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Aug. 23, 2010 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
08:49
1730 Social Anxiety Part Two

The social anxiety that philosophers feel is not always our own fault...

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Hey everybody, Steph, you've been doing well.
I wanted to do a follow-up on the social anxiety podcasts that we've been doing lately, all the way from shyness to the fine young man having problems at work and so on.
The reason being that we've talked about our inability to do small talk and social awkwardness and so on, and I really wanted to discuss some of the different aspects, some of the opposing aspects of what we've been talking about.
So we've been talking about how if you were not taught the language of social interaction when you were a kid, We're good to go.
That there's fundamentally something wrong with this.
Because I wanted to talk about the upside of being untrained.
And the one thing I will say is pretty common, you know, with the very, very first call-in show that we had, using the hellacious clusterfrag node as TeamSpeak back in 2006, I think it was.
We talked about, like, well, why are we different?
One of the things that I think has come out over the last couple of years about our differences is that because so many of us weren't taught this sort of generic social language, we've had to invent things.
We've had to discover things.
And through that process, I think, comes a lot of originality and I think comes some philosophy.
If you're taught all of these social cues, then you move so easily in the social circles, in the social environment, that in a sense you've been kind of propagandized into the norm.
I don't think that's particularly good or healthy or helpful in the long run, but in the short run, people look very socially at ease.
The people that I knew who had the greatest social ease when they were younger have not been doing so well in life.
And the people who had social awkwardness have either done really badly or well, or even really well, but they haven't sort of gone in the middle.
Because it's important to remember when we talk about social ease that society is largely, well, wrong.
Society is largely wrong.
And so it's nice to have the option to interact with society in a sort of easy manner.
But I think it's also important to remember that being socially awkward is not being wrong.
It's just the same as, it's sort of like not fitting in.
Like if you don't speak German in Germany, you're not wrong, you're not bad, you're not stupid, you just don't speak the language.
And that's not necessarily a bad thing.
You don't want to fit in to the Hitler Youth, right?
If you're thrown into the KKK kiddie group, you want to feel social anxiety and social discomfort.
Because if you feel perfectly at ease in the Hitler Youth and in the KKK kiddie group, then you don't really have much of a reason to challenge the axioms or the premises or the morals or the beliefs of those groups.
So I think a certain amount of social discomfort is important to just not be sucked into social propaganda.
And so that tension, back to tension again, right?
That tension of... Disagreeing with society, which means that you are not going to be perfectly at ease socially because you disagree with people.
I mean, if you are an atheist at a Christian family dinner, you are going to feel some awkwardness.
If you didn't feel any awkwardness, it would mean that your beliefs or their beliefs or the truth meant nothing.
But the truth really does mean something.
The truth really means a lot.
And so you're going to face or feel anxiety or discomfort when you're in the face or in the company of people who are fundamentally wrong and don't know it or who are defensive about it or who are aggressive about it or who are manipulative about it.
You're going to feel some discomfort.
So social discomfort as a whole I think is not a bad thing when society as a whole tends to be rather wrong.
So I think that's important.
I mean, Richard Dawkins talking with Douglas Adams, his friend, he's going to feel very comfortable and very at ease.
When you see him talking to some heavy-duty Christians, he's not so much at ease.
And that's natural and that's inevitable.
And I think that's an important thing to remember.
Society is wrong. So discomfort in the face of that era is a healthy thing.
It's a good thing. I just want to sort of remind you.
Of that. Now, the question of small talk is one that has plagued and bewitched, bedeviled and bewildered me for many, many years.
I can do small talk okay to a certain degree and then I just feel myself completely deflate in terms of interest.
I do a little bit of small talk and Lord knows when your parent does a huge amount of small talk when you're chatting with other parents.
You just talk about your kids and, oh, it's been a nice summer and blah, blah, blah.
But I think it's important to remember that people who are into philosophy, people who are into self-knowledge, We got some depth, you know?
We've got some depth. And that depth is very alarming to a lot of people.
Maybe most people. Certainly most people that I've met.
They don't want to talk about heavy topics.
They don't want to talk about deep topics.
They want to keep it light. They want to keep it fluffy.
And there's this pull in society, right?
So the people who want to talk about real things face this sort of helium-giddy idiocy of those who just want to keep things sports and weather and so on.
And those who want to keep things sports and weather feel what they consider to be the grim, depressing undertow of people who want to talk about deep and intense things, right?
Who just can't keep things light and fun and fluffy and bunny-like and, well, retarded.
And that is something that's important to remember.
If you really, you know, we feel socially awkward, of course, right?
Because we're facing this pressure to continually and consistently avoid topics that have any kind of real meaning and just continue to focus on the idiot fluff drivel of everyday emptiness.
And we don't do so well with that.
We don't like that so much. So, for instance, in conversations where you have the impulse to talk about something deep or meaningful or true or real or relevant or important or anything like that, something philosophical, something honest, you will most times face this tension from people like, oh God, here comes a heavy topic.
Oh God, must shield, must avoid, must, right?
And that is social discomfort to me.
Having trouble with small talk, not quite the same as social discomfort.
That's just, eh, I'm bored.
And shyness has a lot to do with being bored.
But if you really, really want to get what social discomfort means, then you just need to really get and understand how panicked most people get about any kind of deep or real topic.
That's also what I was taught as a kid.
No sex, no religion, no politics.
You don't talk about that stuff.
You don't talk about that kind of stuff.
And so when you start to talk about that stuff, other people feel really, really, really socially awkward.
And I think that's very important to understand.
They feel really socially awkward.
Panicking, right? And there's this tug of war.
And the tug of war is you're trying to get them out of the clouds, and they're trying to avoid, as they see, falling off a cliff into the canyon depths of heavy topics.
And this battle is very subterranean and very insistent, very powerful.
And unfortunately, it remains almost entirely one-sided.
So, people are sort of programmed.
They're programmed a lot by the media, where anybody who's deep is, you know, depressed and weird and bitter and so on, right?
And anyone who's light and fluffy and fun is endlessly charming and so on, right?
So, this is propaganda called Keep Things Stupid, right?
And it's very sad and very insistent.
You see this all the time. And that underwater battle, so to speak, it sort of reminds me of when I was playing water polo.
I was on the water polo team in school, and we'd all be treading water at the surface, but I found that, I mean, water polo is about the filthiest game as far as cheating goes, because you can just kick and gouge people underwater, and no one can see and no one can tell.
And so we'd all be sitting there treading water, waiting to play, and then, at least I found it, just these filthy players kicking under the surface.
But that's really what's going on in these kinds of conversations.
And I think that's an important thing to understand, that your social awkwardness is, in a sense, other people's social awkwardness because you have the capacity or drive or desire to go into deeper topics.
I think it's a really, really important thing to understand.
And, you know, somebody posted on the board the other day, you know, what do you do, what do you say when somebody says, oh, why are you getting so heavy, why are you getting so deep, right?
It's like, well, I think it's okay to go a little bit on the offensive.
Again, go on the offensive, don't be offensive, and say...
Well, I just can't spend the rest of my short life babbling on about the weather and sports and stupid shit like that.
I actually want to talk about some real stuff from time to time.
So if you don't want to have anything to do with that, then I suggest you go find some idiot to talk to who's not interested in talking about anything real.
But right now, that's not me.
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