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Feb. 4, 2021 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
15:17
How to be happy...
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I'm miserable in the country with $100,000 or more in cash.
I'm lonely and don't know what to do, where to go or how to find direction.
I'm 30. I'm sorry about that.
And this, you know, goes to show, right?
This goes to show that money is not going to buy you happiness.
Like when I was a kid, I wanted to be wealthy.
Oh, my God, did I want to be wealthy.
I remember having conversations with my friends.
Oh, if you had a million pounds, what would you buy?
Oh, I'd buy a 747 and fly all over the world because we didn't know what a million pounds meant when we were five, right?
And in my very first dream, very first dream I remember having, I must have been like two or three years old, was going through a dark forest, glimmer of light on the horizon, didn't know if it was sunset or sunrise, going through a very very dark forest, finding a tree, seeing a faint Almost like a...
You ever see something in the forest?
You don't know if it's fungus or light.
You know, it's like a patch there.
You don't know if it's light. It could be a little bit of fungus.
Not like the iridescent plankton in the ocean, but just a little bit of...
A little patch or something. Could that be light?
Could it be a reflection or something? I saw that at the base of a tree and I began digging.
Out of curiosity, not frantically, began digging.
And there was a hollowed out part under the tree with glowing gold.
Glowing gold down there, and I took it up, and I was, my God, I was so overjoyed.
You know, you grow up poor, man.
Money is your God. I mean, I hate to say it, but it just is your salvation.
Because what you do is you say, well, the reason we're miserable is because we're poor.
And no, the reason you're poor is because you're miserable.
And that's what you get. People say, oh, well, and you should watch Crossfire, the movie.
Crossfire.movie, something like that.
It's Lauren Southern's latest work with Scooter.
But she puts paid to the notion, and I've talked about it in the past, too.
Crime isn't high because the neighborhood is poor.
The neighborhood is poor because crime is high.
This has been teased out statistically and algorithmically forever, right?
It's a well-known phenomenon in criminology.
So when you're a kid, if your family's poor, you say, well, the problem is a lack of money.
And if we had money, we'd be like the richer families and happier and more stable and less screaming and yelling and whatever, right?
And so you think, well, it's the stress of poverty that's causing it.
It's like, that's not true. It's not true at all.
I had this fantasy, of course, when I was a kid, that the salvation was going to be money, and maybe you had this too.
Gotta get the money. And Scott Adams talks about this.
He didn't say the exact size of the check, but I can guess.
Like, when he was really big in the 90s, he got his first big check for Dilbert, and I guess probably like $10 million or something like that, which he'd always wanted, and he got so depressed for months afterwards, because now he had nothing to shoot for, right?
You shoot for virtue, you'll never achieve it perfectly, so you've always got something to go for, and you don't decay in it.
Physically, I can't do at 55, almost 55, what I could do at 35 or 25, so the body stuff decays, but virtue and knowledge can continue to expand until the scythe cuts your brain in two.
So I had this fantasy that the glowing gold was going to bring me happiness, and so when I was holding this gold as a little toddler in my dream, Man, I woke up.
I don't think I've ever been that sad in my life.
I don't think I've ever been that sad in my life.
And I woke up as a kid and realized that I was just, I had nothing.
Just a dark room in a shitty neighborhood with broken, vicious people.
That was it. There was no gold.
There was no salvation. There was no, nothing was coming.
And I was trapped in this hell prison of a family structure.
For, you know, you're three.
It feels like forever, right? That was a low point, man.
That's a low point, low point to start.
And I mean, I get it now.
I mean, I understand the dream now, sort of.
I understood it later. The dream was that the gold is going to the roots of things, looking for the faint patch of light and going.
You go to the root and you'll get the gold.
And this is why going to the root of ethics, going to the root of the truth, going to the root of philosophy, going to the root of society, going to the root of the family.
That's where the gold is. And the gold is the people who are in my life now and you wonderful people.
And that is as beautiful an environment as I can imagine.
And it makes up for so much.
I can't even tell you. And I just thank you so much.
Thank you so much for this incredible gift of these conversations and this ability to do what I do.
It's an amazing thing.
And I... I'm so appreciative of it, and I hope that I make that clear when I talk to you just how incredibly appreciative I am.
The gold is you guys.
The gold is the people in my life.
The gold is UPB. The gold is real-time relationships.
The gold is everyday anarchy.
The gold is against the gods.
The gold is the work on parenting.
That's the gold, and it comes from going to the roots, not staying on the surface, going to the roots, going to the underneath that supports the up.
A tree grows down as much as it grows up.
And what's visible is incredibly fragile unless you know and reinforce what's at the bottom.
So... I understand that money...
And I remember listening to that...
I buy you a diamond ring, my friend, if it'll make you feel alright.
I don't care too much for money.
Money can't buy me love.
And... I never believed that when I was a kid.
I'll take some diamond rings. Yay!
You know, it'd be great. And so I know.
I know what you're talking about. The money is not going to make you happy.
And in fact, the money takes away the purpose and the everyday struggle that substitutes for happiness.
Survival substitutes for happiness for so many people.
So, I mean, this brings us to a complex topic, which is the relationship between need and meaning.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Need and meaning. I need the world to pursue philosophy.
I need the world to pursue philosophy.
To view reason and evidence as the North Star, the guiding principles.
I need the world to do that.
And I'm naked about that need.
It's my only fence.
I'm naked about that need.
I need for my daughter, for my life, for my future, for my culture, for my family.
I need the world. And so need Breeds purpose.
And purpose breeds meaning.
Need, purpose, meaning. That's the dominoes, right?
So if you have no meaning, it's because you have no purpose.
And if you have no purpose, it's because you don't need anything.
And maybe you don't need things because you have the money.
So you've got to figure out what you need.
What do you need? What do you need in the world?
What do you need? Not just for you, right?
Not just for you. I mean, with regards to this article I was reading earlier, my God, if you want to get out of being neurotic, focus on other people.
Forget about yourself. There's this navel-gazing that goes on with neurotic people, but they're constantly monitoring their own thoughts and their own feelings, and I need this therapy, and I need this pill, and I've got to do my breathing exercises, and I need to be zen, and this person's upsetting me, and I've got to control this, and I've got to manage that.
Oh my God, just go and help someone, for God's sakes, and stop looking at your own fucking innards the whole time.
Go and help someone.
Go and make the world a better place.
Go and volunteer at a soup kitchen.
Go and help a homeless person.
Go and reason someone into doing better.
Go and oppose a lie. Just stop thinking about yourself all the goddamn time.
It's exhausting. It's debilitating.
And it's such a circular whirlpool into nothingness.
Like she's anxious because she's not focusing on other people.
She's not unable to focus on other people because she's anxious.
She's anxious because she's not focusing on other people.
You know, her son is sick, and all she can think about is, well, it's really about me, and I'm more worried about myself, and I've got this business meeting to do, and here's your iPad, and I don't even really care that much if he gets sick or even if he dies.
I'm really worried about myself.
I think that, like, you've got a whole person outside this talking, yammering, joke, teeth chatterbox going on in the head.
The best way to Overleap your Enter the dragon, hall of mirrors, disco ball of self-reflections.
Just leap over your own wall.
Go out into the world. Make things better for other people.
It can be within your family. It can be within your community.
It can be in some online community.
Just go and ask people how they're doing.
Go and help someone. Go and help people.
Go and make the world a better place.
So what do you need? What do you need?
Now, if you can't figure out what you need, then you're not going to find out your purpose, and then you're not going to get your meaning.
Meaning is, am I achieving the goal of getting closer to my purpose, right?
My purpose is truth, right?
My purpose is truth.
Having a smaller audience now is simply a fact.
It's true that my success led to deplatforming, which has a smaller and more concentrated audience.
I still think it's about the same number of people who actually get shit done in the world, so that's not particularly relevant, but that's just a fact, right?
It's a truth about what happened.
It's a fact. And since my purpose is truth, that's just another fact.
It's just another truth that has happened in the world that I can understand and learn from.
And there are great things to learn from it, which I've talked about before.
So what do you need?
What do you need in the world?
What do you need? What do you need the world to do?
Say, oh, well, I'm lonely. Okay, so I need someone.
So, the world doesn't care about that.
The world doesn't care about that.
The world doesn't care what you need, doesn't care what you want, doesn't care that I wanted a philosophy show, doesn't care that I wanted to be published, doesn't care that I wanted to have a positive influence on the reasonableness of the world.
The world doesn't care about that. In fact, it often opposes it massively.
So, what do you need? So, I need the world to be interested in philosophy.
I need the world to be interested in philosophy, because the alternative is theology or communism, theology or fascism, theology or totalitarianism, which is kind of two sides of the same coin.
I don't want to live in a theological dictatorship, and I don't want to live in a secular dictatorship, both of which are harmful to me, toxic.
So I need the world to be interested in philosophy.
So what do I do? Well, you know.
That's why you're here. I need the world to be interested in philosophy, so I need to make philosophy interesting to the world.
You understand, right?
That's how this works, right?
Where I need, I must provide to get what I want.
If I need you to be interested in philosophy, I need to make philosophy interesting to you.
If philosophy, if your interest in philosophy has value to me, Then the first thing I must do is make philosophy have value to you.
To you. Not anybody else.
To you. You. You.
You. If you want someone to buy your pizza, you've got to make that pizza tasty to people.
Your need is your service.
I need you to be interested in philosophy.
I need to make philosophy interesting to you.
That's how I serve my needs, how I serve philosophy, how I serve the future.
And once I'm serving, Something bigger than myself, I stop being self-obsessed.
I stop being neurotic. I'm serving something larger than myself, serving the future, truth, virtue, humanity.
So you say, I'm lonely.
I need someone. Okay. If you want someone to need you, then you've got to provide them something they want.
Because we're adults. You don't have to do this when you're a baby.
You don't have to do this when you're a toddler or a kid, but now you're an adult, which means nobody owes you anything.
Nobody owes you anything.
In fact, the last thing they want to do is give you anything because it interferes with what they want in the world, usually, right?
You say, I'm lonely, I'm lonely.
I need someone to care about me.
Okay, great.
I think that's wonderful. That's a need that you have.
So how are you going to get that need satisfied?
You've got to provide value to people.
Got to provide value to people.
The value that I've provided in this show is virtually limitless in terms of personal liberation, better parenting, non-circumcision, non-hitting, bitcoin, value, increase, investment, you name it.
The value that I have provided is massive in this conversation.
This is why I feel comfortable.
Askfreedomain.com forward slash donate.
Come on. Be fair.
Be reasonable, right? Return value for value.
It's justice. Justice. Return value for value.
So when you think, oh, I'm lonely, oh, I need someone to care about me, that's great.
How are you going to get someone to care about you?
Well, not like a mom or a dad who has to do it because you're there and they chose to have you and they have no choice and there's no alternative.
That's subsidization.
That's fine in the family, but kind of a weird, creepy socialism, you know, from each according to their ability to each according to their need.
Other people have an excess of affection and I need affection, so they're going to – that's just communism.
It's communism of the cock, so to speak, right?
Sexuality and romance based upon your need, what other people must provide.
No, no. To be an adult, you must exchange value for value.
That's the definition of adulthood.
If you want someone to care for you, you have to give them a reason.
You have to give them a benefit for caring for you.
Make me less lonely will only breed contempt for you because you're greedy.
You're not exchanging value for value.
You have a need. Through that need, you have a purpose, and your purpose is to provide value to people.
To have them want to call you, to have them want to interact with you, to have them want to see you.
Provide value to people.
How are you going to provide value to people?
I mean, real-time relationships, honesty, virtue, truth, curiosity, empathy, courage, support, having people's back.
All of this is part of the gold that you can bring to people.
And then some people won't return because they'll be in your primitive state of I need, I need, I need, and they won't return.
Okay, move on. Move on.
If somebody doesn't pay you for the pizza they take, get them out of the store.
Don't have them come back in because they're thieves, right?
You got your need, then you got your purpose.
Through your purpose, you will get your meaning.
Need people? Purposes provide value?
The meaning is the happiness and the love that you get from that union.
Well, thank you so much for enjoying this latest free domain show on philosophy.
And I'm going to be frank and ask you for your help, your support, your encouragement, and your resources.
Please like, subscribe, and share, and all of that good stuff to get philosophy out into the world.
And also, equally importantly, go to freedomain.com forward slash donate.
To help out the show, to give me the resources that I need to bring more and better philosophy to an increasingly desperate world.
So thank you so much for your support, my friends.
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