September 11, 2025 • 10 mins
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Don't overestimate yourself, but don't underestimate who you could be.
That's a much better way of thinking about it. You know,
psychologists of the careless sort, I would say, have been
pushing the idea of self esteem for a very long time,
probably since the early sixties. You should be content with
yourself the way you are. It's like, no, you shouldn't
seriously like you're nowhere near what you could be. You're
(00:32):
not even close, right, And so that's a way more
optimistic message. Like it's you ain't seen nothing yet. That's
the right message. And so I would say, don't overestimate
yourself now, but don't underestimate your future self. And you
have so much influence as an individual if you get
your act together that you can't believe it. There isn't
(00:54):
anything that has more influence than that. You have all
the power that there is right where you are to
put things right around you. You start now, you develop
a noble vision right of who you could be. You
start to put that into practice. Develop some discipline, familiarize
yourself with the great works of the past. Learn to read,
learn to write, learn to speak, learn to think. Man,
(01:16):
you'll be deadly what you could bring to the table
that hasn't been brought to the table for years is
an emphasis on individual responsibility. And the right way to
do that, as far as I'm concerned, is to start
with yourselves. Is develop a vision for your life. You
start think about if you could be who you could be,
(01:39):
what would that look like. That's the beginning of a
mature philosophy of being. If you could be the person
that you would admire, who would that person be? How
would you configure yourself? How would you configure your career,
your education, your family, the use of time outside of work.
If you wanted to be the noblest person that you
could be, who was adopting the maximal amount of responsibility,
(02:02):
how would that look? Then you need a strategy to
put that into place. And that's the way you change
things properly, and also the way you do the least
amount of harm while you're changing them. And so it
should be an individual, an individual focused set of ideas,
and that way you can sidestep the identity politics traps,
and that would be a very good thing. And I
think a modern conservatism, which isn't really all that distinguishable
(02:25):
from a classical liberalism as it turns out, is to
put tremendous stress on the responsibility of the individual. And
one of the things that's wonderful about that, as far
as I'm concerned, and I made reference to this a
few minutes ago, is that you need a meaning to
offset the tragedy of life. Otherwise you just suffer stupidly,
and you tend to make people around you suffer the
(02:47):
same way. The way that you find that meaning is
by adopting as much responsibility as you can. And what's
also so fascinating about that is, you know you're characterized
by an indefinite potential. It isn't easy to understand exactly
what that is, that potential, but you know it's what
people call you on when they say, you know, you're
not living up to your potential. Whatever that is. That
(03:10):
potential will be called forth from you as a consequence
of adoption of responsibility because it won't manifest itself unless
you take on a load. You're not going to develop
in all the ways you could develop, unless you set
yourself a serious challenge, because it takes the challenge to
pull that out of you and also to motivate you
to rid yourself of all the weaknesses and personality flaws
(03:33):
that you've accumulated across the years, and to let those
disappear and burn off you. You need to load yourself
up before the demands of life will be such that
you will discipline yourself properly, and a noble goal is
a very good way of beginning that. The truth of
the matter is, as far as I'm concerned that each
(03:54):
of us has enough potential cha power of character, let's say,
if it's properly manifested, to contend with that in a
noble way and to rise above it and to transcend
and to deal with it in large part because we
can make the world a much better place than it
is for each of us individually and for our families
(04:15):
and for our community, and we can constrain them malevolence
at least in our own hearts, and perhaps have a
positive effect on those around us as a consequence, and
that actually does make things better, And we actually can
do that, and that's where the meaning in life is
to be found. And that meaning, you know, that goes
along with the adoption of that kind of responsibility is
(04:35):
actually the antidote to the suffering. You know that perfectly well,
because all of you need a reason to get out
of bed in the morning, especially on a rough morning.
You know, when things aren't going so well in your life,
and there will be plenty of times when things aren't
going so well in your life, and you still need
a reason to get up and get moving and get
out there. And if you have adopted the responsibility at
(04:58):
an individual level to make things better given how bad
they are, if you've adopted the responsibility to make things better,
then you have a reason to get up. And so
one of the things that I've been stressing to people
is that there's very little difference between the meaning in
life that gives you fulfillment and that engages you in
existence and the willingness to shoulder as much individual responsibility
(05:21):
as you can possibly handle. Those are the same things.
And that's a really useful thing to know. And you
kind of know this, right. Everybody knows this, because, first
of all, if you're not living up to your responsibilities,
even to take care of yourself, the probability that you're
going to be ashamed of that at some level is
extraordinarily high. And so your own soul tells you that
(05:41):
you're in error, so to speak. But also if you
look at who you spontaneously admire, which is a good
indication of where your value system really sits, you'll see
that the people you admire are always people who take
responsibility for themselves and responsibility for their family, and responsibility
for their community. Get your act together. You've got things
(06:04):
to do in the world. The absence of your full
being in the world leaves a hole that is filled
by terrible things. At minimum, So at minimum you have
an ethical responsibility to ensure that the world doesn't evolve
into something approximating hell. And at maximum you have the
responsibility again, the ethical it's a heavy ethical responsibility to
(06:25):
do everything that's in your power to make things as
good as you can possibly make them in this sophisticated
manner that takes you and your family and your community
into account. And it's on you, right, And that's meaning.
You know, people say, well, I'd like to have a
meaningful life. It's like, well, fair enough. But the price
that you pay for the meaning that transcends tragedy is
(06:45):
the adoption of responsibility for the catastrophe of existence. But
that ennobles you, right, It makes you into someone strong
and someone competent in someone who who's worthwhile, and who
lives in a manner that justifies their own suffering. And
that's what There's nothing better than you could possibly do
than that. Although there is a very large number of
(07:09):
ways of looking at the world, or perhaps a near
infinite number of ways of looking at the world, there
isn't a near infinite number of ways of acting in
the world in a manner that actually is successful, and
so there are constraints on how you can how you
can interact with the world in a successful manner. Let's
assume that you don't want undo pain and anxiety. We
(07:31):
could just start with that, and I think that's a
reasonable proposition. You can tolerate some pain and anxiety if
it's in the service of something greater, obviously, but I
just mean pointless pain and anxiety. We don't want any
more of that than is necessary. And that means that
you have to take care of yourself to some degree.
But the manner in which you take care of yourself
is severely constrained. This is partly why you have to
(07:53):
be intelligent and careful and plot your way through life properly.
You have to take care of yourself today, but you
have to take care of yourself and today in a
way that doesn't interfere with you taking care of yourself
tomorrow and next week and next month and next year
and five years from now and ten years from now.
So you can't do just what you want to in
(08:15):
the next hour, because if it's impulsive pleasure seeking, let's
say something like that, excess alcohol use or excess drug use,
or careless sexual behavior, or betrayal of people to gain
you some gain you something in the moment, you're gonna
pay for that. You're gonna pay for it tomorrow, You're
gonna pay for it next week, and next month, the
(08:36):
next year. So, because you're going to exist in the future,
and because you have to live with yourself, there's only
a certain number of ways that you can act that
are going to work. But it's more than that. It's
not just that you're responsible to your future self or
the set of all your future selves. Is that you
also have to act in a way that works for
your family, because otherwise your family's gonna disintegrate and break
(08:58):
down and cause you and them all sorts of misery
and grief, and not just your family now, but also
your family into the future. And then not just your
family either, but also your community. And so you have
to set your aspirations so that they serve you in
the broadest sense over a long period of time, and
they also serve your family, and they also serve your community.
(09:19):
And that's a very tight set of constraints. And I
think that the best solution to that set of constraints,
from a philosophical perspective, or maybe even a theological perspective,
is to view the world as a place not of groups,
but of individuals, of sovereign individuals who are responsible for
their destinies, responsible for their families, and for their communities.
(09:41):
You learn to use minimal necessary force. It's like you
don't defend yourself any more than you have to, like,
be careful, don't push any harder than you need to,
because all you do is you generate a counter force
by pushing harder than you need to. And then you're
in conflict. And you think, well, I like a little conflict.
It's like, look, fair enough, a little conflict, man, no problem.
(10:03):
It keeps your life kind of interesting. And maybe that's
on the problem solving edge. But a little conflict can
become a lot of conflict, very very rapidly, and if
you have any sense at all, that's not what you want,
you know, especially if you have other things that are
better to do, and you should have other things that
are better to do,
Don't overestimate yourself, but don't underestimate who you could be.
That's a much better way of thinking about it. You know,
psychologists of the careless sort, I would say, have been
pushing the idea of self esteem for a very long time,
probably since the early sixties. You should be content with
yourself the way you are. It's like, no, you shouldn't
seriously like you're nowhere near what you could be. You're
(00:32):
not even close, right, And so that's a way more
optimistic message. Like it's you ain't seen nothing yet. That's
the right message. And so I would say, don't overestimate
yourself now, but don't underestimate your future self. And you
have so much influence as an individual if you get
your act together that you can't believe it. There isn't
(00:54):
anything that has more influence than that. You have all
the power that there is right where you are to
put things right around you. You start now, you develop
a noble vision right of who you could be. You
start to put that into practice. Develop some discipline, familiarize
yourself with the great works of the past. Learn to read,
learn to write, learn to speak, learn to think. Man,
(01:16):
you'll be deadly what you could bring to the table
that hasn't been brought to the table for years is
an emphasis on individual responsibility. And the right way to
do that, as far as I'm concerned, is to start
with yourselves. Is develop a vision for your life. You
start think about if you could be who you could be,
(01:39):
what would that look like. That's the beginning of a
mature philosophy of being. If you could be the person
that you would admire, who would that person be? How
would you configure yourself? How would you configure your career,
your education, your family, the use of time outside of work.
If you wanted to be the noblest person that you
could be, who was adopting the maximal amount of responsibility,
(02:02):
how would that look? Then you need a strategy to
put that into place. And that's the way you change
things properly, and also the way you do the least
amount of harm while you're changing them. And so it
should be an individual, an individual focused set of ideas,
and that way you can sidestep the identity politics traps,
and that would be a very good thing. And I
think a modern conservatism, which isn't really all that distinguishable
(02:25):
from a classical liberalism as it turns out, is to
put tremendous stress on the responsibility of the individual. And
one of the things that's wonderful about that, as far
as I'm concerned, and I made reference to this a
few minutes ago, is that you need a meaning to
offset the tragedy of life. Otherwise you just suffer stupidly,
and you tend to make people around you suffer the
(02:47):
same way. The way that you find that meaning is
by adopting as much responsibility as you can. And what's
also so fascinating about that is, you know you're characterized
by an indefinite potential. It isn't easy to understand exactly
what that is, that potential, but you know it's what
people call you on when they say, you know, you're
not living up to your potential. Whatever that is. That
(03:10):
potential will be called forth from you as a consequence
of adoption of responsibility because it won't manifest itself unless
you take on a load. You're not going to develop
in all the ways you could develop, unless you set
yourself a serious challenge, because it takes the challenge to
pull that out of you and also to motivate you
to rid yourself of all the weaknesses and personality flaws
(03:33):
that you've accumulated across the years, and to let those
disappear and burn off you. You need to load yourself
up before the demands of life will be such that
you will discipline yourself properly, and a noble goal is
a very good way of beginning that. The truth of
the matter is, as far as I'm concerned that each
(03:54):
of us has enough potential cha power of character, let's say,
if it's properly manifested, to contend with that in a
noble way and to rise above it and to transcend
and to deal with it in large part because we
can make the world a much better place than it
is for each of us individually and for our families
(04:15):
and for our community, and we can constrain them malevolence
at least in our own hearts, and perhaps have a
positive effect on those around us as a consequence, and
that actually does make things better, And we actually can
do that, and that's where the meaning in life is
to be found. And that meaning, you know, that goes
along with the adoption of that kind of responsibility is
(04:35):
actually the antidote to the suffering. You know that perfectly well,
because all of you need a reason to get out
of bed in the morning, especially on a rough morning.
You know, when things aren't going so well in your life,
and there will be plenty of times when things aren't
going so well in your life, and you still need
a reason to get up and get moving and get
out there. And if you have adopted the responsibility at
(04:58):
an individual level to make things better given how bad
they are, if you've adopted the responsibility to make things better,
then you have a reason to get up. And so
one of the things that I've been stressing to people
is that there's very little difference between the meaning in
life that gives you fulfillment and that engages you in
existence and the willingness to shoulder as much individual responsibility
(05:21):
as you can possibly handle. Those are the same things.
And that's a really useful thing to know. And you
kind of know this, right. Everybody knows this, because, first
of all, if you're not living up to your responsibilities,
even to take care of yourself, the probability that you're
going to be ashamed of that at some level is
extraordinarily high. And so your own soul tells you that
(05:41):
you're in error, so to speak. But also if you
look at who you spontaneously admire, which is a good
indication of where your value system really sits, you'll see
that the people you admire are always people who take
responsibility for themselves and responsibility for their family, and responsibility
for their community. Get your act together. You've got things
(06:04):
to do in the world. The absence of your full
being in the world leaves a hole that is filled
by terrible things. At minimum, So at minimum you have
an ethical responsibility to ensure that the world doesn't evolve
into something approximating hell. And at maximum you have the
responsibility again, the ethical it's a heavy ethical responsibility to
(06:25):
do everything that's in your power to make things as
good as you can possibly make them in this sophisticated
manner that takes you and your family and your community
into account. And it's on you, right, And that's meaning.
You know, people say, well, I'd like to have a
meaningful life. It's like, well, fair enough. But the price
that you pay for the meaning that transcends tragedy is
(06:45):
the adoption of responsibility for the catastrophe of existence. But
that ennobles you, right, It makes you into someone strong
and someone competent in someone who who's worthwhile, and who
lives in a manner that justifies their own suffering. And
that's what There's nothing better than you could possibly do
than that. Although there is a very large number of
(07:09):
ways of looking at the world, or perhaps a near
infinite number of ways of looking at the world, there
isn't a near infinite number of ways of acting in
the world in a manner that actually is successful, and
so there are constraints on how you can how you
can interact with the world in a successful manner. Let's
assume that you don't want undo pain and anxiety. We
(07:31):
could just start with that, and I think that's a
reasonable proposition. You can tolerate some pain and anxiety if
it's in the service of something greater, obviously, but I
just mean pointless pain and anxiety. We don't want any
more of that than is necessary. And that means that
you have to take care of yourself to some degree.
But the manner in which you take care of yourself
is severely constrained. This is partly why you have to
(07:53):
be intelligent and careful and plot your way through life properly.
You have to take care of yourself today, but you
have to take care of yourself and today in a
way that doesn't interfere with you taking care of yourself
tomorrow and next week and next month and next year
and five years from now and ten years from now.
So you can't do just what you want to in
(08:15):
the next hour, because if it's impulsive pleasure seeking, let's
say something like that, excess alcohol use or excess drug use,
or careless sexual behavior, or betrayal of people to gain
you some gain you something in the moment, you're gonna
pay for that. You're gonna pay for it tomorrow, You're
gonna pay for it next week, and next month, the
(08:36):
next year. So, because you're going to exist in the future,
and because you have to live with yourself, there's only
a certain number of ways that you can act that
are going to work. But it's more than that. It's
not just that you're responsible to your future self or
the set of all your future selves. Is that you
also have to act in a way that works for
your family, because otherwise your family's gonna disintegrate and break
(08:58):
down and cause you and them all sorts of misery
and grief, and not just your family now, but also
your family into the future. And then not just your
family either, but also your community. And so you have
to set your aspirations so that they serve you in
the broadest sense over a long period of time, and
they also serve your family, and they also serve your community.
(09:19):
And that's a very tight set of constraints. And I
think that the best solution to that set of constraints,
from a philosophical perspective, or maybe even a theological perspective,
is to view the world as a place not of groups,
but of individuals, of sovereign individuals who are responsible for
their destinies, responsible for their families, and for their communities.
(09:41):
You learn to use minimal necessary force. It's like you
don't defend yourself any more than you have to, like,
be careful, don't push any harder than you need to,
because all you do is you generate a counter force
by pushing harder than you need to. And then you're
in conflict. And you think, well, I like a little conflict.
It's like, look, fair enough, a little conflict, man, no problem.
(10:03):
It keeps your life kind of interesting. And maybe that's
on the problem solving edge. But a little conflict can
become a lot of conflict, very very rapidly, and if
you have any sense at all, that's not what you want,
you know, especially if you have other things that are
better to do, and you should have other things that
are better to do,
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