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Aug. 12, 2009 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
19:58
1435 Our Achievements Part 3
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Hi everybody, it's Steph. It is still the 12th of August 2009.
Heading off to the gym.
I will not give you a gym cast, but I will give you some thoughts that I hope will bring you some comfort as we aim in this wee series to return to the joy of the truth and of Integrity Reason philosophy.
That sometimes in the Strom und Drang of the moment can be evaporated.
And so I'll just talk about my thoughts, my experience.
Maybe it's applicable to you, maybe it's not.
I think it will be, but you can let me know.
So this is a...
It's a tough life.
It's a hard life to put two brain cells together.
And... What I like to remind myself of from time to time, when it does seem a bit like pulling yourself up at Mount Everest by your teeth, to remind myself of the alternative.
So, dieting and quitting smoking and quitting drinking and quitting gambling and quitting drugs and all that is hard as well.
It's tough. It's a multi-year process.
It's a revolution in lifestyle.
And you look and you say, oh man, this is really tough.
It's hard, it's too hard, it's too hard sometimes.
But if you are losing weight and you've put down the ciggies and you don't drink or much less and so on, then what I think is important to recognize is to look at the path of the road not taken rather than just the stones and...
Beaked sky squids that attack us on the road taken.
But to look at the road not taken and see where that would have led.
It's the same old question, compared to what?
Philosophy is hard, compared to what?
That's the question I keep asking myself.
Compared to what? Well, compared to a life without philosophy.
Which, in the short run, is much easier.
Just as not quitting smoking or drinking or drugs is easier in the short run.
And so when you look at the difficulties of a life of reason, a life of integrity, a life of virtue, the hardscrabble willed against all odds to the calumny of some life of the mind, you say, well, this is tough, but the question remains as always compared to what?
So I'd like you to think about what your life would be without philosophy.
Because if we only look at the difficulties, then...
Which is natural, right? Human beings are so constituted, as all animals are, really, to look at the challenges rather than successes.
And successes that we achieve are within 15 or so minutes integrated into, well, that's just plain normal, and then we look at new difficulties, right?
And that's fine, and you can't fight that biological tendency, but I think it's really important to put things in perspective as well.
So, I think my life would say, oh, well, this life is tough.
Well... How easy was my life without philosophy?
Well, it was easier in the short run before I really began to live my values, or live values, as I would say.
It was easier. I had places to go at Christmas, and people gave me presents on my birthday, and I got along with people.
I was urbane, witty, and entertaining enough to have a pretty wide circle of friends, and so on.
And at that time, there's this belief, or the reason that we stay there is that there's this belief that we will continue down that path or along that path forever.
That there's no consequences to a lack of integrity.
That the ease that conformity brings to us in the moment and in the months and in the years of our early life is simply that which is going to continue forever.
As we move forward in life.
But the problem is, of course, as we move forward in life, our responsibilities generally increase.
And the challenges that we face generally increase.
Proportional, I hope, to our wisdom, but not always.
So, how easy would it have been for me to have a great marriage if I was not living my values?
Well, it would be impossible.
How easy would it be for me to be a great father?
Well, it would not be possible.
And how easy would it be for me to have genuine pride in what it is that I do?
I mean, I earned less money than when I was in software, but in terms of heroic contributions to the world, there's no comparison.
So how much pride would I have if I had continued building software And running software teams and selling software and so on.
Well, I mean, it wouldn't have been insubstantial confidence and pride, but it wouldn't have been fundamentally moral.
It would have just been competence, right?
Competence and money does not equal virtue, right?
And that's just me at 42, I guess, pushing 43.
How would I feel at 53 and 63 and 73 and 83 and, with any luck, 93?
If I had continued to live a life of compromise and conformity and the comfort of the moment, well, what would the second half of my life have looked like if I had fled the truth that I knew into the foggy, sticky, syrupy, suctiony arms of social conformity and short-term comfort?
Well, I think that There would have been a slow, inexorable, inevitable decline in happiness.
Churchill's black dog would have slowly closed its yellowed, rotting teeth around my throat, I do believe.
Because the energy and newness and excitement of a young man Making his way in new fields like art and academia and business would have all declined and I would have gotten stuck in a rut and I would have found each successive compromise easier to make and I would have betrayed the values that got their hooks in me when I was 16 or so and first read The Fountainhead.
And does that betrayal come at a long-term cost?
Well, of course it does. When you first start drinking and you hang out with your party friends and you have crazy stories, I mean, it's all great fun, right?
I mean, it's all enjoyable, it's all thrilling, it's all exciting, it's all new.
But then you project yourself forward 20, 30 years and see where you are.
Like Hugh Grant says in Bridget Jones' Diary, I see myself in 20 years in a seedy bar with a seedy blonde.
Or Chris Rock has this thing, you know, like you don't want to be the old guy at the disco.
The guy who's just too old to be there.
You know, a guy who's in his late 30s or 40s at a disco with people half his age.
Or Matthew McConaughey in Dazed and Confused.
You know, he's a senior who just doesn't leave.
He graduates high school but just never really leaves it, you know.
That's what I love about seniors.
I keep getting older, they just stay the same age.
Yee! I think it's really important to look forward in your life.
And I think we all kind of know this deep down, right?
To look forward in your life and say, well, what am I looking at in the absence of living my values?
What am I looking at in 10 years or 20?
Because that's really the comparison, right?
The comparison is not...
I had friends...
And had fun when I was in my twenties.
I got into philosophy and life became harder.
The comparison is not back to when you were in your twenties, when you were, you know, if you were, coasting on social conformity, or at least not living rational values consistently.
It's an unfair comparison, right?
That's like saying, well, it's really tough To quit smoking, and the first time I picked up a cigarette, smoking it did me no health damage whatsoever, which, you know, pretty much true, right?
You know, the first six months that I was smoking, I didn't have any ill effects, and now I'm comparing that to the negative experience of quitting smoking.
Well, it's not a fair comparison.
What you want to do is say, well, if I hadn't quit smoking, where would I be in 20 years?
Well, wheezing in emphysema if I was even above the ground, right?
I had a poem in my head a long time ago, which I never wrote down, which was something like, When I was an occasional smoker, I said, well, I'm comforted by the old smokers that I see, and I try to avoid thinking of the old smokers I don't see, right, because they're dead.
So you want to compare not the early comforts of conformity with the current challenges of philosophy, but where that conformity would have led in the absence of the intervention of philosophy.
That is...
A fair and, I believe, just and valid comparison.
And we all kind of know, deep down in our heart of hearts, where we would have ended up in the absence I genuinely believe that I would have avoided a bad marriage, but I don't think I would have achieved a good marriage.
I think I would not be married, or if I were, it would be a pretty indifferent, stifled, strangled, kind of bite-your-tongue-a-lot marriage, where my philosophical leanings would be viewed with a quaint kind of hobbyist And all that.
Like, it was a hobby like model railroading.
You know, slightly inappropriate, but relatively harmless.
And I would have...
If I had kids, it would not be, I think, nearly as open and productive and positive a relationship.
And I would have a huge deal of problems with things like authority and so on because of my own compromises.
And I would not have the moral authority that I would want or need to be a good father.
And I would be chucking away in my career.
I think that I would certainly not have reached the very top tiers of the business world because that seems to require a certain kind of lack of empathy, at least in the Canadian business world that I saw, a kind of ooginess that I just can't really create or sustain.
And so I would be chucking along, doing my thing, but a growing emptiness and a growing despair and a growing, not quite self-contempt, Because I think you have to do really bad things to achieve that, but just a kind of self-wearness, a life of quiet desperation.
That is what I see for myself in the absence of the, let us say, stimulation of living rational values and the challenge and pride that comes from living the philosophical life.
So I think it's important to really get, for me, where my life would have been in the absence of philosophy.
I certainly remember back...
To what it was like before philosophy, when I was a child or in my sort of early, early teens, early to mid-teens, really, I very clearly remember what it was like.
To not have philosophy, to be an unmind in many ways, to not have an identity, to not have a purpose, to not have comprehension.
For everything to be short-term manipulation, whether it was working out or how I looked or...
What kind of clothes I wore, what kind of music I listened to, everything was for effect, everything was for to manipulate the perceptions of others, which was the only way that I knew at the time how to have any value, was to have other people want me in various ways.
Didn't have any idea how to have virtue or value, and I don't blame myself at all for that.
Not only was my family uber corrupt, but the society is pretty corrupt anyway, and all of this knowledge is held from children for fear of the exposure of adults, right?
And in that phase, I said things without comprehension.
I distinctly remember when I was 14 in an argument saying, I believe that Canada could use a healthy dose of socialism.
Why did I say that?
I had no idea. It sounded cool.
It sounded good. It made me sound smart.
Like, nothing had any content.
Nothing had any principles.
Nothing had any... It was just random grab bag flight of the moment, a spur of the moment, thought of the moment, manipulation of the moment.
Nothing had any depth or purpose.
And it was not easy when I got into philosophy...
That was very hard.
Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, it was so hard.
When I first started working in principles, there were two great shocks, right?
The first was that the principles existed, which is my teens, and then in my early 30s, actually putting them into practice was just brutal, those two things.
And... So if I think back of if I'd never known philosophy, I would just be another...
Petty, empty, rain to the moment, growing desperation, growing depression, random grab bag of prejudices, thoughts, manipulations, and nothingness.
It would be a miserable existence.
I would be older from my novel.
Older is my projection of me in the absence of principles.
When it's too late for him.
So, I'd like to leave you sort of with one thought about why it's important to celebrate the entree of reason, philosophy, truth, and integrity and virtue into your life, difficult though it may be, which is that, dear head of God on a stick, we thrive in the beauty of A mission, of a crusade, of a purpose.
We thrive in the beauty of this because it means that our lives have value and purpose and meaning that stretches beyond the satiety of the moment, right?
The hedonistic or utilitarian impulses of the moment.
We gain glory and grandeur and heavy longitudinal joy in The pursuit and explication of truth and goodness and integrity and virtue and all of the yummy things that are the totem poles of our skyward reaching.
And for me...
What would the purpose of my life be in the absence of philosophy?
Well, it would be to gain money, to gain influence, to gain resources, to gain admiration.
Almost always, if you have that as your pursuit, it's for all the wrong reasons.
It would be to gain status of some kind, whether it was over my children or in my workforce.
It would just be the normal, primitive...
Ape slash tribal programmed biological bullshit that drives most people.
And I would have achieved, I think, some very good things, some very positive things as far as the achievement of status and resources and so on went.
And then what? Well, everybody that I meant would be tainted with the reinforcement of the emptiness of status and resource pursuits.
I would have spread...
Either envy or contempt, as status always does, either down or up the chain.
I would have spread envy and contempt throughout the world, and that would have eaten me out, like acid from the inside.
Right, I would have been a hollow, golden, rotten shell.
As I wrote once about my brother, a hide of bright armor.
Emptiness. Inside.
And that would be miserable.
And so these challenges, you know, it's a challenge and it's tough, but man, oh man, don't you just find it deeply satisfying to the very root of your spinal soul?
To be engaged in the pursuit of something good and true and noble and beautiful and challenging and horrible and frightening and exciting and thrilling.
Don't you love being gladiator of goodness?
The scars, the cracks in the bone and the armor, the heavy sword, the aching muscles, the rest.
The oil on the skin, the massage, the refreshing, the stretching, the exercise, the preparation, the combat.
Don't you love it?
I mean, we are constituted as a species to climb the tribe.
And that is to the detriment of all souls, save the overlords, unless the tribe that you're attempting to climb is truth.
And goodness and empiricism and science, right?
If the status you seek is in the eyes of your own soul and relation to the truth and goodness, then you spread not envy and contempt but joy and fear and anger.
Joy and hope And inspiration among those trembling on the brink of propelling themselves forward across the canyon towards goodness, away from the collective, corrosive crap of the tribe.
Hope and a thrilling expectation.
One man has made the leap, and other men may make the leap.
What one man can do, another man can do, and woman.
And that propulsion to a possible flight By seeing a man arc by overhead like a comet, as I have seen others arc by and women and Rand overhead like a comet, what one man and woman can do, what one soul can do, other souls can do, it brings joy and hope and excitement and a hand-trembling sense of expectation and a gathering together of strength and a coiling of muscles.
For a forward hurl into the future and...
For those left behind in the wake, right?
In the wake of such propulsion, revealed as corrupt by the flight to the future, away from the dismal pits of the past, where there is anger and fear at having been left behind.
But really, what is our choice?
To stay chained in the caves of history forever?
Because those who put out their own eyes cannot stand the sun?
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