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July 14, 2019 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
32:37
Why Very Intelligent People 'Fail' - Freedomain Radio
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Hi everybody, it's Steph. We're going to start in the bowels of the parking lot today before we ascend to the kindly provided by the government sunshine based on the time change.
I thought I'd start off with a quote which I read which was quite interesting and the quote is this.
Saying that atheism Is a kind of religion.
It's like saying that baldness is a kind of hair color.
Or if that doesn't sort of make any sense to you, it's like, here's me in the Volvo, losing my religion.
Hopefully that will help clear it up.
So I wanted to talk today, let me prepare my visor.
I wanted to talk today about an interesting topic that came up recently, which had something to do with the question of confidence around success.
Success, the bitch goddess, as she is called.
And it's very, very interesting, to me at least, this question of success and what it means.
Now, success is a very interesting and challenging thing and can be defined in very many ways.
There are many people who achieve financial or artistic success who would not know personal success if it, you know, bit them on the hiney.
There's that old song, success has made a failure of our home.
And there's a lot of truth in that, right?
The people who are very successful in life, in particular fields, often are miserable in their personal lives.
Not something that I would choose, not something that I would trade for the world.
The joy in my personal life could not be bought or sold for any price, in my humble opinion, though you may feel differently.
But this poster, the gentleman's long-time listener, this sort of issue or question came up.
And it was related to the great adoption controversy that erupted, the schism that erupted on Sunday, which I have yet to get to.
If anybody's still interested, since it was just a personal opinion, I don't see that it's that important, but I'm certainly happy to talk about it if other people have more questions.
But... Oh, and also one thing, technical thing, sorry.
If you've been trying to get on the Free Domain Radio server for where the shows are served up from, apparently GoDaddy has a limit on the number of people who can access the site at any given time, and that limit was exceeded.
So, it's good!
You know, we see success has made a failure of our server.
To adapt the song. So I'm working on that and we'll get that resolved shortly.
So just if you don't mind being patient, you will be able to get the shows.
It just may take a little bit of time.
And of course, by the time you do get to download the show, at least 12 more will have been posted because I have logarithm and you are my victim.
So this gentleman was wondering why he felt so angry about my opinion about adoption.
And a lot of it had to do, I think, just sort of with a mistake that I... I think either a mistake in my communication, which is the most likely, or a mistake in his interpretation, which is less likely, which had to do with the valuation of children, right? So are children valuable or not?
We don't get into the whole controversy, but what came out of it was I said it could be that I'm being an insensitive jerk, but it could also be that if you are rejected sort of by your parents, When you're young, it's very painful, and they have to come up with some reason why you are rejected.
Generally, what they'll come up with is, you're just weird.
They can't say you're substandard.
They can't say you're short if you're not.
They can say you're, I guess, fat if you are, but that's usually an effect of the rejection.
Your parents will talk to you and put you down in ways that are pretty horrible.
And I think then when I talk about having criteria, particularly for adoption, that raises iron people.
It could be right, it could be wrong.
I don't mean to sort of lever myself off the hook or anything, but that could be the case.
And so what I said was that it's possible That this is awakening memories of early rejection from an authority figure, parents, and that it's possible that they rejected you specifically because of your intelligence.
Like, this guy is very, very intelligent, an excellent writer, a great thinker, and, you know, a very good person, and a very fundamentally good person, and a friend.
I was saying that you were rejected, because the question is always, why do I get picked on?
Why do I get picked on when I'm a kid, right?
And most times I think, and I'll sort of make the case for that, most times you get picked on because you're better, in general, in sort of specific ways, which I'll get into.
And so this gentleman posted back and said, well, if I'm supposed to be so great, then why is it that I have so little to show for it?
Why am I not, I don't know, running a country or getting an Oscar or whatever?
Why do I have so little to show for it?
It's not that this person is not accomplished, but why is the world not at my feet if I'm so great?
And that's a good and healthy doubt.
Without that doubt, narcissism and megalomania and resulting...
Intermittable podcasts can result.
So, it's an excellent question to ask.
And I'll sort of do my best to explain why.
Now, I'm very aware that there is great coin to be made in giving people excuses for their lives.
And so I'm aware that that's a possibility.
I'm aware that it's a possibility that I may be doing that.
I certainly haven't achieved everything that I want to in my life, though I am quite satisfied with what I have achieved.
It's certainly not what I wanted to achieve with, you know, all things wise and wonderful.
So it's certainly possible that I'm trying to let myself off the hook and so on, but I'm going to try and be as disciplined as possible and work as rigorously as possible and as logically as possible and with as much evidence as possible so that we can try and avoid those traps of lowered standards.
So let me sort of make the general case and then we'll go into a couple of specifics and details and you can let me know what you think.
First of all, is the world corrupt or is the world not corrupt?
In general. Are people in general interested in truth and wisdom?
Or are people in general, as they were in the time of Socrates and Schopenhauer and Nietzsche and Heidegger and Hegel and...
St. Augustine and all of the other thinkers throughout history.
Are people more interested in social approval, in money, in sexiness, in good looks, in shallow one-upmanship and so on?
Are people interested in truth and wisdom or are they interested in shallow status nonsense?
Says the guy in Evolvo.
Well, I would say that people as a whole are not psychologically and fundamentally, from a philosophical and wisdom standpoint, not much better off than they were in ancient times.
And the reason that I say that is that we're still addicted to as much fantastical nonsense as we were back then.
So instead of believing in Zeus, we believe in Jesus.
Instead of believing in the Polit, we believe in our governments.
Instead of hating Sparta, we hate Muslims.
So, I'm not entirely sure that we've come a whole lot further.
And in many ways, in many ways, We could be easily said to be a whole lot further back than they were, because if you really think about it, I mean, Aristotle with the invention of the three laws of logic and all the other beautiful things that he carved out of nothing with the power of his mind, the degree of respect for logical consistency and reasoned argument and sophistry and so on,
well, maybe not respect for sophistry, but you know what I mean, what occurred back then was, I think...
At least equal to what we have now, but I would say even greater.
But I would say at least equal. I mean, in the educated classes, at least equal to what we have now.
But the not inconsiderable difference is that they did not have the benefit of science and capitalism and the scientific method and all the wonders that have accrued in the world since the invention of these great logical instruments.
They had just started out with logic.
They did not see the free market.
They did not see science in the way that we understand it now.
And still they were able to fight their way free of a large number of illusions that we have fallen once more prey to.
So, in general, and I'm not a pessimistic person, so I don't believe that this is taking a dour view of things, but in general, I would say that the world is corrupt.
And by corrupt, I don't mean that everybody is evil, because there's a guy down my street.
No, actually, he's evil too.
I don't mean that everyone's evil.
What I mean is that their thinking is corrupted.
Their thinking is corrupted.
Think of corrupted files in your computer or corrupted programs.
It's not that they're evil or a corrupted database file.
It's not evil. It just doesn't work very well.
It's all tangled and messed up and gnarled.
And, of course, the issue, the moral problems don't come in because you can't think.
I mean, who's taught to think these days?
It's a real struggle to learn it.
It's like 20 years of rehab for the achy-breaky brain.
So the problem is not that we don't know how to think.
The problem is that we don't accept that we don't know how to think and work to learn how to think.
That's sort of the real issue.
My God, I have developed the photosensitivity of a cave fish.
I'm going back into the visorist.
So that's the issue. The issue is that we don't Accept that we can't think and learn how to think.
We pretend to think. We pretend to know.
I mean, what is religion really but a great pretense at knowledge?
And what is patriotism but a great pretense at virtue?
And what is the worship of the family but a great pretense at a moral community?
There's just a great deal of pretense that goes on in the world.
That's the real corruption. Not knowing something is inevitable.
What I know versus what I don't know is infinitesimal.
But it's pretending that you know.
That is the real corruption.
Not loving someone is not evil.
Pretending you love them, that's kind of messed up.
Not knowing is fine.
Pretending you know is not fine.
Because when you pretend you know, you stop learning.
You stop looking for answers. If you say God created the universe, you're not going to study the Big Bang.
I mean, logically you wouldn't. Because you got the answer.
It's the wrong answer. It's not even an answer.
It's the wrong question and the wrong answer.
That's not even an answer. But it satisfies people, right?
Most people want to put a lid on questions, not use their God-given curiosity to find answers, their natural-born curiosity to find answers.
So if the world's thinking is corrupted and if people are pretending that they know when they do not know, then clearly their greatest enemy is going to be curiosity.
You know, the endless why of the child and of the childish adult?
The endless why of the child is going to be the worst thing in the world for them.
The worst thing in the world for them.
Because when a child keeps asking why, and this is really the basis of the novel that I've written called The God of Atheists, When the child keeps asking why, the parents either at some point have to admit error and have to admit a fundamental lack of knowledge and have to say, oh yeah, all those things I told you are right and wrong, I have no idea.
And then I told you not to get too influenced by your peer group, but I only said that because I was afraid that you would do things that would embarrass me in front of my peer group if I didn't control, restrict, and limit your behavior.
I force you into a little straitjacket of conformity, so I sort of put myself forward as somebody who knew something, and I don't.
And parents don't like doing that.
I mean, in the same way that you wouldn't like to take out your own appendix through your ass.
I'm assuming. So, parents aren't going to want to do that, aren't going to want to admit that they don't know.
So what are they going to do? In the face of the child's relentless curiosity.
Well, they're going to have to smash the child's relentless curiosity.
Right? I mean, that's pretty basic.
That's pretty simple. If you don't have the answers, but you're pretending you do, then the thing that you're going to hate the most is the questions that reveal that.
And if you're faking your way through being a doctor, And somebody corners you and starts asking really complicated and detailed questions about the old doctoring, how are you going to feel?
Are you going to feel like, oh, that's great.
I can't believe this is wonderful.
I'm finally going to get out of this sham.
No. You're going to feel terror and rage.
You're going to feel terror and rage at the potential of being exposed as a fraud.
Policeman. Hello, Mr.
fuzz so you're going to feel terror and rage and fear of being exposed and this is how parents and teachers feel with children and this is why they get irritable with children's questions and And with an exceptionally curious and intelligent child, the rejection has to be that much greater.
If your parents are false and corrupted, which is to say, if they are parents, I mean, there may be exceptions.
Actually, I shouldn't say that.
There are exceptions, and they're on the board, and kudos to you guys for raising possibly the first rational generation of children in the history of the planet.
But when I was growing up, you know, before this sort of stuff was really taking hold, There weren't those people.
Those parents weren't around. Certainly not in my circle.
There's all bloody war-scarred parents anyway.
So parents get angry and must crush the child's curiosity.
Because otherwise, if that child continues to ask questions, they just won't have any answers.
So for instance...
If you say, why is this wrong?
Why is this right? Why is this morally good?
Why is this morally bad? It's bad to do this.
Why? They won't know.
They won't answer. They'll say, well, just because it is.
No, but why? It just is.
Stop asking me questions. But I don't understand.
Why is it wrong? I don't want to just be bouncing around like a pinball trying to figure out what's wrong based on when you get upset.
I need to know principles. Basically, that's what the child is asking.
Don't pick up that marble.
You can pick up all those marbles, but don't pick up that marble.
But why? What's the reason?
What's the purpose? What's the principle?
I'm not going to tell you that.
Then you're just making your child a slave to your whim.
So the child doesn't have any reasoning.
And of course, it doesn't limit you as a narcissistic personality if you never lay down any principles for other people.
But reserve the right of approval and disapproval and right and wrong for yourself based on your whim and mood.
You won't subject yourself to anything.
And that's why people hate philosophy.
and fear philosophy and loathe philosophy and deepen their hearts need and love philosophy.
So parents aren't going to want to answer that question.
And your curiosity and your intelligence, right, this is what happens when you become a liar, right, which most people are.
I mean, I'm not saying they sort of consciously wake up and pull an evil Mr.
Burns and say, my excellent, you know, I could lie to all my children.
No, I'm not saying that. I'd twirl my invisible mustache if I wasn't driving, but I won't.
But what I am saying is that the degree to which parents do lie, and this may be entirely unconscious for them, you're like your dad who snaps at you because you're folding a flag, an American flag, and it touches the ground. He gets angry at you.
It's like, well, it's just a piece of cloth.
But it represents a great thing.
And what is that great thing?
America. America the country?
No, America the idea.
The idea of freedom, the idea of independence, the idea of a limited government.
It's like, well, if it's freedom and independence and limited government, what the hell's wrong with letting the flag touch the ground?
Stop asking questions and just don't let the goddamn flag touch the ground!
If it's freedom from tyranny, why am I frightened of folding a flag that's supposed to symbolize freedom from tyranny, right?
I mean, it's... It's a joke, right?
I mean, most people fundamentally, they're joking, right?
They don't like getting called on it, but they're still joking.
So, your intelligence and your curiosity, if you are of a philosophical bent, and there's lots of people who are intelligent and curious, but entirely within very confined and approved social parameters.
So, if you're intelligent and curious about the causes of cancer, then that's no problem, right?
That's no problem, because you're not challenging people's knowledge about how to raise their children or how to be good human beings.
If you're intelligent and curious about why a zebra is different from a zebra mussel, then you can become a biologist and have a good living, usually at the taxpayer's expense.
If you are curious about how to grow a new orchid, then all of these things, intelligence and curiosity, but they're fine.
But they're specific skills, let's say.
They're not generalized wisdom that everybody sort of falls into the umbrella of kind of needing to conform to, to be a virtuous person.
But, oh my heavens, oh my brothers and my sisters, when you are a philosopher, then your curiosity and your intelligence is like a viper in the pants of the world.
Oh, the hostility, the fear, the anger, the degradation, the humiliation, the eye-rolling, that you're weird, that that's boring, I don't care about it, all you can ever talk about is philosophy, you're only interested in abstracts, abstracts abstracts abstracts when you're going to actually come down to earth and live a real life what does this stuff matter why is it important blah blah blah we all know the litany that goes on from here to freaking eternity
society is a massive pound of attack dogs who've had the center philosophy rubbed into their rabbit and hungry nostrils for years They're darting around and their nostrils are flaring and a philosopher dares to set foot in the compound.
Down he goes in a flurry of fur and bone and blood.
And tell me if I'm wrong. Tell me if I'm wrong.
Perhaps I just do it all wrong.
Maybe there's some way of doing it that doesn't cause this kind of response.
And I'm certainly glad that there are podcasts so that I can, you know, do this in a little bit of a way that we can call to each other across the dogpounds and don't have to cross over the rabid snarling beasts.
But try talking about right and wrong.
I mean, hey, you know, prove me wrong.
I'm more than overjoyed if you can prove me wrong.
Start talking about right and wrong with people.
Start talking about it and ask why.
Why? Why? Why?
Why? Not in a hostile way.
Just be intelligent and curious, as I believe is your nature.
And see what happens. It is like setting off depth charges in a bathtub.
Boom! Boom!
And there's a whole escalating series of things.
It doesn't start off with that, right?
It ends up that way. It starts off with eye-rolling, with changing the subject, with dissociation, with...
Oh, I don't care.
I mean, let's talk about this some other time.
I mean, there's avoidance.
There's all of the defenses that we've talked about in Parts 1 and 2 of this podcast series.
And the video series.
Oh, Viacom. I wonder if the billion-dollar lawsuit that they've leveled against...
These other people for copyright violations is entirely due to free domain radio, or do you think it's only partly due to the free domain radio factor?
FDRF, I believe it's called, in the legal documents.
But if you have curiosity about virtue and curiosity about truth, then you come up with some unbelievably explosive opinions, just out of base curiosity.
Well, what is the difference between a soldier and a hitman?
The costume? Somebody who's paid to kill for money because somebody tells them to?
Is there something I'm missing here?
Why is it that a family would be automatically considered virtuous?
Why does my mother achieve pinnacles of human virtue just because she had sex with my father and nature did its course and I was cut out of her belly?
Why? Virtue seems to be a rather tough thing to achieve, and a 13-year-old can get pregnant and have children.
Does she automatically become a saint?
Well, of course not. It's a simple biological act.
I might as well say that my virtue increases every time I take a good pancake dump in the morning.
Oh yeah, that's some good morals.
Time to flush. Governments?
There's no such thing as a government.
The government doesn't exist. It's a concept.
What there are is people who tell you that you have to obey or they'll point guns at you and if you resist the gun pointing at you and them telling you what to do and handing over your money or going to jail, they'll shoot you down.
There's no such thing as a government.
It doesn't exist. Any more than you could buy a car with the concept of money.
I'm thinking of money. Can I take the car?
No. Why?
Because you're not giving me any greenbacks.
No, I'm thinking about money. In fact, I'm telling you about the concept of money.
Now you have the concept of money.
Is that enough to buy the car?
Good luck. The concept of money doesn't exist any more than the concept of government does.
It doesn't exist in the real world.
Start asking that. Start asking your parents, hey, how come is it that you sent me to a public school and you told me that I had to go to school to get an education because it was the right thing to do and this and that, but you never told me that if I didn't go to school, you guys were going to get shot.
Like, if you didn't pay the property taxes or the income taxes that pay for the school, and if I didn't go, you'd be shot.
U.S. homeschoolers accept it from above offer, but you must still pay.
How come you didn't tell me that?
Did you not know that if you didn't pay your property taxes to support the public school system that you would be arrested and if you resisted arrest you'd be shot?
Did you not know that? I mean, was that not explained?
Did you just pay the property taxes because you pay every bill that comes through your door?
Just ask these questions and see how far you get.
You don't have to be snarky. I'm sort of imitating it.
You can be curious and genuine. Why did you teach me about right and wrong when you didn't know what right and wrong was?
They say, I know what right and wrong is.
It's like, okay, great. Let me sit down and roll you through a Socratic cross-examination of right and wrong.
I've just finished the Gorgias and I'm good to go.
And they won't have any answers for you.
But they will get angry and they'll avoid that conversation like they would avoid black death plague God himself.
So, philosophy...
It's like pedophilia.
Philosophy is an absolutely horrendous, guilty, horrible, ghastly, vile secret that you must keep from the world.
It's like you've got a ferret in your pants and you've just got to stand there and have your picture taken and not move.
It's a little distracting.
So we're fighting this demon, right?
Or what Socrates called his daemon, his conscience.
We're drawn to these issues of truth and reality and reason and philosophy, virtue, all that beauty that is rational thought, especially in the realm of ethics.
Oh, staggeringly beautiful.
There are no postcards that would do it justice.
And we have to hide it as a guilty secret because every time we talk about it, people hate us.
They avoid, they roll their eyes, they scorn, they dismiss.
We must hide it.
We must hide our greatest treasures from the world.
We must hide our greatest treasures from the world.
It's our guilty secret.
it.
Only under torture will we confess our love of truth and beauty.
And I'm not talking about people who teach philosophy in university.
I mean, you don't get to teach philosophy in university if you have anything to say that is true.
It's unthinkable. I mean, when was the last time CNN said, you know, we've got an interesting moral dilemma.
Let's get a moral philosopher on here.
Good Lord, no, not when there's a couple of army generals waiting around in the wings.
So, you know, absent what we're talking about here, here absent of this wild technology that removes the equation of power and conformity from human communication generalized broadcast human communication absent of this technology there's no hope the only people who get to speak are those who have nothing to say Thank you.
Those who have anything to say must be silenced continually.
It's a perpetual war.
It's a perpetual war.
Against any truth-telling.
Society, I mean, you look around and just try.
Try having these conversations. Try.
Don't believe me, just open your mouth and speak and you'll see quickly.
Just try having these conversations with people.
Society is a war against the truth.
Culture is a rabid attack dog on honesty.
The world is a crater that opens below those who wish to tread any paths of wisdom.
And of course it does it by elevating the mediocre and it does it by silently and hiddenly undermining and condemning those who have intelligence and ability in this realm, I believe.
So to return to where we started, this gentleman's question about, well, if I'm such a great thinker, if I'm so smart, why is it that I have so little to show for it?
Well, do you think the world as it is is going to reward people who ask the truth?
Who ask for the truth?
Who demand the truth? Who insist upon the truth?
Who don't take mealy-mouthed platitudes for answers?
Who want to expunge the death cults of religion, statism and the military from the earth?
Not the people, just the ideas, of course.
Do you think that the world that is founded on lies Is going to be impressed or grateful for anybody who goes rummaging around in the empty foundations?
The whole thing is a goddamn house of cards.
Anybody who asks any questions and it all comes down?
Do you think the world is going to be grateful?
If you're trying to sell a house that has a rotten wall and your teenage son is about to lean up against the wall when people are about to sign the contract and you haven't told them?
Will you be overjoyed when the wall comes down and you lose everything that you hope for?
Of course not. Of course not.
And again, don't believe what I say.
I could be the lying big chatty forehead.
No question. Don't believe a word I say.
Just go and try.
Go and try.
Go and try. And people might say, well, but Steph, you have 175,000 downloads of your show every month.
Well, that's okay, but there's 160,000 new posts a month, so it's really just one guy.
Sure, yeah, absolutely.
Now that we have had this barrier to these conversations has been removed, right?
I mean, then now I have an avenue, right?
It's not like I haven't been saying these things more or less for 20 years, but how was I to get anywhere?
The world hates the truth teller.
The world hates the truth teller.
Because the world is a liar.
I mean, the world is based on falsehood.
Falsehood, fantasy, conformity, all masquerading as objective virtue.
The problem isn't the conformity.
The problem is the masquerade.
If you're sick and you don't go see the doctor because you think you're healthy, The real sickness is not your illness, but the illusion that you're healthy.
The real corruption here is this issue that people believe that they know what truth and virtue is, and they don't.
How could they? It's not their fault.
It's a very difficult art in the modern world, as it has been throughout history, I think, and it's a very hard thing to achieve.
It took... Five billion years for the scientific method to pop into existence in somebody's mind.
So if you don't know why you're not succeeding, if you're interested in truth and virtue and ideas, well, it's time to bring that knowledge to the forefront, and it's relatively easy to do.
It's a no-brainer.
Trust me. It certainly will reveal lots of no-brainers.
But it's very easy to do. Just start having this conversation with people.
See how successful you are in talking about what you really love and treasure with people who claim to really love and treasure you.
Let me know how it goes. Thank you so much for listening.
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