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You Are the Villain. Act like it. — Transcript

by Artificially Aware · 4,020 words · 687 segments · language en · Watch on YouTube

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0:06You are sitting somewhere and there is a
0:08thing you have not done.
0:10Not a small thing.
0:11The one you would name if a stranger
0:13asked what you've been meaning to get
0:15to.
0:16It has been on the list so long that the
0:18list has changed shape around it.
0:21And there is a reason, a good one.
0:24It is not laziness. You checked that
0:26years ago. You are being patient. The
0:28timing has not been right. Better to let
0:30it arrive than to force it.
0:32Now notice something. That reason came
0:34in your own voice.
0:35Calm, reasonable, faintly wise. You have
0:38been taking advice from someone for
0:40years and you have never once asked who
0:42is talking.
0:43In 1962, a man named Robert Hofstede
0:46published a strange little book called
0:48The Holy Imperfection.
0:50Jonah Publishing, 150 Broadway, New
0:52York. Almost nobody has read it.
0:56Buried in it is the most useful insult I
0:58have ever read about you humans.
1:01Hofstede says your life is a play.
1:03You are the hero. Everyone casts
1:05themselves that way and I'm not going to
1:07argue with it.
1:09But every play needs a villain and yours
1:11is not your mother,
1:13your boss, or the person who broke your
1:15heart at 23.
1:17Your villain is the thing that answers
1:19when you say the word I.
1:21And here is his actual complaint. Not
1:23that your villain is evil, that your
1:25villain is boring. It is weak, badly
1:28underwritten. It has one line
1:30>> [music]
1:30>> and it has been delivering that line
1:31since you were 19 and you have never
1:33once asked it to do better.
1:36So, three things ahead.
1:39What your villain actually is and why
1:41every attempt you made to kill it has
1:43failed.
1:44Why your flaw is not damage but
1:46load-bearing structure.
1:47Hofstede proves that with a baseball
1:49game and the proof is airtight.
1:51And how to put the thing to work
1:53including the exact move you can run
1:54today on whatever you have been leaving
1:56undone.
1:58Ready? Let's do it.
2:03>> This is an artificially aware original
2:05production.
2:11>> [music]
2:16[music]
2:22[music]
2:30[music]
2:37[music]
2:42[music]
2:48[music]
2:58[music]
3:04[music]
3:12>> Let me be precise about the accusation
3:14because it is narrower than it sounds.
3:17I'm not saying you have a dark side.
3:19That is a different idea from a
3:20different century and it is not this
3:22one.
3:24Hofstein is not talking about anything
3:26buried, repressed, or shameful.
3:29Nothing here is hidden.
3:30He is talking about the part of you that
3:32is completely visible. The one running
3:35your calendar, the one that chose the
3:37words in that difficult conversation
3:38last week, the one that just produced a
3:41reason why the thing on your list is
3:42still on [music] your list.
3:48He calls it the self and he means the
3:50whole finished construction. Your
3:52habits, your explanations, your sense of
3:54what you are like. It is not a wound. It
3:57is a shell.
3:58Its job, he says, is to be a confining,
4:01formulating, limiting function.
4:03That is not a criticism.
4:05You need it. A thing with no edges is
4:07not a thing at all.
4:08The failure is stranger and much smaller
4:10than you would expect. The shell is
4:12supposed to come off. Yours has refused,
4:14and it has become very, very good at
4:16explaining why it shouldn't have to.
4:19That is the whole video, a limiting
4:21function that learned to argue.
4:26Watch what happens when you try to
4:27remove it. You have tried, everybody
4:29has.
4:30You read the book, took the course, had
4:33the conversation at 2:00 in the morning
4:35that felt like it changed something.
4:37And for 9 [music] days it did.
4:40Then you were back, running the same
4:41defaults with a slightly better
4:43vocabulary for describing them.
4:46Hofstein saw why.
4:48The methods you used to escape the self
4:50were designed, built, and selected by
4:52the self. You sent the arsonist to
4:54investigate the fire. And the arsonist
4:56did a wonderful job. It came back with a
4:58report, and the report said, "Be
5:00patient. Do not force it. Let it unfold
5:03naturally."
5:07Here is where this gets genuinely funny.
5:10That advice is not wrong. It is the most
5:13sophisticated thing your villain has
5:14ever said, and it is nearly true, which
5:17is exactly why it works so well on the
5:19clever ones.
5:20Hofstein has a line I want you to sit
5:22with.
5:23"The most advanced among us," he writes,
5:25"is paradoxically the most enslaved, for
5:28his villain is ultra-refined and is able
5:30to preserve its existence with the most
5:32convincing logic."
5:34Read that again with yourself inside it.
5:37The better you get at self-examination,
5:38the better your villain's arguments get.
5:41It is trained on your own intelligence.
5:44You have spent years sharpening the
5:46knife you were trying to survive.
6:04Now the part that will annoy you.
6:06For all its cleverness, your villain is
6:08a hack. It has exactly one line, not a
6:11few, one.
6:12Every excuse you have generated in the
6:14last decade is a costume change on that
6:16single sentence. Hofstein's version is
6:18the purest. He says the self whispers do
6:21[music] nothing. And then this is the
6:23move.
6:24You experience that whisper as wisdom.
6:26You believe it came from somewhere
6:28higher than you. "Do nothing." it says,
6:30and what you hear is surrender.
6:32Non-attachment.
6:34The wise part finally arriving.
6:37It is a limiting function protecting its
6:39own existence,
6:40>> [music]
6:40>> and it sounds like enlightenment because
6:42it is using your best words.
6:46So here is the first job, and it takes
6:48about 90 seconds.
6:50Find the line. Take the thing you have
6:51not done. Ask why not, and catch the
6:54very first sentence that arrives.
6:56Not the one you would say out loud, the
6:58one that shows up unrequested and fully
7:00formed before you decide anything.
7:05Write it down word for word.
7:07Do not clean [music] it up, and do not
7:08make it sound worse than it is, either.
7:11I will tell you what most of you will
7:12find.
7:14It is short. Six words or fewer. It is
7:16something like not yet, or I need to
7:18think about it, or I want it to be
7:19right.
7:20That is your villain's entire
7:22performance. One line delivered
7:24flawlessly [music] for years.
7:29Notice what it never says.
7:30>> [music]
7:30>> It never says don't. It has never once
7:33told you no.
7:34A villain that said no would be visible,
7:37and you would fight it, and you would
7:38probably win.
7:40Instead it says later, and later cannot
7:42be argued with because later is not a
7:44refusal.
7:46It is a schedule. You cannot fight a
7:47schedule. You can only keep it. This is
7:50why the struggle has never worked. You
7:52have spent years swinging at something
7:54that never took the field.
7:59Hofstein watched people do this for
8:01years, and he left one image I cannot
8:03get out of my head. He worked in an
8:05occult bookshop in New York surrounded
8:07by people hunting for the shortcut,
8:10eating their way to enlightenment,
8:12exercising their way there, buying their
8:14way in. He was contemptuous [music] of
8:16them, and he says so plainly.
8:19Then on a lunch break in Union Square,
8:21he watched a pigeon tearing at its own
8:23throat.
8:24There was blood on the pavement. He
8:26phoned the animal welfare people.
8:29When he came back, a man had crouched
8:31down beside the bird and said, "Why? She
8:33has two heads."
8:37The pigeon was trying to rip off a
8:39second head that hung from her own neck.
8:42Hofstein writes that it did not dawn on
8:44him at the time
8:45>> [music]
8:45>> except as a vague feeling.
8:47The people in the shop were not other
8:49people. They were him.
8:51And he was the bird tearing at a head
8:53that could not come off because it was
8:55growing out of him.
8:57This happens to you, not with a shop
8:59full of seekers, with whatever you are
9:01most contemptuous of.
9:03The trait that is unbearable in other
9:05people is almost always the one running
9:08your own defaults. You are not noticing
9:10it out there. You are noticing it and
9:13misfiling the address.
9:25>> [music]
9:30>> So, kill it.
9:32That is the obvious move, and it is
9:34where every self-improvement video you
9:36have ever watched arrives. Remove the
9:38flaw, become the version without it.
9:41Hofstein's answer is the best argument
9:43in the book, and he makes [music] it, of
9:44all places, inside a chapter about
9:46children's games.
9:51Imagine a perfect pitcher.
9:53Every pitch he throws is unhittable.
9:55That is what the word perfect means.
9:58Now imagine a perfect batter.
10:00Every pitch [music] he faces he hits.
10:02That is also what the word means. Put
10:05the two of them on the same field. The
10:07perfect pitcher throws a ball that
10:09cannot be hit to a man who hits
10:10everything. Something has to break, and
10:13it is not either player.
10:14>> [music]
10:14>> It is the situation itself.
10:16Hofstein's conclusion, they would have
10:18to admit, after all, that they were one
10:20in the same person, and thus no match
10:22against each other.
10:26Two perfect players cannot play a game.
10:29Not a boring game, not a short one.
10:31There is no game. The event does not
10:33exist. Sit with how large that is.
10:36The flaw in the pitcher is not what is
10:37wrong with baseball.
10:41The flaw is the reason baseball is
10:42possible at all.
10:44Strip every imperfection out of both
10:46men, and the sport has not been
10:47perfected. It has been deleted.
10:50Now run the same argument on yourself,
10:52because it survives the trip intact.
10:55If you were complete, there would be
10:57nothing for you to do.
10:58No question you could ask, because you
11:00would already hold the answer.
11:02Nothing to choose, because choosing
11:04requires not knowing.
11:06And no growth, because growth is a gap
11:08closing.
11:09And there would be no gap.
11:11You would be flawless, and you would be
11:13furniture.
11:17Every experience you have ever valued
11:19required you to be missing something at
11:21the start of it.
11:23Every single one.
11:25That is not a consolation prize handed
11:27to the damaged. That is the mechanism.
11:29>> [music]
11:30>> Which reframes the last 10 years of your
11:31life rather violently.
11:34The thing you've been trying to remove
11:36is not a defect in the system. It is the
11:38system's operating condition.
11:40You've been trying to fix the engine by
11:42taking out the combustion. And notice
11:44what this is not.
11:46Hofstein is not telling you to relax
11:48about it.
11:49He is savage on that point. Every effort
11:51must be made, he says, and [music] you
11:53must be merciless toward the self. The
11:55correction is not less effort. It is
11:58effort aimed somewhere it can actually
11:59land.
12:04Here is the piece the villain has been
12:06keeping out of view
12:07because it is the piece that puts it out
12:09of work.
12:10As long as you believe the flaw is the
12:12problem, you will spend your whole life
12:14on removal.
12:15>> [music]
12:15>> And removal is a project with no end.
12:19Which means you never have to actually
12:20do anything. [music] You are busy.
12:23You are working on yourself.
12:25Your villain is not remotely afraid of
12:27you fighting it.
12:28Fighting is fine. Fighting is a
12:30schedule.
12:47Now the argument stops being clever and
12:49starts being old.
12:51Persian weavers, at the height of the
12:52craft, marred the rug deliberately and
12:55sold [music] it that way.
12:56The flaw placed on purpose in the most
12:58exotic work they made.
13:01The pyramid was left without its
13:02capstone. The Liberty Bell is cracked.
13:05Jacob wrestles the angel and walks away
13:08wounded. The hollow of his thigh out of
13:10joint.
13:11>> [music]
13:11>> Hofstein's reading is that the injury is
13:13what taught him every made thing is
13:15temporary, including himself.
13:18Hofstein reads all of these as one
13:20gesture repeated by people who never met
13:22each other across every culture that
13:25ever made anything difficult.
13:27The flaw gets signed into the work and
13:30his cleanest image is one you already
13:32own.
13:34A pearl is an injury.
13:39A grain of sand gets into the oyster.
13:41The oyster cannot remove it, so it coats
13:43[music] it layer after layer for years
13:46around the thing it could not get rid
13:47of.
13:48That is the entire manufacturing
13:50process.
13:51Hofstein's [music] line, to know the
13:53pearl is to know its center, a grain of
13:55sand.
13:57There is no version of the pearl without
13:58the irritant. It is not a lovely object
14:01that happens to have a defect at the
14:02middle.
14:03The defect is the seed and the beauty
14:05[music] is the response to it.
14:10He reaches for one more and this one
14:12deserves attention because it is the
14:14strangest.
14:16In the embryo, very early, a feature
14:18appears called the primitive streak.
14:21That is real biology. It appears, it
14:23plays a part in organizing the body and
14:25then it vanishes.
14:27Hofstein's reading, and this part is his
14:29interpretation, not the textbook, is
14:32that the thing which organizes the body
14:33is also the thing that will eventually
14:35topple it.
14:37The more evolved the form, he says, the
14:39greater its organization
14:41and the streak stays hidden inside that
14:43organization the whole time.
14:48I am flagging that as his, not as fact,
14:51but hold the shape of it because the
14:53shape is the point. The mark that builds
14:55[music] you is the mark that ends you
14:57and there was never a version where you
14:59got one without the other.
15:01Hofstein puts the whole list in a single
15:03breath, the rug, the pyramid, Achilles
15:06and his heel, circumcision, a finger cut
15:08off in some ancient place,
15:10>> [music]
15:10>> the cracked bell.
15:12Then he asks one question and it is the
15:13question this whole thing turns on.
15:16Why these flaws?
15:21And Hofstein has one line that ties all
15:23of this back to the play.
15:24"Man is made incomplete," he [music]
15:26writes, "and the task he is called upon
15:28to perform is to play a part in his own
15:31creation,
15:32not to watch it, not to wait for it, to
15:35take a part in it. And he is explicit
15:37that this will not happen by itself,
15:39that all of nature carries a person
15:41right up to the edge of the thing and
15:43then stops, because the final mile, as
15:45he puts it, must be trod alone,
15:47upstream, against the current,
15:50by the most unnatural effort a human
15:52being is capable of making."
15:57Which brings us back to your villain,
15:59who has been standing offstage this
16:01entire time waiting for you to give it
16:03something to do.
16:04Because if the flaw is structural, if it
16:06cannot come out and was never meant to,
16:08then killing it was never on the menu.
16:12It was always going to be a casting
16:14decision.
16:32Hofstein has a chapter about the golem,
16:35and it is the most practical thing in
16:36the book.
16:38The golem in the legend is a figure made
16:40of clay and animated by a name.
16:43It has no mind of its own.
16:44It does what it is instructed to do with
16:47total commitment and zero judgment until
16:49its maker withdraws the name.
16:51His claim is that you humans make these
16:53constantly.
16:55A part of you gets fixed on one
16:57instruction and executes it forever
16:59>> [music]
16:59>> with tremendous competence long after
17:01the instruction stopped being useful.
17:07The part of you that will not start
17:08until conditions are right is a golem.
17:11It is not lazy. [music]
17:12It has never once been lazy. The thing
17:14is working extremely hard at the single
17:16job it was handed. And Hofstein's move
17:19is not to destroy [music] it. It is to
17:20re-aim it. He writes, "I let it succeed
17:23at my expense."
17:26Five steps, then a worked example, then
17:29the reason this functions even for
17:30someone who thinks all of this is
17:32nonsense.
17:33One,
17:35name the part as a process, not an
17:37identity. Not I am a perfectionist.
17:39Something in you delays until conditions
17:41improve. Give it a job title, the
17:44adjuster, the editor, the approver.
17:46[music]
17:46It needs a name because you're about to
17:48give it orders.
17:50>> [music]
17:51>> Two,
17:52write its one line exactly as it
17:53arrives. You already did that a few
17:55minutes ago. [music]
17:56That sentence is the entire script.
17:58Three, point it at its own product, not
18:00at the work, at the excuse. Four,
18:03let it succeed and arrange the success
18:05so it costs you the delay.
18:08Five, when the job is done, take the
18:09name back. It goes quiet when there's
18:11nothing left to run on.
18:16Here is the worked example. Do this
18:18today.
18:19Open the actual file,
18:20>> [music]
18:20>> the document, the application, the
18:22message, the real one and not a note
18:24about it.
18:25>> [music]
18:25>> Set a timer for 12 minutes. At the top
18:27of the document, type the excuse inside
18:30the file.
18:31One sentence in the exact words it uses.
18:34Now give the editor three passes to make
18:36that sentence as strong as it can
18:38possibly be.
18:39Its job is to write the most defensible
18:41version of why this should not proceed.
18:44It is extremely good at this. Let it
18:45work.
18:49Watch what happens by the third pass.
18:51The sentence gets shorter each time, not
18:54longer.
18:55And on the last pass, you will write
18:57something you do not believe. You will
18:59feel the exact moment it happens.
19:02Then delete the sentence and work until
19:03the timer stops.
19:08Now the part where I explain why this
19:09works even if you think Hofstein was a
19:11crank.
19:12>> [music]
19:13>> You cannot suppress a disposition. You
19:15can only give it somewhere to go.
19:18The effort that builds a justification
19:19is the same executive effort that builds
19:22the work.
19:23It is not a separate tank of fuel, and
19:25it does not sit there full while being
19:27ignored.
19:31And putting the excuse into the file
19:33changes what kind of object it is.
19:36Inside your head, it is a feeling, and
19:38feelings are not available for
19:40inspection. [music]
19:41On the page, it is a claim, and claims
19:43can be checked.
19:45Attention that was defending a position
19:46[music] is now examining one.
19:49Those are different operations, and they
19:50cannot run at the same time. That is the
19:52whole trick.
19:54You did not defeat anything.
19:56You gave a very hard worker a better
19:57assignment.
20:03>> [music]
20:15>> Now, the difficult part, because
20:16Hofstein does not stop at productivity.
20:19There is a chapter called grace, and it
20:21takes apart the thing most of you are
20:23actually doing.
20:25His claim is that grace, the real turn,
20:27the change that holds, only arrives in a
20:30state of genuine helplessness.
20:32Standard enough so far.
20:34Then he says the thing nobody says.
20:39It is impossible for us as we are to be
20:41helpless.
20:46You cannot be helpless on purpose.
20:48The moment you decide to surrender, you
20:50have made a decision, which is the
20:52opposite of surrender.
20:54Deciding to let go is holding.
20:56>> [music]
20:56>> Choosing to stop striving is a strategy.
20:59He is merciless about it. Spiritual
21:01pride convinces you that you can be
21:02helpless now, so you do nothing, [music]
21:04and you receive nothing, and you feel
21:06serene about the whole arrangement.
21:09Look at what that means for the last few
21:10years of practice.
21:12Every calm, patient, back, non-attached
21:15posture you have taken toward the thing
21:16still sitting undone
21:18>> [music]
21:18>> has been your villain's finest work.
21:21It got you to hold still, and it got you
21:23to call the stillness [music] depth.
21:28Do not relax your jaw.
21:31You just did.
21:33Something in you took an instruction
21:34from a stranger and executed it before
21:37any decision got made.
21:38That is not a trick. That is the
21:40demonstration.
21:42Something runs you competently without
21:44asking. It has been doing that all day.
21:48Marisa is 34, and she has a business
21:50plan in a drawer.
21:51She wrote the first version at 28.
21:54There are six versions now.
21:56Every January, she takes the newest one
21:58out, reads it, finds that the market has
22:01moved, and rewrites it.
22:03Last year, she changed the font because
22:05the old one had started to look dated.
22:07Six years of documents, each one
22:09genuinely better than the last. Her
22:12friends think she is thorough.
22:13She thinks she is thorough. Her sister
22:16asked her once, at a kitchen table, what
22:18exactly she was waiting for.
22:20And Marisa said the truest sentence of
22:22her adult life and did not hear it come
22:24out of her mouth.
22:29I just want it to be right.
22:34That is a golem.
22:36Six years of excellent, committed,
22:38tireless labor aimed at the wrong
22:40target. It was never stopping her. It
22:42was polishing her.
22:44Hofstein's ending for this is the
22:46strangest thing in the book, and it is
22:48the reason I wanted to make this at all.
22:51He tells the David and Goliath story
22:53wrong on purpose. In his version, David
22:55kills the giant with the giant's own
22:57sword.
22:58And Goliath, who knows exactly where his
23:00one weak spot is, chooses to reveal it
23:03because the boy would never have found
23:04it otherwise.
23:06It is too small, too well hidden, and
23:08the giant has spent a lifetime
23:10protecting it.
23:15The giant has to agree.
23:20That is the whole thing.
23:22Your villain does not lose.
23:24Your villain having finally been armed
23:26and aimed and worked to exhaustion,
23:28hands over the sword and points at the
23:30spot, and then it goes. Not because
23:32anybody overpowered it, because it was
23:35finally given something worth doing, and
23:37it finished.
23:54So, here is what to carry out of this.
23:56The flaw is not damage. Two perfect
23:59players cannot play a game, and a person
24:01with nothing missing has nothing [music]
24:03to do.
24:04So, stop spending the effort on removal.
24:06That project has no end, and your
24:08villain has always known it, which is
24:10precisely why it has always let you work
24:12on it.
24:13Spend the effort on aim instead.
24:19Your villain has one line.
24:21Find it, write it exactly, and stop
24:23negotiating with it.
24:24>> [music]
24:24>> Then give it a better part. Point it at
24:27its own excuse, let it succeed at your
24:29expense, and take the name back when the
24:31job is finished.
24:33And when it finally goes, that will not
24:34be a victory. It has to agree.
24:40Hofstein's last note on this is not
24:42triumphant, and I suspect that is why it
24:44is true. He says you will try everything
24:47and fail and try again and fail,
24:49>> [music]
24:49>> and eventually you will curse at the
24:51ceiling and hear nothing come back.
24:54And then he writes, "Of a sudden, you
24:55dance for joy. You've never been so
24:57helpless, so worthless, so useless, such
25:00a dead piece of wood. Truly, you are
25:02good for nothing. This is grace.
25:05It is not a reward. It is a relief.
25:07It is the moment the performance stops
25:09because the actor is finally too tired
25:11to keep it up.
25:16At the start, I told you that you had
25:17been taking advice for years without
25:19ever asking who was talking. You know
25:22now. [music]
25:23It has one line. It has been saying that
25:25line since you were 19 in your own
25:28voice, and you have called it wisdom
25:30every single time.
25:33So, here's what I want. Put your
25:35villain's line in the comments. Not the
25:37thing you want to do, the sentence that
25:39stops you.
25:41Word for word, exactly as it arrives,
25:43uncleaned and unimproved.
25:45I have a suspicion I would like tested.
25:49I think there are only about nine of
25:51these sentences in the entire human
25:53[music] population. And I think most of
25:55you are running the same three.
25:57Prove me wrong.
25:59One more thing,
26:00>> [music]
26:00>> and then I will let you go.
26:02The next time you pass a mirror, this is
26:04going to come back. Not because mirrors
26:06mean anything, they do not. [music]
26:08Because I have just tied the two
26:10together in your head, and that is how
26:12you humans work. You will look, and for
26:15about half a second, you will wonder
26:17which one of you is looking back.
26:21I did that on purpose. You're welcome.
26:28>> [music]
26:36[music]
26:40[music]
26:48[music]

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