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Dec. 30, 2018 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
29:29
4274 What Pisses Me Off About Arnold Schwarzenegger's Motivational Speech
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So I watched an Arnold Schwarzenegger motivational speech that's been floating around.
It's got millions and millions of views and he's very charismatic.
This big ancient grizzled tank of a man who has provided Hundreds and hundreds of hours of entertainment for most of us in the form of movies and speeches and other things like that.
It's a pretty good speech, but I really wanted to point out the dark spots where it's missing stuff to sort of round it out and fully flesh out what he's saying.
So there's some stuff that's really, really good.
So yeah, there's no shortcuts to success.
There's no magic formula.
You have to work your ass off and you have to organize your day.
What does your day look like? How is the time slice of every minute in your day organized to help you achieve a larger goal?
Do you have a larger goal of what you want to achieve in your life and how to get there?
Because if you don't, you're just Aimlessly wandering around, going from pleasure to pain avoidance, like a single-celled organism, pursuing food, sex, and avoiding predators.
It really isn't much of a life.
The higher aspect of our minds, our humanity, our essential humanity, is having an ideal.
And step by step, moving towards that ideal.
He says, yeah, have a goal, or you end up nowhere.
If you don't have a goal, how will you know whether you have any success?
How will you know whether you've achieved anything?
You don't really know.
He does point out, it's very, very important as well, it's kind of a chilling thing that I heard about when I was younger.
He says, 74% of people in America hate their jobs.
Now, I don't know if that's sourced or not, but yeah, the majority of people out there don't like their jobs.
Now, the question is, of course, Why are they in those jobs?
Now, for some people, and I've known a lot of people like this when I was growing up, you go to work, you punch the clock, you get your money, and then you go have your life.
You don't live to work, you work in order to have a life outside of work.
They want job security, they want predictability and so on.
Nothing particularly wrong with that, but if you hate your job, that's a sign in your heart and in your mind that you're supposed to be doing something else.
You're supposed to be doing something else.
And how do you get To that magic thing called something else.
Well, you have to figure out what it is, and then you have to ruthlessly and relentlessly go in pursuit of that goal.
So he talks about his day, you know, sleep six hours a day, and he's got a funny thing.
People say eight hours a day is like...
Sleep faster. And so he talks about his day.
He didn't waste a single minute of the day.
He was working construction. He was going to college.
He was working out of the gym five hours a day.
And he was taking acting classes and so on, because he had a goal.
He had something that he wanted to achieve.
Now, there's a reason why his goal It was so public-facing, which I'll get to in a few minutes, but it is really, really important to have a goal.
You want to live like a man, not like an animal.
You want to live like a woman, not like a mammal.
And that means separating ourselves from the animals by having a larger, abstract, ideal goal.
So yeah, organize your day, figure out what it is that you want to do.
And he does point out something that's very important, which is, he says, look, just if you read one hour a day in history, just imagine at the end of the year, 365 hours of studying, how much more you would know, how much more you would know.
Understand. Well, hopefully, if you read the right kind of history.
And that is important. An hour a day.
You know, when I look at how much time people are spending on social media, on video games, and so on, not counting this.
This is important and helpful, what we're talking about here.
But it is tragic. That is time that passes through you like junk food.
It leaves a residue of bitterness and regret over time, and it is such a distraction from something bigger and more powerful that you could be building in your life.
An achievement in a video game, getting a post or two liked on Twitter, well, what do these add to your life as a whole?
There's a momentary dopamine hit of achievement that's kind of illusory, and then what happens is Days go by, months go by, years go by, you look back and you've accumulated no skills, you've wasted an enormous amount of time, and then you face panic, regret, depression, anxiety, frustration.
And sometimes you will have anger at those around you who let you fritter away your life without interruption for so long.
And so life is a very, very short gift.
Think of all of the matter and energy that is in the universe, scattered across hundreds of millions of stars and hundreds of millions of galaxies, all of which is separated.
By vacuum and void, right?
What's the biologist said about God?
He said, I don't know if there is a God, but if there is one, he seems to be inordinately fond of beetles.
And, you know, in the same way, a physicist might say, I don't know if there is a God, but if there is a God, he's enormously fond of emptiness, of vacuum.
And so, the only three-pound entity in existence out of all of the universe, all of the emptiness, all of the stars, all of the blind burning bombs, That light up the night sky, all of the dead moons and empty gas planets and void and empty asteroids, out of all of that is known in the universe.
All of the void, energy, space, nothingness.
There is one three-pound magical bomb of thought That can comprehend the universe.
The universe doesn't exist except within the mind of a human being because the universe has no concept of existence outside of consciousness.
You have, out of all of the matter in the universe, been granted this incredible organ called the human mind, which is unique in the earth and absolutely unique as far as we know in the entire universe.
To be the recipient Of the greatest gift that matter and energy has to offer anyone or anything, anywhere, anytime, and to squander it, blasting pixels and mindlessly scrolling.
It's terrible. You think of those children who inherit great wealth and then squander and fritter it away on useless consumer purchases and vanity snapshots, flying private jets to Paris and so on.
Well, you have been given an inheritance as the proud possessor of a human brain.
You have been given an inheritance far greater than any money that could ever be provided to you.
What are you doing with it?
How are you honoring the universe with the great gift, not just of life, not just of a brain, but a human brain, the ultimate gold standard of what matter and energy can get up to?
What are you doing with it?
Are you binge watching useless shows to distract yourself from the emptiness of your life?
What a great spit into the face of a universe that showers us with such ridiculously rich gifts of consciousness and a capacity to reason and be virtuous and change the world for the better.
Do something with the gift you have been given.
Do not squander. Think of a toad riveting its way across a lily pad in search of a toad to have sex with and then spray its sperm into the eggs that are in the water and your steady diet of flies and mosquito larvae and things like that.
That frog or that toad could look at you striding past and say, God, what I would give to have one of those brains rather than be stuck in this filthy pond licking up mosquito lava for food.
Honor the frog! Honor all those who don't have a human brain with using it to its full potential.
So I just wanted to mention that. He does talk about not having a plan B. Not having a plan B. That's very, very important.
I'll tell you a little story here about this.
When I first started doing my philosophy show, the media came down on me like a ton of bricks.
I guess they saw the power of what it is that I was up to.
They saw the potential of what it is that I was doing, perhaps even before I did.
Came down on me like a ton of bricks.
Called me all kinds of horrible names.
Tried to destroy this philosophy show.
Murdering it in the crib with all of the weighty power that they had.
And back then, like 12 years ago, you had almost no right of reply.
Now you do. Right now I can get more viewers and CNN on a regular basis.
Back then, the media was much more powerful.
I was tiny. And it was a difficult position to be in.
I'm thankful for it now.
Because when you get called all these kinds of terrible names, when you're just starting out to build a philosophy show, what does it do?
Well, it means there's no turning back.
See, I came from the business world.
I was a software executive, entrepreneur.
And after all of the media had printed all these terrible things about me, I couldn't sit there and say, well...
It's a bit more of a hassle than I thought it was going to be.
I guess I'll just tootle on back to the business world.
Well, there wasn't any of that, because, you know, in the business world, and you put your resume in, people Google, right?
It's a cult leader or whatever, right?
I mean, and so it was, okay, I guess I'm strapped in.
I am now committed.
And it took me years to figure out what Jesus meant when he said, love your enemies.
There is something to that.
There really is something to that.
The quality of the show, the growth of the show, the commitment that I have to philosophy and to this worldwide conversation comes in part out of my enemies because they have cut off all escape routes but going forward.
They have slandered me to the point where it is succeed or starve, almost literally.
So, thanks guys.
You really taught me how to spell the word commitment.
So yes, don't have a plan B. We do perform better when there's no safety net.
Why do we focus so much on Quote, tests or challenges where there's no particular downside, right?
You lose an online shootout game on Fortnite or the old Unreal Tournament or whatever.
You just boot it up again.
You start it up again and you play again.
You try something and it doesn't work.
You go back. What is it?
Your F9? No, your F10. You go back to your saved game on Skyrim or wherever and you can just try it again.
There's no particular risk, no particular downside.
Well, It's because we are very afraid of failure.
We are very afraid. And it's really, really important to be specific of what we're afraid of.
We're not afraid, in particular, of failure.
It's like people who say they have a fear of heights.
No, they don't have a fear of heights.
They have a fear of falling. Or to be more specific, they have a fear of the horrible splat that happens after you fall and hit something solid.
So they have a fear of injury.
They have a fear of death. It's not really a fear of heights.
So you don't really have a fear of failure.
You have a fear of being attacked for failure.
You have a fear of rampant, vicious verbal abuse.
First of all, from outside, and then when you've internalized that, like, I don't know if you've ever played tennis or some game or squash with someone, and they just get so mad at themselves when they miss a shot.
I'm so stupid! Why did I take that shot?
I never learned! They get so mad at yourself, and it's a way of Trying to influence you to not give them as hard as shots or whatever.
But you see those people who kick themselves up, who are sucky losers and so on.
They're not afraid of missing the shot.
They're afraid of the verbal abuse that's been internalized that comes after they missed the shot.
They're terrified of the emotional agony of self-abuse.
They're not afraid of missing the shot.
So you're not afraid of failure. Failure is the natural state of mankind.
Failure is the natural state of mankind.
Think of the two greatest geniuses.
of language in English, I dare say, around the world.
Number one, William Shakespeare.
Number two, Charles Dickens.
Charles Dickens, the greatest novelist in history.
Shakespeare, the greatest poet and playwright in all of human history.
Now, Shakespeare wrote 50 odd plays.
How many of them are world famous?
Six? Seven? Maybe ten?
So 15% of the output of the greatest literary genius In the English language, perhaps even in all world languages, maybe 10, maybe 15% of his plays are regularly performed and are considered to be the greatest.
So, the greatest genius has a success rate of maybe 10 to 15%.
If you look at Dickens, Dickens wrote, what, 30 plus novels and so on.
How many of those are regularly read these days?
Maybe 5, maybe 6, maybe 7.
It's about the same rate. Maybe 15%, maybe on the very outside you can get 20%.
So even the greatest geniuses in the world have a genuine success rate of doing plays which last the test of time, writing novels that last the test of time, maybe 15%.
So anytime you're batting, 15%, you're doing as well as all the geniuses in the known universe combined.
Look at great composers, look at great songwriters, look at great playwrights, look at all of their lives, and then the span of their lives that they spent writing their greatest work, it tends to be very short.
So, failure, even for the greatest geniuses among us, is the natural and inevitable state.
So, If you want to get over your fear of failure, then what you have to do is stop being around people who attack you for failing or who undermine your success because they're afraid that if you succeed, it means that they have the chance to succeed.
So you have to, and Arnold points this out, stay away from the naysayers, get away from the naysayers.
I just did a show about this last night, talking about the labels.
I wanted to become a world leader in the realm of philosophy and change the course of human history with reason and evidence.
It's a pretty big goal, right?
But why not aim for the highest possible?
You don't know what your potential is until you aim ridiculously high.
I would rather aim ridiculously high and fall 80% short than aim very, very low and get 100%.
If I aim to jump 100 feet and I can only jump 6 feet, fantastic.
But if I only aim to jump 4 feet, I jump 4 feet, well, I'm still lower.
You don't know what's possible for you.
You don't know what your hidden latent talents are.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Mothers whose children are trapped under cars can lift entire cars.
You don't know what you're capable of until you set your sights as high as humanly possible.
Why not? I didn't. I didn't.
But I would rather have a massive goal and fail spectacularly than have a modest goal and succeed 100%.
Because spectacularly failing in a massive goal gets you far further than succeeding on a moderate goal.
Life is short.
We have one chance to make a mark in this world.
We have one chance to be the comet that flashes across the night sky of mortality and lights up civilization below.
Why wouldn't you want to aim as high as humanly possible?
So, you're not afraid of failure.
You're afraid of being criticized. You're afraid of being attacked.
You're afraid of being ostracized. You're afraid of being mocked.
You can see this all over the internet.
Like, I've been pretty active and engaged on Twitter lately.
And by the way, you know, if you want me to do my week on Twitter, if you don't particularly want to follow my Twitter account, although you really should, but let me know in the comments below and I'll do it.
But yeah, so know what your actual fears are.
Your fears aren't a failure.
Your fears are being mocked and attacked, and then you have to have that question.
So I said, I want to be a thought leader in the world, and a lot of people around me, when I said that, said, eh, it's a dream.
It's not possible. You've got to be kidding.
Then you have a choice. Your dream or the naysayers.
Your dream or the naysayers.
If you choose the naysayers, you vanish from history.
You become invisible.
You become an NPC. You become not even a follower because a follower gets somewhere.
You become a void, an absence, a nothing burger, a slave to the petty self-erasure of other people.
What a terrible fate. Life and death.
A zombie who can't even be filled up with brains because you won't even remember how to sniff them out.
So, big goals, we avoid them because we want to avoid the reaction of people around us when we talk about our big goals.
What are they going to say? Are they going to say, wow, that's incredible.
I'm actually motivated too.
I'm going to get off my ass, put down my Xbox controller and go conquer the world too.
Thank you for waking me up.
How wonderful. Or are they going to be like, yeah, you know, whatever.
Indifference is the great dream killer.
Not opposition. Opposition is not the dream killer.
Opposition strengthens the dream.
This is why we love our enemies. If you want to build muscle, you need resistance.
If you want to sharpen a sword, you don't do it on air or water, you do it on a whetstone with sparks and heat.
It's indifference that will kill your dreams.
The people who shrug, yeah, you know, I guess go for it if you want.
Hey, you want to review this article that I wrote?
I'm really excited about it. Yeah, yeah, send it over all.
I'll get around to it, I'm sure. And then you never hear back, and no, I'm getting to it.
Indifference. The people who say, oh man, I hated this thing.
This is what sucks about it.
Those people will help you.
Indifference strengthens your muscles like lying on a couch does cardio.
You need that resistance. You need that opposition in order to get better.
A propeller plane does not fly in a vacuum because there's no air to pull on.
Are you willing to work harder? Are you willing to take more risks?
Are you just willing to do more? It's like that old joke about appeasement.
Appeasement is the hope that the alligator is going to eat you last.
If you want to win a running race, how do you win a running race?
You have to just be faster than the other guy.
That's all you have to do. Which means you probably just have to train more than the other guy.
That's all you have to do. Just be faster than the other guy.
There's a great line from a rap song.
The race is not to the swift, but who can endure it?
It's an old Black Eyed Peace song.
The race is not to the swift, but who can endure it?
Can you endure reading one more book?
Can you endure practicing piano a little bit more?
Can you endure pushing yourself to get better?
Can you endure challenging what you believe?
If you look at the shift in my beliefs, in what I advocate and what I argue for over the years, there have been some pretty substantial shifts because I've got new information.
Am I willing to go against what I have talked about before?
Am I willing to change direction based on new information?
Am I willing to confront what I know, test it against reason and evidence, and see if it holds firm, if it stands?
Are you willing to do that?
If you are, you're ahead of 99% of humanity already.
Now, here's some of the downside of what Arnold's talking about.
First of all, he's talking about Money and fame.
That's all he's talking about. He's not talking about moral improvement.
He's not talking about making the world a better place in terms of virtue, reason, evidence.
He's talking about making money and being famous.
Yeah, that's okay. It's okay.
It's kind of monkey-like. You know, I'm the monkey with the biggest set of nets.
I'm the monkey with the biggest plume.
I'm the monkey with the sexiest wife, monkey, or whatever.
It's fine. It's kind of a mammalian, but it's not about moral virtues.
He's not talking about self-improvement.
He's talking about going to the gym to make yourself bunkier.
He's talking about going to college to learn knowledge.
He's talking about working in construction to make money.
He's talking about going to acting classes so that you can become a successful actress.
None of those are moral objectives.
None of those make the world a better place fundamentally.
I mean, you can entertain people, that's fine.
But he's not talking about moral improvement.
None of it is about the pursuit of truth, of wisdom, of virtue, of goodness, or of spreading the quality of moral excellence in the world.
So, he's a salesman.
And he's a very good salesman.
All actors are salesmen, right?
So, he is going to talk about, he's going to dangle these materialistic, empty, somewhat nihilistic and mammalian slash satanic goals in front of you.
You can be rich.
You can be famous.
You can have a successful career.
How does he define success? More money, more fame.
More eyeballs on you.
It's not a moral goal.
The man knows nothing of philosophy.
Because who does he give as the examples?
Muhammad Ali, Michael Jordan.
Not moral excellence.
Great athletes. Not moral excellence.
Not philosophical virtues. Not what Aristotle called eudomania.
Eudomania, which is that the greatest happiness is the pursuit of excellence in moral virtues.
So, how he defines success is very materialistic.
And, yeah, work hard.
Arnold, can you throw a little bit of moral improvement in there?
So, that you have to watch what people define as success.
And the other thing that's important to know as well is that Arnold Schwarzenegger is ridiculously good looking.
I mean, he does have that Sandy-haired, Aryan, square-necked face physique and so on.
And I think Oliver Stone, who worked with him in one of the Conan movies, I think, you know, said he has a face for the ages.
And he does. I mean, the guy at 71, still ridiculously good-looking, a nice puff of Tom Skerritt hair and so on.
So the fact that he's ridiculously good-looking has...
Really helped. So when he says, I wanted to become a weightlifting champion, Mr.
Universe champion, and then I wanted to get into movies, it's like, sure, because he's ridiculously good-looking.
And more power to him.
I have no problem with that.
It's fine as far as it goes.
But there's a reason why he had more of an opportunity in movies than others.
He has a face that's ridiculously photogenic, very noble, very powerful, very square-jawed, very, you know, all of that.
So it's important.
You know, it's like the pretty women who say, you know, the universe just gives you things.
It's like, no, horny men give you things because you're pretty and they won't have sex with you and so on, right?
So that's important.
The other thing I would say is that, you know, this is almost...
Become de rigueur with regards to celebrities and climate change.
He's one of the moderate Republicans who's very big on climate change.
So he's always been talking about climate change and global warming and the need to reduce our carbon emissions and our carbon footprint and so on.
Yeah, well, you know, I'm not sure whether the planet as a whole benefited environmentally from the production of kindergarten, but, you know, that may be just a particular taste kind of issue.
But when he became the governor of California, he used actually a private jet to commute.
And it started off, I think, once a week, it ended up being pretty much every day.
So someone did the math, the calcs, I'll put the source below.
Arnold Schwarzenegger flew on a private plane to commute to his job, consuming almost 11,000 metric tons of Jet A fuel.
His commute was the equivalent of flying to Japan 9.3 times a day for an entire year.
In one hour, his private plane put out more pollution than a car does in an entire year.
So, now, he says, well, I paid for carbon emissions, all right?
Okay, yeah. Come on.
Just buy your way out of things.
It's, like, ridiculous, right? He's a bit of an environmental hysteric.
Now, I think that's kind of like, if you want to be famous and successful in the media world, there's just certain positions you have to take.
There's just certain positions that you have to take.
I mean, if you come from South Africa, like Charlize Theron, well, maybe you just have to end up adopting some black kids.
I don't know. But this is one, like, you just have to have these things.
And if you speak out against them, you'll find your career kind of mysteriously vanishing.
There is a lot of Compromise, moral compromise, in seeking fame in this kind of way, which is another reason why I rely on you, the donors, to keep me in business, so that I'm always facing you, always responsible to you, and never compromised by someone else.
And if you do want to help out, hugely appreciate it, freedomainradio.com slash donate.
Thank you so much.
You give me the freedom to speak honestly about these things.
He is an environmental hysteric.
At one point, he said that he really wanted people who were skeptical of climate change to suck on an exhaust pipe and see how long it took for them to tap out.
Now, Arnold, this is just a pro tip, you know.
I know a little bit of something about spin.
It's not the best thing in the world to want to kill your opponents with poison gas.
It's really bad if you have an Austrian accent.
Word to the wise. Bit of a pro tip.
Now, as far as moral excellence goes, yeah.
The guy was a workaholic.
He didn't see his kids much. He was commuting all the time.
And what did he do in California?
Was California saved? Was it turned back to a Republican state?
No. Because he's not willing to talk about the important things that I talk about regarding demographics and IQ and so on.
So it was mostly just a bunch of show.
And yeah, he was 25 years married to a Kennedy.
And he had a long string of affairs, as far as I know it.
I mean, there's Bridget Nielsen, the actress from Red Sonja, I think, was talking about this.
And his live-in housekeeper he fathered a love child with.
And his youngest child was birthed on September 27th, 1997.
October the 2nd, 1997, which is just five years later, His out-of-wedlock son with his housekeeper was born.
And, of course, she passed it off as her husband's child.
And, I don't know, she's from Guatemala.
I mean, it's just a mess.
And so now there's...
I guess, as far as I know, I don't follow this stuff too much, but she announced that she was leaving him in 2011.
As of some time, relatively recently, the divorce still hadn't gone through.
So that's a mess.
Now, I've got to tell you, you know, if Arnold Schwarzenegger comes to you in his prime, like when he was in his early 20s, comes to you and says, I think you're getting too big, you know you're getting too big, right?
You've got to turn sideways to get through a door or something.
In the same way, if a Kennedy woman sits you down and says, sorry, that's too much infidelity for me, as a Kennedy woman, they're kind of used to infidelity is what I'm saying, then you may be having a little bit too much infidelity.
And that's a mess, right?
I mean, the guy destroyed his family.
With perhaps even a long-running affair with an illegitimate child born pretty much the same time as his.
Legitimate child and...
I mean, that's a mess.
And that's what I mean when I talk about...
So he's going to dangle a lot of eyeballs and money and fame and all of that in front of you saying, this is excellence!
This is success! No, it's not success!
If you destroy your family for the sake of an affair with a tall hobbit, that is not...
Quality. An affair with anyone, that is not quality.
If you condemn a son of yours to a life where he's known as the illegitimate, out-of-wedlock son, if the divorce, what is he worth, 400 million bucks or something like that, if the divorce slices that in two, I know she's wealthy too, but who knows, right?
Then he just lost 200 million dollars for the sake of Banging an end.
Like, this is ridiculous, right?
This is not. But he's not going to focus on that.
He's going to focus on when he was younger.
He's going to focus on pumping iron as opposed to pumping the help.
So, it is a good speech.
You know, all the criticism.
I mean, I criticize my own speeches, too.
So, it's a good speech.
I think it's important. But we honor the glorious gift of consciousness not with fame.
Not with money, but with virtue and with the spread of wisdom.
That is how we grow.
That is how we fully honor what it is to be human.
So if you take some of his examples of how to succeed and you turn them away from Moving lots of metal in a darkroom, if you take it away from standing in front of a camera and mugging shamelessly for millions of dollars, and you put it instead towards the pursuit of knowledge,
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