0:00 - The Pull-Out Principle
2:43 - Assessing Your Own State
7:03 - The Challenge of Helping Others
9:16 - The Cost of Personal Growth
11:21 - The Ecosystem of Loserdom
24:59 - Navigating Relationships and Progress
29:26 - The Responsibility of Potential
29:56 - Criteria for Helping Others
41:03 - The Limitations of Helping Others
In this lecture, the focus is on discerning when to invest time and energy into helping others, particularly when it comes to the challenge of attempting to "fix" someone who may not genuinely want to change. The discussion begins with the essential question of self-assessment: Are you in a stable and healthy place before attempting to help others? The speaker emphasizes that if you’re not in a position of wellness, striving to help others could stem from an unconscious effort to avoid your own issues, leading to an insidious dynamic where the helper and the person being helped both entrench themselves in dysfunction.
The notion of "pulling out" when the effort to assist someone becomes futile is explored further. The speaker posits that many individuals who are perceived as "broken" may actually benefit from the attention their condition brings, creating an environment where they resist change. The distinction is made between genuinely wanting to improve and merely seeking validation for one’s struggles. The conversation is flush with analogies, particularly relating to health, illustrating that an individual seeking transformation must first exhibit a commitment to change themselves, much like a person seeking fitness should aspire to learn from those who embody health and vitality.
Additionally, there is a robust examination of social systems—familial, communal, and personal—and how these often function to limit an individual's growth. The speaker points out that each social group can only accommodate a certain amount of progress before it reacts, often with sabotage or concern disguised as care. This environment can become oppressive, particularly for those seeking personal transformation, as the fear of outpacing peers can lead to stagnation.
A critical point in the lecture focuses on the challenge of "loserdom," described as a mental prison that collectively undermines those striving for improvement. The speaker asserts that the dynamics of friendship often change as one ascends to new levels of achievement, with friends refusing to support a trajectory that threatens their own comfort zones of failure and stagnation. This transition is portrayed as sad yet necessary; as one evolves, relationships may dissolve, reflecting the thin threads that connect friends who prefer complacency over growth.
Throughout the discussion, the speaker emphasizes that while it's noble to desire to help others, there must be a criterion for selecting whose journey to join. This includes assessing whether the individual seeking help is already in motion toward their goals, has a history of overcoming challenges, and possesses a mindset that values discipline over momentary pleasures. Sentimentality and emotional manipulation are cautioned against, as these can lead to mutual entrapment rather than liberation.
In summary, this lecture articulates a nuanced philosophy of engagement, advocating for discernment before offering help. It stresses the importance of personal accountability and the necessity of being in a strong position oneself before attempting to assist others on their path to improvement. The final message is clear: true growth requires initiative from both the helper and the individual seeking change, and without this mutual investment, attempts at support can lead to shared dysfunction rather than progress.
[0:00] Hey everybody, hope you're doing well. Stefan Molyneux from Freedomain. So I wanted to do a wee little chit chat about when to pull out, when I can't get no contraception, when to pull out of trying to change someone or trying to fix someone or trying to recover someone to a higher ground. When should you pull out? that abandoned ship, so to speak. Or when should you try at all? Because there are a lot of people, if they get attention for being broken, they don't want to be fixed because they're getting attention for being broken, right?
[0:45] So I wanted to put together some thoughts about ways in which you can try to determine whether somebody is worth investing time, effort, and energy into you in order to help them get to a place of truth and integrity and virtue and so on.
[1:02] Now, the first thing to look at, of course, if you want to help other people is how are you? How are you? How are you doing? How are you doing? Right? That's the first thing you have to ask. I mean, obviously, if you want to inspire other people to be fit, you have to first be fit yourself, right? Obviously. So that's the first question. Are you trying to help people as a way of avoiding your own problems? Because that is a huge deal in society. That is a very, very big problem in society, that people try to help others in order to avoid their own problems. To feel superior, to feel like they're better than, to feel like they have it more together than, right? Which to say, I'm not good, but I'm better than is one of the surest off-ramps to mediocrity in the known universe. I'm not great, but I'm better than, right? Which is, you know, the fat person who hangs out with a slightly fatter person. Now, while I'm not thin, but I'm thinner than that person, I'm not smart, but I'm smarter than this person, right?
[2:12] And this sort of misery-loves-company clinging to each other in the downward spiral is, of course, tragically common in the world as a whole. So you want to try and avoid that situation. So are you doing well? Are you in a position to try to help other people when it comes to their issues?
[2:34] Is it something that would people in a state of freedom and liberty, would they gravitate to you as a whole?
[2:44] If people saw you at the gym would they thirst to know your secrets would they thirst to know how you got to be the way that you are.
[2:56] I think that's pretty important. So are you yourself fixed? Now, if you yourself are not fixed, work to fix yourself. Because people who are genuinely interested in fixing themselves look for inspiration and success, empirical success, from those around them. Right so again if you are really you're sick and tired of being overweight or out of shape or whatever then you go to the lean slender healthy ripped nutritionist exercise guru in order to.
[3:30] Get the answers are you someone that people will look to for inspiration now if you're not someone one that people will look to for inspiration, then you will only attract losers who aren't interested in real change. So, I mean, to extend the health analogy, let's say it's pudgy. If a pudgy person wants to become fit, really fit, they will choose the fittest person around and listen to that person.
[4:04] If a pudgy person doesn't really want to get fit, but just sort of wants to talk about it or dabble in it or pretend to themselves that they're improving or whatever, but they're not really committed for whatever reason, right? Then what they'll do is they will choose a pudgy trainer. I mean, or they'll follow the habit. I mean, pudgy trainers are kind of hard to come by, although they're certainly around. But if they're not that interested in being very fit, fit then they won't choose the super ripped trainer they'll choose a trainer who's like kind of okay maybe a little pudgy and so on but they won't have any particularly high ambitions, to achieve you know leanness and muscularity and so on right the super fit now if they're really even less interested in becoming fit then they won't even choose a trainer they'll just kind of to hang around somebody who's, you know, kind of lazily doing half exercises and so on. And they're just going to hang around with that person because that person won't ever really push them to become fit and won't ever really challenge them.
[5:11] Because, of course, as we know, a lot of people are kind of fragile, right? They're kind of fragile, and if you push them, they break for a variety of reasons, right? And I sort of always have to be sensitive to this when I'm talking to people. If you push people, they'll be blowback, right? In other words, if somebody who is out of shape and chubby and so on, well, those people have a whole social system and a whole history of trauma that people let them become that way, that people maybe their parents encouraged them to become that way sort of covertly or whatever with bad diets and food and so on right so there's a whole social mechanism around them that doesn't want them to become healthy right we're just talking about physical health right of course this is even worse when it comes to sort of psychological health right so there's a whole.
[6:01] System around them right everybody sees somebody lying on the path and just wants to help them up but they don't see that there's this giant invisible log that is going to make, it's going to hurt like hell. If you try to get them out, it's going to hurt like hell if you lift it. And not seeing that giant invisible log is a real problem when it comes to helping people. Not seeing the machinery that is keeping them down. Just becoming physically healthy and fit challenges dysfunctional families in the extreme. because, you know, you have to go outside of the family. You have to, it's going to be a challenge to the family. It exposes a whole bunch of pathologies and sabotage and put downs and keeping people down and all this kind of stuff.
[6:49] It's really, really tough and really, really rough as a whole. So you're not dealing with just food. You're dealing with a whole system of dysfunction that is keeping people down.
[7:03] Most social systems and sort of friends and family will only allow a certain amount of limited success before it provokes growth, anxiety, and sabotage. It's really, really important to understand most familial and social systems, and by social systems, I don't mean like the government or anything, although that's certainly there, but most people's social system, which is their friends and family and so on, maybe even co-workers, right? Most people's social systems will only allow a certain amount of progress before intervening and sabotaging and undermining. So a lot of people's, if you're losing weight, some people, a lot of people's family and social and work systems will say, okay, it's good that you're losing weight, and then if you start losing too much weight, they'll start expressing concern, you're wasting away, you're too thin, you're doing it too fast, it's going to be unhealthy, and they'll start to sabotage. Now, again, maybe you are doing it too fast or whatever, but I'm talking about out of the bounds of what is being recommended by your expert, You're a nutritional expert, right? If you're really enjoying getting jacked, people will be like, oh, that's unhealthy. You must be on steroids. That's so gross. That's so weird. People don't like it. It's right. They'll just sabotage.
[8:24] Wives do this with husbands, and husbands do this with wives as well. So if a man starts to become really financially successful, a lot of times the wife will go through alpha anxiety. Alpha anxiety occurs when the woman chooses a man when he's in a relatively subordinate state or low status state. And then he starts to become a higher status. And the woman feels anxiety because she doesn't feel like she can keep an alpha male.
[8:55] I actually experienced this directly when I went from a broke student to a successful entrepreneur, and I had a girlfriend who was not helpful and, you know, put things down quite considerably. And it's tough. And then I just had to like, okay, well, I'm not going to choose this kind of stuff over actual success, right? But people have a tough time with your success.
[9:17] This is one of the ways in which people keep each other down. And I remember there was an old TV series called Suits where there was a very successful lawyer and there was this guy who kind of faked his way into being a lawyer. And the very successful lawyer saw that the guy who was up and coming and had huge potential had a friend who was like a weed guy and a bit of a druggie and maybe did a bit of dealing on the side or something. And the older lawyer was like, you got to dump him. You got to dump him. He's a loser. He's going to drag you down you have to be ruthless if you want to escape that life you have to be ruthless and cut everyone off who's like a loser and and gonna because they're gonna sabotage you right.
[9:58] So if someone chooses you to, quote, fix them when you are not yourself fixed, then they won't be fixed. They can't be fixed because they're choosing you. What they're doing is they're offering you up minor guru status in return for trapping you down in their world of dysfunction. So there's this sort of secondary gains, a sort of unholy bargain that's put forward, which is they say, I'll view you as a really together great expert. But in return, you have to only pretend to fix me and have no real standards. I'll give you the vanity, you give me the continued dysfunction. So rather than you trying to lift them up, they are very effectively holding you down. Like, lucidum is an entire ecosystem. It is a soft mental prison that can't stand it when people get out. Oh man, I know this one. Like the back of my hand.
[10:57] Loserdom is an entire ecosystem, a soft mental prison that absolutely loathes it when people get out. So it will try to keep you in. And the way that Loserdom, the prison of Loserdom, keeps you in is it says you can only get out when everyone gets out. You can only get out when this dysfunctional person gets out. You have to stay back to help the people who also want to escape.
[11:21] Gape and then what happens is you stay back and they say they're almost ready to escape just a little bit more and then you just end up serving out your sentence and dying with them or if you look like you're trying to get out and they're too lazy or dysfunctional or messed up or resentful or whatever to actually escape they'll just knock on you to the guards and then right so i mean if If you sort of look at the history of me with the media, the media is like, oh, he's running a cult. He's like all these terrible things or whatever, right? And it's like, well, that's just because loserdom doesn't want people to get out. And the number of people who hold each other back and hold each other down is truly brutal. Hold each other back, hold each other down. And there really aren't enough stories about this. Maybe I'll write one at some point, but...
[12:13] When I started podcasting, I still had some of my friends, and their complete indifference as to what I was doing, my sort of former friends, was just wild. It was just wild that they didn't care. It didn't really matter. They weren't that interested. And, of course, you know, this was my great life joy and has been the greatest success of my life outside of my personal relationships. And they didn't care. They didn't care. And I think they sensed that it was my way out. Even when I became very successful in business, and please understand, I'm no super business guy, but I was pretty successful, especially from where I came from. But when I became successful in the realm of a business, my friends didn't really care that, oh, how are you doing? How are you experiencing it? You know, what are you feeling and all of that? They didn't really care. They didn't really say, wow, that's really great. You know, it's so fantastic what you're doing, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? They didn't say that.
[13:10] No siree, Bobby. they did not so people and and when i wrote novels i even wrote a novel the jealous war which i i had a character based on a friend of mine i gave it him the novel to read he spent all summer in a tent in nome alaska and never read the book and i you know like i was busy it's like no you weren't you in a tent doing that gold panning prospecting stuff that we had done so like of course you're or not. Busy. Right? That we know. That I know for sure. I got that one down for sure. So, that wasn't a thing. Lucidum is a prison which hates to see you escape.
[13:53] Think of it as an ecosystem where everybody shares the jail cells of resentment and futility. You can't get ahead. Oh, the system is rigged. Oh, it's like, no, it's not. Is there rigging? Absolutely. For sure. But you can still make it. You can still make it. You can still make it. People say, oh, no, I can't get a job. It's like, okay, then make a business. Find a way to make a business. Do your research. Figure it out. Find a way to make a business. And I couldn't get anyone to produce my place. I just produced my place. When I couldn't get people to publish my novel, I just self-published the novels. Just find a way, right? Find a way to make it work. And you say, oh, Stef, but I'm not you. And I get that, but you don't have to do it the way that I did it. Do it some other way. Just find a way to make it work. Find a way to make it work. So important. Just do it. The only thing that matters in life is overcoming obstacles. Life will always be throwing obstacles at you. that absolutely the only thing that matters in life is the overcoming of obstacles. And if you're not willing to overcome obstacles, your life will be terrible, right? Obstacles are just things that life throws in your way to make sure that you get stronger, right? I mean, it's just resistance, like muscles, right? It's all it is. It's just resistance and muscles.
[15:16] And people view obstacles as this giant negative. And no, that's life. I mean, you wouldn't be alive without obstacles. I mean, where would your blood go if it didn't have veins to keep it pointed in the right direction? Your blood wouldn't move if it didn't face the obstacle of your heart ventricles pumping and pushing it around.
[15:36] Obstacles is life. And people have this dream, and I understand it, this dream of like, you know, sitting on the beach, no obstacles, perfect peace and so on. I mean, it's fine, right? You can rest, right? But we are designed to overcome obstacles. obstacles and if you're not overcoming obstacles you're just dying by degrees you're just dying by degrees you can rest sure but you have to work first.
[16:00] And one of the big problems that people have when they become successful is they don't have external obstacles. And if they don't have internal standards to rise to, then their external obstacles are gone and they flail around and self-sabotage. And self-sabotaging is a way of returning external obstacles to your challenges.
[16:20] If you have internal standards, like I try to do better, clearer, wiser shows every time, I have this sort of internal standard to sort of up my game each time as best I can. So I have this internal standard. So I don't need to self-sabotage because I have these internal standards. But if you don't have these internal standards, then if you gain some success, you will coast rudderless over a waterfall because you don't have any external challenges. And so if you don't have any external challenges, then you will simply invent internal challenges. So this is why when people win the lottery, they end up with these terrible lives. Because winning the lottery has removed their external challenges, getting up, going to work, paying your bills, and so on. And so what they do is they start just generating internal challenges, such as addiction. Or they overspend and blow the money and thus end up back where they started. It or they marry the wrong person and end up fighting with their wife or they end up fighting with their relatives over the money and so you're always the same level of challenges pretty much in life and if you avoid the challenges you'll just invent them and if even if you're able to avoid all of that you'll just have terrible dreams with massive challenges because your brain needs obstacles.
[17:38] Your brain is designed to swim against the current and stagger against the wind. Like your entire body is designed for resistance, right? Resistance of gravity, resistance of running, resistance of hurling spears, resistance of like your entire body is designed for resistance. And without resistance, your body turns sickly upon itself. Without resistance, your body decays.
[18:03] It's particularly true after sort of 50, right? If you don't do the work, it's really, really tough to gain muscle. Use of maintenance mode, right?
[18:10] So your mind is the same as your body. Without resistance, without challenges, without problems, it dies day by day. It gets flaccid. And then in order to survive, it will invent problems. And those problems could be neuroticism. It could be anxiety. It could be paranoia. It could be a rage. It could be any number of things. It could be boredom, and boredom comes with it. I think boredom is one of the worst mental states to be in, because boredom has you suicidal over time, in my view. Enough, right? Enough boredom, and you're just like, what's the point? What's the point of any of this? What's the point of living? What's the point of being here? And this is why there's always the next challenge. There's always the next problem.
[18:57] And without the next problem, we decay and die over time. Now, of course, if you're handed too many problems too early, then you have a soft undertow of continually wanting the velvet couch of immobility and permanent rest. Of course, the only permanent rest we get is when we're dead, right? But if you're handed too many challenges too early, then your brain, and you got to watch this. I certainly have to watch this in myself, right? That if you're handed too many challenges or too many challenges, not handed, they're They're inflicted on you. Too many challenges are inflicted too early in your life. Then, of course, what happens is you end up with a permanent irritation and annoyance at challenges and obstacles.
[19:43] So I had the challenge and obstacle of doing current events, which was not at all what I thought of really when I was first doing the idea of what it is I wanted to do with a philosophy show. So I took on that challenge and so on. And then, of course, I had to do the challenge of the call-in shows very early on, where just, hey, talk about anything. And I thought people would be talking about economics, maybe some politics, some philosophy, ethics. And people were like, they found a home where they could talk about their life challenges, their personal challenges, issues, problems, and so on. And that has been, I honestly, I cannot remember the last time that I got any kind of call-in request that wasn't, I have this or that or the other personal problem or issue. And that's not a complaint. I'm just saying that adapting to that was a significant challenge. I mean, what other show does all the gamut from economics to dream analysis, right? I mean, or literary analysis or anything like that, right? I mean, the scope is pretty wild, and that's an exciting and interesting challenge for me. Keeps it spicy and so on, right?
[21:04] But loserdom, like the soft planet, the soft mental prison of loserdom, is about avoiding legitimate challenges, avoiding useful challenges, and instead complaining that challenges are insurmountable. I can't tell you how much anger I sometimes have in my heart with the yes-but people. Well, you could do this. Yeah, but... Well, how about this? Yeah, but... Yeah, but... Like I remember having a guy I knew when I was younger who was a short guy. And he's like, well, I can't get a girl because I'm short. It's like, well, you're also short and overweight. Do you want to work on fitness? Yeah, but, you know, whatever, right? And all of that stuff was exhausting. Because there's a constant battle in the world and in your own heart and so on, between rest and improvement, between lassitude and energy, between pessimism and optimism, between being dictated to and dominated by the environment and being the source of your own mode of power and progress, right? Can I excel? Can I achieve? Can I improve? Or is the system stacked against me and it's pointless and dangerous to try?
[22:26] Lot to do with the fear of a rage and resentment and sabotage should you improve you know i i have gone god i can't even tell you the gamut that i've gone over the course of my life from the lows to the highs to everything in between it's been wild from being ignored to being at the center of, intellectual life in the world it has been absolutely completely and totally wild From being loved to being hated in wild and extravagant measures both, from being broke to having some money to, like, it's just wild. From being denigrated by girlfriends, not all, but some, from being denigrated by girlfriends to having the greatest, sweetest, purest, most wonderful love that I could conceive of. I have really lived the full spectrum. I'm on the spectrum, but it varies widely. I don't know that there's many experiences that are non-pharmaceutical. I don't know that there are many experiences that I have not tasted fairly deeply. I've done manual labor. I've done intellectual labor. I have times of great combat. I have times of great peace. I have times of great anger. I have times of great love.
[23:48] And at every significant progress point of my life, People have fallen away like the stages of a rocket, and I suspect that the same is true for you. And if it's not true for you, it could be because you haven't progressed enough, haven't taken on enough challenges, haven't risked enough. People have fallen away. way. My single friends fell away when I got married. My married but childless friends fell away when I became a parent. My broke friends fell away when I got some business success. It's wild. And I could have maintained those relationships such as they were, but it would have come at the cost of challenge, creation, progress, and striving.
[24:33] People who pull back from the muscularity of your improvement are setting you up against your improvement and sabotaging you so that your challenge becomes not improving but surviving them. And when you grow and you progress, people recognize that the relationship cannot last if your progress continues and they choose stagnation.
[25:00] Maybe that's the better way to describe it. rather than loserdom, the prison planet, rather stagnation, the nation of stags, stagnation. The poor indentured serfs of stagnation know that if you progress, you will leave them behind unless they also take on challenges and progress as well. So when people knew that I was in therapy, people in my life knew that I was in therapy, right? They had a choice, right? They had a choice. And the choice was to say, oh, Stef's in therapy. Wow, he's really looking to improve. Good for him. Maybe I should look into that as well. Right? They had that choice, that option, or, which is kind of what they did instead, they said, oh man, Stef must be really messed up. I hope he gets the help that he needs You know, if you injure your arm and then you're in a sling for a while or whatever then you've got some rehab afterwards, your friends with healthy arms don't go to the rehab clinic, because their arms aren't in need of rehabilitation.
[26:14] Because it's about fixing what was broken and if what they have is not broken they wouldn't come and do rehab with you, right? If you've got to do rehab for your knee or ankle or whatever They're not going to come with you if their knee or ankle are not damaged, right? They don't come and do chemo with you if they don't have cancer, right?
[26:33] So when I did therapy, it was with the goal of improving, of course. And I was in a tough way at that time in my life, but it was with the goal of improving. And people chose to see it not as me going to the trainer and the nutritionist to become become a better version of myself, but is going to rehab so that I could return to them less broken or whole, right? Like if you're on a sports team and you twist your ankle, then you get the treatment for your twisted ankle with the goal of returning to the team as you were before. You're broken, you get fixed, you'll be as you were before, as opposed to, you know, a bunch of overweight people and I decide if I'm stuck in that life and I decide to get a nutritionist and a personal trainer and go to the gym and eat better and so on, then I'm not getting myself, I'm not broken and I'm going to return to the team as I was before.
[27:29] Coming back. Because honestly, if you're around a bunch of fat people, you know, like they're not doing anything with their lives, just complaining, and you get fit, healthy, ambitious, energetic, start to get some success, some traction in life, why go back? It's so depressing for everyone. It's just such a depressing, negative experience for everyone. I mean, they resent you. You're are depressed by them, everyone's unhappy. Everyone's unhappy. And it really is amazing, at least it was for me. It could be the case for you too, but it really is amazing. Just, you know, I had a 30-year friendship and the guy left one message. I didn't call him back and that was it. That was it. 30-year friendship. And he left one message and just didn't call him back, and that was it. Never talked to him again. Can you imagine? Well, I mean, maybe you haven't had to imagine it, right? It's like the thinnest thread imaginable is how these things, when you really sort of dedicate yourself to change and improvement, the thinnest thread imaginable is how these things play out. It's amazing. It's amazing. And sad, of course, right? But.
[28:48] Thing is to pretend it's anything more than a thin thread of everyone pretending that there's no improvement or no growth that's possible. I mean, the closest I can put it is it is almost a God-given responsibility to maximize your abilities. It's a God-given responsibility to maximize your abilities. It is a sin against your potential to decide not to ruffle the feathers and laziness of itinerant losers who will drown your potential in order to avoid revealing their own. It is a sin, as close as I can say it.
[29:27] It is an absolute sin to repudiate, deny, and undermine your own potential in order to stay safe and still surrounded by failures who have never even tried. Failure is massive and failure is to be expected. I mean, it's a cliche to say, but there is no failure greater than not trying. There is no failure greater than not trying.
[29:56] So when it comes to, should you help people? Are you helped yourself?
[30:02] Do you share the same goals and values and are they already in motion? And by in motion, like if you are a a personal trainer you don't just find some you know tubby soft person on the bus follow them home and then nag them for six months to come to the gym because they're not already in motion now if they show up at the gym and they sign up and they pay you then they're in motion right so i don't help people who aren't already in motion otherwise you're plotting a path in a car with no gas, or it's just a shell of a car or a totaled wreck or a cube in the dump, right?
[30:42] Don't nag people. I don't try to get them to be better. I am help. I'm happy to help facilitate people already in motion, but they have to already be in motion. They have to be, this is why I don't call up listeners and, and try to get them to change. Right. But if somebody emails me and say, says I'm desperate for change, and obviously we share similar values and so on, then okay, okay, we'll talk, right? And even then it's often a battle between people's indifference and lack of empathy for their future self, which is kind of what laziness is, just a lack of empathy for your future self. So there's often a battle between my enthusiasm and other people's indifference. And they're trying to drag me down and I'm trying to shake the cobwebs off them and get them even more in motion. And sometimes people call me up in order to frustrate me, right? And call and shows, right? They call me up in order to frustrate me because they want to conquer their potential and they do that by frustrating me. Well, if this Stef guy, if I can even frustrate this Stef guy, then I win. Then I win. If I can even stymie him, right? If you can pull a checkmate with a grandmaster in chess, damn, you're pretty good at chess, right?
[32:01] And so if they can get me to a stalemate, then their lassitude has gained a victory and will conquer their future which is why I won't participate in that right I mean if I have people.
[32:16] And i can be obviously be pretty aggressive about this when it comes to private calls, but if people are just blocking energy and progress and clarity then i will just say nope not doing it not doing it i refuse to care about your life more than you care about your life i refuse to even conceive of or imagine substituting my energy for you i can't do that any more than i can digest your food or go to the bathroom for you or impregnate your girlfriend for you, right? The cuck analogy is far from accidental.
[32:50] So that's another thing. Are they already in motion? Another thing, have they achieved something already, right? So maybe they've achieved, maybe they've got a master's degree or at least an undergrad, or have they started a business even if it failed? Have they done something already or are you giving them the most challenging task of growth, of self-growth, of the pursuit and achievement of virtue, are you giving them the most challenging task of all with no prior history of sacrifice and success? And the success, again, doesn't mean material, it all worked out, but it's success in that they started the business, they ran it for a while, they put their all in for whatever. It could have been COVID or something retarded that came along to destroy their dreams or whatever, But you wouldn't want to give, like someone who's just never really achieved anything and never tried anything, you don't want to give them the most challenging task of a personal moral improvement.
[33:52] I mean, that's putting them on the Olympic team when they've never even played a house league or never even played a pickup game around the block, right? You don't just take someone who's tall and put them as a starting forward on the NBA, right? That they have to, right? It's like the woman that I dated who wanted to become an actress and-
[34:15] Finally, we went to the agent, and the agent said, well, have you done any community theater, amateur theater, any feedback, any responses, any videos? No. It's like, well, start there. Like, how can I put you in a movie if you've never even done a play or anything, right? It's very unusual for that, right? So I try not to assign the fairly monumental and one of the most challenging tasks of moral self-improvement to somebody with no track record of success at all in anything. It's like saying to a guy who's never asked anyone out, go ask out the prettiest girl in town.
[34:52] I mean, you don't want to start with the toughest tasks. So you have to warm up with some degree of success. You have to warm up your capacity to challenge yourself to grow and to survive the sabotage of others. You have to, like, I don't think I could have done therapy before I'd warmed up with the arts, academia, and business. And I'm not saying this has to be the path for everyone. Of course, right? But for me, given that I was forging this stuff largely in isolation and largely without larger feedback, I had overcome the challenges of academia. I had overcome the challenges of the art world. I had overcome the challenges of the business world. And therefore, when it came to therapy, I could do it fairly consistently and energetically because I already had a track record of overcoming obstacles and applying myself to very challenging tasks. And which is not to say that I succeeded. Of course not. Right. But I really tried. And I did. I did well in the business world. I did well in academia. I didn't do so well in the art world. And I don't think it's because I don't have artistic talent or ability.
[36:07] It's because the outworld is just really corrupted by leftism and government power and government funding. They don't want to bite the hand that feeds them so they are pro-statist and I couldn't stomach it and the pro-statist comes with all sorts of moral corruption as well so.
[36:28] Have they overcome prior challenges? And again, that doesn't mean pure success. It doesn't mean that they've succeeded in everything they've touched their hand to, because that's impossible. But have they overcome prior challenges? And if they haven't, don't start them on that. Tell them to get some other challenges going. And succeed on smaller things, right? You don't give someone the 200-pound bench pressing if they're just coming in to exercise at the beginning, right? You start them on some lighter weights and then they'll come back when you're ready. Do they have a methodology or a mindset that surmounts hedonism, that surmounts personal pleasure and personal preferences in the moment?
[37:12] In other words, do they have a mental framework that accepts the necessity of sacrificing pleasure? Because you can't progress without sacrificing pleasure. pleasure? In other words, do they have a standard larger than their immediate pleasure and their vanity and their ego? Are they willing to humble themselves in order to learn and grow? Because every act of growth is an act of humbling, and sometimes it's an act of humiliation. I remember thinking, my gosh, I can't believe I've been doing philosophy for 20 years, and I still don't have good definitions of love, of free will, of moral virtue, and so on, right? That's humbling, and you You have to be willing to set aside your ego and say, I don't know what I don't know. And I had to invent this stuff really out of whole cloth because there wasn't somebody who was leading me that way. Metaphysics and epistemology got a lot out of Aristotle, a lot out of Rand. But when it comes to love, free will, and virtue, which are pretty big ones when it comes to philosophy, I had to invent. But in order to invent, I had to recognize that I didn't know.
[38:20] Do they have a methodology or a standard that accepts the need for self-sacrifice? Another thing that's important is, are they sentimental? Now, if they are sentimental, and so one of the things I remember from my early courtship with my wife, my now wife, is that we were talking about prison and prisoners. Prisoners and she said but the data is pretty clear that very few criminals can be truly successfully rehabilitated and she said this just as a matter of fact so it's like oh that's interesting so she's not sentimental like oh everyone has a soul and a spirit and a potential and so on right because if they're sentimental then their sentimentality will be weaponized against them to keep them small, if they're sentimental. If they're sentimental, then they put the hedonism of existing pseudo-relationships above their own potential. So sentimentality, I generally don't get involved with trying to help anybody who's overly sentimental. I mean, a certain amount of sweet sentimentality is fine, but overly sentimental. Because overly sentimental, people think that everyone can be saved, and thus they get trapped and enslaved by people who won't grow but only pretend to, right?
[39:40] Mother right as opposed to what is right and virtuous and good and true and noble and courageous right sentimentality is one of the softest and deepest quicksands known to man and i don't i don't i don't do excessive sentimentality again somebody's not sentimental at all is probably missing a few chambers of their emotional heart but somebody who is overly sentimental will never Never escape the quicksand because they'll be too easy to manipulate. Other people's sorrow will trap them. Other people's pretend sorrow and tears. Oh, we miss you. They will trap them in stagnation.
[40:16] So I hope that this as a whole helps at least understand my approach to whether people should be changed or whether you should give your precious resources to help people. So you got to be helped yourself already. They have to show some prior achievements and some prior ability to sacrifice. Sacrifice they have to have a standard that goes above ego vanity and sentimentality and they have to respond positively and they have to return something to you right so i hope that this helps because boy oh boy i mean if i could get the time back that i've wasted trying to help people in my life i'd probably be halfway to immortality but i would at least like you to learn from the bitter lessons that i've learned about the limitations of helping others you can facilitate somebody already in motion, you cannot get them moving.
[41:03] And be very, very wary of people who claim that they want you to help them get out of the quicksand, but they end up pulling you back in. And that is a very tragic, but very common situation in the world. So yeah, hope this helps. Freedomain.com slash donate to help out the show. Love you guys so much. Really, really appreciate your support. Hope you have a wonderful, wonderful day. I'll talk to you soon. Bye.
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