The Terrible Paradox of Self-Awareness - Robert Pantano - #1080

Why is self-awareness a problem? Self awareness is a problem well, first of all, I think it's important to recognize that we often think about self awareness as a good thing. Um we generally think about it as a gradient. So we we might refer to somebody as being more or less self aware than others and and more is is typically assumed as better.

When I'm referring to self awareness, I'm referring to just the fact that we are aware of a self at all. And so the mere fact that we have a certain form of consciousness that provides us that sense of self. Is a problem for a a number of reasons. Um first and foremost. we've arrived with a sense of self awareness.

um by a process of evolution that doesn't really care. Um obviously care I'm using loosely there because evolution doesn't care at all about anything besides it's just continuation propagation. But the experience of consciousness and self awareness. from the first person perspective is not central to the reason for why self-awareness and consciousness arrived in the form that humans experience it.

And so we are often at odds with the fundamental nature of reality in existence by virtue of the self awareness, in my view at least. And and the and the reason for that is As a self who is aware of that self, we attach to that self, we attach to the ideas of that self, we attach to people and things.

and our desire to make sense of our perception and understanding through all of the concepts that we form by nature of having that degree of of awareness. And yet Reality and existence are not is fickle. chaotic, uncertain. We're going to lose everybody and everything, um, through time or distance, decay, age or illness or death. Um and so we we find ourselves in this sort of cosmic ocean where the waves are crashing on our our heads constantly and yet we we must continue because we are also

a part of the same substrate that that built us that needs continuation. So it puts us in this very peculiar position where we can feel the intensity and pain and suffering that seems from a conscious individual entity. Terrible, and yet we mu we we just refuse to give up. We we must endure. And so that's why it's problematic. But also, obviously I I I see the other side of that coin and the paradox of self-awareness, in my view, is that

Self-awareness, self-consciousness, self-apprehension is the most horrific, terrifying thing in the known universe. And yet it is the most beautiful thing in the known universe because as far as we're aware, it's the only thing that allows conceptual understanding of existence and reality. So we can form the very idea of beauty and wonder and meaning and purpose and hope. And it's n seems to me to be necessary that the first part

the other half of that coin is in the equation for the second half to be possible. Hmm. Yeah, you've got this line, self awareness is a sort of poison that we each consume upon birth. Yeah. Yeah. I I believe that's our our birthright is the the horrific qualities of self awareness, uh uh a poison, but that we as almost magicians or alchemists can transmute into into gold, into art, a and and beauty and wonder and love and all that. And and so it it makes you wanna you know, you love and hate it.

in the fullest possible form of those words at the same time. At least obviously that's my perspective. I know maybe some people might see life in existence as purely um positive and beautiful, some might see it as purely negative.

and horrific and somewhere in between uh there's a spectrum. But um in my view, it's sort of it it has to be both at the same time and and that is the paradoscal nature of it. How much of that do you think is just us all coming up with some fancy philosophical explanation for our own idiosyncratic experience of the world. that you uh have a bit of a grasp of the awe and a bit of a grasp of the dread.

And some people are almost all dread and some people are almost all awe and each of them kind of create their own philosophical views of the world and the universe based around just Well this is this is my typical daily affect. This is my typical experience of things.

It's definitely important to not universalize your own perspective. your own experiences and your own way of thinking. It's it's easy to assume that the way you think, both in the most literal of sense and in the most abstract of sense, is is the way most people do. And it it's not the case. Um there's a huge spectrum and variety of of um modes of thought.

that people experience and operate through. And so people might be more visually inclined, people might be more linguistically inclined, people might be of a more feeling orientation of the world. So just on that level alone, there's a a a wide variety and spectrum of experience of thought. And so we have to start there and recognizing that our own fundamental experience of the world and reality is not going to be universal um in the way that we might project or assume.

If consciousness is a mystery that can't understand itself, does that mean that the human condition is just fundamentally tragic? Well that that's that's at the heart. Or a heart of the paradox. It's a multi-hearted paradox, I would say. Okay. So it's it is a a part of the tragedy, or it is partly a tragedy, perhaps is a better way of putting it. In the sense that Yeah, I I I I think that um consciousness from the first person perspective, which is naturally

the limit of consciousness, right? You can't, as far as I I could possibly conceive, there's no reality world being entity phenomenon in which a consciousness could perceive itself in the world without its consciousness. And so it's a feedback loop in that sense. And so it it'll get increasingly close to comprehending the nature of itself, but it'll never breach. It's sort of that Xeno's paradox of the arrow, where it'll get increasingly close

But it's always infinitely far away. And and that's that's sort of how I see consciousness attempting to comprehend itself. It's like can you make sense of an i an inch with an inch, a minute with a minute? No, it's just it's just the same thing. um trying to m you know, measure itself with itself. And so that is tragic in that sense. But also on the flip side of it, it's what fuels the unending inquiry about

what it means to be a conscious entity and what it means to be, in our case, a human. And so that's the beauty if you see it that way, because what else is there interesting about existence other than the exploration of the nature of existence. I mean maybe some people would think that we'll just sort of sit around the surface a and that's fun with margaritas and and, you know, sit by pool the pool and all that. And I I I

totally get that. But I think there is something very riveting and and the deepest experiences of wonder come from those explorations that are uh if from my view, uh an infinite landscape of possibilities, questions and answers that um will never satisfy, we'll never fulfill, we'll never reach some sort of peak. That landscape is flat, um, but there's just so much territory to explore. Is there a way to become self-aware without it becoming self-destructive? I I think so.

It's a spectrum, it's a gradient of you start from maybe a a very I don't want to say a low level of self awareness'cause that reduces it. It it's not like that. But maybe a um reflectiveness about that self awareness where you can realize that and then it might there there's a certain experience of difficulties and confusions and sufferings that

they are just them they exist for themselves and you struggle to justify them. You struggle to deal with them. And I think if you continue on that path, you you get to a point where you become more comfortable with the confusions and the uncertainties. and you become you don't be you don't get better at justifying them. You don't get better at dealing with the problems of being a conscious entity in the world, but you get better at at recognizing that the lack of answers

the lack of stability, the lack of rigidness is is par for the course and par for the beauty of the course. And that I think is is the ultimate goal to strive for when it comes to these sorts of topics and questions. I think a lot of people have this sense that the more that they learn about themselves, the more difficult life becomes. That there's a kind of

Enjoyment. Freedom. There's a freedom in naivety would be the way to put it. And um that there Hãy subscribe cho kênh La La School Để không bỏ lỡ những video hấp dẫn naivety that they have, the more challenging the world seems to be. There's complexity and responsibility and self doubt and self esteem issues come in and there's an awareness of what I could have done, standards kind of begin to rise, but in kind of squirrely ways about

virtue. Uh if you've got a critical mind, you find an ever increasing number of ways to derogate success, even if you manage to achieve the success because you were aware of all of the ways that you might have lied or or or cajoled or coerced or not been fully virtuous en route to achieving the thing, whereas previously you were just happy to have fucking done it.

And then yeah, this tighter and tighter spiral, this ever increasing resolution that you look at the world with, I think to a lot of people feels like a personal curse. I think it feels like an increase in self awareness just equates to an increase in suffering. Yeah, I mean I first of all I resonate with that reaction and I think there's there's validity in that reaction and if you feel that way, um That's

justified. That makes sense to me. I feel that way often. I think most people feel that way when they start to, like you said, unravel um the absurdity of a lot of what we are and what we're doing. Um and there is perhaps a better version of of being, of existence from a human perspective that that dulls that, that dilutes that. But unfortunately you don't really get to choose.

whether or not you are or are not thinking about those things, experiencing those thoughts and feelings. So you you kind of, you know, you don't think in my view, you don't think thoughts, thoughts, you know, arrive in your head after a sort of conveyor belt of experiences and neurology and all of that. And so you ultimately wind up

with these questions and thoughts and concerns, these uh the you know, a certain proximity to those thoughts and concerns, um, that become very difficult to to experience and manage. And i it it might make you um Envious of The idea of not feeling that way and not experiencing that proximity. But unfortunately once you start worrying about something or once you start thinking about something, that that can of worms is fully opened and you can't

you can't close it. You you you have to figure out how to how to deal with it, how to move forward. And I find that the the best way to deal with those sorts of cans of worms or those tunnels is uh is forward, not back, because backwards that that that end is closed. um, in in terms of the t tunnel metaphor. You you can't return to some form of yourself, some version of yourself that hasn't already um, you know, wondered, questioned, pondered, or or become concerned about those sorts of things.

And so I I see that it's it's quintessential to to not put those things aside if you're experiencing the sufferings and pains of almost self alienation and self uh confusion, you you have to move forward and figure out how to

in so in some people's cases it's maybe resolving them through through practical and tactical methodology. And in other in other people's cases it it might be more of a embracement of of those feelings and and by embracing certain thoughts and certain experiences um if possible, I do find that you can reduce their uh gravity, their force on on your head and neck. What about regret? I think one of the things that comes along as a side dish with quite a lot of um

Quite a lot of self awareness is people's increase in rumination. Um w w sort of whimsical, w wistful, uh remembering and regret. What have you learned about regret? Well, I think regret is very interesting because regret implies that you could have done differently. you you could have done, you know, better than you had uh in a particular moment of your life. Um, which in my view, I get the I get the impulse, I get the the sentiment, but um if you rewind the clock of reality.

uh a hundred percent of the time you're arriving at that same moment as your same self with the same brain, the same physiology, the same information and the same external circumstances, there's no way you could have made any different of a decision. And so regret is sort of a

an understandable illusion of our consciousness where it makes us feel like there's a lot of possibilities and um we can be deluded by our hindsight and our ability to reference back and forth between time, but there is there is no world in which you didn't make All the decisions are You've made putting aside maybe sort of qu quantum, you know, mul multi world theories, but

in in in this world, the world that we're talking about in in, there's no version that you could have done anything differently. And that that brings into sort of um, you know, the the concept of free will, which personally I I don't.

believe in in the in the sense that we typically refer to it as. Um but Yeah, i i if you consider free will as a part of the equation a and even if you don't, I see no world, I see no logic that makes sense of of regret being uh it's an understandable reaction but not a um certainly not a rational reaction, which I know we oscillate between emotion, feeling and and a and logic, but

I I I just think that, you know, regret exists in a in an illusory realm of our perception. It's a weird one'cause I think the free will argument is one of i it's an in in an interesting category. It's something that why might be uh literally true but figuratively useless, um, that it it might actually be we might be a deterministic set of dominoes all the way from the Big Bang until this conversation right here.

But it's functionally pointless to believe that, as far as I can see. Um you you need to go So deep into non-attachment to I couldn't have done any differently, but you need to not overshoot into nihilism and fatalism and it's just fucking it's too hard. But if we stay, if we shelve the discussion around determinism and you say, okay

You you get to go back, you didn't make a decision before you got to the point at which you made a decision. Or you didn't do a thing, or you did do a thing after or before you wish that you had. And you want to do it differently, as far as I can see, sort of reading your perspective, regret is kind of like a a refusal to accept the limits of foresight. Like you couldn't you couldn't have chosen differently under the same conditions.

And an acceptance of necessity kind of helps to dissolve regret. I think that's very well put. I think and and to your point You could even put aside the deterministic the potential deterministic nature of reality. you're still limited by the same constraints in any given moment. Um, it doesn't mean that maybe there's some sort of deterministic ultimate reality that was gonna pan out the way it it has and did, but it does mean that

You are always limited in every moment by a set of constraints. Your physiology, your your the condition of your mind, your emotional state, the information you have, the you know, the most recent influences you've experienced. all of that is going to cause you to make a decision. and and and whether it's, you know, built into the laws or the nature of the unfolding of reality is is ar irrelevant i i at that point. It's just you are

going to make the same decis decision over and over again. To regret having made that decision is to deny the very fact that you're always going to be limited by a set of constraints. And unless you uh intentionally decided to make the the less

viable decision, the worst decision in that moment, which I I mean, I obviously there are masochists and so forth, but for the most part, people are trying to make good decisions that make sense to them in any given moment. And so you're always trying your best. given those constraints and and and it's absurd to think that you could have done or would have done any better and like you put very well, it's it's sort of this this foresight, hindsight equilibrium that you just sort of

stretch and contort to make the most sense for your current reality. And I also think I think another important point of what regret tends to point to is is a lack of embrace around the fact that there are no conditions of your life that are gonna resolve the fundamental tensions that we often experience, which is, you know, we want a sense of certainty, a sense of uh happiness and and ultimate resolve, a sense of having made

all the right decisions, having done everything right and and all these pieces are in order, that's a a sort of f underlying desire that we all experience. Some, you know, maybe recognize that that's not gonna be the case or not. But I think there's a proportional relation to how willing you are to accept that you're never going to get out of the the sort of hamster wheel of desire and suffering and boredom and anxiety and how much you might regret what you've done and how your life has gone.

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You've got that you know that uh Cormac McCarthy line? You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from. I do not know that line, but I I love it. I love how that's announced. Fucking love that line. You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from. That's beautiful. No, I love that. Well you've got that story about the the guy asking for directions, which is pretty similar. Yes. And so Yeah, I I mean I've I've written a story called The Nova Effect.

Um, and I've also done a lot of similar explorations around the idea that, you know, we basically never know. This is sort of playing off a Kurt Vonnegut line. We never know the good luck from the bad luck until the s the story's over. And and f you know, for all of us we don't the story never ends until we're not even around. And so you never quite can discern

what was good and what was bad for you or for a collective until it's reached its, you know, ultimation. And um yeah, that goes for each of our individual lives where it's it's the same case. It's we we feel in any given moment that good some good fortune is going to lead ultimately to good fortune forever thereafter. But that's not how

life works or reality works. It's it's a a a sort of spurring off of multiple lines that one good thing, one advantage could lead you to a a misfortune or a disadvantage, and vice versa. And so there's

You know, you always wanna feel good when good things happen, but there's and you always you don't always wanna feel bad when bad things happen, but you do ultimately tend to feel bad when bad things happen. But there's here's the dual sided coin of a of a different phenomenon where you know, you if you know that when good things happen it's still there's still more more game to play, more life to live, you're you're you're gonna gonna be willing to accept

the potential for more trials and errors and all that, uh, which is not so great. But knowing that when bad things happen, that's not It's not gonna g just be misfortune forever thereafter as well. Gives you some some hope, uh, and and gives you a sense of, you know, the possibility that things could could be directly related to that that ultimately save you, i in whatever sense save you might mean.

Yeah, you never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from. I wrote uh I wrote an essay today, actually, on uh I want to read you this thing'cause I I thought it was really interesting. All right. Adversity is a terrible thing to waste. Almost all of the biggest periods of growth in your life have germinated from your lowest point. Once shock, grief, sadness and And fear subside, more energetic emotions arise, pain, resentment, bitterness, anger and a chip on your shoulder.

Wanting it a lot. This is why people change so much after losing a parent, enduring a betrayal, losing a job, or going through a breakup. Not because the past version of their world has been stripped away alone, but because they finally have enough fuel to get their new life off the launch pad.

In the mid nineties there was a single mother living in a near poverty home in Edinburgh. When she left her first marriage it wasn't a quiet parting. She's described the relationship as abusive. She fled to Portugal with her baby daughter, and a suitcase that contained the early chapters of a book that she was working on. At one point her ex husband hid the manuscript, trying to prevent her from leaving with it. She was clinically depressed and contemplating suicide.

She couldn't afford to heat her flat properly, so she pushed a pram to cafes to write while her daughter slept. The manuscript was rejected by twelve publishers, that's twelve people telling her in different ways that it wasn't good enough. The rejection wasn't abstract, it was survival level. If the book failed, so did her last attempt at building a life. The humiliation of those refusals became momentum.

JK Rowling went on to sell five hundred million copies in the Harry Potter series globally and became richer than the Queen. But here's the uncomfortable truth. Not all adversity becomes growth. Some people are crushed by it. Adversity is fuel, not destiny. The difference is what you do with the surplus emotion. If that energy isn't directed, it curdles into rumination.

The same fuel that could power a transformation can just as easily power self destruction. There's also a time window, because pain calcifies. The chip on your shoulder becomes your identity. The story of what happened becomes the story of who you are. Anger gets you moving, but it can't steer. It's rocket fuel, not guidance. Eventually, the chip on your shoulder has to become purpose. As a TLDR, the worst thing that's happened to you might be the only thing powerful enough to change you.

Pain is temporary and fuel is rare, so if you're going through a hard time, don't waste it. You never know what worse luck your bad luck is saved you from. Beautiful. I think that's beautiful. I I'm curious to think about or to ask you about what you think allows someone to to create that um differentiation or to act on that differentiation between it becoming a collapsible effect and a fueling effect. What do what do you think it uh it is that allows some people to to utilize

th those adversities versus Yeah, go ahead. Great great question. I'm I'm always hesitant of giving some pithy philosophical answer to this stuff because I think so much of it is just practical. Uh I i spending less time on your own. Sounds so dumb. You go through a breakup. Spend less time on your own.

Man. Like you it's important for you to have your friends come round with tacos and ice cream and watch shit movies. Like that is an important part of the healing process. It's important for you to stay busy. It's important for you to reconnect with

the hobbies that you had as a kid. Right. Start playing football again or or pickleball or whatever it is that you like to do, martial arts or running, whatever. And to do it in a group. And that will carry a lot of the difference between somebody who it that pain calcifies and it it turns into stasis. Um basically what I'm pushing toward is a bias for action, but it's a bias for action when your capacity for action has been severely diminished. So you can't act

as easily your your uh one rep max has been chopped down by ninety five percent and you're really gonna struggle to lift anything, even the smallest weight. So what do you do when you have a weight that you can't bear? while you spread the load between other people. So um I think relying on other people but the broader lesson, not everybody has other people, needs other people in this way. The broad lesson I think is a bias for action. Like how can I just

What's that line uh? Antido uh uh anxiety hates a moving target. Right. That uh action is the antidote to anxiety. And it's so fucking true. Like and it sounds like maybe I'm running away from my problems, you know, maybe I'm hiding them in the fog. And that's a lesson that for a lot of people probably is accurate. They use busyness and chaos as a way to sort of Force down whatever it is that they should be

thinking about more deeply, but I I I get the sense that if anybody's a fan of Pursuit of Wonder or Modern Wisdom, that that they have the opposite fucking problem. Okay. They're like the David Goggins of rumination. They're the fucking bonny they're the bonny blue of Illumination. They do not need they do not need to be told to spend more time thinking. They need to be told to have a bias for action. So I think um

Learning to trust yourself again is done through uh experimentation and and and evidence. Um, once you've got just a little bit of that moving, um, that that tends to help. Uh I I certainly think w not being afraid to use some of the more negative emotions, some of the stuff like bitterness and resentment and anger, um

a paradoxes or one of the disadvantages of self awareness that you don't like these sort of darker emotions. You think, I I should transcend these, I should be sufficiently elevated that I'm not I'm not tapping into this. This is a more base version of me. It's juvenile, it's petty. I I I you know, this is a version of me that I don't like. Going, I get that. But what did you use to get yourself here? Hm.

Because for the most part you probably use that kind of fuel and then, okay, it's pretty toxic if I hold on to it for too long, I probably shouldn't still be thinking at forty five years old about what the kids said to me in school. Fine. But that also means that you don't have that fuel tank anymore. And this fuel isn't gonna be there forever. It i it it's not. Your bitterness will eventually dissolve.

what are you gonna be left with? You will have the time will have passed anyway, and that's some pretty fucking potent fuel. So I I'm saying just, you know, go in and and maybe You just fucking tap tap tap into the side of the fuel tank for a little bit and and make use of it. And Yeah. I look, you're you're gonna look back on this period and it can either be some, you know, kinetic spark at the beginning of growth. You can be your own primer switch for a hydrogen bomb, or y you can

self work your way through it and I'm sure it'll be great. But I don't know. It was just an idea and especially that J. K. Rowling story, so fucking good. And um

After I read that Cormac McCarthy quote, which I've been wanting to write about for ages, I need to fucking put something together. It's not true for all people, in all situations, at all times, but I do think it's pretty fucking useful. Yeah. No, and I agree. I mean I think that It's like you said, obviously not true for everybody all the time, but you don't know if it's true for you until you do everything in your power to attempt to make it so.

And a and so you you ultimately are up against um Zero possibility by not trying to take everything in your power to make adversity worth it for you and worth it for your circumstances and your goals. That's a zero percent chance if you don't try and then you have some percentage of chance

of things working out for you and being, you know, able to transmute that adversity into, you know, the ultimate good fortune that you've, you know, the most you've ever seen in in your life. And so I agree that

approaching it from a fuel minded perspective i is is really the only viable way. Um and that's also that, you know, brings up questions about whether or not certain people can even recognize that and and whether or not it it's it's going to be um you know, there are degrees of you know, um environmental factors that weigh down on people that make it very difficult to even if they you know, if you might recognize Good luck versus bad luck is not always the end all be all.

there is still, you know, there are still environmental and external factors that make it very challenging for somebody to to actualize that potentiality in adversity and and continual adversity is one of those things. Well yeah, dude. I mean, it's it's all well and good me talking about the survivorship bias of J.K. Rowling's five hundred million books. Right. But There is a lot of people that

have not just one kick in the nuts but a series of them that are you know, so frequent that their ability to even lift the lightest weight kind of gets degraded. But I mean th the alternative is is to just keel over and this is, you know, me saying it as a guy that's been kicked in the nuts a lot o over the last couple of years. Like you literally do have only two choices and one of them is to give up and the other one is to do whatever the opposite of that is. And um fuck that dude.

Jesus Christ. Like absol the absolutely fuck that. What's that rage rage against the dying of the light? Yep. Um you might as well because you you because you've got literally got nothing else to do and the fucking time is gonna pass in any case. Yeah. So you might as well send it. I agree a hundred percent. I I think it's important to recognize survivorship bias, but also to recognize as an individual that

If you're still alive, you're you're a survivor in some sense and as long as you're alive, there's hope. Well, give me let me give you this one. You know what the fucking uh ultimate inversion of the survivorship bias is? Every person that gave up. Right. Right. Every person that reaches survivorship bias is a mark on the wall for somebody that didn't give up. And Absolutely. Absolutely. If you want if you want to guarantee that you are not a part of the survivorship bias numbers,

You can just give up and that would be fine. Um, and again, that creates a pressure. I understand that that makes people go, Ah, fuck, it's all on me and that's not fair and things are hard and it's hard for her. It wasn't as hard for her as it is for me, and I've got this thing and Get it. I get it. But I wanna see you win. And I would rather see you win and be in discomfort than see you lose and fucking keel over. So A hundred percent. I I mean I I think there's you you can carry both

those thoughts in the same head at the same time. You can recognize that there is a survivorship bias. A lot of people who try fully to the maximum ability are gonna face continual ad adversity and it's not gonna it's not gonna pan out. And you can also recognize that as an individual person, it's better to not weigh that case heavily. It's better to weigh the cases of the JK Rowlings more heavily.

in the pursuit of the counterbalance of that dynamic to inspire you to try everything you can and to continue forward towards what makes, you know, meaning out of the chaos of your life.

more viable, more possible. And to do that, in my view, and this is I I recognize there there's, you know, maybe a tone here, but to do that until the bitter end, you know, you you if you wanna do anything and you have a a preference, a a a priority, a sense of meaning, an orientation toward meaning, whatever You like you said, you have your time and until the clock goes to zero until the lights turn out, there's still

like just just keep going for whatever it is that you care about and whatever it is that makes sense to you and it's worthwhile. And i there's no prescription to what that might be. What that source of meaning and worthwhileness need not be some sort of you know, ungodly achievement from a societal level. It could be

a a beautiful relationship, uh a beautiful family. It could be a simple, quiet life, whatever it is for you to to continue onward towards achieving that, maximizing that, working towards the maintenance of that. whatever you're up against, uh, you have your time a a and you ought to use it wisely to to

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Shipped right to your door. Right now you can get fifteen percent off your first online order by going to the link in the description below or heading to athleticbrewing.com slash modern wisdom. That's athleticbrewing.com slash. Modern wisdom. Given the fact that we can never step outside of our own minds, how should that change the way that we treat our beliefs?

I think that and I've obviously agree with the fact that, you know, there's not only can we not obviously step out of our own minds, but there's a huge implication to that. Um we will never obtain objective truth in my view as a consequence of that fact. And so I believe that humility and almost a a love of uncertainty is the only appropriate response to the fact that there's just no way that you can get out of the tunneled vision of your mind, your specific mind. And then your own mind is

sort of been molded and mapped according to a particular condition of geography, of culture, of history. Um And there's been no moment as far as you know, if we sort of rewind the clock, every stage of history has presented um a similar ensemble of ignorance, of futility, of wrongness, all that. And so you you must recognize that As individuals and as a collective, at any given time in any given space, we're up against this contorted, chiseled out view of reality that's a pinhole size.

and and to have rigid beliefs, have a sense of certainty, I think is a A less than ideal response to that condition. Um, and this isn't to say that someone ought to be. totally nebulous about everything they think and feel and believe. You can be convictive and confident in life while also not ever being dead set and final about a belief or set of beliefs.

And so there's a there's a sort of essence of confidence and conviction that can carry through across a spectrum of ideas and beliefs. And the importance is is not the individual belief, but the continuation of You know, exploration and curiosity and openness and humility. I feel I feel personally that that's a a sort of essential fundamental quality of for lack of better words, a sort of wisdom.

What about choice anxiety? Because I I I get the sense that people who have a lot of self awareness, again, we've sort of touched on I know how much better I could have been. I I know all of the different optionality that lays out in front of me. How do you come to think about Um netting down choice anxiety as a deeply self aware person. Yeah. See, I I don't know if I have a good answer to that because

first of all, I struggle with it. Um, I think the best way to deal with choice anxiety is to recognize um the degree of your you know, at what point are your desires no longer serving you? And if once you recognize that ceiling the amount of choices that you need to consider can reduce. So if I think that, you know, I'm on an infinite conveyor belt of desires and satisfaction, desire satisfaction over and over and over.

then there is an infinite number of choices that can satisfy or can play into that conveyor belt phenomenon. But if you recognize that there is A certain limit to which your your you know minimum quality of experience is achieved in life. Um You can start to redirect your decision making towards a smaller number of options

for different reasons than just like, you know, if you go to a grocery store, you could there's so obviously an infinite number not nearly I mean there's uh not literally, but nearly an infinite number of choices of cereal and everything else. And and if you regard cereal as a as a reasonable proxy of your quality of life, you might stand in that aisle forever.

But i if you recognize that cereal is not gonna serve you, it's not gonna serve your quality of life, then you pick one and move on. And then you recognize that there is still a difficulty around decision making in other areas of your life. uh that you're going to ruminate on and struggle with. But you can reduce the amount of decisions that are relevant to you by recognizing uh this sort of ceiling around how much your decisions are going to change the quality of your experience.

And I'm somebody who believes that It's much more Like I I wanna make decisions that uh allow me to keep going. And and I mean that in both the most basic literal sense and then sort of a more abstract sense, which is, you know, I wanna decouple my awareness from my desire when I'm making decisions about what's gonna allow me to get up in the morning and still care. Um

and and then also what's gonna allow me to experience some continual fuel as you put it in in your essay. And so there's no clean way of of totally absolving yourself from the paradox of choice and the anxiety around decision making. unless you sort of you can kind of uh oscillate back and forth between the

foresight of or the anxiety around decision making and the hindsight of regret. You can refer to your regrets to remember the absurdity of your anxiety right now. But I understand there's a as maybe a degree of impracticality there. But I I do think that just recognizing that there is like every option in life for everything from cars to cereal to clothes to pe to relationship partners to friends to careers, you can start to

chisel those down by recognizing that so much of that is not what you care about. And and, you know, you decide what you care about, or you end up caring about what you care about. But then you chisel those things out and you're still left with a huge chunk of decision making possibilities, but it's maybe a little bit more manageable.

Oliver Berkman had this question, uh how much should you care about things? Answer. I'm not sure, but I'm pretty sure it's not as much as possible about everything all of the time. Yeah, I love it. And um I I think Yeah, the the that's like the curse of the over optimizer. Mm-hmm. Somebody who just for everything at every opportunity. Uh I have a friend who is huge into um credit card points. You got every different

airline and he knows to use this card for this flight and then if he goes to this supermarket he can get an additional three percent and he then he gets to fly for his whole family for free and all of this stuff. One of his best friends is the most simple person money. Oh, you must have a complex system just like just like a mutual friend.

He's like, no, I I I just decided that there was an area I had to consciously be de optimized in and that was just one of the ones. I can't I can't pick it for everything all of the time. And the advantage of that is When you make the big decision. around I'm not going to bother about this at all. all of the sub decisions fall away if you can sort of relinquish it. And there is a there is a power in sort of letting go. It's the same sensation anybody's had if they've left a bad relationship.

that they go, that that thing and all of the decisions and all of the rumination around it wasn't serving me. And by letting go of it I feel liberated. Isn't that great? Uh so yeah, it's um It's a funny it's a funny blend for that. I th you mentioned anxiety there. Do you think anxiety's just the natural consequence of seeing reality clearly and being a deep thinker then?

I would even go so far to say that uh you don't have to add that that last part about being a deep thinker. I would think anxiety is a um sort of fundamental consequence of being aware of reality on any level, um, and it only goes up from there. Um, I know that people have Worse. cases and experiences of anxiety. Um, but the idea that ang somebody could live

and not and i he this is me projecting my, you know, own experience, universalizing it and assuming everybody's the same. And I recognize that. But I do find it very hard to imagine that anxiety is not a a sort of building block of of consciousness and self awareness from a human perspective. Because everything I mean when we're talking about decision making, we're talking about regrets, we're talking about um adversity, all these things, everything is this

hodgepodge of of chaos and uncertainty that a singular framework of perspective is trying to control and make sense of. And what's what could be more anxiety inducing than that? Trying to filter o a ocean of possibility into a tiny, you know pinhole of desire and preference and hope and idealization. So I would think that if you're if you're that pinhole, there's a lot to be worried about. Mm-hmm.

Is the pursuit of truth really about truth or or more about sort of a psychological security then? It feel it feels to me like our desire for truth is uh a fear response to the uncertainty of the future. I absolutely agree. Yeah, I think that I I personally I think that everything that humans do and humanity has done is is never in it of itself. It's never for itself. It's it's based on some preference. And so the desire for truth is not because we care so much about

Truth. I in my view it's because we care so much about what truth will provide us. And that is a quelling of the uncertainty and the unknowability of existence and our relationship with it. We wanna know that everything is going to be okay. both now and forever thereafter. That's why heaven exists. That's why religions exist. That's why philosophies exist.

And so the b the pursuit of truth is is an attempt to bring down the heavens and and make it make sense right now so that we can feel comfortable as as conscious being. And so, yeah, no, truth is not in my view a a desire in and of itself. It's it's a it's a sort of proxy by product of the desire to produce uncertainty and unknowability.

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I'm thinking about that anxiety uh and I guess anger as well, which is kind of a little bit like anxiety at motion. A anxiety is anger at rest in a way and and anger is anxiety in motion. It seems like anxiety uh foresight without control and then anger is desire for control that gets denied. And I'm wondering what what you've come to learn about how to sort of dissolve or reduce the anger and the anxiety in that way.

Yeah, so I mean they're they're pretty tightly intertwined where If you start to recognize Maybe I I would intertwine anger more closely with something like regret because if you start to recognize the absurdity of regret, um and your ability to control the way things have gone, um

with a greater distance in time, there are many cases of anger in which it might be in real time that you're experiencing an event, but it was an event that you couldn't have controlled. And so in the same way It's it's a much more difficult thing to quell in the moment, but you can sort of start to shave off the edges of anger I find.

by recognizing your lack of control over everything else besides yourself and perhaps even yourself and that takes it to a different degree and we don't need to, you know, necessarily take it there for the same point to be cogent. I'm angry at me I should have done differently is ju you're right. You're r you're right to say that it it it's closer to regret. It's like I should have done differently. Well We didn't.

You didn't and you're trying to motivate yourself to do it more in future. I understand. And if your brain ramps up the pain of the lesson from the last mistake that you made, you will make sure that you don't make that mistake again. It's basically a

existential psychological equivalent of I put my hand on that stove. Oh I I m close to this. I got bit by a dog when I was five. The lesson is don't go near dogs for the rest of life r rest of time. Um that is what our brain is trying to teach us and the sort of amplitude, the fucking volume of the lesson is proportional to how important we think it was and how much pain we were in at the time.

And if you're in a lot of pain and then you realise that you are making the pain worse by trying to sort of whip yourself into submission so that you will be reminded, you've kind of nine tails your way through this thing.

In some ways you can kind of love that part of you. That is a good thing. That's a really fucking cool thing to love. Like, thank you so much for trying to keep me safe. I understand that I'm fallible and fucked up, and I consistently make apparently the same mistakes over and over again, and they really have a great

v like fucking consecutive lineage of often being similar sorts of things and I I get it. You're trying to keep me safe. Thank you. Thank you for trying to keep me safe. Thank you for trying to make me learn a lesson that my uh actions insist on not fucking detecting uh and not updating themselves from. Uh that's that's great. Um it's just It's such a fucking all encompassing emotion, anger. So trying to think rationally when you're in it is not easy.

It's definitely not. Do you think that anger is necessary for what you just described? Or do you think you can have that um response without necessarily anger, the anger tank, so to speak, filling all the way up. I guess it depends. A a lot of people convert anger into other emotions. Right. Um, and a lot of the time these are people who for whom Anger wasn't allowed.

as a kid. It wasn't allowed in the household. There wasn't a safe place to express anger. Uh maybe there was a fragile parent or a an overly disciplinarian parent or a a parent who had anger problems of their own or an absent parent who couldn't really hold that for them. And you need I I I think it's really important for people to understand if

If there's something burbling inside of you i the the world is basically split into two kinds of people. There's people who get mad and people that get sad, but both of them are generated from the same place. Like the anger gets turned outward or the anger gets turned inward. And um the anger that gets turned inward, that's not the job of anger. The job of anger evolutionarily is you crossed a boundary and there's no police force around.

So I'm gonna behave in a way that shows you that you can't do it again and shows anybody else who's watching that they can't fuck with me in the same way that you did, because we don't have laws to enforce this. So my emotional response to you is gonna show you how far you crossed over the line and it's not gonna happen again. That's that that's the the job of anger. So for the when it's sad not mad It's usually because you were disincentivized

In a I mean, everybody's disincentivized from being angry, right? Like it's a very anti social behavior. It's a very anti social thing. Sadness is pro social. People come and give you a hug. Anger is anti social. It makes people run away. But there should be a container for that. And if you don't learn it, m this is a lot very long winded way of saying lots of people are angry but don't feel angry.

And they turn it into other things. They turn it into bitterness, agitation, resentment, uh uh, depression, anxiety, um, like frustrations at at uh at themselves and at other people and that and at the world or politics or you know, whatever. Um, so I don't think that you need anger. I would actually go as far as to say that maybe anger is a bit more warping because it's so it's

It's the fucking raw, uncut version of the fuel. And if you can have it just bubble down a little bit, I think you can make better decisions.'Cause making decisions I mean Is there any emotion that's worse to use to make decis? Maybe being horny. Maybe being horny is the only worse emotion to utilize when trying to orient yourself than anger is. Yeah. I I can't think of many more.

Yeah, nothing come to mind for me either. I think those are are probably the the two at the top of the thing. No, but I think I think that's super well put. I think that there's absolutely uh practical application for anger. And to to just assume that you should never be angry i is um you're cursing yourself for for a life of being taken advantage of and never signalling to yourself and others when when things are wrong and when things

have been um crossed in terms of your boundaries and lines. Um there is a separate category of anger I might I personally would categorize, you know, there's there's the anger towards people and things that are that can be corrected. And then there's anger towards existence or things that can't. Uh, you know, components of life that things have gone wrong in your life that

Nobody intended towards you. Nobody did that to you. No no conscious being or group was like, I want this to happen to you. And so there's no person or or group to be angry at. There's just the nature of

um misfortune, at least insofar as you've experienced up until this point in your life. And so that sort of blanketed anger has a much different r ramification than if somebody does something to me directly or a group does something to a group that I associate with that is tangibly um negative, that is reasonably uh You know, a line is reasonably drawn between that act.

um and we can agree on that as people, then then that anger is productive. But anger of just sort of the the humming and vibration in the back of your your skull and

neck and spine. I mean that's that's an anger that I think is is totally unproductive. So is there's a difficulty in recognizing those different kinds of angers, maybe to an extent. Um But you you definitely don't want to be so willing to be angry that you find yourself angry about things that are are totally useful to be angry about and and so passive that you you you neglect the expression and and, you know, actually recognizing an anger you feel and experience about things that warrant

um a frustration that if you express it, people will understand, people will change, and by not expressing your frustration and anger towards people or or phenomena that can comprehend a reasonable, you know, back and forth between you and them. You're actually doing you and them a disservice because they don't have the information to maintain a useful, healthy relationship. And so they're just gonna assume everything is

is is kosher, everything's fine as is'cause you haven't expressed otherwise. So you just you just sort of um propagate, you continue the the problem by being passive in those sorts of situations. And so there like I said, I mean there's there's different ways of considering anger and different kinds of anger, but it's important to to try to, you know, delineate those two.

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Suffering in many ways, and even the desire to escape desire is a desire as well. And then evolution sort of hardwired dissatisfaction into us. Mm-hmm. Uh and we sort of may we may secretly prefer striving over satisfaction in many ways. So how the fuck do we survive then? Uh well we survive this because that uh fuels survival, in my view. It it's inescapable. I I I mean, I know that there are people that, you know, maybe sit on mountainsides and and and

you know, do nothing all day long and and they're able to live an ascetic life and totally quell all desire. But for the vast majority of people, especially those who might be watching or listening to this, uh, that that's not gonna probably happen and and and it probably shouldn't. It doesn't you don't have to force some sort of romanticism around ascetic life. And so what you're left with is K kinda comes back to what we were talking about a moment ago when it comes to understanding the

the constraints around your decision making and what matters to you. Because you're never gonna eliminate desire and you're never gonna eliminate the continual pain Or dissatisfaction that comes from the very substrate that desire. functions on because desire is is It's not something that you you you get, you achieve, and then you're done. That obviously that's not how that works. It's the same with hunger. It's the same with every every breath is a desire for another breath.

And and that doesn't mean you're done. You you're gonna have to find the next breath, the next meal, the next everything. And so you don't escape that trap. That trap is paradoxical in in the same sense as many of the other things we've we've discussed where it's It's unfortunate because it makes you you're you're kind of destined to never feel an ultimate satisfaction. But by virtue of that you end up pursuing a ton of things. People, goals, achievements, preferences, art.

that you wouldn't otherwise ever care about if you were done. after your first moment of achievement. And so the trap is also the open door. I mean, it's it's it's both ways. It's you're you're stuck in an infinite you know, s hallway of open doors, but in each door you can decide what you care about and what meaning you might derive from what's inside that room. And then you get bored, unfortunately, and then you move on to the next room. But there seems to be, if you ki keep moving

uh an unending hallway of doors. So it's it's not it doesn't have to be purely tragic. Okay. So does that mean that happier people are simply less aware or are they are they better at metabolizing awareness? Oh, that's a very good way of framing that question. I I reluctant to answer that with conviction because I I just don't know if I know enough happy people to to say one way or the other. Um I think that

It could go it could be both. I don't I don't know if it's binary. I I'm not saying you're presenting it as a binary option, but I I think that you can be happy by being maybe uh less reflective and less aware about m absurdity and futility and all that and the sort of associated um you know, suffering with desire. You could be happy that way. And you can be happy is maybe not the best word, but you can be a kind of happy by also knowing um that everything you do is

ultimately absurd and futile. But but you're You're still experiencing moments that are enthralling and interesting and you're experiencing moments of love and wonder. And those don't you know, the awareness of the futility of those things for me doesn't negate them. Um, so I see no reason why both kinds of people or all kinds of people couldn't find maybe not happiness, but a a justification, a a wonder, um A reason to to keep moving.

I g I guess if everything is uncertain and constructed, why trust any of our conclusions? Oh I wouldn't. Y y you're saying why trust any conclusion? I I I definitely would not trust any conclusion, um, i at least in the absolute sense. Um when you say trust, do you mean believing wholly in its sort of finality? Yeah, I suppose

How can we trust any of our insights? Like w w our our own conclusions. Everything's uncertain, everything's constructed, our consciousness is filtering what we see in the world. There's no such thing as real truth. I how how are we not just permanently sort of wallowing in our own uncertainty? Yeah. So I I think I have a way out of that to some extent. everything isn't uncertain because what you're experiencing now

is is completely real and certain. And so you have that basis always, that tether to experience and selfhood and existence that you know, maybe can't be extrapolated out onto some sort of metaphysics. and and, you know, insight about some grander picture. But you can know that you're certainly feeling what you're feeling and experiencing right now and you can navigate a life and existence based on those feelings to the best of your ability.

And that doesn't provide certainty and I think the way that we often like to think of it, but it does provide a a barometer, a compass that we can can reference and and derive what we're really after from. What do you think makes life worth the trouble? I would I would certainly so I p Pursuit of Wonder is the name of of my YouTube channel. The reason why I'm bringing that up is because Um, pursuit of happiness is is the common phrasing.

And I believe that there's, you know, that's that's the wrong way of approaching the justification around pursuits and life in general. And so I think what makes life the tr worth the trouble is And it's by a very slim margin, I must say, but the experience of wonder, the experience of a self produced

meaning and and you can experience wonder from through art, through relationships, through friendships, through um anest you know, aesthetic experiences. Just uh walk through nature and and if you Have enough of those moments and enough is relative, but if you have enough of those moments you can draw, you can take the ingredients of the trouble of existence.

You can take the graphite of of that sort of sludge and you can make it into something beautiful and worthwhile. And it's it's like I said, it's by a certain margin for everybody, how much that actually feels like you made it worthwhile in terms of all the trouble. But I think that's

You're kind of in a boxing match that you're destined to lose, but you're still putting up a hell of a good fight and there's you know, there's so much spirit in that. There's you know, everybody loves an underdog story and I believe each of us Are are the underdogs up against our lives and existence? But we we put up a hell of a fight and that's that makes it worth it. Mm. Do you think uh self-awareness makes love deeper or more fragile?

Probably more fragile if I had to pick. Um, the reason I would say that is because. It it it makes you maybe more self conscious i in obviously self conscious and self awareness are almost synonyms but

Self conscious in the more typical sense of the word, where you're worried about how you're coming off and how you're integrating with somebody else's um preference preferences and desires. However, on the flip side of that, um to be more self aware is to recognize and this is one thing that I think is useful in all areas of life, is to recognize, you know, how annoying you can be.

and how neurotic you can be. And so when you recognize uh uh a more granular sense of your neuroses or your annoyances or your all the sorts of things that make you on a day to day basis from inside your skull a little bit challenging to deal with. to be more aware of those qualities makes you more understanding of another person's uh difficulties.

with dealing with those qualities. And if you're not aware of those qualities, then you might never understand why is this person reacting to me in such a way? Why are they feeling this sort of way in relation to my behavior? Um, you know that you have a certain outward behavior, but without recognizing the proper, you know, picture, the full picture of those qualities and how they become manifest and why they are the way they are.

it it can be challenging to empathize with somebody who is trying to be as close to you as possible. Um an and they obviously you are as close to you as possible, humanly possible. And if they're trying to get anywhere near that

without recognizing those qualities, you you do tend to lack the empathy for their perspective and experience. So I I think ultimately this may be more of a benefit, but it can be also very challenging because you you want to you always want I mean when you're you're you're always seeking ideal circumstances at least for me. And so when you're aware of all those negative qualities

I'm always seeking to integrate them fully and properly um into myself and and in a way that makes sense for other people that I'm close with. And um that's a i impossible goal. And so that also can make you, you know, maybe over over zealous, over angered by by the lack of success in certain areas like that. Mm. Yeah. Robert Pantano, ladies and gentlemen, dude, you rule. I love your YouTube channel. The book's fantastic. Where should people go? To check out everything you do.

Appreciate it, Chris. Yeah. So I have uh a new book, uh Terrible Paradox of Self Awareness. That's coming out um March tenth. So depending on when you're watching this, it's available for pre-order now. After March 10th, it's obviously available for regular order. And then YouTube channel is Pursuit of Wonder.

Try to come out with videos a couple times a month over there and then uh Pursuit of Wonder everywhere else on all socials and pursuit of wonder.com. Fuck yeah. Dude, I appreciate you, man. Congratulations. Thanks so much, Chris. I really appreciate you. If you are looking for new reading suggestions, look no further than the Modern Wisdom Reading List. It is one hundred books that you should read before you die. The most interesting, life-changing, and impactful book.

I've ever read with descriptions about why I like them and links to go and buy them. And you can get it right now for free by going to chriswillex.com/slash books. That's chriswillex.com slash books.