The Uncomfortable Truths: Beliefs, Morality, and Relationships

Caring about people and showing it is the highest leverage behavior for happiness and wellbeing, according to long-term psychological research.

### Uncomfortable Truths That Will Change Your Life
* 🔄 Everything you believe today will one day be **proven wrong or incomplete**, as evidenced by past experiences of being **completely wrong about various aspects of life and intellectual beliefs**.
* 🧠 "The next time you feel so sure of yourself, maybe step back for a moment and think, is this one of those things that I'm gonna be **embarrassed about in 10 years**?"
* 😈 Most people are not evil, they're just stupid, and social media's mass moralization encourages making **good and evil judgments** about others, when we should actually **reserve judgment more often**.
* 🤯 "Most of the things that we perceive to be evil are actually just **ignorance and stupidity**."
* ❤ The highest leverage behavior you can adopt in your life is to **care about people and show them that you care**, as evidenced by George Vaillant's 70-year study of Harvard graduates where the **quality of relationships** was the only consistent factor correlating to **happiness and wellbeing**.
* 🚀 "To build strong relationships, relationships built on **trust, intimacy, vulnerability, and mutual respect**, essentially **care and show that you care**."

- The difficult truths
that no one wants to hear, but we all need to hear. So that's why we're here, to hear the difficult truths that we don't want to
hear here, right here. Truth number one: everything you believe
today will one day be proven to be completely and
utterly wrong or incomplete. When I was younger, there were times that I believed I was gonna
be a professional musician, that I'd never get married, that a girl wouldn't even like me. There were times where I
thought I was gonna get a degree in math or physics, that I
was gonna go to grad school, that I was gonna go to law school, that I would never live in
the United States again, that I'd never be a morning person. In every case, I was completely wrong. Intellectually, I went through phases where I was into Karl Marx,
Ayn Rand, Sigmund Freud, and Friedrich Hayek.

Now I think they're all a
bunch of fucking Looney Tunes. (upbeat music) Take a minute and think
back to what you believed about yourself five years ago. Chances are you can think of a few things that you were wrong about. Now, think about what
you believed was true in the world 10 years ago. Chances are you're cringing a little bit. It's funny 'cause we've
all had this experience of remembering the way we were or the things that we
believed in the past. And we get embarrassed, we feel ashamed of how stupid we were. Yet none of us stopped to consider that the things that we are
so certain or true right now, we're gonna feel the exact
same way 10 years from now. And in 10 years, we're gonna look back with the same embarrassment and disgust at the stuff that we think is true today, as the way we look back today at teenage Mark trying
to wear a hammer pants.

So the next time you feel so sure of yourself, maybe step back for a moment and think, is this one of those things that I'm gonna be embarrassed about in 10 years? If the answer could be yes, then I don't know, maybe shut the fuck up. Truth number two, most people are not evil, they're just stupid. This definitely includes ourselves. A lot has been made about social media and how it affects our politics and our mental health. But I believe the most under-discussed effect of social media is how it promotes moralizing. And by moralizing, I mean encouraging people to make good and evil judgments about each other. A disagreement is when you think somebody's idea is bad, but moralizing is when you think that person is bad for having the idea. This mass moralization has grown to such an extent that I now believe something that I never would've thought possible 10 years ago.

that we probably need a little bit less morality in the world, not more. What I mean by that is that
we shouldn't act unethically. I think we should simply reserve judgment a little more often. Please refer back to truth number one: we don't know what the
fuck we're talking about. This truth is kind of a variation on something that's widely
known as Hanlon's Razor, which says never attribute to malice what can be adequately
explained by stupidity. But I'd like to add
something to Hanlon's Razor that I'll call Manson's Addendum, and pretty much everything you see or read is some degree of stupidity. If we take truth number one, that most of us are pretty much wrong about most of the things that we believe, and we combine that with Hanlon's Razor, which says that most of the things that we perceive to be evil are actually just ignorance and stupidity, well then it suggests that maybe we should be slower to moral
judgements, not quicker.

After all, if we accept
that most of our assumptions are wrong about most things, then we should reserve our morality for only situations that
are clear and obvious. Take the pandemic, for example. It doesn't matter where your politics are. It doesn't matter which country you're in. It doesn't matter what
your personal beliefs are, your risk tolerances. You were horribly wrong about
something at some point. We all were. The experts were, the amateurs were, the conspiracy theorists
were, the scientists were. Everybody got something
horribly, horribly wrong at some point. Now you would think that
this would encourage a certain degree of
humility in the population, but we know how that turned out. Truth number three, the highest leverage behavior
you can adopt in your life is to care about people and
show them that you care. In the 1930s, the psychiatrist
named George Vaillant started to collect data on a
group of Harvard graduates.

Now he collected everything. He tracked their financial situation, their family situation, where they lived, what
occupations they had, whether they participated
in the war or not, whether people they knew died,
whether they got promotions, whether they moved to a sweet
new house and bought a boat. Everything you can imagine, this guy tracked over decades
and decades and decades. Now, while he was tracking all this data, he also asked them basic
psychological questions. How happy are you? How satisfied are you with your life? Do you have a sense of
meaning and purpose? How are your moods? Do you fucking hate your kids? At this point, as you can imagine, they've collected a lot of data. So what did Vaillant learn? Well, in 2004, he said
that he could sum up over 70 years of psychological
data with one word, love. (majestic music) Fucking hair in my eye.

Vaillant explained that over the decades, there was only one
variable that he tracked that consistently correlated to a person's happiness and wellbeing. It wasn't money, it wasn't prestige, it wasn't winning awards,
it wasn't where they lived, it wasn't how fucking
sunny it was last spring. It was the quality of their relationships. And how do you cultivate
better relationships? Well, that's a big
topic for another video, but basically, you learn
how to care about others and then you learn how to
show them that you care. It's not fucking rocket science. It's a simple willingness
to be close to others, and therefore a willingness
to be hurt by others. So when it comes to general
happiness and wellbeing, this is the highest leverage skill that you can build in your life, to learn to care about others, and to show them that you care. To build strong relationships, relationships built on trust,
intimacy, vulnerability.

and mutual respect, to essentially care
and show that you care. And yes, my friends, that is a real puppy
dogs and rainbows truth, and maybe we all need to hear it. This is Manson, out. (majestic music) (heavy metal music)

3 Hard Truths That Will Change Everything

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Mark Manson

Our beliefs are constantly evolving, and many of the things we are sure of today will eventually be proven wrong.

The speaker shares personal experiences of being completely wrong about his beliefs and highlights how this is a common human experience.

He emphasizes that the certainty we have in our current beliefs will eventually be a source of embarrassment and shame.

The Overlooked Impact of Social Media on Moral Judgments

Social media promotes mass moralizing, leading to an increase in making good and evil judgments about others.

The speaker suggests that the world may need less morality and more reservation of judgment, in light of the fact that most people are simply wrong or stupid, rather than inherently evil.

This idea is a variation of Hanlon's Razor, proposing that we should be slower to make moral judgments and more considerate of ignorance and stupidity.

The Impact of Our Wrong Assumptions and the Power of Love

The pandemic has proven everyone, including experts, wrong at some point, leading to a lack of humility in the population.

The longest psychological study on Harvard graduates concluded that the most important factor for a fulfilling life is love and caring for others, based on over 70 years of data collection by George Vaillant.

The Key to Happiness: Building Strong Relationships

Vaillant emphasizes that the quality of relationships is the most consistent factor for happiness and wellbeing.

Cultivating better relationships involves learning to care about others, showing that you care, and being willing to be vulnerable.

Building strong relationships is the highest leverage skill for general happiness and wellbeing.