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Dec. 14, 2022 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
23:27
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All righty, ready. Some more questions from the subscriber feed.
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All right. Someone writes, I think I suffer from an overactive amygdala.
I often easily get triggered and experience adrenaline release, shaking hands and voice, and I find it very embarrassing as it also impacts my ability to rationalize my thoughts.
I want to be able to stay calm in tense situations, particularly when I am facing a conflict or a disagreeable person.
Do you have any advice on how to train myself to remain calm?
I am frankly sick and tired of trying to calm myself down, appearing weak in difficult situations and replaying these situations back in my head afterwards.
I find I have diminished self-respect after experiencing one of these events.
Well, unfortunately, the most likely explanation is that you have an inner alter ego that is incredibly critical of you, puts you down.
And therefore, in these situations, that alter ego robs you of confidence and security in order to be able to castigate you afterwards.
It's a trap. It's a setup.
So... I'll tell you a funny little bit of reprogramming that I did many, many years ago.
So there's a Genesis song called That's All.
Just when I thought it was going all right, I found out I'm wrong when I thought it was right.
It's always the same. It's just a shame, that's all.
And I found that song going round and round in my head.
Now, it was during a time when I absolutely needed to change my life as a whole, but it was getting repetitive, and I realized, of course, that I was kind of programming myself.
By repeating these lyrics.
And the way I broke it was I changed the lyrics just when I thought it was going all wrong.
I found it I'm right when I thought it was wrong.
It's always the same. It's not a shame.
That's all. I just had to reprogram that sort of loop in my head to change things.
So you're going to need to break the script.
There's a couple of ways you can break the script.
First of all, Have sympathy for yourself.
Have sympathy for yourself.
The amount of parenting it takes to help children learn how to navigate conflicts in a productive manner is prodigious, deep, wide, and meaningful.
And very, very few of us get anything like that, so we're just kind of thrown to the wolves and have to figure out things as we go along against very experienced people in terms of manipulation and domination and so on.
Have sympathy for yourself for being untutored in this area, and you might need to, you're going to have to find a way to not attack yourself afterwards, right?
So if you have an alter ego that wants to attack you, it's going to put you in situations where it can have a good excuse to attack you, so you have to cut that off.
And say, look, I appreciate your efforts to protect me because the alter ego is trying to protect you, right?
Any kind of confidence or assertiveness that you might have had in the past was probably extraordinarily dangerous to you in terms of your upbringing.
And of course, it's not a call-in show, so I'm just kind of guessing, but this is what would fit in my mind.
So you have all of this history wherein being assertive was extremely dangerous and so an alter ego was trying to eliminate assertiveness in your mind so that you wouldn't put yourself...
A slave that gets beaten for speaking up is going to experience extreme stress and anxiety when considering speaking up or speaking out.
And that extreme stress and anxiety is internalization of the abusive slave owner in order to keep you safe.
Do not provoke the beasts that can tear you apart.
So you've got to find a way to not have that attack occur.
Now, I know that's easier said than done, but you've got to make a deal with these alter egos, right?
Alter egos negotiate just like everybody else, so make a deal.
Okay, how about we take a three-month break from self-attack, let's just try it, and what do you want in return?
Now, probably what the alter ego wants in return, in order to lay down his arms of attacking you, with the goal, of course, of keeping you safe, the alter ego probably wants to be released from stressful situations.
So, if you're in stressful situations that remind you of your childhood, it's very hard to change.
You have to change your environment, and you have to make a deal with your alter egos.
What do you want in return?
For stopping the self-attack.
And listen to the alter ego.
It says, okay, if it's three months, and three months might be we just don't get into those stressful situations, or if we are in stressful situations, we're not going to fight, and we're not going to think we should fight, and we're just going to recognize that we need to take a break from conflict, whatever it's going to take. So if you want your ears to stop ringing, you've got to remove the loud noises, so to speak.
So I hope that helps. And of course, if you want to call and show, I'm happy to.
Shout about that. Somebody else asks, do you have any thoughts on why tragedy in art, in the Shakespearean sense, has completely managed?
Movies, TV shows, plays, etc.
I feel in my gut like these tragedies missing from the art landscape is a real problem or done on purpose, but I can't quite formulate an argument as to why.
So tragedy is there to train you to make better decisions in a situation of free will where there aren't easy answers.
You think of something like King Lear.
I played the murderous Cornwall in King Lear once.
And King Lear, the problem of course with the king is vanity and a lack of acceptance of aging and death.
And so he goes through these tragedies and through this Aristotelian idea of catharsis, the idea is that you're supposed to see the tragedy of vanity play out to try and get you to stop being as vain.
And to listen to people and to judge people not by flattery but by actual affection, which is the relationship between the three sisters, the two older sisters, flatter the king and get half the country and with their murderous and dysfunctional husbands and the younger sisters.
Daughter Cordelia tells the truth to the king and gets banished and so on, right?
So don't be susceptible to flattery, don't be vainglorious, and know when it's time to give up power.
Power corrupts, right?
That's one of the other messages.
So you have to be in a situation where you have difficult choices, no easy answers, and it's kind of like the human condition, right?
It's the human condition to resist aging.
It's the human condition to be corrupted by power.
It's the human condition to be susceptible to flattery, the false self.
It's very susceptible to flattery.
So, why aren't these things existing anymore?
Because we don't accept complex problems as a society anymore.
We simply do not accept complex problems as a society anymore.
So... If you look on the left, all of the problems in society are easily explained by identity politics, by in-group preferences, by patriarchy, by sexism, racism, phobias of various kinds.
This is their answer to everything.
And so, because you have easy answers, which are often wrong, what's the tragedy?
The tragedy is when you recognize that there's a part of you that is dangerous to you that needs to be confronted.
But if all of the problems in your life are because of external evils, then all you do is turn on the giant spigot of hate and attack people.
There's no... There's no complexity there.
There's no depth. There's no self-confrontation.
There's no sense in the Jungian sense or even in the Solzhenitsyn sense that we ourselves have a shadow and a capacity for evil and that we're susceptible to flattery.
So a modern tragedy would be somebody who blames all of their life problems on external factors and Uses rage and aggression and maybe even violence to punish these external actors for thwarting their life.
And it turns out that it's not the external factors.
It's their own internal susceptibility to flattery.
The flattery being, well, why are you not succeeding?
Well, you're not succeeding because there are powerful institutional forces that part of it, right?
Well, that's a form of flattery, which is to say that your problems are not your fault.
Your problems are caused by external factors which all you have to do is rage at and attempt to destroy and your life will be wonderful, right?
You're lured into violence.
You're lured into hatred.
You're lured into contempt and easy answers.
That would be a tragedy.
But you can't make that show.
I mean, if you could write it, I suppose, but nobody would really put it out.
We don't have the need to confront evils within ourselves.
I mean, we have that need, but we don't have that as a conscious need because all evils are defined as intersectional, institutional, blah, blah, blahs, and so on, right?
I mean, in the same way...
It happens on the right as well, that all the evils are just government, government programs, this and then the other, and it's like, well, yes, there's certainly some truth in that, just as there is some truth in the institutionalized repression of people, but where do these institutionalized repressions come from?
Well, as I've always argued, they come from early childhood experiences, they come from child abuse and so on, and we can do something about that.
All right. Let's see here.
Do you have any advice on how to best detach from family shame?
I know I've been raised to manage my parents' irresponsibility and shame.
In other words, they and some of my siblings either couldn't process their own shame or inflicted it upon me or used it as a manipulation tool against me.
I'm the youngest one in the family.
Whenever they fail, I feel like it's my responsibility to shield them from consequences, or I should somehow help them.
When someone from my family of origin does something embarrassing, and I get to know about it from a third person, it sometimes feels even worse.
Working through this issue and getting angry at the situation helps, but not entirely.
I've separated from most of my family as they have treated me badly in the past and even in recent years.
The one sibling I have the best relationship with still keeps in contact with my family of origin and sometimes likes to complain or talk about it.
I've asked them not to do that, but I still got that morbid curiosity in me, and this topic slips into our conversations from time to time.
I've even ignored or blocked some family members to deny them access to me via text as to avoid them triggering me.
Mmm, right, right, right, right.
So shame is the implantation of self-attack so that the other person can remote control your neurological system.
It's the implantation of an alter ego that replicates external verbal abuse internally, and that way you're dependent on the person's approval, They have a remote control button which is going to trigger self-attack within you because they've implanted, usually through parental means, but sometimes it can be through sibling means.
They've implanted a self-attack mechanism within you and they have this remote control.
They can push that button, get you to self-attack, and this way they get compliance from you without appearing to be violent, right?
So, how do you deal with that?
Well, you get angry at the attempted subversion of your free will by carrot and stick.
The carrot being, I won't trigger the self-attack that I have planted within you.
And the stick being, of course, a self-attack that has been planted within you.
So, self-attack is when you have the choice.
You're given the choice as a child.
It's not much of a choice, but the choice is there.
And the choice is this. Either I punch you or you punch you.
Now, of course, if we're given that choice, most of us, of course, would choose to punch ourselves because we can control that, right?
So the implantation of self-attack is either I attack you or you attack yourself.
Now, if you attack yourself, I will be appeased because then I know I have a long-term control mechanism that's been implanted in you that I have access to anytime, 24-7, night and day.
So this is what we do when we are attacked by parents.
We show them, in order to appease that attack, we show them that the alter ego of the parent has been successfully implanted into our own minds and will self-attack us if we cross the parent.
And that appeases the parent because now they won't trade an immediate attack For lifelong control over you.
It's a cost-benefit analysis, right?
So they will approve of you self-attacking by withdrawing the external attack because that way they know they have remote control over you for the rest of your life and their life, again, barring sort of any philosophical intervention.
So, I mean, it's a terrible way to treat someone.
It's terrible, absolutely terrible.
It's such an abuse of power.
And anger is one of the ways, you know, peaceful anger and, you know, don't be violent and don't, you know, abuse people and so on.
But, you know, anger where you just sit in a chair and say, wow, they really did remote control me and set up a bomb in the brain for me.
To control and manipulate me, and that's a terrible thing to do.
And they won't admit it, of course, because to some degree it's an unconscious process, although it's pretty obvious when you see it clearly.
Sorry, that's kind of redundant.
Of course it's obvious when you see it clearly, but I think when it's framed this way, this is our experience for the most part, right?
So, the other thing which you have a curiosity about, and I understand this, right?
So, everybody's a salesperson of their own philosophy.
Every single person in this universe is a salesperson of his or her own philosophy.
So, if you have mean parents, then they are going to sell to you that they're in the right and you're in the wrong.
That their way of doing things is the right way, and your way of doing things is the wrong way, and Concommon to that, or consequential to that, is that they will succeed and you will fail.
Everybody you have opposite ethics to is rooting for their own success and rooting for your failure.
And... If you doubt this, then you will continually, and I don't have an issue with this, and I'm just pointing it out as a sort of process.
If you doubt your morals versus opposite morals, you will have a constant desire to check in for empirical evidence about who is right.
You will have a constant desire to check in with other people, to circle back, to review the progress or issues in their life, to find out who's right.
Because their prediction is that you will be unhappy and they will be happy.
And that them opposing you morally is a desire to draw you into the wonderful circle of happiness and have you escape or avoid the terrible circle of unhappiness that you're destined to because of your bad morals, your bad ideas, whatever, right?
So yeah, you'll constantly be obsessed with checking in, and they will be to some degree obsessed with checking in on you.
Now the more you oppose not just them but general societal principles, the more you will want to check in on people, and the less society will want to check in on you because, well, society will probably just make you look bad so that other people will continue down their path, right? So...
Your desire to check in on your family is a desire to check the progress of who's right and who's wrong from a moral standpoint and a success standpoint.
Once you accept, I hope you have good morals, good ethics, you're listening to this show and thinking for yourself and reasoning from first principles and empirical evidence and so on.
So once you accept that, I mean, that is just the way to live and there's no substitute and everybody who lives in opposition to that is going to end up having to cling to society because they can't access reality.
Then they're just going to not do well.
They're not going to do well. They're going to be unhappy.
And they may fake a lot of happiness, but, you know, lift the lid and the hellscape is underneath.
So once you accept that, you really won't have a need or desire to check in on people.
In fact, it will be kind of unpleasant to do so because it is watching somebody self-mutilate.
All right, let's see here.
Why is it that showing excess fear and stress provokes aggression in others?
Is it the primal need to dominate?
I've been on both sides in these situations.
I remember my aggression towards someone like that had something to do with a feeling of power, a feeling better than or superior.
In the opposite scenario, I managed past fears of making mistakes and thus annoyed those around me.
With greater self-knowledge now, I treat others better in such situations, but I'm still struggling with provoking others, assuming they're not total assholes to begin with.
I know this comes from my childhood, but why is it easy to learn to treat others better than myself?
Well, when you self-attack...
So one strategy of self-attack is to get other people to comfort you externally.
But the problem is then comfort comes from self-attack.
So you don't learn how to self-soothe, self-comfort, ease yourself down off that cliff edge, right?
So self-attack is a form of trying to minimize self-attack by having other people rush you.
No, no, no, it's fine. No, it's okay.
No problem. And that's sort of one side of things.
People will come and sympathize with you, but you're simply setting yourself up for repetition.
Now, the other thing, of course, is that when you self-attack, you are under the strain of an inner abuser, and that can go out as a sort of clarion call or a sort of wolf-howl pack-gathering call-out for external abusers.
So people will be tempted to join in On your self-attack by not comforting you, but by being the abuser of some people.
And not a lot of people who have a history of abusing others will be able to resist that temptation.
All right, so I think, yeah, I think we got that.
I think there was one other question. Let me just grab that and finish that.
Ah, yes, here we go.
This would be a question strictly for Steph.
If you should read this, you said on several occasions over the years that once a person starts drinking, that's where their emotional growth is stented.
Which makes perfect sense to me, but I've often wondered approximately how much and how frequently is the drinking for one to stop maturing almost completely?
Thank you. So, I don't know.
Obviously, this may be a question for medical professionals, but from a philosophical standpoint, I would say that...
Pain is often necessary for growth.
I mean, the purpose of philosophy is that you can grow based on principles rather than on pain.
The purpose of nutrition is to prevent you from getting a heart attack.
It can't cure a heart attack in progress, so maybe it can help prevent a recurrence.
But the purpose of exercise and nutrition is to avoid health issues, right?
Like 70% or so of health issues, a result of lifestyle choices and so on and so.
The purpose of philosophy is to prevent the necessity of pain for growth and change.
And I say this as somebody who's...
I've done it both ways.
I've done it through gruesome pain and I've done it through philosophy and I hope you'll trust me in saying that philosophy is a better way to change rather than pain because pain can be really difficult, unpleasant and, you know, can be fatal, right?
If you don't exercise and eat well then the heart attack might finish you off.
So... If you're not learning through principles, then the only other way you're going to learn is through pain.
Principles of pain. That's it, man.
That's all we got. Now, I don't know what level of drinking is necessary, but the reason why addiction, particularly drinking drugs and so on, it can be hypersexuality and so on, but the reason why addiction prevents you from growing or has your emotional state Get stuck is because addiction is a way of avoiding a pain, right?
You feel anxious and so you have a drink, right?
People do this with social anxiety, I think, all the time.
With kind of trashy people, they need to ignore that.
Everyone's drinking and they just have to self-erase to avoid consciousness if they're low status.
Because consciousness, if they're low status, of being with fairly trashy, drunken people, will cause them humiliation.
But it's that humiliation that's trying to get you to a better or higher state.
So, alcoholism in particular is a form of self-medication to avoid a pain.
And because you're avoiding pain, you are not changing your behavior.
And you get really addicted to pain avoidance, not even to alcohol.
You get addicted to anxiety management, not in particular drinking.
So I don't know what level it is, but whatever level it is, you are drowning out the inner voice that says, try to be better, try to improve.
This is where you really are.
You know, there's an old Bill Murray and Robert De Niro movie.
I can't even remember what it's called.
It wasn't a particularly good movie, but there is...
Bill Murray, sort of against type, plays the mafia guy and Robert De Niro doesn't.
And at one point, Bill Murray says of his sort of trashy mafia buddies, you know, this is my life.
This is who I hang out with. This is all I've got.
And it's really tragic, really sad.
And Bill Murray was very good in that moment, right?
And of course, he hangs out with a bunch of fairly trashy comedians that are probably speaking from real experience here.
So whatever is preventing you, like if you're not going to go by principles, then you have to go by pain.
And whatever you use as an avoidance mechanism for that pain is going to prevent you from changing.
Typical example, right? You have a toothache and you just take a whole bunch of painkillers.
Well, your toothache is just going to get worse.
So I don't think there's a specific amount, but...
And this is why addiction tends to escalate, because the more pain you avoid, the worse the pain gets, so the more you have to drink.
And then you hit rock bottom, right?
You either die or you hit rock bottom, or maybe you have some transformational experience outside of that.
Hopefully philosophy can have a hand in that.
But at some point you turn and face your demons.
And the demon now has become you and your choices and so on.
So... Accepting pain is really healthy.
Because if you say, well, I can't accept pain.
Pain is my enemy. Well, then you're saying that the entire apparatus of your emotional system that's trying to help you improve is actually your enemy.
And of course, pain, particularly when you're young, pain is not your enemy.
Pain is your abuser's enemy.
They don't want you to suffer pain because the pain will lead you to their bad actions, their potential crimes.
So it's not you who doesn't want to experience pain.
You can handle the pain. It's those people who've done you wrong or harm who don't want you to experience the pain because that will lead you to change with regards to them and go against their interests.
Anyway, wonderful questions.
Thanks everyone so much. Freedomman.com slash donate to help out the show.
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