Stefan Molyneux
Stefan Molyneux
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What is the EGO, and does it help or hinder us?

Philosopher Stefan Molyneux provides a deep insight into the nature and purpose of the ego - truly life-changing information!

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Transcript
00:00:00 Good morning everybody, Stephen Molyneux, Free Domain.
00:00:03 Hope you're doing well.
00:00:04 Let's do a nice posture improving portrait walk today.
00:00:10 And we are talking about a great question
00:00:13 that came in on freedomain.locals.com.
00:00:16 I hope you will check out that platform,
00:00:18 freedomain.locals.com.
00:00:20 And the question was, what is the ego
00:00:23 and why does it matter?
00:00:27 What is the ego and why does it matter?
00:00:30 Now the ego gets a very bad rap.
00:00:34 Egoism is considered to be a kind of predatory selfishness
00:00:39 and you say, ah, you must overthrow the ego.
00:00:41 You must overcome the ego.
00:00:44 And I don't agree.
00:00:51 That's a foundational principle that I've worked with
00:00:54 since the very beginning of certainly this show
00:00:57 and even many years before that.
00:00:59 I think it really came about over the course of therapy
00:01:03 when I had the most outrageous dreams
00:01:06 that were truly shocking to me,
00:01:08 morally and metaphysically and so on.
00:01:12 And it turned out, lo and behold,
00:01:14 that those dreams contained great wisdom,
00:01:17 truth, virtue and value about my life
00:01:20 and saved my semi-scrawny ass.
00:01:24 So there's an old statement from a philosopher,
00:01:28 I think he was French, which makes him suspect,
00:01:30 but nonetheless we get our wisdom where we can,
00:01:33 which said, "Nothing human is alien to me."
00:01:38 So I want you to try an idea.
00:01:41 I want you to try a thought
00:01:43 because this could be one of these thoughts
00:01:47 that really totally and deeply
00:01:51 changes your life, changes your mind.
00:01:55 And the thought goes something like this.
00:02:02 What if nothing within you was bad for you?
00:02:09 What if nothing within you was bad for you?
00:02:21 Isn't that an interesting thought?
00:02:23 Because to say that something that is within you
00:02:28 is bad for you innately, no matter what,
00:02:31 must be overthrown like a devilish impulse
00:02:34 or something like that.
00:02:35 If we say that something within us is bad for us,
00:02:40 then what we're saying is that evolution
00:02:48 has made massive mistakes in the process
00:02:53 of propelling one particular organism, i.e. human beings,
00:02:56 to the very summit, top, and peak of the food chain,
00:03:01 of the power chain, that evolution has completely effed up
00:03:06 despite the fact that we are beyond almost,
00:03:13 and beyond any evolutionary precedent,
00:03:18 the ultimate alphas of the planet.
00:03:20 You understand?
00:03:21 Now that's a kind of vanity that's a little crazy, right?
00:03:24 Because that vanity is to say that the guy
00:03:28 who wins the running race by five times
00:03:35 his closest competitor, that that guy
00:03:39 is just bad at training, man.
00:03:42 There's something really wrong with his training.
00:03:48 Now this is not a moral thing,
00:03:49 'cause I understand that being at the top of the food chain
00:03:53 from an evolutionary standpoint is not a moral thing.
00:03:55 I get all of that.
00:03:56 But I'm saying that the mind,
00:04:00 if you look at our success as a species,
00:04:02 is without a doubt the greatest creation
00:04:06 of nature that we know of in the entire universe.
00:04:13 Supernumbers mean nothing, galaxies mean nothing,
00:04:17 nebulae and clusters mean nothing.
00:04:19 The human mind is the greatest glory
00:04:22 in the entire universe of 100 billion galaxies,
00:04:27 each containing 100 billion stars.
00:04:30 It's the greatest thing that we know of.
00:04:31 And it's not even a close second.
00:04:33 It's not like we're just smarter than monkeys.
00:04:36 I mean, it's a whole different thing, right?
00:04:39 It's a whole different thing.
00:04:43 So, that level of success,
00:04:48 oh, and you, by the way,
00:04:49 happen to be in possession of the greatest gift
00:04:51 in the universe, a human mind.
00:04:52 Lucky you, lucky me.
00:04:55 Let's enjoy it, and let's also be grateful.
00:05:01 I think it's worth it, isn't it?
00:05:04 I mean, the glories and beauties of nature are wonderful.
00:05:09 But the glory of you, beyond compare.
00:05:13 It's pretty out here, for sure.
00:05:18 There's no genius out there, or out here.
00:05:20 And there's genius in you, and there's genius in me.
00:05:23 So, we have the greatest peak of evolution
00:05:30 that can possibly be conceived of.
00:05:34 And yet, we so often fight against
00:05:42 that which is within us.
00:05:43 We become like one of those, I don't know,
00:05:50 really precious supermodels who's, you know,
00:05:52 some supermodel like Linda Evangelista,
00:05:57 or Cindy Crawford, or Naomi Campbell, was it?
00:05:59 I'm not proud that I know these names, but I have a wife.
00:06:03 And it's like one of those supermodels
00:06:07 who complains about a tiny flaw in her complexion,
00:06:11 or something minorly not perfect on her body.
00:06:16 Everyone else kind of rolls their eyes, right?
00:06:18 Imagine being a field mouse,
00:06:24 and listening to a human being complain
00:06:30 about the contents of his mind.
00:06:32 What would the field mouse say?
00:06:37 What would the titsy fly say?
00:06:39 What would the ringworm say, listening to us complain
00:06:43 about the contents of our incredibly glorious
00:06:48 minds and brains?
00:06:49 Be like, "Bro, shut up.
00:06:53 "You have inherited a billion dollars,
00:06:57 "and you're complaining about the price of milk.
00:07:00 "Please, I'm out here trying to milk a wombat,
00:07:05 "and you're complaining about the price of milk
00:07:08 "with a billion dollars in the bank.
00:07:09 "It's pretty embarrassing.
00:07:11 "It's pretty sad."
00:07:12 So again, talking about contents of your mind.
00:07:18 What if, what if, just put it out there as a possibility.
00:07:21 It's certainly been really great for me,
00:07:24 which is not proof, I'm just telling you
00:07:25 my personal experience.
00:07:27 But what if nothing in your mind is bad for you?
00:07:35 What if nothing in your mind is negative?
00:07:38 What if nothing in your mind needs to be fought
00:07:40 and overthrown and combated and so on?
00:07:43 You say, "Ah, yes, well, but I have some bad habits."
00:07:46 Well, as a possibility, what if your bad habits
00:07:51 are the result of you fighting yourself?
00:07:56 I mean, what if your bad habits are the result
00:07:59 of you not accepting yourself?
00:08:02 What if your bad habits are a form of punishment
00:08:05 inflicted by others who wish to do you harm?
00:08:07 And because you haven't overthrown the alien consciousness
00:08:11 that sits in your mind that wish to do you harm,
00:08:14 you end up with bad habits.
00:08:16 What if?
00:08:17 What if the solution to bad habits is self-acceptance,
00:08:22 not self-hatred?
00:08:26 What if the entire purpose of bad habits is self-hatred,
00:08:31 and that by attacking yourself for having bad habits,
00:08:34 you're simply putting reinforced girder scaffold structures
00:08:38 around your bad habits
00:08:39 to make sure they can never be overthrown?
00:08:41 What if the entire purpose of having bad habits
00:08:44 is to set you against yourself so that you're easier to rule?
00:08:48 It's not the craziest thesis in the known universe, is it?
00:08:54 Ooh, look at that.
00:08:56 So nice.
00:08:59 I should actually just show you guys
00:09:00 where I'm walking next time, not me.
00:09:03 Look at the beauty of the woods.
00:09:04 Not my 57-year-old increasingly crypt keeper head.
00:09:08 All right.
00:09:11 So what are we told is bad?
00:09:15 We're told the ego is bad.
00:09:17 Well, what is the ego?
00:09:19 Well, we're told that the ego is a vanity, exploitation,
00:09:24 refusing to admit that you're wrong,
00:09:26 thinking that you're the greatest gift to the universe
00:09:30 and putting other people down.
00:09:32 We're told that the ego, you see, is just bad.
00:09:37 It's just bad.
00:09:38 Okay, so listen,
00:09:41 given that the structure of the world is the way that it is
00:09:44 and all of the negative things that occur in the world
00:09:46 and all of the exploitations and degradations
00:09:48 and war and enslavement and debt that occurs in the world,
00:09:52 I think it's important, to put it mildly,
00:09:56 to be highly suspicious of anyone
00:10:01 or any traditional moral judgment
00:10:03 or any traditional even aesthetic judgment.
00:10:06 So given how bad the world is,
00:10:08 I think it's pretty important to be kind of suspicious
00:10:12 of every traditional thought that's out there.
00:10:14 So every traditional thought that's out there
00:10:20 or every widespread belief that's out there
00:10:24 serves the powers that be.
00:10:25 So we don't have any kind of organic culture.
00:10:28 This is really important to understand.
00:10:30 We don't have any kind of organic culture.
00:10:33 We have cultivated culture.
00:10:36 We have curated culture.
00:10:38 We have programming disguised as morality.
00:10:43 And the reason we don't have any kind of organic culture
00:10:47 is that culture is transmitted
00:10:51 through the instruction of the young.
00:10:53 And in the West, for 150 years or so,
00:10:57 the young, the instruction of the young,
00:10:59 has been controlled almost exclusively
00:11:02 or in many countries exclusively by the state.
00:11:05 We don't have any kind of organic culture.
00:11:08 We have curated culture.
00:11:10 We have programming disguised as morality.
00:11:14 So every belief that is widespread,
00:11:24 that is deeply rooted in the modern world
00:11:29 is the result of propaganda that has passed through
00:11:34 the gatekeepers of the rulers and found to be good.
00:11:41 Yep, works for us, serves us, go right ahead.
00:11:45 Now, when you have something like a hostility
00:11:52 towards the ego, "Oh, you're so full of yourself.
00:11:57 "Oh, he can never admit that he's wrong.
00:11:58 "Oh, he's so vain.
00:12:01 "There's no humility in that guy."
00:12:05 Well, whatever it is, right?
00:12:06 There's a lot of anti-ego stuff.
00:12:07 Of course, nobody really defines the ego
00:12:10 and just gives it negative characteristics
00:12:15 designed to push you away
00:12:20 from that which gives you the most power.
00:12:24 Your ego is the most powerful magic that you possess.
00:12:28 And I'll sort of, let me get into definitions in a sec,
00:12:30 but let me sort of tell you why this is important.
00:12:33 Your ego is the most powerful magic that you possess
00:12:35 and your ego is your only chance for freedom.
00:12:42 Ah, but the ego, like all great powers,
00:12:47 is easy to misuse.
00:12:49 It's easy to turn from liberty to exploitation.
00:12:54 You know, like the old argument,
00:12:57 a knife can be used to cut bread for your children
00:13:01 or stab a guy in the leg, right?
00:13:03 I mean, the knife gives you power, fire gives you power.
00:13:05 You can use it to cook food.
00:13:07 You can use it to burn down the huts of your enemies, right?
00:13:11 So the ego is the wildest Thomas Covenant white man
00:13:16 is the wildest Thomas Covenant white magic power
00:13:21 that we possess.
00:13:22 And the reason you're told to reject it
00:13:26 is so that you don't use it to free yourself.
00:13:29 So let me tell you what the ego is
00:13:33 and why I make this distinction in this definition.
00:13:36 The ego is our capacity to deny impotence
00:13:44 to deny empirical sensual, quote, reality.
00:13:49 Can you feel that?
00:13:53 You feel that ripple through the innards,
00:13:55 the guts of the brain.
00:13:57 The ego is our capacity to reject immediate sense data.
00:14:03 The ego is something that we don't talk about a cat's ego
00:14:09 other than in humor.
00:14:10 Human beings have the capacity
00:14:12 to deny immediate sense data, which is fantastic.
00:14:15 I mean, science is required or has power
00:14:20 because science shows us the value
00:14:24 of denying immediate sense data.
00:14:25 You know, the obvious one being that the sun and the moon
00:14:27 are the same size, that the earth is flat and so on, right?
00:14:38 So our capacity to deny immediate sense data
00:14:42 is the root of both our power and our degradation.
00:14:48 Our capacity to deny immediate sense data
00:14:55 is the root of our power and our degradation.
00:14:57 Because denying that the world is flat,
00:15:08 denying that the sun and the moon are the same size,
00:15:10 denying that the earth is hurtling through space
00:15:13 at high velocity,
00:15:14 denying that the earth is the center of the universe
00:15:20 all gives us modern science
00:15:22 and an understanding and appreciation
00:15:24 of how the world actually is
00:15:26 rather than how it looks from our perspective.
00:15:28 That's great.
00:15:32 That's powerful.
00:15:38 However, allowing ourselves to overcome immediate sense data
00:15:43 also gives us great concepts and true concepts
00:15:45 and valid concepts.
00:15:47 But saying that we have the capacity
00:15:52 or our capacity to reject immediate sense data
00:15:56 also has us believe in all kinds of non-empirical concepts
00:16:02 that enslave us.
00:16:06 I mean, such as collectivism and other forms of aggregations
00:16:11 that have moral qualities separate
00:16:16 or opposed to each individual member.
00:16:18 The collective can do X, Y, and Z.
00:16:22 The individual cannot.
00:16:23 And so our capacity to deny the evidence of our senses
00:16:27 is a great strength in truth
00:16:31 and a great weakness in ethics.
00:16:34 It's a great strength in science.
00:16:36 It's a great weakness in collectivism.
00:16:39 The world is not flat,
00:16:44 although it looks and feels flat.
00:16:47 So we can deny that
00:16:47 and we can get to the truth of the world thereby.
00:16:50 Collectives, concepts, collectivism, aggregations
00:16:57 do not exist and do not have separate moral qualities
00:17:03 than any individual within, right?
00:17:04 Any more than if you have an aggregation
00:17:07 of animals called a mammal than any mammal.
00:17:10 And you define it to say, I don't know,
00:17:12 what is it, warm-blooded, has hair,
00:17:15 gives birth to live young, that kind of stuff.
00:17:18 So you can't create, logically, right?
00:17:23 Scientifically, you can't create an aggregation
00:17:25 called mammals, say warm-blooded,
00:17:27 and then include a rock and a snake.
00:17:31 Snakes are cold-blooded and rocks have no blood at all.
00:17:35 As you can find out,
00:17:36 if you ask a false friend for your money back,
00:17:39 can't get blood from a stone, man.
00:17:41 So our capacity to deny empirical sense data
00:17:48 is our greatest strength and our greatest weakness.
00:17:53 So the ego is the part of our minds
00:17:57 that gets to override the ego.
00:18:02 Immediate sense data.
00:18:05 And of course, concepts don't exist in the senses.
00:18:09 Concepts don't exist in the realm of the senses,
00:18:11 but we're defined by our capacity for conceptual thinking.
00:18:16 That's what makes us human,
00:18:18 is our capacity for conceptual thinking.
00:18:19 But concepts don't exist.
00:18:21 Here I am.
00:18:23 What am I always talking about?
00:18:24 Forests.
00:18:26 Am I in a forest?
00:18:27 Yes.
00:18:28 Do the trees exist?
00:18:30 They do.
00:18:31 Do the leaves exist?
00:18:32 Yes.
00:18:33 Does the undergrowth exist?
00:18:34 Do the little clumps of grass exist?
00:18:36 Yes.
00:18:37 I am in a forest.
00:18:40 Every atom, every organism, every piece of matter exists.
00:18:45 Does the concept forest exist?
00:18:50 No, it does not exist.
00:18:54 It does not exist.
00:18:57 It is our conceptual label.
00:19:00 To describe aggregations of things that exist.
00:19:05 Things that exist, exist.
00:19:07 Aggregations exist in the mind.
00:19:09 And of course, we understand that their accuracy
00:19:12 is not subjective, right?
00:19:14 If I looked at a bunch of ducks on a lake and said,
00:19:18 "Oh, that's a forest," I would be incorrect,
00:19:20 'cause a forest is an aggregation of trees
00:19:23 in obviously, often a root-intertwined ecosystem.
00:19:29 Ecosystem or connected system.
00:19:32 Where does the forest end?
00:19:35 Well, sometimes like, I guess, Fangorn,
00:19:38 it's like a line, like a slice in the ground,
00:19:41 and sometimes it's a fading out.
00:19:43 When I worked up north,
00:19:44 the trees got progressively smaller and smaller.
00:19:47 And then you were north of the tree line.
00:19:48 Where does the tree line end?
00:19:50 Well, we know when it doesn't end,
00:19:51 which is there's a tree line here,
00:19:53 and we know when it does end, like the North Pole,
00:19:55 or it's not there, and it fades out somewhere in there.
00:19:58 Now, our capacity to deny reality
00:20:03 is why we have the concept forest.
00:20:05 We have the concept forest, which is great.
00:20:09 Meet you in the forest, let's go hunting in the forest,
00:20:11 I wanna sell you the forest, or whatever, right?
00:20:13 Let's go and examine, as a biologist,
00:20:16 I wanna examine the forest,
00:20:18 like having these concepts is great.
00:20:19 So the concepts do not exist in the real world,
00:20:24 but they're derived from things in the real world.
00:20:26 You can't arbitrarily label everything a forest,
00:20:28 and they often have fuzzy edges, right?
00:20:32 What does it mean to be competent
00:20:37 in the sense of the rule of law?
00:20:39 What does that mean?
00:20:41 Well, somebody who's brain dead and hooked up to machines
00:20:45 is clearly not competent in the rule of law.
00:20:48 Somebody with an average IQ clearly is,
00:20:50 and there's fuzzy boundaries somewhere, right?
00:20:53 So our ego, that which is specifically human about us,
00:20:58 is our capacity to deny immediate sense data.
00:21:04 There's no forest impacting itself on my senses.
00:21:08 The forest does not exist,
00:21:12 but the concept forest can be accurate
00:21:15 and useful and powerful.
00:21:20 Now, our capacity to deny our senses,
00:21:25 to say the world looks flat, but it's not,
00:21:31 our capacity to deny our senses is a great strength,
00:21:36 because through embracing what seems false,
00:21:43 we can get to the actual truth, right?
00:21:46 Again, I hate to overuse this one, but it's so obvious,
00:21:48 right?
00:21:49 Embracing what feels false or what seems false
00:21:55 can get you to the truth, right?
00:21:57 The world seems flat, but it is a sphere.
00:21:59 Boy, I miss the days when a statement like that
00:22:07 would get you endless rebuttals
00:22:09 and links on YouTube comments.
00:22:11 So you deny what seems true
00:22:14 in order to get to what is true.
00:22:18 So our capacity to deny sense evidence,
00:22:22 sense data is essential.
00:22:26 I mean, x-rays, ultraviolet, infrared,
00:22:29 all of these things don't show up on our vision,
00:22:31 but they're real forces in the universe.
00:22:35 And it's very important for us to study them
00:22:40 and learn about them.
00:22:42 So even though they appear invisible,
00:22:44 they do in fact exist.
00:22:45 And yet our senses, particularly our eyesight,
00:22:50 are designed to serve our survival
00:22:54 and infrared and ultraviolet was not essential
00:22:56 to our survival, so we don't see them.
00:22:58 In the same way, we don't have sonar
00:23:01 because we don't hunt at night.
00:23:03 So our capacity to deny what seems true
00:23:14 is the root of our capacity for actual truth.
00:23:19 Right, seems true is you just look around at things
00:23:22 and so on, right?
00:23:24 Actual truth.
00:23:25 Seems versus is.
00:23:29 And of course, the purpose of philosophy
00:23:35 is to substitute what seems true for what is true.
00:23:39 Because what seems true is what is true.
00:23:43 Because what seems true is our greatest red herring
00:23:46 and our greatest risk and our greatest danger.
00:23:48 So, I mean, you've heard me a million times
00:23:52 in my call-in shows, someone says,
00:23:55 "Oh, I love my girlfriend," right?
00:23:57 All right, that's a statement of claim.
00:24:01 I don't know if it's true or not.
00:24:03 That's a statement of claim.
00:24:05 And the person might actually feel
00:24:07 that they love their girlfriend.
00:24:10 But of course, the definition of love
00:24:12 is our involuntary response to virtue
00:24:16 if we ourselves are virtuous.
00:24:17 So when somebody says, "I feel love for my girlfriend,"
00:24:27 or "I love my girlfriend," that's a claim,
00:24:30 I don't know if it's true or not.
00:24:31 I don't know if it's something that they say
00:24:34 because they wanna get laid.
00:24:36 I don't know if it's something they say
00:24:39 because they don't want to go through the humiliation
00:24:43 of admitting that they're with someone they don't love
00:24:46 because then you have to say,
00:24:46 "Well, what are you with that person for?"
00:24:48 And of course, a lot of it has to do with sexual access.
00:24:52 And again, I don't say this with any pride
00:24:56 or, "Oh gosh, I've never ever done anything like that."
00:25:00 We were all kind of in the same boat, particularly men,
00:25:02 but it happens to women as well.
00:25:03 So I say, somebody says,
00:25:09 "I love my girlfriend."
00:25:10 Okay, so then I say,
00:25:12 "What is it that you love about your girlfriend?"
00:25:17 What is it that you love about your girlfriend?
00:25:22 That's kind of an important question
00:25:26 because love is not arbitrary, love is not random,
00:25:33 love is not purely subjective.
00:25:35 Love is our involuntary response to virtue
00:25:38 if we're virtuous.
00:25:39 So it's a perfectly fair thing to ask,
00:25:42 what do you love about your girlfriend?
00:25:45 What is the empirical evidence
00:25:49 for the feeling that you claim to have?
00:25:51 And of course, everybody who's listened to this show
00:25:57 for more than five minutes knows about that
00:26:00 sickening, soul-crunching pause that occurs
00:26:05 when someone says, "But I love my girlfriend."
00:26:08 And then I say, "What do you love about your girlfriend?"
00:26:11 And what happens?
00:26:14 Oh, pause, pause, pause, boobs.
00:26:18 Whatever it's going to be,
00:26:22 it ain't particularly pretty, right?
00:26:24 They're looking for evidence.
00:26:30 You say, "What is, seems?"
00:26:32 No, not seems, 'tis Horatio.
00:26:36 The funeral baked meats did coldly furnish
00:26:38 forth the marriage tables.
00:26:40 So,
00:26:42 we can deny reality, that's a great strength for us.
00:26:49 It's a great weakness because sophistry,
00:26:52 con men and women, politicians, liars,
00:26:58 cult leaders of every shape and hue,
00:27:01 they all rely on our capacity to deny reality, right?
00:27:06 So, if we all have the capacity to deny reality
00:27:14 and people can use that to lead us to the truth,
00:27:17 or they can use our capacity to deny reality
00:27:21 to exploit and harm us, to rob from us,
00:27:28 to tell us that we owe them something,
00:27:31 to tell us that they will give us something for free
00:27:33 when we know deep down there's nothing for free.
00:27:35 So, our capacity,
00:27:38 or our, wow, just how far it's changed so quickly, eh?
00:27:44 Now we're in the land of the pines and the soft underfoot.
00:27:48 I was back here with my daughter many years ago,
00:27:51 playing hide and go seek with a whole bunch of friends,
00:27:53 and man, you had to watch for the scratchy pine
00:27:56 eyeball tearing lower branches.
00:27:57 Let me tell you that.
00:27:59 Well, enough reminiscing.
00:28:01 When you kids get to your mid-teens,
00:28:03 you get some reminiscences going on.
00:28:05 So, our ego allows us to deny reality.
00:28:12 Now, that's kind of important.
00:28:13 I mean, any of the success that I've accumulated in life,
00:28:19 and it's been fairly considerable, I think, for me at least,
00:28:21 at least based on where I came from,
00:28:23 the success that I have accumulated in life occurred
00:28:27 because I denied the reality of most people
00:28:31 and most things around me when I was growing up.
00:28:33 Like, I grew up in, you know, pretty,
00:28:35 a really trashy welfare, lower class,
00:28:39 yuckity-yuck environment,
00:28:41 and you wouldn't look at my childhood,
00:28:46 and you wouldn't look at my environment
00:28:48 and my circumstances, and you wouldn't look and say,
00:28:50 "Ah, this guy has the potential to be
00:28:53 "a pretty influential intellectual."
00:28:56 You wouldn't say that at all.
00:28:57 And it does, you know, there's a certain amount of willpower
00:29:00 where you just have to overcome your environment,
00:29:03 overcome your circumstances, and say,
00:29:05 although for 99.9% of human history,
00:29:09 environment and circumstances utterly defined the person
00:29:12 and their potential and their future
00:29:14 because it was a class or caste-based system as a whole,
00:29:17 even though
00:29:18 throughout almost all of human history,
00:29:25 circumstances and origin determined future and possibility,
00:29:28 which is usually very little and very low,
00:29:30 and we are programmed to stay within our class, right?
00:29:34 Because to wander outside of our class
00:29:36 is highly risky from a reproductive standpoint.
00:29:38 Like, if you're born in the trash heap
00:29:41 of the lower classes, or the lowest classes,
00:29:43 wasn't many below me other than people
00:29:45 who lived on the streets.
00:29:47 If you're born into the lower classes
00:29:49 and you try to get out of the lower classes,
00:29:51 well, I write about this in my novel, "The Future."
00:29:55 That you might make it,
00:29:57 you might make it, but you might not.
00:30:02 And if you leave behind the females that you grew up with
00:30:07 and you try to woo and win the females
00:30:12 who grew up with higher caste or higher class males,
00:30:18 that's really risky.
00:30:20 A lot of people lose their lineage in that kind of pursuit.
00:30:25 It's tough to change classes is what I'm saying,
00:30:27 and there's evolutionary reasons why we would have
00:30:30 resistance and hesitation towards changing classes.
00:30:33 So I had to deny my origin story.
00:30:39 My origin story, my origin reality was very empirical,
00:30:45 to put it mildly, was very empirical.
00:30:48 Very vivid, very real, very factual, very true.
00:30:54 My origin story was brutal.
00:30:57 And I had to deny that my origin story
00:31:03 was my inevitable future,
00:31:05 'cause I wouldn't have wanted that future.
00:31:08 And I would have felt kind of ashamed to stay in that
00:31:13 rotten, poisonous, caustic,
00:31:19 venomous, acidic underworld,
00:31:23 where everybody pulls each other down
00:31:25 for the sake of inevitable childhood repetition
00:31:29 through the avoidance of self-knowledge
00:31:32 and the pursuit of domination rather than virtue.
00:31:34 So I had to deny the empirical reality
00:31:41 and therefore future inevitability of my origin story.
00:31:49 So how did I achieve some success?
00:31:50 How did I achieve a good marriage?
00:31:53 By saying F you to all the evidence of my senses.
00:31:58 (laughs)
00:32:00 I know this sounds kind of odd.
00:32:02 I'm telling you, for me at least, the absolute truth.
00:32:04 And that's why when people on my call-in shows
00:32:07 or whatever they say, X, Y, and Z,
00:32:09 I said, "Oh, what's the evidence, right?
00:32:11 "What's the evidence?"
00:32:12 Now, of course, (sighs)
00:32:14 the evidence of my origin story was that,
00:32:18 was where I was gonna be.
00:32:19 This is more so true.
00:32:20 This may not be quite as clear in other countries,
00:32:23 but in England in particular, it's a real thing, right?
00:32:26 Like your origin story, your accent,
00:32:30 your class history has a lot to do with where you end up.
00:32:35 So that was part of my whole life,
00:32:43 was just saying, "I will not,
00:32:46 "I will reject the empirical evidence of where I came from
00:32:50 "and find for myself where I'm going to go."
00:32:53 And that's tough.
00:32:55 I'm sure if you've made this journey,
00:32:58 you feel a lot of resistance.
00:33:01 I certainly did.
00:33:06 I felt like an outsider.
00:33:07 I didn't know what to do or what to say
00:33:10 at elite country clubs when I was negotiating investments
00:33:14 and business deals.
00:33:15 I mean, I knew econ, of course, economics,
00:33:18 'cause of my studying from mid-teens,
00:33:19 but you really do feel like a wee bit of an outsider.
00:33:24 Although I suppose the accent helped a little bit.
00:33:30 So that which held me back in England
00:33:32 probably propelled me forward in Canada and America
00:33:35 and other places where I did business.
00:33:37 And they were certainly quite fascinated by me in China.
00:33:40 So, yeah, denying reality,
00:33:46 denying empirical, I don't say denying reality,
00:33:48 by that I just mean sort of sense data.
00:33:50 So denying empirical reality is key.
00:33:53 So the ego allows you to deny the evidence of your senses.
00:33:58 It gives you potential,
00:34:00 it gives you mastery over the universe
00:34:03 and its physical facts, and it gives you virtue.
00:34:07 So if you were raised in an immoral environment,
00:34:11 you can become virtuous.
00:34:14 It allows you to overcome
00:34:16 seemingly insurmountable obstacles.
00:34:19 Because the ego allows you to navigate,
00:34:27 not by what is, but what could be.
00:34:31 It allows you to navigate the world
00:34:34 according to your potential.
00:34:36 Right, it allows you to navigate the world
00:34:40 according to your potential,
00:34:42 not according to empirical evidence.
00:34:46 So it allows you to navigate the world
00:34:48 by what could be in the future
00:34:50 rather than what empirically was in the past.
00:34:52 I mean, my life,
00:34:55 I say this not because I'm particularly fascinating,
00:34:58 but because hopefully it's an example
00:35:00 that resonates with you.
00:35:01 But my life has been,
00:35:05 like I didn't just say, oh, I can do anything I want.
00:35:07 I can overturn historical errors in ethics
00:35:11 and define a whole new system of philosophy.
00:35:14 Although I do remember reading,
00:35:15 there was this book,
00:35:17 I think it was called "21 Up" or something like that.
00:35:20 I know that there was a documentary about it,
00:35:22 but there was a book I read in my teens.
00:35:24 And if anybody knows it, just let me know.
00:35:27 But in it,
00:35:28 there was,
00:35:32 they followed people from sort of high school into,
00:35:35 I think it was the middle age at that point.
00:35:37 And one guy was like,
00:35:38 I'm gonna define an entire new system of epistemology.
00:35:41 I remember thinking like, yeah, that would be fun.
00:35:44 That would be, I wonder if I could do that.
00:35:45 That would be interesting.
00:35:46 Maybe I could.
00:35:48 So I didn't just leap to sort of the pinnacle
00:35:52 or whatever it is, wherever it is that I am or was.
00:35:54 I was constantly testing.
00:35:57 Am I a good storyteller?
00:35:58 Okay, I'll try telling stories to people.
00:36:01 Am I funny?
00:36:02 Okay, I'll try making jokes.
00:36:04 Can I keep people's attention for a long period of time?
00:36:06 Well, let me try a Dungeons and Dragons campaign
00:36:09 that lasts for a year
00:36:11 and see if I can keep people interested and involved.
00:36:13 Yes.
00:36:14 Yes.
00:36:15 Can I act?
00:36:16 Well, in high school, I was in Thornton Wilder's "Our Town"
00:36:20 and did a pretty good job.
00:36:22 So can I be creative?
00:36:25 Well, let me try writing a book.
00:36:28 Let me try writing a novel.
00:36:29 Let me try writing a story.
00:36:31 So you just try.
00:36:33 And, you know, the first try is like,
00:36:37 I don't know, it's one step in the journey of a thousand miles
00:36:41 but you make that step, right?
00:36:44 So once you take that first step, you say,
00:36:46 oh, I wonder if I can take the next step.
00:36:47 And then you keep waiting to run up
00:36:48 against your limitations.
00:36:50 You keep waiting to run up against your limitations.
00:36:53 And of course I have run up against limitations,
00:36:58 both positive and negative.
00:37:00 I had some limitations in my ability to accept
00:37:03 a certain level of what I viewed as corruption
00:37:06 in the business world.
00:37:07 So I did not.
00:37:09 And when I was in theater school,
00:37:11 I could absolutely completely and totally see
00:37:14 that there were people who were better actors than I was.
00:37:16 Now, some of that has to do with the material.
00:37:21 I was given some pretty trashy material
00:37:24 to work with in theater school.
00:37:26 I remember once I was a, I think a homeless fisherman
00:37:30 trying to woo a woman who was 300 pounds.
00:37:32 And it just wasn't, you know,
00:37:34 whereas when I played Martin Luther in university,
00:37:37 I think it was John Osborne's play about Martin Luther,
00:37:39 the theologian.
00:37:41 I mean, I did fantastically because it was very sort of
00:37:45 elevated and intellectual material.
00:37:47 So, but nonetheless, I remember going to see,
00:37:52 going to Stratford and seeing an actor,
00:37:55 his name was Brian, was it Brian Bedford?
00:37:58 I think it was, not Brian Blast.
00:38:00 He's the guy from the Branagh films.
00:38:01 Brian Bedford, and he played a very foppish
00:38:05 19th century character in the afternoon.
00:38:07 I remember his sort of catchphrase,
00:38:08 "Oo, stop me vitals."
00:38:10 And he was like hilariously funny.
00:38:13 And then he played Shylock in "The Merchant of Venice"
00:38:16 in the evening and was like incredible, deep, powerful,
00:38:20 like filled up the hole.
00:38:22 Main stage with his presence.
00:38:25 And you'd basically just waited for him to come back on.
00:38:28 And I was like, yeah, I don't think that's me.
00:38:30 So there was some limitations to put it mildly.
00:38:33 I think when I work with my own material,
00:38:35 when reading my novels as audio books,
00:38:37 I can really throw myself into the material
00:38:40 and all of that.
00:38:41 But I, you know, they were better actors, obviously.
00:38:44 Obviously you watch on the waterfront,
00:38:46 you go like, okay, well, that's been done.
00:38:48 So yeah, I did, I ran up against limitations.
00:38:51 I've run up against limitations in my capacity to network.
00:38:55 I've never been a fan of networking
00:38:57 and, you know, the sort of making of alliances
00:39:00 and the trading of allegiances and all that kind of stuff.
00:39:03 I didn't really do that in the business world,
00:39:05 sometimes to my strength and sometimes to my detriment.
00:39:07 Obviously I didn't do that in the intellectual world
00:39:11 because otherwise I might've ended up
00:39:12 with even one or two allies during my deplatforming,
00:39:16 which is, you know, strengths and weaknesses.
00:39:18 You run up against your limitations.
00:39:20 In some areas, I really feel I have yet to run up
00:39:22 against my limitations.
00:39:23 In the realm of philosophy,
00:39:25 I still feel like I'm in hot pursuit
00:39:27 of better communications.
00:39:29 Every time I do a show, I'm like, yeah, that was good.
00:39:32 I can do better.
00:39:33 I can do better.
00:39:34 I can do better.
00:39:35 And hopefully I'm still in pursuit of that.
00:39:37 It's what keeps it interesting
00:39:38 that I'm not repeating the same things,
00:39:39 but trying to find new ways to communicate,
00:39:41 such as this great question about the ego,
00:39:43 which I hope is helpful to you.
00:39:44 And it will be more helpful to you as I finish up here.
00:39:48 So look at this.
00:39:49 I debated with a guy who said women can have sex
00:39:54 with trees and get pregnant.
00:39:55 I guess this tree is pregnant,
00:39:58 'cause why not just throw everything out the window?
00:40:01 So yeah, the process of testing and rejecting reality
00:40:09 is important, right?
00:40:12 Perceived reality.
00:40:14 So the ego allows us to reject what seems obvious
00:40:19 in favor of that which is true.
00:40:23 Is it true that I was limited by my upbringing?
00:40:29 It is not true.
00:40:31 It feels true.
00:40:32 And the world wants to tell you that it's true
00:40:35 because the upper classes don't want the lower classes
00:40:37 competing with them.
00:40:39 So they do everything in their power
00:40:41 to keep the lower classes low.
00:40:44 So, but it's not true.
00:40:48 Is it true that the cycle of abuse has to repeat?
00:40:51 Well, it feels true, but it's not true.
00:40:54 So moving away from what feels true to what is true
00:40:58 is the operation of the ego.
00:41:00 Now, denying reality is essential for ambition
00:41:05 because the reality is you haven't achieved
00:41:12 what you want to achieve.
00:41:14 And so you have to deny your lack of achievement
00:41:18 in order to achieve.
00:41:20 And again, I know people are gonna snip,
00:41:22 "Oh, he wants you to deny reality."
00:41:24 It's like, no, no, no.
00:41:25 But I don't want you to fake knowledge you don't have.
00:41:28 Right, that's essential to philosophy.
00:41:31 I mean, this is the whole Socratic argument,
00:41:33 Socratic reasoning is don't deny.
00:41:35 Don't claim to have knowledge you don't have.
00:41:37 You say you know what justice is?
00:41:38 Okay, let's ask what justice is.
00:41:40 You don't know?
00:41:40 Okay, so stop claiming that you know what justice is.
00:41:43 Stop claiming to have knowledge you don't have.
00:41:46 It's pretty important to life and virtue and integrity,
00:41:50 not fake stuff, right?
00:41:52 So you don't know your potential.
00:41:58 If you try to measure your potential by your past,
00:42:01 you're working with an empirical set of knowledge
00:42:04 that's based on things that you didn't choose, right?
00:42:07 I mean, you didn't choose, I didn't choose where I was born.
00:42:09 I didn't choose the family, the class, the country,
00:42:11 the sex, I didn't choose any of this stuff.
00:42:14 Just work with what.
00:42:15 So if you try to judge your potential by your past,
00:42:20 then you are trying,
00:42:23 you're pretending to have knowledge you don't have.
00:42:24 And you're also saying that you can judge
00:42:27 what you can choose by what you can't choose.
00:42:30 Right, I've never, it's never ever clicked with me
00:42:36 the idea of being ashamed of something I never chose.
00:42:41 Right?
00:42:42 So I just, it's just embarrassing
00:42:45 for when people try that stuff.
00:42:46 So when you have choice, the sky's the limit.
00:42:53 That which you didn't choose,
00:42:55 like I didn't choose to be born
00:42:56 in this trashy welfare class back there in the UK
00:42:59 and live in a fairly trashy welfare class
00:43:02 for most of my childhood and youth in Canada,
00:43:05 I didn't choose, I didn't even choose to come to Canada.
00:43:09 So I'm not gonna be defined
00:43:11 by any of the things I didn't choose
00:43:13 because to be defined by things you didn't choose
00:43:15 is a contradiction in terms.
00:43:17 You are defined by the things that you did choose.
00:43:19 Right, you're defined by the things you do choose
00:43:22 and you didn't choose your childhood,
00:43:24 you didn't choose your parents,
00:43:25 you didn't choose your culture, your environment,
00:43:27 your country, your race, your sex,
00:43:30 you didn't choose any of that.
00:43:32 Right, it just kind of happened to you
00:43:33 and therefore it doesn't define you.
00:43:35 Doesn't define you.
00:43:38 Everybody wants to be defined by the past
00:43:42 because when you get defined by the past,
00:43:43 you can exploit the present, right?
00:43:46 Ah, because of past injustice, you owe us money now.
00:43:49 Gain control over the present by pretending
00:43:51 that the past is responsible for,
00:43:58 that people have chosen the past somehow.
00:44:00 So,
00:44:04 to deny empiricism as the basis of your potential
00:44:09 is to accept that the future you choose
00:44:13 is different from the past you didn't, right?
00:44:17 The future you choose is different
00:44:19 from the past you didn't choose.
00:44:21 And that's why I want to make everything
00:44:22 in the present a choice.
00:44:24 Everything in the present is a choice, should be a choice.
00:44:27 That way you can be defined, you can be actualized,
00:44:32 you can be real, you can have pride for that which you chose
00:44:35 rather than that which you defer to that you didn't choose
00:44:37 like your history.
00:44:38 So yeah, how did I achieve by saying
00:44:43 empiricism can never, ever determine my potential
00:44:48 because my potential lies in the future
00:44:49 and empiricism is always about the past.
00:44:51 So to deny the evidence of the senses
00:44:57 is to unleash your potential.
00:44:58 (pages rustling)
00:45:01 Why on earth should you be bound
00:45:05 by that which you never chose
00:45:07 and use it to crush your capacity for glory
00:45:12 and success by what you do choose?
00:45:17 Right, because if we allow ourselves
00:45:20 to be defined by our history,
00:45:23 we cut off endless avenues of possibility
00:45:25 or opportunity in our future.
00:45:28 It doesn't bring our past to life,
00:45:30 it simply kills our future.
00:45:31 I'm sure you follow, I'm sure this all makes sense to you.
00:45:35 So when I say there's nothing within you that's bad,
00:45:39 there's nothing within you that's wrong,
00:45:43 yeah, your capacity to deny empirical reality,
00:45:47 your capacity to deny history,
00:45:49 your capacity to deny the evidence of your senses,
00:45:52 I mean, it's funny because denying the evidence
00:45:55 of your senses is also...
00:45:58 How you, I mean, we watch movies,
00:46:04 movies aren't real, right?
00:46:06 Denying the evidence of our senses
00:46:07 and getting involved in stories that aren't real
00:46:10 with people who are only faking it,
00:46:11 but we get involved,
00:46:12 we get involved in these dramas and so on.
00:46:15 So denying the evidence of our senses
00:46:16 is why there's art in many ways, right?
00:46:18 Why is there stories?
00:46:19 Why do we cry at the end of a movie
00:46:21 when people aren't real?
00:46:22 Cry at the end of an animated movie,
00:46:24 like "Tangled", it's not real.
00:46:26 I mean, even the images aren't real,
00:46:27 but we get involved nonetheless.
00:46:29 Denying the evidence of our senses,
00:46:30 nothing wrong with that.
00:46:32 Denying of the evidence of our senses,
00:46:34 which is all about the past,
00:46:35 unleashes our potential in the future.
00:46:36 So your ego is not bad.
00:46:40 And people who tell you,
00:46:41 who want, they want you to kill the ego,
00:46:44 are telling you that they want you to be enslaved.
00:46:49 People who tell you they want you to kill your ego,
00:46:52 that your ego is your enemy,
00:46:53 that your ego is vanity and narcissism and so on, right?
00:46:56 Because we can believe in things that aren't true.
00:46:59 I could believe that I'm a better singer
00:47:03 than Freddie Mercury, not even remotely true, right?
00:47:05 So we can believe in things that aren't true,
00:47:08 and that can give us great success.
00:47:11 But we can also believe in things that aren't true,
00:47:15 and that leads us to great failure,
00:47:19 to waste our resources.
00:47:20 So of course we need to check, right?
00:47:22 We need to check.
00:47:23 I mean, I remember when I was in my mid-teens,
00:47:28 I half put together a band
00:47:31 and we practiced in a basement and so on.
00:47:33 And I was like trying to sing Roxanne by Sting,
00:47:35 which is way too high for me.
00:47:37 And I was like, yeah, that's not good.
00:47:39 That's just empirically terrible.
00:47:41 So that's not good.
00:47:43 And I wrote a couple of songs and sang them,
00:47:45 did multi-track and all of that.
00:47:46 And it was like, it was okay, it was okay.
00:47:48 But not good enough for me.
00:47:51 Anyway, I mean, my strengths lie obviously elsewhere.
00:47:54 I hope, I believe, I know, I have evidence.
00:47:57 So yeah, denying the evidence of your senses
00:48:01 is important for ambition.
00:48:02 Like there's a million people
00:48:04 who everyone says they're gonna fail,
00:48:06 they end up succeeding, okay?
00:48:07 They denied the evidence of their senses,
00:48:09 everyone telling them they're gonna fail,
00:48:10 their own thoughts that they were gonna fail.
00:48:12 So yeah, denying the evidence that's around you
00:48:15 is essential for success, but it's a double-edged sword,
00:48:17 like all these sorts of things.
00:48:18 Like anger is a double-edged sword, right?
00:48:20 Anger can be used to protect you,
00:48:21 anger can be used to endanger you, right?
00:48:25 So if you're like an angry guy,
00:48:29 or if you have the capacity for anger,
00:48:31 if you're comfortable with your anger,
00:48:32 it can keep you safe,
00:48:34 because bullies will sense that and steer clear,
00:48:36 so it actually prevents fights.
00:48:37 Like having guns in the neighborhood prevents break-ins,
00:48:40 even if you don't have one,
00:48:41 the thief doesn't know whether you have one or don't,
00:48:43 and therefore, right, it prevents break-ins.
00:48:48 So being in touch with your anger is healthy and helpful,
00:48:52 it can keep you safe and can prevent conflicts.
00:48:55 However, right, that Aristotelian mean,
00:48:57 too little anger means you're exploited,
00:48:59 too much anger means you're in danger,
00:49:00 because then you get too pissed off at every little slight,
00:49:05 and you push people in the chest,
00:49:06 and you poke people and get into fights,
00:49:10 and this can give you significant injuries or death, right?
00:49:14 So anger is not good or bad.
00:49:17 Ego is not good or bad.
00:49:19 Fear is not good or bad.
00:49:23 And the people who say, "Well, fear is bad,
00:49:26 "don't be a coward,"
00:49:27 it's like, no, no, caution is essential.
00:49:29 Why did we develop something,
00:49:32 again, being at the very top of the evolutionary chain,
00:49:34 like far beyond everything else
00:49:36 that could possibly be conceived of as real,
00:49:40 why would we have developed fear
00:49:43 if fear wasn't an essential survival mechanism?
00:49:45 Fear is not bad.
00:49:47 An excess of fear can make you a coward,
00:49:49 a deficiency of fear can make you foolhardy,
00:49:52 fools rush in where angels fear to tread,
00:49:54 and I certainly, (laughs)
00:49:57 I understand that one,
00:49:58 probably deeper than your average bear, so.
00:50:00 Oh, no ice yet, but it is cold.
00:50:05 It is cold, but I like the bracing cold.
00:50:07 Sorry about the portrait, I forgot my gimbal.
00:50:10 So, gimbal, what does that make me think of Harrison Ford?
00:50:14 Wasn't that some character in a movie he played?
00:50:16 Ah, the random thoughts.
00:50:17 Reign them in, reign them in.
00:50:19 Get your ducks in a row, get your horses in a line.
00:50:21 Oh, interesting, all right, all right, just track it.
00:50:26 So,
00:50:27 your ego is not bad.
00:50:31 Your capacity to deny, sense data,
00:50:34 your capacity to deny history
00:50:36 as defining your future is essential to success,
00:50:39 is essential to progress,
00:50:41 is essential to unleashing your potential.
00:50:43 And your potential is always in there,
00:50:45 knocking and mocking, right?
00:50:46 Knocking at the
00:50:48 salty ribbed cage of your heart.
00:50:54 Knocking, knocking, right?
00:50:55 Your potential is knocking and complaining and whining
00:50:58 and wanting to be set free, always, always, always.
00:51:01 And how do we stifle our potential?
00:51:05 By saying that the past has to be the future
00:51:07 and don't be ridiculous.
00:51:08 I mean, what is the great cry of the lower classes
00:51:11 when someone improves, right?
00:51:12 What's the great cry of the trash classes?
00:51:14 Not that all lower classes are trash classes,
00:51:17 and the trash classes exist everywhere,
00:51:18 but in particular, the lower trash classes,
00:51:21 what is the big cry of the lower classes,
00:51:25 the trash classes when you improve, when you do better?
00:51:29 They say, "Oh, you just think you're better than us now.
00:51:32 "Oh, you just think you're so great."
00:51:33 Right.
00:51:36 To which the answer is, well, yeah,
00:51:40 'cause if you succeeded,
00:51:41 I'd never think of saying that to you,
00:51:42 but never crossed my mind to say that to you.
00:51:44 So yeah, I guess I am better than you.
00:51:46 Oh, look at Mr. High and Mighty.
00:51:50 Doesn't even drink Pabst Blue Ribbon.
00:51:58 Fridays at three o'clock in a wife beater.
00:52:02 So great.
00:52:03 I mean, it's funny because yeah,
00:52:07 I remember when I wrote my first novel,
00:52:09 I gave it to friends to read.
00:52:11 Oh yeah, I wrote a novel, it's not bad.
00:52:13 It's called "The Jealous War."
00:52:15 Did they read it?
00:52:19 They did not.
00:52:20 They gave me feedback, they did not.
00:52:22 I wrote a great play called "Seduction" one summer,
00:52:24 which I actually produced
00:52:25 and gave it to a close family member to read,
00:52:31 give me feedback.
00:52:32 Every time I went over, sat by his bed the whole summer,
00:52:36 never bothered to read it.
00:52:38 After I'd helped him move how many times?
00:52:43 And helped him clean up his entire house
00:52:46 when his firstborn was due.
00:52:47 Ah, reciprocity.
00:52:50 It's such a great filter for exploitation.
00:52:53 So yeah, there's nothing within you.
00:52:58 What is there?
00:52:59 Jealousy.
00:52:59 No, no, jealousy can be good.
00:53:01 Jealousy can be good.
00:53:02 It's actually a pretty underrated queen song,
00:53:04 beautifully sung of course by the Fredster,
00:53:05 but yeah, no.
00:53:07 Jealousy is good.
00:53:11 Hey man, I was jealous of people
00:53:13 who had better homes and better families than I did.
00:53:16 I was jealous of those people.
00:53:18 Yes, I envied them.
00:53:20 Good.
00:53:21 Good, aren't you jealous of a guy,
00:53:22 if you're fat, aren't you jealous of a guy
00:53:25 who's thin or has lost weight or at least slim?
00:53:27 Yeah.
00:53:28 Yeah.
00:53:30 Aren't women jealous of more attractive women,
00:53:33 which is one of the spurs
00:53:36 to work to become more attractive?
00:53:38 Yeah.
00:53:40 Jealousy is good.
00:53:41 Now, if it becomes pathological,
00:53:43 rather than something you use to lift yourself up,
00:53:45 it becomes pathological and you use it to pull others down.
00:53:49 Right, like what's this?
00:53:51 TV show, was it "Glee"?
00:53:56 There was a bunch of girls who didn't like the new girl
00:53:59 and so, in the cheerleading squad,
00:54:01 so they tried to convince her to not eat anything
00:54:04 and then she kept fainting.
00:54:05 So that's unhealthy, right?
00:54:08 That's pathological.
00:54:08 And you don't use it to lift yourself up,
00:54:10 but instead you use it to pull other people down.
00:54:14 Right, like the psychos who preyed upon
00:54:16 Atlantis Morissette when she was a kid
00:54:18 and she then produced bitter, angry music
00:54:21 that spread that rage and discontent from them
00:54:25 to the singer, to the millions of people
00:54:27 who bought and listened to "Jagged Little Pill"
00:54:31 and so on, right?
00:54:35 So you tell me, tell me what aspect of you,
00:54:39 oh, pettiness.
00:54:40 No, well, see, pettiness is what keeps you alive
00:54:45 when you're little, right?
00:54:46 You wanna make sure you get equal shares to your sibling,
00:54:48 that keeps you alive when you're little.
00:54:50 Pettiness is a way of focusing on small injustices,
00:54:55 obviously with the hope
00:54:56 that they don't become big injustices, right?
00:54:58 'Cause if you can nip injustices in the bud
00:55:02 when they're small,
00:55:04 that's better than waiting until they're big, right?
00:55:06 So pettiness is like, well, you don't wait
00:55:09 for the weird thing on your skin
00:55:10 to be the size of a dinner plate
00:55:12 before you go see the doctor.
00:55:13 You wanna focus on small problems
00:55:17 so that they don't become big problems.
00:55:19 So you tell me, is pettiness bad?
00:55:21 No, pettiness is just the word that is applied.
00:55:24 Oh, you're so petty, such a petty, petty man.
00:55:26 No, that's the word that's applied
00:55:27 by people who wanna exploit you
00:55:29 and don't want you to notice
00:55:30 the early stages of exploitation.
00:55:33 So we could, I don't wanna do this all day,
00:55:36 but we could do this all day where
00:55:38 we take every aspect that is supposed to be negative.
00:55:45 Say, oh, well, what about our capacity for evil?
00:55:50 Ooh, what about our capacity for evil?
00:55:53 Surely, Steph, you're not saying
00:55:55 that our capacity for evil is bad.
00:56:01 Well, no, but that's, that's tautological, right?
00:56:05 So you're saying that which is evil can't be good.
00:56:07 Yeah, yeah, well, you've just defined
00:56:08 that which is down is not up,
00:56:09 that which is black is not white.
00:56:10 Yeah, good for you, right?
00:56:11 Wow, brilliant.
00:56:13 Evil is the capacity to do harm.
00:56:15 Now, evil is the capacity to do harm
00:56:19 against the virtuous and the innocent, of course, right?
00:56:22 But the capacity to do harm?
00:56:23 Are you gonna tell me that there's something
00:56:26 fundamentally wrong with the capacity to do harm?
00:56:30 Good Lord.
00:56:30 So yeah, I mean, the capacity to do harm
00:56:34 can be used for good, it can be used for ill.
00:56:37 I mean, when you have treatments for an illness,
00:56:43 harm is done to that illness, right?
00:56:45 You have treatment for cancer, harm is done to the cancer.
00:56:47 Capacity to do harm.
00:56:49 Self-defense is the capacity to do harm.
00:56:51 Just ask Kyle Rittenhouse, right?
00:56:54 Do we have the capacity to do harm?
00:56:56 Do we have the capacity to do harm?
00:56:57 It's kind of why we're alive.
00:57:01 You don't think we do harm to animals and vegetables
00:57:04 and fruits by picking them?
00:57:06 Well, I guess maybe not fruits
00:57:07 'cause that's sort of the point of the fruit, but.
00:57:09 So, but we don't do what the fruit wants
00:57:12 and usually replant every seed.
00:57:15 So our capacity to do harm is why we're alive.
00:57:17 I mean, I've been stepping on a bunch of plants
00:57:19 the whole time.
00:57:20 I can't even walk in the woods and get my exercise
00:57:23 without stepping on a bunch of plants.
00:57:25 Does it do each individual plant harm?
00:57:27 Oh God, I've just been thinking about that.
00:57:28 Look at this, poor plants.
00:57:30 The capacity to do harm is innate to life.
00:57:34 I scratch my nose, I kill a hundred million cells, right?
00:57:39 So we can't be alive without doing harm.
00:57:43 So evil is when we do harm
00:57:45 against the virtuous and the innocent.
00:57:50 But the capacity to do harm is not immoral.
00:57:55 So the ego, yeah, embrace the ego and test the ego, right?
00:58:01 So the ego is about rejecting the evidence of the senses,
00:58:04 but it's gotta be circular, right?
00:58:06 So if you think you're a great singer,
00:58:08 then that's your, you know,
00:58:11 you haven't been a great singer,
00:58:13 you haven't been applauded
00:58:14 or you haven't received accolades as a great singer.
00:58:17 So yeah, sing into your phone and listen back to it
00:58:19 and ask other people to listen to it
00:58:20 and what you think, right?
00:58:22 Like Sammy Hagar was just singing along to the radio
00:58:24 when he was a teenager and some guy was like,
00:58:25 holy crap, that's fantastic.
00:58:27 And he has got a fantastic voice.
00:58:29 Alanis Morissette was singing in church.
00:58:31 Somebody tapped her on the shoulder and said,
00:58:32 you have a beautiful voice.
00:58:33 And she does.
00:58:34 It's kind of a bit of a banshee shriek,
00:58:35 but it's got some real power.
00:58:37 I saw her live doing that thank you song.
00:58:41 And it's just like, holy crap,
00:58:43 she can belt it out like a waistline factory.
00:58:47 So yeah, it's, but have the feedback, right?
00:58:52 So of course I put myself forward to say,
00:58:56 well, maybe I can achieve great things intellectually.
00:58:58 So I keep pushing myself
00:58:59 and keep rejecting the evidence of the past
00:59:03 as a guidepost to the future.
00:59:05 And that works, right?
00:59:08 So yeah, the ego is wonderful.
00:59:10 Deny reality, absolutely deny empirical reality
00:59:14 and then test with empirical reality, right?
00:59:17 So I thought I could achieve great things.
00:59:19 So I started putting out shows back in 2005, 18 years ago.
00:59:24 And I think the evidence is that I can achieve
00:59:28 some pretty good things with this kind of stuff.
00:59:30 So that's a plus, right?
00:59:34 I didn't just keep doing it and keep doing it
00:59:36 and keep doing it.
00:59:37 I mean, I tried that with writing novels.
00:59:39 Like I kept writing novels, took time off,
00:59:40 wrote novels, got educated.
00:59:42 I had an agent and I got incredible reviews on my novels,
00:59:46 but nothing ever happened, right?
00:59:47 So I had to not do that
00:59:48 because even though I thought,
00:59:50 still think I'm a great novelist,
00:59:52 of course I didn't realize the degree
00:59:54 to which art had been infiltrated
00:59:56 by those with a propagandistic agenda
00:59:58 that didn't exactly align with my promotion
01:00:00 of free markets and hostility towards collectivism.
01:00:02 So that's why the quality,
01:00:05 I was rejected for the quality of my novels,
01:00:07 not for the lack of quality,
01:00:10 but because they were good and anti-ideological,
01:00:13 they couldn't be published.
01:00:15 So yeah, there's nothing within you that is wrong or bad.
01:00:20 The measurement, the balance, the wisdom is all.
01:00:26 Embrace everything about yourself.
01:00:28 There's nothing bad in you, but thinking makes it so.