The Truth About Small Talk

Stefan Molyneux

Small talk serves as a social lubricant but should not be the only skill we possess. Some individuals enforce a narrow-minded and rigid mindset, discouraging deeper discussions. This rigidity stems from a lack of curiosity and flexibility. Shallow slogans and simplistic solutions can justify violence and hinder critical thinking. The use of persuasive tricks by sophistic individuals can have disastrous effects. It is important to recognize the potential dangers of shallow conversations and strive for genuine and meaningful discussions.  Join the PREMIUM philosophy community on the web for free!  Get access to the audiobook for my new book 'Peaceful Parenting,' StefBOT-AI, private livestreams, premium call in shows, and the 22 Part History of Philosophers series!  See you soon!  https://freedomain.locals.com/support/promo/UPB2022

Transcript

00:00 Hey everybody, Stephen Molyneux from Freedom Anhub, you doing well?

00:03 Alright, an interestingly deep question for y'all, which sounds shallow.

00:09 So here we go.

00:10 Somebody says, "I'm filled with thoughts, but often find my mind blank when engaging

00:15 with people who are fluent in small talk.

00:18 What is the truth about people who love small talk?

00:23 Your reveal about shy people was legendary."

00:25 Then extremely helpful, right?

00:28 Small talk.

00:29 Now small talk is a kind of social lubricant, you know, the small pleasantries that people

00:36 exchange back and forth to just acknowledge each other's presence and to show some sort

00:40 of basic social skills and empathy.

00:43 It's a good thing to be decent at small talk.

00:47 I don't think it's something you want to become a real expert at, but it's a good thing to

00:51 be decent at small talk.

00:53 Okay, you can get by, you can do it on a sort of as-needed basis.

00:57 That's a fine thing, not a bad thing at all.

00:59 Remember, and this is particularly true for men, but also to some degree for women, are

01:04 you relatively decent at, you know, what's called reading the room?

01:09 Can you read the room?

01:13 That's important.

01:14 Because if you don't get social cues very well, then you're less likely to be successful.

01:21 There's this joke, it's been around forever in comedy circles, where some bad thing happens

01:27 and some bad sort of social war of it, and somebody makes a joke about it and then they

01:32 say, "Too soon?

01:33 Too soon?

01:34 Yeah, it's too soon."

01:35 Right?

01:36 Is it too soon, right?

01:37 Because comedy is tragedy plus time.

01:40 So can you read the room?

01:42 Are you good at reading social cues?

01:45 Do you know if somebody's bored with what you're saying?

01:47 Do you know if somebody's actually finding you funny?

01:50 Do you know if somebody's interested in what you're saying?

01:53 So are you good at reading the room?

01:55 Do you know how to act appropriately in social situations?

01:59 Now this doesn't mean being a slave to social situations.

02:02 It doesn't mean having no identity.

02:04 It doesn't mean having no integrity.

02:06 It's just, can you read particular social cues?

02:11 So for instance, somebody who's bad at reading social cues would be the petty criminal who

02:17 decides to fight the cop, right?

02:20 That's not good at reading about legal cues, but also to some degree social cues.

02:24 Are you decent at reading social cues?

02:27 If somebody is acutely uncomfortable, then are you able to adjust your behavior to act

02:34 in recognition of that?

02:35 It doesn't mean necessarily to make them feel better or anything like that, but just are

02:38 you able to adjust your behavior in reaction to someone who's acutely uncomfortable?

02:44 So there's another real cliche in comedies, which is somebody gets kind of obsessed with

02:51 doing something themselves.

02:54 They're obsessed with cleaning something under their nails and they really get into it.

02:57 And other people look at them like, "Whoa, what are you doing?"

02:59 That kind of thing.

03:00 This is used a number of times in the 80s movie, The Breakfast Club, where the goth

03:07 girl, the emo girl is biting at her nails or her cuticles or something.

03:12 And everyone's looking at her like, "What are you doing?"

03:15 And that's an example of not reading social cues.

03:18 You get so into what you're doing that other people look at you like you've sprouted a

03:21 second how to get an advertising head or something like that.

03:26 And that's an example of not reading social cues very well.

03:29 And that's the problem.

03:31 You really should be...

03:32 A lot of people feel like, "Oh, I'm not going to be a slave to convention.

03:35 I'm not going to read social cues."

03:37 And it's like, "Okay, well, that's fine.

03:39 You can do that, but it's going to harm your dating prospects."

03:44 In particular, women tend to be a little bit more concerned about social status and reading

03:50 the room and reading social cues and so on.

03:53 Reading social cues doesn't mean that you're a slave.

03:57 If someone is uncomfortable reading the social cue, it simply means noticing that they're

04:00 uncomfortable.

04:02 And whether you deal with that or not, but at least noticing it.

04:06 Maybe you'll take some steps to make them more comfortable.

04:08 Maybe you'll drop the topic.

04:09 Or maybe if you are engaged in some sort of hostile debate, maybe you'll press your advantage

04:15 and really push verbally hard down on where they're at the least comfortable.

04:19 It could be any number of things, but you've got to at least know what's going on.

04:22 What you do with it is a different matter, but you have to at least be able to read the

04:25 room.

04:26 So being able to do small talk is fine.

04:30 Now, you want to be able to do small talk.

04:33 You don't want to be only able to do small talk.

04:37 Does that make sense?

04:39 You want to have fine motor skills, but you don't want to only have fine motor skills.

04:44 Like you want to be able to thread a needle, I suppose, but you also want to be able to

04:47 lift heavy weights and run away from a bear, right?

04:50 You need your big, big ass muscle skills as well as just sort of fine motor skills.

04:56 So you don't want to be a slave to social convention in this way.

05:01 There is a certain kind of small-minded, narrow-minded, rigid personality structure that is quite

05:11 hostile towards anything of depth.

05:13 I mean, I think we, it's almost the default position these days to be hostile and frightened

05:18 and aggressive towards anything of any depth.

05:23 I don't, this is an old Seinfeld joke.

05:24 I don't really think we're supposed to be talking about this.

05:28 You know that kind of stuff, right?

05:29 Keep it shallow, keep it goofy, keep it nonsensical and so on.

05:32 As sort of woke culture has expanded or woke anti-culture has expanded, this has become

05:36 more and more common.

05:37 So there are people who are desperate to keep topics relentlessly shallow, inconsequential

05:45 and unimportant.

05:47 And they do that with quite an aggressive rigidity.

05:50 And this is where the word inappropriate comes from.

05:52 This, this is inappropriate to talk about.

05:55 Well, of course, the question is always, well, appropriate to what, who defines it, what

05:59 does it mean relative to, whatever else is going on.

06:02 So it's never defined.

06:03 It's just a generic negative term that is supposed to make you feel bad and thus train

06:08 you into not talking about particular topics rather than give you a reason for not talking

06:13 about particular topics.

06:15 So yeah, inappropriate, getting cold, angry glances shot at you, people withdrawing, people

06:19 rolling their eyes.

06:20 These are all designed to program you into avoiding particular topics.

06:25 Now I was thinking about this just over the last couple of days, sort of what is it that

06:29 characterizes some of the worst aspects of the lower classes that I kind of crawled my

06:34 way out of.

06:35 And one of them is this intense rigidity with regards to thoughts and ideas.

06:40 There's no flexibility, there's no curiosity.

06:43 And I've referred to them as a period people.

06:44 You know, it's just this way, period.

06:47 You know, hate has no home here.

06:48 It's like, what does that even mean?

06:50 Does that mean you hate people who hate?

06:53 What if they hate evil?

06:55 It doesn't mean anything.

06:57 It's just, well, when people say hate has no home here, what they mean is that they

07:03 are giving themselves license to hate people.

07:05 Which is, I mean, it's kind of ironic, right?

07:09 Intolerance has no home here.

07:10 It's like, well, then aren't you intolerant?

07:11 And what if somebody's intolerant of intolerance?

07:14 I mean, does that mean that, anyway, so it's all just a bunch of nonsense.

07:19 Has no home here is one of these threats of ostracism.

07:25 It's designed to kick into your unconscious and provoke the torture circuits that are

07:31 stimulated by threats or enactments of ostracism.

07:35 So that's what that sort of hate has no home here means that you're going to threaten you

07:40 with ostracism if you do something that I define as hate.

07:43 We're allowed to hate the hateful, even if the hateful are hating the hateful and the

07:48 evil.

07:49 Anyway, it's all a bunch of Pavlovian programmable brain vacuum nonsense.

07:55 But there are this rigidity and these slogans, right?

08:00 And these slogans pass for wisdom, these slogans pass for knowledge, these slogans pass for

08:05 virtue.

08:06 But the slogans are stupid.

08:08 The slogans are stupid.

08:10 And you know, no human being is illegal, right?

08:13 It's just a stupid statement.

08:15 It's a stupid statement because of course there are tons of people who are illegal.

08:21 Try not paying your taxes and see if you end up becoming illegal, right?

08:24 Try not paying for government schools.

08:26 Anyway, so it's all, but these are just slogans, right?

08:29 Now when people pretend that they have wisdom because they have slogans, then they have

08:36 to skate on the shallowest of shallow surfaces of things because any depth reveals their

08:41 pretense of wisdom.

08:43 Any depth, any curiosity, this is back to the ancient battle between Socrates and the

08:47 sophists.

08:48 The sophists are those who pretend to have knowledge that they don't in fact have.

08:52 And this is sort of the NPC thing, right?

08:54 You get programmed with a bunch of slogans and you can see them, like people proudly

08:58 display them on their lawns and so on.

09:01 And we've sort of mentioned them here.

09:02 Well, it's just a bunch of slogans.

09:04 There's no depth, there's no knowledge.

09:06 Like you know, all of the people who say, "Well, you can't know anything for certain,

09:09 man.

09:10 Oh really?

09:11 Are you certain of that?"

09:12 You know, it's just, it's just stupid.

09:13 It's just now people are given slogans and they grab onto those slogans as a form of

09:17 vanity advertising to pretend that they're deep and knowledgeable when they are, when

09:22 they're not deep and knowledgeable.

09:24 And quite the opposite, right?

09:26 To give people slogans and have them pretend to be virtuous is one of the surest methods

09:30 of advancing power and control over people.

09:35 The reason being that the way that you avoid the simplicity and stupidity of violence is

09:41 with the depth and curiosity of philosophy.

09:44 That there aren't simple answers, that it's very complex because when there are simple

09:47 answers violence is very tempting.

09:50 When there are complex answers, violence becomes less tempting, right?

09:53 So idiots will say, "Well, we got a bunch of rich people, there's a couple of poor people,

09:58 we'll just take money from the rich people, give it to the poor people and everyone will

10:00 be fine."

10:01 Right?

10:02 That's a stupid solution to a challenging problem.

10:06 And if you can get people to believe that, then the use of violence and the use of slogans,

10:12 the use of violence and the boiling down of things to one variable simplicity idiot formulas

10:19 are very intertwined.

10:22 Complexity is freedom.

10:24 Simplicity often is brutality.

10:27 Now it's sort of like, how should goods be allocated in society?

10:32 Well, of course the stupid answer is to say, you know, that the wisest people should sit

10:36 and distribute resources according to what's best for the economy.

10:40 Some sort of central planning nonsense, right?

10:41 You say, "Well, how are they going to know?

10:45 And how can they be so wise?

10:47 And how do they get chosen?

10:48 And what happens if they're bad?"

10:50 You know, there's just so many questions that, right?

10:54 How do we protect our property?

10:56 Well, the government.

10:57 But the government can only protect your property by taking it ahead of time.

11:01 So that's not really much of an answer now, is it?

11:05 It's like saying, well, we protect women from being raped by forcing them to marry men and

11:11 then making no, there's no possibility of raping within a marriage.

11:15 So we protected women from rape.

11:17 This would be the dumb argument, right?

11:19 Women are getting raped.

11:20 Well, we'll force women to marry men and then define marriage as that in which you cannot

11:24 rape your wife.

11:26 And look at that, no rape, right?

11:27 That's all this sort of stuff, right?

11:28 Rather than dealing with root causes, you jiggle with the facts and think that you're

11:31 a genius.

11:32 So you want to keep things complex.

11:36 Shallow people want to keep things simple.

11:38 Shallow people want to keep things simple.

11:40 And those in power want to hand people slogans because by pretending that things are simple,

11:46 they make people vain and impatient and aggressive.

11:51 And they both emotionally and from a sort of consequentialist standpoint, raise the

11:55 likelihood of advocating violence.

11:57 You know, if the government is just great at educating kids and kids need to be educated,

12:02 then of course we have to government educate children, right?

12:05 That's the argument as opposed to, well, the greatest power any human beings have is over

12:10 the mindset of children and how are people never, like how are you going to guarantee

12:15 without competition and voluntarism that people will never use that power to ill?

12:20 You can't guarantee that.

12:21 And therefore you are setting yourself up for society destroying propaganda machines,

12:26 right?

12:27 Mills.

12:28 So shallow people, a small talk addicted people, people who will try and punish you for veering

12:35 out of the shallow end of the conversation pool.

12:38 Well, the reason they want to keep you in the shallow end is the dead bodies of their

12:44 former conscience is buried in the deep end.

12:48 When you trade out your conscience for slogans, when you trade out challenging virtue for

12:52 simplistic shouting, you kill your conscience.

12:55 I mean, you can't really kill it dead, but you're in two minutes for sure.

13:00 And in the same way that a guy who's killed a bunch of people and buried them in his backyard

13:05 doesn't want you rooting around his backyard.

13:09 People who have traded in their conscience for empty, stupid slogan earring don't want

13:15 you asking any foundational questions because that will reveal their own corruption and

13:20 their own pretense of knowledge and virtue, right?

13:23 So the people who say, "I care about the poor and we should just give the poor money and

13:29 then they won't be poor and everything will be great."

13:31 Well, that's, it's dumb.

13:34 And because it's dumb, it tempts people to violence.

13:37 The reason for that, well, if it's so simple, you might as well just use coercion to achieve

13:40 it.

13:41 That's number one.

13:42 And number two, they need it enacted through violence because otherwise people will start

13:46 asking uncomfortable questions, reveal their own appalling lack of ignorance or thought

13:51 or care about the actual subject.

13:52 Like their lack of caring about the poor.

13:54 They only care about people perceiving that they care about the poor.

13:57 They don't actually care about the poor.

13:59 They're perfectly willing to sacrifice the poor and the future of the poor in order to

14:05 pretend to care and for people to believe that they care.

14:09 And so I care about the arts, so the government should fund the arts.

14:12 It's like, well, the arts is very powerful ways of programming people and will the government

14:16 fund art that is critical of the government?

14:20 Well, probably not.

14:21 And therefore you're losing a pretty powerful way of pushing back against expansions of

14:25 government power, which is terrible and so on.

14:28 So again, simple answers provoke violence or justify violence because if it's that simple,

14:36 just get it done with a gun.

14:37 And also because complex questions that are allowed in the vicinity unravel the vanity

14:45 and narcissistic ignorance of people masquerading as deep, rich, wise and tenderhearted virtues.

14:51 So yeah, shallow people in that sense, the people who are constantly promoting small

14:58 talk and it doesn't just necessarily mean about sports and the weather, although that's

15:01 certainly part of it, but it also has to do with stupid solutions to complex social problems

15:07 like take money from the rich and give them to the poor.

15:09 Well, isn't that the use of coercion?

15:10 Well, a lot of rich people get their money from coercion as well.

15:14 Do two wrongs justify a right?

15:15 All this kind of stuff, right?

15:18 So yeah, it's really bad.

15:21 For the most part, and I've only penetrated this a couple of times, so this is not exactly

15:24 scientific, but for the most part, when people are relentlessly addicted to small talk, it's

15:31 because they have a really bad conscience.

15:32 They have a really bad conscience because they're pretending to promote virtue while

15:37 being in the service of evil, for the most part, right?

15:41 By promoting simple, coercive solutions to complex social problems, they're pretending

15:45 to be virtuous while actually serving evil.

15:47 Well, that's going to give you a very, very, very bad conscience.

15:49 In fact, it's going to give you in some ways a worse conscience than actively doing evil.

15:54 A thief has a better conscience than a sophist because the thief is not lying to himself

16:01 or to others about what he's doing.

16:04 I mean, a sophist is more of a con man, but a con man can only target people who voluntarily

16:09 walk into his trap, but the sophist can, in conjunction with the state, produce absolutely

16:15 completely disastrous effects that affect hundreds of millions or billions of people

16:21 in a pretty permanent and escalating kind of way.

16:24 So the sophist is more dangerous than the thief in many ways, and those who advocate

16:30 stupid coercive slogans in the place of sophisticated and curious wisdom are, I mean, doing really,

16:38 really terrible things in the world, and because they never want that revealed to themselves,

16:42 least of all, they never want you to find the bodies in the deep end.

16:45 They got to keep you shallow.

16:46 They got to keep small talk.

16:49 Small talk births very, very big evils.

16:54 FreedomAid.com/donate.

16:55 Thank you so much for your time, attention, and your support.

16:59 FreedomAid.com/donate.

17:00 Talk to you soon.

17:01 Bye.

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