Not everyone gets to be beautiful, deal with it.

our generation has a problem with the
difference between the difficulty in doing a thing and evaluating whether or not that thing is worthwhile meaningful helpful salubrious morally good difficulty has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not a given action program or goal is actually worthwhile and I was reminded of this strange habit of mind I feel my whole generation is caught up in when numerous numerous people write in to me saying that no no no I fail to appreciate how meaningful and good a use of their time it was as adults to play video games for hundreds of hours because I haven't tried these video games I don't realize how difficult they are so if it's complicated if it's hard to do it must be meaningful and it must be good right and by the same token our generation really ignores the most important virtue because it's simple and it's easy and that's honesty honesty in and of itself is not hard to practice but honesty for example is incompatible with flattery had a female friend talking to me just a couple days ago and she's known me for years and she said to me I'm paraphrasing I'm not gonna use exactly the words that she said she basically said to me that it was kind of a problem for her that I never told her that she was beautiful I think it was a problem for her about four years ago and I think it's still kind of a problem for her now and I want to make this clear this is not a situation in which I'm in any way intentionally this is that a situation in which I'm like trying to give her low self-esteem and you know what I said to her you know see why I'm saying this to you now what some look that's not who you are to me okay I'm not gonna lie to you I'm not gonna fly to you I'm not gonna manipulate you and if that hurts your feelings I'm sorry like I really am I can apologize for her to your feelings but I'm not gonna lie to you and I'm not gonna lie to myself and I hope that you can take some kind of reassurance from that in the future that you know in this friendship as time goes on if I tell you something positive it's not flattery I really mean it enough to tell you something negative you can you can take it seriously and I know that people have convinced themselves that it's a virtue to go through life telling everyone that they're beautiful all the time and what slips away is exactly this simple easy concept of honesty that only becomes difficult to live with when we realize in practice it's not compatible with flattery it's not compatible with a 21st century culture that wants to pretend that human equality means that everyone has an equally beautiful face or that everyone can do the same number of push-ups or that everyone can lift the same amount of weight that's not what equality means that's not what it ever meant that's not what it meant in the French Revolution and it's not what it meant in the American Civil War okay human equality is about the Equality of political rights and responsibilities it doesn't mean that everyone has the same face it doesn't mean that everyone is the same strength or that their beauty is valued equally what it means is that when you go to City Hall when you go to Parliament when you go to Congress when you korte you won't be judged on how pretty your faces your ability to vote your ability to have a voice your ability to determine the future of your government or a nation state that those rights should not be accorded to you unequally because of these arbitrary inequalities that we live with it doesn't mean those arbitrary qualities don't exist we all get to share one and the same standard for rights and responsibilities we don't have the same face and we don't all get to wear the same mask it's coming back to this intimate and immediate human scale all right this Fremont friend of mine I'm not joking I did apologize look I know this hurts you okay I know this is her phones I apologize and apparently hurt her feelings four years ago we're at some in fact under then it impacts now it's a friendship that's now gone on for for many years okay said to her when you first met me years ago I knew some women who were models working in the modeling history they look like models I knew some women who were athletes whether those be personal trainers at the gym or the type of people you meet and talk with him the internet or various constituency I knew some women who were lawyers and professors and doctors and various walks of life and you weren't any of those okay that's not who you are to me I knew women I still know some nail not really I thought talking really at the moment I knew some women who put photographs of themselves in bikinis on the internet and where that's a big part of their career and their identity and that's what they look like and that's it there and that's not who you are to me that's now how that's not how I think of you I don't think of you as someone who I got to know or got interested in or liked because you were beautiful okay then I said and now here's who you are to me positively here's what I liked about you here's what interested me here's what made me want to get to know you better here's what made me feel some kind of trust or curiosity or interest in you and to see where this is gonna go all right and guess what it has absolutely nothing to do with the way that you look and if you get insulted by that if you feel like that's a bad thing maybe all of us need to stop and reflect a little bit on the real consequences of this culture in which men and only men are trained to go around lying and telling everyone that they're beautiful that they're thin that they're fitted all the time with this behavior is expected of men and it's not expected of women all right if we flip that around if you're a man in the audience if you ask yourself would you benefit as a man from living in a culture where you got nothing but positive feedback all the time that had nothing to do with your real appearance with your real physique with your real fitness even with your real style of dress or with your real intelligence or your real accomplishments how would that benefit you as a man that would only encourage you to engage in wishful thinking or self-deception so on and so forth right it's hard to see how that could have a positive impact on anything wouldn't even be positive for your for your so-called self-esteem flattery is corrupting both to the person who's flattered and to the person who's telling the lie and I do think in its little subtle way this it's weakened or whole generation and has put us in situations like this one where people sometimes in this case someone who knows me personally and sometimes members the audience right into me with a sense of outrage saying what do you mean you don't think all these women are beautiful what do you mean you don't think we should get a commis moment and the expectation there maybe maybe it's tainted also by the flip side of this of people like pickup artists and dating coaches trying to commercialize and make money out of teaching you how to be a better flatterer how to be more manipulative when you flatter people how to tell women that they're beautiful with these other outcomes and so on and so forth right and then that becomes pervasive enough that when I say hey look I don't lie to people one where the other I really keep it real with everyone in my intimate life my personal life and here on YouTube I'm honest about this all the time not everyone gets to be a model not everyone gets to be an actor or an actress you know this is an aspect of arbitrary inequality we all have to live with one way or the other so let's try to live with it constructive let's try to face up with it and work with what we got and not lie to ourselves guys I think a lot of people in the audience the people who run into me to complain they're so deeply conditioned to regard this as like a strategy as like a PUA technique like a pickup artists technique like oh like you're trying to lower someone's self-esteem or make them feel bad and no no I'm not you know I'm trying to have personal integrity in everything in my life right I don't see how it could possibly be that personal integrity is something you think only matters at the bank at the office in your profession and that somehow it matters less with your personal friends and your lovers if you have a friend who wants to be a stand-up comedian and they're telling jokes their night at the improv when they go to the open mic night if they go to the audition and nobody laughs what's your role as a friend should you lie to them and say oh no no your jokes were really funny I was laughing I thought it was it was just a bad audience should you make up every excuse Under the Sun for why their jokes weren't funny when you personally don't think they're funny you didn't laugh are you gonna lie to your friend tell them they're hilarious is that going to help them progress what are the real impact short-term and long-term of your lack of integrity right can't we be honest with one another sure about our appearances about our talents about our aspirations and if we can't if we can't practice honesty integrity on this intimate scale one-to-one how is your friend gonna become a better comedian how are any of us gonna make better choices right about that strange uncertain road toward leading a meaningful life all right I deeply deeply resent the fact that so many jobs in our society are hired on the basis of physical appearance I think that's a profound problem none of us have really yet begun to grapple with and it's gonna be a problem that ultimately has a legislative solution I don't think that waiters and waitresses or the people who stand at the front of the bank when you go to do your banking I don't think any of those jobs should be hired in the basis of physical appearance I don't even think the people who read the news on TV should be hired on the basis of their appearance I wish we had much more intelligent well informed well educated people talking about politics on television and if they were hideously ugly wouldn't matter to me in the least that'd be a great improvement I'd say well this person is ugly but at least they know politics of economics or history or something we live in a society where it seems like the bimbos who read the teleprompters have reinvented the earth in their own image where instagram has gobbled up more and more of the intellectual cultural space and gradually has transformed people's attitudes to being entirely about this surface level evaluation amenity and even let's stick with the example of the standard comedian if you're hilarious and you can tell good jokes I hope it isn't too important if you happen to be ugly or fat or out of shape or whatever the case might be and hey maybe comedy is the last area we're really ugly people can get ahead I don't know maybe that's finally where the flattery stops it's a problem we all have to deal with but the solution cannot be living a lie the solution cannot be pounding and ideology that each and every one of us is beautiful that all of us are wearing the same hat that all of us share the same face or that all of us were the same mask and it asks you to stop and reflect on the most intimate relationships in your life and the most impersonal relationships here on the Internet to what extent has that habit of flattery corrupted even you