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June 23, 2011 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
19:01
1938 Pretension - An Analysis
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Great questions from the Borg brain of the Eternally Genius listenership.
The one I haven't got to yet is what will constitute self-identity in a free society, in a society without nationalism or religion or any of these other silly things.
Great questions, still working on it.
But another question, which is around pretension.
What is pretension?
Now, asking me about pretension when I claim to have solved the problems of ethics and government, blah, blah, blah, Asking me about pretension is like asking me for advice on boldness.
I guess it's appropriate and hopefully not too crazy.
But I will tell you what I understand about pretension.
And I'm going to illustrate it to start with.
Let's see if you can spot the thread of principles woven into these examples.
I remember being at an airport probably about 11 or 12 years ago.
I was traveling for business. And I saw a boy of about seven or eight with a mean streak, a mean and cruel, hooked and barbed mouth to his face.
And his younger brother was upset about something.
And the older brother said to the younger brother, who was about, I don't know, five or so, he said, you're only embarrassing yourself, you know.
Very, very interesting. That's number one.
Now, another example I'd like to provide is one that I heard about.
It is a definition.
It was like a definition of maudlin or kitsch or something like that.
And it goes something like this.
If you see something moving and you are moved, that is authentic.
If you see something that is moving and you are moved, and then you are further moved by noticing that you yourself are moved...
That is kitsch.
That is maudlin. That is rank-cheap sentimentality.
So, you see a beautiful film, and you're moved by it, and you weep.
Beautiful, sad film. But if you see a beautiful, sad film, you're moved by it, and you weep, and then you are further touched by your ability to be moved by the film and further weep out of regard for your sensitivity and this and that, Then that is mortal and that is kitsch.
That is rank sentimentality.
And the third is from a television series called Alias.
It's a very short line. Victor Garbo.
I can't remember his character's name.
Probably giant oval egg on its side, melonhead, something like that.
He's killing a traitor and the traitor says just before he dies...
Look at yourself, Victor.
Look at yourself. Just look at yourself.
As in, you know, look at yourself.
off your ridiculous, your rent.
I could go on and on, but we've got the general idea.
Now, when I saw the boy in the airport saying to his younger brother, you're only embarrassing yourself...
It's very interesting to me. I kind of got, deep down, what a damaging thing that was to say to someone.
I didn't really know why, until I thought about it later.
And it's a quasi-religious issue.
And what it is, or what is so dangerous, I believe, It's that it puts someone in an ironic, distant, and judgmental view of himself.
This is very, very important.
Very, very important.
So, when the boy said to his brother, you're only embarrassing yourself, there is a split in the personality that is being provoked, let's say, or defined.
So you are only embarrassing yourself.
Well, this indicates, of course, that there are originally, or at this level, there are at least two selves.
One that doesn't want to be embarrassed.
One that wants to be embarrassed or is going to act in such a way that it's going to embarrass.
So part A is acting in such a way that it's embarrassing part B. There's also an implicit...
Rejection of manipulation or perceived manipulation, so let's say if the kid was crying because he was sad about something, that he's trying to shame others into obeying him and the way that the older brother counteracted that.
Was to say, you're only embarrassing yourself.
You're not embarrassing me. I'm fine with you crying.
You can cry until your eyes turn inside out.
That's fine with me. But you're only embarrassing yourself.
In other words, your attempted manipulation of me isn't going to work.
It's in fact bouncing back.
And instead of me changing my behavior because I'm embarrassed that you're crying, you are simply embarrassing and shaming yourself.
Guilt and shame and all of these kinds of emotions.
This is why I say it's quasi-religious.
These are all generated by provoking or indoctrinating or brainwashing splits into the personality.
That's really, really important.
So this is the weird thing that happens, right?
So, if you accept this definition of kitsch, right?
So, if you're moved by something, that's great.
But if you're moved by the fact that you moved, then that's not great.
That's bad, right? No, it's ridiculous.
I'll be moved by the fact that you move.
Who cares, right? What a ridiculous thing to self-police.
But there is a kind of self-policing, right?
So what happens is it interferes with your spontaneous enjoyment or appreciation of the moment, right?
So you're watching some sad film and then you're moved.
But if you've heard this line and you're concerned about it, then suddenly what you are is you're concerned about whether or not you're being moved by the fact that you're moved.
Wait, is my emotion genuine or a genuine response to the film?
Or am I emotional as a result of my genuine response?
And you're lost. You're done.
Your spontaneous enjoyment of the moment, or not enjoyment exactly if you're crying, but your appreciation, your saturation in the moment, dries up and vanishes, and you coldly look upon yourself with a critical third eye.
This is, of course, foundational to religion, right?
Your instincts are deemed bad, and therefore, if you look at someone with appreciation, you can't just look and say, you know, there's an attractive or sexy man or woman.
Appreciate that for what it is and move on.
You then have to jump outside your own skin and critically evaluate yourself.
And critically evaluate yourself and say, oh my goodness, I'm looking at this man or woman with lust and that is the same as infidelity and I must pray and that's bad and I need forgiveness.
Let me go give the church some money to feel better.
And, you know, all this kind of garbage that goes on.
And so this split in the South is so important.
In order for authority to gain power over you, this is when I say the state is so unconscious, it's so foundational.
In order for the state To gain control of you.
Or in order for anyone in authority to gain control over you.
What they have to do is they have to create an identity that is removed from your experience and that coldly and critically judges you in a way that can never be satisfied, that can never be appeased, that is always on the lookout for these negatives and so on.
And approximately, you know, this is not scientific, but it's fairly accurate, approximately 99% of the comments that I get that are critical of what it is that I do are all attempting to do the same thing, which is to create or to provoke a self-critical aspect of myself.
An irrational...
See, self-criticism is good, right?
Why not, right? But it's an irrational self-criticism of myself.
And I'm very, very aware of that.
So, it's the kind of thing where, you know, somebody starts off with, on the story of your enslavement or whatever, whatever video I've done that has some historicism to it.
Somebody says, um, I don't mean to burst your bottle bowl, but you might want to do a little bit more research because your facts are fundamentally wrong and your interpretations are amateurish and don't you just know you really need to do some basics and you obviously have no training in this area and this video is full of nonsense.
Not a single substantive argument.
Not, well, you claim this fact, but there's lots of arguments about this fact.
First of all, anyone who claims facts in history is full of bullshit to begin with.
Facts in history are really, really, really hard to come by.
I mean, facts that have any meaning, right?
So yeah, World War I started in 1914.
So what? Doesn't matter, right?
Doesn't tell you anything of any use, but valuable interpretations, philosophical understandings, cause and effect.
You know, a doctor doesn't just say, hey, look, a sick person.
That's not medicine, right? Medicine is trying to figure out the causes and ways to ameliorate or eliminate illness.
So, what people are trying to do is, it's sort of an appeal to insecurity.
And the reason why I'm tying this into pretension is I view pretension as an appeal to insecurity.
You're pretentious. And it's tragic.
It's truly tragic. It's like all the people, I mean, this is, I swear, all I hear, all I hear is this massive quasi-Greek chorus of everyone on the planet shouting me, In tortured agony, I can't think.
I can't think.
I feel scared.
I can't think.
I am scared.
Me no think.
Think not me.
Scared I am.
Green eggs and ham.
That's all I hear. It's this endless chorus of, I can't think.
I'm scared. I'm angry.
I'm upset. I can't think.
So all I can do is throw the mental equivalent of monkey feces at an image of you.
Because I am alarmed by what you're saying, but I don't know how to contradict what you're saying.
I don't know how to rebut an argument.
I don't know how to evaluate an argument.
I don't know how to find its flaws.
I don't know how to rebut it.
And I'm not willing to do the work to find out, because probably I don't even know that I don't know, although I guess at some level people always do know that.
But all I hear is this massive, tortured, groaning, kneeling in the mud, arms outstretched, lacerated back of reason, strip-striping along the outside of the skin.
All I'm hearing is the tortured and endless cries of those kneeling in the muck and mire of their own mental apocalypse.
I can't think.
I feel scared.
You must stop.
I can't think.
I am scared.
You must stop. But they don't know how to make it.
The arguments stop or me stop or whatever, right?
So all people do is they attempt to intimate that my argument...
Look, and it's not talking about me. Everybody who reasons goes through this.
You understand, I'm not saying that I'm right.
I could be completely wrong. But people don't know how to contradict what it is that I'm saying.
They don't know how to do it. So the fact that people can't argue against me doesn't mean that I'm right.
Good heavens. I'm just providing examples of what passes for argumentation.
Ah, so sad. What passes for argumentation?
These days, these tragic lost end-of-the-planet days.
And so what people are attempting to do is the appeal to insecurity, right?
So they say, well, you're so wrong, it's not even worth me talking about it.
You're so wrong that I just can't even be bothered to express.
It's so obvious that you're wrong that anyone who's taken in by you is a complete fool and also not worth debating.
So now I must return to my Mount Olympus of mental achievements and pursuits and resume my conversation with the gods of reason and evidence and history and not spend any more of my time pretending to be Howard Rourke As an equivalent to children building spit-soaked and glue-soaked blocks in kindergarten.
And what that's designed to do is to create a persona in you that is cynical towards you.
To create a persona in you that is harsh, critical, judgmental, hostile, negative, undermining, skeptical of you.
It's designed to split.
It's like that little crack.
You put the chisel in, one crack with the hammer, and apart it comes.
Right? It's designed to fragment.
Because if you're whole, if you're integrated, if you're authentic, then you're undefeatable.
That doesn't mean you're never wrong.
It just means, and I can't be defeated, because reason is my goal, right?
If reason and better reason and evidence comes along, yeah, of course.
I will conform.
Netre l'mant. So, I mean, I can't lose any more than a scientist can lose.
I mean, if a scientist hears a better argument, yay, fantastic.
The advancement of science continues.
So, that really can't happen.
And so, when people say, well, you're pretentious...
Of course, something that's well worth asking then is, well, what does that mean?
Well, does it mean that I am pretending to have knowledge that I don't have?
Well, I think that's something that's worth looking into.
I don't think that's quite what people mean by pretentious, though.
I mean, that's just faking it. I mean, this is fraudulent, right?
It's like arrogant. What does that mean?
Arrogant. It's just a word that's designed to create a self-critical, toxic persona within your own head which says, Oh boy, I better not be arrogant.
Oh boy, I better not be pretentious.
Oh boy, I better not be too ambitious.
Oh boy, I better not be vain.
Oh boy. It's just designed to inject this slow paralysis of self-criticism in your veins.
Which is all designed to paralyze you, to make you inert, and to create these massive buttons on the front of your personality which people can hammer at will and make you do whatever they want you to.
Right? Like, have you ever seen those?
This is kind of old school, right?
With these little toys. There's a guy standing.
He's sort of with elastic or whatever.
And there's a little sort of cup.
There's a tiny guy. He's standing on an upside-down little cup.
And underneath the cup is a plunger.
And you push the plunger up and the guy collapses.
Well, that's all this stuff is designed to do.
It's designed to infect you with an irrationally self-critical, self-attacking persona that other people can invoke at will.
To have you collapse, to have you fold.
And sadly, I mean, this is all that people have in the absence of reason.
Is this, you know, bullshit, self-attacky crap?
This is all that people have. How do you resolve disputes in this kind of situation?
How do you resolve disputes in the absence of reason?
Well, psychological manipulation and self-attack.
That's all we got.
That's all that there is.
And what it requires fundamentally is that you agree...
Wow, that's a plane that went low overhead.
All that that requires for it to work, and it's not all, like it's a little thing, but all that that requires is that you agree with them, right?
If you don't agree with them, then it doesn't mean anything.
Six. It doesn't mean anything.
So, if somebody says, Steph, you're arrogant, it's like, okay, well, first of all, I have to agree that arrogance is negative, because it's meant in a pejorative way, right?
So, all I have to do first is agree that it's pejorative, and then what I have to do is agree that I manifest it, and then what I have to do is agree that it's a bad thing that I need to change.
Right? And...
All you have to do is ask people for definitions, right?
So all people are doing is randomly pushing buttons on your chest, hoping that one or more of these buttons is going to put you under their control.
Or have you stopped doing whatever you're doing that's causing them anxiety?
Right? So if you say, hey, dude, you are arrogant.
Oh, shoot, I don't want to be arrogant.
I better stop whatever it is I'm doing, because that's arrogant.
Well, then they've used a magic button to get you to stop doing whatever you're doing.
Well, how sad is that? It's not an argument.
So all you have to do is say, oh, that's interesting.
Can you tell me what the definition of arrogance is?
I mean, you clearly are a big expert if you're willing to use this term.
Tell me what is the definition of arrogant, and how do I conform, and how is it negative, or how is it destructive?
What is the definition? That's all I ever ask for, and that's, I think, a reasonable thing for a philosopher to ask for, which is to say, well, okay, so what is your definition of arrogant, and how do I conform, and so on, right?
These are all perfectly reasonable things to ask for.
And, of course, what is your definition of pretension?
That's very interesting. And what will happen is people will just change the subject back off.
It's like, oh, shit, the button didn't work.
I either got to find another button, Or run the fuck away.
Because I'm a coward.
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