Radical Honesty

We all lie like hell to ourselves and others, and it's stressing us to death.

What Is This Book?

It's about anger. It's about how moralism comes back to bite you in the ass. It's about neurosis. It's about deadening — low intensity suffering caused by being on guard. It's about growing the fuck up. It's about willingness to take care of oneself. It's about telling the truth as you experience it, regardless of how it portrays you. It's about the struggles you face — and their insignificance in the face of your death.

It's all over the place in a wonderful way.

It's to the point, unapologetic and without sugar coating. The honesty Dr Blanton is talking about is not just "truth is the best policy," but to tell the truth as you experience it, in great detail and no matter how it portrays your identity.

Why This Book?

This book is so crazy, yet so sane. It is books like these that keep me motivated to read. It is finding books like this that is the payoff for the time I put into reading. I don't agree with everything Blanton says, but I'm grateful to still be able to pick up new perspectives and ideas that can help me understand the human condition.

What he suggests is a shock program, but don't worry, because 99.99% of you won't have the balls (or tits?!) to do the exercises described in this book. Your ego won't let you. And you don't need to — you will still get massive value from reading it.

The Core Idea

We mix up reality with our interpretation of reality. We invent some fundamental lies about how life should and shouldn't be. Then we use food and drugs to temporarily escape the lie we invented. We are prisoners in our own minds.

It is abnormal to be happy. The best way to see what is normal is to look at the faces of people when you walk to work, in the subway. Keep track of how many look happy. Most people will look dead or damn unhappy. This is an invitation to be abnormal.

"The stress that kills or cripples most of us comes from people being too hard on themselves when they don't live up to their own imaginings about how other people think they should behave."

People are stuck in adolescence. About 75% of the modern world. How long it takes to build an ego identity depends on culture and tech level. For a bushman to go from child to starting to make babies, take on an adult role and choose vocation takes about a year. In our culture, adolescence lasts from 12 to 40 years old. The way out? Telling the truth.

On Anger

How does a person that is used to suppressing anger show anger? Direct and indirect. Indirect is sick and dumb. To express our anger fully we need to lose all our constraints to it.

One of the hallmarks of suppressed anger is helplessness. Power is assigned to forces outside the speaker. We resent our parents for getting old, children for being children, men for being men and women for being women. Our decision to not show our resentment is based on the belief that it has to be justified. Express your resentment even if it's irrational. That's how you get free from anger.

Be specific when you express your resentment: "I resent you for getting drunk and falling asleep on our anniversary" — not "you never listen to me."

📺 Video Review

On Happiness and Self-Care

"The key to happiness is the willingness to take care of oneself. Problem is that most people are willing to take care of anything and anyone else, but themselves."

Getting drunk and stoned works! Being sad and being fat works! Especially in a world where being angry, horny or being expressly joyful is taboo. These are all ways of survival, and if they are replaced there is a big risk that the new replacement will be a pain to accomplish and might not work as well as the old way.

Many of the people going to get help from psychiatrists are tired. They have set up their lives so that they get worked out instead of recharged by living. When someone like this takes responsibility for exercise, diet and rest, a number of their psychological problems disappear.

On Truth and Identity

It's not normal to be honest. What is normal is to be concerned foremost with having a good cover story. Normal people are concerned with figuring out the right thing to say that puts them in the best light. They want to live up to their own best guess about what the people they are talking to want to hear.

When you are lying, keeping a secret, withholding information or feelings in any moment, you are always doing that to protect something meaningless. You are usually protecting a memory to preserve a constant state of being. You can't see that what you're protecting is meaningless because the illusion of the self you are protecting blocks your view. When, through telling the truth, you destroy that illusion — you can see that it was meaningless.

"The willingness to face the abyss of meaninglessness is the power accessible to accomplish change."

Whatever your main struggle is, it is insignificant in the face of your death. It is petty and unimportant and has no meaning at all. It is a tale told by an idiot...

Blanton Walks His Talk

The author walks his talk when describing his intention with this book: to show off what he learned during his career, but also to show that he is smarter than most people. To be rich and famous and to create a legacy that lives on after his death. Things we all think but never say explicitly.

"Fuck hope! Hope is how most of us keep ourselves from growing up. The power of positive thinking is the biggest pile of bullshit of our day. Positive thinking is for negative people... Thinking is not the source of power. Being is the source of power. And in being we are already whole."

"It's okay to not get the most out of life. It's fine to let the world happen and not get all the cookies. Getting the most out of life is too much work anyway. Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly. Let up on everything, including this."