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About this Episode
All the text for this video and then some is below. Also See the Perfect Prisoner
Mark Twain once said, “A fool doesn’t argue for truth. He argues to feed his pride. He will twist your logic mock your calm and drag you down to his level then beat you with experience. You can’t teach someone who wears ignorance like armor. The more you respond the more you validate his madness. Don’t wrestle pigs in the mud, they enjoy it, and you walk away filthy. Silence isn’t weakness it is power. Let the fool shout, his own words will bury him deeper than you ever could.”
This echos my mantra, the best way to deal with an attention w***e is to deprive them of attention. Modern society is in a tough situation. Sensationalism is monetized and truth telling is censored. Over time the entire stage is taken over by clowns.
If we continue to reward the clowns for temporary escapism, if the societal rot is avoided rather than addressed, our mental decay will become irreversible. Improvement isn’t fun nor is it instant. How does one move the inertia of the heard? The field of donkeys with their heads in the sand lost in a haze of Netflix, porn, gossip, endless gaming, is seen from above as just rows of ignorant un-moving a******s. But they will kick you if you disturb them.
When poison is made to taste like honey the fool will fight to keep it. The alcoholic clings to his destroyer like a baby bottle. The scroller feels naked without their phone. Take away the constant virtual reality and drugs and most people are bored with who they are for they are no one and are unsatisfied with real relationships for they made none. So back to the noise they will go, cursing anyone who interrupts them.
Self deceivers will always hate the one that tells them the truth, for truth violently destroys falsehoods they have attached their identities to. A lie injures the intelligent. The truth hurts the confident but wrong.
As Socrates said, “It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows. The mind once sealed by arrogance becomes deaf to truth and blind to growth. Knowledge doesn’t enter a cup that believes itself full. It spills. It is wasted. The greatest barrier to wisdom isn’t ignorance, it is the illusion of understanding. Until a man humbles his certainty, he’ll mistake noise for insight and ego for intellect.”
Too much attention makes a donkey think he’s a lion. And that is the sickness of our age. We feed fools with applause until they begin to believe their own delusions. A crown of noise sits heavier than a crown of gold. Yet every ignorant man craves it. They mistake visibility for value and noise for nobility. The donkey when surrounded by cheers forgets what he is. He begins to roar in his own mind. But strip away the crown, silence the claps and you’ll hear only the Hee-Haw of mediocrity. Attention in excess is poison. “I’m a 10” is one of the by products of this insanity.
It blinds the weak, corrupts the average and flatters the undeserving. The wise finds respect in truth, the fool seeks validation in volume.”
Aristotle said, “The wise seek reason, the fool seeks approval.” The clown seeks attention, I will add.“No one is more hated that he who speaks the truth, for Truth is a mirror that exposes the ugliness men spend their lives trying to conceal. A ruler who feeds his people illusions is loved, but one who strips away their delusions is despised. For men prefer to be comforted by falsehoods than confronted by reality. The truth does not inspire gratitude. It inspires resentment. To reveal truth is to wound pride. And pride is defended more fiercely than kingdoms.
Understand this, the world rewards deception with loyalty and condemns honesty with exile. Therefore if you choose to speak truth, do so knowing you will walk alone, armed not with applause but with contempt. Yet in that solitude lies a darker kind of power, the knowledge that while men hate you, they can not silence the reality you have spoken.” - Plato
“You can beat 40 scholars with one fact but you can’t beat one fool with 40 facts. For wisdom bows before truth. But ignorance kneels only to its own delusion. A scholar listens, weighs and yields when reason demands it. The fool however builds his throne upon noise. He mistakes volume for victory and stubbornness for strength. You can carve proof into stone yet he will still deny it, for his pride is built on denial itself. He doesn’t search for truth he searches for validation. And when a man argues for validation instead of understanding, no truth can reach him. to debate such a creature is to wrestle with the wind. It howls. It shifts. But it can never be captured. While truth humbles the intelligent only silence can expose the fool.” -Rumi
Most modern people do not care about injustice to others. They care about being seen as someone who cares. It is performance empathy. This is how and why the media can select what the crowd will be outraged about. Watch them wear courage like a disposable costume. One day it’s a mask, a black square in their bio or the Ukrainian flag, they come and go as quickly as Free Tibet or Kony 2012, and are as hollow as a white Epstein binder given to Zionist influencers. Theater has gravity. A herd with no moral principles will always glob on to whatever is socially acceptable and safe to hate. Thus we see the weirdly zealous outrage towards the problems of yester-year. It is extremely safe to condemn Nazis, racism, slavery OF THE PAST. But the current evils, sweat shop labor, exploitation, Jewish supremacy: challenging these things comes at a cost. Are you good or do you just wish to appear good?
The less talent they have the more pride vanity and arrogance they have. All these fools however find other fools to applaud them. The ignorant always find comfort in the echo of their own stupidity. They praise one another not out of admiration, but out of fear, fear of seeing their own emptiness reflected in silence. Pride is their refuge, vanity their creed, and arrogance their mask. Wise need no applause, for truth is its own reward. Yet the fool blind to his ignorance mistakes noise for wisdom and flattery for honor. And so the world rewards appearances of substance, illusion over intellect. It is a strange comedy. Those who know least shout loudest. Those who know most must whisper to be heard.
Noise and attention seeking make more money than telling the truth or tackling social ills. Piling on to the degeneracy is how one makes it in the world. This set up is part of our sickness and why most people run around like barely domesticated monsters. The future is rapidly becoming a contest of who is mastering fakery the quickest. It is a whirlwind of lies and self deception. Every filter, every edit and avatar is deception.
“A man who lies to himself and believes his own lies, becomes unable to recognize truth either in himself or in anyone else. And he ends up losing respect for himself and for others. When he has no respect for anyone, he can no longer love. And in order to divert himself, having no love in him, he yields to his impulses, indulges to the lowest forms of pleasure, and behaves in the end like an animal. And it all comes from lying.” -Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Lying to others and to yourself is hollowing.
You do not need more time. You need less distractions. Hours are squandered on pointless endeavors, meaningless habits, mindless scrolling. Your time disappears as you get lost in the noise. The difference between the focused and the astray is discipline. Distractions are thieves. They don’t just steal minutes, they steal dreams. They turn months into years and years into regret. You don’t need an extra hour. You need a sharper mind. No matter what you know, no matter how many facts you have gathered, you are adrift without focus.
If someone is hurt by honesty it is not the truth that hurt them but their inability to accept it. The fragile mind will always favor fantasy to patch over the rough spots in reality. To the strong willed this is disgusting. If you can not handle honesty don’t bother asking me questions.
Beware the noise. Beware the noise. It wants you to fail.
“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so”. - Mark Twain
Also see the Prefect Prisoner
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