Aug. 25, 2018 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:18:54
4177 Prepare Yourself | Mike Cernovich and Stefan Molyneux
What is your deepest fear and how can you face it? Is it possible to reinvent yourself through the power of story? What is a Strange Loop, and what does it have to do with mindset? Find out the answers to these questions and more in Mike Cernovich's Mindset Master Class, available for pre-order now: http://gorillamindset.com/class/Mike 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.” Twitter: https://twitter.com/CernovichWebsite: http://cernovich.comGorilla Mindset Masterclass: http://www.gorillamindset.comPeriscope: https://www.periscope.tv/CernovichYouTube: 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
Hi everybody, it's Stefan Molling from Freedom, Maine.
Hope you're doing well here with Mike Serinovich.
I'm sure you know him, but just on the off chance you don't.
He's a 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 the producer of the film documentary Silenced, Our War on Free Speech, and the upcoming imminent, can't wait to see it, hoaxed the media's war on truth.
And he's also got a new... Yeah, we have...
You, all of us, we've had a busy year.
We had New York event.
Yeah, we've been... DC. We've been around, man.
We've been around, so... It's what I always tell the people who are watching these videos.
Don't just watch the videos.
Say, hey, if they can go make moves in life, I can go make moves in life too.
Oh yeah, you never lose any weight just by flipping through a diet book.
You actually have to do stuff in your life.
But what I wanted to start with, before we get to the mindset stuff, let me know if you think this makes sense.
If you want to paint a picture, you have to have an easel, right?
You have to have something that you're going to put your canvas on so you can start painting.
The easel's got to be anchored on the floor.
And for me, I think a lot of people try and jump past physical health, exercise, you know, getting your hormone levels right, making sure you get a full physical checkup.
So before we just jump into the mindset, I wonder if you could talk a little bit about the base of the mind, where the relationship is to the body and your potential.
Yeah, sure. One of the myths that unfortunately has not died off, even though it's been disproven by science, is mind-body dualism.
The ghost in the machine, the idea that we're just this conscious soul with no weight moving around this body and we can tell the body to do all these things when, in fact, it just isn't true.
Your mood, your mood, your soul, your spirit is all influenced by your physical body and your physical health.
And if you don't take care of your body, you're also not taking care of the mind.
And again, that's been proven empirically just in terms of dementia.
If you are overweight or obese, you're more likely to develop dementia and then that magical mind or soul that you think you have suddenly doesn't work that well and that's because of physical neglect.
So you see a lot of People who are more intellectual that don't lift weights and, in fact, are a little judgy-judgy.
Oh, what kind of brutish meathead would lift weights and go to the gym?
Well, actually, if you want to be more intelligent and more high-conscious, then you should be lifting weights.
Well, that is something that I also find quite surprising.
I have been, since my mid-teens, with very, very few exceptions, mostly due to injury, but I've been constant in the gym for...
35 odd years.
And it is really, really important.
If you feel strong, if you feel trim, if you've got good muscle definition, it just changes the way that you approach the world.
And it also changes the way the world views you.
It's very tough to say to people, listen to me as a wise sage of the internet, if you're jowly, if you're heavy, if you're out of shape and so on.
And like no one's saying you've got to go full six pack or anything like that, but at least be reasonably trim and healthy.
It helps your own self-credibility and it sure helps your credibility in the world.
And we can say, oh, that's terrible.
It's so shallow. It's like, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well, that is just the way of the world and you can't will it away.
Yeah. I always love when people complain about the way the world is.
Well, that's like, okay.
And, you know, your point, you have a bigger point.
Oh, it shouldn't matter.
Okay, great. Thanks for sharing your opinion, but yeah, it doesn't matter.
And moreover, in terms of your physicality, there's a term for this even called embodied consciousness, which is what it sounds like.
Your consciousness is embodied in a physical form, and that's why if you're physically bigger, you're more prone to take more risks.
The world just looks less scary.
A lot of this is actually Unconscious when you get bigger and stronger when you walk around you just do things because I've been fat I've been fit the toughest I was I was 163 pounds was probably when I was I beat up my current self easily but when you get bigger just the way you engage with the world differs and that's because your consciousness is being reprogrammed through the efforts of your physical body so it literally does And reshape who you are as a person,
your physical self and the physical activity you engage in.
Well, and we're just talking about the basics too, like taking good care of your teeth.
And skin care is also very, very important.
If your skin feels flexible and subtle, I know when I'm about to do a show, I actually have some moisturizers down here in the studio.
Because if I'm about to do a show and my skin feels tight or odd, I need to limber it up so that I can be more expressive and so on.
And It is a kind of funny way to get to wisdom from the outside in, but man, it has an effect.
Even if all it does is get people to listen for three more minutes, isn't that worth it?
Well, and there's also the issue of low-grade inflammation.
So most people are sick and don't know it.
And what I mean by that is when you are at the gym and you're active and you're taking your fish oil and you're living a clean life and you're not just eating gunk and not doing anything, well, you feel amazing.
You just feel great.
Like, every day I feel great. But I actually got out of shape very, very badly earlier towards the end of last year and the beginning of the year because wall-to-wall traveling, making a film, doing everything, and then my come-to-Jesus moment Was when I watched The Rough Cuffer Hoaxed.
And I was like, oh man, I look busted.
It actually adds to the aesthetic of the film because it's a grittier film.
But I looked at myself and I was like, damn bro, you gotta get better.
And then I started getting back in shape and then you feel better.
And then when you feel better, you're more optimistic.
And then when you're more optimistic, things that might seem dark or pessimistic just aren't.
And so much of that does happen through, you know, there's a concept that Doug Hofstetter has talked about, I think that's how I say his name, it's called The Stranger Loop.
And M.C. Escher and other photos show where if you go to the top of it and you try to find out where it begins, you find yourself at the bottom of it.
And that's sort of like our mind, which is, if you try to say, well, what's your mind?
Well, it's these biological processes, it's your DNA, it's your environments.
Epigenetics and how your genes manifest themselves and deal with reality, your physical thing.
So then when you try to find it, you go to physical processes.
But if all you look at physical processes, you find this epiphenomenon of yourself and who you are.
So that's always in flux.
And that's why if you take care of your body, your mood is built.
Well, if your mood is better, you're going to want to read more books.
You're going to want to talk to more people.
You're going to maybe want to take trips and take It's funny, too, because for me, I've always wanted to be anything that stands between me and Or the message and the audience.
Anything that stands between the message and the audience, I just want to, you know, window panes, like squeak that right out.
And for me, you know, if I was overweight and so on, you see these guys, they stand there with their arms kind of like, they're folded the arms over their belly.
And it's like, you know, we can still see it, right?
It hasn't magically vanished.
And I thought, okay, well, if I go out on stage and I feel fat or I'm afraid of being judged as fat or half the comments in the video are going to be about being fat or something like that, that's a distraction.
And if you have a good enough message, don't you want to have nothing stand between you and the audience for your message?
And if there's something that you could do, and I'm not, you know, I'm bald or whatever.
I'm not going to go get a sort of toupee or something.
That would be embarrassing. But...
If there's something between you and the audience, and the audience can be someone you want to get a job with.
It can be someone you want to go on a date with.
It could be somebody you want to befriend or a team you want to join.
It doesn't have to be some big audience in an amphitheater.
But whatever is between you and the audience, don't you want to work to just get that out of the way so that you can just talk directly to the audience and they can listen to what you're saying rather than look at who you are?
Yeah, and the judgment is always going to be there, and especially if you have a male audience.
The, you know, the judgment is always going to be there, even where, I mean, I would watch YouTube fitness channels and you could be like jacked and they'll say, well, your calves are small.
You know, our people aren't like that.
But yeah, that's really the way it's going to be is people are going to look at you and they're going to judge you and then the world is going to treat you a certain way.
And then the way the world treats you, of course, influences your view of the world.
And then you think, oh, you know, the world is like a really bad place and everything.
It's like, well, not really.
The world is just responding to you and it might not be fair.
You know, that's the biggest word that I would just like to eliminate from people's mindset.
It's not fair because it's like, well, yeah, you're right.
It isn't. But what are you going to do?
You're not going to change the world.
Change yourself. Well, this issue of fairness, oh man, it's one of the ones that I've struggled with the most and I really, really liked the stuff that was going on in the master mindset class around that because it's like that old cartoon where the woman's saying, hey honey, come to bed, come to bed. And he's like, I can't, there's still someone wrong on the internet.
And it's the same thing with fairness.
Like, I do want things to be fair.
I do want things to be just.
You know, this double standard of conservatives versus liberals just drives me kind of crazy.
It's totally wrong to mine for old tweets if it's James Gunn, but it's totally right to mine for old tweets if it's you or if it's me or something like that.
That double standard drives me nuts.
And it just is what it is.
You can point it out without it making you crazy.
Yeah, and me, I mean, the greatest thing about the James Gunn thing was the articles would say, James Gunn tweets should be ignored because Mike Cernovich has tweets.
Wait a minute. Ignore tweets, bad tweets, good tweets.
But they end up, and I guess it's probably why I have so much fun, is that you and all of us, we make the media defend pedophiles.
Right? It's like, they defended it.
They said, oh, it doesn't matter.
We made the media...
We revealed that they would.
I wouldn't say that we made them.
Okay. Well, yeah, we can word it differently.
But yeah, we got them to definitely show their cards.
Because the real...
I actually talked to multiple journalists about this, and I said, you know, you guys really did a dumb thing with the James Gunn thing.
And they're like, well, why?
And I said, you should have just did the story, say the tweets were bad, and then said I was a bad guy.
I said, but instead what you did was you created a storyline, which is that there's this flawed person named Mike Cernovich who is out there going after people posting pedophile stuff.
I said, in your mind, you just write some little dumb story and you lash out emotionally and you think you feel good because you're hurting me, but all you really did was you created a character arc.
And then people read that and they go, wait a minute, James Gunn is bad, so the Cernovich guy must be okay.
So I said, you should have just said James Gunn was bad.
And Cernovich was bad.
This just shows the world is broken.
Everybody, you know, needs to get rid of these guys.
And I said, but instead you defended him, but he was indefensible.
So just through the virtue of...
Because again, human beings are not rational.
That can make you upset or not.
So the human mind, which is not rational, is always comparing things fairly or not.
And the human mind goes, wait, they're defending James Gunn and attacking Cernovich.
Well, if I have to choose between...
Well, and that is the astounding thing.
And that was a very, very instructive sequence to anyone because it's clear as day to anybody with half a brain or anyone with a Twitter account.
It's like, if you're on our team, you can do anything.
You can pedo-tweet.
You can go to vile, horrific, to-catch-a-predator theme parties.
You can pose with friends of yours pretending to choke women dressed as little girls.
You can do anything you want if you're on our team.
To me, the underlying narrative of that, Mike, is that if you've got a lot to hide, we know which team you want to end up on because you can't get away with that stuff in conservative circles.
Man, they'll disembody you like nobody's business.
Yeah, and that's why the evil people go to the left, because the right throws people out too quickly.
I draw the line personally at Nazi salutes and stuff.
It's like, okay, so that's why...
Fair enough. Can you draw the line at pedophilia?
No Nazi salutes, no pedophile stuff.
And then, you know, you're a hardcore Maoist.
Well, yeah, Mao was technically a mass murderer, but maybe you're just wrong But we should have a couple of hard lines.
No Nazi salutes, no pedophilia.
And then everything else we can kind of argue over.
So we're willing to say, hey, no Nazi salutes.
How about you guys over here say no pedophilia?
And they're like, well, but if it's just a joke, leave us alone, blah, blah, blah.
Yeah. It's just one of these funny things where They see racism and sexism and Islamophobia everywhere they look, even if nobody else can really see it.
They see it clear as day.
And yet you scroll after scroll, pedo-tweet, pedo-tweet, pedo-tweet.
It's like, no, that's just a joke.
There's nothing to see there.
And it's like, so the evil that you're seeing is imaginary, but the evil that's right in front of you, you can't even see it at all.
It is. If you're sitting, if people are going to say you're doing dog whistles, okay, well, here's clear pedo stuff, like hundreds of them.
Hundreds! Well, they're just jokes.
There's no punchline.
There's no setup. If you just say that you're attracted to children, okay, that's not like a joke.
A joke would say, you know, there's a punchline.
There's a setup. There's an idea that is leading into something.
And if you just say that you like kids, then that's what you're saying.
Yep. Yeah, no, I mean, where's all the forgiveness for, you know, misinterpreted stuff from you and I where people could say, no, it's just a joke.
You know, even when we were actually making jokes, there's no forgiveness because it's all taken out of context.
But, oh, that is wild stuff.
All right, so let's, tempting though it is with the gossip, let's talk about some of the foundationals of mindset.
So when you were putting this masterclass together, what were your sort of major objectives?
I know you rarely ramble into things without a defined plan.
So what were you trying to get at? Right, so I told people that Guerrilla Mindset was like the beginning.
So you and I, you know, you read Guerrilla Mindset, we've talked about it, and it's very concrete.
So if you're a very, you know, a very orthodox sort of thinker, you pick up this book and you're like, oh wow, here's a chapter, here's a step-by-step guide on how to do things, and I follow this guide, and wow, amazing, my life is improving.
So with this one, I wanted...
I don't like the word esoteric.
Maybe abstract is a better word.
Refined. Refined, yeah.
I wanted to go into these really complicated problems, the heart consciousness problem, the idea that, like, who is you, right?
So when you say, I am Stefan Molyneux, I am Mike Cernovich, or I am whoever is listening, well, wait, what does that really mean, though?
Where is this you located?
Show me the you...
And let's just go deep and really, really focus on that.
So we go into the idea that you are a physical body, but also a mind.
And you're constantly, it's like that strange loop concept I talk about frequently in the book is when you try to look at your mind, you end up looking at your body.
And by the way, I don't mean that in a vain way.
I just mean biologically.
And then when you improve the biology of your body, your mind increases.
And then you start to realize, okay, that me...
I am always constantly in flux.
There's a philosophical thought experiment called NURAS boat which is what happens if you leave England and you're traveling to the US on a boat and you keep replacing parts of the boat during the trip and then towards the end of the trip when you land every original piece of wood has been replaced.
Are you still the same boat?
Our bodies are constantly having new ideas, new insights, new thoughts, new molecules, new cellular turnover.
So who you are, even though it feels fixed, right?
I feel like I'm the same guy I was in college.
But actually, I wasn't. If the me that exists talked to the me in college or the me in high school, there'd be major, major, major, major different conversations being had.
So the point I communicate is...
You are not a fixed self.
You are constantly being recreated in real time.
So why not recreate yourself rather than let the world recreate and rebuild you?
Right. There was a moment, and let me give you sort of an example of this that I got from listening and watching the masterclass, Mike.
And it was an odd thing.
You and I have touched on this in sort of personal conversations when we met in New York and in Washington.
But something that I didn't know that came up in this, and it's an odd coincidence, one of these like, whoa, simulation-style coincidences.
That you and I both went to visit our mothers in a mental asylum when we were in our early teens.
I think we were both 12 or something like that.
It's almost in the blur of history and chaos.
It's a little hard to figure out.
And you did talk about the etymology of your mother's breakdown.
And I've touched on it in mine.
It's not particularly relevant to go through here.
But we both, as in our early teens, I was 12.
I think you were 12. We're both looking at our mom in a mental asylum.
And that is very important to me.
Now, I know, and I've talked about this on my show, I've known what that's done to me in terms of I spent a lot of years fighting my mother's madness.
So taking a combat stance with the world's madness is not a massively new thing to me.
It's not like, wow, where did this come from?
Why do I have all these great skills to take on?
It's like, I was fighting, going crazy from...
Well, my earliest memory is like mom saying crazy stuff and me thinking like, whoa, that's not right.
That doesn't seem right. And then when you see how that plays out, if somebody is unable to battle, I think my mother's maybe a little bit more mental.
Your mother seemed a bit more biochemical.
If they're unable to battle it, that's where you end up.
You end up in an asylum or you end up in an institution of some kind.
But you said something there.
In that moment that really, really struck me.
And I'll give a little bit of backstory to that first.
So years and years ago, I was watching a show with my mom where the mom went crazy.
And my mom was really emotional about it.
And I said, well, what's going on for you?
And she said, how terrifying all that was for her.
Now, her kids were terrified too, but my mom didn't process the kids' side of it.
And I remember thinking, well, that seems kind of selfish and all that.
But you did say in the masterclass, you were talking, it was a bit of a throwaway thing, but I grabbed it and hold on to it because it's really, really important, where you said, imagine how it would be as a mom, as a parent, to be unable to provide security, safety, comfort, stability for your children.
And I'm like, oh, there's an example of a rewiring of an old wound so that it becomes hopefully a little bit less of a sore spot, a little bit more of a muscle.
And it's an effort of will, I'm telling you, because, you know, I'm human.
I got some resentment over those years.
But as an effort of will to say, now as a parent myself, what would it be like if I felt myself descending into madness, unable to provide stability for my kids?
What would that be like for me?
How terrifying that would be.
And having empathy for that fear was a very powerful thing for me because occasionally I can hold a grudge till it grows a beard.
But that was quite a bit of release.
So help me understand what the hell happened in my brain there because I'm not able to track it too well.
Okay, exactly. So I'm really glad that touched you, which is why I shared stories.
I mean, I go deep. Fat kid getting bullied, visiting my mom in a mental institution.
What was that like? Throughout the course, what you're doing and what worked for you is you rewired that story.
The story is true.
Your childhood is true.
But what you now have is a source of empowerment rather than a source of trauma.
You start to say, well, isn't it amazing that I grew up like that and I still have a great life and everything worked out well for me?
Now that I think about it, why would I feel sorry for myself?
I should feel sorry for this person who was struggling.
They felt helpless. They felt like they were a disappointment.
Maybe they were a bad parent.
So you've taken a trauma.
What we know is that the truth does exist, but you can change the way that you view the truth.
The truth is you grew up a certain way, certain things happen.
It cannot be changed. What can be changed is, well, how do you perceive that?
Could you perceive it through a different vantage point?
Could you flip it around and look at it differently?
And then when you say, well, actually, yeah, isn't it amazing?
I even talk about this. Isn't it amazing?
I grew up, I talked about how demons cast out of me when I was 14.
We go deep. So me, rather than say, wow, I grew up around religious kooks and didn't have a normal childhood, I'm like, wow, how many people have these stories that I had?
Isn't it really cool that all of this stuff kind of happened to me and that we can get to talk about it?
The same thing is true of my mom.
It's just in terms of...
I feel bad for her.
I don't feel bad for me anymore or pity myself that I grew up that way.
I think, God, it must have really been a very, very sad thing for her.
And then that in your own mind gives you closure too.
So by being unselfish and having empathy for the other person, you actually have closure in a way that you never could have had simply by being only looking at yourself in your own perspective.
And isn't it wild to think, and I got this thought while listening to the, um, The conversation that you were having with yourself and with the audience.
Isn't it a wild thing, Mike, to think that my commitment to sort of reason, evidence, sanity, self-knowledge, and so on, was to some degree a provocation or a response to constant exposure to chaos, insanity, madness, and so on.
In other words, the dose of madness gave me the health of sanity.
You know, like you get an inoculation and that kind of stuff, right?
And that was, I've had that kind of thought before, but you know, there's thoughts that pass by and then there's stuff that like, the birds that fly by and then the birds that land on your hand, the birds that actually land on your hand, they get a lot more attention.
And that thought really, really struck me.
About how it's so hard for me to think that there could be any gratitude for what I suffered as a child.
But given how great and powerful and wonderful my life is as an adult, what if there was a weird kind of inoculation that happened that other people...
It didn't provoke an immune system response called sanity because maybe the provocation called craziness wasn't strong enough.
Yeah, and you can choose to believe that.
That's where we talk about it's a choice.
You can choose...
to believe that it was a terrible thing that happened to you and like me when I hear people talk about their childhood I'm like wow must be nice no I don't have nostalgia I hated being a kid I hated having no control I hated not having any money I hated not Knowing if I was going to do something wrong or if I was going to commit some weird sin.
I hate it. People are like, oh, these millennials will wear onesies.
I'm like, oh man, I'm so far.
I don't ever want to be a kid again.
But when I talk about this stuff, I laugh about it because Then I think it's amazing that I was able to go through things other people didn't and it gave me a different perspective on life and then you turn a bad story because it's a choice.
You can't choose what happened to you but you can choose the way you interpret it, the way you frame it, the way that you rewire that in your own mind, the way you reprogram yourself and that's fundamentally what mindset is.
So for me Whenever something bad happens to me, here's what I always do.
First of all, I just blame myself.
Why? Delusion of control.
So it's actually blaming yourself It's actually more effective than blaming others because then at least I can cling to the illusion or delusion of control.
Like, oh, wow, I shouldn't have met that person or talked to that person or got embroiled in this controversy.
I should have done something different.
Now, whether it's really my fault or not, you know, it doesn't matter.
The idea is, okay, now I can think about moving forward.
So when things happen to me that would, like, for example, the Night for Freedom New York, right?
First venue canceled.
Second venue canceled. I'm thinking, well...
Isn't this amazing?
This is literally what I told myself.
Isn't it amazing that I get to show people guerrilla mindset in action and that I will not stop?
So that's how my brain...
The truth is it sucked.
I just wanted the first venue to go through and I wanted it to be fine.
But if you can't choose what is happening to you, then why not reframe it in a way that is positive, that's more optimistic, and then the irony...
And again, that's why it's a strange loop.
It's like, well... If I choose to think about terrible things in a positive way, then the terrible thing isn't terrible anymore.
The terrible thing becomes positive because I'm using it to level up my game and on and on and on.
And then you do that for a few years, like I have, and people think you're insane because they're like, I can't believe this is happening to you.
I'm like, I know it's great.
It really gets to test my mettle.
It really gets to show me what I'm made of.
Well, the leveling up concept is fascinating as well, that there is not an end to this particular growth and this particular challenge.
And I know one of the things, and this was really reminded for me while listening to this masterclass, I know one of the things that happened to me went something like this.
I felt like I was born into an asylum, like in my sort of family of origin.
Like I was born into a crazy place, into a place with chaos and violence and abuse and all that kind of stuff.
And I was like, oh man, I can't wait to break out.
I can't wait to be. So I went to, I did summer school so I could get out of high school early and get a job.
You know, I was been on my own since I was 15 years old.
I took in roommates. We started paying our own bills and so on.
I was really looking for that independence.
I was like, I can't wait till I chew my way I'm going to go through the rubber rolls of this madhouse and get the hell out into the world where it's going to be sane.
That was my big mirage.
I'm going to get to that.
I'm thirsty, man.
It's a desert. There's a lake right there.
And then what happened was I got out into the world like, this is just a bigger asylum.
It's not as vivid.
I'm not as subjected to arbitrary power as I was when I was a kid.
But university is full of crazy people.
You got Marxists and socialists all over the place who don't listen to reason and people don't...
You know, they make the craziest choices when it comes to dating, and they get involved in the worst conceivable messes that you could imagine, and they don't listen to reason.
And it's like, I remember getting really mad.
Like, I thought I was going on vacation, and it's like, hey, vacation turns out to be basic training.
And I thought I'm retiring from a war, and it turns out I'm just getting drafted for a bigger one.
And I resented the hell out of that for a long time.
And I was thinking about that, thinking, okay, but...
Somebody has to fight for the sanity of the world and maybe it was great in a way that I was so battle-hardened in a way that I could step into it in a way that I couldn't just survive but flourish.
Right, and that's the story that you want to tell yourself and about yourself because, yeah, the truth is the world is a very insane place.
There's really no question about it, but the world isn't going to change Unless you're able to manifest change on it.
To manifest change on it, you have to change how you perceive the world and how you perceive the challenges.
Because one thing, and this is like a very male trait because you said you got angry.
And this is a male trait that I try to break my younger men readers out of it, which is I have a logical brain.
The world isn't logical.
My logical brain hits the world.
Rage. That's what happens.
Because the world isn't behaving properly.
The way you would expect. But then I would say, well, is it rational to expect the world to behave the way you want it to behave?
Well, why is it that rational?
Right? And that's how you start to break out.
You know, I talk about simulations and other things, usually metaphorically.
And to just say, okay, the world isn't behaving that you want to behave, but why don't you find a way to change it, to make it different, to make it more in lines with what you expect it to be?
And even if it doesn't work, that's why I say in the course, even if it doesn't work, it's better than the alternative.
It might be bad all day.
Well, and this is the thing, too.
I mean, I think that there are times in your life where you need a necessary delusion.
There was an article I read many, many, many years ago.
It was probably my early 20s.
About a woman who said, you know, if I want to throw a charity ball, I mean, it's a kind of a ridiculous example, but the methodology has stuck with me forever.
If I want to throw a charity ball, I just phone people up and I say, hey, I'm having a charity ball.
You want to buy tickets? You should come to this charity ball.
It's going to be fantastic. It's going to be at a great location.
And he said, you know, the first person I call, there's no charity ball.
I'm just saying that there's a charity ball.
And next thing you know, I got 500 people to come to a charity ball.
We raised 2 million bucks and it's a wonderful thing, right?
So is that delusion?
Is that fantasy? Whatever.
And I think for myself as a kid, Mike, I had to say to myself, I'm going to break out to a sane world outside of this home.
But as I got older, I recognized that the crazy world within my home could not actually have existed in a sane world outside my home.
In other words, my mother, in sort of being violent and aggressive, you know, we were getting beaten the hell out of in apartment buildings.
My whole childhood, thin walls, you know, dozens if not hundreds of people could hear all of this violence.
Nobody called the cops.
Nobody knocked on the door.
Like, so all the clues as to the craziness and instability and moral betrayals of the world were actually embedded in everything that happened with me as a child.
But I had to pretend that there was a great place to get to that was the world, you know, like.
Like, even if you only, like, you're lost at sea or something, and you think you see an island and you just start swimming like hell towards it...
Isn't that better in a sense than just sitting, oh, I'm in the middle of the ocean.
So almost like, and I hate this because I'm a rational empiricist, but I can really see the value of the necessary illusion, but it's really tempting to get stuck in that illusion and then resent when it evaporates.
I hope that makes some kind of sense, but that's one of the things that was coming up from when I was listening to the course.
Yeah, no, I mean, the biggest BS that I say, which is true, is that I can't be wrong because Even if I'm wrong, you're going to wake up hopeful.
You're going to wake up inspired.
You're going to think you have a shot.
So even if everything I say isn't true, it is true because you do live a better life.
So what people realize and why it isn't delusional is, yeah, wake up tomorrow.
Nothing I do matters.
The world is rigged against me.
It's terrible. The media hates me.
This is sad. Okay, watch what happens to your life.
And then a week or two later, Just wake up and say, you know what?
Life is good, and I know that if I really work hard and apply myself, I'll have some setbacks, but things are going to pick up from me.
Well, one guy, one year later, one guy, another year later, I can tell you where they're going to end up.
I don't like fake it till you make it.
I don't like people who go on the internet and pretend they're multi-billionaires.
That's the bad fake it till you make it, but if you just believe in yourself...
Because even if you don't believe in yourself, well, fake it and pretend that you believe in yourself, well, then pretending to believe in yourself actually becomes a real belief in yourself.
And then you take more action and you move forward into real-world results.
And that is tough because I know what you mean.
Like, the fraud-itis of pretending to be something that you're not, I think, eats away at your self-esteem.
But at the same time, if all you are is empirical and historical, you can't build any damn thing in the future.
The first guy to build a bridge had never built a bridge before.
And if he was just historical and empirical, there's no bridge.
And so you have to imagine something that you can achieve without being delusional.
And I think that's the big challenge.
And a lot of people scare themselves away with, oh, it's too big a delusion.
It's fraudulent.
It's false and so on.
And it's like, yeah, but what's your alternative to simply work empirically, you know?
Before you can walk, you've never walked.
So if you're just working empirically, you never can walk, and you've got to have something ahead of you that's different than what was behind you.
Yeah, we don't live in a world, because in a different world, my mindset teachings would be different.
But we don't live in a world where people are just too optimistic and visionary, and everybody's trying to make something really big happen.
In your life. That's not the world we live in, where everybody's like, I can't believe it.
He's doing that, and I'm doing this, and everybody's just doing all these important big things.
That's not the world.
The world we live in are, if you tell somebody you want to do something, well, that won't work.
Can't believe you would try that.
Just follow the rules. Just conform.
Blah, blah, blah. That's the world we live in.
So that's why, because what I call like college boy questions are always like, well, you said this, I'm going to therefore present some other hypothetical thing to challenge that thing.
And my answer is, why don't you just do it this way, bro?
And then you'll see that your question is even a good question because it takes it in a different direction.
So a lot of people go, well, You know, what if everybody thought like you thought?
And it's a little Kantian, so I don't want to be too dismissive.
But I said, well, if everybody thought like I thought, then yeah, I'd probably say people are too delusional and we should be a little bit grounded on Earth.
But that's not the world we live in.
We live in a world that isn't even grounded.
We live in a world that's like in the gutter, in the sewer, where nothing matters and people are despondent and life expectancy is lowering and people are dying of opiates and everything else.
So that's a crisis. I tell people, well, yeah, let's get a few more people like us that are too visionary, too delusional.
We think anything is possible.
Let's try that for a little bit.
And then we can have that conversation.
Well, it's like saying, how would your diet book change if Americans on average were too thin?
It's like, but they're not.
So I got to write the diet book for the average obesity levels that exist in society.
And while there are a few Americans who are too thin, it's like, yeah, then they'll buy some of their different...
You know, like, I mean, you deal with the biggest problem, and the biggest problem is all the yes-but stuff.
And the yes-but stuff exists in your mind.
Well, I could do this. Yeah, how about this?
Yeah, but, you know, or the people who just kind of deflate you, and that deflation can be very subtle.
It can be an outright attack, it can be a scorn, or it can just be, here's my great idea, and it just falls into people like a penny down a well without even a plop at the end, where they just don't respond to any enthusiasm, and that kind of deadens you down.
As well. And now, I'm more ruthless in this than you are for reasons that may be good or may be bad or may be indifferent.
But I remember when I was first like, you know, I've loved philosophy my whole life.
There's this amazing new technology that I can get philosophy out to the world.
I know I've got a job, but I've got a long commute and at least I can record in my car and, you know, like...
And I was like, and I remembered saying this to people, I really want to start this show, and it's going to be really cool, and it's going to be great.
And I even got some friends involved in early recordings and had them listen to stuff.
And there was just this profound indifference, like, I guess this is your thing.
If you're into it, I guess that's great, you know, good for you.
But, you know... You know, this silence in the room, you know, the silence in the room that is the cold, clammy washcloth on the little candle of your enthusiasm and so on.
And for me, it was like – and it's not selfish because if they were enthusiastic about stuff, I'd be right behind them too.
But it's like, man, if you're in the way of me in this dream, I'm afraid you're entirely expendable.
And it's cold and it's calculated and it's ruthless.
But I'm not sure any other way to do it because enthusiasm is a very, very delicate thing.
At least before you get like now, you know, you get a half a billion downloads or whatever and views and okay, that's different.
You got that momentum.
But at the very beginning, enthusiasm is a very, very challenging and flickering little candle.
And for me, it was just like, hey, anybody who's farting on that candle, well, I guess farting would light it up.
Anyone who's blowing too hard on that candle and trying to put it out or just wet fingering it is like, sorry, you are completely expendable because I have to do this.
Well, actually, the Gorilla Mindset has a whole chapter on that, and of course we talk about it too.
No, I'm ruthless about people who just waste my time.
I'm like, what? You know, people are trying to call me.
I'm like, you're calling me about something.
I tell people this. This is a stupid thing that you are contacting me about.
This is low consciousness.
When you want to be higher consciousness, then come to where I am.
I think I even used that example, which is I'm happy to have people in my life, but you need to come up to my level, and if you're not ready and willing to come to my level, then that's fine.
You can stay where you are, but don't try to bring me down to your level.
You use the word expendable, which is I don't even think you mean that.
You don't want to use people.
You just don't want them bringing you down, being a bummer.
Because that's what happens.
Oh, I want to do this thing.
Oh, I can't do that.
I don't need to hear that. Just say thanks.
The relationship is expendable, I guess.
The people, you know, I'm happy for them.
Go off and do your thing, whatever makes you happy.
But if you're between me and the dream, the dream wins.
Sorry. That's just the way it has to be.
Well, at this point, it has a good, you know, logo or slogan, lead follower, get out of the way.
Yeah. So if you're doing your thing and I'm not really thinking it's a good idea, I'm just going to get out of your way.
I'm not going to tell you no or no.
I'm saying, cool, good luck.
And people, they want to stand in front of you and tell you why it's a bad idea.
And I talk about this in the course.
I always say I agree with the feminists on the fact that mansplaining is real.
You tell a man you want to do something and he's always going to tell you why it won't work.
And there's nothing novel or unique about telling people why something won't work.
That's what 99 out of 100 people are going to do.
So men, you know, we tend to feel special.
I really offer my criticism.
It's like, no, actually, you didn't.
You said the same thing every other a-hole out there had to say.
If you really want to, you know, be a man, so to speak, then find a way to make something work or find a way to be inspirational.
Or just don't say anything.
Just go away. Oh, this trap drives me crazy.
Well, not so much anymore.
Ever since I went to this masterclass.
But this trap of like, I've got feedback for you.
And you know it's just going to be some negative, basic bitch, nonsense drizzle.
Not enough to avoid, but just enough to just kind of clammy up your soul for the rest of the day.
And you're like, no, it doesn't help.
Oh! So I guess you can't take constructive criticism, you know, and this kind of stuff.
And it's like, you have to sell criticism, man.
You have to make me want the criticism.
Hey, I'm happy with criticism.
I criticize myself.
You know, every time I do a speech, I look it back and I'm like, I could have done this better.
Let me aim this. I'm constantly tweaking.
It's great. You know, fantastic.
But people have to earn the right to criticize me or criticize you.
You have to make me want your criticism.
And if it's just kind of negative and you don't have much to show in terms of your excellence and so on, it's like, you know, it's just clammy and it's a downer.
Well, they're losers.
I mean, I block those people and then they'll email me, why'd you block me?
And just from that behavioral pattern alone, I'm like, I can tell you it's a mess.
Because you don't have the social awareness to realize you're like a creepy dude and I don't want to be around you.
I don't want your energy. And their criticism is never good.
It's never like, oh wow, why?
Because successful people aren't out there criticizing people.
You're out there doing successful things.
You're not out there saying, Oh, you know, your shirt didn't match or the timing here didn't really work or something.
It's always some just nitpick, downer thing that actually isn't really valuable.
So there is a, and yeah, it does annoy me a little bit.
I've always told people it isn't the haters that make me want to quit the internet every day.
It's actually my own fans who just deluge me.
Like, for example, some really bad things are happening with some stalkers.
And people are like, oh, you should go to the police.
And I'm like, thank you.
They mean well.
So I take it.
I'm glad that they care enough to say something.
But it's like, yeah, I know.
I don't need a thousand people telling me this.
Obviously, we're doing things that way.
And those people mean well.
And then you have the people who don't even mean well.
And what they're always just saying to you is, well, you shouldn't, you know, have pictures of your daughter on the internet, you know, or your wife shouldn't be on the internet.
And I'm like, okay, so my wife should just like, what, wear a, you know, hide her eyes or something and go, you know, like, we live in America, my wife can be on the internet if she wants to.
So you do get a lot of that, and it gets tiresome.
Oh man. Well, this other thing too.
I mean, I had criticisms of contemporary philosophy and you know what I didn't do was stalk, harass and annoy all the contemporary philosophers telling them what they should focus on.
You know what I did? I just started doing my own philosophy show.
And this to me is one of the big rebuttals to people who are just constantly telling you what to do.
It's like, hey man, if you think there's this big market out there for something I'm not dealing with, that's called a market opportunity.
You know, that's wonderful.
You know, like, it's like if you email the restaurant that's serving French food and saying you ought to serve kebabs, and they don't listen, it's like, hey, man, go open up a kebab shop, you know, because you've got a market opportunity.
But these people, they just insist, well, you got to do shows about this, and you got to do shows about that, and your shows are too long, and your shows are too short, and your shows are too rambly.
Dude, that's a wonderful market opportunity.
If I'm not covering off something that's really, really important, that's an improvement in philosophy, man, you've just identified a massive way that you could become bigger than me, so why aren't you taking it, you douchebag?
Yeah, I always tell people, one of the things I learned is like, here's what I tell people, sounds like a good idea.
Hey, you should be doing this way.
Great, sounds like a good idea.
Go run with it.
Go do your thing.
That's the point. They don't want to do anything.
It's natural. They just want to put the brakes on you and whatever you're doing.
Their life isn't going to be better.
Your life isn't going to be better. To me, that's why so much of my mindset work is if you don't like what I'm doing, I am glad you don't like what I'm doing because now you can identify something better.
Now you can go do it and create the life of your dreams and the life of your vision.
Yeah, okay, so let's talk a little bit about this, because whenever you're out there visually on the internet, or I guess audibly as well, All of the nitpickers are like, oh, your voice is like this, or I don't like your singing, or you're bald, or you have man boobs, or something like that.
It's like there's this really relentless little tide of insects that are just kind of flying at you with these, like, not an argument, inconsequentialities.
I won't say that they totally bothered me ever.
Every now and then, it's a little bit like, well, you know, I guess I am getting older.
It's like, yeah, but I'm getting older.
What are you going to do? Beats the alternative.
And you talk about this in the mindset, but how do you deal with the, Not unimportant general physical nagging that you hear.
Well, initially, I mean, when you initially, before you fully reprogram your brain, you believe them, right?
And then you realize, no, this is just what people on the internet do.
They just make things up about you.
So for me, I just think, well, this is great.
Every person who hates me means 10 people like me because people are less likely to to complain than they are to or people are more likely to complain and praise you and then the way that I've demonstrated this empirically is that when people like when people buy a course they don't tell me they bought a course they just buy it right but if I sell a course I have a hundred people telling me you're a scammer I can't believe you're it you're a snake oil guy missing on that but I bought your course.
And so the way to do it is you have the a priori, which I'm telling people, just believe me, trust me.
The people who complain are never going to buy it.
This is just true.
Take it as an article of faith.
And then once you've done your own thing long enough, then you'll see it demonstrated empirically.
Right? You'll see it demonstrated empirically.
And then that'll reinforce the belief.
Shame. Shame, shame.
Shame seems to be like TCPIP and shame run the internet.
And this sort of public shaming, public flogging is a big, big deal for a lot of people.
And you've got some very powerful stuff to say about rewiring your brain to avoid shame.
Because, man, shame is one of the most toxic substances that can be injected into your biosystem.
Okay, so shame is physiological and emotional biofeedback from the system, from the global brain, from the whatever it is that we want to call it.
Now, if we lived in a pure, clean, functioning society, then I would not be against shame.
This actually, again, goes back to the whole idea that A lot of what I say is because it's a product of where we live.
If we lived in a moral, upright world and you did something wrong, then I would want you to feel like, oh, okay, I got good feedback from the world.
But the shame that we usually get are you're thinking for yourself.
You're seeing things and having an understanding that you shouldn't have.
That's why they don't logically argue with us, right?
Sam Harris won't debate you.
Sam Harris goes on the Joe Rogan podcast and insults me.
Well, that's shame. Because he doesn't want to argue with me.
He doesn't want to argue with you.
He doesn't want to debate you.
They want to send these emotional feelings down your spine, and then you'll just shut up.
So that's how they silence people, shaming, shaming, shaming.
So everywhere you look, you're thinking, well, I don't do that.
I might be embarrassed. So there's a number of things.
Usually, they're trying to shame you to make you conform to them.
Do you want to conform to them?
Is that what you want to be?
Do you want to be like all these other people?
Well, I personally don't.
A lot of shame, too, was created by literally, I don't really like the plantation metaphor necessarily as used for African Americans, but it is a slavery of sorts.
We're the media people.
We can say and do whatever we want.
Here's what you Plavians need to do.
We're the Catholic priests.
We can do whatever we want.
We want you to feel ashamed that you were molested because then you're not going to go to the police because you feel that shame that you have to keep quiet about it, that you can't talk about it.
So there's all these very structures and systems that you shame to manipulate us and use us And they aren't even following the rules that they expect to impose on everyone else.
So what I tell people is, you're not going to listen to this, which is why I tell people this.
Go be shameless. Why?
Well, because you're not going to be shameless.
You're going to realize that, you know, if you were rude to a friend, you're going to feel bad.
So the issue isn't that I'm raising all this army of sociopaths who don't feel any shame.
The issue is everybody listening to this is pretty nice and needs to be a little bit less nice because the world is not very nice and to be a little bit shameless.
And if you're a decent human being, then you're going to auto-regulate your And realize, oh yeah, I was a little rude to my friend.
I feel embarrassed about that.
I should talk to this friend about it.
But that's not the world we live in.
We live in the world where people don't want to do anything because they're afraid that they'll be slightly embarrassed.
Another example I give is people don't sell themselves.
Well, they're ashamed. I'm embarrassed.
What if the person says no?
I'll feel ashamed. What if people make fun of me?
What if people say I look funny, I talk funny, I'm goofy, I'm this, I'm that?
So then you're deciding then that you're going to let the culture and the society dictate your entire existence, and is that really the choice you want to make?
You and I talked about this a couple years ago.
If you had said, well, I mean, who am I to start a philosophy podcast?
I'm going to be embarrassed.
People are going to make fun of me. You never would have done it.
Even if you don't think of it in terms of being shameless, You did have to overcome a certain amount of insecurity and a certain amount of that shame reflex in order to become who you truly are.
Well, I don't have a PhD in philosophy from Harvard, so people could just say, well, you don't have the credentials.
But of course, you know, the whole point of philosophy, well, they generally study people who don't have PhDs from Harvard, like Socrates, Aristotle, Plato, and so on.
And the question is to judge the people who are judging you.
That's very, very important.
In other words, if you're being attacked by the media...
So when I was in New Zealand, I had a run-in with a reporter, Patrick Gower, I think his name was.
And after the media in Australia and New Zealand had been saying the most outlandish, horrible things about Lauren and about me, he's like, you have to show some respect.
And it's like, show some respect?
Show some respect. If respect is the issue, why haven't you taken on the media for all the terrible things that aren't true that they've been saying about me?
So you have to judge.
If the person who's dealing with you themselves don't have a sense of shame, having a sense of shame is a huge liability.
Yeah, that's exactly right.
And that's the whole point.
That's why I call shame a slave emotion.
Because it is the masters, the owners, who make you feel a certain way It's not to modulate your behavior.
It's the schools. It is the priests and the other people in power.
It is the media trying to shame you, to silence you, and to shut you up, and to make you abide by their rules.
And then you have to decide if you want to do it.
So if I were at your house and I spilled a bottle of wine, I would be embarrassed.
I'd be like, well, I'm sorry, Stefan.
I should have not got drunk and spilled a bottle of wine.
So that's a good form of shame.
And it's good that we have it, but then if I'm going to say, well, I'm not going to go do this video or apply for this job or approach this person to talk to or make this move in life because I'm afraid that I'm going to be shamed for it, then you find yourself in a cage and you find yourself as a slave to these emotions.
Well, and the media, let's just touch on that because I think that's where the real masterclass needs to be for a lot of people these days.
The media, I mean, so there's what, 200,000 fewer reporters now than there was in the year 2000.
I mean, I think anybody with half a brain has gotten out and certainly my interactions with the media, that would seem to be a pretty good metric because why would you want to walk when there's a jetpack and why would you want to be in the mainstream media when there's the alternative media where you can actually tell the truth and free of sort of collectivist control?
But the media is still quite powerful, but it's been a real tipping balance.
My last big run-ins with the media were like 10 years ago, and they were so big and alt media was so small that you really didn't have much of a chance to get your side of things out.
But we filmed the interviews in Australia and New Zealand with the mainstream media, and I checked the other day, man.
20 to 30 times the number of people are watching the original interviews than watch the resulting hit piece.
Not 20 to 30% more.
Not 2 to 3 times more.
20 to 30 times more people are watching the original interviews rather than the contrived hit pieces.
That is an astonishing flip.
I would not have guessed the ratio was that high these days.
But people seem to be so sick of it.
And, you know, anytime the media comes at me or comes at you or attacks people that I care about, I'm like, yeah, but you know what we've never done?
Never started any wars.
You know, never done any race baiting.
Never tried to get people killed.
Never, you know, called people such horrible names that it summons the feral Antifa leftists and so on.
Like, no matter what the media does to you, if you've not started a war today, you're pretty much better.
Well, yeah, I always tell people that too as I go, and we talk about this actually in Hoax, which is, you know, they always blame this pizza thing on me, which is unfair, but set that aside for a minute.
It's like, okay, So you want to compare body counts.
Okay. Stalinism.
Let's talk about Walti Durante and the New York Times.
Let's talk about Maoism.
Let's talk about the war in CNN and the first war in Iraq, the second war in Iraq.
Sure, sure, sure. So if you want to blame me for things I didn't even do, fine, fine.
I'll accept your frame for the debate.
Let's compare. And of course, they have no answer.
And of course, that is also why they're really working hard to shut down alternative media because they lost control of the narrative and they really are freaking out.
They don't know what to do and they won't debate and they want to censor, censor, censor.
And what they're starting to kind of realize, and I know this because I've been on all the big networks and all that, even if a million people watch you on CNN, they're not watching you.
50 screens are on an airport, and everybody's on their iPad, and people are on the treadmill kind of watching.
You go to a urinal, and you go to the bathroom, and it's playing in the background.
Maybe only 50,000 people are watching.
That's maybe 50,000 in terms of their intent, they're engaged.
They'll remember you said, when I went on 60 Minutes, 16 million people watched me.
It was a record. I sold no books.
Zero. None.
It was a cool guy thing that I got to do so my followers could see me in the major leagues.
That's the only reason I did it.
It was like Madison Square Garden.
If you ever had any doubt, I'm the real deal.
They brought in their best reporter to take me out and it didn't work that way.
Didn't sell any books. Didn't gain any kind of social media stuff because people who watch TV aren't engaged.
I'd rather have 10,000 people watch a YouTube video than go on a show that has 100,000 viewers.
Because those 100,000 people who watch the TV, or even a million, they're diffuse, they're unengaged, they're not paying attention, and you're just like fodder.
And now, Stefan Molyneux and the alligator attack next door, so many people don't even stop to go look into you.
So yeah, the only reason to do traditional media is if you can flip it Find your own channel and do your own thing.
But just in terms of value, it's not a credible use of your time.
And isn't that, though, I think, though, that's when I think we can see this with Alex Jones at all, Mike, which is I think that because they have so little to lose, and they recognize that they've lost power, and I think they're very much addicts to power.
I think that's when they're at their most dangerous because that's when they run to big daddy government to do or to the big tech companies to do what they can't do, which is to eliminate a competition through quality.
Therefore, they'll eliminate it through aggression.
Yeah, and not only that, but they're really looking the other way.
I want this to be evergreen and not temporal, but for those listening, some really bad videos are being made, edited about my wife, things that aren't true, things that could actually get people killed.
And the same media people trying to get you banned and Alex Jones banned, they all know about it.
They won't say anything about it.
It really is.
The media is so desperate that they're running for the government to ban people.
And then, you know, if Antifa wants to kill that guy or Antifa wants to kill another guy, well, you know, maybe we don't really support that.
But are we as mainstream reporters really going to report on that when there are so many other things to do?
It is, in a way, a very, very dangerous time because the media is not doing their job, which is to keep the peace.
The media's job is supposed to be, here's Cernovich, he's doing bad things.
Oh, here are these other people, they're doing bad things to Cernovich.
That's literally what the media is supposed to do.
Oh, Keith Ellison, he's accused of domestic abuse.
That's a pretty big story.
We ought to be on this.
People forgot about that one already.
The media moved on to something else.
But, oh, did Trump maybe use the N-word one time, even though there's no proof of it?
You know, wall-to-wall-to-wall coverage.
So, yeah, that really is a dangerous time where the media is not doing its job, which is to kind of keep everybody in line.
If we had an honest media, I would love it.
I would love an honest media that would say, hey, Cernovich, you went too far over here.
Oh, and hey, Antifa.
You guys went too far over here.
Let's kind of, you know, let's kind of play a clean game and kind of keep it here.
I would love to have a real free press in America.
Well, of course, if we get hurt or we get put off the internet, I mean, it's great for them.
There's no neutrality because we're direct competitors.
In fact, we're competitors who are kind of winning.
And so, and the way they frame these things, I mean, you've seen it and you've seen it with what happened at the De Bloor poll.
I saw it with a feral leftist attacking buses, bringing fans to come and see the show that Lauren...
And me were doing, and I were doing.
And the fact is, of course, they say, well, the way they frame it, it's always the same way.
It's, well, these horrible people have come to town, and violence has resulted.
You know, like, that's the cause, the causality.
You know, like, that's not...
That's not reasonable. I mean, if there was some feminist march and they were attacked by a bunch of men's rights activists, they wouldn't say, well, you know, some difficult and annoying women came to town and violence resulted or some people attacked a Muslim rally.
It wouldn't be like, like, so they are giving this kind of, yeah, you know, I mean, you know, the violence just seems to follow these people mysteriously because they're Nazis and, you know, it is an implicit permission, you know, pound them and we'll cover for you, man.
Yeah, violence erupted outside of an event.
No, a 56-year-old Jewish guy was walking home, and because he didn't...
This is the real, in a way, tragedy is.
At an event in New York, I had a guy who didn't even know me.
He was on a date. It was just a 55-year-old guy, 56, was walking home, and the police go, oh, no, no, don't walk over there.
There are protesters there.
And the guy goes, oh, come on, you know, who's afraid of a protester?
Because he thought they were the P-hat marchers, because the women's march I have no problem with.
You don't ever hear me complaining about the women's march.
It's quite the opposite. I'm glad that they're peacefully protesting.
It's the Antifa. So this guy, because the media doesn't report on Antifa, didn't realize, no, no, no, these aren't the women's march.
These are violent, feral thugs.
And this race is race neutral for the SPLC censors.
Because the guy who attacked him was a 30-year-old white man, attacked a 56-year-old Jewish guy who, you know, must be a Nazi.
And I blame the media for that attack.
Because that man who was attacked was not educated.
He didn't understand...
That it isn't protesters.
These are not protesters.
These are actually violent criminals.
Oh, yeah. No, they invent Nazis so they have someone to punch.
It's not like they have any big moral crusade.
They just like to be violent.
They like to aggress against people.
And they wait for the media to put the correct labels on people to paint us so that the aggressors know who and where to attack.
And it really is a sick kind of circus and extraordinarily dangerous.
And, you know, I don't wish violence upon anyone, but when people like the NBC crew end up being attacked by Antifa because, you know, 10 white supremacist idiots show up I mean, I hate to say karma, and I certainly don't take any pleasure in it, but it does seem like an inevitable blowback for feeding these monsters until they grow.
Well, that was an education for them.
I'm the same way. I disavow all political violence, and if any of my people ever did something like that to a journalist, that person would be gone immediately.
But it was an education.
Like, oh, so Antifa, they're just violent.
Oh, Trump tweets about the press and how The press is the enemy of the people, but he doesn't attack them.
These are the people who are actually attacking you.
Stefan Molyneux wants to debate you.
Mike Cernovich will debate you.
I don't want to censor you.
I want you out there with your cameras doing things.
I just want you to be honest. So it was an education for them.
So in a way, that pathetic little rally woke up, I think, a lot of people in media as to what is really happening.
And there are some good people in media Not many, but there are some, and I think they'll pick up on it.
Right. So let's give people the building blocks to an extraordinary life.
Because look, it is a great life.
It can be stressful sometimes, it can be frustrating at times, but it's a great life.
And not least of which is the satisfaction of never ever doubting whether you've had an effect on the world.
I am immensely proud of what I have done over the past 12 years as a public figure.
I'm immensely proud of my body of work.
I'm immensely proud of the positive effects I've had on families, on parenting, on society, on understanding.
It's been a wonderful ride, worth every moment.
Almost, almost every moment.
There's been a few moments, but for the most part, every moment.
And I think people look at you and say, you know, I mean, it's a great life.
It's an exciting life. It's a dynamic life.
It's a powerful life. And people yearn for it, but maybe they think that we walk on clouds or, you know, there's never any problems or it just kind of rolls into our lap or something.
What are the essential building blocks that are going to help people ascend to the heights of power?
Well, one is you have to believe in yourself and you have to believe you matter.
That's the fundamental decision that you have to make in your life is that you do matter and that your life does matter.
And because if you don't start there, the power of believing in yourself, nothing is going to happen.
If you don't believe that you matter and your choices matter, then what are you going to do?
You'll be a nihilist. You'll be one of these people, oh, you know, life is meaningless.
What's the point of life? Just some crybaby existentialist, right?
Here's what I always tell those people, too, by the way.
It's like, oh, life doesn't matter.
No, and I go, okay, cut your leg off.
What do you mean? Well, life doesn't matter.
You know, why don't you just go chop your leg off?
Well, I would never do that. It's like, okay, then.
Then quit being an existential little crybaby, thinking, you know, because the rest of Sartre, that life is, you know, purposeless and everything.
So you have to start from the belief that you are worth it, that you matter, and that you should believe in yourself.
Step one. And then once you do that, you have to, what, take action.
Small action every day.
Smaller action every day, okay?
That's where Jordan Peterson's stuff is good.
Make your bed. Have good posture.
There's a whole posture on Gorilla Mindset, which came out before Jordan's book.
Just the idea that, you know, be proud of yourself.
Walk with some kind of dignity, right?
Treat people with dignity. Treat yourself with dignity.
Treat yourself, I always tell people too, treat yourself, have a belief that you deserve to be treated a certain way with a certain amount of dignity, and treat other people that way also.
Oh, it's a great point you have in the masterclass there, which is if you spoke to a friend the way that you speak to yourself, what would your friend say?
You know, oh, it was stupid.
You did the wrong thing. You're just such an idiot.
It's like you'd never say that to a friend of yours and be a friend.
Why the hell would you ever say that to yourself?
Yeah, you wouldn't have a friend. You wouldn't have a friend.
You would have no friends in your life if that's how you talk to people.
So yeah, I'm very hard on myself.
You know, sometimes too hard where...
Earlier this year, it was actually in May, and I was like, man, you're a loser, dude.
You've done nothing this year.
And then I sat down and was like, oh no, actually you have.
But when you live on the internet, the pace of life is so fast.
It's like a week and you haven't done something really big.
And in a way, that's why I pry on the internet too much.
It does change your conception of moves.
But yeah, that's the idea.
Just talk to yourself in an encouraging way.
Yeah, you didn't do the right thing here.
Here's the way to do the right thing in the future.
Next one is you always have to have a vision for the future.
Rather than, oh, these things happened in my life.
I can't believe this stuff is going on.
No, no, you have to have a life vision.
What am I moving towards?
What am I walking towards?
What am I trying to bring myself closer to?
Positive life vision that's concrete, that's clear, That is something that you can feel, put your hands around, put your mind around.
And then you just got to walk forward to that vision every day.
A little bit every day. Patience is another key version, which is that on a long enough timeline, you're probably going to get what you got coming to you.
For better and for worse.
Yeah, for better or worse, there are exceptions.
There are people, terrible things have happened that are unfair.
Absolutely. Absolutely. As a rule, though, as a rule, if you wake up and you really apply yourself and you get on that grind, you believe in yourself, you have a vision, you're moving towards that vision, and you keep pushing forward, it might take you 10 years, it might take you 20 years, it depends on how you are, but you'll get there.
I even use the example, I ask people, how is George R.R. Martin?
And the Game of Thrones guy, he was basically a loser until he was like 58, never really had any success.
Now he's got Game of Thrones.
So George R.R. Martin is like living the dream to the extent he won't even finish his books.
And people are like mad at him.
And George R.R. Martin's like, oh, I'm so miserable because I didn't hit it big till I was in my 60s, right?
And that's where the patience comes in is that when you do finally make it, You don't cry because you didn't make it sooner.
You're like, wow, I made it.
I'm really happy. Things are really great.
So whatever struggle that you went through at the time dissipates and disappears.
So you do have to have that vision, the belief that what you're doing matters.
And then a little bit of patience and understanding that, yeah, you're probably gonna get what you deserve.
Also, I try to remind people to be very, very specific in their language.
Years ago, I was on a business trip.
It was a dicey business trip.
And I knew it was dicey going in.
Great rewards, but some great risks.
And things didn't work out. And the guy who invited me along said, man, I'm so sorry I got you into this.
I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Do not take agency from me.
Do not take agency from me.
I chose to come here.
I knew there were risks. I knew there were rewards.
So we rolled snake eyes.
But my hand was on the dice.
I chose to join. So make sure you don't strip agency from yourself.
I mean, I do this call-in show, right?
And people are like, well, we just ended up getting divorced.
It's like, no, no, no, no. Take the language of inevitability out of your life because recognize that whenever you say, well, my boss just had it in for me or things just didn't work out or it just happened.
It's like every time you use the passive voice, you're stripping yourself of your power to change things in the future.
There's this big scalding rock called free will and personal responsibility that if you grab it and take the burn and take the heat and the stink of your own smoke and flesh, you gain superpowers in the future because the passive voice robs you of the capacity to make things happen in your life.
Yeah, and that, again, that is all reasoning from the belief that you matter and, again, just blaming yourself even if it's not your fault.
Because, again, there's all these paradoxes in life, which is, you know, one of them is you learn is if you want to be selfish, you have to be unselfish.
Because for the most part, when you give people what they want, they give you back more than you thought.
And if you're always selfish and petty, you tend to be short-sighted and you tend to nurse grievances that maybe you shouldn't exist.
And the same is true of getting what you want out of the world is you think that, well, I'll just blame circumstances.
To solve my ego.
But actually, that's the worst thing you could do.
If you really want to be selfish, then you just blame everything.
You're right. Shouldn't have done it my fault.
Shouldn't have got involved with these people.
Because that leads itself to agency.
That leads itself to smarter decisions in the future.
And if you have a goal that's bigger than your own mere personal preferences, because, you know, people have a goal like, I want to be rich.
Why? Because I want to buy things.
I want to have things. It's like, do you know how you become rich?
It's you provide value to others.
That's how you become rich in an honorable rather than a predatory way.
You provide some value to other people to the point where they're happy to give you some value that they've gotten.
And if you're in it just for yourself, it's really, really hard to sustain.
Because otherwise it's like, well, I'm hungry.
Well, I ate a meal. Now I'm full.
Okay, so there has to be something that keeps you going over and above your own personal needs and preferences.
I mean, I know you have a bigger calling.
I have a bigger calling.
People who are religious have a very big calling, for better or for worse.
And if you have something that big, it can sustain you at the times when you really don't feel like doing it.
Because if it's personal pleasure, that's going to run out.
Yeah, and that's, again, the vision, because life...
I always love when people say, oh, I wish I did for a living what you do.
And I was like, well, okay, do you wish you had the five years where I didn't do anything?
Where nothing happened, because it's an inflection, where it's an S-curve, where you have nothing, and then suddenly you're like, oh, how did I get up here?
I didn't succeed, I just outlasted people.
Or I got lucky, and the timing worked, and then, you know...
Things overlapped in ways that you didn't expect.
Because there's nothing stopping it.
That's why I was loving people like, oh, I want to, you know, do news.
Like, okay, well, I mean, you can go do it.
You know, there's Fleckas. There's all these people who have done it.
And you need the vision because you're going to...
Have lean times.
You're going to have times where things just aren't going the way they should because you have a vision and the world has a vision too and you're always going to be in conflict or you're always going to be doing that dance or wrestling match.
Oh yeah, and those lean times.
They can last. You know that, I think the Game of Thrones, like seven year winter.
Oh yeah. That, I mean, when I first started getting interested in philosophy, until the time that I had a successful show was more than 35 years.
That's a long time to be circling the seal before you take a chomp out of it.
And what sustains you for that time is the love of what it is that you're doing.
And you see this all the time, you know, if you ever want humility and, you know, just look at how singers, you know, like look at Huey Lewis, look at like all these guys who are like, oh yeah, I spent 10 years playing harmonica on a street corner in Marrakesh, you know, next thing you know, I'm an overnight success.
And it gives you that kind of humility that really has you Stay consistent.
Because earlier, I wasn't successful.
I just outlasted people.
There's a lot to that. A lot of people give up along the way.
And to some degree, I think success is a last man standing kind of deal.
Yeah, I wrote for 15 years before I made any money writing.
Some people go, I want to be a writer.
Okay, write.
Go write then.
Go write for years and obscurity.
So people have a fantasy where they think they want to be a writer, but writers write.
They think they want to do something, or they think they want to be something.
And we talk about that in the mindset course, too, which is being is doing.
I want to be a writer.
People imagine you're in a cafe drinking.
Well, sure, I've written from Parisian cafes.
But you know what I did? I worked.
I still grinded away.
And when I'm not in a cafe in Paris...
Then I am in my office writing with nobody around and the lights are off or maybe just listening to a little music.
But they have this sort of ideal or idyllic vision of what it is.
And then you find out that it's not even true.
And then, again, we talk about that in the mindset course.
So maybe what you think you want, you don't know.
You wouldn't want if you had it because you have to take all the other stuff, right?
That's true. Yeah, no, I had written 30 plays.
Six novels, a nonfiction book, all without making a penny or getting it anywhere.
I mean, if you love to write, then you're a writer.
And if you just want to be a writer like some abstract thing or make money at writing, it ain't going to happen.
All right. Well, I really want to thank you for your time.
I hope that this motivates people more than just this conversation.
You know, Mike is fantastic at this kind of stuff.
So of course there is the great book, we'll link to this below, Guerrilla Mindset, How to Control Your Thoughts and Emotions to Live Life on Your Terms.
We'll also link to MAGA Mindset, How to Make You in America Great Again.
The film documentary...
Okay, spend a minute or two on this, Mike.
I've seen some of it.
It's like goosebumpingly, high-budget, chillingly, relevantly good.
And it's not a left or right thing.
It's not a conservative or liberal thing.
It's a... We gotta find a way to get to a collective truth that is less manipulated.
So, let's talk about what's going on with Hoaxed because I think it is going to be a major, major movie.
Yeah, Hoaxed is a...
It's...
Hard for me to explain because I just remember that when my wife, she watched it first, she said, this is the documentary you wanted.
And by that, it's all credit to the directors because they've created a visually compelling film shot on, you know, professional quality products, director of cinematography, on location, on set.
You know, you were interviewed in this garage-y warehouse kind of thing, which gives a lot of color and character to you.
And it has a narrative.
And the narrative is that truth is hard to find.
Truth is worth finding.
But our media is not doing a good job on it.
And in the film, we talk about a lot of issues like the Haldemar that the media, for whatever reason, wants to ignore because of communism.
People die because of communism.
They suddenly don't seem to care.
We talk about the Gulf of Tonkinism.
We talk about a lot of the wars And we kind of start to see a pattern, which is that the media wants to divide all of us.
And they lie to us to try to get us into wars to fight other people.
And that's, of course, only one part.
There's talking about financial news.
Oh, the stock market never crashes.
There'll never be a housing bubble.
And it's all set in a really cool structure with a lot of interesting people in it, including you.
Scott Adams, Alex is in it.
A bunch of people are some surprise guests that the media are going to freak out about.
We'll wait for them to watch it so that they can start freaking out about that.
So yeah, Hoax is a visually compelling film and the feedback has been universally positive.
Yeah, and it's going to be a real game changer for people's understanding of the media and its power and its weaknesses.
So the Power of Mindset Masterclass, on the verge of full release, pre-ordered now.
That's at Cernovich.com?
Gorillamindset.com.
Yep. GorillaMindset.com.
All right. Well, fantastic. Thanks, as always, for your insights, my friend.
I'm sorry about the attacks on your family.
I'm sure that they will be cleared up relatively soon, and hopefully great things will come out of it as best as can be.
But at Twitter.com forward slash Cernovich, Cernovich.com and Gorilla Mindset.
Go order this Mindset Masterclass.
It's really, really well worth your time.
And I say this as somebody who's pursued self-knowledge for 35 years.
There's great, powerful new stuff in it.
Thanks again for your time. I really, really appreciate it.
