3993 Why Failure Is Not An Option | Mike Cernovich and Stefan Molyneux
Stefan Molyneux and Mike Cernovich will be speaking at "A Night For Freedom" in Washington, DC on February 24th. Tickets are available now: http://www.anightforfreedomdc.comMike Cernovich is a lawyer, filmmaker and the bestselling author of “Gorilla Mindset: How to Control Your Thoughts and Emotions to Live Life on Your Terms” and “MAGA Mindset: How to Make You and America Great Again.” Cernovich is also the producer of the film documentary “Silenced. Our War On Free Speech” and the upcoming film “Hoaxed: The Media's War on Truth.” Follow Mike on Twitter: https://twitter.com/CernovichRead Cernovich.com: http://cernovich.comRead Mike on Medium: https://medium.com/@CernovichFollow Mike on Periscope: https://www.periscope.tv/CernovichFollow Mike on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/DangerAndPlayOrder Gorilla Mindset: http://www.fdrurl.com/gorilla-mindsetOrder MAGA Mindset: http://www.fdrurl.com/MAGAHoaxed Movie: http://www.hoaxedmovie.comYour support is essential to Freedomain Radio, which is 100% funded by viewers like you. Please support the show by making a one time donation or signing up for a monthly recurring donation at: http://www.freedomainradio.com/donate
Hope you're doing well here with Mike Cernovich, the lawyer, filmmaker, and the best-selling author of Guerrilla Mindset, How to Control Your Thoughts and Emotions to Live Life on Your Terms, and MAGA Mindset, How to Make You and America Great Again.
He is also producer of the film documentary Silenced, Our War on Free Speech, and the imminent, brilliant, I dare say, upcoming film, Hoaxed, The Media's War on Truth.
The website is Cernovich, C-E-R-N-O-V-I-C-H. Mike, how have you been?
Been a while, man. I actually had a really nasty cold, though, for about the past five or ten days.
Did you get that flu? Because I hear there's this death medieval flu coming down that's striking people down like the swing of a medieval scythe.
Luckily, I didn't get the flu, which a bunch of people got.
I got an abbreviated version of it, an abridged version of it.
It's still pretty unpleasant.
Yeah, the other day my daughter wanted to go to a play center and all I can think of is, you know, that violet light that they put in crime scenes and just shows you all the body fluids and all I could see was this play center coated in this weird violet light of doom and it's like, nope, the only thing we can do is go skiing because those bugs will be killed by the snow and that's kind of key for me these days.
So let's talk about what's coming up in a couple of weeks now.
February 24th, that's 2018.
A Night for Freedom. Actually, it's the second Night for Freedom, I suppose.
Washington, D.C. and NightForFreedomDC.com.
What's going on and why should people come?
Well, they should come to see you.
Well, naturally. You're the draw.
You're the main event.
I'm happy making you the main event.
Jesse Lee Peterson will be there and he's going to be with us doing a private podcast.
We may have a special guest or two that I'll keep on the download for now.
The main reason people should go is because you need community, and we've proven that it isn't going to be 20 people in some dingy, grimy little space acting weird.
We did a night for Freedom New York to prove the concept.
We proved the concept that, look, our people want to do things that are fun.
Our people want to socialize.
Our people do want to hang out.
And they're all good people.
And you know they're good people because I would never give a media pass to ThinkProgress or Huffington Post or The Guardian because those are fake blogs.
And there are articles.
They're like, oh, angry white people gather.
There's actually no pictures of anybody being angry.
Everybody's like smiling and having a good time.
So even with undercover infiltrators, they couldn't find anything wrong with what we did or how we behaved.
And that's because we are not like that and we had a lot of fun.
Well, I've never myself taken cocaine injected directly to the eyeballs or any other balls on my body.
But if I did, Mike, I'm pretty sure it would be the kind of contact high that comes from meeting brilliant, smart, fun, happy people for a great night of enlightenment and entertainment.
It was a real blast.
And I coasted on that for like a week now.
In terms of the joy juice in my brain, and everybody was so thrilled.
And it was so wonderful to just...
I'm sitting there for like four hours after my speech just meeting and greeting people.
It was an electric night, and people should not miss out on it.
If they, you know, crawl to get there, take to the sewers, catch a ride with a skyhook on an airplane, whatever you need to do to get there, it is going to be like an oasis in the desert for people.
And it's something you can keep going afterwards.
You keep your contacts, you get your cards, you exchange...
Information with people and keep the flame alive.
Yeah, people meet all kinds of great people, make a lot of friendships, lifelong friendships.
And that's why, too, we always price things based on people's level of commitment and what they can invest in everything because general admission tickets are subsidized by the VIP and sponsor, the super sponsor, which is great because we want everybody who can possibly find a way to go out for a night and To be able to come out and have a great time.
Right, right. So this was your first, I guess, New York was your first big event since the deplorable and fear of failure.
I mean, that's a big thing to stare down.
You've got venue cancellations.
You've got Antifa floating around.
You've got cops downstairs.
You don't know who's managed to infiltrate their way in.
You've got hostile reporters.
That is a lot.
To take on. And how concerned were you about whether New York was going to go well, badly?
And how did you deal with that fear of the crash and burn scenario that, you know, it seemed like you were on the conveyor belt, too, for a while there?
I didn't have fun until it was about 9.30pm.
The night of the event. And then Shauna came over and gave me a big hug and I felt sort of overwhelmed with emotion as if, okay, I can now finally say that we've won and, you know, I had that sort of where Michael Jordan's crying as he's holding the trophy thing.
I'm like, nobody's going to catch me, you know, nobody's going to catch me getting emotional.
But yeah, I didn't have...
It wasn't fun for me until about 9.30 that night because we did have...
One venue not only canceled on us, which I actually, I don't have a problem with the venue saying, look, I don't like you.
I don't want your money. Fine.
Capitalism, right? I do have a problem with people saying, we actually really like you.
Thank you for the $16,000 deposit.
We're going to host you, and we can't wait.
And then when I go in Friday at 2.30 p.m., and the event is supposed to, we're supposed to be opening the doors for us, you and I and others, at 1 p.m.
to get set up. When I go there Friday at 2.30 p.m., the guy goes, can't do it, can't host your event.
And he said, well, we need a permit.
It's like, no, he runs an event space.
Literally, that's what his company does is they hold events, they hold parties, they hold, well, we need an event gathering thing.
And he just was completely lying to me.
And from there, this was about the time that you joined us, we went to venue number two.
So venue number one cancels, we go to venue number two.
We talked to them. They know who we are.
They had hosted, you know, other controversial people.
So they didn't care. It's just strictly about, you know, business.
We do a deal. We all have dinner and everybody's celebrating.
And, you know, I'm having a good time.
You guys were with me. I was still in my head a little bit because I'm like, I told you guys even, I said, when we're in the venue setting up, then I'll feel comfortable, right?
So I'm kind of exhausted.
I go home Friday night, fall asleep.
Shauna comes in at 1 a.m.
Hey, babe, get up. What?
What? The second venue canceled on you.
I go, no, it can't be, babe.
Like, they know who we are, it can't be.
So I pick up the phone, 1 a.m., no, no, the second venue canceled.
The promoters were fine with us, but then the venue owner said, well, actually, I would be fine having you, but I need 24 hours notice so that I can notify NYPD Precinct and just have police there.
So... Of course, embedded in that is the idea that, well, wait a minute, the venue owner, the second venue owner was fine with us, but he's like, well, I need to get the police here because I know these feral leftists are going to come out.
I'm like, okay. So then I'm up till 3.30 in the morning trying to find a venue, can't find one.
Wake up, you know, sick to my stomach because a number of reasons.
One is that movement leaders don't get to say, well, you know, two venues cancel on me, hitting me, I'm such a victim.
Isn't it sad? Now, everybody who was in town knew what I would do.
I would refund everybody's money.
I would have taken $100,000 loss on it, just taken a bath, because we already prepaid the caterer, which was $45,000.
And then I would have just had a happy hour.
I would have said, okay, hey, we would have done something.
But I said, man, I'm not going to quit until I'm dead, right?
So we keep calling around, right?
So we keep calling around, keep calling around, keep calling around.
Finally, we find a guy who's I said, bring $30,000 cash and I'll make the video.
So my business partner said, well, I got like $7,500 on me.
Can you go get $20,000? And I said, well, I mean, what choice do I have?
Sure. So I go to the bank.
And then meanwhile, there was like this media embed that were filming it.
So for them, I'm like, great.
I'm glad they got great footage.
I don't know what they're going to do with it, but they're doing kind of a longer project on it.
So anybody who claimed that I made this up, like, no, there were literally people following me around.
And it wasn't my people, you know, it was media people following me around.
So the idea that, like, I did all this just because it would be fun is, of course, ludicrous.
So we go in, get the cash, get the venue.
I'm still a little uneasy.
And then I give the guy the cash, and I go, he takes the cash, they count it, and he goes, okay.
And I go, well, should I, like, sign something?
And he goes... Your people are here setting up.
I have your money.
What's to discuss? I'm like, okay, I can deal with people like this.
I was like, okay, I like this guy.
They're just straight up like it's business.
And then people sat up.
Everything was great. And then the event started going a little bit behind schedule, a little bit of chaos, but ultimately it got going.
I was very pleased to be there sort of mid-afternoon.
I have this thing where I want to go make friends with the space that I'm going to speak in and also figure out the dimensions, where to pace, where to walk, so I don't go to pull a Steve Tyler and plunge off the stage.
So it was really great having that luxury ahead of time.
So you had a fascinating thing to me going on when we were at the second venue and you were like, well, you know, it's the price of the game.
It's like the mindset and the mental approach that you take to these kinds of issues I think people would be quite curious about because it is an old thing in life.
Like what stops people?
Where is it that they hit that wall?
And that wall that they hit where they just kind of give up and they go rubber bones – That's usually internal.
It's usually before something happens external that is going to stop you.
People just like, okay, whoa, that's like one too many.
Straw that breaks the camel's back.
So what is the language, Mike, that you use in your mind to frame these kinds of setbacks and to give yourself that resolute willpower to keep going?
Yeah, I call it the three E's, which is ego, expectations, entitlement.
Me, I exist.
I'm a person... I have expectations about the world.
My expectation about the world is if I sign a contract with the venue, they're going to perform as they've said they're going to perform and nothing's going to happen.
And then I feel entitled to having things go right, to have things go according to plan.
Now, a lot of people would say, well, you're not actually feeling entitled to have things going according to plan because they're supposed to go according to plan.
Well, that's the breakdown of the model.
No, there's nothing supposed to go according to plan.
That's the idea that you believe the world is supposed to perform to your expectations.
No, the world is going to perform to the way it wants to perform based on how much force that you can push back against the world.
And then, of course, the world is going to push back against you.
So as we're doing this venue thing, I'm not thinking, oh, I can't believe they canceled.
What do I do? I'm such a victim.
Everybody's going after me. The world is rigged.
Well, the world is rigged against us, Stefan.
And everybody listening.
I hate to break it to you and everybody listening in and Michael and the whole crew.
But yes, the world is rigged against us.
When you have a venue that you paid money to, and they're like, nope, not going to do it, setting you up.
When you have venues canceling you, when you have feral hate mobs of people coming out trying to threaten you, then it's fair to say, yes, indeed, the world is rigged.
So what? So what?
That's always the question about childhood.
My parents are bad. It's like, great.
Great. I accept your premise.
You've had an unfair life.
You were born with maybe the gifts other had.
You had a challenging upbringing.
You were abused. Bad things happen.
Okay, I understand. And with all compassion, I say, now what?
Right? Now what? And that's where you have to adjust ego expectations and title.
You just have to say, yeah, the world is rigged against me.
So what? I have to live according to the world as it is.
And then, of course, find ways to hack it.
So for me, When we're walking around, they're looking at the space.
To me, I'm just thinking, okay, we had this drama.
Got to come up with this money.
I better get my refund on this.
It didn't even occur to me to feel sorry for myself because I don't have expectations about the world and that the world should perform the way that I believe it should perform.
Yeah, because we all have these ideals about, you know, honesty, integrity, and being forthright, and so on.
And, you know, of course, in the long run, we hope to build that world so that those ideals are more firmly embedded in people's minds, and you can rely upon them.
But right now, where we expect the physics of rationality to be the world that we move in, we're moving in a sort of this psychotic dream nightmare escape of other people's lack of integrity.
and that I think is really important to understand.
You know, every time you go out in the car, you assume that there's some lunatic out there driving half blindfolded.
Every time you go out on the ocean, you assume that there's gonna be some terrible storm.
Like, expect the best, sure, prepare for the worst, and recognize that we still live in a world where power and influence and fear and greed and all of the base monkey brain human lusts and paranoias are kind of what's running most people.
And whoever can exert the most pressure wins.
Whoever can will the strongest is going to get their way.
I really would love to evolve beyond that, but that, I think, is where we are at the moment.
And recognizing that and making a peace with that, I think, makes things a lot easier to navigate.
Right, because you can't change the world.
You can only change yourself.
Or if you do want to change the world, you have to change yourself.
I also, you know, ego expectations and entitlement is kind of my model of dealing with the world.
As I just say, okay, you have expectations about the world.
Now you feel bruised because poor me.
You know, the world didn't perform my expectations.
And then you realize, well, that's just because of a basis on entitlement.
So just all that homespun wisdom that we've lost, just get over yourself.
Just get over yourself.
Get over what you thought about the world and how it's supposed to perform and then find a way to make it work.
So that means if what I have to do is come up with 20 grand cash, go to the bank, fine.
To me, it didn't even occur to me that this was an absurd situation.
Now, the people filming it, to them, this is like great TV to them because this never happens in their world.
Their world is so different from our world that they are just giddy.
They're like, oh my, because I'm on the phone, like, yelling at people and hanging out.
Then meanwhile, Cyra walks over and, da-da-da!
So she's sitting on the table, and I'm going, just get the venue.
Where do I have to be? You know, and she's just laughing and giggling, of course.
You know, doesn't care.
She's having fun. So to these guys, this is like bizarro world.
They're like, well, wait a minute. You got to go to the bank right now and get $20,000 cash?
I'm like, yeah. They go, to get a venue?
And I go, yeah, because two others, yeah.
They're like, wow, this is amazing.
You know, so they're, like, elated because...
We really do live in an alternative universe where not only do we have problems getting venues because of the venue owners who might not like us, but we have venue owners who do like us, or at least will do business with us, who are afraid of Antifa coming in and committing terrorism.
And in fact, I thought it was quite revealing that a man who had walked home from the party and he was a block or two away down the street was viciously attacked by an Antifa terrorist.
His face, he had a horrible bone break.
The Antifa terrorist, who was a 30-year-old white man, tried to strangle the guy to death.
NYPD, which had been there, grabbed the suspect, and then he tried to put a police officer in a headlock.
So this guy is facing multiple felony counts, right?
Two felonies, a couple charges for assaulting the officer.
CNN has covered that.
The media, where is it covered?
No, that's a local crime story.
Nobody can, you know, the New York Post wrote it up, or Daily News did, but The mainstream media goes, well, that's just a local crime story.
It's like, oh, so if I had smacked Chelsea Manning at the Night for Freedom, you would have said, well, that's just a local misdemeanor, assault, no big deal.
Really? Right?
So if we do live in these parallel structures and we do have you and I and everybody listening in, though the world is rigged against us and feeling sorry for yourself isn't going to do anything about it.
And in fact, we showed, and that's why I did the party, is What fueled me was that if we threw a bigger and better party than anything the people who hate us could ever throw, which we did, that would be a triumphant statement of who we are, what we stand for, what we can overcome as proof that we are the good guys, we are on the right side.
And then on a personal level, it is proof that, hey, you think you want to make fun of Guerrilla Mindset the book?
Well, here. I live it.
I wrote the book, and I lived the book, and it had to happen.
So, too, that was the pressure, too, is the guy who wrote Guerrilla Mindset doesn't get to say, well, I mean, I had two videos canceled, so we'll just have a happy hour.
You know, we'll just have a happy hour and, you know, whatever.
You don't get to do that, right?
You have to make it happen one way or another, and we did.
Our revenge and our victory was the party.
Yes. Now, inner critic time, because there's this Aristotelian mean I think that people need to get with regards to the inner critic, because the people who don't criticize themselves, who don't sort of have, you know, what we used to do in business and what I still do in what I do now, this sort of the postmortem, like what worked, what didn't work, how can you improve?
And you've, of course, written that article earlier.
At syrnovich.com about what you've learned from it.
So not criticizing yourself, not having that kind of feedback about how to improve makes people lazy and has them kind of squander their precious talents in the low-rent section of underachievement.
On the other hand, of course, we all know people, and maybe you have this sometimes from time to time, as do I, where that inner critic is like this death poison hydra fastening on your jugular and just goes way, way too far.
So, as far as having reasonable criticism with yourself, lessons learned, postmortems, things to improve, how do you keep that balance where you want to improve, but it doesn't go too far into self-flagellation?
Right.
And we talked about this before off-camera, the difference between importance and self-importance.
If you don't feel like you're important, if you don't feel like you matter, if you can't say, I matter, my life has a purpose, well, then you're going to be a slug who lays on the couch all day and you're going to be depressed.
But if you're the guy or gal who walks around, oh my god, I'm the most important person in the world, the world that about me, you're going to get crushed so fast and then you're going to say, well, I don't understand they're going to be a victim.
So it is navigating that.
The way I navigate it, and because your audience is more, you know, rationality inclined, is the Pareto principle or the 80-20 rule has been proven time and time again.
And the 80-20 rule is simply that 80% of your results Are going to come from 20% of your actions.
So let's just apply that to a knife for freedom.
If I have a venue, you and I and Gavin and Owen are there, people were going to be, for the most part, happy.
If that venue had to be changed to Central Park, if it had to be changed to Times Square, if it had to be changed...
If we're all on the subway in a row, it's less optimal.
Yeah. Yeah, people might not have loved it, but if all we had had is a place for us to gather, then 80% of people are going to say, well, you know, you pulled it off, son of a gun, you know, it's great.
Now, that doesn't mean you don't want to seek out that other 20%.
So what happens with people is they say, well, I can't pull off 100% of it.
Where am I going to put the tables?
Where are they going to put the chairs? I didn't even think about any of that, to be honest.
It didn't even occur to me that there would be tables and there'd be tablecloths and they would be set up.
And then as it turns out, the way we did our podcast, we were all facing the crowd instead of each other.
So in the postmortem, yeah, what we need to improve more is an hour more of programming before the party.
A more kind of Reuben Report-esque setup where we're looking at each other talking rather than sitting like this.
Now, people complained that I was on my phone.
Well, yeah, I was coordinating with NYPD intelligence officers.
So those people can just, you know, go to you-know-where because I wasn't, you know, surfing the web, dude.
They're like, Antifa's outside.
Okay, we have 50, you know, NYPD officers.
So there was like a real thing going on.
So, yeah, we are going to take it to another level.
And if you want to criticize yourself, but fundamentally you have to say, What is it that's going to get me the 80%?
So for example, I always say watch the Joe Rogan podcast, even though Joe is, I don't know what's happened to him lately, but number one, Joe Rogan podcast.
He and Redman are sitting in front of a laptop, and there's like these like flowers in the air, just like, it looks dumb, to be honest, you know?
And now he has one of the top podcasts in the world.
Why? Because he did the podcast!
Your early videos are you and a Bluetooth, you know, in your car, driving around with the Bluetooth.
Now you have one of the biggest philosophy podcasts in the world.
Why? Because you did the podcast.
Just keep doing it. Yeah, it could have been better and, you know, my pacing was a little off and, you know, what about this?
That's what stops people. They're like, well, the lighting isn't perfect and I need 15.
No, you don't. You need to do a podcast.
You need to do a blog.
That's going to bring you 80% results.
And then as you keep plugging along, then you say, okay, like, Yeah, lighting does matter.
So even me, I went from use Periscope iPhone.
Great. That's what I did.
I didn't always look good and the lighting was bad.
Great. Now I have a professional home studio.
Next year, I'll have something else, right?
So you do want to make those gains.
But fundamentally, you have to say, what is something that I can do that will yield maximum results?
And for most people, quite frankly, it's just get off the couch.
Or Jordan Peterson would say, clean your room, right?
Because what happens is, as you do that, then you start improving.
You go, oh yeah, so I did my first podcast, I watched it, and Shauna says I talk with my hands too much.
Maybe I do, maybe I don't.
Well, how about you do the podcast first?
How about you do the videos first?
Yeah, just an object that is in motion tends to stay in motion, and an object that is at rest tends to stay at rest.
And this perfectionism, you know, the idea that the perfect is the enemy of the good.
There's something that really struck me when I was younger.
I think it was some band, I think Huey Lewis and the News or something like that, which kind of seemed to come out of nowhere.
And when you look into most bands, what you do is you look back and you see, okay, well, they spent 10 years playing pubs.
You know, like Katy Perry, you know, started writing songs when she was like nine years old.
And if you look at like InXS, the band, they ended up, you know, they were playing the backwater bars in the Outback in Australia for like years and years and years.
And that...
When people kind of erupt into your consciousness, it looks like they've just appeared out of nowhere, like they just teleported into fame and competence, but they didn't.
And recognizing that there's just, there's a long grind.
In order to get sudden, quote, sudden success, people want, of course, a sudden success because when you're on the receiving end, it looks like they just teleported in.
But there's a lot of grind and a long way to go to get there.
And, you know, that journey of a thousand miles, just start walking.
Just start doing something.
Find out what you like.
Find out what the audience responds to.
Find out what you're passionate about and willing to risk for.
Because if you're not willing to risk, you can't possibly succeed.
And that... Slow and steady wins the race aspect.
I think people look at that and say, well, that's a hell of a long way to go.
And it's like, well, sure, which is why you should stop walking right now.
Well, so there's three points to that.
One is that your idea of what is great.
Well, guess what? Other people have their own opinion, right?
So first of all, if you think, well, I can't do it because I'm not good enough.
Well, you might be right or you actually might be wrong.
Some of the stuff that I've done that I thought was bad, the market said we love it and they rewarded them.
And then two is what you talked about, the 10-year overnight success.
Oh, where'd that guy come from?
Out of nowhere. No, he didn't.
He was 10 years in obscurity.
I was an obscure blogger since I was like 25.
I didn't really blow up until I was probably like 35, 36, okay?
And then, of course, the 10,000 rule.
How are you going to get into your 10,000 hours of practice if you're not doing it?
And what we have to do is we have to practice in public.
And then I guess finally to touch on the point where people see what we have, So I put it this way.
I go, you don't want to do what I do.
You want to have what I have.
And here's what I mean. People go, Mike, how can I do what you do?
You mean pick up a phone and talking to it?
You pick up a phone and you're talking to it.
And to have a blog? Yeah, you buy a domain for $10, install WordPress, and you just write thoughts.
So you don't want to do that.
You want to have what I have, but What people don't understand is what you and I have.
Oh, it seems cool. Oh, we have an audience.
Well, yeah, but it isn't cool.
People harass your family.
The death threats aren't cool.
The having to have home security installed isn't cool.
The having to have a security guy come around.
So the rumors and lies that people spread about you and then how that gets to your family and then your family starts asking your wife questions.
So if people were just thrust into what you and I have, they would actually be crushed because you wouldn't even know how to handle it.
When you level up, so actually the worst thing that can happen is if you do have that instant superstardom, because then suddenly you're like, wait a minute, how do I deal with vultures?
How do I deal with parasites? How do I deal with the media?
You don't even know, but you and I, we've leveled up progressively.
So now it's just like, oh, okay, so this is just a different way of dealing with the problem that I've dealt with on a smaller scale.
So it's actually better to level up progressively over 10 years.
Yeah. I mean, I remember way back in the day, one of my early videos, there was a guy I knew who was talking to me and said, Yeah, but your video, man, it did like 500 views.
That's really sad. And now you could look at that and say, well, compared to this person or that person, that's not very much.
And I said, well, wait a minute, wait a minute.
So if I went to go and give a speech and there were 500 people in the audience, would you consider that a failure?
And he's like, well, no, that would be pretty good.
And it's like, so that's my metric.
You know, I'm reaching 500 people without even having to travel.
And there you build up.
From there, you know, you don't get to 100 million plus views and downloads, you know, that way.
You just keep focusing and just get stuff done.
That is really, really the important thing.
You know, it's an old saying that says, if you want something done, give it to the busy guy.
Because people who are in motion are going to get things done.
You generate excitement, you generate enthusiasm, and you generate momentum.
And people want to join the winning team.
And so for me... There is, for the most part, a kind of desert you have to cross.
And the desert is you're putting out a huge amount of effort and you're not getting much in terms of feedback.
You're not getting much in terms of return.
Now, you'll have a few dedicated people early on.
Hold on to those people. The people who love what you do from the beginning, they're the way, they're the water bottles, in a sense, you drink to get across the desert to more general popularity.
But if you have a goal in you that is not based on vanity, if you have a goal in you that's based on making the world a better place...
You don't have the option to sag and to stop because you have a goal to make the world a better place.
If you're like a doctor and you have a pill that can cure some deadly disease and you got a giant sack full of them, well, you could sit there and say, my legs are tired.
It's like, yeah, but I'm doing something really, really important.
And that's what powers your legs.
And I think a lot of time people procrastinate because they want to make it about themselves.
They want to make it about their vanity.
Like in England, the kids, they did a survey.
And they said, what's the number one thing that kids want?
To be famous. Well, for what?
For what purpose?
Well, for vanity, for money.
If you make it about you, you'll almost never have the locomotion to sustain the cross across the desert of obscurity to sort of the lush oasis of having an effect.
And if you make it about you, you'll never have the willpower to continue.
And not only that, but those who want fame don't realize that If you want to be loved, then that means hate is going to get to you.
See, this is another thing a lot of people don't understand is that compliments for me are nice.
I like to get compliments. But even when I get a bunch of them and, you know, you'll read them, you know, I'm a human being.
I'll go read all the five-star reviews about Gorilla Minds on Amazon, feel good about myself.
But then I go, wait a minute.
If you let compliments define who you are and how you feel about yourself, then when the hate comes in, then the hate is going to have more impact than it would.
So a lot of that has to come to transcend your own ego, because the bigger your ego, the more the mob can control you.
You have to fundamentally have a philosophical belief system and believe that, look, what I'm doing is right, and what I'm doing is making the world a better place.
So I know a lot of people are going to love that, a lot of people are going to hate that, but I have to stay the course and realize that I'm trying to move The world and move people into the right direction.
In doing that, you're going to get love.
Don't let the love inflate your ego too much.
You're going to get hate. Don't let the hate bring you down.
You have to stay grounded. So that's even sort of one of my mantras, is that I just try to stay grounded.
I don't ever try to let the love inflate me too much, and I'll never let the hate bring me down too much.
Yeah, I mean, when I, I mean, it was quite a love bomb at a night for freedom in New York, you know, you got hundreds of people saying, you know, you changed my life, I'm a better person, my kids are being raised well, I got married, I had kids because of the principles I learned through your show and so on.
It's wonderful. Now, I mean, I could sit there and say, well, that makes me a great person.
And I don't really experience it that way at all, Mike, the way that I experiencing it.
The way I experience it is they have gained a respect for philosophy, for rational thinking, for clarity, for honesty.
And so if the show has helped create that sort of North Star for them to guide their lives by, fantastic.
It's not about me. The last thing I'd want is for people to sort of sit there and say, well, I'm going to ask Steph.
What would Steph tell me to do?
It's like the whole point is to empower people to make decisions for themselves.
You don't invent the scientific method so everyone runs to you and asks you what's true or false.
But so they have a methodology for themselves to figure out What is right or wrong?
But the hatred stuff is really important.
And I think you get even more than I do, Mike.
And that's a big question because it does come as a surprise for a lot of people.
Because when you start out, you're surrounded by people who support you, and then you get out into a wider arena.
And, you know, people call in this crazy rage of airstrikes down upon public figures, particularly those involved in this kind of empowering work.
The way that I work with it is to recognize that I am a proxy for what they dislike of themselves, that it's really not about me.
They don't even know me.
I'm just some guy. I'm a bunch of pixels on the screen.
I'm a guy doing what he thinks is the most important thing to do on his own integrity.
It doesn't have anything to do to me.
They can't possibly hate me because they don't really know me.
But the question is, where do you think the hatred comes from?
What has it fueled by Why?
Because I think if people understand that, they'll have a lot more courage in the public sphere, because they'll be able to put that dislike in context.
My funniest story about haters, actually, is I was about to give a talk at Columbia University, and I was over by a side door, and I saw three people walk by me and mask up.
It was Antifa protesters.
They were coming to protest me.
I was standing outside in a suit, and they looked at me, and then they looked away and kept walking forward.
And I was with a wonderful person, Rita, and she goes, they don't even know who you are.
I go, yeah, you're right.
They just walked right by me.
It wasn't like pitch black or anything.
They walked right by me, saw me in a suit, looked at me, looked away to march.
So the people who are protesting you, they don't even know why.
They don't even know who you are.
They don't even know what you stand for.
It's just blind hatred, it's blind groupthink.
And for them, fundamentally, the protesters, They don't believe in anything.
They're just trying to hang out.
They're just trying to hang out with each other.
They don't even know why they hate you.
Right, right.
Yeah, they're just told that you're some bad person and they come up with all the negative pejoratives so that they have an object.
But you must be incredibly frustrated in your life to have that level of hatred towards...
I mean, it's not like you and I are kings of the world and have our direct hands on the massive levers of state power or, you know, we can't print money at will like the Federal Reserve.
Like, we don't actually have...
We have the power of influence. We have the power of ideas.
We have the power of conversations.
The real powers...
That B, I mean, I think are well worth being afraid of and being angry about, but you and I being the targets, it seems kind of characterly in a way because what is so bad about what it is that we're doing?
I'm trying to teach people to think rationally, and clearly you're trying to get people to overcome their inhibitions and live life of power and so on.
It's kind of hard from this side of things to kind of see, okay, well, I mean, you know, if we were talking about doing terrible things to large groups of people, sure.
I mean, I could understand it.
How is it that teaching people to think critically and overcome inhibitions to live a powerful life, what makes that so terrible for people?
Well, human nature, I call it the law of reflection, is best understood in terms of you see a guy in a Ferrari and somebody goes, oh, that's a little, you know, what car, right?
He must have a small something.
He's compensating for that.
And you go, I don't know, maybe he just likes cars.
Maybe he worked his whole life and he bought a used Ferrari or maybe that was really what matters to him.
But the idea is if you see an image of a person, you feel insecure about it.
So you want to, oh no, I don't want to admit why I feel insecure.
Maybe I don't feel like I could ever buy a car like that.
So with you, if you're telling people, hey, live human rationality, you're showing courage.
People Then they see fear back.
They're like, well, he's not afraid.
Why am I afraid? Me, I think the reason they hate me, and people think I'm crazy, but you know, you tell me what you think.
I think people hate me because everybody knows I talk a little funny, myself included.
And you know what I do every day?
I get up and I talk. And they go, well, wait a minute.
How dare he?
How dare he do podcasts and videos?
How dare he get up and not let this bother him?
Well, what they're really saying is, well, he's doing something I believe that I should be able to do.
He's showing great courage every time he gets up and talks.
I feel like a coward.
Well, rather than say, well, why do I feel like a coward and how can I show more courage?
I'm going to lash out on him for making me feel that way.
No, that's very interesting.
Because everybody has a particular kind of physical flaw, but they can look in the mirror and say, well, here's why I can't do X. You know, I got an overbought.
I'm bald! I'm old!
Rather than the demographic relative to a lot of people.
And, you know, I get a lot of bald jokes and so on.
How can you handle it? It's like, first of all, it's fantastic because I could just get up and do a video.
Okay. I mean, there's not a lot of styling going on here.
I know that you use a towel or something sometimes.
A towel and some coconut juice or something.
But people, they stop themselves because of perceived physical flaws.
I mean, the funny thing is, I've never actually heard what people talk about with regards to your voice.
I'm really focusing on the content of what you're saying.
I could care less. It doesn't matter.
But if you have a physical flaw, which everyone does, of course, and everyone thinks there's some level wherein your physical flaws won't matter, and that's bullshit.
You know, I get a pimple, who cares?
But if you're a face model and you get a pimple, well, you're doomed, right?
Or if you get to be over 28 or whatever it is, right?
So everybody has a level of physical perfection that is going to elude them based upon where they are.
And when you have just publicly saying, well, I don't care if I speak funny.
I don't care if I'm bald.
I don't care if I'm older than the usual demographic.
I don't care. I don't care at all.
I don't care if I don't have, you know, an entire boatload of credentials behind me to allow, because that actually makes me work harder.
You know, the stuff makes me work harder.
The fact that I don't have a set makes me work harder to be more animated, to have better analogies and metaphors and so on.
And so if you don't Let yourself be stopped by little things that are outside of your control to a large degree and fundamentally unimportant, then I think that does challenge people who use that excuse of imperfection to avoid being in motion.
See, and that's the hate.
The hate is, like, who do you think you are, right?
Well, what they're really saying is, I feel small.
Another kind of silly example is when I was out, you know, dating or whatever, I would go inside and I'd wear aviator glasses with reflective lenses.
And I would have quite attractive girls say, really?
I can't believe you're doing that.
And I was like, why are you getting so mad, right?
Well, because sociologically they were thinking, well, he must think that he's better than everyone else.
Because the rules say you can't wear aviator sunglasses.
I'd wear a cowboy hat. I would just do something that I would stand out in a ridiculous manner.
And it does work.
Because they would say, well, who do you think you are to challenge our mores, our norms?
Because people believe...
That whatever their ideas are, are their ideas.
Well, you're supposed to walk, talk, act, look, speak, behave in a certain way.
Well, because they were designed by society to do that.
So they're called, I don't know if you've ever read his book, Howard Bloom, The Global Brain.
He calls them conformity enforcers.
So the idea is that if you're a non-conformist, which you clearly are, if you're a non-conformist like I clearly am, you're going to trigger, it's almost like a biological hive mind process where the Conformity enforcers are going to come in and say, how dare you?
How dare you not conform?
How dare you think you can teach philosophy if you're not at Harvard?
But then when you join Peterson and you taught psychology at Harvard, they go, he's a YouTube star.
It's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
It's like, well, wait a minute here.
You're saying Molyneux is in a PhD at Harvard, so he can't talk philosophy.
But Jordan Peterson is a PhD or whatever, and he taught at Harvard, but he's just a YouTube guy, right?
So they're not even honest in their critique.
Well, and this is the funny thing, too, because when I was younger, I used to dislike that process.
And I'd say, well, I have good arguments.
Why are people, like, filling it up with sophistry and garbage and so on?
But as I get older, which is not an argument, it's just an observation, but as I get older, Mike, I actually really respect that social pushback process.
Because changing society is really, really, really risky.
And it goes wrong a lot more often than it goes right.
I mean, if you look at the various revolutions and deposings and coups and so on throughout history, 99 times out of 100, it turns a moderate shitshow into an unbelievably deep, danty, scrape-in-the-bottom-of-the-barrel-of-hell shitshow.
So most times it goes wrong.
And so I think that there should be a huge amount of stability within society.
Because it works for a lot of people for a lot of time and those of us who come along who wish to change things, I think that there should be a lot of pushback.
Because, again, most times people get it wrong and things get worse for the average person.
And so the fact that there's a lot of pushback...
I think is good because it means that only the people who've got really strong wills, who have a higher mission, a higher purpose, and are really certain about what they're doing, for better or for worse, only those people are going to push through.
So the sort of phalanx that guard the throne of changing society, like the Praetorian Guard, I really respect them and welcome them now because I think that they should drive a lot of people away who aren't really committed to the vision that they want to bring forward to society.
And those who get through can walk through anything.
Yeah, that's sort of the Burkean argument about why you're conservative, a natural sort of conservativeism, which politically I'm not conservative per se, but yes, the French Revolution was a disaster.
People were chopping each other's heads off, right?
Pol Pot, complete disaster.
All this revolutionary thinking, generally a disaster.
Society should be naturally conservative, which just means stable.
Hey, can you get up?
Can you exchange in free commerce?
Can you buy and sell goods?
Can your, you know, wife or daughter walk around at night without reasonable fear of being randomly attacked or assaulted?
Things like that. So you should have a stable society where there is a high degree of conformity.
And then if you do want to come in and challenge them more, it is to be a nonconformist.
So, right, that's why where Jordan Peterson comes in is postmodernism went too far, right?
Where they said, let's just deconstruct everything.
Well, no, I mean, we do believe that Jim Crow laws were wrong, right?
And you would say, well, Jim Crow laws are wrong.
We should change those laws, right?
But what happened is people go, well, whatever system enabled Jim Crow laws to happen must be deconstructed, so let's just burn it all down.
And you say, well, actually, if you burn it all down, you'll probably have another civil war, and it'll lead to real problems, right?
So postmodernism said, well, here's something about society that's bad rather than fix that problem.
Let's just deconstruct the whole thing, tear it all down.
And when that does happen, yeah, you now have the global brain and the hive mind and everything.
It goes crazy.
And then everybody goes into, you know, balkanizes fractures and starts killing each other in their own small little groups.
Yeah. It's this deep goddamn pendulum swing.
Drives me crazy. And I'm like this guy striving with all his might to try and slow the pendulum in the middle.
It's like, well, there's racism in American society.
Okay, well, let's try and deal with that.
Okay, we're now going to open and subsidize the importation of millions and millions and millions of people from the third world.
It's like... I think that may be considered a bit of a swing too far.
You know, it's like, well, women don't have access to all the same rights and opportunities as men do.
It's like, okay, so the solution to that is to create a massive gyneocracy that relentlessly promotes the superiority of women.
It's like, can we just slow down in the middle a little bit here?
Well, blacks are underrepresented in certain groups, so let's create massive affirmative action and force employers to hire them, thus creating a huge amount of racial tension.
It's like, can we just kind of stop a little bit in the middle here and have balance the revolution It seems never knows when to stop because it becomes an industry, especially when it's paid for by the state.
It becomes an industry that is detached from the needs of the people and the balance of the society.
And it goes from a necessary compensation to a crazy tumor that threatens everything.
And part of that just human psychology is if you tell people, people go, how do I change my life?
Right? Like as my mindset work, I'm like, well, you don't change your life.
You get off the couch, you go to the gym.
Well, what do I do at the gym? I want to bench press 500 pounds.
You don't go to the gym and bench press 500 pounds.
Just go to the gym and walk around.
And people think that's like the dumbest thing I've ever heard.
And I go, when's the last time you've been to the gym?
Well, you know, I used to go 10 years ago.
I go, well, how about, because I know that if you just go to the gym and walk around, eventually you're going to be like, well, what's this thing?
Or what's that thing? And then the rest will fall into place.
So you don't change your life.
Get off the couch. Or with Jordan Peterson, like, People go, just clean your room, right?
Just the idea that once you clean your room, then you're going to say, oh, my room's clean.
I'm a little bit more organized.
Well, maybe I should decorate a little bit better.
Maybe I should do this. It's those habits you develop in the process.
But unfortunately, people don't believe that gradual improvement is possible.
They believe we need a revolution.
We have to have a revolution or else we'll never get women's rights.
And then you realize, like with the Me Too stuff, it went from legitimate...
Stories of abuse and harassment that should not be tolerated.
To, well, you know, 30 years ago I was taking a shower.
People are like, wait a minute, nobody even remembers the way you were 30 years ago, right?
To now anybody can say anything.
And then, of course, the backlash is, as Ariana Huffington tweeted out, men are now three times less likely to mentor women.
Because men are now terrified.
And people go, well, they shouldn't be terrified.
Well, in a perfect world, women would not falsely accuse of men.
And men would not harass women.
They would respect them as peers and colleagues.
That would be great.
But we do know that we have men who do commit abuse, and we do have women who make false allegations.
And if you just say you have to believe anything, like that is this story, for example.
Well, you know, he was raping me as I gave him oral sex.
It's like, well... How does that figure, right?
So now if you just have a bad date, somebody can go to the media, and then that becomes rape.
So yeah, men are terrified of being with women, and now men don't want to mentor women.
So great job, Me Too.
Let's close off with this question of procrastination, which...
Is something that I think it's that sort of one central devil that's got his tentacles wrapped around the neck of potential.
It would be procrastination.
And it's the people, like everyone knows that deep down you have something to offer the world.
It may not be spectacular, it may not be earth-shaking, but so what?
Everyone has something to offer the world.
And I do believe that we have a kind of obligation to bring our talents to bear on making the world a better place for the basic reason that we've inherited the freedom to do so.
By people who made that striving themselves.
Procrastination. You know you've got something to do.
You know you've got something that you can offer.
But it's easier to play a video game or to stare at the television or whatever it is.
Do you have that temptation?
Do you know people who you've helped overcome?
And what's the best way to just get that spur into the ass of people?
Of course, I'm a naturally extremely lazy person.
Which, that isn't self-effacing.
It's actually true. I'm a naturally...
I'm a naturally lazy person, so I have to overcome procrastination pretty much every day in my life.
Now, as you do create a positive feedback loop where people are like, oh, come on, Mike, do a video, you know, then you don't want to let people down and like, okay, okay, you know, I don't want to do a video today, but sure.
So once you're in the feedback loop, it changes.
But what I tell people is the great, greatest thing I ever read I wish I'd come up with was that hell is what happens when you're in your deathbed and you meet the person you could have become.
And one day, one day people are going to look back and you're going to wonder, well, maybe I could have done something.
And when that happens, it's going to be too late.
There's no time like today.
The person you're going to become isn't going to be brought into being unless you start working on that person today.
And maybe, maybe one day you'll be confronted with what you could have become.
That's a very powerful thing.
It's a very powerful thing. Yeah, it's a very powerful thing, and I'm reminded of an article I read many years ago.
I've mentioned this on the show before.
And procrastination doesn't necessarily have to do with massive ambition in the world.
It can simply be, I want to improve my relationships.
I want to be more present.
I want to be more honest.
I want to be who I am and not just a conforming mirror to other people's expectations, to actually self-actualize, to be who you are and vocal about what you think and with the willingness to correct and be corrected.
And I do remember reading an article about a woman who was retiring and she was clearing out her office and she was going through all the memos and all the little reports and all this crap that she'd written over the decades.
And she was looking back and she came upon one report and she was about to put it in the shredder because that was kind of her job was to shred everything that wasn't.
And she said, oh yeah, this man, this was like 20, 25 years ago.
I remember this night directly because my daughter was opening in her school play and I couldn't make it.
Because I was working on this report.
Now my daughter to this day remembers me not being there for the first half of that play.
And now this report, which everyone's forgotten about, is now going in the goddamn shredder.
And working on your relationships, you know, relationships can be an incredible boost.
They can also be an incredible limitation if you're around people fundamentally opposed to who you are and you're not aware of it.
And so the procrastination doesn't have necessarily something to do with, you know, building some new philosophical system or holding a knife for freedom.
It can be just, I'm sick and tired of not being honest in my relationships.
And that dishonesty, that self-erasure is fundamentally required by the expansion of the powers that be of control over you.
If you're not yourself, What do they care if they take away your rights?
If you have nothing original to say, what do you care if there's no freedom of speech?
If all you're going to do is conform, what do you care about voluntary association or freedom of association?
So become who you are and become honest and speak the truth about what you believe.
That's the foundation for actually valuing the freedoms that our ancestors fought so hard to give us.
Yeah, the revolution starts with you.
Any procrastination starts with you.
Don't change the world, change yourself.
Don't worry about—if you can't change yourself, for example—and this, by the way, is why I have much more tolerance of people within their own—you know, I have a large degree of tolerance for weird people, and primarily because I know how hard it is to change myself.
The idea that I'm going to change every person that I ever meet— It's, to me, insurmountable.
The idea that I'm going to completely change the world strikes me as odd.
And yet, here you and I are.
We have been changing the world.
But that all started 10, 15, 20 years ago when we first looked in the mirror and decided to change ourselves.
It's a funny thing, too. I mean, it's a very common belief, or at least I wish it were more common, that if you can't manage your own feelings, you end up having to control other people.
Like if you can't manage your own sense of insecurity.
Let's say you're jealous, right?
You have a tendency towards jealousy and you're in a relationship.
If you can't find a way to manage and rationalize and deal with your own paranoias about being jealous, let's assume that your boyfriend or your girlfriend is not cheating, then you end up having to control your partner's behavior.
Oh, you can't go out to this place.
You can't go out with this person because you can't manage your own feelings.
You end up controlling other people.
But the amazing thing for me when I really began to start working on changing myself, Mike, was the humility it gives you about institutions' capacity to change the world.
That nothing ends up with a greater skepticism towards central planning and government control of this, that, and the other when you start to change yourself and you realize how difficult it is.
The idea that some centralized institution can wave a magic wand of bureaucracy and change the world for the better completely evaporates from your mind, which is why I think people who pursue self-knowledge end up being skeptical of these big, giant government institutions and social engineering monoliths.
And I guess a great way to conclude our conversation is if you like this conversation, why don't you come meet us in person?
Right. We'll be there. In the flesh.
3D. In the flesh. Yeah.
All right. So it's a knifeoffreedomdc.com.
Please bookmark and check out Mike's excellent blog, cernovich.com, twitter.com forward slash cernovich.
Mike, it was a great pleasure. I guess we'll be seeing you in two weeks and change.