saying, fuck off.
I'm gonna be happy enough fuck off I'm gonna be happy I don't care. I'm going to be happy.
You have nothing to offer me.
Accept negativity? Fuck off.
I'm going to be happy. Right.
I mean, that's after a certain amount of negotiation, but that's what I mean.
Like, when it comes to just making that savage decision for happiness.
Because it's not going to come any other way that I know of.
Right, right. Well, I guess if it comes down to just Amicus's voice clearly just wants me to fail.
Right, but you think that the failure is in the future.
The voice is trying to trick you into the failure of being in the future.
The failure is in stressing about it in the present, as I talked about in that video on perfectionism.
The failure isn't, do I get this work done or not?
The failure is, do I enjoy doing the work?
Right. Right.
Right.
Right.
And this applies, I mean, the flock of birds, it's not just our internal stressors, right?
The flock of crows pecking at us, pecking away the morsels of joy that we can have in the present.
I mean, it's corrupt people, it's nasty people, it's trolls, it's, you know, it's just like, ah, I don't have time.
I'm off to be happy. Good luck with the swamp of who you are.
I just, I don't care.
I mean, I just, I'm sorry.
I'm just too busy enjoying my life.
I just... I just can't get engaged in that stuff.
Right. How's it going to serve me?
Is it going to make me happier?
No. No, of course not.
It's just the world ends up minus one happiness unit, right?
right?
It doesn't get added anywhere else.
Because, you know, happiness is like, Happiness is like marinade, right?
People like to eat it.
Or they like to eat you when you're covered in it, right?
They do. I mean, happiness will just bring out a lot of aggressive people.
Because people end up aggressive because they're sort of anti-life and anti-happiness.
So when they see happiness...
Virtue reminds people how corrupt they are, right?
Happiness reminds people how miserable they are.
And they get pissed off.
The happiness is dangerous.
We're not idiots for not wanting it.
But at some point you just say, look, I'm sorry.
I'm sorry if it pisses you off that I'm happy.
But you have a choice, right?
You can either say, hey, Steph, you seem to have some good old juju happiness joy there.
How can you have, you know, do you have any tips, right?
And of course I have, oh, a few tips, right?
But, you know, if my happiness pisses people off and they get mad and upset and this is like, well...
So what, right? I mean, you have a choice, right?
I'm not going to stay fast because other people don't want to lose weight, right?
Right, right. I'm not going to stay on heroin because other people don't want to quit.
Because it makes them feel bad if I quit the drug, right?
Of irrationality. Right.
Because... Them taking away my happiness doesn't add to the happiness of the world.
It just means that I surrender that which is most glorious and beautiful in life for the sake of people who I don't morally or intellectually respect.
What a net negative.
You could not design more of a net negative ever to give up that which is beautiful for the sake of those who are ugly.
Right. And what you're saying about this is really reminding me of just how much the ecosystem stuff helps us with interactions with others, right?
Because I imagine it's hard to do that with others if we aren't doing it with ourselves, right?
Yeah, you know, we listen patiently, we ask for solutions, and if inner ecosystem dudes just keep complaining and don't provide any solutions, then it's like, you know, I don't want to hear it.
Right, right. Okay, what are you adding?
What are you adding to this? You know, you're like someone who comes into the store and shoplifts and then complains that the quality of the goods that are stolen are not high enough, right?
It's like, I don't want you in my store.
Come in here with some cash, come in here with some work or whatever, but I don't want you here, right?
We have to be firm, right?
I mean, with the inner aspects of the ecosystem, if they're not adding value, this is called honesty, right?
You're not adding value to me.
You're stressing me out.
You're creating all these problems, you're interfering with my happiness, and you have no solutions, so you lose your seat at the table.
Right, right.
Come up with something. Challenge the negative aspects to be happy, right?
Wow, right.
But we don't take anything from our inner selves that we would take from an outer self.
It mirrors, right? This is UPB goes into our unconscious as it does into the world, right?
Right, right. You wouldn't accept that from a friend just sitting there saying, oh, you have so much to be worried about.
Oh, there's so much to be happy about. What if this bad happens?
What if that bad happens? What if the other bad thing happens?
Right. Right? Well, what are your solutions?
Well, I don't know. Let's just think about all these negative things.
After a while, you just say, look, give me a solution or stop.
just to get lost.
Right, right.
Wow.
Right.
I'm definitely going to be a lot less passive with my mucosystem, and I guess as an effect of that without this.
Right, because only the ego gets philosophy, right?
The mycosystem is about fragmentation and dissociation.
You are the only one who gets philosophy.
I think I've been undervaluing the ego aspect of myself when I'm talking to my meta-system.
Right. We all do that, right?
Because the ecosystem can seem overwhelming at times, for sure.
But only the part of you that reasons and has empiricism, that goes from the inner world to the outer world, that UPBs the whole scheme of things, that is the only part that has philosophy, and as such it has the final authority.
Hmm.
Hmm.
Right.
Because, you know, if it was all just about some sort of compromise, then we wouldn't need philosophy, right?
If it was all just about, well, you know, let the ecosystem run everything, then we wouldn't.
It's all tension and ambivalence and management, right?
Right, right.
Wouldn't need the complexities of self-knowledge and of philosophy and of psychology.
Right.
There's a...
The Singing Detective is something that my therapist pretty much insisted that I rent and watch, and it's a very long British drama.
And this guy, he has a...
It's an ecosystem. And I'm not giving anything away.
It's not a plot base.
It's about a guy in therapy.
And as my therapist said at the time, his body is in full unconscious revolt.
He's got boils and all this sort of manifestation of all this kind of stuff.
And it's a full mycosystem conversation about a guy in therapy, and it's quite witty and quite well done, and very well acted, of course, as is usually the case with British stuff.
And he's got this whiny negative side of himself, this guy, that won't come up with any solutions and just continually drags him down into stress and suicidality and self-pity and this and that and the other, right?
And I'm not saying this is ideal by any stretch of the imagination, but it is quite dramatic.
At the end...
Oh yeah, it was remade with Mel Gibson and Robert Downey Jr.
I don't know anything about that movie.
I'm just talking about the original British series.
When... At the end of the miniseries, he's got this whiny side of himself.
And basically what he does is he's like, are you coming to a new life or not?
And the whiny side of himself just keeps whining and complaining and being negative and weird.
And he just takes out a gun and puts a bullet in its head.
Now, I'm not saying that necessarily is the approach that I would suggest, but it is quite interesting.
Because I think the way that I interpreted that was that this was an infection.
Because there's aspects of our psychology like the body.
There's natural things. We have natural antibodies and so on, white cells.
But there are infections.
And we don't want our body to negotiate with infections.
We just want it to kill it.
And when it doesn't, we get cancer.
That's not an infection, but when it doesn't deal with that stuff properly.
We don't want any compromises when it comes to an infection.
And the part of ourselves that are infections from those who have anti-life, anti-rational values, we can't really negotiate with those.
Because no negotiation is possible, right?
Right. So we try to...
Woo them in, right?
We try to get them to join the conversation, but if they simply won't, then they're like a psychological infection from really destructive or dysfunctional or abusive people.
And I'm not saying this is I don't know how any of this fits with what...
I just wanted to sort of point that out, right?
That not everyone...
Not every aspect of ourselves can be integrated.
Because some of it is just scar tissue infections from really abusive people, right?
Right. I wasn't considering that when I was considering the negotiations.
I was just...
Everyone stays, right?
And everyone does get to stay, but they still have to be cross-examined.
And if they're not going to add anything productive, then...
They can't stay, right?
And you never eject them.
What you do is you cross-examine them into...
That's the exorcism, right?
You cross-examine them into non-existence.
Sorry, this is really...
This is ecosystem part two, but...
But you cross-examine them into non-existence until the psychological energy that they represent is released to other things, to better things.
Right, right. Right?
So, I mean, there are people in my life who have treated me with great contempt...
And from my childhood and so on, and they would show up, right, in my head, particularly when I would be doing new and risky and unusual things.
And I would cross-examine them, and I would continue to cross-examine them.
Okay, well, what are your solutions?
Or tell me what is objectively wrong, and tell me why you're focusing on me rather than everyone else in the world, right?
So, you know, some aspect of me would get mad at me about some podcast where I was too emotional, and it's like, well...
You know, we saw the Pope really passionate the other day.
How come you didn't rise up against him, right?
Why is it just me? You just do the UPB philosophical Socratic cross-examination, right?
And you just keep doing it and keep doing it, and then eventually they just don't show up anymore.
It's not a rejection. It is actually an acceptance.
Hey, come talk to me. I'm happy to hear.
I'm not going to be passive.
I sure as hell am not going to be bullied.
I'm going to cross-examine you because you claim to have all of this great wisdom and you keep cross-examining them and you keep cross-examining them and one day they just don't show up.
That's the exorcism of reason.
Sort of the troll thing too, right?
Yeah, yeah. I mean, and you get better at it as you go along, but certainly earlier on with the trolls, yeah, it's like, hey, you know, give me...
And you can even see this with the YouTube comments, right?
Because there was a time there where the YouTube comments were getting really aggressive, right?
And so I put it out there and I said, hey, you know, call in.
I'm happy to hear. You can tell me all about how bad I am and so on.
And nobody came, right?
And the YouTube comments have not been nearly as volatile since then.
Right, right. Wow.
You know, when you invite bad people in, it's the best way to drive them away, right?
As long as they know they can't bully you, they'll just run away, right?
Right, and I was considering the thing that you said before, that we can't defoo ourselves, right?
We can't just get rid of aspects of ourselves, but I think this is an interesting approach and I think a helpful approach to cross-examine the aspects of ourselves that are challenging us.
Right, right. Just because we can't defoo ourselves doesn't mean that we are passive children with our own inner parents for the rest of our lives, right?
Right, right. It means that we can't just angrily reject parts of ourselves.
We invite them in and we cross-examine them.
Until the errors are revealed and the energy gets released to other things, right?
Why is it that you can cross-examine other people with such a great degree of nimbleness and precision, right?
Not just emotionally, but intellectually, right?
Well, it's because I've done that with myself for years, right?
What I'm doing to other people is no different than what I do with myself.
No different. It's a universal principle.
Right, right. Wow.
When you see me in a debate with other people, it's no different than what I do with debating myself.
It means I am curious.
I will let people talk.
I will make notes. I will listen.
I will cross-examine. And when I'm sick of the bullshit, I shut it down.
Right, right. And then I have no desire to re-engage.
They may have a desire to engage, but certainly not with me directly.
Nobody comes back for round two, right?
Right.
And the release of that energy with the cross-examination of the really hostile and negative aspects of herself, that's just closure, right?
It just means that I don't have any fear of this aspect of myself.
And when we lose the fear, we lose the bully, right?
Right. You did say that that psychological energy will go to better places, and I don't want to take too much time with this question, but I'm curious.
Where have you found that those energies usually go?
What podcast number is this?
Almost 1,400. Oh.
Right. Wow.
Yeah. Right, plus what?
Over 250 premium casts, plus...
Seven books. So that's what you meant by the...
Right. That is when the paralysis of self-contradiction is resolved, you get the tight brackets, right?
Right. Well, I guess I didn't take up too much time with that question.
No, it does.
It goes into amazing places that I would never have guessed.
Right, right. It goes into being open-hearted, into being loving, into being strong, into being admiring, into being someone others can admire.
It goes into a huge amount of human engine power that I did not suspect beforehand.
Wow.
And we're hiding from that power, right?
We... As Mandela says, we don't surf the world by staying small.
We hide from that power.
Nobody wants to be a comet in the night sky.
Nobody wants to be that kind of beacon.
We want there to be those beacons, but we don't want to be those beacons.
Because they draw flack, they draw hostility, they're exposed, they're vulnerable, we feel scared.
And that all makes sense. I go through all of that, for sure.
But, as I say to those parts of me who want to stay small, what is your solution?
What is your solution? Do we hide?
Do we go back to working in IT? Do we go back to typing?
Right? I think what is your solution is going to be a common theme over the next, well, while for me.
Right. Do we step aside and let contemporary philosophers define the debate?
Do we let the nihilists and the determinists and the relativists and the socialists and the statists and the religious, do we let them talk about Ethics and virtue, is that the solution really that's being proposed?
Because that's hard to take seriously, right?
Right, right. Do we hope that someone else is going to do it?
Well, who is there that we've seen?
And this is just me, right, when considering FDR, right?
Saying, oh, you know, it'd really be great if someone else did it, right?
Well, the last person that we really admired who did it was Ayn Rand in the 60s.
Right? It's now the noughties, right?
So it's 40 years later.
Harry Brown, political, vaguely religious, or at least deferral to religious, doesn't have a theory of ethics.
Hmm. I don't know.
Maybe it's the political libertarians.
No. Right?
Who's going to do it, right? And UBB says if you're expecting someone else to do it, then everyone else has the right to expect someone else to do it, and nobody's going to do it, right?
So is my solution that it just shouldn't be done?
Well, no, it needs to be done.
And nobody else seems to be on the verge of doing it that you know of.
It really needs to be done.
You like to do it.
It's scary, but if it wasn't scary, it would have been done already.
Right.
So, you know, I entertained lots of oppositions to doing FDR in my Mika system, for sure.
work.
Sure. And I was more than happy to hear alternative solutions.
Right, right. But after a while, they just all fell down in exhaustion, and the road was clear, right?
Right, right. Because I'm not defended, I'm not a defensive person, I'm in an air-conditioned little room where these people are out there sweating in the Iraqi sunlight of defensiveness, so I've just got to wait.
They're going to fade long before I do if I'm just patient, right?
Right, right. I'm sitting, you're standing, I'm cool, you're hot.
I can wait, I can be patient, right?
And it's like when the last idiot defense falls down, it's like, let's gun it, baby.
And I turn around, they're all behind me, pedaling and pushing.
Right.
Wow.
Well, this was just enormously powerful.
I'm going to have to re-listen to this several times.
I'm sure this is incredibly powerful stuff.
And it's given me a lot of tools for engaging my ecosystem rather than just letting everyone talk.
Yeah, for sure. I mean, remember, in a free market, no one dominates, right?
And they only dominate through quality, so to speak, right?
And so we treat them ecosystem like the free market that we respect as economists or people who are interested in economics, right?
Neither the boss nor the employer are the final authority because it's a free market, right?
Neither the buyer nor the seller, the customer or the vendor.
But everybody gets to negotiate and people who are crap get fired.
Right.
Right.
Well, do let me know how it goes.
I don't really think there's much point entertaining anymore.
Who's gonna have something else to say after that monster speech?
But I really do appreciate you bringing it up.
I'm sorry to have been such a gavel-fest about it, but it's certainly stuff I've been thinking about and just podcasted on this today, shockingly, in another intellectual coincidence that's not.
So I really do appreciate you bringing it up.
And thank you again so much, everybody, for this incredible opportunity to exchange these ideas, to have this conversation, which is the third most meaningful thing in my life and not far behind the other two and heavily involved.
Thank you so much, everyone.
Have yourselves a fantastic and wonderful, wonderful week.
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