142 Do What Thou Wilt: The Virtue Of Selfishness

This episode explores the Aleister Crowley's maxim "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law"-- exploring the taboo idea of putting yourself first, what it means for your psyche, and how to do it in a way that benefits those around you.

Transcript

So, I've recently been told that I have low liver chi. I was told this by a Chinese medicine practitioner. I've been seeing this guy for acupuncture for my eczema. I have this recurring eczema. It's annoying. It's gotten a little bit worse lately. And I've seen tons of dermatologists about it and Western medicine's verdict on it is, Oh, We don't know what causes eczema. Here take this medicated cream. I got kind of tired of that, And it didn't really work. So, Seeking new options. I've been seeing this acupuncturist. He seems cool. And Chinese medicine's interesting because it's not science. Of course, There's scientific elements to it. I know Chinese medicine doctors, My friend Alex Hain from Modern Health Monk, It's certainly not something to be lumped into the category of energy healing or anything like that. But what's interesting about Chinese medicine is that it's based on assumptions that are very not Western medicine. I mean, It's kind of anti-scientific method like the concept of chi or meridians or the different elements in the body. There's no way to—it violates scientific methods, Work on conclusions of that sort that cannot be observed. But it is where I am now. Checking this out, There's no—because the scientific method prevents false positives and Western medicine is based on that. Sometimes the answer is we don't know what to do, Whereas other holistic healing methods do have answers. And what he had diagnosed in me is that my liver chi is low. He did some sort of testing with acupuncture needles in my pulse and that's what he concluded. All my other energies are well and vibrant, But my liver chi is low. So he's asking me lifestyle questions, Why my liver chi might be low. It wasn't diet stuff as far as he could tell. Style-wise, Not really sure, But he did say, Well, I notice you're very mellow. And liver chi is a lot about like—I think he actually said selfish expression. It's showing of anger. Maybe you don't express anger enough. But that selfish thing stuck out to me. And he was asking me questions. He asked me when the eczema started. It started for me about eight years ago when I—basically when I left OneTaste, Stopped doing that kind of spiritual quest stuff and started to return to the real world. And somehow it came out in the conversation, At least to me, That I think what has been caused—if there's anything in me, Right, If I'm trying to like validate his hypothesis as my liver chi, The only thing that seemed to come to mind is the last year or so I have been suppressing or trying to hide or put away certain feelings of lust that I've had. It's been an amazing relationship, The best relationship of my life. And I'm going to speak a little about her in a moment. But, You know, Truth is, And actually because of this amazing relationship and that I'm committed to her, We're having a child soon, I have been kind of trying to hide for myself even the fact that I still have a strong desire for women. You know, I'm a normal man in the peak of his virility, Particularly when I feel good about my life and my body and my health. You know, Obviously I have this desire and I have been hiding it, Suppressing it, And I've had various dreams of that kind of nature that I've tried to ignore because I didn't want it to come up in my relationship where it would add instability or discomfort or anything, And we've both committed to monogamy for now. But you know, After speaking to this Chinese medicine guy, Running on his hypothesis, Maybe it's my liver chi, Maybe I've been muting something, I did come home and I spoke about it with Nalaiah. And one of the things that is so amazing about her and something I'm very grateful in our relationship is that we can have these difficult conversations, Which I honestly was avoiding, Even avoiding thinking about because I didn't want to bother introducing this tension of, Hey, By the way, I'm attracted to other women still. But she did receive it well even though it was obviously uncomfortable. And one thing that I know makes our relationship work, And I spoke about this in the high polarity relationship principles episode in more detail, Is that we don't punish each other when we're uncomfortable. Almost all, When there's a downward spiral in a relationship or just two people fight a lot, You know, In any situation, Two people just argue a lot. It's usually because when they feel uncomfortable, When one person feels uncomfortable, They dump it on the other person, They try to make the other person feel bad, And then that causes another reaction, You have this negative feedback loop. We for the most part have a positive feedback loop where we can have the discomforts and it doesn't get thrown back at each other and back and forth, Right? So we had this discussion, Moments of discomfort. Obviously there were some emotions, But pretty quickly I started feeling all of this relief. Like I didn't realize that my body was tense, My body relaxed. I noticed myself feeling more connected to her and in love with her. I felt myself just feeling more, Right? I mean, Basically I was feeling more from this state of contraction, Relaxation because I got to be a little bit more truthful with the person I live with, Meaning I got to be a little bit more truthful in my life and in my relationship, Right? And we felt closer. Obviously, You know, Throughout this podcast, I speak about the importance of truth in different contexts. Here's another one. And you know, Most of us, It's not like we lie. Usually we don't lie just for selfish means. We often lie to withhold, I mean, Specifically withhold things from people we care about, Right? So even though it seems like a noble intention, It not only reduces the fidelity in our relationship because we're not actually being truthful to each other. We're hiding something of each other, But also you're forcing yourself to hide something from yourself, Right? And I realized I was doing this. I was trying to like hide my lustful feelings and then pretend like they weren't there, Which made me feel not so myself, Made my reality a little bit dimmer because I was hiding this thing, Putting something in the dark. So in this episode, We're going to speak about self-expression, Self-expression to the degree that it can seem selfish. And we're actually going to talk about the concept of selfishness. This is important, But I titled this episode Do It Thou Wilt after the famous quote by Aleister Crowley, Do it thou wilt shall be the whole of the law. As his famous or his primary prescription. And we're going to talk a little about Crowley in this episode if you don't know who he is. He's a figure from the late 1800s, Often associated with I believe late 1800s. I might have gotten that wrong. It might be early 1900s, But some time ago, We have black and white images of him only. He's associated with Western occultism, Ceremonial magic, Stuff like that that's pretty fringe and maybe not, Unless you're into that stuff, Maybe you haven't really read anything by him. But eventually, As we'll discuss in this episode, Crowley, His ideas, Or rather, Crowley was a node of influence in a lot of Western thought, Specifically, And we can see this all the way to this modern day, Specifically in the realms of pop psychology, Personal development and general spiritual assumptions in the West, At least. A lot of his ideas, Even though they're wrapped in mystical, Esoteric fringe dressing, They were ideas that would influence the way people think about life. And I call him a node of influence because obviously, He was influenced by people before him. But he was someone who actually brought a lot of ideas and incepted them into the Western world, Specifically around being true to yourself, Or a lot of ideas that have become watered down in the self-help, Personal development realm. It doesn't mean that they're not useful, We're actually going to try to go back to the core of this. We're talking about basic instincts. So we're going to talk about this idea of selfishness, Also through the lens of the work of Ayn Rand, Conservative philosopher. She had a very different take on the same idea, Different than Crowley. And we're going to explore the natural roots of this, I mean, The idea of selfishness, And why we have the perceptions that we have of it, Referencing some ideas from the semantics episodes. So ultimately, What this episode is about is about reclaiming instincts, Things that are related to the dark side. So of course, Also speak about how to do this without creating harm in your life. Quick announcements, If reconnecting to your instincts is something that you want to explore, You might want to check out my archetype challenge. It's a 21-day program to help a man connect to his masculine instincts. You could check that out at ruando. Com slash archetype. And if you sign up now, I'm still offering the free coaching session with enrollment. I am going to still be doing sessions, Although I'm probably taking off for four weeks. As of the time of the recording of this, My baby has not been born yet. But when she's born, I'm probably going to take four weeks off. But whenever you're listening to this, Before or after, That's still available. You'll get an automatic link to my scheduler. Right now you're listening to episode 141, Do What Thou Wilt. So let's first speak about the origins of the idea of selfishness and also evaluating selfishness. So in our modern day lexicon, It's pretty common to hear the phrases having good boundaries, Or the idea of speaking your truth, Following feelings, All sorts of that kind of thing. And it's interesting, Actually, I have this friend, It's become a thing that's, These are common phrases amongst millennials. This friend is a little bit older than millennials. She's in her 40s. She still hangs out with a lot of people, Even younger than me. But she has noted, Man, Like millennials, Like they're so annoying with always saying having good boundaries or trying to have boundaries or speak their truth. You know, I think all of that stuff, That's just a mask for being selfish. That was her complaint. She just went on in this rant about people her age don't do that. They show up where they, When they say they're going to show up, They don't back out on commitments, Things like that. It was interesting the way she said that, Right? Millennials are selfish, Or these things are masked for being selfish. Because the presupposition of that statement is that selfishness is bad, Right? This is an assumption in that statement when she says that in the tone that she says that. Those are selfishness, Implying selfishness is bad. So I agreed with her that these phrases that are commonly used amongst people my age and younger and there's probably more that I'm not even aware of are a mask of selfishness. But my issue wasn't the issue with selfishness. My issue with that was different than hers. My issue is that actually these are phrases of abstracting selfish desire from the speaker so that the speaker doesn't have to take responsibility for what they want. If you say, Oh, I'm not going to show up when I said because my feelings have changed. It's different than saying the more direct truth, The thing that is more E-prime or semantically accurate which is I don't want to go to that thing anymore. That feels a little, There's more tension with saying I don't want to do this or I want to do this rather than abstracting it and making it separate from you, Depersonifying it of like, Oh, My feelings have changed or something I would hear a lot in one taste in other spiritual worlds is like, Oh, My desires are such and such as opposed to saying I want blank. It's a lot, Feels safer, It feels less aggressive, It's less personal because it's less real, Less specific to say my desires are such and such. Oh, It's not me, It's my desires. That's my issue with it. Her issue is the idea of selfishness. So let's explore this idea of selfishness. And actually specifically, First I want to explore the idea, The assumed idea that most of us don't think about but if we, Given that we are in the culture that we're in, Has become kind of an assumed value which is selfishness is bad. This idea of selfishness is bad. I actually remember I had this business partner once upon a time who went on to actually be very successful in a different business. And early on, This was shortly after college, I think he was reading Dale Carnegie and he maybe was reading the thing about how the best way to get what you want is to help other people get what they want, Right? It's a common idea that we've all heard or in some fashion. And he had this thing of like, He was kind of troubled over this idea because he's like, Well, If helping people is the best way to help myself, Then when I help other people, I'm really helping myself. Isn't that really me being selfish? Like he was troubled by this, Right? But in actually, If you caught the semantics episode, Perhaps you caught that in that in itself is a semantic disturbance. This idea of like, I mean, Helping people and his idea and his presupposition is that is good, But it means he's being selfish, Self-serving, And that means bad. And that's what's causing this issue. But really, If you take away the connotations and the judgments, What's wrong with being selfish? Like that's the question that comes to mind. So where did this idea, Because this is the root of shame that so many people feel that causes one to deny his own or her own desires, To hide herself or himself from the world, To lie to people, Even white lies, Anything that lowers the fidelity of your reality, Your fidelity to self often comes from this idea. This is one of the ideas deeply embedded in our perceptions, Which is selfishness is bad. Now, The selfishness is bad meme that has persisted so long in Western English-speaking society at least, I'm sure it's in all societies at some level, It wasn't always there. Certainly, To our hunter-gatherer ancestors, They may have had some perception like that, But it's really embedded nowadays. And part of it came about in human society to combat tyrannical rule of might. Because if you zoom back, Let's say to the Stone Age, Or maybe later than the Stone Age, But you have basically what determined ethics. And what determines ethics in the wild is essentially who is bigger and better, Rule of might. Tyrannical rule of might became a thing in human society shortly after agriculture, Where for the first time, You had people who weren't directly connected. So in Paleolithic times, The biggest, Baddest guy probably became chief, But he didn't have free reign. He couldn't be a dick to everyone because if he was, The other, Let's say the beta males were getting up on him. And also, Groups were small enough that they were bound by direct emotional connection, Direct social connection. Everybody had a connection to the chief. So he was deterred from using his might, Let's assume he was the strongest guy, From really harming anyone. Whereas post-agriculture, You basically can have tyrant kings because the tribe is no longer connected by empathy. The tribe or the nation state is connected through a myth. This is stuff that I've spoken about in Sapiens and we've talked about this in other episodes. Once people were connected by myths and not empathy, Now you have these kings or warriors or anybody with mights who now would swing his weight around acting selfishly because he's not, I mean, The myth isn't strong enough for him to care enough about his kin or the people that he might be harming and there's no one to check him, Right? Society developed in a way that the king can just be a dick to people or whoever has might. So obviously this wasn't useful for a lot of people. So there's this development amongst usually people without might that selfishness must be bad. Someone acting in his own interests, Which can sometimes be harmful because it's sometimes harmful, It's always harmful. So this is actually a semantic disturbance. It's almost the same way that, I mean, This is also the way that racism forms, Right? This idea of abstracting, Say, A statistic for every person that shares this quality of skin color or whatever, Right? Or some sort of association, Right? It's the same kind of error in judgments that makes a racist guy think all black people are criminals or even someone who thinks all Asians are good at math or something or anything like that. It's the same idea of thinking that selfishness is always bad, Right? But this is such a deeply embedded idea for most of us that, Like my friend who is an intelligent guy, He actually had this perplexed dilemma of how can I help people if I'm being selfish? He had this brain freeze because he forgot that this is not necessarily the case, That selfishness is always bad. So actually to really understand this, This is maybe going deeper than, Well, This is where I'm going, We need to look at these ideas of good and bad. Now, I spoke about this a bit in the semantics episode, But it's worth repeating that good and bad, These concepts that are so kind of integral, I mean, Certainly in people's moralities and also sense of the world from the youngest age, Right? I mean, It's one of the earliest concepts that we're taught, Good versus bad, Right versus wrong. It's actually one of the vaguest abstractions that causes most of the brain farts. I mean, That's my term for semantic disturbances, Right? It doesn't actually mean anything, That is what I mean, Right? It's such a vague thing that it can basically make people's minds cloudy. So just for a very simple example, I like looking at nutrition because you see ideological debates that match sometimes the passion of religious debates or political debates, But we're talking about food, Which I always find is funny. So when I was more on paleo forums looking up that kind of lifestyle, Diet, Etc. , Because I of course love the philosophy of living like our hunter-gatherer ancestors, There's this debate that was popular back in the day, I don't know if it still is, Which is if you're eating paleo, Is milk good or not, Right? And there's a lot of arguments. People actually think that diet maybe 15 years ago split into two communities. There's like the paleo people who I believe were anti-milk and the primal people who are pro-milk. I mean, They basically had this, It's like they're both still Christians, But you had the Catholics and the Protestants. They're just arguing over this one little thing of is milk good or not. And the pro-milk people can say, Yes, Milk is good. You're crazy if you don't think milk is good. Here are all the reasons why milk is good and they have all these scientific figures that back up their idea. And then of course the paleo people, Or as I say, The anti-milk people, Have the same thing. It's like, No, This is why not drinking milk is natural. And they have all of their facts and figures and stuff, Right? But actually, At least from what I can remember, When one side says milk is good and the other side says milk is not good, They're not talking about the same good. From what I can remember, Whatever I read of these arguments, There is a lot of evidence that milk is beneficial for certain, Let's say, Performance things, Right? Like putting on muscle mass. Maybe some other things too, But that's what I remember. And the other side, Milk is not beneficial for things like inflammation. There might be other facts. The facts aren't important, But they're not talking about the same thing. One is basically saying milk is good for performance. The other side is saying, No, Milk is not good because it's not good for longevity. And they're not really talking about the same good, But they're arguing. And then you see this type of argument a lot. I mean, We talked about this more in the semantics episode. Now, Given that this is a semantic disturbance and makes minds cloudy, You would think, You know, You'd wonder why is it that good and bad are such important ideas in the way that we perceive the world? And as most things, It is rooted in survival. So the word good in English comes from the word God. Good is what God wants. Good is what gets you into heaven and prevents you from being damned to hell. Of course, This is a monotheistic Christian framework. And actually one of the additions that monotheism incepted into the way we view reality is kind of making the sense they have a singular God, Then there's a singular set of ethics, A singular set of right and wrong. It's absolute. Whereas if you look back at the polytheistic era, Pagan cultures with many gods, You still had this idea of kind of right and wrong, But it was more subjective, Right? Because what the God of war wants is sometimes maybe different than what the goddess of love wants, Right? But still, This idea of, You know, Good is what God wants comes from basic survival. God is who a religious person perceives determines well-being. Evil or bad is what causes pain or suffering or death. And even this idea of what we could say is where the ideas of gods come from comes from a very primal level. Whereas when you're an infant, When you're a small child, You do perceive your parents or whoever your primary guardian is as a godhead, Right? Your parents are gods. So you do actually determine your survival and whether you survive and thrive. So you better listen to them. What they say, Of course, Is right and wrong, Not because they know exactly ethics perfectly, But whatever will allow them to continue to nourish you becomes your good. And whatever would get you spanked or have them cut off love from you becomes your bad or evil. And, You know, When you translated this into religion, Be polytheistic or monotheistic or today's religion of rationality, This is still the roots of these ideas of good and evil. It's actually interesting because I wanted to look up the etymology of these words because I was aware of, You know, Good is related to the word God and the word evil is related to the word devil. But I was wondering where bad came from. So I went to an etymology website. I looked up bad. The word bad was not actually, It's actually not found prior to 1400 in Old English or English, But it did become popular as an opposite for the word good until the 1700s. Prior to this, People only used the word evil when they spoke about the opposite of good. The word bad, People think, Comes from the word betel. I might be pronouncing that wrong. Betel from Old English, Which means an effeminate man, Which I thought was interesting. Betel also might come from the word baden, Which is to defile or make impure, Which maybe makes more sense. Betel is interesting that there's a similar, That word and the word from an effeminate man are similar, Which is just interesting. Now, Christianity is the biggest meme set to affect the Western world. By meme set, I mean ideology, You know, A set of beliefs that can each be taken together or separately. Christianity was the first force in the Western world or the primary force in the Western world to codify good and evil. As I just mentioned, You know, A monotheistic religion draws a line and says, Well, There's only one God, So there's only one thing that he wants and there's only one right. That was almost one of the useful parts of monotheism. If you ever play the game Civilization on the computer, You control civilization and you have it developed through the ages. The advance of monotheism is actually seen as a scientific advancement or a cultural advancement because it actually drove, It allowed peoples to unify more easily under a single God rather than many gods. So in Christianity, You have a lot of these rules and this is true of other monotheistic religions, But Christianity is what influenced the Western English-speaking world the most of the three Abrahamic religions. Christianity has a lot of these basically stating flat out what is good versus evil. Thou shall to this, Thou shall not blank, Right? But all of these statements, Anything that says this is good, It violates what's known as E prime, Which we discussed in the semantics episode, Which is a more clear way to think and speak because it removes vagaries. It violates E prime. It uses the verb is, Which of course confuses orders of abstraction and it confuses subjectivity with objectivity, Right? To say this is good is different than saying I want you to do that, Right? But they actually, When someone says this is good, In a sense they're saying I perceive that I want you to do such and such, Right, If we're talking about an action, Right? Saying this is good separates the speaker or the person with the opinion from the perception so it makes it easier to make it like this blanket thing as if it's coming from God, Right? So when someone talks about right and wrong, They're speaking from like a third party perspective zoomed out that doesn't involve the individuals involved. But of course, Any perception of right and wrong or any perception can only be in a subjective person's viewpoint, Obviously. So from the perspective of general semantics, Which is maybe how I'm looking at everything these days, Is that this idea, Any statement of this is good, This is bad, Any perception of absolute good and evil is actually a semantic disturbance, If only from this violation of the truth, Which is everything we can evaluate comes from a sort of lens. And of course, As we discussed in the semantics insanity episode, To misperceive reality, To put evaluations that do not line up with actualities, Is the definition of insanity, Right? So it's actually to have to live by an absolute code that you think comes from like this objective plane is some form of insanity, Is a denial of reality. And in reaction to a lot of this Christian absolute sense of morality, Of course, With this absolute sense of morality, Where by saying that all human beings should do this, Of course, You're going to bump up against some people's individual wants and desires, Right? If you say, No one is allowed to pee sitting down, Some people just want to pee sitting down, Some people can't or don't want to pee sitting up. I mean, That's a silly example. But you could imagine, With Christianity, Christianity put controls on things that we know, Of course, Around kind of natural instincts. Of course, There's a lot of control and you see this in most religions, Control over sexuality, Right? It caused a lot of suppression. A lot of religious doctrine around sex, Let's say, Says a lot of the things that people naturally want is bad. So of course, This causes shame, This causes confusion amongst people who are trying to follow this abstract doctrine saying that this is not good, But it's true for me. It feels so good, I'm confused. So one of these big things that was put in the bad category is the subject of today, Which is selfishness, Right? Because of that rule of might thing, Because of the fact that harm has been caused by this selfish idea. In fact, Most of the time someone's hurting due to the hands of another, It's because that other person was acting in their own interest and not the other interest of the other person. So over time, And we can see that it probably became the most rampant when the Christian church really took, When Christianity really took over the Western world, Which, You know, Of course, Started around the age of Jesus Christ being alive, But probably peaked around the fall of the Roman Empire. Or like I should say, These ideas and his control over Western ideology went mainstream around the time of the fall of the Roman Empire. That's when, Of course, The Roman Empire, Constantine apparently swore he was a Christian on his deathbed, And that was really just part of the general shift of the population. It became a very popular religion in the Western world. So of course, With the Christian dogma suppressing a lot of people's instincts around sexuality, Around a lot of things that are natural, Animalistic, Instinctual expressions that are true for us, A lot of people started to feel repressed. So as a reaction to a lot of people now feeling shame due to these controls over their behavior, These abstractions of good and evil as given to them, Initially from religious sources, Let's say Christianity in the Western world, But also influencing governments, And a lot of the laws are essentially extensions of thou shalt, A lot of people were feeling shame and repression as they are today, Because these forces haven't really changed. I mean, They've changed form, But they're still existing. So people like Aleister Crowley, Who essentially was a fringe thought leader, He was in the world of ceremonial magic and Western occultism, Which as I mentioned, If you take away a lot of the mystical esoteric dressings, They kind of boil down to general useful advice on your own inner hero's journey, If you will. I mean, If you take away the belief in magic and spirits and stuff like that, A lot of it is training the subconscious mind to be a certain way, Such as his statement that is the backbone of this episode, Do what thou wilt, Shall be the whole of the law. One of Crowley's contributions, Let's say, To our culture is taking some pre-Christian ideas. He went to India and took from Eastern mysticism, Yogic traditions, Various forms, Tantra, Things like that, Brought it to the West. And one of these ideas, Because in the pre-Christian religions, Specifically in something like tantra, This idea, This recognition that there are things that our individual, Subjective, Selfish beings want that is selfish, That is part of us, That is part of our nature. And to suppress that or try to cut that off from ourselves or pretend like it's not there, Causes some feeling of impotence, Whether it manifests as physical unease, Disease, Lack of expression, Or just someone not really living fully as themselves. Crowley brought this idea back, Right? So do what thou wilt, Shall be the whole of the law, Acknowledges that morality is subjective, Do what you want, What you want is good because you want it. And I called Crowley a note of influence in the intro because even though most people aren't into his actual teachings, Occultism is certainly not popular, His ideas, And one of them being this of really speak your truth, Do what you want, Follow your feelings essentially, These are core tenants now in the self-help world, In the personal development world, In spirituality. Yeah, Most of red pill advice I spoke about in the last episode follows this of like, Put yourself first. A lot of millennial pop psychology is this idea of have good boundaries, Respect yourself. I mean, This is general and we can all accept these are useful ideas. And so a lot of people who come to this realization that they need to put themselves first later in life, Sometimes it's like, Well, It's so obvious, But there's also this deep rooted, We can call them guilt and shame memes that are embedded into our perceptions that somehow putting yourself first is not good, Right? This is trained into us. Of course, Your parental, Your home upbringing can affect it, This idea or all of your ideas. But I think regardless of your upbringing, If you grew up in this, Let's say, Western world and probably true of all worlds, But I only know the English speaking world, This belief that selfishness is bad or putting yourself first is somehow wrong is so deeply woven that most people, It takes them till adulthood to realize, Oh shit, This is actually not right. Why do I have this guilt response when I do something for myself? So as far as spirituality goes, Crowley represented what is known as a left-handed path. In occultism, There's a differentiation between right-hand paths and left-hand paths. Right-hand paths are things that avoid anything chaotic or dangerous. Most religions, Certainly the Abrahamic religions are right-hand paths of there's a lot of control around anything that could stir you up. So there's abstention or control of sex, Of intoxicants. Control of your emotions is championed because the idea of a right-hand path is anything dark can take you off your path. So we're going to try to find higher consciousness or personal evolution without those things. We're going to avoid them. We're not going to eat meat or stuff like that, Right? Whereas a left-hand path takes the other lens of like, Well, These things that you're calling dark and chaotic, They're parts of you too. We need to find ways to integrate them because anything short of that will be unpleasant, Will have some negative effect. So Crowley and stuff and Christianity were kind of at odds. In fact, Crowley's ideas went on to influence a later, Much more directly anti-Christian group known as the Church of Satan. I have spoken about Satanism briefly before in other episodes because—and this was told to me by someone who studies both personal development and cults in America—so that Crowley's ideas kind of passed through the Church of Satan, I mean, And through other things too, Which of course became popular in the United States in the 1960s. And then that group, Even though it was very fringe, Like it's pretty extreme, Like most people wouldn't want to associate with that kind of thing, Their ideas helped spread these ideas of like, Put yourself first, That eventually affected basically all of Western personal development, Right? They went on to affect a lot of the groups that now become popular as far as self-help stuff. Satanism is obviously a reaction, Like an extreme reaction to Christianity, And even in its own doctrine says that they use Christian symbols like Satan to kind of like balance out Christianity. At least that's my interpretation. They're trying to kind of aggressively fight it in the same way that Red Pill, In my opinion, Kind of aggressively fights against the negative aspects of feminism, Or we used to say feminism in general, Which is not a bad thing when something in culture goes a little too far off. But when your whole existence as an ideology is about being anti-another ideology, I think for an ideology or a person, You haven't really discovered yourself yet. But the whole idea behind a left-handed path is embracing what we might call darkness, Taking on all the things that might be chaotic, Relieving shame that may have been caused by dogmatic viewpoints of good and evil, And embracing everything that makes you you, And selfishness being one of them, Of course. So for a very non-fringe take on this same idea of putting yourself first, We can look at Ayn Rand, The conservative philosopher. She wrote, Of course, Many fictional novels espousing conservative philosophy like The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. One of her nonfiction books, Prescriptive books, Is one titled The Virtue of Selfishness, Where she basically goes through why selfishness is important. And it's largely through the lens of economics, Like of course conservatives argue for free market capitalism, The idea being that competition, When people are allowed to freely compete, Competition drives innovation and progress. And notice in that statement again, Or in this argument, There's a presupposition that innovation and progress are good, Which is another thing that most of us assume without questioning, Including myself, Until you read something like Ted Kaczynski and recognize like, Wait, Wait, Who said progress is actually good? But anyways, Competition drives innovation and progress. And of course, With survival of the fittest, The best companies, The best businesses, The best ideas will win in a free market capitalistic situation. Runs on the same principles as Darwinism, Survival of the fittest. But of course, There are negative things. There's arguments against this kind of selfishness on the societal level. So for instance, Free market capitalism often creates what's known as the tragedy of the commons, Where everyone acting in their own best interest causes a shared resource to be depleted. Or of course, The thing that is often argued against free market capitalism is that over time, The advantages of one person to another or one company to another or people, They compound and at some point, It's so unfair. The game is so unfair. This is one of the arguments for affirmative action, But also socialism and other things like that. Or even in the trust era, The rich and the poor were so separated that the factory owners could pay their workers way less than they deserved because they had so much more power. And that's the creation of labor unions. So you see this push and pull in society even over the idea of selfishness versus not selfishness. How selfish are you allowed to be? Of course, Philosophies like communism, Socialism would say that even fair trade capitalism doesn't work because fair trade obviously tries to fight against those negative things. But socialism would say, Oh, That never works, So we have to hand ourselves to the government to police us basically and redistribute things for us, Which follows the same kind of spine of thinking of a monotheistic society where you're handing the right and wrong to this external thing, To God, To the church, To whatnot. And one of the reasons I'm going so deep into the idea of how we perceive the idea of selfishness is that because it's such a deeply embedded idea that selfishness is bad, Even if we can consciously accept, Okay, It's important to express yourself and do what you want for various reasons, In the moment, It can be very hard to do that. So I wanted to explore why does selfishness exist? How can we really understand it at its core so that these other programs, This program that we've been conditioned to believe, Doesn't hijack us in moments where we might default to not putting ourselves first? And also, It raises the question, How do you be selfish without all of the negative things that could come of it? Like free market capitalism, Of course, Has various negative externalities, Like companies all acting in their best interest to maximize profits often harms the environment. Bringing this to your personal life, Of course, If you're being selfish, If you're doing whatever you want all the time, It can cause harm and it can cause a net negative effect in your overall life, Specifically when it comes to other people you care about. So of course, If you've caught the last couple of episodes, You've noticed I've ranted a bit about a lot of the problems in society are caused by this denial of the nature of subjectivity. A lot of people are fighting over what they think is objective, But it isn't. About reality, About facts, About various things, Of course, Opinions too. And I was actually even thinking about the idea that I opened, The story I told in the beginning of this episode about my liver-chi, Right? I was thinking about, So my brother also has eczema. I mean, I guess it runs in her family. And I was thinking what my brother would think about just this idea, This diagnosis, And that I'm taking this to the degree of like reanalyzing my lifestyle based on this idea of liver-chi. So my brother is, I don't speak about him too much, But he's in med school. He's going into Western medicine. He's going to be a doctor. And I think he probably would roll his eyes at the idea of liver-chi. I mean, I don't know this for sure, But I think he would. And certainly being trained to be a Western doctor, Maybe he would have that. And I was thinking about, My brother and I, We're actually quite similar. We're 10 years in age, But we grew up having similar interests and various similar traits. But we've gone on very different life paths, Right? Like at the age where I was now going into like spiritual hippie fringe things, My brother was entering med school. We had, Despite similar environmental conditions and similar, We look similar, We think similar, Similar skills, We went in very different life paths. And I was thinking about this and like, Why did this split happen? And there's this idea that younger siblings are often more creative than their older siblings. The reason being is that when a younger sibling is born, At least one of the roles, At least one of the identities in the family has been covered by older siblings. In fact, The more older siblings one has, The more identities that have been taken. So it tasks the younger sibling a little bit more to come up with a new identity. And this is one of the arguments. I forget where I heard this originally from, But someone was pointing out how many famous inventors and people who brought something really huge, I think Einstein was one of the people mentioned, Were like the fourth sibling. Are they many older siblings? Anyways, This idea is interesting, Whether it's true or not, Because it makes sense. It makes sense from a genetic standpoint that even with the same conditions and similar genes that we would be driven to have a diversity of strategy. Let's say my brother and I were born with similar attributes, But given the human culture changes so much and the environments that humans are in are so very different, It kind of makes sense from a genetic perspective that even with the same attributes, We would go off and choose to do different things. Because maybe my path doesn't work out and my brother is taking a path where he would be able to spread our genes, Looking at it from a purely selfish gene perspective, Which is certainly where all selfishness comes from if you want to go that far back. So it makes sense that we'd all be kind of programmed to do something a little bit different than everyone else. It makes sense that it's basically a genetic argument for why individualism is a thing, Why we each have slightly unique desires especially, Maybe different from other people from our environment. Which brings it back to Crowley's quote of why this is framed as a new kind of ethic of doing what you will, Doing what you want, Expressing yourself, Being yourself, Why it's so important on the most primal, Preconscious genetic level is that only by what Jung would call individuation, 110% being yourself, Are you really contributing to life as a whole. So for the rest of this episode, Let's look at the how. How do you actually follow Crowley's prescription, Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law? Because of course what this statement means, Right, Do what thou wilt, What thou wilt is what you want. It's your instinctual drives mixed with your conscious intention, It's your will. Shall be the whole of the law means the law meaning what is good. It's like this is your standard of right and wrong morality. So a way to translate this statement into more common language is you want what you want and therefore what you want is good. Another way to put it is what you generally want is right because of the fact that you want it. This is something I discussed quite a bit with Patrick H. Who was on the podcast a couple episodes ago. You're just fighting against this, I mean in his case it was in the form of nice guy syndrome, This belief that you couldn't have what you want. And selfishness in that setting of course, It displays, I mean we talked about how when he was on the podcast, We talked about how selfishness is attractive. Selfishness is attractive to women. Even in the red pill world, They have this idea called the dark triad which are three traits that women tend to find attractive but most people assume are bad which is why it's called the dark triad which is selfishness was the first one. Machiavellianism which is making power plays on people and the third one was narcissism. I don't disagree with that red pill idea. Men as most red pill ideas, I think it's kind of wrapped in maybe the wrong value perception because I wouldn't consider those things dark of course. Selfishness is important. This idea of Machiavellianism, I think as I spoke about in the stages of man episode, I think that whole focusing on making power plays, It's not that awareness is wrong or bad, It's that it's not a place to end. I called a lot of red pill philosophy great for your adolescence. It's good to be aware of that stuff but for people who are constantly being Machiavellian, It kind of displays an insecurity because if you look at even Machiavelli's famous book with most of his ideas, The one that everyone knows is The Prince, It's written for a prince. It's written for someone who is not in power yet. It's not written for a king who's already established power. So maybe it's how the prince becomes the king but once you achieve that, I mean this is a metaphor for developing security, You don't have to think about that stuff. This idea of narcissism, I think is kind of an extreme way to put just caring about yourself, Right? It doesn't have to be put in this extreme way. Of course, Red pill is reacting to some of the same things that Satanism is reacting to like these incorrect suppressions, These incorrect beliefs that cause one to suppress their instincts. Selfishness in this setting of course is attractive because it displays, Let's say if we're talking about male-female relating, Selfishness applied by a man displays to the woman that he's not being pushed around by other people and therefore even though the selfishness might not be a pleasant trait, It shows that he's not a nice guy which is the worst thing because a nice guy can't keep her safe. Like a guy who's constantly looking to others for what is right and wrong and what he should do is no way going to be able to look out for her if she has his baby which is why these so-called dark traits are certainly more attractive than beta male or people pleasing behavior. But I would say you don't have to frame it as this dark thing, Right? It's kind of an extreme way to look at it. Whereas really what this statement is, Do it thou wilt, It's a recognition of the reality that things are subjective whereas the actual truth is that all morality is subjective. One needs to recognize that and certainly for a person to live an empowered life, They need to decide their own right and wrong for themselves, Not from what your friends say or what society says or even what the laws are, Right? If you really want to be individuated and maximize your personal power, You need to decide all the time what is right and wrong even if other people disagree which is not to say that you're always going to choose things against the collective beliefs. In fact, Probably most of the time it wouldn't but a thing is only real morality if it's chosen. This reminds me of the quotes that I brought up before from one of my favorite movies and books A Clockwork Orange which is, Goodness is something chosen. When a man cannot choose, He ceases to be a man. This idea in the movie was repeated by the priest, The priest who helps Alex when he's in prison and he's fighting against that Ludovico technique where they invent this new way of basically conditioning Alex to feel pain when he thinks of doing something bad and the priest argues that this is not morality. You did not make him a good man because he has to choose. If he can't choose whether to be good or not, He's not actually being moral, Right? I think one of the lessons here if we take this as an allegory for our own internal journey is what I said earlier which is one is only really living if you're living by choice. Anything that is ethical is only ethical if you're choosing it's ethical, Not because you're following some dogma or what you think your friends on Facebook expect. Because ultimately the only cost is discomfort, Is tension. Obviously, If you're doing something against the laws of wherever you live, That could be a lot of tension. But for most people, Assuming you're fairly normal, Fairly usual, Most of the things that cause one to lower their fidelity are these little bits of shame or avoidance of tension. So like with the example I opened with, This thing that I had been suppressing in myself and maybe or we can say maybe has been affecting my liberty, I don't know if that's for sure, Was this suppression of my lustful feelings, Right? I kind of hid them. I hid them from my partner. I hid them from myself because I didn't want her to feel bad. But I was avoiding that discomfort myself, Right? That was kind of cowardice. And you know, I thought of this a lot especially when I was in like the more polyamory world or I was just, You know, Dating around a lot and interacting with people in non-monogamous situations a lot. Something that I noticed and that everyone notices at some point is that usually it's the side, I call them the side piece or the non-primary partner that actually gets more truth from an individual than their primary partner. And you know, To bring this into like a non-regular dating world, You see this, You know, When people cheat, Right? The person who is cheated on always has less information, Less of the truth than the person cheated with, Right? I remember speaking about a friend of mine who I've known from like the polyamory world, She settled down and became monogamous with a guy who she eventually married. But at some point in there, She cheated on him. She was telling me about it. It wasn't with me. She was telling me about it. And I was thinking like, I even talked about it. I was like, Oh man, It sucks that like the person whose opinion you actually care about knows less than the person who you don't really care about so much, Right? Like there's a, It's the other person, The casual partner gets more truth. It's kind of fucked up, Right? I mean, Of course, When we choose to settle down with someone or commit to someone, It should be the other way around, Right? They should get the most truth, Right? Most of us, If you're in a relationship or you want to be at some point, Of course, You want to be the person that gets the most truth. And we're not even talking about non-monogamous situations just in general. But also in general, People tend to hide things from their partners more than other people because they want their partner to be okay, To feel okay. There's actually a thing, A debate that was in the Masculine Underground Forum, My group on Facebook, I think it was like last year when I was interacting with it more, Someone posted, Do you tell your woman everything? And there's a heated debate between sides. There was like the more red pill guys were like, Hell no, That's foolish to open up to your wife or partner or girlfriend about everything. And then there were the more like tantric guys who were like, Oh no, It's important to talk to everyone. And just every kind of person who chimed in. But you see, People feel really strongly about both sides because ultimately, I wouldn't want to be with someone who I have to hide truth from, Right? That's not worth the relationship to me. Whatever other benefits there are, If I have to not be myself, Then why am I spending my life with this person? But of course, You have this other side of like, You're spending your life with this person, You want them to feel okay. And I was reminded of this lesson with Nalaiah that it's never worth it to hide because I didn't even realize how much that I was kind of suppressing this part of myself. And when we had this conversation, It kind of relieved most of the pressure that I was feeling around this secret desire. And we felt a lot closer, She and I. And I actually started to feel more aroused just in that because, And this is something I spoke about with Patrick, He told me the story in the context of Nice Guy Syndrome again. We're back in the day when he was more of a nice guy. Sometimes he had this belief wrapped up that whoever's the primary woman in his life, Starting with his mom and later his girlfriends, Would always tell him that he couldn't do what he wanted to do. So in the rare instance or the occasions where his girlfriend said, Oh, You can do whatever you want tonight, It would actually give him this flushed, Aroused feeling where he would actually start to get turned on because it's basically a part of him that previously felt a lot of shame and contraction opening up. And I've spoken about this in a few episodes, How our sexual responses and our sexual fantasies reveal a lot of what's going on under the hood. And it's not always sexual. As I saw, I think, Last episode I was speaking about the Oedipus complex. It's not necessarily even about sex. It's about aliveness, Like this sexual arousal is kind of just like a signal, Like you're feeling more alive because now this part of you that you basically muted the light on or muted the, I'm mixing metaphors, You basically dulled out or suppressed is now coming to life. So of course you feel a little more virile, You feel a little bit more self. Because do what thou wilt by yourself, Of course, Is embracing your subjective morality and asserting that you deserve what you want and all of these things. To do what thou wilt and to speak truth and to be truthful with a person that you're in connection with, It's no longer just a singular subjective morality, Excuse me, Singular subjective sense of reality. It's that you're entering this reality together. At least you're giving the opportunity for another person to accept you as who you are or your world as it is. It's allowing yourself to be separate in a way. I was being separate in a way by hiding this desire from my partner. And the cost though, There is a cost, Is that there's this kind of loss of innocence, Which is what the tension was. It kind of pops the bubble of purely monogamous desire, Which is probably not true even in the most in love couples. Of course, We have animal desires, It's natural for a man, Especially one my age, To have these desires. This loss of innocence, This loss of this Disney perception does bring us closer to reality, Closer to nature. We're both looking at the same thing with much more clear lenses. Because as discussed in the high polarity relationship principles episode, Deep connection is a shared reality. To be in love with someone is kind of a shared delusion. It's not to me that's a bad thing. But when it comes to living a high fidelity reality together, To having this, What I think is a useful, We can apply this to romantic relationships, But you can even apply this to friendships or connections like that. Any deep connection is based on truth and mutual acceptance of that truth. Thank you for listening. If you've enjoyed this episode, Please share it with someone who may enjoy it as well. Stay tuned. Attitude.