The Matt Walsh Show - November 28, 2024


Matt Walsh's Most Motivational Moments

Topics
work and happiness
Hosted by
Matt Walsh
Mentioned
Johnny Taxpayer Clint Eastwood
Ep. 1495 - How Trump’s Border Czar Plans to Put Sanctuary Cities Out of Business Right or Racist？ Matt Walsh's ＂Am I Racist？＂ The Game!

Episode Stats


Length

12 minutes

Words per minute

173.8

Word count

2,167

Sentence count

198

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged

Toxicity

5

sentences flagged

Hate speech

2

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Stress is a modern invention. Prior to the 20th century, nobody talked about their stresses. In fact, the entire category of mental health would seem totally foreign and bizarre to pre-modern people. That s why perhaps the best thing to do sometimes, and this is a good thing as we head into the weekend, is turn off the screen, put down the phone, go out and get some exercise, engage in some kind of actual physical activity in the three-dimensional physical world, aside from your feelings.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 There are countless perils in life, no matter where you go, and no matter what you do.
00:00:08.020 Those perils follow you around.
00:00:10.020 Your own death, your own impending death follows you around.
00:00:15.100 You can't escape it.
00:00:16.140 Okay, walk around every corner and it's there. 0.67
00:00:18.040 Go to sleep at night, sleep right next to your own death. 0.98
00:00:20.440 Because we're all going to die, every single one of us. 0.98
00:00:23.080 And there's nothing you can do about it, not one single thing.
00:00:25.520 You will be decomposing in the ground in the not-too-distant future.
00:00:30.460 That is a reality.
00:00:31.720 It just is.
00:00:33.020 I'm sorry, but it is.
00:00:45.900 No, we really think that everything we go through, every little or big thing that we go through,
00:00:52.480 we think, well, this is the worst thing ever.
00:00:53.940 This is the worst thing that's ever happened to anybody.
00:00:57.000 And it can be helpful to realize that nothing we're going through is new.
00:01:00.500 People have been experiencing and surviving in spite of all of these sorts of things all through history.
00:01:06.520 There has never been a time of utopian peace and tranquility.
00:01:10.720 That sort of existence is simply not on offer.
00:01:13.040 It's not available to us.
00:01:14.280 It's not in the catalog, right, of when you're a mortal human being.
00:01:19.420 Life has never been easy.
00:01:20.400 The life that we're given right now is as close to easy as humanity has ever gotten.
00:01:25.680 And we can't stop complaining about it.
00:01:28.500 So what does that tell you?
00:01:29.200 We're so obsessively focused on our own stress.
00:01:32.860 We think about our stress all the time.
00:01:34.780 We talk about it.
00:01:35.740 We like to tell people.
00:01:36.720 We like to say to people, oh, I'm so stressed out.
00:01:38.440 I'm so busy.
00:01:39.060 Here's what's happening in my life.
00:01:40.420 We go around telling people how stressed out we are.
00:01:42.300 You know, I said earlier that you should go back in time in a time machine and ask somebody in 1862 about their stresses.
00:01:48.120 But actually, you can't do that because, first of all, you probably don't have a time machine.
00:01:51.480 But also because the people in 1862 wouldn't have known what you were talking about.
00:01:56.540 Stress is a modern invention.
00:01:58.780 Prior to the 20th century, nobody talked about their stress.
00:02:01.640 They didn't have that concept.
00:02:04.280 To say, you know, to ask a person if they're stressed, they would have looked at you like, what does that even mean?
00:02:08.320 Now, that doesn't mean that they didn't experience stress as we think of stress.
00:02:11.800 It just means that they didn't use the word or think of things in that way, which meant that they certainly weren't intensely focused on the subject like we are today.
00:02:22.260 In fact, the entire category of mental health would seem totally foreign and bizarre to pre-modern people.
00:02:29.140 That's not to say that stress and mental health don't exist or are myths or something.
00:02:32.860 Rather, it's just to point out how we've gone all the way to the other extreme end of the spectrum.
00:02:39.320 We are consumed by the thought of our own stress and our own mental health.
00:02:44.640 We are stuck inside our heads, constantly analyzing how we feel and how we feel about how we feel and how we feel about how we feel about how we feel.
00:02:52.840 This only exacerbates the anxiety and the stress.
00:02:55.700 It's a self-perpetuating cycle.
00:02:57.600 That's why perhaps the best thing to do sometimes, I think, and this is a good thing as we head into the weekend,
00:03:02.820 turn off the screen, put down the phone, go out and get some exercise, pick up a hobby,
00:03:08.320 do something.
00:03:10.020 I mean, engage in some kind of actual physical activity in the three-dimensional physical world
00:03:15.600 and think about something else, literally anything else, aside from yourself and your feelings.
00:03:22.360 That's the other advantage that pre-modern people had, which probably gave them better mental health in the long run.
00:03:31.680 Though they didn't have that category, they didn't think of it that way, and their lives were much more difficult.
00:03:36.440 Still, they lived in the world, right?
00:03:38.300 They lived in the physical world, for better or worse.
00:03:40.160 They inhabited the spaces where they lived.
00:03:43.200 They actually inhabited.
00:03:44.120 They concerned themselves with what and who was closest to them and spent most of their time thinking about those things.
00:03:53.680 So we should try that for a change.
00:03:55.960 It'll do wonders for your stress and your mental health.
00:03:58.220 Maybe something to do over the weekend.
00:04:00.920 Using the internet without ExpressVPN, it's like leaving your keys in your car while you run into the gas station for a snack.
00:04:06.560 Most of the time, you're probably fine.
00:04:08.000 But what if you come back to see somebody driving off with your car?
00:04:11.180 Well, think about it.
00:04:11.960 Every time you connect to public Wi-Fi at a coffee shop, airport, or hotel, your sensitive data is exposed.
00:04:18.260 Your passwords, credit card numbers, personal messages, they're all vulnerable.
00:04:21.960 Here's the scary part.
00:04:22.740 It doesn't take an elite hacker to access this information.
00:04:25.600 Even somebody with basic technology and inexpensive equipment could potentially intercept your data.
00:04:30.860 Now, I'm not suggesting that you need to live in fear or disconnect from the digital world, but you do need protection.
00:04:35.380 That's why I use ExpressVPN and why I recommend it to everyone who asks.
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00:04:51.800 It's no surprise that CNET and The Verge name ExpressVPN the number one VPN in the world.
00:04:56.580 Consider this.
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00:05:22.500 That's expressvpn.com slash WalshYT to get an extra four or even six months of ExpressVPN for free.
00:05:29.500 Now, I honestly don't know what a statement like, I deserve to live comfortably means.
00:05:42.820 To deserve something is to earn it.
00:05:44.960 It's to be worthy of it.
00:05:46.280 Are we all worthy of a comfortable life?
00:05:48.460 Have we earned it just by simply existing?
00:05:50.680 And even if we have, even if we do all deserve comfort, whatever that means, what good does it do for you to just talk about how you deserve it?
00:06:00.080 You can cry all you want about what you think you deserve, but to quote Clint Eastwood in Unforgiven and also Snoop from The Wire,
00:06:06.780 deserve ain't got nothing to do with it.
00:06:08.960 Now, maybe we all deserve to skip through fields of daffodils while gumdrops fall from the sky,
00:06:13.640 but that's not what life has presented us, okay?
00:06:16.200 That's not the reality.
00:06:18.320 So maybe you deserve something other than the reality?
00:06:21.080 I don't know what that means.
00:06:22.900 You can't manifest what you think you deserve just by talking about it and making demands to the universe.
00:06:31.920 So for all the younger people who lament the state of things,
00:06:35.120 and the fact that in many ways it would have been easier to have been born 40 years ago,
00:06:40.360 we might just put it this way.
00:06:41.720 Like, you're right.
00:06:43.840 You get a raw deal.
00:06:45.560 It's not fair.
00:06:47.840 I don't think you deserve a comfortable life necessarily.
00:06:50.860 Life is simply an uncomfortable thing much of the time.
00:06:53.680 But you do deserve a better country and a better culture and a better economy than the one that you're getting.
00:06:59.680 Okay.
00:07:01.260 Now what?
00:07:02.460 We've established that.
00:07:04.400 Okay?
00:07:05.040 It's like it shouldn't be this way.
00:07:06.980 This should not be the culture that you are inheriting.
00:07:10.300 It shouldn't be.
00:07:12.540 But, okay, what's your next move?
00:07:15.860 What do you do now?
00:07:17.760 The problem with people in the younger generation is that they correctly diagnose many of these issues,
00:07:22.620 and then they use that diagnosis as an excuse to give up before the game even starts.
00:07:29.420 They decide not to put in the effort at work.
00:07:31.560 They decide not to work hard.
00:07:32.920 They decide to essentially drop out of the dating scene and give up on romantic relationships and marriage and family and everything.
00:07:38.680 They retreat behind phones and screens.
00:07:40.760 And this is just not the way to solve any of these problems.
00:07:44.140 It's the same kind of criticism that I have of the red pill manosphere types who correctly point out all the ways the system is stacked against men. 0.96
00:07:52.960 But then they offer no real solution except for a full-scale retreat recommending that men give up on family life, marriage, legacy, their own bloodline.
00:08:02.220 And that's not a strategy.
00:08:04.840 That's despair.
00:08:05.840 And you can't give in to despair, especially at a young age.
00:08:10.860 So, yes, you may graduate from college and realize that you wasted a lot of time and money on a useless degree.
00:08:21.280 You got scammed into going to college when you really didn't need to go.
00:08:25.140 And you plunged yourself into debt for something that might not do you any good at all.
00:08:30.860 That's also really unfair.
00:08:32.500 It shouldn't have happened, but it did.
00:08:35.760 You may struggle to attain financial security.
00:08:38.440 You may not be able to afford a house or many of the things that your parents could afford at your age.
00:08:44.760 All of that may be the case.
00:08:46.960 These are the obstacles that you face.
00:08:49.440 Every generation has its own.
00:08:51.260 It's not perfect for anybody.
00:08:53.100 And these are yours.
00:08:54.960 The goal is to succeed and thrive in spite of them.
00:08:59.620 That must be the goal.
00:09:00.840 Otherwise, there is no point.
00:09:03.620 You have to get to work either way.
00:09:05.220 And obsessing over how unfair everything is and how you aren't being handed what you think you deserve will not accomplish anything.
00:09:14.440 You have to work for it one way or another.
00:09:16.380 Whether you're happy or not, the fact of life is that your life requires work.
00:09:28.960 And if you refuse to do it, somebody else has to.
00:09:31.960 So who's that going to be?
00:09:32.780 Your parents?
00:09:34.180 Johnny Taxpayer next door? 0.92
00:09:36.120 Maybe a combination?
00:09:38.120 Whoever it is, if you are not living a life free of the work requirement, nobody can.
00:09:44.800 You are rather living a life where that requirement has been offloaded to somebody else.
00:09:51.140 You've made someone else your slave, in effect.
00:09:54.260 You don't want to be a wage slave, so someone else is going to be your slave.
00:09:58.020 Nothing noble about that.
00:10:00.260 It's entitled.
00:10:01.180 It's selfish.
00:10:01.740 In fact, it's evil.
00:10:03.540 The refusal to participate in the difficult aspects of your own life is evil.
00:10:08.840 It's a shameful thing.
00:10:10.680 We hear that all of these younger people are prioritizing their happiness, focusing on their happiness, giving up work for the sake of happiness, pursuing happiness, thinking about their happiness, talking about happiness, obsessing over their happiness.
00:10:24.400 And yet, shockingly, so few of them are actually happy.
00:10:27.420 There have never been people who talk so much about happiness and yet feel it so little.
00:10:35.200 Isn't that interesting?
00:10:37.160 Millennials and Gen Z are at once the most focused on their happiness and yet also the least happy. 0.51
00:10:43.580 Perhaps there's a lesson there, which we might consider finally learning at some point.
00:10:47.560 And the lesson is that happiness cannot be conjured out of the ether like a magical spell.
00:10:53.540 You can't will yourself into it.
00:10:55.620 You can't convince yourself to be it.
00:10:58.600 Happiness is a byproduct of a well-ordered, well-situated, grounded, virtuous, productive life.
00:11:05.780 That's the only way to achieve sustained happiness.
00:11:08.960 You can find pleasure outside of that.
00:11:11.080 You can go to a back alley somewhere, buy some black tar heroin and find some pleasure that way, I guess. 0.97
00:11:15.940 You can derive pleasure from an extra large fast food value meal or a $3 hooker. 0.54
00:11:22.380 But you won't find happiness any of those places.
00:11:25.900 And you won't find it in a directionless life free of work, free of challenge.
00:11:30.200 Spend staring at screens while somebody else provides for all of your many needs.
00:11:34.760 As it turns out, life and work cannot be severed and neither can happiness and work.
00:11:39.580 It takes work to be happy.
00:11:41.460 You have to do difficult things.
00:11:42.640 You have to exert yourself.
00:11:43.360 You have to give yourself over to some cause beyond yourself.
00:11:48.240 Happiness comes then as a side effect, often when you least expect it.
00:11:52.320 And always when you aren't thinking about it.
00:11:55.240 You simply fulfill your responsibilities.
00:11:57.280 You live your life.
00:11:57.920 You do your work.
00:11:59.300 And one day you look up and you say, wow, look at that.
00:12:01.260 I'm happy.
00:12:01.940 That's how happiness works.
00:12:05.440 You only find it when you stop looking for it.
00:12:07.080 You feel like yourself.
00:12:13.440 Yeah.
00:12:14.400 Yeah.
00:12:14.580 Yeah.
00:12:16.560 Yeah.
00:12:17.440 Yeah.
00:12:18.220 Yeah.
00:12:19.440 Yeah.
00:12:20.120 Yeah.
00:12:21.860 Yeah.
00:12:23.160 Yeah.
00:12:26.140 Yeah.
00:12:27.500 Yeah.