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March 28, 2023 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
41:35
Emergency Listener Show – Integrity Versus Popularity!
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Good morning, everybody. Hope you're doing well.
Stefan Molyneux from Freedomain just had a really heartfelt question that I wanted to talk about right away.
Somebody wrote this morning, it's March 25th, 2023, he said, Man, I'm so sorry, my friend. That's very tough.
That's very harsh. Very rough.
Now, The reason why it hurts so much, I'll sort of get into.
Everybody gets great and deep pleasure out of feeling like a good person.
Morality and virtue, I mean, they're so hard at times.
And nature would have to bake into us a great deal of joy out of being virtuous, out of being good.
Because it is so hard.
And there's really no... I mean, if you're religious, of course, God has planted in us a yearning for virtue.
If you're more secular you could say that our brains have adapted to process universals
and the most important universals are morals and therefore if we
are morally consistent, if we have integrity, that's going to give us great pleasure
in the same way that we have more pleasure in the world as a result of universally applying scientific principles
than being mystical and superstitious and so on.
So we have a bent towards the universal that is just baked into us and its human nature.
We have physical lusts, and we have a desire for a universal, which is another way of saying that we get great pleasure when we conform with universals, which is why it's called universally preferable behavior, rational proof of secular ethics.
So, basically, we really, really want to be good.
Our desire...
To be good is most often used to manipulate and control us and subjugate us.
It's very, very sad.
So what people do, this is sort of the devilish bargain, right?
So let's take a theological approach.
So God wants us to be good The devil wants us to feel good.
God wants us to be good.
The devil wants us to feel good.
Now, God says, you're going to feel pretty bad being good at times, but it's worth it.
And the devil says, well, you can get all the benefits of being good just by feeling good.
And in order to not trigger your contempt for things that are sort of based in mammalian, you know, like just that bug man pursuing orgasm after cocaine, after drinking, after social applause or whatever, after money, where you're just chasing your dopamine in the lowest possible way.
In order to avoid that, which you'll be on the hedonistic treadmill, and if you simply pursue physical pleasures, they'll run out pretty quickly and be replaced very quickly by physical pain, discomfort, unpleasantness, depression, anxiety.
You'll run out of it. You'll burn out.
Morality, being moral, is the only thing in life that gives us sustainable happiness.
And, of course, it's hard.
It's hard. So the devil comes to you and says, Okay, yeah, you want to be good.
I completely understand that.
It's a wonderful thing. I love the fact that you want to be good.
So... Here's a definition by which you can be both good and comfortable.
See that God guy?
He says there's all this downside to being good.
There's all this harshness and attack and criticism and ostracism and so on for being good.
But that's all nonsense.
That's all nonsense. You can be both good and popular.
You can be both good and approved of.
You can be both good and safe.
Ooh, isn't that great?
You can be virtuous and applauded by all the powers that be in the world.
You can have integrity without Isn't that a wonderful thing to think of?
To be, because we, you know, one of the things, I was saying this to a friend of mine the other day, like one of the things that drives people a little bit nuts about me is that, I mean, I know this sounds odd.
I have my strengths and weaknesses, but I can be frank.
I'm very likable.
And when people meet me in person, somebody asked me the other day, have you ever had a negative interaction with somebody who's recognized you based on your work on the internet, your work in philosophy?
Other than organized and violent opposition to speeches, no.
No, everyone, everyone.
There was one waiter who was a little hinky, but it was all very passive-aggressive and girly.
But no, honestly, for the most part, people have just been incredibly wonderful.
Some waiters absolutely demanded to pay for my dinner when I was out with my daughter because they love my show so much.
People have just taken selfies with me in the middle of nowhere when I'm hiking.
Really, really wonderful and positive and warm interactions.
And of course, when people sit down and chat with me, they find that I'm very pleasant and very positive and want the best for everyone in the world and really committed to truth and reason and peace and all of that.
And, you know, that can be fairly funny at times.
So normally when people are very popular, it's because they like to please.
Whereas I'm very likable, but like to please reason and virtue and philosophy and truth.
Because normally people who say very difficult and unpleasant and harsh things, not in a harsh manner, but truth that people have been programmed to avoid or suppress or attack, normally people who say very harsh things are themselves very harsh people.
Whereas... I'm a very sort of positive, friendly, and happy person.
And then when I speak difficult truths, it kind of short circuits people because they expect difficult truths to come from unpleasant or harsh or difficult people.
And I'm easy.
So yeah. So I've always really focused on pursuing the truth in a sort of positive and friendly manner and that messes people up.
So yeah, it's always been very positive when I've met people in the world.
So the way that this world has been set up is that you can be popular, but in general, that means you will be corrupted.
Because if you're popular, and you have sort of a high charisma and high likability factor, high Q factor, and you want a public life, then the powers that be will try to corrupt you to push their own messages, right?
Obviously. I mean, you can see this in the art world all the time.
On the other hand, if you are not likable, then people don't really try to program you quite as much.
At least the powers that be may happen in a somewhat localized setting, but they won't really try and program you so much because you're not likable, so whatever you have to say will go through people's filter of, do I like the person or not?
You know, it's the old thing in sales, right, when I was in sales.
Elderly, ancient, charismatic salesman, you know, put me through the ropes, right?
They gave me the score.
They told me that a salesman is always first and foremost selling himself.
And after that, you sell the product.
And that's, you know, the fact that I was in sales and marketing for many, many, many years.
I mean, I was a tech guy, but I'm obviously a good communicator, so I was always out on sales, and then I actually had a job as a director of marketing for quite some time.
So I know how to sell.
You sell yourself, and then you sell the content.
It's the way of the world, and you can fight the way of the world, but then you're basically just a sort of human denialist and end up with bizarre social theories.
So people want to have both the good of popularity, the good of being liked, and we're social animals.
Ostracism is scary for us, and obviously serious or severe ostracism.
It's a gene-ending situation.
Like, ostracism is just about the greatest predator.
Because if you're a man and you're out hunting, you've got sort of a wife and kids, you're out hunting, and a predator chews your head off, well, at least your kids will most likely survive.
So ostracism, particularly when you're young, is gene-ending, right?
So our instinct is to please those around us, So we have this contradiction.
We have the universals that give us the greatest happiness, integrity and consistency in morality.
These are our greatest joy.
And that's our greatest long-term joy.
Our greatest immediate joy is approval from the group.
Approval from the group.
and even somebody like Ayn Rand who was famously individualistic in many ways,
she wanted approval from other conservatives and people in the world of
literature and publishing and she did write some pretty magnificent novels and
after she published Atlas Shrugged in what 1953 or something the reception
that she got for her book was so harsh and so negative she basically went into
a 40-year depression never wrote really any more fiction and didn't really do
much and was you know had a pretty pretty rough go of it so she wanted a
She wanted her tribe, so to speak.
And she was attacked and rejected, really, because of her...
I think William F. Buckley was very harsh against Atlas Shracht, and he was sort of the central figure in conservatism in many ways.
So she just couldn't find a place where she was accepted and approved of.
And that's tough, you know?
So we want to be good and we want to be liked.
And the best way to keep virtuous people from consistently practicing virtue is It's to savagely attack and punish them for being consistent, for being good.
And that scares other people off from being good.
And the way the world is structured is, you can be good in limited ways that serve the needs of the power structures, but you can't be good in consistent ways that may challenge the virtue of the power structures.
So that's just, it's the way of the world.
People fight hardest.
What do they fight hardest against?
They fight hardest against the actual universal application of a virtue they already accept as universal.
Let me just say that again because it's a bit of a mouthful, but I can't think of a better way to put it.
People get the most tense, frustrated, and angry when a virtue that they claim to be universal It's actually applied universally.
Or, to put it another way, if somebody has told you for 20 years that X is virtuous universally, and then you say, then you should apply it universally, and you point out where they're not, or they're doing the opposite, they freak out.
It's almost like a seizure.
It's cognitive dissonance, the likes of which you can't suppress it.
You can't suppress that level of cognitive dissonance.
X is universally good.
Wait a minute.
In your life, you do the opposite of X in this area.
And it's even worse if they themselves have been in charge of other people's moral instruction.
I mean, parents, obviously. It could be teachers or other people.
So if they've not only been hypocrites themselves, But have modeled that hypocrisy and taught that hypocrisy to others, particularly innocent, helpless, dependent children, then they go from thinking that they're good, noble, kind, and virtuous, which gives them great pleasure, and they're popular, which gives them great pleasure.
They go from that To realizing that they've done some significant wrong in the world.
I hesitate on the word evil, but some significant wrong in the world.
They're high on virtue.
And not only do you take that drug away, but you apply its opposite.
I mean, there's a withdrawal when you come off any drug and the drug of self-righteousness.
Self-righteousness is when you believe that you're right because people in power tell you that you're right, which means that you're useful to them, which means that you're harmful to the virtuous.
So, again, just when you look at people, I mean, when I go around the world, I look at people, for the most part, I mean, there's exceptions, of course, and I think this community is a wonderful example of that, and there are other communities as well, but when I go around the world, I see people who are addicts, for the most part.
They're addicts. You see this online, you see this even in person, you can see this in those around you.
They're addicts. They want to feel good rather than be good.
And they would rather choose moral hypocrisy and popularity versus moral integrity and attack.
Which, again, I'm not a big hostile guy towards this, because, again, we wouldn't be here if we didn't have some sort of cohesive tribes in the past that were able to defend the young while they slept and protect and blah blah blah, right?
But all power is subject to corruption, and the power of ostracism is used by those in power to not just punish those who choose moral consistency over ostracism, But also to warn other people away from doing the same thing.
So, let's go from the abstract to the concrete.
So, why do people get so upset if you say, I am not in contact with my abusive parents at the moment, right?
If they change and they go to therapy, I mean, wonderful.
I'm not waiting for a call from my mother, but if she did any of those things, I would absolutely take that call and be happy about it.
So, say I'm not, you know, they're harmful, they're abusive, right?
Well, why do people get so upset?
Because they agree with you, and that's exactly what their parents taught them.
I mean, I went through a couple of weeks of fairly significant bewilderment when I was first publicly attacked for this stance many, many years ago.
I understand it now, but a bit of a shock.
Because it's strange when you get attacked for practicing the universal virtues that you were taught.
As a child, right?
It's almost like people say, well, your parents raise you, but don't shoplift, don't shoplift, don't shoplift.
And then you go and you tell people, don't shoplift.
And then you get attacked for saying to people, don't shoplift.
And nobody points out the wild inconsistency, right?
So what did your parents tell you when you were a child?
They told you the same thing they told me that they told everybody.
That if you were in a group, you have a group of friends, and your group of friends were doing something wrong or stupid or bad or whatever, right?
And you get caught.
And then let's say that you have some prank that you're playing on your neighbors and a bunch of your friends, let's take a kind of male example, right?
A bunch of your friends, you take some dog poop, you put it in a paper bag, and then you light the paper bag on fire, you put the dog poop on someone's doorstep, and you ring the doorbell.
And then they come out, they see the fire, they step it out, they stamp out the fire, and they get their foot covered in dog poop, right?
Silly joke, but that's something that people do, right?
So then, let's say it's a neighbor, and the neighbor sees you and calls your parents and says, you know, Bobby did this terrible joke, and now my porch stinks, and my house stinks, and my shoes need to be repaired, and you owe me a mama.
And then your parents call you in and say, what the hell were you doing?
He said, oh, yeah, but it was a fun joke.
My friends were all doing it. He says, well, hey, look, If your friends were jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge, would you do that too?
No. Okay, so think for yourself.
Don't just do what's popular.
Do what's right. It's a mean thing to do.
He's an old man. He's got no friends.
And now I've got to go and pay for some shoes and got to calm the waters.
So just because your friends are doing something doesn't mean that you should do it too.
You have to think for yourself.
Well, the other kids were doing it.
Well, that's not an excuse. That's what you're told, right?
You know, your kids, your teenage kids are going to some party.
It's okay. If people are drinking underage, you think for yourself.
Don't do it. In fact, call me and leave the party.
Right? But mom, it's cool.
No, it doesn't matter. You've got to do what's right.
Not what's popular. Not what gets you approval.
You've got to do what's right. Not what gets you approval.
And that's what everybody is told.
That's what everybody is told when you're a kid.
If you've got a daughter and she's going on dates and so on, it's like, don't let the boy do anything that you don't want and blah, blah, blah, blah, right?
And don't try to be popular and don't try and get in his good graces by letting him kiss you.
And if you don't feel like it, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right?
Have those right. Think for yourself and don't do what gets you approval, but do what is right.
So... When you're a kid, teachers, of course, say the same thing.
And they're very harsh about it.
I mean, they're very harsh and brutal about it.
Not, you know, well, look, I understand you want to get along with your friends, but is this a balance in life?
It's like, no, no, no. It's an absolute.
Like, the iron gate comes down.
Don't do what is popular.
Do what is right. And what is popular is...
Absolutely unimportant compared to doing what is right.
Think for yourself. And don't blame other people.
And don't blame the crowd and your need to get along with the crowd and have approval from the crowd and your peers.
Peer pressure. It's called peer pressure.
Do what is right. Don't do what is popular.
Do what is right. Don't do what is popular.
So right, that's a constant refrain in society.
A constant, constant refrain.
Do what is right. Peer pressure, popularity, the need to be liked, the need to feel accepted.
The threat of ostracism should mean nothing.
The threat of ostracism should mean nothing compared to virtue.
Because you say, well, you know, if I didn't go shoplifting with my friends, they wouldn't be my friends anymore.
It's like, well, you don't need friends like that.
You don't need friends who are going to take you down this dark road.
If your friends are pressuring you to smoke cigarettes or do drugs or drink or have sex, then you should get rid of those friends who are negative influencers.
And if somebody is trying to convince you to do the wrong thing or somebody is harming you, you ostracize them.
And it's not even close.
It's not even like, well, I understand.
You've got to have a circle of friends.
It's tough, you know. No, it's just like it's an absolute.
Boom. Done. If your friends are harmful to you, if your friends are trying to talk you into doing bad things, then there are no friends of yours and go find better companions.
Go find better friends. This is absolute.
And it's in movies, it's in books, it's in school, it's in church, it's in society, it's in parental instruction, it's everywhere.
Do what is right. And what is popular, what is accepted, what is approved of, is absolutely unimportant.
It should never factor into any of your calculations.
And if anybody is doing you harm, you should not associate with them.
Dump your loser friends.
Oh, your friend wants you to go and steal a car?
Well, you call me, you come right home, and you never talk to that boy again.
Whoever is tempting you with immorality should be ditched because what is right and what is moral and what is virtuous and what has integrity is infinitely superior to that which is popular and gets you approval.
Okay, I'm flogging the horse here, but you understand that this is what we're taught.
This is what we're taught. We're also taught, of course, and by society, that if you're in an abusive relationship, you should leave that relationship.
This is everywhere. Sleeping with the enemy.
Julia Roberts in the 90s, all the way back at MC in the 80s.
If you're in an abusive relationship, Get out.
I remember reading this book, boy, if anybody remembers it, I'll probably never read it again, but I remember reading this book when I was maybe 11 or 12, and it was the story of a woman who was involved with a narcissistic, she was married to a narcissistic husband, and, you know, he was rough and brutal and selfish and mean, and I remember very clearly that there was a scene, because I lived in an apartment where you'd walk down to put the garbage in the chute down at the end of the I remember there was a scene where he decided to walk naked down the hallway to put garbage in the chute at the end of the hallway of the apartment building.
And he walked all the way back naked.
And she was, of course, really... I think he was punishing her for something like that.
And she was really stressed and freaked out that he would walk down the hallway naked and back just in case somebody came out the elevator or somebody opened the door or something like that.
And she left him.
And I remember reading a book around the same time by Judy Blume called Wifey, where a woman had an affair and basically left a guy, her husband, because he didn't tell her that he loved her.
Even though he said at the beginning of the marriage, I'm not going to say I love you because I'm here.
I'm paying the bills. I'm coming home every night.
I sleep next to you.
So I love you. Just accept that.
I'm not going to be talking about it every day.
And she basically left him.
I remember Peter Benchley, the movie, sorry, the book Jaws that the movie was based on.
In the book Jaws, which I read a couple of times, the wife is discontented.
And I remember vividly, the husband wanted to make love to his wife.
And she had taken a sleeping pill.
And she says, you can go ahead if you want.
And he rolls over and says, No, forget it.
I'm not very big on banging corpses.
And she says, well, that was uncalled for.
And there's this real conflict. No, he's not a mean guy.
He's a good guy. Saves an entire town from a shark.
And he's a police chief.
And he's a good guy. But she's obsessed with a lover from many years ago.
And this is not like she's a bad person.
This is all the judgment-free 70s shit that was just all over the place, right?
So even if you're just discontented, even if you're just kind of vaguely unsatisfied, you can just walk out of a family.
You can walk away from your kids.
I mean, this was Kramer vs.
Kramer. Kramer vs.
Kramer. A movie I watched three times when I was a kid.
And this is when you had to pay to get it in the movie theater.
And I watched it three times just trying to understand.
It was a hugely popular movie.
And the Dustin Huffman character, the dad...
Wasn't abusive. You know, he worked kind of late and he was a little inattentive and so on.
And then his wife was like, if I stay any longer in this apartment with my child, I'm going to throw myself out of a window.
I have to leave in order to survive.
And then, of course, it turns out that she's just this magical productivity machine, even though she's been a stay-at-home mom.
She's a magical productivity machine and just ends up out-earning him, even though he's been in the workforce for like 10 years and works very hard.
She just out-earns him within a couple of months by just jumping into the workforce, and it was all this nonsense.
But she breaks up an entire family and abandons her son.
And is she criticized for this?
No. No.
Not at all. In fact, he's the one who has the moral journey to go through and to learn to be a better father and learn to love his son better.
The fact that she abandons her son is not criticized.
The fact that he's a little harsh with his son right after his wife abandons him and the mother of his child abandons them He's criticized.
He's got a moral journey to go through to become a better person.
Well, she doesn't have any moral journey.
She's just perfectly wonderful and poised and successful, right?
So she walks out of a relationship where the guy's providing for her.
They've got a pretty nice apartment in, I think, New York or something like that.
And there's one kid. And she's, I don't know, she's just going to throw herself out of a window because she's home with her son.
It's weird, right? So...
This is what I grew up with.
That, you know, even if you're just dissatisfied, even if the guy's not mean or abusive, even if the other person is not destructive and there's no history of abuse and they never hit you and they never scream epithets at you or whatever, right?
Even if that's all the case, even if that's all true, even if you're just kind of dissatisfied and unhappy and feel you can do better and feel that you're underutilized in some abstract manner, you just walk right out, not just of your husband, but of your son, totally fine.
Totally fine. And of course we've all seen a million times the story of Oh, she's a woman, she's got a boring husband, and then she leaves him and she goes to open a resort or a restaurant on the Mediterranean, or she goes and becomes a sculptor and, you know, ends up with a young lover and, you know, all of this breadcrumbs to lead women away from the family to take a pretty contented and happy existence and turn it into, well, now I'm dissatisfied because there's all this wonderful stuff out there and this self-actualization and I could be this wonderful artist and Have young lovers.
It's absolutely, literally satanic.
You just lead women away from...
Path home, children, husband, into a desert, right?
Because they leave all this stuff behind, and it turns out that there's nothing out there, and, you know, they're not fantastic sculptors, and they don't end up with these wonderful careers, and they don't end up with these young, washboard-abbed lovers, and, right, they just get led away.
Greed, right? Stimulate greed.
Oh, the grass is greener on the other side of the fence, and it turns out to be an electric fence, you die getting through.
That's the wrong thing, because it's not like...
The only real freedom is in monogamy, because that's when you can be honest, and yourself, and be accepted for who you are.
So, yeah, so your friend...
has, without a doubt, fully absorbed and accepted that you should act with integrity, that you should never act for the sake of approval or popularity or peer pressure or out of fear of ostracism that you should do the right thing, you should be virtuous, and you should not have unsatisfying relationships in your life.
Now, I personally, I don't agree with this.
You should not have unsatisfying relationships in your life.
Unsatisfying is not abusive. If you've got those relationships, there could be good historical reasons.
There could be good shared experiences, reasons, and you should work to try and find those relationships to try and make them more satisfying.
You should work to try and make those relationships more satisfying.
I don't view dissatisfaction, particularly marriage.
Dissatisfaction is not a reason to separate dissatisfaction because how do you know dissatisfied with yourself, with your prior choices, If you're dissatisfied with your life, it's not your husband's fault.
It's your life fundamentally to live.
And if you've got dissatisfactions in your relationship, work to close them, work to fix them, work to deal with them.
And it could be maybe your husband is dissatisfied and you're also a boring pile of tapioca.
And you've just got to get more engaged, get more, read more, have better conversations, maybe go exercise, pick up a sport, do something, do some travel if you can, just do something to be more interesting and have a more interesting life.
But just running away into the desert thinking you're going to find a jungle is usually just a way to die among the dunes, right?
So, no, I don't view dissatisfaction as at all legitimate for ending a relationship.
I mean, if you try and fix it forever, you know, whatever, that's a different matter, but...
So, yeah, your friend has completely accepted that dissatisfaction is perfectly justifiable.
It's a perfectly justifiable reason to end a relationship.
And also that abuse is not just you can end the relationship, but you must.
You should. You must end the relationship if it's abusive.
This is what we're always told, right?
The woman with the abusive husband, she gets to the shelter and she's...
Warmly received by all the other women and blah, blah, blah.
She's got a happy and she ends up in a great job and with a new lover and she's happy, right?
And it's all perfect because apparently, you know, traumatized single mothers are just number one on everyone's list, right?
So, and again, great sympathy for the trauma.
But as far as dating, it's, you know, it's a heavy burden to take on.
So, yeah, he's fully accepted.
And, you know, if he has a friend, let's say he's got a female friend, and the female friend is complaining that her boyfriend is yelling at her, is putting her down, is insulting her, and has a history of hitting her, what would he say?
He would say, you've got to get out.
My God, you've got to get out.
You can't have a guy who used to hit you and is putting you down and Or barely talks to you, or is insulting you, or undermining your career, or showing no interest in anything you do.
And, I mean, come on, this is a terrible relationship.
You've got to get out. So he would say that, and we all know that.
We all know that. So then when you take the exact principles that he has accepted, and also inflicted on others, because when you tell people, like, it's wrong to stay in this relationship, you deserve better, you're making sort of a self-esteem statement, Moral argument.
So he's accepted all the principles that you're living by.
So then when you say, oh, I'm living these principles consistently.
I have a relationship with my parents.
Let's say they used to hit you and they abused you as a child and they won't change and they continue to neglect or abuse you as an adult.
Usually it's verbal and so on like that.
I mean, and neglect in the form of parental relationships is abusive because as a child, your sense of self is so directly shaped by your parents' experience of you that when they neglect you, they say that you are unimportant, you are uninteresting, you are unworthy of any attention, and, you know, good luck getting that log off your legs and striding confidently through life.
I mean, you can do it, obviously, but you can only do it with a lot of anger, which is quite destabilizing for a while because you're being...
Really abused. When your parents neglect you, you know, it's like people don't have the need, they don't have the obligation to feed you.
But your parents do, right?
And so your parents need to give you attention so that you grow up with a sense of worth, that you're interesting, that you're important, that you're worth interacting with.
And if they don't do that when you're a child, that's severely abusive and gives you significant challenges to gain self-confidence as you get older.
So he has absolutely accepted the principle that you should...
Not be in abusive relationships.
And you should not do what is popular.
You should do what is right.
So then when you say, well, my parents were abusive, are abusive, are neglectful, and I'm not, and I've tried to fix it.
I've tried to talk about it with them.
I've offered to go to family counseling and so on.
And I'm personally in therapy. All things that I recommend when you're in these situations, for which I have massive and bottomless sympathy for everyone involved.
It's a horrible mess.
But if you've gone through all these steps and you tell this to your friend, then of course he should be applauding you.
By every principle that he holds dear and that he has accepted and follows to some degree and has inflicted on others, he should absolutely applaud you.
Why doesn't he? Why doesn't he?
Well, because he's not good.
He says words, but he is doing that which is popular.
He is doing that which is accepted.
He is doing that which gains approval.
And he is willing to burn the heart out of somebody striving and achieving real virtue.
He's willing to attack and ostracize that person.
Like any terrible peer pressure person.
Like anyone pressuring you when you're a teenager to drink, do drugs, have sex, shoplift, whatever, right?
He is just another NPC programmed to attack anybody who tries to practice consistent virtue.
He is a minion of dark forces in some analogous fashion.
And you are taking away his drug by saying, all the virtues and values that we both accept, I'm actually living them, I'm actually going to apply them consistently.
And if he realizes, deep down in his heart and mind and soul, if he realizes that all of the pride and self-esteem that he gets from being, quote, virtuous, is actually a drug to keep him compliant, and that he is actually just an NPC enforcing rank hypocrisy within society that serves the powers that be, I mean, imagine. Imagine.
You wake up tomorrow, you see a little short circuit in your eyeball, you reach up to touch your face, and you pull off a mask, and you find out that you're just a robot.
I mean, that's a horror movie, right?
That's a horror story. So, you are taking the mask off.
Somebody thinks they're virtuous, it turns out that they're actually just a Vicious moral hypocrites serving the powers that be.
And you are taking away, right?
It's one thing to go from saying, gee, maybe I'm not as virtuous as I thought I was.
That's fine. I mean, we all have that thought and that's worth thinking about and worth figuring out what you can improve.
But to go from, I'm a really good person to, I might actually be kind of evil.
To go from getting the drug called virtue to getting the mule kick in the chest called maybe I'm the bad guy is too much of a shock to the system for most people and they have to chase you away.
And really what they're doing is they're just chasing their own conscience away.
Because our own conscience is saying, what is it saying?
Why does UBB trigger so many people?
Because UBB is an external manifestation of the internal conscience.
The internal conscience is saying, be consistent, be consistent, be consistent.
That's what the internal conscience is saying.
And culture is this big maze or moat set up around to guide people to consistencies that are not consistent but which serve the powers that be.
And the powers that be could be your own parents, it could be whatever, some local structure or some universal structure.
So, your conscience is saying, be consistent in what you claim is consistent.
Be consistent in what you claim is consistent.
Because the claim of consistency gives you great joy, hypocrisy will destroy your life, your society, everything in the long run.
Get real virtue, not fake virtue.
Have integrity, not the pretense of integrity combined with the drug of popularity.
I mean, everybody worships these stories where heroes go through tough times to fight the bad guys.
Could be some superhero movie, could be any number of things, right?
Heroes go through tough times to fight the bad guys, even in Fight Club and the bad guys himself.
Everybody loves these stories.
You've got to do what's right, regardless of what the crowd says.
You've got to don't be pulled apart by peer pressure.
If everyone was jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge, would you as well?
No, I would think for myself, I'd be a hero.
And if you say to somebody who thinks that they're a hero and admires heroes and thinks that they're consistent, you're actually a bad guy.
I mean, people can't handle that.
It's too agonizing.
They don't have the ego strength.
Because when you build your ego on what is approved and what is propagandized, after a while, you don't have a true self to survive the collapse of the false self.
It feels like death.
And in many ways, it is.
There's a song by Supertramp.
It feels like I'm dying when I stop being shallow, when I stop engaging in small talk, when I actually think deeply.
I feel I'm dying.
It's really, it's a powerful song.
Asylum, it's called. And he feels like he's going mad.
He feels like he's dying when he takes on his false self.
Very powerful, very powerful experience.
People will tell you that you're virtuous to give you the drug of being virtuous, that you're good, and they will give you the one-two drug of virtue and approval.
Now, of course, I wrote my novel, The Future, freedomain.locals.com.
I wrote my novel, The Future, to say, look, here's a society where being good and being popular are finally united.
But ostracism is used as a weapon to keep people hypocritical and therefore subjugated.
Because by punishing people who actually act consistently, consistent virtue undermines the entire power structures of the world that is.
Consistent virtue undermines the entire power structure of the world that is.
The subjugation, the human form that I talked about in my long ago video, The Story of Your Enslavement.
So consistency is the enemy of subjugation.
So, they tell you you are consistent and they praise and approve you and then you get the one-two drug of pretend virtue and enslaving subjugation to approval and you take both of those away.
When people say, wait a minute, I thought I was good but I was just being manipulated.
I thought I was good but I was actually transmitting immorality.
Especially if they've raised their own kids, what are they going to do?
Go back and say, well, I told you to think for yourself and fight the crowd, but it turns out I'm just a crowd pleaser who doesn't think for himself.
People can't do that.
So, that's why it hurts so much.
Because you're exposing a foundational lie at the very center of power in society.
And you are showing people who they are by actually acting consistently.
You're showing people who they are, or rather who they are not, which is generally virtuous, by actually acting consistently.
And it turns out that Your friend only hung out with you because you participated in the lie of virtue.
And when you no longer participate in the lie of virtue, when you are actually virtuous rather than pretend virtuous, then your friend doesn't want to have anything to do with you because it was a kind of sick, under the table, Agreement or bargain.
We both pretend that we're virtuous and that's how we get through life.
And again, I have sympathy for this.
This is how people are raised. It's how they're programmed.
And really, prior to the internet, it was pretty hard to get counterexamples.
So again, a lot of sympathy for this.
But your friend is seeing who he is.
By seeing you as an actual person who's striving to achieve consistency and integrity, you are revealing them to be a programmed robot.
Addicted to false virtue.
And that's really harsh for people.
And they have an instinctual jump back from that.
Like if you ripped off your mask and you were some squid-faced space alien trying to plant an egg in their chest, they would recoil.
And this is the same sort of experience that people have.
So a lot of sympathy.
I'm, of course, happy to talk about this in general.
People want to call in. Call in at freedomain.com.
C-A-L-L-I-N. Call in at freedomain.com.
But I hope this helps, and lots of sympathy out there for my friends.
We are doing great things in the world, but nobody's going to tell you, who's at all honest, that it's always easy.
Take care. Lots of love.
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