All Episodes
Previous Next
Dec. 11, 2023 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
45:30
HOW TO DIE FROM PRAISE - Locals Questions
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Alright, great local questions, and let's dig straight in.
This is late November 2023.
Hello, Steph!
I've recently become fascinated with the life and death of writer Robert E. Howard, the creator of Conan the Barbarian, Solomon Kane, and other such characters.
He was a very talented writer, but had a very troubled relationship with his parents, especially his mom, which led him to take his own life at the age of 30.
This inner pain seemed to have fueled his creativity, and as an aspiring author myself, I wonder how can that inner darkness best be harnessed for that task?
So... He was an interesting character, grew up, turn of the last century.
His father was a traveling doctor.
His mother was a homemaker. His mother cared for relatives all the time, sick and ailing relatives, and through that she contracted tuberculosis, which plagued her for decades, and then eventually she died from tuberculosis.
He was 30 years old, and he then ended up taking his own life.
he shot himself in a car. Now he was never hugely successful in his life. I think his
maximum earnings in modern terms would be about $40,000, but of course since then he's
become quite the icon. Now he hated bullies and he was in one town when there was an oil
boom and of course people came swarming and vice crimes went through the roof, the roads
were destroyed, people fought all the time, there was drunkenness, so he kind of hated
that kind of stuff. Of course the oil booms were one of the reasons why his family moved
around when he was younger. Now his mother had an absolute belief in her sons, in Robert
E. Howard's literary capacities.
Now, he had, of course, a remarkable mind.
He was able to memorize long stretches of poetry simply by reading the poems a few times and just a really remarkable mind.
But his mother was the person who believed in him.
Now, this is a dangerous thing, man.
It's a dangerous thing.
It's great when people believe in you, but you have to find a way to transfer that to yourself.
You have to find a way to transfer that to yourself.
So one of the ways that we can overleap doubt, all of the doubt which is healthy and necessary to all, especially creative endeavors, but all endeavors as a whole, you have to doubt whether you can do them.
That's what brings your best efforts to the table.
You don't doubt that you could walk, so you'd never become particularly good at it or great at it or anything.
But things that you're trying, that you're striving for...
You have to doubt that you can do them, and that way you prepare, right?
I mean, if you doubt that you can pass an exam, I mean, I could probably pass an exam from grade four, okay, but if I had to do something really complicated and advanced, I would doubt I could pass it, and therefore I would work.
So self-doubt is natural.
How do you overcome the self-doubt?
Well, there's two ways to overcome self-doubt.
One is to gain expertise through hard work and dedication and practice and experience and so on.
And that way your doubt gets asswashed.
I don't pick up these questions and say, gosh, I hope I can answer them.
I hope I can provide some value.
I mean, I've been doing it for 40 years.
So, I mean, obviously there's things that I have doubt that I could do.
I would not make a great Jean Vergeant.
In Les Miserables, because there's a lot of high notes, but things that I know I can do.
So how have I gotten confidence that I can do what I do well?
Well, experience and self-criticism and feedback and all this kind of stuff.
So doubt is natural for progress.
And if you want to stagnate children, you tell them they're great already.
This is a way of drugging children.
You're great already. Oh, this is such a perfect drawing.
Oh, this is so wonderful. Oh, you're so good at this.
Oh, you're so funny. Oh, you're so clever.
And then what that does is it gives them a kind of artificial confidence, which is unjust and unwarranted.
It's unjust and unwarranted.
It cripples. And it shows a sort of devilish or demonic, almost, focus on people who want to be thought of as great without having to earn it.
And this is a bit more women.
Of course, women are praised when they're young, in particular, sort of young and pretty.
Women are praised just for breathing.
Or get a lot of positive attention just for breathing.
And so what they do, since they enjoy that, is in particular with their sons, what they do is they say, oh, you're brilliant, you're talented, you're wonderful, you're excellent, you're perfect, and all of this kind of stuff.
And this cripples kids, because what it does is now they are dependent on their mothers for their identity.
Their identity is artificial and it is sustained or maintained through the praise of the mother.
And in general, it could be fathers too, just a little bit more, I think, on the mother's
side.
So it's very dangerous.
It's very dangerous.
My mother was very positive towards my writing and always completely paranoid it would all
be stolen.
Get it registered, copyright it.
And I think this had happened to one of her relatives when she was younger.
So she was always very positive towards my writing.
I remember when she would read my writing and there was not a particularly great passage
she would say, well, I suppose you were just a little tired here, which I actually found
No, sometimes I just don't write well.
But I always hesitate in the face of great praise.
I view it in the Aristotelian mean sense.
You know, unjust attacks are bad, and yet effusive praise is dangerous.
Because a lot of times people who praise you excessively...
Are trying to get you addicted to them or trying to make you lower your defenses because they deliver the dopamine of praise and then through the lowering of those defenses they can exploit you in some manner.
And I've seen this a bunch of times because I grew up in single motherville, right?
I mean, because the The places I grew up in were so poor, there were single mothers everywhere, and the single mothers would have wildly excessive praise for their sons, and this was a way of tying the sons to the mothers so the mothers wouldn't have to face...
Loneliness. I mean, for men, it's really hard for us to understand how difficult loneliness is for women.
It's why so many older women are on antidepressants and so on.
It's really tough. Men tend to be a little bit more independent that way, and it's kind of tough for us to understand.
For women, loneliness is, for men, the equivalent of...
A cratered status, like the destruction of status.
And so mothers will overpraise their sons as a way of tying their sons to them and having their sons become dependent upon them, because the mother, the dysfunctional mother, could be a single mother, could be a...
The mother in particular, some of the most dangerous mothers and fathers, are those who don't have a good relationship with their spouse, right?
So whether it's divorced or not, and Robert E. Howard's parents didn't get along really at all, I think.
And so the mother, especially when she gets older, especially like Robert E. Howard's mother, she's ill and emaciated and tuberculosis-ridden and so on.
Well, she's going to end up alone, right?
So how does she not end up alone if she's not getting along with the father?
Well, she massively praises the son, and then the son becomes addicted to the praise of the mother, and then the son has, through this inflated ego from the praise of the mother, the son is like an overfull balloon in a world of cactuses, right? So, I think we've all seen this at one time or another, somebody who's got a significant degree of vanity or Often coming from the mother, young man in particular.
And then what happens is they go out into the world and the world doesn't give them the same feedback.
And then that's very, it's discomforting.
It's very uncomfortable. Your mother says you're the most wonderful thing since sliced bread.
You go out into the world, the world doesn't care about you.
And then you have a choice, right?
You can either say, well, I got to go out and earn it.
And, you know, my mom's just being a mom and telling me how wonderful I am.
Well, it's actually more sinister than that for the most part.
Or you run back to your mother and she rubs the wounds of your pain from the indifference of the world by telling you how wonderful you are, nobody appreciates you, and this, that, and the other, right?
So, yeah, maternal praise, I mean, again, it's fine when kids are very young, like, you know, yay, good job, you know, you grabbed a ball, yay, good job, that's fine, you know, but, you know, when you get older, you've got to get to some of the more masculine, you suck, stuff, right? So, Robert E. Howard, now what you do, of course, a lot of times is you see a story like this, Robert E. Howard's mother, oh, you're a brilliant writer, you're wonderful, you're a genius, this, that, and the other.
And then he was a brilliant writer in his own way, he was a kind of genius.
And so then we say, oh, he succeeded because of his mother's belief in him.
Nope. No, no, no.
Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope.
No, so what happens is the mothers wildly praise their sons, And very occasionally, the mothers are right.
But the mothers aren't praising their sons because they have a deep understanding of literary genius, I mean, Robert E. Howard invented basically the whole sword and sorcery adventure stuff, right?
Magic and blades and so on.
Sorry, really no point repeating it with similar words.
So she overpraised him, as single mothers or lonely mothers often do, and she just coincidentally happened to be right.
Right? If every mother says to her son, you're a wonderful singer, well, you know, once in 10,000, they'll be right.
And then what people do is they say, oh, they praise the mother for her perceptiveness and steadfastness and so on.
It's like, no, no, no, no.
So, this is really dangerous.
Overpraise is one of the absolute worst toxicities, environmental toxins in the world as it stands.
And people are, I mean, as single motherhood rises, overpraise rises, which means unstable egos, which results in Depression, it results in violence, and it results in paralysis.
And in Robert E. Howard's case, again, I don't know, it's just my theory about it, nobody will know for sure, but in Robert E. Howard's case, when his mother died, and remember, he was not particularly successful, did all right, was not particularly successful in his life, and had no reason to believe that he was going to be such a I mean, he was published in half-failing magazines called, like, Weird Tales and so on, and just, you know, might as well be photocopied in the basement to some degree.
So Robert E. Howard had his confidence artificially inflated through his mother's praise, and he never internalized that confidence to the point where he could survive her death.
I mean, I knew a guy when I was younger, single son of a single mother, just about the worst combo.
And he was into martial arts and this, that, and the other.
And he ended up being an unpaid assistant teacher in some martial arts place and so on.
And he was kind of tubby and all of that.
And it was just like, man, it's a long way from Bruce Lee.
And, you know, you're in your 40s.
You know, it's just really, you know, you're not taking the world by storm.
And I remember saying to him, you know, when he was in his 20s, I said, you know, you should start a dojo.
You know, if you really care about martial arts, you really love martial arts, you should start a dojo.
And his mother, of course, thought he was wonderful and the bee's knees and she really bound him to her in the slimy tentacles of over maternal praise.
And I remember saying, oh, you just had a dojo.
I mean, that's my kind of thinking.
If you love something, find a way to monetize it.
I mean, why wouldn't you? Life is short and if you can find something you love...
And you can make money at it, then, you know, the old saying goes, make money from something you love, you never have to work a day in your life.
I love doing this stuff.
It's great. I think it's good for the world.
It's certainly a great workout for my brain and all of that.
So he loved martial arts, and I'm like, yes, let's start a dojo.
And he's like, well, I don't have any capital, all the yes-butt stuff, right?
Well, I don't have any capital, and then, you know, I'd already had experience raising capital at this point for my own entrepreneurial venture, so I'm like, well, you know, I can help you get started on that, and you can save up your money, and you can get a loan, and, you know, that kind of thing, right?
And then he's like, oh, you know, there are a lot of regulations and legal issues and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and I'm like, well, yes, I'm sure there are, but...
So he was all the yes, but...
And I responded in a somewhat baffled manner, which is, this, I mean, yeah, there are difficulties.
There are difficulties. Yet there are dojos.
There are karate places.
It's like all the people who say, well, it's really hard to start a restaurant.
It's like, yes. Yes, it is.
Yet still there are restaurants that start.
Oh, a lot of them fail.
And it's like, yes, yes, they do.
And so you should try and learn from that and do your best.
But... Anyway, I could never talk him into getting anything going in this area.
I said, you know, the other thing you could do is you could find a dojo with an old instructor who might want to retire.
You work there, you work your way up, and then you offer to take it over from him when he retires.
There's lots of ways to do these things, but he didn't want to...
I mean, he thought he was brilliant in a particular field.
I don't want to get into details.
But he thought he was brilliant in a particular field because he scored very high in high school.
And so he went into some of the most challenging and difficult areas of this particular field.
And he just freaked out because, you know, going from being a big fish in a little pond to a little fish in a big pond is tough.
You know, I was considered the best actor in my university, and then I went to the National Theatre School, which takes like 1% of applicants, and they were all really good.
It's just like kind of in the middle of the pack, I guess.
And a lot of what happened with me as an actor, by the way, just by the by, I really enjoy reading my own audiobooks, the fiction and so on, and a lot of that has to do with I rise to the material.
It's kind of an unconscious thing for me.
If the material is great, and of course I love my own writing, And so if the material is good enough, then I rise to the occasion and can really concentrate on it.
If the material is not good, then part of me just checks out and I don't engage my full personality.
That's not about me, that's just a tip for you, that if you're not motivated enough to really put your heart and soul into it, then it's probably not going to succeed.
And so, you know, he knew that he needed to go out into the world and date and get a career or something going.
But no, he just went over to his mom's place, ate some hamburger helper and watched Murder, She Wrote.
And that was about it.
So it's really tough.
It's really tough. And so my guess is that with Robert E. Howard, what had happened was, Is he had placed all of his confidence on his mother's praise.
All of his confidence on his mother's praise.
And had not internalized it himself.
And although he was making some successes, for sure, I mean, again, 40k is not bad at all as a writer.
And when he died or when he killed himself, he owed more money.
So he had reason to believe that he was going to move forward.
But to me, when I look at, and I remember first reading about Robert E. Howard when I was in my teens...
And, of course, I played Dungeons and Dragons and knew something about Conan and read some Robert E. Howard as well.
And it's very vivid, very powerful stuff.
He wrote a lot of poetry, and when you write a lot of poetry, it's really great for your writing as a whole.
I mean, Karl Marx wrote a lot of poetry as well, and that allowed him to write in a very sort of compact and powerful way.
Poetry is like distilled essence of language, like dreams are distilled essence of your life and its choices.
And so Robert E. Howard...
When I read that the creator of the most macho character in modern literature died or killed himself when his mother died, I mean, it's really clear.
I mean, isn't it? It's really clear, right?
That his masculinity was beaten down, robbed, and hyperinflated, right?
By his mother's constant praise and his addiction to it.
And so he created a fantasy of...
The ultimate not mama's boy, right?
The ultimate independent, strong warrior whose mother, didn't she die early on?
It's been a long time since I read them, but Conan has nothing to do with his mother and goes out and conquers the world of men, right?
So this is the alter ego.
This is the other side of the beaten down guy, like the secret life of Walter Mitty about a non-entity who imagines he's a surgeon and a pilot and an adventurer and so on.
The fantasy life of the beaten down tends to be full of gore and conquest, right?
Because that's the slave dreams of ruling the world, right?
Because when you get beaten down enough, what happens is your mental energies go popping out the other side with fantasies of omniscience, right?
So Conan is such a tough guy that when he's crucified, a vulture comes to feast on his neck and he chews the head off the vulture and, you know, survives the crucifixion and so on.
So, he's so dependent on his mother, and does not have a good relationship with his father, and so dependent upon his mother's praise that he creates a character that's pure masculinity.
Because he survives on manipulative femininity, so he's looking for purely independent masculinity as his character.
Fantasy alter ego, which is why he wrote about boxers and gunslingers and swordsmen and, like, you know, ultimate macho guys.
Now, of course, in his own personal life, Robert E. Howard did strive.
He was sort of a naturally tall, juggered beanpole, so to speak.
So he did end up working out, and he became an amateur boxer.
And sort of back in the early parts of the last century, boxing was huge.
Like, it had massive—I mean, it was the most popular sport— In America, which of course would reflect the prevalence of physical abuse in America at the time.
Boxing was huge and he became an amateur boxer and weightlifter and so on.
And you know, the other thing outside of the sort of psychological aspects of it, the other thing that's Really important is, I mean, think of how many head injuries Robert E. Howard would receive over the course of being an amateur boxer.
I mean, just imagine, right?
How many head blows? I mean, did he always wear his head protectors?
Did everyone always wear gloves?
No, he'd be sparring. So he probably took a whole bunch of head blows.
And outside of the psychological aspect, right, which I think is important, and of course we don't know what the physical aspect was, but when we look at sort of NFL players and so on, The sort of murderous fantasies of which Conan was one, and suicidal ideation and even actions having to do with brain injuries from head traumas, I would imagine that that had something to do with it as well.
Yeah, as far as the inner pain seemed to have fueled his creativity?
No, he had the creativity.
He had that brain.
He had the creativity.
But you want to look at parental praise as a performance-enhancing drug that's incredibly dangerous.
So if your mother's netting your head and whispering what a sweet, brilliant genius you are, that's going to give you a lot of confidence.
And if you do have a lot of ability, that's going to give you some real nitro accelerant in what you do.
You know, my mom believes in me and she thinks I'm brilliant.
And if you have natural talent, that's going to jet fuel, accelerate your creative process and achievements.
And, I mean, is that terrible?
It's dangerous. It's really dangerous.
Like, roid rage, right? Take too many steroids or take steroids at all.
I don't know what the mechanics are, but there's aggression and depression and heart issues and so on, right?
So... So you can get these accelerants, you know, like you can take cocaine if you want to be happy.
I don't recommend it. You can, and then you'll be happy, but it comes at a very, very high price.
So, I mean, his mother was literary, and it was something that I remember hearing a long time ago, that nothing has more effect on a child than the unlived life of the parents.
And his mother was literary and read verse to him and all of that.
Literary and ill often goes hand in hand because you're stuck in bed.
It's like Robert Louis Stevenson, right?
You're stuck in bed and you have time to read and write and make things up and so on.
So I think, if I had to guess, I mean, obviously brain injuries to some degree, I assume, had something to do with this.
But also because...
His personality was largely a shadow caused by his mother's overpraise.
You know, like, a drug can have you do some pretty wild and incredible things, and then it kind of hollers you out, right?
And leaves you a shell of your former self.
It burns you out. And so I think his mother's...
Rabid praise of him. Deep belief in...
Which would have happened no matter who he was.
She just happened to be right, but it didn't happen because of her.
She just happened to be right.
And if I am blindfolded and I hit a hole in one in a golf course, I'm not a great golfer.
I just happen to be right.
I happen to be lucky in that thing, and I couldn't reproduce it.
He was an only child, so we don't know what would have happened to his...
So, his native talents, combined with his mother's mad praise, accelerated his creativity and output and productivity.
But the problem was that when she died, his identity died with her because his identity was fueled by her praise.
So, that's my guess.
That's my guess.
All right. I recently got heat in the Instagram's crunchy home birth community after saying it's wrong to make little children watch while their mom is butt naked giving birth to her baby.
I personally think all kinds of nakedness and sexual energy should be kept away from kids, but the woman started opposing me saying things like, then why are the kids looking so happy watching it?
Or why would it be traumatizing?
That's where the kids came out themselves too, and we should normalize birthing for kids so they're not afraid to have kids themselves, under the video of a three-year-old staring at his mom's butt and stretched out bloody vagina.
It's horrible. I mean, it's absolutely horrible.
Yeah, it's absolutely horrible.
I don't think that women are blind to this, but, you know, I watched a video the other day where the mom clinked a glass with the three-year-old and then the baby crawled over and clinked his baby bottle with the mom's glass.
The kids just copy stuff. Kids just copy stuff.
I mean, I remember when my daughter was younger and I would tell a story, when she would retell the story, she would use a lot of the same phrases.
I mean, kids copy, right?
And so, and kids have no choice but to please.
Kids have no choice but to please.
And so, if the moms are like, no, you should see this, no, this is great, no, this is natural, and the moms, it's like, the kids, okay, this is really important to mom, right?
It's really important to mom, because it's really important to mom.
I'm going to smile and grip my teeth and get through it.
And that's just a horrible amount of power.
It's a horrible amount of power to inflict on a kid.
It's terrible. Absolutely terrible.
And so I consider it wildly beyond inappropriate to have children in the birthing room.
I mean, the mom's, you know, crying out or screaming.
She looks like she's in pain. She looks like she's dying.
Kids don't understand what's happening.
It's like beyond traumatic.
So I personally think it's just absolutely, absolutely terrible.
And it's an exercise of power to me.
In a recent episode, you referenced your complicated relationship with the word selfish.
In my youth, I stood by the objectivist definition completely positive, the pursuit of rational long-term self-interest.
But life experience made me back away from that, because selfish people are so difficult to have relationships with.
I never reassessed my definition of the word, but have you arrived at some all-encompassing definition of what it means to be selfish?
Ayn Rand was selfish, and there were some really negative characteristics to her selfishness.
I mean, Ayn Rand and Nathaniel Brandon were starting a real movement in the 60s to bring objectivist philosophy to the mainstream.
Ayn Rand was not a particularly great public speaker.
She was kind of haunted and hunted.
And of course, her childhood experiences being haunted and hunted as her family was attacked as Bush was in the Soviet revolution, the communist revolution.
I mean, it was pretty terrifying for her and trying to escape and get to America was all pretty terrifying.
So she had a really tough early life.
And although, you know, as a whole I'm sort of getting of the opinion as I get older,
which doesn't mean anything other than it might be just worn down stuff.
But in general, I think that it does, in a sense, the gene pool good to be humble from
time to time.
I mean, I came from illustrious history.
And to be humble from time to time is not altogether a bad thing because it puts the
the fire back in the belly to want to achieve.
And so, you know, my father's big obsession was to raise the family name from ignominy.
Well, I'm not sure I've done that perfectly, but I certainly have worked pretty hard to manifest the potential of my And I don't think I would have done so if I had been raised with sort of wealth and privilege and all that kind of stuff.
I think I would have become a tool of the bad guys.
So while the poverty was tough and the dysfunction was tough, there were some really positive things that came out of it.
Of course, I'm in the positive things now and far away from the tough stuff.
I mean, my childhood is like 40 years ago.
So, yeah, it's funny.
So, yeah, she was very selfish.
They had a big movement going.
Nathaniel Brandon was a much better public speaker.
He organized all these lectures, and of course they had Alan Greenspan and Murray Rothbard, a lot of people who were around that kind of environment, who could have done quite a lot to really move objectivism more into the mainstream.
But instead, she wanted to have sex with Nathaniel Brandon, and so she did, and that blew up the whole movement and destroyed everything.
So her lust crippled a movement that happened.
Would otherwise, I think, have had some very positive effects.
So that's kind of selfish.
That's kind of selfish.
Of course, when you look at something like The Fountainhead, or, of course, Atlas Shrugged, and you look at the sacrifices that the heroes make for their own art and architecture, for their own philosophy and Atlas Shrugged, they just make massive sacrifices and live poor.
And, you know, Howard Rourke, the architectural genius, goes to work in a quarry as a manual laborer just rather than compromise his vision.
And she just couldn't refrain from grabbing at Nathaniel Brandon while she was married and he was married and having sex with him, you know.
So she wrote about integrity, but in my view, this was pretty corrupt.
This was pretty corrupt and really harmed because it broke up the whole movement and so on, right?
So, as far as selfishness goes, you know, it's tough.
I certainly wouldn't want anyone to be in my life out of pity, or if they didn't gain any selfish pleasure or value out of being in my life, it would be terrible.
I wouldn't want that.
I don't want any of that.
I mean, if, you know, I don't know, my wife were to say, well, you know, I'm just kind of here out of obligation, you know, just be like that, be terrible, and I would, you know, obviously work to try and fix that as As quickly as possible.
So, I want people to be in my life for their own selfish pleasures, but if your selfish pleasures don't overlap with other people's well-being, then it's kind of exploitive, right?
So, you think of a guy who's selling you something, then the way he sells it to you, if he's a good salesman, is he says, here's how this thing will benefit you.
Because the benefit to him is obvious, like you pay for it, he gets money or whatever, he gets commission.
And so, yes, people want to sell you stuff.
And a good salesman then talks about the benefit to you.
And if you accept the benefit to you and it's a win-win situation, then you buy things, right?
I mean, I bought this little rig.
It's a little portable recorder that has an XLR port, which is really great for audio.
It's a nice little microphone. I can strap it to my side.
I can hold the mic and I can actually walk around and answer these questions.
So, I don't know, it's a couple of hundred bucks for the rig, but it's of benefit to me.
So, that interaction is a win-win.
They want my money more than they want these mics and recorders, and I want the mic and recorder more than I want my money.
So, it's a win-win, and I'm happy with the purchase, and I just do like being able to walk around.
I do enough sitting on the live stream, so I like being able to walk around.
So, selfishness, yes.
You want to sell something to someone, then you expect them to be able to benefit it.
And of course, if they have benefited from you, then they will come back.
Right? If they've benefited from you, then they will come back.
And that's what you want.
I remember many years ago, the very first car I had, when I was driving it, it did this one moment, just kind of wobbled on its wheels.
And I took it to a local dealership, a local repair shop.
It wasn't a dealership. So I took it to a local repair shop, and they looked at it, and it was some issue with the rims.
And they fixed it, and I said, whatever.
Oh, you said, no charge.
It was three minutes.
Like, don't worry about it. And I'm like, so who do I go back to forever, right?
So for the rest of the time, I would go back to that repair shop.
So they didn't charge me for something that I was expecting to pay a couple hundred bucks for.
And so I knew that they weren't in it just for the money.
Now, was that a good investment for them to not know?
Because I gave them, of course, over the course of an aging car, you spend a huge amount of money on repairs until you just can't take it anymore.
And so I would go to them every time I had an issue with my car.
That's good business, right?
To not charge someone is great business.
So, as far as selfishness goes, my daughter's happiness is my happiness.
My daughter's long-term happiness is my long-term happiness.
And so I take...
My selfish values have expanded to include...
The values of others, right?
And I think that's love, that's bonding, that's connection, that's having a relationship is when your happiness involves the other person's happiness, right?
So if, you know, when I was younger and I had a friend who was drinking too much, I'd say, you're drinking too much.
And, you know, you're having trouble socializing without alcohol and your friends are all encouraging you to drink.
Like, this is just a bad path to go, right?
In the same way that I said to my friend who loved...
Martial arts, he should open a dojo, right?
You try and help people.
You try and give them some feedback and help them and so on, right?
And if your happiness includes the happiness of other people, I know it's kind of trite, and this is far from an original thought, but I'm just telling you where I'm at with the concept of the idea.
If my happiness has expanded to include the happiness of others, then I'm a trader, right?
It's win-win. Whereas somebody who's doing a con job on you They're running some sort of Ponzi scheme or something like that.
So somebody who's doing a con job on you, you lose, they win.
They win, you lose. It's win-lose.
And that's the bad aspect of selfishness.
They want the money and they don't care how they get it, right?
And they may even take pleasure in fooling you, right?
I remember there was some video from Nigeria about all the scams they were running and, you know, I win, you are the loser.
You know, it's just like they win, you lose, and that's great, right?
You know, like people who go to a country and then just sit on welfare.
It's not good, right? They win and the country loses in a way, right?
Certainly the taxpayers lose. So, does your definition of happiness include the happiness of others?
And I think the word selfish means, in its common parlance, it means when the happiness that you experience, the pleasure that you experience, does not include the happiness of others.
You have no particular conscience or empathy, right?
I mean, I want my wife to be happy, I want my friends to be happy, I want you to be happy, I want my daughter to be happy.
And I want myself to be happy.
And, you know, this is complicated stuff and challenging stuff and so on.
So, if your circle of happiness is just you, then you're selfish.
And if your circle of happiness includes...
I mean, it's...
Your greatness will depend on how wide that circle goes, right?
Your depth, your power in the world...
Is how far that circle goes, right?
Does it go just to you?
Does it go just to your spouse?
Right? I was just talking to a guy yesterday who is having such bad fights with his wife that even though they have a couple of young kids, they haven't talked to each other, right?
Their husband and wife haven't talked to each other for three months.
Well, that's obviously terrifying to the kids and weird and alarming.
So it's not a very wide circle of happiness, right?
So it's why I sort of remind people that when you become a parent, your job is to wake up and say, what's best for my kids?
Right? Because they're the people who aren't there by choice, right?
And your husband and wife are there by choice, and everyone else in your life are there by choice, but the kids aren't, right?
Wake up and say what's best for them.
So, the circle of happiness.
Now, of course, what's best for them is going to sometimes come at your short-term expense, but so what?
I mean, the idea that happiness should never come at any short-term expense...
I mean, we all watch what we eat.
We all exercise and we don't feel like it.
And so the idea that we should just indulge ourselves and never defer gratification.
Yeah, so sometimes the happiness of those around me means that I'll say uncomfortable things, just as the happiness of B means that other people will say uncomfortable things to me or things that I find uncomfortable but are beneficial.
So yeah, if your doctor says you're overweight, that's unpleasant, but it's a fact-based thing that's aiming at your long-term happiness and so on, right?
So, for me, you know, right or wrong, good or bad, it's just what I've decided, and obviously I think it's good, but my happiness includes the protection of billions of children.
It includes the entire future of society.
It includes the happiness of parents and children and families and, like, the world, right?
The world as a whole. And that's good.
In that it does, I think, allow me at least to aim pretty high and wide on what I want to do, but it's tough because I don't actually have any direct control over any of these things, so it can be a little bit of a rollercoaster, depending on how the world is doing.
Yes, that is a challenge.
So your greatness is going to fundamentally come down to how wide the benefit of others is included in your pleasure.
And if you're only about your own pleasure, then you're going to be forgotten in general and forgettable, right?
And if your circle includes your family, then you'll be loved by your family, but you won't change the world, really, other than through your family, which is not a bad way to do it.
And the wider your circle goes of other people's happiness that you take pleasure in, then the stronger your moral resolution goes, right?
Because to make people happy who aren't happy, usually they have to become a lot unhappier first, right?
So in order to bring people to the truth, if they're living a lie, It's very painful for them, right?
If everyone around you, even though you've gained 50 pounds, says you look fantastic, you're just kind of big-boned, and I can't believe how small they're making the clothes these days, your pants must have shrunk in the wash, if they're all sort of colluding to hide from you your weight gain, and then your doctor says, oh no, you've gained a lot of weight, this is very dangerous, and you've got to stop, that's very painful, because you kind of shock, you come shock out of the hypnotic delusion that's woven around you, this unreality that's woven around you by other people, that's really painful.
Because it's not just your weight gain that you have to contend with.
It's all the people lying to you about your weight gain that you have to contend with.
And all the people who didn't intervene and say something and do something.
And like, dude, what are you doing?
You ain't big boned, right?
Abranto is big boned. You just fat.
Right? Hat tip.
O'Leary? I can't remember his comedian's name.
Kevin O'Leary? No.
Anyway. The guy from the firefighter show.
So... In order to help people become happier, they have to become unhappy to begin with, right?
If you have broken a bone and it's set badly and no one said or did anything and then you need to fix it, well, maybe it has to be re-broken or maybe there's a lot of painful rehab to go through and you're going to feel a lot worse before you feel better.
I mean, the regular scraping of plaque off the teeth, you know all of this, right?
It's unpleasant, but it's better in the long run.
So the wider your circle of caring, the more short-term unhappiness you're going to create.
And people will get mad at you because they will perceive you as causing them suffering.
They will perceive you as causing them suffering.
You know, if we go, or women say, well, you know, women have this intuition, and we're right about things, and we just don't contradict us, and just trust us, and so on.
It's like, okay, but if women have such great intuition, and such great judges of people, and events, and situations, and things, and women just have this access to this divine feminine knowledge, then why do so many women choose the wrong guys?
It's just a basic fact, right?
So... Yeah, who you would destroy, you first overprice, right?
Who you would destroy, you must first overprice.
Sort of back to the last thing. I just forgot to mention that.
I mentioned it in passing, but I wanted to sort of focus on it a little bit more.
I forgot, and then it sort of popped back into my head.
So, the wider your circle of caring, the more short-term pain you're going to inflict.
And some people will get very mad at you about that short-term pain, and then some people will thank you later.
Some people will recoil from that short-term pain and march confidently forward to their own self-destruction.
And some people will appreciate it.
Finally, somebody's telling me the truth, and thank you so much.
And, of course, I get emails from people who are like, oh, I hated what you had to say, but, you know, and it took me years, and then I kind of bounce back onto it, and I'm like, oh, God, he was right, you know, and all that kind of stuff.
So the more people you want to help, the more short-term pain, anxiety, and so on you're going to, quote, create, right?
I mean, basically what you're doing is you...
Taking people off a drug.
And when you take people off a drug, they hate it.
I mean, it's one of the worst experiences for people.
I mean, I remember during the pandemic, rolling my eyes that the liquor and beer store stayed open in Ontario.
And people were like, yeah, but I mean, if you're an alcoholic and you can't get your alcohol, you can die.
If you're a serious alcoholic, the DTs, the detox delivery instruments, you get hallucinations and ants crawling in your skin and it's really, really bad.
So getting people off drugs is really, really painful.
But the wider your circle of care, the more people you want to get off drugs and therefore the more short-term pain you're going to create and therefore the more blowback.
And hostility you're going to get.
Because people will say, I was fine until so and so took my drug away from me.
And because most of the drugs that people are addicted to are language...
Language is the ultimate detox.
Counter language, the counter spell, right?
Dispel illusion, right?
That's my entire... I have one spell as a wizard.
Dispel illusion. And so most people are addicted not to substances, but to words.
Praise and virtue signaling and so on.
Or clicks and likes on social media.
So people are addicted to words, which means that words can take away their drug.
If you want to get someone off heroin, you've got to remove from them their sources of heroin.
It's like a physical thing, and they could just go downtown and get heroin.
But it's different with words, right?
People are addicted to words, to illusions, to false words.
They're addicted to lies.
Well, the lies can be dispelled with like 10 seconds from a podcast, right?
And so there are these flame strikes of illusion destruction that occur when rigorous philosophy enters into people's lives.
And now, I mean, because of podcasting and all of this, there used to be all these gatekeepers that would keep the predators of truth at bay.
It's keep them silent and excluded and And now, of course, you know, one click and you can get the truth.
And so people are living in a state of perpetual anxiety because the holy water is everywhere.
The holy water is everywhere.
The holy water can come spouting out of the phone in 10 seconds, 20 seconds, and can dispel or drive out or at least begin the process of driving out the devils of illusion to control the souls of the people.
And so this is one of the reasons why people are so anxious and stressed these days is that they know for a simple and powerful fact that The truth is not out there anymore.
The truth is in your phone, it's in your butt, it's on your person, it's in your breast pockets, down your cleavage or whatever unholy place.
People store these radiation machines.
It's really stressful for people as a whole.
But the wider your circle of care, the more people you're going to try and help, and the more they're going to hate that help, or at least the exorcism of illusion is a painful and difficult process, as we all know.
So to me, I am selfishly invested in the truth and happiness of mankind.
But that's a hell of a bandage coming off a hell of a hairy arm and that's really painful.
I mean, to diminish it to the point of foolishness.
So yeah, selfishness is just, I'm happiest when the world is honest.
I'm happiest when the world is truthful. I'm happiest when the world has integrity.
I'm happiest when the world is moral. I'm happiest when the children are protected.
And that is great power, but also great vulnerability.
Because people who don't, like when the world gets worse, it's hard not to feel some kind of ownership, right?
You know, if you've got a best friend and you're really dedicated to his happiness and he's depressed and miserable, then that's kind of on you a little bit, right?
So the wider your circle of care, the wider your circle of vulnerability.
And that's something to be managed.
That's why I'm obviously very invested in the topic of free will.
Because given that I've done my best to bring the truth to the world and continue to do so, people who reject the truth, it's not because of me.
I've certainly been successful enough in bringing the truth to the world that People who reject it, it's not because, well, I just wasn't charming or engaging or charismatic or funny or whatever.
It's not because of anything like that.
It's just their choice to reject it, and that way the responsibility shifts.
I mean, I'm responsible for bringing the truth.
Other people are responsible for listening and acting on it, right?
The old, you can bring a host of water, but you can't make him drink.
Yeah, so selfish to me, it's, I mean, the greater life that you want, and the more exciting and dangerous, it's not the same thing, exciting and dangerous life you want, the wider your circle of care should be.
But also, you have to remember that your circle of care should not focus on the far away at the expense of the close, right?
I mean, that was sort of my question around politics, right?
Yeah. So if you focus on saving the world and it comes at the expense of the people in your life, then that's the wrong circle of care, right?
Your circle of care is those closest to you, and from that you move to the world.
But if there's a contradiction between the two, you choose those closest to you.
Because they have already invested in you and strangers have not.
You already have a relationship with them and you've made commitments to them explicit or implicit and you haven't made commitments to strangers so you keep your word to those closest to you.
And if there's a contradiction or a conflict between helping the world and keeping the people around you happy reasonably then you keep the people around you happy of course.
Especially when it comes to kids because they're not there by choice.
I mean, people are miserable to some degree by choice, especially now that the internet has allowed the truth to be available to everyone.
People are unhappy to some degree by choice, whereas the people who have the least choice deserve your most care, and that's the kids.
So I hope this helps. Freedomand.com slash donate.
If you'd like to help out the show, I'd really, really appreciate it.
Hope you're having an absolutely wonderful day.
I will see you tomorrow night for a Wednesday night live.
And love you guys. Thank you.
Thank you so much for all of the support.
Don't forget to check out freedomand.locals.com.
And you can sign up there using the promo code, all caps UPB2022, and you can get some really, really great stuff.
Don't forget we've got this AI that's really, really cool, trained on all of my non-fiction, and it's really, really fantastic.
All right, thanks everyone. Have yourselves a wonderful day.
▲
Export Selection