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July 14, 2019 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
33:01
Self Deprecation and Authenticity
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Time Text
Good afternoon, everybody. It's Steph.
It is T plus five minutes.
I have left my career.
I have left my place of employ.
And I now am about to become other employed, otherwise employed, itinerant.
Desk jockey, nothing but dressing gowns, philosopher dude.
And I just would like to say, heartfelt and true, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you for making this possible for me, for you, for everybody, and particularly those in the future who, with any good luck and hard work, will reap the fruits of our labor.
And had some lovely donations today.
Perhaps people are out there remembering that this is my last day of having any kind of regular income.
And although they wished me to stay longer, I said to them, but no, my muse, she doth call.
And I wish to take up the dressing gown and not let it go.
So I did not decide to continue.
And I was talking about this with Christine on the weekend.
I feel quite different than when I left my last job when I left my last job.
And I did the podcast on last.
I was quite weepy.
And I don't feel that at the moment, and I think, sort of looking back in hindsight, it was, or at least had something to do with the fact, and please, if you don't want to listen to this podcast, there's no reason to, other than this is a total self-indulgence death rumination podcast.
There's probably not going to be a whole lot of philosophical value in it, but I would like to, for myself, if not the two other people who might be interested, record my thoughts on this fairly important day.
For me. And, you know, who knows?
Perhaps for this philosophical conversation overall.
But I think that I was making the wrong turn.
When I left my last job and I took this job, and I sort of took this job with the idea that I was going to work for a year or two and amass a lot of change and then maybe go back to writing fiction or whatever it was.
I'm like a pearl diver.
I can sort of dive into the business world, but I really have to come back up.
My lungs can only take so much, and I really do have to come back up at times or at points, and it's been...
About five years since I was not in the business world, and before that it was about seven.
And so now it's about time.
But, of course, the massive difference is you.
I mean, the massive difference is you gorgeous, wonderful, huggable people who are making this possible through your recognition, I think, of the value of what we're doing here and your enormous generosity.
And I just...
It moves me more than I can say.
It really, really does.
The... The beauty of that generosity and what it does for me in terms of allowing me to pursue this conversation in a more full-time manner.
What I like to think of is that you're buying back your future.
That's my sort of thought.
And what I mean by that is that...
And it's semi-serious, but semi-not, right?
What I mean by that is that...
I simply can't do two 40-45 minute podcasts a day if I'm not driving.
I just think it would be...
Well, how can I say overkill after the last 15 or 16 months?
But I think that it's time for more research, more tightly focused, more tightly reasoned articles and arguments.
And so there'll be less, but there'll be more or less.
There'll be more in less.
That is the idea. No tangents!
No jokes.
No repetitions.
No... Oh, God, that means no podcasts.
Okay, well, I'll work on that.
I'm not sure exactly what it's going to work out as.
But just think of it as the donations that make this possible allow you to buy you back your future so that you get...
Freedom Aid Radio in the concentrated Teng-like space station package.
And that's got to be worth something.
Just think of all the time you'll have left to do other things to other people.
So I think it was a mistake in some ways.
I don't really look back on my life and say I made a mistake because, you know, I believe in determinism.
And because you make the best decisions with the best information that you can at the time.
I didn't know we were like...
Christina's business was still...
We just put ads in.
It was still spiraling up to where it is now, which is very, very good.
Because she is the best therapist in the world, so...
Her business was still spiraling up, and donations were scanty.
This was, I guess, a month or two or three.
Since I'd started taking donations, and there really wasn't any indication that it might be a remotely livable income.
And so we had decided to take another job, and I thought it would be fun.
There were parts of this job that I really did enjoy, parts of it that were great fun.
And I got to do some really feverish, and I think some pretty skilled coding, and I really enjoyed that and appreciated that.
So... From that standpoint, that's sort of the decision that I made, and I think it was, in many ways, it bought me some peace of mind because I made, I don't know, $60,000 or $70,000 over the past six months.
That gives me, I mean, it's not like free and clear.
There's taxes, there's living expenses, and my God, the gas price is unbelievable.
I actually think that soon there's generally cars just that you burn off $100 bills.
You burn $100 bills to make them go.
That, I think, is going to be the next step in fuel efficiency.
But if I'd started out, it would not have given me the money to buy the server, to buy the advertising, to buy all of the other things, the equipment and so on that I needed.
So I'm very glad that I did that.
But it was not really going to...
It was not really going to last.
Do you know the thing that I'm looking forward to just unbelievably enormously?
Oh my God, I can't even tell you.
Do you know I've never in my life, I've never in my life, I think this is true, well, a little bit in theater school, but I've never in my life only been doing one thing.
Only been doing one thing.
You know, even in theater school I was writing plays on the side.
I've always had a job and a half.
I've always, always had a job and a half, at least.
And if it's not writing fiction, then it's writing novels, it's writing plays or poetry, or it's trying to get published, or it's...
I had a job when I started writing the code that ended up being the basis for the Caribou system, and that was a job and a half for about a year.
Caribou, as an entrepreneur at a startup company, was a job in 12 million for seven or so years.
When I was working on The God of Atheists and Almost, I was working on the two books overlapping and doing an enormous amount of research and, of course, trying to get the book.
I got an agent and she had a whole bunch of stuff to do, so that was a pretty hefty workload.
But I have not...
I'm not going to do...
I'm not going to write any fiction.
I like the fiction that I write.
Like I really like the fiction that I write.
But unfortunately, philosophically, the world is not ready.
You, my beautiful, beautiful friends, are.
But the world as a whole is not ready for my fiction.
So I had to...
Because I couldn't sell my art, I had to change art.
Right? In through the outdoor.
And... So I'm not going to take on writing any fiction.
I doubt I'll write any poetry.
That's like a once a decade thing for me.
But I really am looking forward to staying focused and I have to watch my capacity for overwork, hyper-concentrated overwork, but I really am looking forward to my capacity to focus on just one thing.
And there's going to be some technical stuff which I'll have to get done at the beginning.
I want landing pages for the advertisements.
I'd like to finish the interface for viewing the podcasts and make a slightly simplified interface of that for people who haven't subscribed so they'll at least get some of the benefits.
And I really think that is going to be a really wonderful, wonderful thing for me, a time for me.
I actually get to do one thing.
Actually get to do one thing.
My history of split, nay, near, kaleidoscopic, schizophrenic focus may be at an end.
And with any luck for the foreseeable future, this will be my life, this pursuit of the truth with this wonderful, wonderful crew.
And I just can't tell you how much I massively, massively appreciate it.
I thought I'd have more to say, but I really don't.
So why don't we jump on to a topic that a listener prompted or mentioned this weekend on The Call-In Show, which was, I think, a very good call-in show.
And I really, really do appreciate the listeners.
You guys are just heroic.
It's awful, in a sense, like pulling out your own intestines through your nose to reveal that much in public about your life.
But it is how we find each other, right?
I mean, our... Our true selves use sonar a little bit, and we only echo off the truth.
Otherwise, we just crash into things.
So we are lighthouses, right?
We are lighthouses. When we speak the truth, we illuminate the darkness and we steer people away.
And from the rocks wherein they will perish.
So it is a beautiful beam of light that we are sending up skyward and across the dark seas to sailors struggling with...
Ships that be sinking.
So, really, just flares that people send up, these geisters of truth, these solar flares of honesty, are amazing, amazing lights.
Visible from space, visible from the galaxy Andromeda.
And something to be, I think, enormously proud of.
Though I know it's very hard to do it until you get used to it.
But a gentleman on the call-in show this weekend wanted to know the difference between self-deprecation and like a self-deprecating humor that is positive and funny and a self-deprecating humor that is sort of obsessive and negative.
And I don't have a huge amount to say about it, but I figure since we have a short topic here, why not do something tidy and quick.
There is no magic to these kind of formulas, but to me, it all kind of rolls down into the intention.
I know that when I make fun of myself, What I am trying to do overall, I mean, and I don't want to sound like I'm sort of manipulating the conversation at all times here, like I have some big Machiavellian plan.
That's not the case. I'm sort of feeling my way through this stuff.
Some of it I figure out ahead of time.
Some of it I figure out the time and some ex post facto.
But I think that the purpose of self-deprecation for me...
Obviously, it's not particularly important that people focus on me in this conversation.
I am but a vehicle for God's Word, so I am but a channel through which Christ diddles his index finger.
So, I mean, I'm important in the conversation only insofar as I'm effective at communicating the stuff which is important to you, which is the truth, as best as I can and as rigorously and as honestly and as passionately as I can and with as much good grace and good humor.
I mean, there's probably some interest in me a little bit, like, oh, isn't that interesting?
He does this philosophy stuff.
But that's really not particularly important.
If I was just telling you about my life, unless I was just some wildly fabulous storyteller, then you would listen.
But also you would get exhausted, right?
If it was just me talking about my life, no matter how good a storyteller I was, you would get exhausted.
There's no movie that can last for 500 hours and not have people bail out of the theater.
The way in which I use self-deprecating humor is in order to keep drawing the attention away from myself and to keep the spotlight focused on the truth, which is that five-letter word that we're all jonesing for.
I know that for me, the self-deprecating humor where I'll make fun of my own verbal tics and habits and make fun of my rather excessive pigskin, flat forehead and All the other kinds of jokes that I make, I do that so that...
Well, so you'll keep listening and enjoy it, even when it's emotionally can be sort of tough.
But also, when you take me less seriously, then you'll take the truth more seriously.
Because I'll be less of a factor in it, like...
You enjoy the movie when your glasses are clean, right?
When something allows you to focus on the movie...
That's not dirty or not out of focus.
And I'm trying to be that lens, right?
Like I'm trying to be that lens that helps you focus on the truth.
And in order to be that lens, I actually have to be somewhat transparent, right?
I have to be somewhat transparent.
And that means keeping myself out of the way, right?
Keeping myself out of the way between you and the truth.
And for me, I believe, though I could be wrong, I certainly do believe that the self-deprecating humor and the general humor and goofy, silly, scatological stuff that I throw in is a way of keeping myself out of the conversation and reminding you to focus on the truth.
That's sort of my theory as to why I think it works.
So then the question is, what is your purpose for self-deprecating humor?
There's lots of complicated ways Or manners through which you might end up having self-deprecating humor that's not for the right reasons.
So you might be interested in or prefer self-deprecating humor because you think that it makes you look stronger.
You have self-deprecating humor because...
You believe that strong people can make fun of themselves.
And if you make fun of yourself, then you look strong.
And sadly, this is not good.
Sadly, this does not work at all because anything which is done for effect is inauthentic.
Anything which is done for effect is manipulative and inauthentic.
And inauthentic is one of these words that basically means that your motivation is to affect the behavior of others.
And it's not simple, of course.
I mean, oh, Steph, aren't you trying to affect the behavior of others through what you say?
And yes, of course, but I don't do it to affect.
I'm not trying to do anything to you or make you change.
I can't do that. I'm completely powerless in that manner.
But if your primary motivation or a main motivation for what it is that you're doing is to create a particular emotion or effect in another person, then that is inauthentic and manipulative and it says, I'm not good enough, I'm not enough, I'm not good enough.
When I was, ooh, but a young lad, maybe about 21, maybe?
I looked into hair transplants.
Yes, it's embarrassing to say, but I wanted to move my armpit hair to my knees.
It was just a thing I was going through.
It felt good against the kilt, and I like the breezy tickle.
And I looked into hair transplants.
Actually, I'm a pretty good candidate for it because although I don't look like I have much hair, I do in the back.
I haven't ended up with that sad little horseshoe that balding guys get.
I'm fairly shaggy in the back, so I can spread it around.
And I looked into it, and I went and met with someone, and I was sort of vaguely thinking about it, and I made excuses for myself, like, oh, it's because I'm going to go into theater.
Of course, that's nonsense, right?
Being bald is a great advantage in theater, because you can either be bald or have a wig, right?
It's a little easier than shaving your head if you have hair.
For movies, it's a little different, because, you know, you can see that it's a wig or whatever.
I guess it's not Sean Connery has proven otherwise, as has Nick Cage and all these other Baldy Von Baldybills.
And... What I didn't like about that, though, was sort of two things.
One is that it's the old thing.
Like, if the woman doesn't like balls and won't go out with me because of balls, then I don't really want to go out with her, right?
Because that's a pretty sad and shallow way of judging someone, right?
So, I mean, for me, it's a little bit different from being, like, obese and assuming that it's not biological.
A bald is just, you know, you just get the genes, right?
And your hair follicles die, or they don't die, they just sort of go dormant, and if you don't take so many female hormones, you end up sounding like John Anderson's sister, then you stay pretty much with the baldness.
But you can get sort of hair moved around and...
So I thought, well, you know, so I do it to be attractive or more attractive or whatever.
And I thought, gee, that would be kind of sad.
If a woman would not go out with me because I was balding, then...
That would be like saying, well, I don't date anyone who doesn't have big tits, right?
I mean, that's just sad, right?
That's just, you know...
Anyway, we don't need to even discuss that.
I'm sure that's fairly well understood.
So it feels like I was doing something surgical and not entirely inconsequentially surgical for the sake of attracting people who I wouldn't end up liking that much anyway.
And that just seemed kind of bad.
And the other thing that I sort of thought of when I was going through that process of evaluating this as an option was I thought, well...
I'm young, and with youth comes certain kinds of vanity, and with middle age comes other kinds of vanity.
I still look better than Sean Connery.
I mean, it's sad, but true.
And I thought, well, I'm young, and I'm going to make these decisions based on vanity, and what if I change my mind?
Like, what if I am totally a fine enough human being without hair on my forehead?
I know it sounds silly, right?
But this is things you think about when you're young and so on.
And I thought, well, what if I change my mind?
What if I'm wrong? What if it turns out that I am actually fine and content with myself?
Then for the rest of my life, I'm going to have irrevocable physical evidence of a time in my life when I thought that I was not enough just being me.
We're just being me. So I'm going to have this Ken doll tufty thing.
I mean, this is 20 years ago, right?
I'm sure it's improved now, but I'd have this Ken doll tufty thing coming out of my forehead, and even if it looked perfectly fine, I would look in the mirror, and for the rest of my life, because I don't think you can exactly reverse a hair transplant, for the rest of my life, I would be fully and totally and completely aware That I would have all of this evidence all over my head of not thinking that I was good enough, just being me.
And why would I want that advertised to myself for the rest of my life?
Every time I look in the mirror, I'm not enough.
I'm not good enough. Me, in my natural state, with the bolt, is not good enough.
And for the rest of my life, I would have this not good enough staring back from the mirror.
And I thought, that's pretty risky, you know?
Like, yeah, if I could snap my fingers and grow hair when I was 21 or whatever, then I would have.
I don't know that I would now. But I thought, geez, that's kind of risky because, man, if it turns out that I do think that I'm good enough, and that certainly would be nice, then it's going to be kind of embarrassing and silly to have this stuff floating on my head for the rest of my life.
It just seems kind of sad, right?
So I didn't, and I'm very glad that I didn't, and I was entirely right that I didn't.
But I think that's the kind of thing that I'm talking about with self-deprecating humor.
People always say, oh, it's for me.
It's not for others, it's just for me.
You know when people say it's not about the money?
It's about the money. When people say it's not for others, it's just for me, it's for others.
Botox, it's just for you.
Nonsense. Complete and total nonsense.
I would say that colonic irrigation...
Probably just for you.
That would seem to make sense.
Enemas? Yeah, I could see that being mostly pretty much just for you.
A massage? Yeah, kind of just for you, right?
Botox, liposuction, all this other kind of mutated mess?
Not so much. Not so much.
And of course, it is a form of aggression, right?
I mean, it's a form of aggression.
These sort of Nicolette Sheridan mask faces of perfect in animation.
Like these flesh-taught Ming nothingness faces.
It's a form of, you know, I'm better looking than you.
I'm younger looking than you.
I'm superior to you.
Oh, the podcast on women and their vanity is still to come.
But oh, my sisters, you must be working your very hardest to make men think that you're retarded.
Just have a look at these women's magazines.
But we'll get to that. This is the kind of quality stuff.
Enough epistemology.
Let's look at nair ads.
Oh man, this is just going to be work, work, work.
So if you're doing this thing, self-deprecating humor, and I'm just sort of using the hair transplant as an example, for the sake of making an impression upon other people that is not organic or natural to you, then it is inauthentic and it is going to be manipulative and you're going to be dependent on the approval of others and you're actually going to achieve the opposite of what you achieve.
Like if you're not... Totally shallow and vain 14-year-olds, right?
When you see people trying to act cool, doesn't it just look tortured and sad when you see people trying to...
I remember seeing a...
Not to slack or good friends of Japanese, but they seem to be fairly into the cool.
Fairly down with the whole cool thing.
And I remember when I was...
I started going to discos when I was about 15 or so.
Or 16, because the balding helps with that.
I was the guy who bought beer. And...
I remember being at a disco and seeing a guy, a Japanese guy, he had the, you know, heavy mirrored police sting shades on, half welding goggles, half sunglasses, and of course it's a dark disco, right, as they all are, and he's walking across trying to look totally cool, and like a whammo goes straight into a pillar that didn't have any day glow on it or anything, and he just wouldn't take his glasses off.
felt around like a blind man and he wasn't right but felt around like a blind man and continued on his way and and it's funny right I mean it's sad and it's it's funny and it's tortured and it's such an indication that you are not enough right like the girls who with the hair and the teasing and the multicolors and the I don't know the nose rings and it's just you're saying I'm not enough I'm not enough me and my natural state I'm not really worth that much
But if I put adornment on and this and that, then I will be worth more.
I will be worth so much more.
And of course, that's all nonsense, right?
The only thing that's worth anything in this life is virtue and integrity and all the good things that we talk about here.
So, if you are...
Putting yourself down in order to try and achieve something, some effect for the sake of the other person, it doesn't come from an organic place, the other person will sense it immediately.
And you will achieve the exact opposite of what you want, right?
So when you try to look cool, you look like an idiot.
To anyone who's, like, not an idiot, right?
I mean, so what happens is you obviously, if you were trying to act cool and you were trying to, you know, hey, how you doing?
If you were trying to act cool and you knew that only idiots thought you were cool, then you wouldn't think it was very cool to do what you were doing, right?
So you have to think that discerning people think that you're cool.
But when you try to act cool, discerning people, the last thing they think is that you're cool.
I mean, idiots will think that you're cool.
And so, like, if you've seen, and it's usually women, engage in this self-downmanship, like this, I don't know, the titty plunge or something, where one of them says, oh, you've lost weight.
Oh, no, I haven't lost weight.
This is just a slimming dress, but you look fantastic.
Your hair is this and that.
Oh, yeah, you know, they kind of botched the job, but I managed to sort of fix it up myself.
But those are a great pair of shoes.
Oh, these? I got these on sale.
But that belt is fantastic, right?
Every time they get a compliment, they downgrade themselves and then compliment the other person.
This can actually swallow up six or seven villages of women in a sort of self-deprecation black hole, and no man goes in and comes out alive.
So this can happen quite a bit, and this is, of course, manipulative, right?
I mean, this is very manipulative.
I was talking with Christine on the weekend, because I think Christine has got a great figure, and she gets complimented on it.
And I said, well, why don't you say at one point, well, you know, it's nice that I have a good figure, but, you know, I care more about being a good human being.
I mean, this is just my body, right?
I mean, it's nice, but it's not really that important or special, right?
And, you know, anything that Britney Spears has has nothing to do with morality, right?
She has a good figure, and so...
Paris Hilton, I don't know, whatever your tastes are.
Skinny or trashy? What's your pleasure?
We have both kinds. Then I said, well, what would happen if you said that?
I said, oh, women would get angry.
Oh, yeah, no, I'm just saying, right?
They'd just get angry. I'm just saying he's a nice figure.
I'm not saying that you only have to care about your figure, but, of course, that's mostly what women do, right?
Massive black holes of unhappiness and insecurity based on the vagaries of inherited genes and all this kind of stuff.
So this is this kind of thing you don't want to get involved in, right?
This is just... This kind of back and forth, this manipulation, this self-downgrading, and so on.
You don't want to get involved in that.
I find my own foibles kind of delightfully funny, like I really do.
I think that some of the jokes, the metaphors that I make, that they break apart in my hands, if not attack me back.
The verbal tics, the tangents, the this and that.
Like, for instance, if I were to start talking about...
I just think it's, you know, it's part of the ride.
It's part of the ride for me, and hopefully an enjoyable part of the ride for you.
So I think from that standpoint, since I genuinely do take pleasure in these foibles that I have, more so than other people do sometimes, for me, when I make fun of myself, it's with affection.
It's genuinely, I think this is funny in a positive way, in a sort of warm to myself, gentle to myself kind of way.
Pulling off a lot. I'm not going to aim for perfection.
I'm trying to pull off a hell of a lot here with your help and assistance and guidance.
I'm going to be kind to myself while I'm stretching myself this thin.
That is one aspect of things.
You don't want to get sucked into self-deprecation based on somebody else's self-deprecation.
So when somebody else self-deprecates, it can also be a manipulation towards you.
Oh, I can't do anything right and this and that.
Well, what they want you to do is they want you to manage their anxiety.
They want you to manage their anxiety.
And that's not right.
I mean, you should not become the managers of other people's emotions.
That's not fair, that's not valid, that's not healthy.
Even therapists don't do that, right?
They aim to get people to manage their emotions themselves.
So good therapists don't aim to patch people up.
Good therapists aim to reflect back at people with a therapist's experience of how that person is acting.
So if someone comes into therapy and says, Oh my God, I can't do anything right.
I'm just such a failure. Everybody hates me, this and that and the other, right?
And the therapist will say, well, this evokes a fair amount of despair.
I can certainly see that you're feeling down.
What was the sequence of thoughts that brought this about?
And then you challenged the thoughts and, you know, all of this kind of good stuff.
And if somebody comes in and does this in a self-deprecating manner, then the therapist will say, well, you seem to be pretty comfortable with this kind of stuff if it's genuine or healthy.
But if the therapist feels that there's something off or awry about the emotional content of this, Then the therapist will say, well, I'm getting a sense of something more serious behind these jokes that you're making about yourself, that you're not that comfortable, you're looking for people to reassure you.
If I thought I was some fabulous singer and I kept putting myself down and then people didn't say, no, no, no, you're great.
I'm not great. I mean, I enjoy singing and I'm not too bad.
I'm like an okay amateur.
But if I put my singing down because I really wanted people to praise me, they said I'm manipulative and destructive and that's a mess.
If your self-deprecating humor is because you want people to shore you up, then that's kind of, I think, sort of manipulative and unfair and means that you sort of have to deal with this stuff, right?
There's a genuine lightness when you're comfortable with yourself.
There's a genuine lightness in your interaction with genuine curiosity and benevolence and warmth and so on and strength and anger if necessary.
But there's kind of a lightness.
I don't know if you get this feeling with other people.
I do. I get this feeling with people that I'm just sort of You know, like that garbage room in Star Wars kind of closing in, right?
Or landmines that sort of you don't know where they are and you feel a little paralyzed, a little kind of claustrophobic at times because they're just reacting so quickly and so intensely to what it is that you're doing.
It's a form of trying to inhibit or control.
Your behavior, right? This gentleman who was on the Sunday calling show sits down with his mom and starts talking religion.
She's going to go off on all these six million tangents and controls and distractions.
It's a very, very accelerated kind of mechanism by which passive-aggressive people will attempt to control and stymie and paralyze your behavioral habits.
There's a kind of freedom, I think, and flexibility when...
When you are sort of at peace with yourself and can be genuinely curious about others, when you're not holding or propping yourself up, and that's to aim for, then I think the self-deprecating humor then comes a little more free and easy, and it's actually kind of pleasurable for other people.
It's one of the ways in which you end up not taking yourself too seriously, and again, as I mentioned, so that people can take this conversation more seriously.
So I hope that that helps.
I mean, it was a fairly rapid drive, I guess, so not too, too bad from that standpoint, so relatively short.
But this will be it for a while, my friends.
This is the last podcast drive for some time.
I mean, I guess if I have to go downtown for something, I'll throw the old podcast stuff together.
But that's it.
I'll be at my desk. I'll be sitting around.
And of course, I'm going to be doing some work on the website.
I'm going to be finishing up.
Thank you so much for your patience.
The God of Atheists.
I have to listen to some of it again, of course, because I can't remember the voices for everyone.
So thank you so much.
I hope that this helps. I will talk to you soon.
And thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you for making my dream come true.
I just can't tell you how much I appreciate it.
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