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July 13, 2019 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
31:29
The Agony of Wisdom
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Ah, from the audacity of hope to the reality of hopelessness.
It's Stefan Molyneux from Freedomain Radio.
I hope you're doing well.
If you are, listen to this show.
It should solve that problem tidily.
Happiness?
Sorted?
Yes.
So, a fine listener emailed me and basically said, how, Stef?
Can I get my girlfriend interested in philosophy, in self-knowledge, in psychology, in all of the good meaty matters of self-improvement?
And to his credit, he said, I realize I'm asking you how I can use manipulation for good rather than for ill.
But I would really like to find a way to get my girlfriend interested in things that matter.
It's a fine question.
That's a fine question.
Let me make you the case against it.
Let's start by talking about some of the basic facts around dieting.
Being slender is a plus in society.
Being overweight is not.
It may be a plus in a particular social circle where it's become kind of the norm and people don't want to change that because they don't want to challenge the trauma that the overeating may be covering and all that.
But for the most part, given that there's a lose weight industry and not a gain weight industry, thinner one can never be too rich or too thin.
Thinner be better.
And who among us has not I had the shallow certainty to be slyly amused and tickled when somebody says, have you lost weight?
Oh, maybe just a few pounds.
But it's a good thing.
Anybody who loses weight gets huge amounts of social kudos and envy and blah, blah, blah.
So if you look at ThinBIn going from chunky this felt is hugely positive.
You know, the before after photos are all over the media.
And yet, I think 90 to 95% of dieters fail.
And this shows you some of the challenges, even around something as, you know, relatively simple as losing weight.
And when I say relatively simple, I don't mean like it's just a no-brainer, but what I mean is that it's relatively simple in that we all know what we have to do to lose weight.
Stop eating so much.
Stop eating so much.
Whatever you're eating, just eat less of it and exercise more.
Exercise alone won't do it because it just doesn't burn up enough calories.
I remember being quite shocked as a teenager when I found out that you had to run for like 15 minutes to burn off one piece of toast or something like that.
So exercise won't do it.
Weightlifting helps, of course, because it gives you muscles that burn even in Rest.
In a rest day.
Burn calories.
But, it's just eat less.
Now, I get, I mean, that it's obviously more complicated than that, but relative to something like self-knowledge, it's a not doing something.
Like, self-knowledge is a doing something.
It's journaling, it's going to therapy, it's confronting your issues, it's having confrontations with people who may have harmed you in the past, it's being honest in situations where it's really uncomfortable.
All of which, if you have a dysfunctional environment, A very strongly discouraged mocked attack.
And so on.
But there are very few people who will mock you for not having a second slice of cheesecake.
Especially if you're overweight.
I mean, there are obviously a few lunatics out there who will be like, hey, what's the matter?
You want to become a supermodel?
I don't know what these people say, but... But it's relatively not doing stuff.
Like, smoking is not doing.
It's not going out to buy cigarettes.
Not lighting up a cigarette.
And that's very different.
So, refraining from a positive action that is approved of... I mean, how many people, when you say, I've quit smoking, say, pussy.
What's the matter?
Lung cancer not good enough for you?
No, they say good for you.
Even the smokers say good for you.
Whereas if you start really questioning your environment and your family and your whole tribe, how positively is that received?
I quit smoking.
Good.
Taxation is theft.
What?
You hate the poor.
I've lost ten pounds.
Wow, good for you.
You look fantastic.
I'm so proud of you.
I think the public school is indoctrination.
What?
Aunt Mabel is a teacher.
Are you saying she's indoctrinating the young?
Are you calling her a fascist?
What are you, crazy?
Hey, I quit smoking pot.
Good for you, I guess.
That's great.
I didn't even know you did, but good for you.
I think I'm going to talk to mom about some of the harm that we received at her hands when we were children.
Buddy, no, don't do that!
Let bygones be bygones.
Let sleeping dogs lie.
Let the past be in the past.
Let's all put it behind us and go to the future.
She'll get upset.
And smokers usually quit like 10 or 20 times before it takes hold.
And hopefully that's because they, you know, just about everyone gets a non-smoking coffin.
So, dieting.
quitting drugs, quitting smoking.
These things are all incredibly socially approved of for the most part.
And relatively, all they require is not doing something.
And the failure rates are staggering.
Nine out of 10, 19 out of 20.
And in dieting in particular, most people, vast majority of people who lose weight end up gaining it back and more.
So it's actually negative.
And those who oscillate, you know, 10-15 pounds up and down, apparently have worse outcomes than those who are just a little bit overweight.
And in fact, being a little bit overweight has not been, as far as I know, linked with any particularly negative health outcomes.
Obesity, obviously, yes, but not just being a little overweight.
So when you look at it that way, that if you engage in self-knowledge, I mean real self-knowledge, I don't mean touchy-feely, let's forgive everyone and life is a circle and kumbaya and hakuna matata or whatever.
If you go for real self-knowledge, which is rigorous, which is challenging, which is ethical in nature, which is confrontational in terms of honesty with those around you, that is an incredibly volatile thing to do.
It requires, I believe, I think it's All but impossible to do without a really good therapist, and that can be hugely expensive.
I mean, I dropped 20 large or more really on therapy.
So it's very, very expensive.
I mean, that's a car.
And it is strongly, strongly resisted.
I mean, the more you need it, the more it's going to be resisted by those around you, right?
The more benefit you'll get out of therapy, the worse your environment, and therefore the more those in your environment are going to oppose it.
It's like, the more you need the medicine, the stronger allergic reaction you're going to have.
It's brutal.
Convincing people to not take government benefits, for instance.
I mean, that's not exactly in the realm of self-knowledge, but just as sort of an example.
Why is libertarianism not working?
Well, because to convince people to not accept state benefits is the direct equivalent of hanging around a convenience store waiting for somebody who's won fifty, a hundred, a million dollars and saying you shouldn't cash this in because the government is just going to print money.
It's going to harm some poor people or they're going to borrow money which is going to harm the next generation.
It's really not good for the economy.
It's promoting a lack of thrift, a shiftlessness and so on and complete mathematical illiteracy if you play those things.
So you really shouldn't cash this in.
I mean, the man will look at you like you're bad.
And of course, in his world, you are.
And we can't even convince most free market economists in the public sector of academia to give up their government benefits.
So even if we gave everyone a PhD in economics, in free market economics, they wouldn't give up the government benefits, and nothing fundamentally would change.
So these are just the realities of looking at change, even when society supports change, even when the health benefits are clear, even when the attractiveness benefits are clear, even when the financial benefits are clear.
I mean, if you eat less, you spend less money on food.
Smokers spend, what, five, six thousand dollars a year on smoking?
I mean, who pays you for self-knowledge?
I mean, you know, it may pay off in the long run in terms of, you know, more competent at your job, better negotiator or whatever, but boy, that's a real roll of dice, right?
So, if you just look at the failure rates of quitting smoking, the failure rates of stopping biting your nails, the failure rates of stopping drugs or, I mean, let's not even start talking about alcoholism, the failure rates of quitting alcohol and so on without replacing it with some other addiction.
These things fail.
Fail mightily.
Fail repetitively.
And they are way easier than self-knowledge.
And most people, they kind of get that.
Like, we all have a built-in social calculation processor.
I mean, it is truly the GPU of our math functions.
They've done studies where people who can't do even rudimentary math can figure out who's cheating in a very complex social game.
I mean, we have this hardware-accelerated social calculator which says, hey, let's look at the costs and benefits of self-knowledge.
Does it pay me more?
Nope.
In fact, it's going to cost me tens of thousands of dollars at a minimum.
Is it going to free up my time?
Well, smoking.
If you quit smoking, well, it frees up your time.
Does it free up my time?
Gosh, no.
In fact, it's going to consume a huge amount of time.
Because I'm really going to have to spend time journaling and trying to solve X, Y, and Z.
Having conversations with people and going to therapy and remembering my dreams and all this kind of stuff.
Hugely time-consuming.
Hugely expensive.
And what are people going to think about?
Hey, I'm losing weight.
Good for you.
Hey, I'm in therapy.
Right?
I mean, it freaks people out.
Ooh!
What about everyone who is around me before I start pursuing self-knowledge?
Huh.
Interesting.
Let's look at friends.
Well, your friendships exist with people who think that the pre-therapy you is just great.
Just peachy.
A whole big black boiling kettle of yummy tea.
A big bag of, alright mate, good on ya!
So everyone who's in your life before you pursue self-knowledge has chosen you to be in their life when you haven't been pursuing self-knowledge.
So if you start to pursue self-knowledge then you're either going to change, in which case the people who chose you because You fit through the Japanese game show rolling wall of non-self-knowledge are not going to be able to shove you through the Japanese rolling wall of self-knowledge shape.
These analogies will mean, you know, in a hundred years these shows are going to be like Shakespearean-style footnotes.
So all of your friends, I mean, it's like drinking, right?
I mean, if you go out with a bunch of drinkers and then you stop drinking, well, your friends liked you as a drinker because that was how you socialized with them.
So they were good with that.
They liked that.
So why would they want you to change?
But unless they're interested in changing, in which case maybe coincidentally or, hey, I've been wanting to quit drinking too or whatever.
That's a possibility, but certainly as a whole your social environment is not.
And again, that's something like drinking, which most people recognize is a negative thing to do.
It's expensive and so on.
To not drink is to save money and brain cells and memories and yourself from STDs or falling down bar steps and getting a concussion or whatever.
When you look at your friendships, the friendships that you have developed and inculcated are with people who have no problem, in fact, very much approve of the way that you are.
And now you're saying, the way that I am is seriously broken and needs to be fixed.
Well, what are your friends going to think about that?
The person you really, really like is seriously broken and needs to be fixed.
Well, of course, they're going to experience that as you have the wrong values and you like me because I'm broken, which means that you're broken.
I'm going to go and get fixed.
You are going to stay broken.
What's that going to mean to the friendship in the long run?
And I mean this from both sides, not just from one, but from both sides.
What's it going to mean?
Well, of course it's going to mean that either you outgrow them or they resentfully push you out for outgrowing them.
What about your work environment?
Well, you chose this job and you were hired for this job prior to self-knowledge, prior to the revolution evolution of gaining truth.
I can tell you the business world becomes a rather tricky, stickly, prickly pear kind of place to navigate when you start dealing with objective ethics.
He's no good.
He's no good.
I don't know why they don't need any stinking badgers, but anyway, I mean, I don't even know if badgers stink, but there's another footnote.
If you have an honest workplace and you don't have any particular integrity, and you really can't have self-knowledge without integrity, any more than you can have healthy eating without any knowledge of nutrition, And, I mean, in particular with access.
Sorry, I just thought of the natives who probably ate relatively healthily, but that's because they didn't have supermarkets, right?
But if you just go with what tastes good, then you're going to get sick.
And if you just go with what feels right, and you haven't been raised well, well then, things aren't going to go very well.
So if your workplace is honest, and you don't have any integrity, then they would have figured that out pretty quickly that you lacked self-knowledge, and they wouldn't have hired you.
So you've been hired by a place that values, at some level and to some degree, your lack of self-knowledge.
So if you start pursuing self-knowledge in that environment, are you not pretty much like a surgeon who says, I will never touch a scalpel again?
Well, that's kind of what we hired you for, sir.
So bye bye.
And there goes another one.
Bites the dust.
And then we move on to the core.
The meaty, beaty, big and bouncy heart of the matter.
Which is the family.
So the terrible tragedy of therapy with the family is that, in general, the more you need it, the more it's resisted in the family structure.
So the more dysfunctional the family, the more they're going to oppose and resist and mock and scorn and downgrade you and ostracize you and slander you and snarl at you and so on for pursuing therapy.
Which is like, well, the more desperately you need the medicine, the stronger your allergy to it.
And that's really the fundamental tragedy of needing therapy or wanting therapy or wanting self-knowledge and coming from a dysfunctional background.
And that's pretty horrible to see.
But that's really not the most fundamental thing that's horrible to see about that, in my opinion.
The most fundamental thing that's horrible to see about pursuing self-knowledge with regards to a dysfunctional family is that the fundamental question of do you like me or do you like what I do for you Those are two very different things.
In many ways they're quite opposite things.
It's a person as intimate and personal, a person as utility for self.
It's a cold-ass, unempathetic thing to just like people for what they can do for you.
It's fine when you're shopping for a car or whatever, but not for love, not for family.
And when you stop pursuing self-knowledge in a dysfunctional environment with regards to your family, There's obviously exceptions to this, but I speak very generally, so I'm just going to go with the vast majority of cases in my experience.
But when you start becoming honest about who you are, about what you think and feel, your preferences, your standards, your values, all that kind of good stuff, when you start to become really honest about who you are, well, people suddenly They're no likey, right?
They don't like it.
They don't like it.
Oh, go back to the way you were, kind of thing.
It's not convenient for me.
If you have preferences, too, you're kind of here to serve my needs.
And if you have needs, too, then it doesn't really work for me, you know?
Like, I like to get lifts to the mall.
I don't like to give lifts to the mall.
I like to talk to you about my problems.
I don't like it when you have your problems and, like, come to me to talk about them.
Like, no.
That's gross.
And I like it when you tell me that I'm pretty, or I like it when you tell me that I look super hot, but I don't like having to tell you how you look, because frankly, it's really not that great.
And so, no.
I mean, this is what you'll run into.
Perhaps not quite with the stereotypical Valley Girl accent, but you will run into it.
And that's really tragic.
It's horrible.
It's completely horrible.
Because it means that, well, frankly, they never liked you.
See, there's no satiation point for intimacy.
Intimacy is a continual process.
It's like there's no satiation point for wisdom or for knowledge.
Oh, that's it.
I know everything.
I'm done.
No.
Oh, I'm wise enough.
I'm perfect.
I'm morally excellent without possibility of improvement and no capacity for flaw and no new challenges arise.
Well, no.
Never going to happen.
And so wherever there is a satiation point for people around you, you can be sure that it has something to do with manipulation, control, bullying, resource exploitation, various narcissistic skullduggery and thumb-whackery.
And so when people are like, oh, actually, that's a little too much information for me.
That's a little too much honesty for me.
No, I don't like that.
Let's go back to talking about sports, the weather, and bras.
Oh, yeah, bras is different.
Once you have someone who no longer likes your self-expression, it's because they didn't like you to begin with.
Like you as you.
Because if you become more honest with somebody who really values your honesty, they will like you more.
I mean, that's a basic reality equation.
It's almost axiomatic.
I mean, if you really like money, Then you will like a $5 million winning lottery ticket more than you will like a $5 winning lottery ticket.
And if you like my thoughts and feelings, then you will like me all the more, the degree to which I honestly express my thoughts and feelings.
And there won't be a limit to it.
I mean, if I have an hour's great conversation with my wife, which is just about every hour's conversation I have with my wife, I don't sort of sit there and say, no, not another word, my love, because I'm full.
Maybe in a week or two, but right now, I've had enough intimacy, honesty, and connectiveness.
It's shorting me out.
I got to flee.
I mean, so there's no satiation point, right?
Next year, I'm not going to say to my wife, well, I think I know everything about you, so we don't really need to talk about anything anymore.
She's growing, I'm growing, life's challenges are growing.
Yeah, always more to chat about and the deep delight of a mature and healthy marriage.
So the really tragic thing that you understand that you get when you start pursuing self-knowledge is the degree to which people never liked you.
Never liked you.
Because when you start becoming honest about your thoughts and feelings, they don't like it.
It means they never liked you.
Oh my God, that's heartbreaking.
That is like Mariana Trench in the heart, Volcano Vesuvius out the top of the head.
Really bone-cracking, content-shifting, interstellar-splitting kind of heartbreaking.
I'm telling you, if you've not gone through it and You can imagine it, then triple it, and then square it, and then pump an infinity bag under it and blow it up too forever.
Because it is a brutal, brutal experience and it's incredibly humiliating to realize how much you may have lied to yourself for necessary reasons about whether people liked you or not, about the degree of love and intimacy and connectedness and being there for each other and so on.
I mean people say that sort of stuff a lot.
I mean really all they usually mean is that I want you to be there for them.
But the degree to which it is grueling, gruesome and humiliating and irreversibly damaging to the relationship to realize that people only liked you because you weren't you?
I mean, how screwed up is that?
I wish to make love to the opposite of your vagina.
I mean, what is that?
I mean, I wish to love the opposite of who you are, and then if you shed the opposite, and if you're no longer compliant, and you're no longer serving my narcissistic needs, well, damn you!
Damn you for hell forever!
And you also realize just how non-negotiable the relationships are.
How incredibly rigid they are.
Like what a pattern has formed wherein you provide resources, you bite your lip, and you give stuff to people, and you conform, and you go along, and you're quiet, and you're compliant and convenient for people.
And if you start to rock that boat, yikes!
Yikes on a hot stick in a wet bag.
It's just horrendous.
It is literally Like going to sleep in a Jane Austen film and waking up in a zombie film.
I mean, everyone's still doing the same stuff.
It's just zombie Austen.
That's really what I'm trying to tell you.
It is the Matrix moment.
And it's brutal.
And I would really submit that if we look at the negatives for self-knowledge Loss of time.
Loss of money.
Loss of career.
Loss of illusions about familial connections or friend connections.
Loss of your entire society.
I would also argue that we all know this, starting out.
I mean, I had been playing around with self-knowledge for years and years and years before I really dug in.
And I didn't dig in because I had some epiphany about how much I needed to learn about myself or how false my relationships were or whatever.
It was a being cornered thing for me as well.
I mean, I simply got so embedded in corrupt and destructive relationships.
And so far from any kind of virtue and values that I had thought of when I was younger, that I just simply stopped sleeping.
I mean, I had a complete Macbeth meltdown.
And it lasted 18 months, maybe a little more.
I simply stopped sleeping.
Ah, sleep that knits up the raveled sleeve of care.
And I stopped sleeping because I was asleep.
Because I really needed to wake up.
And it was no personal virtue.
Nobody around me was encouraging me, which is why I talk about it in this show as a virtue.
But it was not any virtue on my part.
It wasn't like, ah, I have looked at my life and compared it to those ideals.
There is too much of a gap.
I must now pursue self-knowledge.
No.
I'm either gonna sleep or throw myself off a bridge.
I mean, I got that desperate.
And so I went.
I went for therapy.
And unlike the first time I went for therapy, this second time, I mean, this woman was magnificent.
I mean, batshit crazy epistemologically, but emotionally she was just a freakin' Mormon tabernacle choir tuning fork of expertise and synchronicity.
So I would argue that I am arguing that we know all of this stuff to begin with.
We know all of this stuff before any progress, before we set a single foot down on the path towards self-knowledge.
We know all of this stuff.
I knew deep down that if I really were to become self-expressed and honest and to act with integrity and to start requesting integrity from those around me, in particular reciprocity was the big problem.
I would do things for people, but they would never consider doing things for me.
Well, that was brutal, and I knew that this is why I avoided it for so long, and this is why it took such an extremity.
So I would really argue that we know all of this stuff before we even set one foot down the path towards self-knowledge.
We know, right?
As the song says, the ruins to the right of me.
will slowly lose sight of me.
We know where it's going to go.
We know which of our relationships, if any, will survive, which of our professional commitments, if any, will survive, which of our friendships, which of our lovers, which of our... And, man, if you are married and have kids, holy crap, that is an entire bag of, oh my God, set on fire with dog poop on your doorstep.
Double.
Double plus on good.
Triple plus on good, I would say.
Not to go overly dramatic on you.
So when you say, as this listener did, basically, can I manipulate somebody into loving self-knowledge, truth and wisdom?
Well, of course you can't.
Self-knowledge, truth and wisdom is the opposite of manipulation.
And remember, I mean, there are people out there who will love the struggle that you're going through when you start to pursue self-knowledge.
When you start to pursue self-knowledge, it's like correcting a bad golf swing or a bad tennis stroke.
I mean, you're a lot worse player for quite a while before you get a lot better.
And when you really start pursuing self-knowledge, you become a lot worse in almost every metric you can think of before you become better.
I mean, there's so much unlearning, there's so much resistance, there's so much personal, financial and resource-wise cost, time cost.
I mean, you just get worse before, a lot worse before you get better.
And, you know, it's important to remember, maybe they're not in your life, but, you know, maybe they are.
But it's really important to remember that there are lots of people in this life who, you know, are schadenfreude vampires, right?
They just love to see the suffering of others.
And I don't mean this like metaphorically, I don't mean this like, oh, just, you know, in some... I mean, physically, They show videos of people being hurt accidentally and people being hurt intentionally to people, and a pretty significant number of people, their happy joy-joy centers light up when they see people being hurt intentionally.
I mean, it makes them very happy to see people suffer.
I mean, they are sadists.
I mean, I don't know if that's technically true or not.
I'm just using these terms as always in an amateur fashion, but they take pleasure in other people's pain.
Like real, not pleasure, like afterwards they feel crappy for having taken that pleasure, Like, you go see a really great comedian, he really makes you laugh, and afterwards you don't feel guilty.
I mean, I hope not, anyway.
But, so, this is like that.
It's not like, oh man, I shouldn't really be enjoying this, I shouldn't, oh, I can't believe I laughed at that.
Oh, that makes me a terrible person.
No, it's like it genuinely makes them giggle, it makes them happy, and then they move on, you know?
Just watch America's Funniest Home Videos when you see a whole bunch of people who wake people up with their horns, right?
I mean, they take a deep delight in causing suffering in others.
And if you have any of those people, or it just takes one really to infect others, well, then you have, I mean, a significantly difficult path because your pursuit of self-knowledge is going to be – it's going to turn you into a flopping fish in the bottom of a boat as you adjust to an entirely new landscape.
And if you have any of these kinds of minor or major sadists in your life, they're going to exploit that and laugh at you and spread terrible words about you and all that and alienate other people because deep down they're going to recognize That if you're pursuing self-knowledge, you're going to start gaining empathy, and if you start gaining empathy and start spreading empathies of virtue, they will be revealed as the monsters they are, right?
They're calling you fat, when in fact you're normally proportioned, and they're skeletons.
They are dead.
And this is what the battle is.
The battle is between empathy and exploitation.
And self-knowledge is the pursuit of empathy, of universality.
Once you know your own feelings, then you can much better understand the feelings of others.
And if you have empathy, you can also see exploiters.
It's like these special glasses where you can see who is One of the Cylons, right?
I mean, you can see whose spine glows when they orgasm.
Okay, I've seen it!
Okay, you got me.
But that is the reality.
So can you manipulate people into pursuing self-knowledge?
No.
It's insane to pursue self-knowledge.
It's ridiculous.
It's nuts.
What a stupid and retarded thing to do on just about every level.
On just about every level.
Except for the future, which we can build by doing it.
And except for the relationships that come around on the other side, if you stick with it.
Other than joy, happiness, peace of mind, virtue, self-respect, dignity, and the mass radiation of good into the corrupt universe.
Other than those things, forget about it.
Walk away.
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