124 Beyond Good & Evil Morality: How To Own Your Reality

"Goodness is something to be chosen. When a man cannot choose he ceases to be a man." (Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange). Noelfry and I discuss Master vs. Slave consciousness in both society and in one's personal life. We cover the foundational actions of "owning your reality". I reference some fictional examples from the Lion King, A Clockwork Orange, and Shantaram.

Transcript

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According to the podcast or according to your definition,

Master nobility is when there is no separation between a person's will and a person's action.

And when I heard that I thought a lot about kids and how we're kind of born in that state of like,

A child doesn't really lie.

A child is very vulnerable in their power.

A child is always pushing boundaries.

So it's just safe to say that children are kind of,

We're all kind of born into that master nobility from the get go.

Master morality.

Yeah,

I kind of I mean,

I think it starts really young.

That like,

Depending on how your parents or your environment treats you,

You know,

At I think around the terrible twos is probably when someone either diverts from master morality or diverts from their nobility,

I guess like nobility is kind of like the natural state,

To your point.

But some people at a very young age learn,

I can't be myself.

Therefore,

I need to morph who I am,

To be liked or to be accepted or not get hurt by my my actual masters who were when you're two years old,

Are your parents or whoever's raising you.

So I think someone who's raised in a healthy way,

Grows up still feeling for the most part that I can do or like my my feelings and my desires are valid.

Whereas maybe someone with who's like oppressed at it,

From the beginning of their life,

Grows up in slave morality,

Feeling like I can't be myself,

I have to morph myself or change myself to exist,

Basically.

So then would would slave morality just be a part of socialization and,

You know,

Becoming a productive member of society?

I think that's part of it.

I think,

You know,

Obviously,

Like the way Nietzsche says it,

I mean,

Slave morality sounds really bad,

As opposed to like being more communal or whatever.

But I think he was kind of attacking Marxism as well.

But I think,

You know,

As I talked about in the podcast,

Everyone's got a little bit of slave morality in them,

And we should,

We shouldn't just think we're the only person that matters at all times.

But as far as our individual psychology goes,

If someone's like really heavily weighted on slave morality,

What we would now today say is like,

Oh,

They have no boundaries,

Like we identify now,

That's not a good thing,

Right?

Like,

You should at least have like personal agency.

And then the master,

If you're really in your master morality,

You can choose to sacrifice something of yourself for other people,

Or you can choose to go without for the sake of people you care about,

But not in a way that it's reactive and you don't have choice.

That's the difference.

It's like,

Have you seen Clockwork Orange?

I haven't.

I don't know if I might have mentioned this in this episode.

Definitely mentioned in some podcasts were like,

Basically,

The guy's a criminal,

Really fucked up criminal.

He's doing all this bad stuff.

He goes into this program where they basically brainwash him to feel sick every time he has a violent thought.

And there's this guy who's like his mentor,

Who's fighting for his rights.

He says the theme of the movie,

Which is,

If you don't have choice,

There's no real morality.

Like,

If you can't choose to be good or evil,

If you're forced into being good,

You're not really a good person necessarily,

Because you didn't choose it.

And that's what I think about when I think about like,

You have to be in a noble state to actually be good.

Like if you do nice things with other people,

Because you're afraid of what society will,

If you're afraid of getting thumbs down on social media,

You're not really being good.

You're just being afraid of the mob,

Or you're being afraid of the authority figure or whatever.

I think you mentioned that how it's our internal audience,

When our internal audience is more important than the external one.

That's when we're in master morality.

And I connected that to validation,

Because just bringing up the social media example,

Like when you seek external validation,

You're kind of giving your power away to validate yourself to other people.

And then you're just a slave to other people's opinion.

Yeah,

Basically.

Yeah,

Because it comes down to whose opinion matters more,

Yours or the other person.

Like if you're actually enslaved by someone,

Well,

In your reality is,

Of course,

Like their opinions affect whether you eat or not.

So that kind of makes sense.

But to be a physically free person,

And still behave like other people's opinions matter more than your own,

You're turning yourself into a slave,

Which is obviously not beneficial.

And ultimately,

You're not even going to be a good person,

Because you're only going to react to what other people say is good,

As opposed to making your own choices.

So is the master just someone who follows their inner compass,

Regardless?

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I like the term because it's like,

Obviously,

None of us are owning estates.

But if you take that as a metaphor for your reality,

Like,

Are you the king of your reality?

Yes or no?

And it ties into stuff you and I have talked about before.

If you're in the master archetype,

Then you're really taking responsibility for what you experience,

As opposed to complaining about external forces.

So as a master,

Is it possible for a master to be both or either or a tyrant and then a wise king?

Because both are just following their inner compass.

The tyrant is doing,

You know,

He's in his power.

He's still doing what he thinks is right.

Not so much for other people,

But for himself,

Whereas the wise king is doing things while he's aware of other people and the kind of repercussions that could have on them.

And I thought back to the Lion King metaphor that you brought up with Mufasa and Scar,

Like the main difference between Mufasa and Scar is that Mufasa is aware of the subjects,

Whereas Scar is only in it for himself.

Yeah.

I mean,

Both Mufasa and Scar do live by master morality.

Like they're both taking responsibility.

It's just once they have power,

Mufasa does right by people and Scar is an asshole.

And like,

It's kind of like the thing where in our culture now,

People are quick to demonize anyone with power because of course,

Someone who's an asshole with power can do bad things.

Like take the Harvey Weinstein's or the Scars of the world.

But so like the idea is,

OK,

If people with power are doing these bad things,

We need to take away power,

Which turns everyone into a slave.

But people forget there's also Mufasas in the world.

And without the Mufasas or the Simbas,

The world will be overrun by tyrants,

By Scars.

Like you need,

I mean,

There's lots of models of explaining this.

Like Colonel Grossman,

Who's on my podcast,

Calls people either a sheep,

A wolf or a sheepdog.

Like sheep are people who are basically enslaved morality,

Who are basically helpless,

Which is most of the population.

There's wolves who are assholes who have power,

Who eat the sheep.

But there's also the sheepdogs who also have power,

But they choose to defend the sheep.

And like,

I mean,

The societal implication is you need people who are able to at least fight the Scars of the world.

I know I'm mixing metaphors here,

But like otherwise everyone's going to be overrun by wolves or by Scars.

And like that's like coming down to masculinity.

Yeah.

It's like that thing of like if you castrate the male population,

There's going to be some assholes who still retain power because they say fuck you to the group.

And they're going to,

You're basically like giving more power to the assholes.

Like a lot of this like masculinity shaming,

Like this toxic masculinity,

Or even the MeToo movement.

I mean,

I'm not against it in its motive,

But like the only people who are really affected by the MeToo movement were guys who give a shit,

Right?

Like the actual assholes didn't give a shit.

It's like all they were doing was attacking,

Ultimately like affecting guys who were probably meaning to be good in the first place,

And then you just have more assholes relative to the population.

Anyway,

You know,

There's like,

It's yeah,

I mean,

Strength is the first virtue.

If you're not strong enough to do stuff,

You can't choose to be good or evil.

So there's a neutrality to it.

To being a master,

It doesn't really have to fall on either side of the spectrum.

To be good could be evil.

Well,

It's like a prerequisite to being good or evil,

Right?

Because like,

If you don't have power,

Then you can't,

Like back to the Clockwork Orange thing,

Like if you don't have power to affect reality,

Then you don't have the ability to be good or evil.

You're just,

You're just caught in someone else's game.

I think on the psychological level,

The very first thing is taking responsibility for stuff,

Which is something I've been thinking about like a lot more,

Obviously,

Since I did that episode,

I was like,

Am I actually practicing what I'm preaching here?

And it made me think,

Like,

I had to really go into my life of like,

Where am I complaining about things or people?

Where am I resenting stuff,

Even little things?

And I'm like,

Every time I'm blaming something that's not myself,

I'm basically going into slave resentment,

Or resumptance.

I'm assuming someone else is in charge of stuff or my experience rather than taking responsibility.

It's kind of like Jocko's whole thing of extreme ownership is essentially extreme nobility.

Can you really take responsibility for everything you experience or that you have the ability to influence?

So I think that's the first thing is like,

Can you really take responsibility for everything,

Which is really hard for some people,

Because if some stuff in your life sucks,

You have to own up to the fact that maybe on some level,

Not obviously not you're not trying to blame victims necessarily,

But like,

There is something you can control,

Right?

With everything.

Yeah,

Even the worst experiences,

There's always something you could have done differently.

That's something I've come to realize with the shadow work that I've been doing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

What kind of stuff have you been doing with that shadow work?

Just so I'm reframing certain memories that some of them I might have talked to you about during some of our coaching sessions,

But just reframing them going from a lesson powered viewpoint.

So something with my mom that happened,

She was totally wrong for it.

But I'm coming more to the realization.

I'm seeing her as a little girl and where she was coming from.

And I'm taking myself out of it and kind of seeing how I could have reacted differently.

So to sum it up,

She rejected me.

I felt rejected in a way by her actions.

And it was a very strong memory.

And it played out.

I see it play out in my life a lot of times.

But now I've been doing a lot of journaling on it.

Just kind of seeing how I was the one who internalized that rejection.

And I allowed it to affect me to the extent that it did.

It wasn't the best way to talk to your child at the time.

But I also have the power to kind of give myself that validation that I was seeking from her at that point in time.

So it's a lot of empowerment from my past that I've been working on.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean,

That's the whole thing with forgiveness.

It's like,

It's not for the other person,

Although it's nice to have a better relationship with your mom,

For instance.

So when you forgive someone,

You're basically saying,

You don't affect me anymore.

It's like that reclaiming of power that you're mentioning,

Which is important.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Because to go through the next,

I mean,

There are probably a lot of people in your situation,

Except maybe had a very similar experience,

Who blamed their mother for the next 10 years.

Or they blame their mother their whole lives.

And of course,

They don't do anything with their lives.

It bleeds out into everything else.

If you think that your mom's actions are preventing you from experiencing something,

Then of course,

How could you take responsibility for the life you want to live?

How could you create your own reality?

If your baseline assumption is that my mom was able to affect me so terrible,

You know,

Whatever,

You know,

It's like,

Yeah,

It's really important.

It's really,

It's a great way to step out of slave morality into nobility,

What you just described.

Things like inner work is the key to becoming a master almost because you,

You,

You can't influence your reality if you're still tied to the past.

So it's like the people who actually do influence the reality are those who have let go of their past or work through it enough.

Because I don't think you ever do let go of the past entirely.

Yeah.

Or get to the point where it feels it's like,

Oh,

That's interesting.

Like that was,

That's interesting that that happened to me.

I mean,

Obviously it's easier said than done,

But so this becomes neutral.

But you said something that's interesting about seeing your mom as a little girl.

Like that's,

That's,

And it's really powerful.

It's really cool to be able to see her side of things and like realize like she wasn't obviously meaning to do anything.

Like she knew she was working through her own stuff and like,

And I think on a macro level,

Like if you choose to have kids or whatever,

Anyone you interact with,

You,

You've now stopped like this cycle of,

I mean,

Traumas.

I don't like to use the word trauma,

But maybe it's the only word here.

Like,

You know,

She probably did that to you because of her parents and their parents and their parents.

And you've actually stopped a cycle potentially.

Right.

So you'll treat your kids a little,

You're not going to pass that pain on essentially.

That resonated so much.

And I know the exact experience that she had with her dad,

When she was rejected in the same manner because she told me.

And it came up during shadow work and I literally bawled my eyes out at that point that it was just,

It was like a synchronicity almost.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You ever,

I mean,

This is non sequitur kind of,

But you ever,

You know,

The book a hundred years of solitude.

No.

Okay.

Well,

All right.

Well,

Anyway,

It's about,

It's like about this family,

This Colombian family over like seven generations and you see like these certain cycles repeat in kind of a funny way,

But it's also kind of dark in that you're like,

Man,

It's just like,

They're just passing on trauma kind of in a mystical way,

The way the book puts it.

But anyway the thing you were saying though,

About seeing their side of it,

I remember,

Cause I know you're on the street in New York,

Right?

Or something.

Yeah.

I'm just remembering like one of the times I really got this is when I was a cab driver in New York because obviously in New York traffic is like,

You know,

It's easy to get pissed off.

But when I was driving every day and making eye contact with other,

You know,

Rude,

Supposedly rude cab drivers,

I realized like,

We're all dealing with the same shit,

Which is traffic.

Like,

So like,

I just had like this kind of moment of enlightenment while driving a cab,

You know,

Like being pissed off and like,

We're all equally pissed off.

We're all kind of being assholes to each other because we're all dealing with the same shit.

Like I can forgive this guy for humping at me.

And it,

Like all of a sudden it took away all the stress from traffic.

Like I all of a sudden didn't give a shit about anything.

And I was just like,

Yeah,

You know,

We're all in this together.

Like I kind of like felt a connection to the other pissed off cab drivers.

Yeah.

Because you know,

No one's an asshole on purpose,

You know?

Right.

It's like that empathy,

Just stepping into other people's shoes and seeing,

Cause we only ever see things from our perspective,

But the same thing that we may be dealing with other people are doing as well to varying degrees.

Yeah.

And you know how someone else got hurt,

You know,

It's not to say that you should forgive every behavior or not correct someone wronging you,

But understanding,

You know,

If like,

You know,

The example I like to use is like when someone gets pissed off about something,

Someone says,

If,

If,

If like that same mean comment,

Let's just say it's like a mean set of words,

Someone,

An insult someone gives you,

If it came from a four year old,

You,

You probably laugh at it.

Even like you think of the meanest thing of a four year old said it to you,

Unless you're really insecure,

You probably would laugh at it unless it really hits on some cord maybe.

But like,

You wouldn't get mad at a four year old,

Right?

You might be like,

Oh,

Okay.

It's like,

It's only threatening and insults only threatening if it's coming from someone who you assume can take,

Can actually detract from you,

Right off which a four year old we assume wouldn't,

Which again is kind of like the slave morality thing of like,

You know,

That a four year old is just a four year old.

So you don't,

You're not threatened by them.

You might even feel bad for them for thinking such mean thoughts if they said something rude to you,

Right?

Like but you can,

You know,

It's kind of like what you just did with your mom.

Like you could kind of imagine the guy or the person,

The asshole as a four year old,

And then you're not so upset anymore.

Right?

It's really recognizing that you are strong enough to not be taken down by a certain punch or something,

You know?

So in order to be a master,

Look at everyone like children or toddlers,

Or,

You know,

Or see yourself as big enough that no one else can really harm you.

Because I have all this opinion stuff,

You know,

If we're using like the analogy of like literal masters and slaves,

You know,

When in actually in a literal master slave situation,

There's like the whip,

Like the master has some way of actually doing harm.

But this is all kind of a metaphor for in our real life,

Like 100 thumbs downs on on YouTube or something is not actually as bad as getting whipped or is like doesn't actually affect you,

Right?

It's you're only letting it affect you.

So whatever it is,

Or what we know whatever social thing.

So how would you go about being a master without being an asshole?

Or because there's a way to be,

I think you said it in the episode,

I don't know if you ended up explaining it,

I might not caught it.

But said there's a way of being a master without being an asshole to the slave,

Or coming off as an asshole.

It's,

It's again,

A choice,

Right?

Like once you have power,

You can choose what to do with it.

You can choose to terrorize people or not.

The thing is,

You know,

This might be a bit of a romanticization.

But like,

If we take this idea that hurt people hurt people and whatnot,

Like,

What does one get out of terrorizing someone like,

What does one get out of hurting someone?

And actually,

If we go if you go into like,

You know,

So I've been still working on this history thing.

And like,

One example that I came across,

Which is interesting is that when a beta male feels threatened,

I'm talking about chimpanzees or different primates,

They'll attack the younger or like anyone subordinate to them,

Right?

Like,

And I don't know,

I read this in John Coates,

His book,

The Hour Between Wolf and Dog,

He was talking about like,

He's comparing middle level managers and on Wall Street to like beta males and a chimpanzee tribe or like the middle level guys,

Whenever they feel threatened,

They reassert or they get their hormones back up by attacking someone smaller than them.

The alpha male doesn't need to do that,

Because the alpha male knows that he's actually the alpha.

And you can see this with dogs,

Like if you ever see wild dogs or a pack of dogs,

The actual alpha is the most chill.

The next rung,

Like the next biggest dogs are like the beta males,

Like the second tier dogs are the ones who tend to terrorize everyone because they feel inferior to the alpha.

So I mean,

I do think this is true for humans,

Like someone in power who is using their power to terrorize other people probably feels insecure about it.

And it's kind of this primal way that we feel better about ourselves by bullying others or terrorizing others.

Whereas the actual alpha has nothing to gain from that.

Like,

You know,

If you know that you're the king,

Why force that on other people?

If you know everyone respects you,

You don't need to like,

You don't need to,

You know,

You don't need to spank people.

It reminds me of the winter effect because you do get power from terrorizing other people or weaker people than you,

Especially if you just took a loss like those middle managers would have from the higher ops.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It was interesting.

In that book,

He was saying how when like,

I don't remember the terms in Wall Street,

But like when a certain branch or desk takes a huge loss,

He's noticed that's when the middle managers become very aggressive towards their subordinates.

It's like they literally have had a drop in testosterone from this loss.

They feel shitty.

And the easiest way to bring it back up is by,

You know,

Passing the pain on essentially by like making someone feel inferior.

But when you just made a million dollars from a great trading day,

You don't need to do that.

You feel great.

You want to celebrate with people.

It's like when you actually feel like a winner,

You kind of want to raise people up.

Like that's a natural thing unless you're really fucked up or traumatized where you just want to hurt people all the time.

But we can say like that kind of trauma or that kind of feeling comes from just like feel like the ultimate loser.

Right.

You need to go around harming people to feel good about yourself.

And then on the other end of the spectrum,

The alpha,

He where does he derive his winner effect from the power?

Like he always feels like he has a million bucks.

Right.

Or he's just made a million dollars.

So he doesn't feel the need to beat up on other people.

Does that come from just having trust and confidence in himself or where does that?

It ultimately comes from winning.

Like he earned that status somehow.

When we're talking about human beings,

Like we don't have as strict a hierarchy as dogs or chimpanzees.

But yeah,

It comes from having actual wins.

But then the actual wins come from maybe having the mindset of like,

I am a winner.

Like,

You know,

It's,

You know,

I think there is a psychological side of it or an inner inner game side of things where you don't take your losses too seriously and you trust that you're always going to have more wins in the future.

I guess kind of the abundance mentality,

Like you're trusting more wins are coming in the future as opposed to,

You know,

Everyone has ups and downs on a down day.

If you take it so seriously that you let you actually let your hormones get depressed and cortisol rise and you feel shittier and shittier,

Then yeah,

You're going to have a harder time winning in the future.

And that's going to just like,

You're kind of confirming your reality.

You're going to confirm your reality of feeling like a loser of like,

You know,

And I experienced this with my brief time crypto trading of like,

Can I take a loss and trust that I'm going to win?

Actually,

This may be a more silly example.

I've been playing a lot of chess lately and I noticed even with chess,

Because you have a chess rating,

If I take a bad loss,

The rating drops and it's easy to feel shitty.

I can even notice like,

I'm starting to talk negatively,

Like,

Ah,

I'm so stupid,

Whatever.

But if I can,

Like,

If I can just silence that,

Because if I start like going into like,

Oh,

I'm so stupid,

I end up losing every other game after that.

Like it just like switches something off.

I become less sharp.

But if I can just like not take it that seriously,

Yeah,

You know,

I can actually use my abilities.

You're not giving your power away to the to the outcome.

You're a master.

You know that win or lose,

You're still decent at chess or however good you are.

Yeah,

I think it's to bring it to like the mass,

Like the macro trippy level,

Maybe like,

If you really at the core level believe that you influenced your reality,

Then any loss you seem to experience,

If you really believe that,

Then it's really just like a superficial whatever.

These are probably the ups and downs.

It's like,

You know,

Looking at your portfolio,

Like,

I know it's going to go up.

It doesn't matter if it went down 10 percent today.

Like,

I know it's going to go up so I can be chill.

And that's ultimately the most pleasant way to go through life.

What would you say the role is for slave morality?

I feel like it has to do a lot with socialization and making sure that people because let's take a human being.

A person is primal.

They have urges.

And one person unleashed can be a lot.

Just thinking of a toddler as a baby and in master morality,

A toddler is always pushing boundaries.

They're always curious,

Always expanding,

Very confident in themselves.

They don't doubt themselves unless given reason.

So if everyone was in master morality,

The world would be chaotic.

Yeah.

Does does slave morality have are its implications to socialize people and keep people under control?

Well,

I mean,

I think from an anthropological view,

Like especially when we started coalescing in groups bigger than 150 where people don't know each other,

There had to be a split.

And like that's perhaps one of the origins.

That's one thing I get into in the history podcast.

Like once people started forming these big agricultural towns where like no one can not everyone can know each other.

There had to be a divide in classes because like you said,

You can't have you know,

You can't have everyone being a chief.

And I think this is the original split.

And we can even see this in non-human animals.

Not everyone can be the alpha,

Right?

Like there is a stratification.

There has to be winners and losers for the group to function at a certain level.

I got a really small group.

Maybe everyone can be an alpha.

But like once you get past a certain group size,

It's not possible.

Even like just with like,

You know,

Human teams,

Like if you ever worked on a team with a bunch of people,

I would guess like I think six is probably the maximum that like a bunch of really mature people can all be the leader in quotes.

I mean,

This is maybe consistent like with SEAL teams.

Like they,

I think they're only as big as six.

Like that's the maximum size because once you go beyond six,

Someone has to be in charge.

Otherwise you can't make decisions.

So on like a human economic level,

I think there had to be a class divide at some point because this is even in a Brave New World,

They talk about,

I don't know if you know the story,

But like basically it's like in the future,

Society has broken down into like clear classes.

Like everyone has a letter,

Like either you're an alpha,

A beta,

A gamma,

Whatever,

And you have,

And that determines your access and like what you're allowed to do in society.

And they talk about how they tried to make everyone an alpha and they would just all fight because no one wanted to like do the menial labor jobs.

It's like they had to like force people into lower classes just as someone,

Just like it's clear of who does what.

This is kind of why we have dominance hierarchies or there's dominance hierarchies in nature because you know,

If there's a group of,

I don't know,

Wolves or whatever,

And there's only enough food for half of them,

Who gets to eat?

Well,

The top of the,

You know,

The most dominant ones.

Otherwise you don't know who's going to eat and maybe no one gets to eat.

So anyway,

I don't know.

I might've gone off on a tangent there,

But yeah,

So I think to a degree there has to be,

I mean,

This is an unfortunate part of nature.

People might not like to hear this,

But there has to be an underclass,

Particularly when a group gets to be a certain size.

Yeah.

It's almost a natural result of it,

Of being part of society.

There has to be,

For it to function properly,

Otherwise it's all just chaos and people are trying to,

Too many cooks in the kitchen would be the same for that.

Yeah.

And I talked about this in the How to be Attractive episode.

Like you know,

Dominance hierarchies are all contextual,

Right?

And I think the best thing someone can do in our modern society is to carve out your little thing,

Like the thing that you're really good at and really interested in that.

And you can basically make yourself at the top of this thing as opposed to like trying to,

I mean,

The cliche of trying to be like everyone else,

You're not going to be the best at everyone else.

You're not going to be the best at trying to be someone else,

But you can be the best.

You can be the absolute best at being yourself.

And that's like your little kingdom,

However big it is,

It doesn't matter.

And that's where you could feel good about yourself.

In the United States or in the world,

In terms of the wealth hierarchy,

You might not be at the top,

But you can still feel really good about yourself in your world.

And I think that's part of being a healthy person and part of being a master.

It's like,

What is your thing as opposed to being in the underclass of everyone else's reality.

And I think people with really high self-esteem,

Because obviously not everyone can be alpha in every context,

But people with really high self-esteem have found their thing that they feel really good about.

I feel very good about certain things,

But if I can go to a situation where I know nothing,

Or I feel very incompetent,

But if I can recognize that I matter somewhere,

I've done something good with my life somewhere else,

I don't have to feel inferior to everyone just because I'm in a situation where I don't know what's going on.

Whereas someone who's not found their thing where they can derive security from,

They always feel inferior,

Which maybe is what causes them to be an asshole.

Or I don't know,

Maybe not always,

But I think that's the social reason to find what you're good at or find your life purpose.

You can be a better person in every context that way.

And they say you usually find your life purpose when you find your passion.

And then there's no divide between will and action because your will is your passion.

You almost have to be a master to have any significant impact on the world.

Definitely.

If you're in slave morality or slave consciousness,

You're not calling any shots.

You're just doing stuff for other people.

You're making someone else rich.

Your actions are someone else's will.

What's that?

You're stuck in the tension of being a slave and you can't focus on anything else because you're stuck in other people's traumas.

Yeah,

For sure.

For the book club,

For the men's group book club,

We're reading The Inner Game of Tennis.

And I'm on one of the later chapters right now where he's talking about,

Obviously we all know the importance of focus.

If you focus on something,

You can do better with it.

You can be in a more Zen state,

All that stuff.

But he's saying the best way to develop focus and quiet your mind is not by yelling at yourself to quiet or yelling at yourself to focus,

But to find something really interesting.

If you're really interested in something,

Which ultimately would be your passion,

You don't need any willpower to force yourself to be interested in what you're interested in.

The trick is finding the things that actually fulfill you as opposed to getting sucked into YouTube or getting sucked into a social media feed.

Right now I'm kind of obsessed with chess.

I know I sound like such a nerd.

I need no willpower.

I'm getting better and better at chess.

I don't know if it's going to do anything useful for my life,

Although I'd like to think so.

I'm getting better and better at chess.

I'm fucking upset every time I take a shit or any time I have some time free,

I want to play another chess game and it's making me better.

There's no resistance there,

Maybe to the detriment of everything else.

My girlfriend doesn't like how much chess I'm playing.

But yeah,

Fine.

It sounds like quite the obsession in the bathroom too.

Yeah.

I mean,

Because obviously I've gotten obsessed with video games or different things.

It's nice to be obsessed with something that seems to be improving my brain power.

But I might just be telling myself that to justify my addiction.

I don't know.

What have you been up to hobbies wise or when you're not doing shadow work?

I've been jump roping a lot.

All right.

Yeah.

You're telling me you got into that a while ago.

Yeah.

I've been just learning new tricks,

How to double dodge different leg positions.

I've actually found a flow state in jump roping.

The other day I put on a song and I stopped focusing so much on the mechanics of jump roping and more on music and trying to jump on time with the music.

And I managed to jump rope to the entire song while I was more focused on dancing than actually jump roping.

And I thought it was interesting because when I focus on jump roping,

I mess up more often than not.

And this time I focus for like two minutes straight without stopping.

I know you said you're real busy with school and stuff,

But you might like that the book that we're reading for the men's group,

The Inner Game of Tennis.

It's exactly what we're talking about right now.

But finding that interest and flow and thinking less and finding the perfect action more.

Have you heard of the Weck rope?

It's kind of a new thing.

It's like I've been using this guy I was training with in Thailand,

Tommy.

It's kind of like a jump rope,

But you don't jump.

You swing the rope and it's supposed to teach your body how to.

.

.

It's basically teaching your left-right coordination.

So I've been doing that a lot and I can really enter a flow state with it.

But yeah,

It's a similar idea of you just getting into the feeling.

It just feels good to do it.

You don't have to think about it so much.

Right,

It's that middle ground between effort and pleasure where it just blurs off and you go into flow.

I think that's what flow is,

Honestly.

Yeah,

It is.

There's a chart for it.

How much effort you put into something versus how much you enjoy.

Yeah,

The confidence and challenge crossing.

Yeah,

Because that's the other thing with master morality.

If you really are in master morality,

Your idea of leisure isn't doing nothing.

Something I've been thinking about with social events,

Most normal social events are doing nothing.

They're going on.

.

.

The ultimate thing to do with your time is go on vacation and sit on the beach and do nothing or get drunk and depress yourself more and feel less or eat junk food.

People often get together to just engorge their senses,

Which makes sense from a slave archetype perspective,

If all you're doing with your time is stuff that you don't want to do,

Of course,

You're going to try to find a relief from that and basically do less and take the opportunity to get fat.

That's the ultimate.

.

.

If you're actually in a slave situation,

Of course,

You'd want to do that.

You'd want to do nothing.

But if you're really the master with your free time,

You don't want to do nothing.

If you're always doing what you want,

Then on your pleasure time,

You want to do more of what you want.

You want to do challenging things.

You want to go hiking.

You want to explore the world.

You want to do challenging things with your body for fun because why wouldn't you do that?

A lot of our assumptions of what you should do recreationally come from slave morality,

Getting drunk and talking about nothing,

Laying on the beach and sipping Mai Tais and doing nothing.

That's only fun.

That's only pleasurable if you normally do stuff you don't want to do.

It's an escape.

You're escaping from what your usual reality is.

Yeah.

It has enough control over you that you need to get away from it versus just living in it all the time.

Yeah.

The master,

The most fun thing for the master consciousness is let's see what I'm made of.

When you look at guys like Joe Rogan comes to mind or what's the guy who yells a lot?

This guy who killed a bear.

What's his name?

It's skipping my mind,

But he wears a suit a lot.

Anyway,

Guys who go out and do challenging stuff,

They want to see what they're made of.

David Goggins is a great example.

That is master morality.

With my free time,

I want to challenge myself.

I want to find that flow state by challenging myself as opposed to making the challenge super low where all I have to do is lay on the beach and get fat.

That's the difference.

That's a difference.

Sounds like fearlessness.

You just want to go out there and conquer the world,

See what you could do with it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

What's the best thing a person can do to drive themselves more into master morality?

Taking more and more responsibility is one thing.

With that,

Deciding what you really want to do.

It's like getting into the very simple,

I want,

Fill in the blank.

The slave doesn't get a chance to really think about what he or she wants because they're not in charge of.

.

.

They can't act on their will.

Whereas if you're really in the master morality,

You should know what you want to do or you should work towards knowing what you want to do if you want to take on that archetype because what will you do?

What will you do if you don't have to do anything?

You should,

I mean,

Not say you should,

But yeah,

You will find something you want to do if you don't feel any pressure to do anything.

And the master usually doesn't.

.

.

They have all that free time to do whatever they want to do.

So logically,

They would want to do what most interests them.

Whereas the slave has to do things.

Usually the slave has to work for other people so they're not doing what they want to be doing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And this shift you see in Landmark is.

.

.

A lot of personal development 101 type stuff is switching your language from,

I have to do this to I want to do this or I get to do this.

It's basically a shift towards like,

I'm actually in control of my reality.

I'm choosing to do this.

And obviously if you're working a job that you need to work,

That you don't really want to work,

Everyone's got a little bit of slave morality.

Unless you have unlimited money and unlimited and you're like emperor of the universe,

Of course there's going to be some limitations.

At some point you can't do whatever you want without consequences that you don't want to have.

Fine.

But we should always work towards that.

And when I'm coaching a guy who's in a job they don't like,

But they have certain constraints,

Which we all have,

What I try to direct that person to is like,

Let's be real with what you really want if you have no limitations and how much of that can you actually do now?

Because I think a lot of people when they're stuck in slave morality,

They don't realize how much of what they actually want is already available.

They think,

Oh,

I need to have X amount of dollars in the bank account or I can only do this after I quit my job.

But if someone gets really honest with themselves and what they want,

Sometimes what they really want is not that hyperbolic thing of a yacht party.

Maybe that is what some people want,

But if you really are in master morality and you have the option for the yacht party or whatever,

It's like,

You know what?

What I really want to do is build a rocking chair from scratch.

It's like,

Well,

Shit,

You could do that right now.

You don't need to quit your job.

There's all these things.

I meet a lot of people who are like,

I want to be a writer.

It's like,

Why are you writing?

It's like,

No,

I don't.

It's like,

There's all these things about being a writer that people romanticize about that's far off,

Like getting validation and this and that.

But the actual thing of being a writer is writing.

Are you writing?

Well,

Then you could be a writer.

You just take some time and write.

A lot of people mix up the action and all these accoutrements that they think are far off and they can't have.

Whereas most of what most people want is probably already accessible.

Right.

And control.

You know,

There's only so many things that you can control.

Even a master,

Even the master of the universe can control so much.

You know,

They can't control whether someone assassinates them.

But I think you said this in the episode,

Too,

When you focus your scope on what you can control,

Then you start to see your power come out more because you can work towards those goals,

Even if it's just small baby steps.

Whereas the slave,

He sees those goals and he sees what he cannot control and how far away they are from him.

And actually,

By fully utilizing everything that's within your control,

That realm of control becomes bigger and bigger.

Like what just came to mind is like,

See,

Someone wants to be a musician.

There are certain things that are out of your control,

Like certain like one,

Your talent.

Maybe you just suck at music and no matter how much you want it,

You know,

You're,

You know,

Whatever.

Or like,

You know,

People finding you or Spotify,

Whatever.

There's a lot of stuff.

Right.

But the actual thing you can control is actually playing and playing what you want to play.

And the only chance you're going to have at becoming a famous musician is by getting really good by playing a lot.

Right.

It's like if you just do a lot of what you can control,

Like if you want to be a writer,

If you just write a lot,

Not to say that you're going to become rich and famous as an author,

But that's your only chance is by actually doing what you already can control.

Whereas someone who complains or like assumes like,

Oh,

I can never have that.

I don't even write.

Of course,

They're not going to have their,

Their reality is never going to expand.

Right.

It's actually probably going to get smaller if they say I can't write,

Don't,

You know,

No point in trying essentially,

As opposed to forgetting about the outcome and just doing what you enjoy,

Which is the action of writing or whatever thing,

Then something could happen.

I'm curious,

How did Nietzsche go about discovering these archetypes?

Because they seem to be prevalent everywhere in life.

It's just a part of being a human.

I don't know.

I mean,

From what I've read,

Which is not certainly not all of this stuff at all.

His when he was writing this stuff about master morality and slave morality,

He was kind of for foreseeing that Europe was moving towards slave morality.

And like,

Because like,

I think the age of imperialism was ending.

And like people in Europe,

Like move,

Like governments were kind of moving towards more socialist policies and culture was moving towards more collectivist ideals.

And he was like,

Warning people,

You know,

Over well over 100 years ago,

That Europe was going to move into this like kind of slave consciousness,

Which it's funny reading it now.

It's like,

That's kind of where we're at now with like,

Call out culture and like,

And stuff,

You know,

It's like,

It's like,

Wow,

Like he called it,

You know,

He didn't,

He didn't call some other things like Nazi Germany and stuff,

Necessarily.

But he was kind of warning,

I guess he was kind of warning about the rise of communism and Marxism and stuff that might have actually been his influence.

I'm not sure.

Karl Marx is called my I don't know exactly I'm speculating that Karl Marx influenced Nietzsche's counter thoughts.

It's almost like if you're going to be a part of a dominance hierarchy,

You're going to fall in either role.

And you could either be conscious of it or unconscious of it.

Just thinking because he,

He based his examples on governments,

And that's a structure of power,

And how it was shifting.

So I assume it's just a natural part of being in a dominance hierarchy.

And it is because there are masters and there are slaves at the top.

Yeah,

But I think is most,

You know,

I'm not trying to restructure society.

It's like being conscious of it in yourself,

And doing your best to like,

Even if you're obviously working in a dead end job,

Because you have to or whatever,

You're in kind of like certain slave situations,

You don't have control,

You can do your best.

Or at least,

You know,

You at least admit to yourself,

Okay,

Like,

I'm kind of taking shit from my boss,

I need the paycheck,

Fine.

It happens,

Right.

But don't don't trick yourself into thinking that you don't have the ability to walk away if you don't want to.

So you can choose to take people shit,

Right.

But you know,

I'm not saying that everyone should like to say fuck you to everyone.

And then you'll end up,

You know,

There's probably a lot of homeless people who that's how they end up home.

I don't know that's true.

But like,

You might end up homeless,

I'm not saying you should do that you can make active choices.

But like you said,

Like being conscious of conscious of what you're doing,

And doing your best to at least be like,

Okay,

As a for master consciousness,

I'm choosing to take shit from this person,

Because I need the paycheck.

And that's my choice,

As opposed to assuming you have no choice,

Which of course,

Is going to make you less and less empowered.

It's like your it's basically your basic assumption of reality,

Right?

It's not to say that you need to be king of the world.

It's like,

Can you be king of what you experience and make the choices based on your own?

Yeah,

Your own volition rather than assuming you have no control.

And the control seems to be more for from your inner authority versus the outer authority.

Like you're you're either choosing to play in your inner well,

Either way,

You have to play in the outer authority because you have to,

You have to play nice with other people in society.

But it's like how how much do you allow your inner voice compass authority to,

To dictate,

You know,

What you experience outside of you?

Do you do you give more power to that?

Or do you give more power to what you want to do and your desires?

Yeah,

And I would invite anyone who's listening to this and like,

Like,

You know,

It's like,

Take some time and think,

What if I did everything I would do I actually I mean,

I guess that's the fundamental question,

Like,

What do I actually want in every situation?

Like I gave like,

Kind of a mundane example.

Recently,

I kind of just became I admit it to myself,

I really don't like certain kind of social events.

I find them I always find them kind of boring.

And I have to kind of fake myself till I get along and like some boring small talk events,

Right?

Something I've been kind of aware of,

But I would still go to these events because I like the people there and I want them to like me signed up doing these things that don't really interest me,

Right?

What if I just stopped doing that?

And the worst and I that's what I've been doing,

I just stopped going to all social events that don't interest me.

The only consequence is maybe these people who weren't I wasn't who I liked,

But I wasn't really close with in the first place.

Maybe they think I'm a jerk now.

I don't know.

Maybe not.

Maybe they understand.

But it actually doesn't even matter.

Even the worst case scenario doesn't matter.

And I'm actually happier as I spend more of my time doing what I actually want to do.

I play chess.

I mean,

Among other things outside of nerd shit,

Things that I actually find interesting,

As opposed to like,

Yeah,

As opposed to doing something that is actually making my I'm actually just by going to events like that I was reinforcing my slave consciousness of like,

Oh,

I need to do these things I don't want to do for something other people can control,

Which is their validation,

Which doesn't even matter to me in the first place.

And I would challenge someone to look through everything in their life.

Again,

With your job,

Maybe you can't.

Maybe it's what you choose to do is work at the job you don't like for the money.

Maybe that's your choice.

But at least recognize you have the option to quit.

You have the option to say fuck you and spend some time living on your savings or doing some other thing for what you really want.

Because the worst thing would be to go through 30 years of your life or whatever and realize,

Oh shit,

I wasted my adulthood.

And there's all this stuff I could have been doing.

I mean,

I'm writing a book about my time in my mid 20s.

So I'm going through all my journals to look through the notes.

I've taken pretty good notes throughout my life of what's going on.

And there's a bunch of things that consistently I'm like,

Fuck,

I feel a little bit like a twinge of regret because I made the wrong decision looking back.

And almost always it was like a slave decision.

It was based on something of like,

Oh,

I need to be responsible.

Or I can be in a lot of things were like,

Oh man,

I can't do this thing.

It's financially irresponsible.

I'm like,

Fuck,

I should have got on that plane.

That's actually one time I bought a one-way ticket to Mexico.

I was broke.

I was like,

Okay,

In three or four months,

Whenever this plane ticket is,

I trust the universe.

I'll have more money in my bank account.

I could enjoy this thing.

The time came,

I didn't have more money in my bank account.

I was like,

Fuck,

I can't go on the trip.

It'd be irresponsible.

I look back and like,

Man,

I should have went on the fucking trip because eventually I had more money anyway.

I robbed myself of an adventure.

The worst case scenario is I would have my bank account when I went to zero and I would have had to figure something out.

I don't know what I would have done.

But I would have been fine.

Now obviously I could look back with hindsight,

But I would have been fine and I would have had an amazing experience.

Instead,

I stayed in New York working restaurant jobs and ultimately not having money in the last place anyway.

There's a bunch of stuff like that.

Man,

I should have at least admitted to myself that I had control and I assumed I didn't.

Anyway.

That reminds me of an abundance mentality,

Just trusting the future.

You did trust the future.

Then you try to control it so much.

I'm going to have this money by the time I get there.

Then when you came,

You could have chosen to continue to trust the future.

But your logical,

Responsible mind told you not to.

Yeah.

I'm not saying you should always do the reckless thing.

I'm glad that I've saved money and stuff like that.

I know people who always trusted things would work out and maybe they did,

But they're in their 30s and they have no savings.

You'd have to make the decision.

But I think the real thing is really being conscious of where you're making an active choice rather than letting external things decide for you.

That's really what it comes down to.

And I think that's the mental health piece of it.

If you can recognize where you're always making the choice and where you're feeling agency,

You don't have to fear the future because you can trust that,

Okay,

Whatever happens,

I'll figure it out.

Or whatever happens,

I can in the future make another active choice,

Even if the worst that's out of my control happens.

And it seems like once you make the choice,

The happiness comes back to you in one way or the other.

Like you said,

You stopped going to those parties because first of all,

I don't take you for the small talk kind of guy.

You're definitely not the small talk kind of guy.

But like you said,

You became happier after you stopped going to those parties.

So it's like you were trying to control the way that these people saw you.

You let go of that control and suddenly happiness comes back to you.

Yeah.

Yeah.

In that moment.

And I think I might have mentioned this in the Nietzsche episode,

But there's a line from the book Shantaram,

Which is like one of my favorite books,

Where the guy is based on a true story.

The guy's in prison.

He's being tortured by these guards and he has this kind of moment of enlightenment where he's like,

I actually have the choice whether to hate them or not.

And I don't have to hate them.

Right.

And he chooses not to hate them.

And even though he's physically getting tortured and it friggin sucks,

Like that's literal.

I mean,

That's about as slave situation as it gets.

Like he has no control over his physical reality.

He still has control of how his mind thinks and he feels peace.

You know,

And he has an opportunity.

He can choose peace in his mind as opposed to choosing turmoil.

And yeah,

I mean,

Easier said than done,

But that's real control over your reality.

Yeah,

That's powerful to be subjected to that.

Yeah.

And to really forgive the people torturing him,

He had to trust that he was going to be okay.

Or he had to believe that,

Okay,

You can't,

I mean,

He had to assert that they can't really bring him down in his mind,

At least even though,

Even if they could whip his body or whatever.

Yeah.

So,

Yeah,

It's always fun talking to you,

Man.

Yeah,

You too.

It's good stuff.

My first time diving into niecesic nobility.

There's a lot of interesting things in that.

Yeah.

I remember the first time I read Nietzsche was in college and a lot of it just went over my head.

I just didn't get it personally.

Like,

Honestly,

Only recently do I feel like,

Oh,

I kind of get it now.

I don't know if I had to have,

Or whatever,

I had to get smarter,

I guess.

But it's like,

It's,

Anyway,

I'm glad it's becoming more accessible and stuff.

I think it's very relevant for what's going on in society these days.

For sure.

Yeah.

Cool,

Man.

Let's talk again soon.

Yeah,

Let's do it.

Let's do it.