Jan. 27, 2010 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
10:48
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| And it does sort of beg the question, I think, as to why would people want to nitpick? | |
| And I'm going to call it nitpicking, because I think that it is, obviously. | |
| Why would people want to nitpick about something like RTR or UPB? Well, with RTR, it's particularly tough, because RTR is a very humiliating book. | |
| It was a very humiliating book to write, and it can be a very humiliating book to read. | |
| And by that, I don't mean that the book itself tries to humiliate anyone. | |
| Gosh, far from it. | |
| But what I mean is that it exposes such deficiencies in our relationships. | |
| And it's not RTR that does that. | |
| It's simply the basic virtue of honesty that reveals deficiencies in so many of our relationships. | |
| And serious deficiencies as well. | |
| I mean, how many relationships do we have in the world where we can be completely and totally honest? | |
| And vulnerable and where conflict is virtually non-existent and is joyous to see the person and you can always trust that that person is going to be in your corner and have your back and look out for the best in you and if they're going to correct you to do it in a loving and enthusiastic way. | |
| I mean, how many relationships do you have like that? | |
| In the world. But shouldn't they all be that way? | |
| And what RTR the book does, or even the theory, is it says, be honest, be honest and open and vulnerable in your relationships. | |
| And that is really, really a tough thing to hear, because what it does is it exposes how few, if any, of our relationships we can be truly self-expressed and honest and open in. | |
| So, when that is revealed to us, When the lack of honesty in our relationships is revealed to us, people feel anxious. | |
| They feel put down. | |
| They feel lessened. | |
| Like if they didn't know it, it wouldn't put them down. | |
| But now that they know it, it makes them afraid. | |
| It does. It does. | |
| Because there's a reason why we're not honest in our relationships, and it's because most of us have often feared rejection for being honest. | |
| And it's humiliating to silence yourself, to censor yourself. | |
| It's humiliating to censor yourself for the fear of somebody else's disapproval or rejection. | |
| And that's the humiliation that we re-experience when we bring the value of honesty back into the criteria that we have for a loving and intimate and positive relationship. | |
| It reopens all of the wounds which have resulted in the closing of our mouths and of our hearts to those around us. | |
| It is a humiliating experience to read a book which says, hey, be honest. | |
| Be really honest and open with people around you and don't jump to defensive conclusions and don't manipulate and don't level up with someone by putting them down and just be honest and open and curious. | |
| That is a very humiliating thing to be told because it's so obvious, right? | |
| And it is a virtue that we all... | |
| I mean, everybody says, oh, let's be honest. | |
| Is honesty important? | |
| Yes, honesty is important in relationships. | |
| Everybody says that. But to actually do it is a very fear-inducing thing because in my experience, and I'm pretty good at doing it, but in my experience, almost all my relationships fell away from me. | |
| Fell away from me. Relationships, at best, in my experience, prior to philosophy, my relationships were, at best, the scaffolding that holds a rocket about to go, and when the rocket lifts off, it hopes everyone's going to come with it, but what happens is the scaffolding melts and falls away, and the relationships melted and fell away. | |
| And I think a lot of us, to be honest, I think a lot of us sense that about our relationships, that if we are truly honest, if we are open, if we are vulnerable, That we are going to be rejected, that we are going to be attacked, that we are going to be put down. | |
| And that knowledge, if it remains unconscious, it is simply acted out and therefore does not strike us to the core emotionally directly. | |
| But when we become conscious of that, and that's what RTR does by bringing the standard called radical honesty. | |
| How am I doing in the moment with the person? | |
| That's what real-time relationships does. | |
| It brings that standard of honesty into relationships which reawakens. | |
| All of the humiliations that have resulted in our relationships, if we aren't fully self-expressed in them, have resulted in our relationships being claustrophobic and silent and censored and routine and mechanical and over polite and over refined and not honest. | |
| So when you think about adding... | |
| And that is as close as I... Oh, I'm going to change the government. | |
| That is as distant as serious, right? | |
| But I can pick up the phone or I can drive over to my friends, my siblings, my parents and be really honest about my experience and my thoughts and my feelings. | |
| You see, that is... | |
| I mean, that's what political action is designed to avoid, is the personal virtue. | |
| Because that's as easy... | |
| I mean, physically, it's as easy as going to pick up a bottle of milk, right? | |
| Right? So it's that close to us. | |
| It is a phone call away. It is that imminent to find out the degree to which honesty ourselves, our true selves, is welcome in our relationships. | |
| It is something you can find out today, tonight, this hour, this week, this month, this year, now. | |
| And that is really scary for people. | |
| And in my experience, I'm not saying this is proven with anybody in particular, but in my experience, and you might just want to be honest with yourself about this, if you feel drawn to, what about this sentence, what about that sentence? | |
| Well, what's the payoff? What's the payoff? | |
| I mean, it could be that you're like 300 pounds, and there's the best diet book in the world, but you're not going to diet because there's a typo on page 52. | |
| You understand? That's just an excuse not to diet. | |
| I mean, to get hung up on the potential logical this, that, and the other of two sentences in the book, rather than just pick up the phone, go over, open your heart, open your mind, open your soul to the people in your life. | |
| Right? You understand how it looks from the other side, how it looks from the other side of having taken those steps in life, of having opened my heart to people, of having opened my mind to people, of having honestly expressed my thoughts and feelings and experiences with those around me who claim to care, who claim to love me. | |
| Once you've gone through that process, and yeah, I lost a lot of relationships. | |
| But you know what? I gained some incredible relationships. | |
| The most important, of course, being that with my wife. | |
| And I am growing an amazing relationship with my daughter based upon that honesty and self-expression. | |
| So that's what I want to model for her. | |
| You lose the false, you gain the true. | |
| There's a canyon in between, as we all know, which is what we shy away from. | |
| It's what we draw back from. So rather than, let's say that the book is riddled with these little logical errors and maybe it only covers 99.6% and I should say it doesn't cover everyone in this particular... | |
| You understand, it doesn't matter. | |
| It doesn't matter because you can take all of that stuff and say, it doesn't matter because the fundamental reality is I can still pick up the phone, jump in my car, jump on the bus, go over and say to people, this is what I thought and I have never said. | |
| This is what I think and feel and this is what I cannot say or have not said. | |
| I would like an honest and open relationship with you. | |
| Or I'm afraid of opening my mouth and being honest. | |
| I'm driving over here to talk to you, brother, sister, father, mother, friend. | |
| I'm driving over and I feel my hands are shaking and I feel really scared to talk to you about what I'm thinking and feeling and what I have thought and felt for many years. | |
| I feel great fear at the idea of real honesty in this relationship. | |
| Is a small possible series of maybe, in some context, if you read the text backwards and hold it up to the light, possible logical errors in some places in the book, is that going to stop you from picking up the phone, from going over, from having the dinner party, and opening your heart? If it is going to stop you, then don't imagine that it's a flaw in the book that is stopping you. | |
| I mean, that's all I'm saying. Don't pretend to me. | |
| I mean, you can pretend to yourself, but I get it, right? | |
| Don't pretend to me that you're stuck in your expression of honesty because of a possible, potential, maybe... | |
| False dilemma on page 62, right? | |
| You understand. It's a completely obvious avoidance. | |
| Because you can say, if you want, I'm perfectly fine with that, you can say, look, RTR is crap, right? | |
| It's full of logical errors, and the metaphors are bad, and the writing is bad, and so on. | |
| But what I did get out of it was that it is really beneficial to be really honest in relationships. | |
| If that's all you walk away from and that's what you actually go and do, I couldn't be happier than the book has achieved its goal, as it has for many, many thousands of people. | |
| So that's my hope and my goal for the book. | |
| But it really is when somebody says, listen, you've really got to go and be honest with the people in your life if you want to have a quality relationship with them. | |
| That awakens a lot of fear. | |
| And with fear comes avoidance. | |
| With fear comes stalling. | |
| You know, like, I think I've got a really bad problem with my teeth and I'm afraid to go to the dentist and you put it off, right? | |
| It becomes stalling, right? | |
| And nitpicking at a comma and a syntax and a semicolon in the book is just a way of avoiding picking up the phone and going and doing it. | |
| And look, you can avoid all you want. | |
| You really can. I mean, you can be honest, you cannot be honest. | |
| That's completely up to you with yourself and in your relationships. | |
| But please don't imagine that... | |
| It's because of your dedication to improving the logic of that book, of real-time relationships. | |
| Because you've actually been really honest and open and vulnerable for months or years with people in your life, and you've gone through the whole reforging of your relationships, dropping of some, inquiring of others, based upon a real philosophical, gut-level, moral, integrity-based, ethical commitment to honesty no matter what, gritting your teeth, hurling things, Your head through the thunderbolts and the ice storms of real honesty. | |
| Once you've gone through all of that, if you have gone through all of that, the possible logical error on page 52 in the book that compelled you or encouraged you on that journey will be meaningless. | |
| And if you've gone through that, and I've gone through that, I'm not saying it's all done, all complete, but I've gone through it a huge, huge, huge amount. | |
| When people say, well, this book needs to be improved, they're just missing the point. | |
| And to solve problems like, well, you know, that just sort of struck me while I was working out. | |
| To solve problems like, oh, maybe Vince really understands Jennifer's deepest needs, but he isn't dealing with her shallowest needs and so on. | |
| Well, I mean, that just to me says you've got people who really mess with your head, right? | |
| You're looking for ways to stall the simple act of picking up the phone and go. | |
| You're just looking at ways to avoid doing that. | |
| And I can completely understand that. | |
| I mean, I really can. I mean, I have great sympathy about it. | |
| It is a terrifying thing to go over and be honest with the people in your life if you haven't had a relationship conditioned to honesty. | |
| It's really, really scary. | |
| I understand that. | |
| I really do, and I really genuinely sympathize with that. | |
| But, I mean, come on. | |
| Please don't tell me that it's because of a split infinitive on page 173. | |
| That's what's stopping you. |
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