Let's consider the wolf. Wolves are fierce, strong, resilient, powerful creatures that can take down a thousand-pound Caribou. They feel loyalty and connection with each other. They fight and live wild, strong, beautifully. Now consider the Shih Tzu rolling around in its baby carriage, fed consistent meals, and safe from every danger. It is cute, it is soft, but it is weak. The crazy thing is, the Shih Tzu is a direct descendant of the gray wolf of China. Years of comfort and breeding for the weaker qualities destroyed the very essence that made it a wolf. It is unrecognizable, its instincts and feelings are dimmed, its bark and bite are nullified. It is dependent on its Master, its soul has been trimmed down to the faintest echo of the original wolf spirit that prowled the hills. Does it feel joy and ferocity and suffering as keenly as the wolf does? Vitality rips through its body and soul, probably not. The Shih Tzu may be cute, but only the wolf is majestic.

in the Shih Tzu, we see a remarkable evolution. It's hard to imagine the Shih Tzu being remotely related to the wolf or ever returning to its natural state. In fact, this Shih Tzu could never be a wolf again unless there was a miracle of breeding and genetic engineering. The Shih Tzu would simply be crushed by Nature, eradicated. It does not have power in any sense; it is an abomination. Society tames the wolf into a dog, and man is the most domesticated animal of all. Frederick Nietzsche, perhaps a problem for the larger context of humanity, is that we are not much different from the wolf species. We too are domesticated and can devolve just as far as the Shih Tzu, if not further. It is man's personal orientation that determines whether he moves toward the wolf or the Shih Tzu. In this video, we're talking about the cult of weakness that is leading humanity downward toward what Nietzsche called The Last Man. In this cult, we are indoctrinated to reject suffering, and in doing so, reject

love and power and the deepest experience of life. The question is, will you continue to follow the way of the Shih Tzu or honor your wolf-like ancestors and learn to live with a bit more Warrior spirit. Life delights in what is strong and powerful. It rewards those creatures with the best food, the best territories, the best mates. It seeks to create Majesty, Beauty, and Excellence through struggle. All the creatures we see, all the growth and culture, and Science and Society are the products of struggle and overcoming. In fact, suffering is the law of life, and how you approach suffering, how you relate to suffering, determines what you become. The longer you live life, the more you realize like, hey, there's a lot of Joy, there's a lot of pleasure, there's a lot of laughter, there's a lot of love, there's sex, there's beautiful new experiences, but there's also so much struggle. There's overwhelm on a daily basis, there's misfortunes, there's all the pains in the body, the pains in the heart, everything got hold up into your life.

there's constant struggle and that struggle that suffering makes people wish life were different. I'm sure you've been there. Does whimpering on your floor, you're sick for a [__] week. Maybe you're like Niche, you got headaches, your stomachs and nausea for extended periods of time. You're just like what the [__] God, why is life like this, and it can make you wish life were different. But life is what it is. It has this, this, this light and this dark inside of it. So what are you going to do about it? Many people watching this, you know, may think to themselves, oh, a life free of the suffering, that would be great. A life free of struggle, a life free of striving, that would be fabulous, right? And I think we've all had these thoughts in our quiet hours before. I want to tell you a story about a book I just read called The Giver. Now The Giver is this fictional tale, it's a quick reach, you should give it a go, the fictional tale that takes place

in this futuristic society that is initially presented as utopia, there is perfect control and regulation. Life is so well-ordered, it is governed over by this wise, enlightened Council who observes the development of children and helps align them with the correct assignment and job in life. There are rules that govern rudeness and equality, and everything is very equal and, you know, well, uh, well-lubricated, let's just say, from birth, you know, to, you know, your career towards old age and towards death. It's very easy. The Giver focuses on the journey of this boy, Jonas, who becomes the receiver of memories, the most highly honored position in society. And the receiver of memories gets to learn about what was life like before the sameness. You see, long ago, this society implemented this idea of sameness. They leveled the landscape, they eradicated colors, they took away sex and love and deep relationships. They took away differences in people, differences in climate. They mitigated hardship. They gave all these sheep three solid meals a day, pills for every small ache. They took

away all the suffering and the things that made The Human Experience really difficult. But with that, the receiver realizes that before the sameness, there used to be color, there used to be love, there used to be loyalty and camaraderie. There also used to be torture and War, and the hardest experiences of life and heartbreak, and the depths of suffering. But with that, it brought the heights of Joy, a celebration of connection, of a vital and full human experiences, the full emotional Gambit of Life. All of a sudden, everything had deeper meaning, deeper Beauty, deeper connection, and there was free will, there was free choice, and the sameness took away all of that, and it made life easier, but it made life less life, less alive, and he was like that feels wrong, that feels like a theft of these people, and you know you should read that story and maybe read the Brave New World as well where it talks about Soma, this pill that makes life Blissful, and life is so well ordered, but the raw human natural experience is totally missing as well.

you know and it and it starts to reorient your perspective towards what exactly is the value in suffering, and how can we face it better, how can we affirm life as it is. As Nietzsche, you know, once wrote, it's interesting, this question of suffering is one of the main problems, if not the problem, that most world religions and political ideologies have sought to solve, whether it's you know, Christianity preaching of a heaven beyond, or Platonism talking about the true world, the forms, or Buddha speaking of Nirvana, or Karl Marx talking about radical social equality, taking away all land and creating a political Utopia, or it's the Socialist, or it's the Stalin's, or it's the Leninism, or you know, whatever philosophy or world religion is ultimately aimed at, hey, suffering sucks, what do we do about it, and a lot of them are what Nietzsche would call life-denial philosophies. Life deniers have a philosophy, a world view that says suffering is bad, struggle isn't an inherently good thing, right? In fact

pleasure and ease. Those are good things. Comfort, equality. Those are good things. But struggle and power, suffering and overcoming. Those aren't really necessary, right? Life denial philosophies, like Christianity. Where did Christianity spread to and from? How did it emerge? It spread through the slaves, the people who didn't have a lot of power, who didn't love life, who had a lot of suffering in their life. And it told them, Hey, this world, it's full of sin, it's full of suffering, and it's full of evil people who are ruled by demons, right? All those people above you, they're evil. What you should do is you should, you know, accept Christ as your savior and live for the next World, live for heaven. Don't follow your instincts, your passions, your sex drives, your own individual ego in this life. That's all wrong. In fact, you should only live for God's law, what this book tells you. You should live for this imaginary next World, the true World. Same thing in, you know, especially the more Fallen forms of

Buddhism or Hinduism. It's like, Hey, this world is just the Maya, it's an illusion. Just reject this world and don't live for the body. Don't live for anything of this world and live for the next World. Just use this world to reach nirvana. This world is like a Lobby, it's like a waiting room. This the suffer, the Suffering, The Struggle, it doesn't really matter. Just relegate that, try to minimize that as much as you can and just get through this life. That's the life denier, denial philosophy versus a life affirmation philosophy. A lot of people think Nietzsche was nihilistic, but he was probably the most anti-nihilistic philosopher of them all. He didn't believe life was without meaning. He was like, No, the meaning of life is to fully affirm life. He looked at the ancient Greeks and their heroic stories and dramas and tragedies and the Olympic games, which were struggles or which were called agons or struggles to achieve Glory. He looked at these things. It was

like wow, the Greeks. They looked at life, they looked at the struggle of life, the struggle of the lion, and the fight that the gazelle put up against it. And it was like, yo, life is one big struggle. And that's not a bad thing, that's a great thing because that's what brings out the excellency in the soul. It's what brings out the greatness within man and mankind is how he struggles. So the ancient Greek, they created this whole culture around excellence and competition, right? This whole culture that's centered around the heroic ideal instead of the victim ideal of the modern day. They were like, yo, Heracles, Achilles, Hector, these great, you know, heroic stories, this is what we want to instill into our children. We want them to be excellent intellectually, morally, physically, in their character, in their spirituality. We want excellence in all things. We want the spirit of overcoming. It's what allowed these small nation-states of Greece to take on the 2 million Persians that were marching through the hot Gates and were like, no.

you know what we are powerful inside of ourselves. We seek power because power is the affirmation of life. It's what gives birth to magnificence, to beauty, to strength, to wisdom, to vitality, to a full zest. We are free beings, right, and we do not run from struggle. In fact, we rejoice in it. So us Greeks, we say bring it on. That's what they said to the Persians, you know, and uh, they won, and they created one of the most magnificent Golden Ages humanity has ever seen. You know, the birth of science, philosophy, architecture, drama, literature, uh, so much more flowed outward from that golden age of humanity. Perhaps it was because they didn't conform to the cult of weakness. They didn't conform to waiting in the lobby for a true world. They were like, no, you know what, we're going to suffer, and this life is going to be hard, but that's what makes it [__] beautiful. So let's suffer well, let's be excellent in our plight as humans. These modern-day life deniers, they could

be in the cult of weakness or the cult of Conformity, and comfort. They're coming from a place of weakness, whether they know it or they don't know it. This place of weakness says, Hey, this life, just live for the maximum amount of pleasure. You don't really like struggle, isn't inherently valuable. Suffering is not inherently valuable. It's these archaic things that should be fixed, they should be overcome. These modern day life deniers, they preach a lot of equality and compassion and kindness and non-violence, and then they want a world full of comforts where everything is just catering to every sensitivity and making life the easiest possible. These modern day life deniers often are conforming to socialists, to Marxist ideas of making some kind of political Utopia where everyone doesn't have to work that hard. There's not a lot of striving anymore. The idea of greatness has been eradicated. All the corn stalks have been cut to the same height. Everyone feels safe and equal. It's a safe place for the

grazing animals and gazelles not a lot of work, not a lot of hardship, not a lot of pain, right, not a lot of striving, and it's a very anti-heroic cult, really. Um, and if scientists one day came out with a drug called soma like in the Brave New World, the Soma drug that just makes you feel blissful and pacified and all your instincts die down, and you can just follow the rules, and you basically willingly choose your subservience to some kind of state or some kind of system and reject all suffering as something we don't really need that anymore, that's some archaic [ __ ] right. The problem with modern-day life denial is that in your rejection of suffering, in your rejection of this struggle, you reject the need to be strong, you reject power, you reject nature, you reject life, and as such life rejects you. Pain is there to make you deeper, stronger, and more profound than ever before, but in the rejection of pain by covering up with painkillers and

distractions and all these things. You never truly grow by never striving through struggle. You never grow that strength of character, that excellence in your soul, that's going to allow you to actually ride the currents of life well. So where does this life denial philosophy lead you? I've seen old friends from high school, old people I once knew who have a big personality, they had a lot of fire and enthusiasm for life. I've seen them wither over the years, mentally, physically, spiritually. You know, decay into this state where, you know, perhaps they're frustrated, they're they're they don't have a glowing vitality about them anymore. They've lost their self-esteem, they've lost lost their worth, they lost their purpose, right? And now, you know, they work a job they don't really like, they're addicted to drugs of some kind, you know, they take their medication for ADHD and anxiety and depression and waste of life on screens and meaningless relationships, and they are miserable, they're like, what is wrong, what's wrong with me, what's

wrong with life you know and I feel like so many people can relate to this situation and the most problematic thing about this state is most of them want to change. Most of them they want to work out more. They want to have better relationships. They want to have more purpose. They want to have more connection but they've been indoctrinated into a path, a cult of weakness. The Cult of the shitsu really have and it's hard to consistently push through the struggle of working out. It's hard to push through the consistent struggle of doing creative work, of facing the doubt, the procrastination, the resistance, the fears, like all the thing that is required of you to grow into a life that is powerful, that is vital, that is free. It takes a lot of heroic effort. It takes a lot of slaying dragons, per se, and if you're too entrenched into the path of the shitsu, it's like a shiitsu fighting back to become a wolf. Why did we ever let Society degrade to

that place in the first, in the first place, you know. And I think the key shift, the key shift here, is the internal transformation away from facing life from a lens of weakness towards facing life heroically, entering the cult of the hero. This is what my whole book I just wrote is all about. It's about this internal shift towards the lens of heroism from the lens of victimhood, and this is what makes life beautiful. And here's the thing, if you want to suffer less, there's two approaches you can have here. You can make the world safe and mitigate suffering and create this dystopia where there's not a lot of deep feeling and vitality anymore, or you can become strong to suffer less, become stronger. And if you're interested in these ideas, you should check out my book, The Psychologist Lane Dragons, coming out in about two months here. There's a link in the description below to sign up for notifications about that, or follow me on Instagram at I am Christian Bell with a k. Um, so coming into the end of the video here.

is I want to talk briefly about power and this idea of power. A lot of people in the modern society have a have a bad connotation and understanding of power. They think of it as some dominant, dominating control Matrix or this authoritarian, you know, manipulative thing that's greedy. Here's the thing is you need power for you need power to change anything, to do anything, to influence others, to influence reality, to to grow, to progress. You need power. The opposite of power is pure stagnation. Without power, you can do nothing, change nothing. You're just stuck. You're at the mercy of everyone else, and this creates a lot of victimization. It creates a lot of resentment. It creates a lot of the spite inside of you. You need power, and in fact, healthiness and happiness naturally come to those who are powerful. If you are truly powerful, my friend, you could you know, get the woman you want, live in the place you want, do the things you want to do, right. You're free. You no longer have to play small. You can play who you are.

you can be who you are fully. You've cultivated the character you have cultivated, the internal strength, the resources, the relationships, the purpose, the Dharma in your life to become powerful, and this makes you free, makes you healthy, it makes you happy. Power is really like the solution to most of your problems, but the problem is, power is earned through struggle, power is earned, strength is earned, right through challenge. So one, you don't face life heroically when you seek to make life safe, power diminishes, all experiences of life, therefore also diminish, because you need a lot of power to have the highest experiences of life, to have the deepest experience of life, you need more power. So the question is, which way are you following? There's a path of a wolf, and then there's the path of the Shih Tzu, and whichever way we take collectively, literally determines the outcome of humanity, because yeah, that's a whole nother video, but anyways, my friends, I do think we can learn a lot from something like

Christian morality, Buddhist morality, from compassion, from empathy. I think these are all generally good things, but they must be tempered with that Warrior spirit, with that will to rise, to strive, to fight. Everything in nature fights - the gazelle fights for its life, just like the lion fights for its kill. Just like the Wolf fights through the Wilderness and through the winters, and the Caribou fights and runs for its life from the wolves. Like everything fights for its life. Just look at, you know, Animal Planet for a little bit, you'll see this deep fight imbued into nature. When you don't have that fight in you, when you have joined the cult of weakness, this is when Nature starts to reject you and you start to reject yourself. And the dystopian, is this dystopian world is born. So I think all that compassion stuff must be tempered by that fight. And I think the cult of the hero must be born again. Go check out my book, The Psychology of Slaying Dragons, join my newsletter, and I'll see you at the next.

Video: This is Wisdom Warriors. I'm Christian. Peace.

The Modern Cult of Weakness: How Wolves Became Shih Tzus

The Modern Cult of Weakness: How Wolves Became Shih Tzus

Scripts