Q&A: "I have no personality" (at 24 years old)

there are a lot of youtubers who make
the sanctimonious statement at the beginning or end of their video whittle if it helps just one person then this is the way it's normally about you know some incredibly self intelligent topic like well this video talking about how I finally learn to dye the roots of my hair are consistent blonde cover but just one person will be worth it talking about my weight loss transformation or whatever it is there's a lot of a lot of this kind of stuff I've got to say I find it kind of daunting to make videos that I that I know will help just one person because I think a lot of the time the the questions or problems I get sent in by just one person are not going to be that relevant to the life and interests of the rest of my audience is not going to have the power or educational potential of a more general methodological kind of discussion but I got a question from a supporter on patreon I'm gonna skip ahead to the addendum the very end of the question and then read the whole thing so the very end of the question she wrote PostScript to what extent is this problem here in a moment to what extent is this problem a result of my being told that uh I was pretty my entire life and not asked to do any meaningful self work aside from physically maintaining my state of being pretty so she means interrupts bringing this was the the emphasis so I want to jump right in and give a short answer to that the answer is the same if you met someone who grew up training to be a tennis pro just playing tennis all the time and then they asked ug to what extent are my problems my philosophical or professional or self esteem based on the fact that I spent all my time playing tennis of course of course this is part of the problem or part of the explanation and again in both cases I choose tennis for a reason it's not entirely bad I mean playing tennis isn't evil isn't terrible in some ways it's a waste of time or a shallow or meaningless or its failed to solve this other problem of course if you grew up I mean I again assume Melissa's off camera I don't know if you knew some people who grew up that way whether it was ice hockey or tennis or any other physically demanding sport but there people who wake up every day at 5:30 a.m. and go to practice you know against the hope of being on the Olympic team or the varsity team or whatever it is she woke up and did the scales every day in the bus so to some extent musical instruments had that role in your life where you saw the danger and potential of that of it you know dominating you so on a mass scale a lot of women wake up every morning half an hour earlier than they would to do their their hair and makeup they spend a significant percentage of their mental energy and time and money being pretty now I would just emphasize as with playing the violin or playing tennis it's not 100% bad like I can't say there are a lot of things really say if you gambling is what you're doing playing blackjack or poker or slot machine I think that's a hundred percent bad it's a pure loss but I mean I think there's something to be gained or learn from the artistry of makeup or from the physical discipline of playing tennis however yeah it is kind of mostly bad or mostly meaningless I'm not I'm not positive oh yes is it that's how she closed it oh here's that here's the first part of her question she says I apologize for treating you like a guru but I'm genuinely interesting your thoughts on this question as a 24 year old assume Melissa's not 26 so to say this question comes from a young woman who's not that far off from Los Angeles my perception of the world and myself more and more every day I feel as though I have no personality I feel as though I am entirely just a mirror or amalgamation or permutation of the people around me and the media I have hazard Li consumed every every quote-unquote original thought every seemingly original thought I have I eventually unto unearth the true source of which is not me so when she thinks about where these thoughts yes comes from if she finds something source of them that she's just repeating or echoing something she's read over as well her question is is it that nothing not even the self is ever original or is it that I haven't lived enough to become a true self those are her words so you can see where she apologizes for treating me like a guru just the phrasing here is a bit yeah it's a bit staying late after yoga class and it's it's that expression doesn't mean it doesn't mean it's a bad question so look you know first part I won't respond to again isolating kind of different bits and pieces of this question is originality what really matters here you know thanks to computer databases we now know it's impossible to play an original game of chess if you go if you practice playing chess you feel really great at chess and you go to a chess champion so you have every single game being played at a Chess Championship has happened before now if you have an incredibly stupid incredibly idiotic game by two people who are in the civils where you know that game doesn't make sense okay it's possible it's never happen but the point is there's a limited range of possible moves at each stage of a game of chess there's a limited number of moves that are strategically valid or viable once you're at a high level of skill so every game of chess has already been played now it's a real question his chess worth playing is this a worthwhile use your time is it worthwhile to paint pictures and especially when you look within one genre you know there's a Chinese genre of painting that are just called bird and branch paintings you can you can guess it is depending of so it's normally a flower on a branch or a leaf on a branch and a bird at the moment of landing or taking off a branch I can't say if you've seen one you've seen them all but if you've seen 100 or 200 of them you've seen them all do you want to dedicate your time to this kind of classical Chinese painting creating it or even looking at it I mean you could already guess through my tone of voice I don't valorize these things culturally it doesn't seem that that well but is is originality what what matters right I mean I think that there's maybe an air in in the question here in that she's asking you know okay there's there's a really meaningful part of this just feeling that you're not anybody feeling that there's not that you you don't have a self that you're not generating meaning of your own not creating or destroying something for yourself that you're merely echoing things other people that I understand that however the solution your problem and the criteria and you're looking for for something real or something meaningful I think probably can't be originality but this is so that the person or enemy I presume she's American this is definitely an aspect of American culture because American United States America is a culture where there's a very very little value placed on tradition so like you know when I was studying patli which is an ancient dead language in Asia a lot of the things I did which made me a very powerful scholar contrast other people who didn't do this kind of work it would involve literally copying out by hand manuscripts I mean repetition traditional forms of scholarship and learning you know that we don't do in the West I mean nobody sits down and says wow I have so much respect for William Shakespeare I'm gonna write out this play by hand I'm gonna actually study how it's written on that level of actually copying it up by hand or I'm gonna memorize and recite these monologues in you know original pronunciation and accent understand the phonology of it and anyone could in the irony you don't need a PhD to do that you can submit it has to have a respect for tradition and understanding that one mode of learning really is walking in the footsteps of the master doing something completely unoriginal completely conformist but sure I think we do that or I as a person I do that in order to be an original philosopher myself and in order to be a better original political thinker original writer myself it's true i'm i'm creating a basis to do something original but there's a lot there's a lot of totally unoriginal work whether it's the artist copying another person's painting or the scholar writing is up my own or if you reason why somebody might read Greek philosophy is to have a better idea for what Britany about current politics yep yeah just have an alien vantage point I'm going to take another look [Music] right but I mean look I think another another problem here in the phrasing of the question is that she talks about selfs work which is very American so she says to reread I'm becoming more and more familiar with my perception of the world and quote-unquote myself every day I feel as though I have no personality so that's that's the big problem here and then the postscript says to what extent was this problem created by my being told that I was pretty that what's important is being pretty and not to do any meaningful self work besides maintaining my state of being pretty but you see self work it's like prayer it's like meditation I mean it's absurd when you pray you're not praying to anyone you're praying dear so you're talking to yourself when you pray same with meditation you don't learn anything from prayer I mean self work is not work right and all the examples I've just given or work whether it's copying a painting or studying Shakespeare you know what does matter philosophy politics what-have-you or actually even playing tennis is work it's not self work it's you know I think there is something here that comes out of the yoga the yoga studio you know comes out of watered down white Western Hinduism you know Hinduism as marketed to white people which is also misleading so I mean but your your sense of having a personality my point is why would that arise from self or why would it be from introspection and not from after a special firm actually doing things whether creative or destructive why wouldn't arise from work yeah yeah did you feel that way I won't say Jamil get it get personal come on yeah yeah but really the kind of person that I was you know I felt like veganism was a very positive change in my life and that's that's how I found your channel and so on so so that that was a big turning point in my life going vegan but before that Martin definitely you know remember how it felt to feel like I have no basis to form opinions about things well I think this is a coincidence because today I was planning to make another video talking about this under a totally different heading but I think one of the big gaps between myself and mainstream white American and we're speaking culture by the way this includes Hispanic people and black people for the most part like it's really not exclusively but it is this is especially typical of white english-speaking Americans if you're québécois this probably applies to you but you know this is especially white english-speaking Americans where they really create a divide between who you really are your true self when what you do you know what you are and what you do being two very different things I mean you mentioned that the realization was that what you did with your time is who you are or I become we are door to whatever extent but I mean like for me that's that's very profoundly alien and it even comes back to the image of the tennis player okay if you wake up and you train like a professional athlete every day you are a professional athlete even if you're an unsuccessful profession that doesn't mean you're gonna win doesn't mean you're better than someone else playing tennis but if you put in 40 hours a week say training is a tennis pro then that that is who you are it's good it's gonna have all these knock-on effects I think many of them negative in your life you know now again with with habits of the mind this was even obvious to me in in Buddhist scholarship and again I was always a very kind of secular a nihilistic person but like I was waking up early and putting huge numbers of hours into really studying this language and there'd be people in PhD programs who were amazed like oh wow you've accomplished so much in two years and by the way I was simultaneously learning lotion and had a job and I was doing other things I was going to the gym too but so what are you guys doing with your time yeah you know they're playing video games and drinking alcohol or whatever I mean they're doing whatever it's doing but the point is just for me again I wanted to make another video talking about this there isn't this divide between Who I am and what I do and for that same reason I'm not looking for a kind of justification for my identity or self but a lot of people feel I've seen this with people who say like I am an anthropologist I said what do you actually do and what have you done last several years like do you even read anthropology and like becomes often it becomes obvious in the conversation they don't they're not even reading current publications anthropology they're also not going out in the field and doing original research and writing and producing it but they have the sense I'm an anthropologist and the fact that I'm a self-pitying alcoholic that's just happenstance that's just something this is just what I do with my time you know as opposed to who I really am but was one of the most common is being a writer this thing I am a writer I am an author okay what you know you know do you write six pages a day you know what do you do what do you what do you actually are you actually living the life of a writer and I think that can be asked under under a whole headings - you know this button do audience doesn't that after I after I graduated from university I was kind of trying to decide what I would do after that should I come on to get a masters degree and this was part of it you know I mean I'm influenced to say that's because he just said I'm an anthropologist or I'm a writer we're trying to give myself an identity then after graduating with a degree in English what am I going to be now and you know I I did pursue some education to maybe become something else than a writer than just somebody with English sure but I I get you know her phrasing was about not having a personality yeah I guess for me it was more like struggling with an identity so I don't know if you really can separate those two identity versus versus personality but like in itself the Netflix or television is not evil you know you can use these tools to learn but there are plenty of documentaries on Netflix that can teach you something um but I think a lot of people use Netflix just for inane entertainment right many many hours just spend you know completely wasting time and not addressing the fact that I felt like I didn't have an identity and that's why you know I already said it but I want to emphasize that when I when I learned about veganism that could be something I could identify with and that was part of my growing identity I said okay now I am a vegan like it's something you do and it's something you are right you happen to be an atheist right rather than being pretty right so the crisis is to be clear getting to age 24 and feeling like you have no personality and feel like you of no original thoughts that everything about you is an echo or regurgitation of some other source I mean that's the that's the process and I think the underlying issue is shown by her presuming that the solution is quote unquote self work which I don't agree with I think that's as misleading as thinking that the solution is prayer or meditation or just introspection or someone said I got to spend more time alone you know and for me it's it's really the opposite and I don't think a lot can be learned from playing tennis but contrast is miserable that's one of the reasons why I'm fairly sex-positive and I'm against things like skiing I actually think I mean again when you're not talking about prostitution with a language barrier which is exactly what surrounds you in Thailand is men paying for sex with prostitutes where they have no common language of course it's not but most human relationships dating and falling in love with somebody's but you normally do learn a lot from those notions just just mentioning in contrast to 10s or so we have look I want to come back to what you raised earlier which is what is meant by personality so personality and contrast to identity right and I think probably what she means here is being the sort of person who has something to assert not just who is assertive but someone who when talking to co-workers or family members or something is in effect low-key in a constant state of conflict because they have contrasting views that they want to assert right now why would that be the case I was thinking about this the other day I mean some of these women I forget about but there was a woman a good-looking blonde my type I mean frankly she kind of look like you know she we know she was she really had the same sort of very feminine face but I remember this woman who sat down next to me on a bus in Laos and in the so she was a white blonde woman who sat down they in sterilization and really looking back on it she probably was interested in getting into bed with me I was looking back on it was like why was I like why was I so negative towards her why did I completely you know shut her down like yeah I had a lot of personality like I had a lot of things to assert right like is it really positive like you know I was living in a situation where most of the other white men around me were like alcoholics sleeping with prostitutes and there's always this sense of asserting that's not who I am in terms of how I looked I was I was younger than I am now but I was doing 100 push-ups a day not 200 maybe and riding a bicycle and stuff people thought I was in the US military and I was living in a country that had been completely destroyed by the US military Laos more bombs were dropped on Laos than were dropped on Germany and Japan combined in World War two so was country destroyed by American militarism and people think I mean the US mother's I have to assert I'm not in the army not that kind of guy you know and I'm not ex-military either I'm not pro-american North I don't support like in that war I'm not here making excuses for what the Americans do being being good at something and then even within Buddhism right well for one thing that most of the Buddhist eat meat and drink alcohol you know I don't eat meat but I'm not this kind of hippy Buddhist I'm not cool with any and if the [ __ ] within that religion so I'm living in a state of many uncomfortable contradictions and I'm always asserting my personality in contrast to people's expectations of me or the demands they're putting on me therefore I have a personality right but it arises through contrasting opposites its perceptual right like also by the way living in Laos people thought I was fat because everyone else is so skinny it didn't actually use the word fat but know that I was considered such as consider enormous in all directions but I mean these things arise their relative their their contrast but this is purely you know psychological and based on values it's not based on anything with physical limits like being fat versus being thin now look what if I had been in a cultural context where I wasn't challenged on those things how much personality do I really have you know I want to conform I'm a nonconformist because I live in a society that I despise and a society that despises me and that's not just true of Laos and Cambodia that's incredibly true of say Toronto Canada and you know again then there were different contrasts like I'm not a communist each corner I grew up right oh that's so cool you know this this person we don't know that much better obviously having a personality whether it's good or bad the reality is you would arrive at that point of both being perceived as someone who has a personality and actually being a personality if you get out and do work and you know engage the world even if it's something like you study volcanoes whatever it is and then you're living in a context where you have to assert your personality rather than conform to or succumb to things that you despise so I mean so in a meaningful sense I think having a contract having a personality means living in a constant state of contradiction is that people are saying things to you or inviting you to do things even I was I would get invited to go and watch soccer you know obviously from the British before they all will come have a beer and watch soccer and I've got to assert back that's not who I am this is who I like you think that's who I am I'm not even insulted that's not who I am I you know whatever the thing is you're being you're being invited to so look I'm gonna sympathize I think you know she gets the point that we're both saying sure if you really don't have something meaningful in your life you got to take on projects and so on but probably a lot of what you're thinking about in terms of personality has to do with this kind of challenge mutual challenge contrast and contradiction