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Nov. 29, 2024 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
08:32
Atomic Self-Control
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That's how it works for me and genuinely works for me.
I cannot dictate to my unconscious, neither will I surrender to it.
We must work together.
It will permit itself to be shaped as long as I do not dictate.
It will generate as long as I guide.
I'm like a fireman putting out the mad blazes of the world with water I did not generate but can only aim somewhat.
If I try to aim it too much, this is really true.
It's a good analogy, right?
The world is burning.
I got a giant hose of water.
I can aim it a little bit, but if I try to turn it too much, it kinks and the flow stops.
If I just let go of it, it's just going to go all over the place.
You see those whipping hoses, people trying to catch them when they're training women to be firefighters?
Firemen, let's not be kidding.
You can guide it a little bit.
You guide it a little bit.
But it dies if you try and control it too much.
And if you let it control you, no fires get put out.
It has always bothered me the arrogance of people who think they know what they're capable of or what other people are capable of.
Thank you.
The arrogance is crippling.
It's satanic, right?
Satan says, this is what you're capable of no more.
Which gets you away from what, the only phrase that I can use that is accurate, is the divine inspiration of the eternal.
I am just a tiny jump-up whack-a-mole representation of eternity, right?
We know that, right?
We are a mere happenstance assemblage of the eternal.
I know this sounds mystical.
I know it sounds like artsy-fartsy bullshit.
It's not.
And I'll tell you, I can prove it to you like that.
Where are your atoms from?
The atoms that make you up, where are they from?
Well, according to the law of the conservation of matter and energy, they are forever.
They are eternal.
So you and I were in the fiery bowels of some long-exploded star scattered across the universe, assembled into our fortuitous, truth-blaring trumpet.
You did not invent your atoms.
They've been here forever.
They just assemble for you.
You did not create the energy that is in your body.
Matter and energy are interchangeable according to E equals mc squared.
Energy equals mass times the speed of light squared.
Matter and energy are interchangeable.
You created neither your energy nor your atoms.
they are eternal.
You think of those flocks of birds that go wheeling and coruscating around the sky, like scattered confetti, dodging, moving, swirling, and every now and then, every now and then, if you watch them long enough, and I find it quite hypnotic to watch these every now and then, if you watch them long enough, and I find it quite hypnotic to watch like a bunch of drunken drones avoiding predators.
And every now and then, they will assemble into what looks like a human face, or they will assemble into what looks like a little dragon, or they will assemble into what looks like a large bird, in the same way that you could look up at the clouds and say, oh my gosh, that's a duck.
Oh my gosh, that looks exactly like a dog running.
And then it blares, and it disappears, and it dissipates.
So that's you.
You are the freeze frame, the assemblage of eternal star matter, into speaking, reasoning, singing, all dancing crap of the universe, right?
You are a freeze-frame moment where starshit becomes conscious.
So because we are composed of things that have lasted forever and ever, amen, and will last forever and ever, amen, though they go from the back rooms of energy to the front rooms of matter, because we last forever, thinking we know what we're capable of is the mortal judging the capacities of the immortal.
Do you follow?
I hope this makes sense.
You cannot judge eternity from a mortal perspective.
You cannot judge your eternal potential from your transitory flash of mere surface-level consciousness.
Both the man and the mountain are eternal, but the consciousness of the man is mortal.
Thought cannot judge the potential of matter and energy.
What you are composed of is far deeper than what you think you are.
What you can stand is far more than you think you can stand.
Can you imagine?
you Thank you.
What is God inordinately fond of?
Beetles and hydrogen.
Hydrogen atoms are like 99 plus percent of things.
So, I want you to think of your average hydrogen atom strolling and tumbling through the back alleys of the void for 10 billion years.
If that atom could think, would it believe it was capable of lighting up or participating in the lighting up of an entire solar system?
Yeah.
Thank you.
Thank you.
The photons falling on my face or through the screen onto your face, did they think that they would be illuminating a great philosophical conversation?
No.
The hydrogen atom cannot judge the potential for sunlight.
light.
It cannot judge the staggering amounts of energy that is produced by a nuclear bomb that goes off and nurtures life for 10 billion years.
You cannot judge that which is eternal about you.
And even if we say, well, of course, as we know, individual atoms cannot think.
Thought is an emerging properties of combinations of atom cells and energy.
I get that, and it's specific to the human mind.
They've been teaching sign language to chimpanzees and other forms of monkeys for well over half a century.
The monkeys, the chimpanzees, have never asked one question, not one.
Every animal but man, when you point at something, looks at the finger.
it is human infants who point at what you're looking at, which is a fundamental question of empathy.
Your conscious mind is 150,000 years old in a 14 billion year universe and a 4 billion year journey of light.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Your thought cannot conceivably judge the atoms and cells that compose it, which are billions of years old, and the atoms are eternal, and it cannot burrow through and judge and evaluate and know the potential of all of the layers that came before it by millions, hundreds of millions or billions of years.
We are a tiny piece of dust on the tip of a spear we cannot comprehend, and yet still we imagine we know how deep it can go.
We are a little bit more than we can see in the future.
There's a photon that is released.
Think about this.
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