0:07 - Opening Thoughts on Matthew 10.22
1:10 - The Burden of Potential
5:45 - The Journey of Self-Discovery
13:38 - The Importance of Preparation
17:22 - Embracing Life's Uncertainties
23:45 - Resentment and the Moral Striver
31:05 - The Cost of Cowardice
37:59 - The Nature of Virtue and Happiness
41:19 - Conclusion: The Price of Integrity
In this episode, I delve deep into Matthew 10:22, where it is proclaimed that "ye shall be hated of all men for my name's sake," exploring the powerful implications of virtue and societal values. I dissect the idea that people often resent those who strive for moral excellence and the underlying reasons for this animosity. Whether viewed through a theological lens, equating God's name with virtue, or through a philosophical perspective, connecting it to rational virtues and objectivity, I demonstrate how the struggle for moral integrity encounters significant resistance.
Through personal anecdotes, I illustrate the challenges individuals face when pursuing their potential. I share my reflections on moments in life when the notion of "missing one's calling" resonates painfully—how these sentiments can act as a harsh reminder of unfulfilled capabilities. I examine the psychology behind why people who fail to strive for their best often turn to scorn and degradation of those who do succeed. By drawing parallels between my own experiences and the lives of friends who failed to pursue their passions, I emphasize the importance of seizing opportunities when they arise, underlining the notion that life is unpredictable and readiness can open new doors.
I expand on the theme of societal structure and the resentments tethered to one's class or station in life, particularly during the rise of modern leftism. This resentment often serves as a backlash against those who strive to enhance their circumstances. I analyze how this dynamic manifests in personal relationships, illustrating that when one individual seeks improvement or success, they can inadvertently provoke envy and hostility in others who perhaps fear their own stagnation. I bring into focus real-life examples that convey the emotional landscape of striving for virtue in a culture that frequently rewards mediocrity and superficiality.
The conversation shifts to how this societal backdrop influences our view of virtue, bringing clarity on why the virtuous often become targets of derision. I contemplate how the struggle to be better intermingles with personal fears, using the example of someone attempting to improve their relationships amidst external pressures. The societal tendency to mock and belittle those striving for moral excellence fundamentally stems from a deep-seated recognition of their own failures to aspire similarly.
Moreover, I emphasize the importance of enduring through these challenges and the ultimate promise of salvation through personal diligence and moral fortitude. The journey may be tough, but the payoff—be it a life of integrity, self-fulfillment, or the cherished relationships that spring from virtue—is worthwhile. I explore how a commitment to philosophical principles and personal growth over decades has equipped me with resilience and insight, revealing how we can often be unprepared for the rewards that await when we choose to pursue virtue.
I conclude by reiterating the weight of the verse: enduring to the end does not merely promise heavenly salvation but also liberation from the corrupt influences surrounding us. It is a call to arms—an invitation to embrace our potential and recognize that the path of virtue, while fraught with challenges, ultimately leads to a richer, more meaningful existence. Life is a journey where the readiness to seize opportunities is crucial, no matter how distant they may seem. In the face of adversity, I remind listeners to strive, improve, and support those around them in their quest for a virtuous life.
[0:00] Good morning, everybody. This is Bible Versus. We're going to talk about Matthew 10.22. Matthew 10.22.
[0:07] And ye shall be hated of all men, for my name's sake. But he that endureth to the end shall be saved. He that endureth to the end shall be saved. So, of course, for the theologically inclined. My name's sake is God, which is synonymous with virtue. For the secular, for the philosophical, my name's sake here is UPB, rational virtues, objectivity, Socratic reasoning, and so on. So, why do people hate the moralist so much? The moralist who strives to live his virtues. Why do the corrupt hate the strivers so much?
[1:00] Well, if someone were to say to me, hey man, Stef, you should have been a ballet dancer or an opera singer. You really missed your calling.
[1:10] I would find that amusing. I mean, it's funny, right? I have no near the voice, nor the physiology, nor the inclination to do any of those things. So if somebody told me I missed my calling, when I know for a simple fact that such things are not my calling, and in fact, I have no capacity to achieve them, I would not be offended. On the other hand, if somebody were to say to me, if I had really failed in life, if I had failed to achieve my potential, as I continually feel I'm striving and continuing to work to improve my potential. But if somebody had said to me, if I was working as a waiter in my 50s, and somebody had said to me, you missed your calling, you're a great thinker and communicator, you should have been more than a waiter.
[2:06] Oof, oof, like I can't even tell you, there are these old videos of a fat guy taking a cannonball to the belly in slow motion, like it is circus, and it would be like that. The coulda, woulda, shoulda, coulda been more, shoulda been more, that is brutal. I always felt, deep down, that I would be a good husband and father. And if I had not achieved marriage and parenthood because of my own choices, let's say I had chosen to date based solely on looks and avoided virtue and so on.
[2:47] Then if somebody had said to me, you missed your calling, like you're an old bachelor, you missed your calling, you would have been a great husband and father. Oof, you know, there are certain phrases that just cut right through your defenses. You know, as the old saying goes, like a hot knife through butter. And there are certain phrases that can scald you with regret for the rest of your days. I mean, a friend of mine when I was younger, very much into martial arts, and was working as a tester in the software field. And he was not particularly happy with his job. It was okay, but it was far below his potential. Certainly one of the smartest people I ever knew.
[3:38] And I would tell him, if you're really into martial arts, you should open a dojo. And he's like, oh, but the licensing and the paperwork and the this. I understand that, but nonetheless, there are dojos out there. And if you've ever been around people whose talent is prodigious, I grew up, I was very fortunate to grow up in this with a lot of really talented people. Had another friend of mine, played guitar, sang really well. And I was like, man, you should go to coffee shops and sing and play. So he just did like joke songs. He did a song. He formed a joke band called the Barfing Pigeons. And he did a song called King Redneck. He lives all alone except for his wife. He's lived all alone for most of his life. And there was another song they did called Driving the Big White Bus. Driving the Big White Bus is a reference to holding on to the porcelain edge for tub when you're throwing up after being drunk or getting drunk. Driving the big white, driving the big white bus. But he wouldn't just write songs, play guitar, and sing anything that wasn't, you know, very dark humor, right? It's a little frustrating.
[5:07] Much better voice than I had. But he wouldn't really do much with it. Wouldn't commit, wouldn't dig in, wouldn't make it happen. So when you have that kind of potential, and you fail to actualize it based on avoidance and fear, And I honestly, I don't know why people, when I was younger, I don't know why they didn't manifest. I don't know why they didn't manifest, why they didn't sit down and just try, just really try. I mean, see, oh, but there's so many barriers. Yeah, I get, I get there's tons of barriers, but still people do it. It's hard to make it in the music industry. Yes, it is.
[5:46] But a people still do it and b you never know what technology is going to be available, in the future right you never know what technology is going to be available in the future so i strove mightily as an actor as a playwright as a director as a novelist as a poet in sort of.
[6:12] Capacities. I strove mightily and got amazing reviews and I think did some great work, but it did not happen. I wrote a great master's thesis.
[6:24] And I remember my thesis advisor was saying, this is really great, you know, and I was like, hey, maybe you could help me get it published then in a academic journal or magazine, right? And he just, you know, it's what people do. It's what people do. I shouldn't laugh. I mean, I can laugh now, but for almost all of my life, there has been the same thing. And I think we could all recognize this when we look back upon the massive bobsleigh, Möchtel hair on fire, pinball slalom race of a career of mine in the public square, it's always kind of the same thing. And it's now entirely predictable. So what happens is, people will work with me, and they will privately praise me. But for the most part, when I ask them to really stand by me, they do that, you know, that moonwalk Homer Simpson into the shrubs. Off they go. I have despawned, dematerialized. So it's been a sort of a constant thing when it comes to, my work hey you're fantastic you're really great you know what you do is wonderful it's amazing oh great maybe you could help me in this public work oh no they just get ghosted right and.
[7:54] I mean, it's funny, because the only way that I can avoid bitterness is to say, well, there's something really singular about me. You know, you could say for good or ill or indifferent or whatever, right? But there's something quite singular about me. Like, I used to be frustrated with how bad my education was, and it was terrible, of course. But you can't design a general population educational approach or curriculum to take into account exceptions like me, right? I mean, you just can't. It would be like trying to design society for people who are, you know, four foot eight or seven foot four. Like you have to kind of design for the average. So you have to design your door frames for people who are within the central hump of a bell curve of height, right? Super short people find everything too big. Super tall people have to stoop to enter. So you just kind of have to. So one of the ways that you can avoid bitterness is to recognize what makes you extraordinary. And again, I put everyone who listens to this, particularly sort of post-de-platforming, I put everyone who listens to this in the 1%, top 1%. And I think it's actually more rare than that, probably one in 10,000. But let's just say top 1%, it's a little easier to talk about. So society can't design itself for the top 1%.
[9:23] Can't design an educational system for the top 1% of intelligence. Houses and cars and everything cannot be designed for the top 1% of height. It would be like trying to design charity for the top 1% of income earners. It just really wouldn't make much sense, right? So I worked for a long time in art, communications, conversations, like I was having the equivalent of call-in shows since my teens. I mean, I didn't just step into this out of nowhere with no sort of history or background. I remember when I went to go and walk up north, I worked in Thunder Bay. And what that means is we would often go out into the bush but then we had a base it was an apartment with.
[10:22] An apartment in thunder baby we would bring the stuff back to we'd work at a warehouse, sometimes i mean often we'd be out in the bush but sometimes we would be in a warehouse going through things and so in thunder bay i remember going to a bar i would go on a fairly regular basis to a bar to, I didn't know anyone in town, but, and I actually had a lovely Japanese woman that I lived with, and she had no particular interest in going to bars and dancing, so I would go on my own, and I would chat with people, and I remember talking to a woman one night, I was talking to a woman one night, and I was like, I don't know, I don't know.
[11:08] She was complaining about her day with her mother. And of course, I was starting to go in and be curious about her history, her relationship with the mother, what was going on. And I just remember she said she started to turn all different kinds of colors. And it wasn't just the disco lights, all different kinds of colors. And she then ended up going to the bar and ordering a lot. She said, I'll be right back. And she went to the bar and she just drank savagely and didn't come back. And I'm like, okay, maybe that was a bit too close to the nerve centers. And I also, for some reason, what I remember, I remember dancing with a girl to the arrhythmic song, Would I Lie to You? And I remember, I remember, for some reason, there was a really great singer. It was a cover band. Sometimes it was recorded music. Sometimes it was live music. And I remember a cover band doing Everybody Wants to Rule the World, which was originally entitled Everybody Wants to Go to War. And I just remember the singer was, you know, the welcome to your life, the welcome to, It was just beautiful, crisp, and perfect notes. And I was like, okay, that guy can really sing.
[12:13] I also remember, sorry, this is a sideline. I also remember I had a gym membership at the university, Lakehead, I think it's called Lakehead University. Thunder Bay is fairly well known for, I think, agriculture and geology, if I remember rightly. So I had a gym membership at the university, and I would go to exercise, and I was looking for people to hang with. And of course I was in the sauna chatting with a guy and we seemed to get along and I was like hey man we should really catch a movie or something sometime and of course he closed his towel off and began to edge away because I realized afterwards of course it looks like a gay pickup and I don't fault him for thinking that I mean I did have a bit of British accent so.
[13:00] You fruity English bastard that's some line from I think SNL I like a martini shaken not stirred, says James Bonds to an American bartender. He's like, yeah, coming right up, you fruity English bastard. That was sort of my nickname sometimes at work.
[13:16] I mean, you'd be appalled for men, you understand the humor. So, yeah, I don't know why people don't achieve their potential, but you should strive at it because you never know what's coming. You never know what's coming down the pipeline. So, my friend with, he's talented in just about everything. Honestly, just talented. It was absurd, right?
[13:38] To me. I mean, admirable, but absurd. And if he had striven to to improve or perfect his musical stuff even if he did it on the side on the weekends or whatever then who knows you know youtube came along and i mean that's how justin bieber got his start of course he would have been older but he would have been in his 30s but you never know you never know i prepared all of this you know all of these abilities i I worked on prepared, honed, pursued, and with no idea or hope or thought that this universal communications medium that allows us to have these conversations would occur. The readiness is all. The readiness is all. So when podcasting became a thing, and again, I wrote about video casting in a novel that I wrote, showed up six years. And the novel I wrote showed up six years, I think, before YouTube about video broadcasting.
[14:42] And you just never know. So I just happened to be able to hit the ground running because for 20 years I had been rehearsing. I used to rehearse debates in my car. I enjoyed debating with everyone. I enjoyed telling stories at a dinner table. I enjoyed making people laugh. I enjoyed making people think. I've always had a rabid curiosity about people's origin stories. So I've been doing all of this stuff for like 20 years before the medium hit that allowed me to.
[15:15] I do. There's an old story about Sam Cooke's brother. Sam Cooke would be in the backyard practicing singing and performing as a little, little kid. He's saying, you know, I'm going to be a big star. I'm going to be someone someday that's going to sing to people. And of course, you know, obviously he had great voice, I'm sure, even as a kid. But why do you hit the ground running? Because you've been preparing forever, right? So, you know, age of six, Sam Cooke is spending hours and hours practicing singing and performing. And then he sings at church, he joins a band called the Soul Stirrers, and he was away to the races because you have to prepare in life for things. Even if there's no particular chance that you can achieve it now, you never know what's going to happen in the future. I mean, for all I know, I could be a philosopher who died 100 years ago, and I'm just an AI in a matrix. Just kidding. It's a funny idea. So, you don't know what's coming. You don't know what is coming. You don't know how you're going to be able to spread your wings. Even if you're caged, you exercise your wings because you never know. It could be an earthquake, your cage falls, and you're out.
[16:33] I was kept away from the general population, as a young man by gatekeepers. And then the gatekeepers, there was 10 years where there were essentially no real gatekeepers, and the gatekeepers reeled in shock, and then came back with a vengeance. Now there are gate reducers, but not gatekeepers. Right? My prominence, my reach can be reduced, but it can't be eliminated. Which means I speak to fewer people in the present, but infinitely more in the future. You just don't know what's going to happen. Prepare, prepare, prepare. I consider it a zero, almost a zero chance possibility that I would have married my wonderful wife if I had not gone to therapy and cleaned up my relationships in my past.
[17:23] Now, I didn't go to therapy and clean up my relationships with the anticipation of meeting such a wonderful woman, but the fact that this was all done when I met her meant that we could meet, date, get engaged, and get married in 11 months. Ah, should have been sooner, but what the heck. So...
[17:45] Life preparing, because you never know what is going to open up. And of course, all the people who said it's impossible failed to prepare. And then when the internet came along, they were not ready. They were not ready.
[18:01] And of course, if I had gotten what I wanted, when I wanted it, I would not be able to do what I do now, right? This, sorry, right, like, you know what I mean. sorry, let me maybe be a bit more clear. If I had, let's say, gotten an acting, directing, writing, novelist, poet career going in my teens and my 20s, well, I would not have had the freedom to speak as frankly and honestly to the world as I have. Because I, let's say, I had become very successful in the arts when I was younger, then I would have an entire industry around me, you know like your publicist your media relations manager your agent your you know all of the people around me my entire social circle would be based upon all of that fame and ability and i would be paid for not telling the truth i mean artists used to be paid for telling the truth now artists are paid for lying so with a comfortable income with a reasonable degree of fame and with a lot of positive feedback from those around me who would have been profiting from my abilities, would I have been able to tell the frank and important truths that I've told over the last 20 years? Well, no.
[19:20] No, I would not have. So I didn't get what I wanted when I was younger. And a direct result of that is the world got what it needed when I got older.
[19:31] Hard to understand, but it's a fact. And this is why when something happens in life, I don't know if it's good or bad. I don't know. I don't know because I don't know the future. It may not be what I want in the moment, but of course, you know, I dated women in the past and then sometimes I'd be sad if the relationship didn't work out. Not usually, of course, right? You go in with general hopes, right? I'd be upset if the relationship didn't work out, but I got to meet my wife, right so it's hard to say it's really hard to say of course i would do not like losing my hair when i was younger but it caused me to mature and go beyond the frivolity of youthful looks and look for qualities of character so yeah it's overall it's better overall it's better i mean i remember getting scouted for modeling and then i remember not going which of course was i'm sure absolutely for the best having talked to a couple of people in the modern modeling world it is absolutely for the best i mean it's funny because it wasn't even like i didn't go because i chose to i just kind of forgot about it and then slept in and then just never went back and wasn't that so much for the better it's like my unconscious was like don't do it don't step into that world don't do it.
[20:53] So, sorry, long-winded. But, you know, it's funny because I had this thought about the singer singing that, welcome to your life. And I was like, that sticks in my brain.
[21:07] For some reason, I need to discharge it into the world and then it will give me peace. I don't know why. I don't know why. But I'm sure I'll figure it out at some point. Okay, so when it comes to virtue, striving for virtue is really important. So one of the things that the free market has done is raise resentment. We are aware of that, right?
[21:30] If you sort of think of, I don't know, 15th century England. So you're born into wealth and privilege, or you're not. And there's very little movement between the classes. You can't just go and join the aristocracy. I mean, obviously, there are occasional exceptions, but effectively, it was impossible to change our classes. In fact, you were kind of hardwired and sometimes legally required to go into the same profession that your father had. If he was a baker, you had to be a baker. If he was a smith, you had to be a smith, and so on. If you were a farmer, you'd be born into that as a serf, and you'd be a farmer. So there was very little opportunity to change your station. So there was some resentment, but resentment was pointless, because you couldn't change things.
[22:12] And what Nietzsche identified in the 19th century, where he used the French word ressentiment, which is resentment, which is, when you can change your station, resentment goes through the roof. And this is really sort of the birth of leftism, right? There really wasn't leftism until there was the Industrial Revolution, until there was some semblance of the free market. There was not leftism. So leftism, and I talked about this in my presentation on the French Revolution, leftism in many ways is motivated by A, resentment at having been left behind, and B, it is a backup strategy for those who choose not to strive and achieve. The backup strategy being, we're just going to attack those who strive and achieve.
[23:03] So, if you don't gather together the food necessary to survive winter in a cold climate, if you don't gather together the food necessary to survive winter in a cold climate, because you're frivolous, you're lazy, you're whatever, right? Then what happens? Well, what happens is your backup strategy is to guilt, manipulate, or rob those who have food.
[23:30] To do that, you have to resent them. And in order to resent them, you have to imagine that because they planned and worked and have more than you have, somehow they stole from you and you're just taking it back. It's a backup strategy for those who fail to prepare.
[23:45] And it punishes the productive and rewards the indolent. And therefore, it swells until it breaks the productivity of society and everyone ends up with nothing. But at least then, It reduces resentment. So why is the moralist hated in particular? Because people can be better. And they know that. They know that deep down. They know they can be better. I had a friend once who was dating a woman who was very pretty, but not smart. And she didn't even have that earthy practical wisdom that sometimes comes with being less abstractly intelligent and he's like hey man what do you think of her and i couldn't say she's not smart i couldn't say you're like you're way smarter than she is i don't think it's going to work i could say and what i did say i said i think she seems to lack the level of insight that you have or she seems she seems short on the level of insight that you have so nicest and then you know you just this coldness and you know there's like get lost and you know like anger And of course, well, it's funny because they did actually stay together. Well, from what I know.
[24:59] So, why do you hate it? If somebody has a beautiful singing voice and they don't do anything with it, but they love singing and they love music and love performing, but they don't do anything with it, and they work as a waiter and maybe do a little karaoke where people are like, holy crap, man, why the hell are you just a waiter? Make sounds like that. Well...
[25:21] Cowardice of the everyday coalesces in to the vengeance of certain syllables later in life, which is every day you're like, well, I won't, or I'll do it at some point or later or whatever. And you just sort of delay because of fear, fear of failure, fear of wanting something too much. Like wanting is painful, right? This is sort of the Buddhist thing, right? To want something is painful.
[25:43] And when you want something, then you are vulnerable to the world, right? The moment you broadcast your needs into the world, you broadcast your vulnerabilities into the world. The moment you broadcast your desires, you broadcast massive levers on how to control you. Right? So, you know, the typical thing that the young starry-eyed ingenue wants to be a movie star and therefore roles are dangled in front of her so that she could be preyed on financially, sexually. I mean, Alanis Morissette talks about this when she was a teenager, like a child in the music industry, just how brutal it was. So the moment you say, I really want something, it's the moment that people will begin to prey on you, right? I really want to talk about philosophy to the world. And so having had that need and that preference, people know that because I have a need and preference to talk to the world about philosophy, then if they take that away, that hurts, right? So the moment you have needs, you have vulnerabilities. The moment you have a great hunger for something, that hunger, people will try to use it to control and bully, subjugate and use you for their own illicit ends.
[26:56] We must strive to be better. Even saying, I want to be better, I want to improve, and so on. Like, let's say there's some guy who just keeps sleeping with women, and at some point he says, let's say in his 20s, he says, this is pretty terrible, I'm treating women badly, I need to do better. Well, if he's surrounded by men like him, he'll be called pussy, cock, a simp, like a mama's boy, Like, he'll just be insulted, right? Pussy whipped. He'll just be insulted. So he has a desire to be better, and other people will mock and attack his desire to do better.
[27:34] Because they could do better. If he can do better, so can they. But they want to guard their greed for the material. They want to guard their dopamine addiction by mocking and attacking anyone who tries to shift pleasure from the material to the spiritual, from the physical to the moral. And so the weakness, corruption and tragedy of your personal relationships is revealed if you try to improve. Yet still, we must try to improve. And it's easy for me to say this, of course, so I remember the journey as being pretty hellacious, but I did it mostly alone. So it's sort of a different matter. But looking back, you know, this is a quarter century after I cleaned up my relationships. And looking back, it's like, A, what was I so bothered about? B, what's on the other side is so fantastic that if I hadn't cleaned up my relationships, I would just be so depressed. I mean, it would just be awful. I mean, if I hadn't cleaned up my relationships and I was surrounded by people that I, let's say, did not agree with morally or practically, let's say my parents, right? And I didn't have a wonderful wife, I didn't have a great family, I didn't have great friends, but instead I was going over to my mother's house.
[28:49] Paper-filled cluttered and smoky apartment to have some some depressing food and my father was dead and my mother of course at this point is you know old and certainly of of bad health as most old people i don't know if she still smokes but she did for a long time so it's probably not great and and that would be my life i wouldn't have what i have now i would have i would have stayed on the Titanic and the Titanic would be going down. And I would look back and say, and if somebody had said, man, you've been into philosophy for 40 years and you've never really applied those principles to your personal relationships, did you ever miss the boat? And be like, oh, cannonball to the fat belly, ripple, right? It'd be awful. And somebody can say something like that, like when you've gone down the wrong path, you can dissociate day by day, right? It's really important to know, right? When you've gone down the wrong path, you can dissociate and ignore it day by day. But my God, it just takes one sentence to cleave through all that dissociation. And that's when the gates of hell open up like beneath you and you fall forever. And you fall forever. People falling feel weightless, but certain words can bring the ground up hard and it wounds but does not kill them. And then they say, it was not the falling or my choice to jump that put me in the wheelchair.
[30:12] Who said the word ground, which made the ground appear, and he put me in the wheelchair. So if you can be better, you resent those who strive and work to achieve something better. And then what you do is you attack them so that you can justify your own failure to strive for improvement morally. So you attack them, you tear them down. He's vainglorious, he's narcissistic, he thinks he's so much better than us, he's got sucked in by a cult, right? You just attack them, right? Attack, attack, attack. I mean, of course, people, when I was younger, when I got into objectivism, which is Aristotelianism plus free market in many ways, when I got into that, I was just marked and attacked. Randroid and so on, right? Don't think for yourself. You're just a slave to that ideology and so on, right? I mean, okay.
[31:05] Well, if you've got a fantastic coach, you do what the coach says. You're not a slave to the coach. You're just using the coach to achieve what you want, which is excellence in sport. In my case, it was truth and virtue in philosophy.
[31:19] But objectivism does not deal with your personal relationships, really. So, because you're striving to do better, and they feel bad because they're choosing to chicken out from the striving to do better, rather than join you on the journey, they just mock and attack you to apply negative stimuli and say, well, if we can tear someone apart who's trying to do better, then we can justify our own goal of not improving, of not doing better, of not doing better. I mean, if you've ever known people who've gotten a really good relationship and they seem really happy and they get along well, the resentment, the seethe, the seething hope and resentment from other people around them can be appalling to watch. It's a shark feeding frenzy, blood in the water, right? It's rough, man. It's rough. And what they do is they just make up all of these, like the resentful people, they just make up all of these falsehoods, right? Oh, they only get along because he's whipped and doesn't say anything. Oh, they only get along because, you know, she was frightened and lonely of growing old alone, so she just cleaves to him and agrees with everything he says. It's really desperate and pathetic and sad. Like, whatever. Like, you just make up stuff. That is just horrible.
[32:34] So, in Matthew 10.22 And ye shall be hated of all men for the sake of virtue but he that endureth to the end shall be saved, Now the end here I mean, of course, I don't know the original Aramaic or whatever it is but the end here is complex, He that endureth to the end does that mean, to me, that would mean the end of bad relationships He that endureth to the end to the end of bad relationships Thank you.
[33:02] To me shall be saved. I think it's worth striving to help those around you. I mean, philosophy kind of fell into my lap and I did not earn philosophy. Philosophy, like when I first started reading about it, it just, there was this electric energy within me and enthusiasm and excitement and joy and fear. It was just a great roller coaster and it woke me up. I mean, I really didn't exist much before philosophy, because I did not know how to think. I was, of course, highly traumatized, and I was just reactive. I was just like a leaf on the stream, as we all are without principles, like a leaf on a stream, going where the currents and the wind and the eddies and the tree limbs take, wobble, and push me. So once I started to manifest through thought, through principles, It's like mankind without science is at the mercy of nature, and human beings without philosophy are at the mercy of impulses, and fight or flight, and pain and pleasure. So it is worth trying to save people.
[34:10] If you have found a cure for the disease, you try to help those around you who are stricken with the disease, knowing that they will die slowly and painfully without the cure, but they think that the cure will cause them to die right away, and they deny that they are diseased. They say, no, no, it's the human condition, man. You're trying to escape the human. It's human condition is to be confused and frustrated. It's just like life and you can't just wave it away with ideology. It's just going to cause your suffering to be worse, right? So they say that the disease is life. I mean, if somebody, if we were supposed to Old Testament style live for a thousand years and we died at a hundred, people would say, well, that was a really short lifespan, right? If you're supposed to live for 80 years and you die at the age of eight, that was a tragically short lifestyle. You only make it 10%, right?
[35:00] 100, we say they died at a ripe old age, and we will not feel particular sorrow because they made it that far, right? We'll feel sorrow for losing them, but we won't feel sorrow that their life was, quote, cut short, right? But somebody, like my friend when I was young, dies at the age of 10 or 11. Well, that's tragically cut short, right? That's a life tragically cut short. So somebody lives to 100, we say they lived well, they had a good long life. Somebody dies at 10, right? So, but if you think that life is suffering, that we're just going to have this existential angst and so on, then anybody who tries to escape it is lying to themselves, right? Like somebody who ages, who says, well, I'm supposed to live to a thousand. I don't know what's happened. If I speak sick and go to the doctor and says, you know, my joints are creaky and my back is sore and I don't sleep as well and something, it's like, you're just aging.
[35:53] I mean, you're 80. It's going to happen. Well, I don't feel as strong as I did when I was 20. What's wrong with me? Do I have chronic fatigue syndrome? Do I have Epstein-Barr? Do I have fibromyalgia? Bro, you're just aging. I assume all the tests are negative, right? It would be a delusion to think that aging will have no negative physical effects on your well-being. It's just not going to happen. I mean, if a woman loses her hair at the same rate and pace and age that I did, that might be a sign of some ill health. But for Ben, it's just, you know, usually male pattern baldness, right? It's just a genetic thing. Comes down from the maternal side, I think.
[36:35] Because I was striving to escape the unhappiness and dysfunction of my childhood and in many ways culture. I was called delusional for wanting that.
[36:48] Reactive, mad, as delusional as the 80-year-old complaining that he doesn't feel like a 20-year-old to a doctor because the 80-year-old thinks he should live to a thousand and therefore he's still in his extreme youth. And of course, this is why people don't, actually, one exception, the one exception, but people from my past don't contact me. They don't want to see how it played out. They don't want to see how it happened. They don't want to see how it worked out. They don't want to see that, I mean, certainly by my metric, by the metric of philosophy, by any reasonable standard, it more than paid off. It more than paid off. You know, the guy, I don't know if you've ever been around people who have really bad habits, but if one of them gives up those bad habits, man, it can be brutal socially. If you're around a bunch of people who smoke and drink, and one of them starts living clean, he's just going to get mocked. And then when the smokers and the drinkers are sick and dying in their 50s or 60s, do Do they want to contact the guy who quit smoking 30 years ago and now runs marathons and is healthy and whole?
[38:00] No, they do not. In fact, they will hate him, which is to say they hate their cowardice in the face of their potential. That's really what it comes down to. They hate their cowardice in the face of their potential.
[38:17] Really at the root of it. I mean, people don't hate me. They don't really know me. They just know lies about me. They don't hate me. I mean, as I said before, I can just be a really nice guy. People like me as a whole. I mean, I meet people in the world, meet people in life. I'm, you know, constantly, like, if I'm playing a racket sport in the summer, I'll chat with people, and they're always like, hey, let's play again, you know, whatever.
[38:38] I mean, people like me as a whole, and so they only dislike the falsehoods. And the falsehoods are put out in order to keep people away from their own potential. It really has nothing to do with me as an individual. It's just that unfortunately the world profits from dysfunction for the most part. I mean, will the makeup industry ever push philosophy, right? So can you imagine me being invited to some big makeup conference and talking about a virtue and honesty and love as our involuntary response to virtue if we're virtuous. Well, no, because if people shift from adornment to virtue, well, the makeup industry does not do so well, now does it? So the economy is calibrated both in terms of the state part of the economy, but to a large degree, the private part of the economy, it is all mostly, again, this is the mall thing, right? There's no philosophy store in the mall, right?
[39:43] There's only adornment and vanity in the mall. So, the entire economy, like trillions of dollars, is all founded upon resistance to philosophy or cheap substitutes for virtue, right? You don't have to be moral, you just have to be pretty, right? You don't need virtue, you just need a six-pack, and then you'll be desired, and you'll get what you want, and you'll be happy. You buy this new thing, upgrade your car, get a bigger house, and you'll be happy, you'll be happy. And it doesn't really work, of course, right? But it's profitable. Things that don't work morally are very profitable financially.
[40:20] So, I think that's what it's all about, right? This statement, this quote, this verse, Matthew 10, 22, and you should be hated of all men for my name's sake. Now, why would you hate the virtuous? Because they are an implicit rebuke to your cowardice in the face of your own potential. He that endures to the end shall be saved. Well, what is he saved from? Of course, you're saved from hell, you get heaven. If you're theological, what are you saved from? I mean, half the J6ers were turned in by their own family members. You're saved from the corruption of those around you. You are saved, like if you have a happy marriage, you cannot long coexist with those with unhappy marriages. You just can't. You just can't.
[41:16] Your happiness makes them even more unhappy.
[41:20] And because they have a dysfunctional marriage, your marital happiness will cause them to turn on each other and blame each other for their unhappiness. And their marriage will tear apart. And then what? Or they will try to undermine your marriage to have you join them in their fiery thrones of perpetual misery and resentment. it. I don't have people in my life with unhappy relationships, and I have not had people in my life with unhappy relationships for decades. So I won't do it. I won't do it. Particularly at my age, it's kind of too late for people to fix stuff really anyway. I mean, I'm pushing 60, right? What are you going to do? Just go and start another family? Well, that's going to be a mess in and of itself, right? And an unfair competition, right? Getting women to be materialistic orients them towards older men. It's a mating strategy from older men.
[42:12] In the same way, there was a mating strategy from older women, which was this thing that, oh, when women get older, they just want sex all the time. And that's just dangling sexual access in front of younger men, right? So, yeah, they don't hate you. They hate their cowardice in the face of their own moral potential. And the fact that I don't listen to people complain about the world unless they're living moral lives themselves. If people complain about politics, but are embedded in corrupt relationships.
[42:47] Well, I won't listen. I mean, I'm fine to listen to people about politics if they have happy relationships, but no thanks. So I hope that helps. I really do appreciate your support at freedomain.com slash donate. Thank you so much for permitting and encouraging this conversation to continue. I really do appreciate that. Lots of love from up here. I will talk to you soon. Bye.
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