The Matt Walsh Show - Ep. 80 - Why 'Love Yourself' Is Horrible Advice

00:00:00.000 So I wanted to build on something that we talked about yesterday, and that is, if you remember,

00:00:07.120 we talked about social media and how social media fuels our narcissism and causes us to think about

00:00:14.120 ourselves, focus on ourselves an inordinate amount. And this is where a lot of the self-esteem

00:00:20.260 issues come from. It's not that we think badly about ourselves in this culture. It's just that

00:00:26.400 we think about ourselves way too often. We spend way too much time thinking about ourselves.

00:00:31.400 And when we do that, of course, we're going to notice our flaws. And of course, we're going to

00:00:35.500 be obsessed with those flaws because we're obsessed with ourselves. And then we chalk that up to a

00:00:41.540 self-esteem problem when really it's a narcissism problem. It's almost the opposite of a self-esteem

00:00:47.500 problem. And now that isn't to say that we should never notice our flaws. We need to be self-aware.

00:00:53.780 We need to know that we have flaws. But we shouldn't spend all day noticing them. And the

00:00:59.100 best thing to do with a character flaw or a moral flaw is to, once you notice it, to then just set

00:01:06.220 out to correct it, to live your life and try to correct it in the way that you live your life.

00:01:12.540 And the best thing to do with an unfixable physical flaw is to just forget it. And again,

00:01:19.160 live your life. Either way, the process is harder and we are interfering with it when we are too

00:01:26.740 focused on ourselves. Now, I mentioned that I think these love yourself, embrace your flaws

00:01:35.980 types of campaigns are misguided. And they're very common these days, of course, where we're constantly

00:01:43.160 being told to love yourself, love yourself. I think it's misguided because we should be encouraging each

00:01:48.960 other to forget about ourselves. Forget yourself and focus on other things. Look outward instead of

00:01:59.200 always inward. So I don't agree with running around and telling everyone to love themselves.

00:02:05.280 And in fact, I think that if we just drop that phrase from our vocabulary completely and never again

00:02:11.180 discussed, loving yourself, self-love, you got to love it. If we never talked about those things ever

00:02:16.440 again, we would be better for it. Now, I got a lot of feedback to that idea about self-love. So

00:02:23.360 some of it positive, a lot of it negative or critical, I should say anyway. And honestly,

00:02:31.240 the critical feedback, it hurt my own self-love. So I want you to know that. It hurt my feelings.

00:02:36.260 So now I wanted to, I wanted to expand upon it a little bit more because I think it's an important

00:02:41.860 point. My basic theory is this, loving yourself, if understood correctly, can be good, but not as an

00:02:52.100 end in itself and not as the beginning either. Now, I think there are two huge mistakes we make when we

00:02:58.900 talk about self-love, the idea of loving ourselves are two huge mistakes. The first mistake is in thinking

00:03:03.780 that loving yourself is the highest good and the ultimate point of life. That's obviously a big

00:03:10.420 mistake. The second mistake is in thinking that self-love is the starting point and you really

00:03:16.160 can't love anyone else until you love yourself. Now, I'm not going to spend much time debunking the

00:03:21.580 first idea, which is, which is Satanism. The idea that self-love is the highest good, the ultimate

00:03:27.160 point. That's Satanism. Um, and it is a philosophy that's been adopted in the mainstream by, by, uh,

00:03:35.100 by leftism. But I've talked about that plenty of times in the past. I will again in the future for

00:03:40.400 now. I, I'm going to address the second idea, which is prevalent, even among people who know that

00:03:45.420 self-love is not the highest good. It's still very prevalent. And you hear this all the time,

00:03:49.640 don't you? Right. I mean, you, you've heard this meant, maybe you've said it yourself

00:03:52.260 that, um, you can't love someone else until you learn to love yourself. You'll even hear that,

00:03:57.760 uh, that you really can't do anything with your life until you love yourself. This is what's

00:04:04.260 implied when you ask someone, you know, you meet someone that you haven't seen in a while and you

00:04:08.380 say, Oh, what are you doing with yourself? What are you, what are you doing for a living? And they say,

00:04:12.320 well, I'm just working on myself right now. I'm just working on myself. Now, Christians will tend to 1.00

00:04:19.160 think that, and what he means is he's completely, he is, he, this is a person who has just caved in

00:04:26.220 on themselves, just completely just there. You're looking at a void of a person where they have

00:04:32.780 completely caved in and they've blocked everything else out. And they're just thinking about themselves

00:04:38.020 all day and working on themselves. Now, Christians will tend to think that there's scriptural support

00:04:45.780 for this approach. Um, they'll point to Jesus saying, love your neighbor as yourself. And they

00:04:52.900 take that to mean that you cannot begin the project of loving your neighbor until you have developed a

00:04:59.880 sufficient affection for yourself. But that is not at all what is meant. You see, we have to remember

00:05:07.160 that love your neighbor as yourself is the second greatest commandment. The first commandment that

00:05:12.740 we're given is love the Lord God with all your, with all your heart and with all your soul and

00:05:17.100 with all your mind and with all your strength. I would say that if we, if we concentrate on the

00:05:23.860 first commandment, which is loving God, and then if we concentrate next on the first part of the second

00:05:29.980 commandment, which is loving our neighbor, and if we really give that our attention, uh, then love for

00:05:36.040 ourselves will just be tossed into the bargain. We don't even have to think about it. If you're really

00:05:41.620 focused on loving God and loving your neighbor, uh, then, then your self-love just comes with it. It's

00:05:48.720 just part of it. Self-love is not the starting point. It's not the beginning and it's not the end

00:05:55.460 goal either. It's a by-product. It's something that happens in the middle and not because you're trying

00:06:03.260 to make it happen. It, it, it simply does happen. There's another important thing we should remember

00:06:08.860 about love your neighbor as yourself. Love your neighbor as yourself. What that really means in

00:06:13.740 context is keep your neighbor's interests at heart. Like you keep your own interests at heart.

00:06:21.480 This is not, this is, Jesus is not recommending self-esteem that Jesus is, is, is simply building

00:06:27.960 off of the fact that we all naturally as individuals value our own interests and work towards fulfilling

00:06:35.800 them. Everybody on earth naturally does that. Now we may have very wrong ideas about what's in our

00:06:43.400 best interest, but we still are. That's, we were very concerned about that all the time. We're concerned

00:06:49.540 about our own interests. So Jesus is just taking that for granted. He's not saying to work on that or to

00:06:55.640 build that up. He's saying you're already like that. So you don't have to think about it. That's how you

00:06:59.980 are. But instead take that mentality and apply it to your neighbor. Don't worry about fortifying that

00:07:06.620 mentality about yourself, apply it to your neighbor. But we've taken this command and we've, we've done

00:07:13.480 the opposite. We've, we've, we've taken it the opposite direction. That's the opposite of what we

00:07:17.660 were supposed to do when we use it as an excuse for selfishness. No, no, no. That's, that's the opposite

00:07:23.300 of what he meant. I think there are two things about love that we have to remember in order to, you know,

00:07:28.180 in order to really work through this idea of self-love. The first thing is, you know, Aquinas

00:07:34.720 says that to love, he defines love as willing the good of the other, right? That is wanting what is

00:07:44.580 good for someone, not necessarily wanting them to always get what they want, but wanting what is

00:07:51.060 actually good for them, what is actually good. And then working so far as we can to actively bring

00:07:57.100 about that good. Uh, I've never heard a better definition of love. I think that is, that's the

00:08:03.140 definition. That's it, right? That's whatever the dictionary says that right there, Aquinas,

00:08:08.060 he has the definition to will the good of the other. At least that's the definition for person

00:08:13.940 to person love. Uh, love for God is a little bit different because you can't really will the good of

00:08:20.300 God. He already, he already has everything he needs. There is no good that you can provide for

00:08:25.540 him, um, or wish for him because he's the author of all good. So he's, he already has all that. He

00:08:32.620 contains it. He is it. Love for God, I think could be defined more like maybe something like wanting to

00:08:40.520 give God what he is due, which would be our faith, our loyalty, our trust, our obedience.

00:08:48.460 That's what loving God means. But how does this definition apply to self-love? What does it even

00:08:55.480 mean to love yourself? What is, what is the definition? And it's kind of confusing because

00:09:00.420 you'll notice that both of these definitions, although the second one I just came up with, but

00:09:03.760 the, the first one from Thomas Klan, that it's outwardly focused by definition, how do you bring

00:09:10.480 it back on yourself? Well, I guess to love yourself, if, if, if, if loving others is to will the good of

00:09:17.740 the other, to love yourself must mean to will what is good for you, not to will what is pleasurable

00:09:25.100 necessarily, or even what is always desirable, but to will what is actually edifying, healthy,

00:09:31.380 wholesome, things that are going to elevate you, bring you closer to truth and to beauty

00:09:35.960 and to God, to love someone else, to put it more simply is, is to want them to go to heaven

00:09:40.840 and to work to, to kind of help them get there. And so to love yourself is to want yourself to go to

00:09:46.400 heaven and to help yourself get there. But that desire in its, in its fullest and holiest state

00:09:53.000 is not rooted in a love for yourself. It's rooted in a love for God. So you, you want to be good

00:10:01.260 and do good because that's what you ought to do, because that's what God deserves for you to do.

00:10:08.340 So I think we see that self-love cannot be the starting point. It can't be the point at all. It's

00:10:15.300 not the point. It's a thing that happens when you worry about loving things beyond yourself.

00:10:21.860 It is the product of those things. Second point, we see from Aquinas' definition that love is active.

00:10:31.460 It's not just a feeling. This, of course, is a, is a huge misconception we have in our culture,

00:10:38.120 and it's been disastrous for our culture. It's been disastrous, especially for families and for marriages,

00:10:43.900 where we look at love as a feeling of affection, but it's not. Love is an act to will, to will the good

00:10:53.300 of the other. The problem is that when, when people talk about, about loving themselves,

00:10:57.960 they mean it almost always as a purely emotional exercise. They mean, they mean to say that, um,

00:11:05.420 they want to feel good about themselves. That's what, that's what, that's what they mean. It's like,

00:11:08.740 I'm working on loving myself. What they mean is I'm working on feeling good about myself.

00:11:13.900 They're, they are essentially sitting around trying to conjure up emotions about themselves,

00:11:21.540 or maybe they're even taking drugs to help that or whatever, but they're, they're, they are trying

00:11:30.380 to develop emotions in their head about themselves. And this is a ridiculous exercise because you're 0.78

00:11:38.780 never going to reach a state where you feel always good about yourself. That's never going to happen.

00:11:44.860 It shouldn't happen. Anyway, you should, there are times when you should feel bad about yourself.

00:11:52.100 When you do something bad, when you do a horrible or selfish or cowardly thing,

00:11:58.000 you should feel bad about yourself. You shouldn't feel great in those moments.

00:12:02.500 Doesn't mean you should hate yourself. You shouldn't go into despondency and despair over it,

00:12:06.780 but, but you shouldn't feel good about yourself either. So there's never going to be, there's never

00:12:11.560 going to be a point where you always feel good about yourself. Just like, just like you, you're

00:12:14.920 never going to reach a point where you feel always affectionate towards your, your spouse or your kids,

00:12:20.560 but you love your spouse and your kids, hopefully. Anyway, in fact, in fact, love really comes into play

00:12:29.800 in the moments where you don't feel particularly good. You're talking about your, in a, in a family

00:12:37.460 setting with your, with your spouse or your children. It's when you don't feel that really

00:12:44.580 strong affection because you're tired or you're annoyed or you're angry or you're hurt or whatever

00:12:50.100 it is, right? It's when you don't feel that when you, when you, when, when, when you don't have that

00:12:54.540 affection necessarily, that's when love really comes in. That's when the love is really needed

00:12:59.360 because then to love the other person is an act of will. It's really a choice. It's not just

00:13:06.540 something that you're doing because, because you happen to be feeling pretty good in the moment.

00:13:12.460 Anybody can act loving when they feel loving. Anyone can do that. Doesn't mean anything.

00:13:17.080 Even the most abusive and horrible spouse can still act loving in the moments where he feels loving,

00:13:26.540 but it doesn't mean anything. If the moment when those, those feelings leave, you start acting like

00:13:33.860 a tyrant. So to act loving when you don't feel it, that's the real thing right there. I mean, that's,

00:13:41.020 that's it. That's love. And it's, that's really love in its, in its strongest state or maybe I should

00:13:50.080 say in its rawest state. Um, so when we always focus on our emotions about ourselves, we're embarking

00:13:59.760 on this really foolish and narcissistic quest to reach a state of emotional constancy in relation to

00:14:05.920 ourselves, which is never going to happen. Instead, we should just be always doing what is good for 0.96

00:14:12.260 ourselves, actually good, not what is always pleasurable or anything like that, but just what

00:14:17.920 is actually good, what is actually bringing us higher and closer to truth. And, uh, and we should

00:14:23.320 just be doing that all the time and let the emotions come and go as they will. So that there really

00:14:31.180 shouldn't be a reason to talk about self-love. It's not the point of everything. It's not the starting

00:14:36.800 point. It's not the end. It's not something you feel. It's, it's something that comes with the package

00:14:43.740 of loving others in a real and active way. The last thing I'll say is this. Think about the implications

00:14:53.960 of this idea that, uh, that you have to love yourself before you can love other people. Think about what

00:15:00.480 that looks like in practice. Think about how this must work in a marriage for the brief period where 0.72

00:15:07.760 somebody with this mentality can actually stay in a marriage. Think about how that must work.

00:15:15.020 You'd be going up to your spouse and saying, sorry, honey, I can't love you today. I'm just not feeling

00:15:20.220 great about myself. You see, I need to love myself again. And then I'll, and then I'll get around to

00:15:27.200 you. Okay. But I can't love you right now because I'm, I, you know, I'm just not feeling great.

00:15:33.640 No, I think that obviously is not the right approach. The opposite is, is the better approach.

00:15:38.700 Forget about yourself, love your spouse, serve your spouse. And then magically you'll find that

00:15:45.480 your opinion of yourself improves. It's, it's, that's what happens. It's really, it's really magical

00:15:54.780 like that. Go out and do good things for others and do your duty, fulfill your responsibilities.

00:16:06.460 Live as though you feel great about yourself. And then you'll find that, oh, wow, I feel pretty good

00:16:12.620 right now. But then you can't, but, but here's the, this is what I'm talking about. We've become so

00:16:18.320 focused on our emotions about ourselves. It can't, that's the, your emotions about yourself. That's,

00:16:23.720 that's just an underlying thing. It's, it's, it's a current that's kind of there, but you can't stop

00:16:30.160 and think about it. Because even when you're going out and you're living your life and you're doing

00:16:34.760 what you're supposed to do and you're being self-sacrificial and you're being loving towards

00:16:38.120 others, that is going to lift you up emotionally as well. But the moment that you stop and dwell on

00:16:43.040 it, you stop and think, wow, I really feel great about myself right now. Let me think more about how I

00:16:47.100 feel about myself. Let me analyze the, the moment you do that, it all falls apart. You start losing all of

00:16:52.620 it. It's like, now it's, now it's just water through your fingertips and you're trying to grab

00:16:56.060 it. It's like, no, I just had it. It's gone now. That's because you're not supposed to stop and

00:17:00.700 think about it. Continue living, continue going. I guess it's, it's, it's a little bit like when you,

00:17:07.060 if you've ever really dwelled on breathing or if you've been walking and, and you, and you began to

00:17:16.720 think, this is kind of a, how am I walking right now? I'm not, I don't feel myself telling myself to

00:17:21.960 walk. You start dwelling on the act of walking or the act. And the moment you do that, it starts to

00:17:25.980 feel weird. Like you, you almost forget how to do it because you're not supposed to dwell on it.

00:17:31.240 It's kind of something that you do automatically.

00:17:36.100 So love yourself first and then, and then you can love others. No, I think, I think, I think the

00:17:40.400 opposite is the case. I think maybe the way that we should phrase it is, is, is something like this.

00:17:44.380 You cannot love yourself until you learn how to love something other than yourself. I think maybe

00:17:54.500 that's the way we should put it. And that's how we should live. All right. Thanks for watching.

00:18:01.300 Thanks for listening, everybody. Godspeed.

00:18:03.020 Thank you.

00:18:08.180 We'll see you next time.

00:18:22.380 Bye.

00:18:24.080 Bye.

00:18:27.420 Bye.

00:18:29.220 Bye.

00:18:30.920 Bye.

00:18:32.160 Bye.

The Matt Walsh Show - August 09, 2018

Ep. 80 - Why 'Love Yourself' Is Horrible Advice

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