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hey this is Leo for actualised org and in this video we're going to talk about how to beware of false prophets eloquence at its greatest pitch leaves little room for reason this is one of my favorite quotes from David Hume and one of my favorite quotes of all time and especially when I was growing up and I was going through high school and through college I really adopted this quote and I really fell in love with this quote because I felt like there was something so true to this there's so much so much nonsense so much disinformation that comes when people get sucked in to the cult of personality and that's what I want to talk about in this video because this is a very dangerous thing that leaves many people astray in their personal development dooms them for life makes them lost for life makes them believe stupid ideas makes them buy into dogmas makes them angry bitter resentful defensive egotistical violent and many many more negative qualities like this which we want to avoid with personal development actually the quote goes on Humes quote goes on and it goes like this it says eloquence and its greatest pitch leaves little room for reason or reflection but addresses entirely to the desires and affections captivating the willing hearers and subduing their understanding which is exactly the danger of it when something sounds really nice when something sounds very flowering when someone's very eloquent when someone's a good speaker when someone can make a really good case present something beautifully someone knows how to pitch something to you that's usually when you got to wash out the most because all of that all that talk it's not letting you come in contact with the truth via direct experience what you've got no matter how well said something is is what you've got is you've got hearsay you've got someone reporting something to you and you always have to keep this in mind so the key here is to understand that there is a cult of human personality and human nature is such it's like your mind and your brain is literally programmed hardwired for following strong leaders this is how the human species is just evolved we evolved presumably because in the past we used to live in tribes and in these tribes these tribes were run by leaders so there was always the few who were passing down Authority and information to the many and the many would work for the few and there was a hierarchy like a caste system this is just part of our evolution and our history now the problem is that in modern times we've really come a long ways and we've shed a lot of that which is great it's amazing I think it's one of the most important developments in human history and evolution is the doing a way of these caste systems and false Authority but still our brains leave us very susceptible to giving authority to people very easily and just trusting that authority and not just Authority but it's like it's not just we're like buying in and believing from people I mean that definitely happens but I'm actually even more interested in this video to talk about the more nuanced case where you're an intelligent human being you're smart you're well educated you went to college you view yourself as independent you do a lot of personal development and yet still you fall into the trap of the cult of human personality and this is simply that you're really persuaded by someone's likeability and someone's charisma this is something that's very difficult to separate yourself out from so for example you're watching a video on YouTube someone's presenting some sort of information or point to you maybe it's me maybe if somebody else does it matter now you're listening to this person this person can have a different manner different style different personality they can be funny they can be they can be abrasive they can be very calm and peaceful it doesn't really matter what their style is but inevitably what's gonna happen is that you're gonna resonate to certain styles and personalities more than you are to others and you're gonna tend to make this mistake of saying well I really like this person he really resonates with me there's something that like he really understands where I'm coming from or she the way she talks is it's funny and interesting and I really like it it's really humorous to me or whatever so there what's happening is that your tastes are getting played on and that's fine there's nothing wrong with liking someone that you're listening to I mean I do that too but you have to be very careful because it's a very slippery slope and what tends to happen is that as soon as you fall in love with the style and manner and personality of this person and maybe you even then fall in love with his ideas too so you know it just kind of like starts this the slippery slope and then sooner or later what's happening is that you're just seating your own authority and mind over to that person and you're not all the sudden being as analytical and as critical as you ought to be of their ideas I say this about myself and I say this about other people right I just like I see sometimes in the comments section someone say oh you're a genius or oh this person is brilliant or look at this like it's this sense of of worship right it's it's worshipping of false prophets that's basically what it is you have to be really careful about this whole style thing because the style and manner of what is being communicated to you if it's a serious communication is irrelevant it really doesn't matter and if you're attracted to the style this will get you very lost in life very lost and even if you're attracted to the ideas because you feel like oh this idea it's really cool idea I always thought that way myself I know this is right or yeah this you know this is just a very important articulated idea you have to be careful about that too because just because an idea is beautiful just because it sounds nice to you just because it's simple and elegant and eloquent says nothing about the validity of that idea and even if that idea is valid that's hearsay no matter how you slice it it's always hearsay everything I tell you including what I'm telling you right now is just hearsay you have to have an independence your own critical thinking your own faculties to analyze all this stuff and piece it together for yourself do not outsource this to anybody else very very dangerous I see people outsourcing this and just saying you know let that person handle it and usually they you don't do it consciously so you don't say that eh I'll just let him do all the critical thinking for me that usually is not how it happens because that's too obvious your brain is very subtle about this in the ways that he gets deceived politicians will do it religious leaders will do it YouTube celebrities will do it self-help gurus will do it spiritual gurus would do it leaders at work will do it your business partner might do it the person in your marriage might do it it doesn't really matter this is how humans work is that we we try to persuade and influence each other and persuasion we always think and we tell ourselves well persuasion I get persuaded by logical arguments and I get persuaded by the meat of the matter but that's very rarely the case usually if you're very self honest and this takes a lot of open-mindedness and self honesty to admit because you can see yourself doing it when you're persuading somebody else when you want something from them it's very difficult to stay objective it's very difficult to stick to the issues usually what happens is you start to diverge and talk about all sorts of irrelevant stuff basically you're building up that cult of personality you're trying to persuade people persuasion doesn't happen usually through logical argument it's hard to persuade someone through the logical argument it's a lot easier to persuade them through emotions and so that's how persuasion usually happens is through emotional Appeals what are some examples of this I mean I read a lot of comments I read pretty much all comments that you guys leave me under the videos and on my website and I hear stuff you know who likes what who doesn't like what what you guys are into who you're watching who you're following and also you know I follow some of these people too and I think that some people are really great I mean I love learning from experts so this is not to say that you shouldn't learn from experts I think there's a literally thousands of experts that if I could just send you to all those experts that would be amazing and if you actually were committed enough to study from each one of those experts and you put the time and effort into it I would send you to all those experts but most of you don't have that time and the point here is that experts are cool just like don't seed everything to them don't put them up on a pedestal don't idolize them this is not necessary in fact this is very dangerous to you so here are some examples a lot of you guys who watch my videos also watch artisty videos or are HD videos are great I've watched many of them but RSD is definitely a cult of personality that you have to be really careful about a lot of the rsd instructors they're charismatic they're funny they have interesting and cool ideas and a lot of that stuff blows your mind and it's great but also I really see this kind of like cult of personality happening there and I notice it myself because I watched a lot of their videos and I really just like it get sucked into it to the point where my mind stops working independently which is a very bad thing and as much as RSD talks about groupthink that's a really big theme throughout all our st content is groupthink groupthink how dangerous it is but actually RSD is a very dangerous pit of groupthink so be careful about that and I know personally a lot of people who are involved with RSD I've met pretty much all the instructors face-to-face and so I know these people and I know the people that follow these people and there's this definite tendency to just kind of like buy it you know buy into the group thing Elliott Hulse I love Elliott Hulse but again don't idolize him if he gives you good ideas great the ideas are good let the ideas stand on their own merits but not on his personality because he's got a great person that personality is very attractive that personality is like oh yeah I want to be like him or he really inspires me that's great but separate that out right you can be inspired by Elliott Hulse but separate that out from the merit of what he's talking about and I think he talks about a lot of great stuff has amazing merit so you know really no real bones to pick with him other than that you can take heli it holds his material and turn it into crap by turning it into this false prophet situation Eckhart Tolle I think this is a big one too a lot of people talk about Eckhart Tolle as though like oh my god at heart Olay amazing read the power of now read his other books and it's like all it blows your mind that's you know so enlightening and Eckhart Tolle is an amazing human being he's enlightened human being you can watch his videos you can read his books great I recommend it again don't turn him into a false prophet and by the way all of these people the people that I'm talking about they will tell you the same thing themselves right they actually faced this problem themselves because they have a lot of followers they have a lot of viewers and they'll tell you this themselves at least if they're very honest they should be telling you this they should be sensitive to this kind of stuff Tony Robbins a lot of people love Tony Robbins people talking about Tony Robbins because he's kind of like the the father of modern personal development of self-help he's just like the easy example to use and that's great and I mean I love Tony Robbins I watched a lot of his stuff I started on Tony Robbins material the first self-help book that I read was a Tony Robbins book or actually was a CD program of his so I mean that's awesome but again don't think that Tony Robbins has every aspect of life nailed and that he understands every aspect of life because he doesn't I can I can find new areas where Tony Robbins is deficient in his understanding of life and that's fine that I'm not trying to say like I'm better than Tony around like I honestly don't care like I don't want to compare myself to these people I'm just saying like don't just like seed blind Authority to these people even though they have amazing accomplishments I mean the stuff that Tony Robbins is accomplished I would not accomplish probably in 10 lifetimes he's a very notorious guy he's had amazing talent he's amazing speaker he can do amazing things on stage and I'm sure he helps a lot of his clients and stuff in really powerful ways but don't turn him into a false prophet you can also of course go back to the old-school prophets the actual prophets Jesus Buddha Muhammad whoever else you might want to follow from your you know based on your religion or your tradition in your culture even these guys you might think well but these guys are the original prophets no they're not the original prophets in fact these guys the way that that they have been false prophet eyes turn into false prophets by all the people that came after them after thousands of years it's really turned into a travesty real travesty and if you read for example the writings of Buddha you can see that he's very much against this kind of stuff very much against it Jesus I'm pretty sure he would be appalled at what has been done with with his teachings after 2,000 years because it's been turn is it just complete nonsense these kind of people they don't want you to take them as prophets it's actually a very egotistical thing to want to be a prophet to be put on some sort of pedestal to think that you're special and to use this kind of authority to influence people like a self honest intellectually honest person is never going to want to do that it's not a like it's just a very disgusting way to lead others and it's not that they're trying to fool you I think that actually what happens here is not that any of these people that we talked about is fooling you in any way most of them are pretty honest individuals and they're doing the right thing the problem is with you it's not really with them you're the one who likes their personality so much that you want to idolize them and you want to think that they're amazing and you want think things that are special than they're unique and there's something about them that's like oh man they're a genius there's just like something about this person like Oh Albert Einstein Albert Einstein he genius I could never be like that or he could never match that this is this stuff you got to really be careful of this issue of authority authority is important because what all these people have in common people who influence lots of people what they have is they have authority and the thing we understand about Authority is that there's only one real Authority and that all other authorities are fake authorities real Authority is truth truth with a capital T and I'll talk more about that other videos because this is a very important idea and very people very many people are confused about what truth with a capital T actually is and what it means but just briefly truth with the capital T is direct experience personal direct experience by you it's not even that you can trust yourself to analyze the experience that's already a step removed from truth although that would be much better than what most are you guys are doing which is living your life based on hearsay what other people are telling you truth is direct experience it's direct insight of the question and matter at hand so even scientific knowledge which you might say has the pinnacle of truth even this doesn't qualify really as truth it's not real truth it's hearsay which is masqueraded under a kind of an assertion of truth it's really a form of persuasion that's what scientific truths are real truth is direct experience of it so for example if you sit down and you actually do the science experiment yourself and you see what's happening there and you see the truth of it there you got a taste of the real truth that's real authority and notice that real Authority is impersonal there's nothing personal about it it has nothing to do with human nature or human beings it's impersonal it's not even contained in language language doesn't carry truth very well of course we have to rely on language we have to rely on hearsay because there's just so much stuff to know there's so many experiments to run that we couldn't possibly run them all in our own lives it would take us a million lifetimes to do it so we have to rely on hearsay and of course then there's the whole game about well which hearsay is accurate and which ones are not which hearsay is not accurate and you know that's a whole that's a whole field of study you can go in there and start to study and analyze all this stuff and compare the stuff this is a passion of mine I spent a lot of years comparing and studying different ideas different philosophies I was a philosophy major for this reason because I was really interested in dissecting and comparing and contrasting all these different ideas and cosmologies and ways of thinking and metaphysics and all this stuff and you know religion and philosophy was just very fascinating to compare and contrast all this stuff and so you know you'll do that but don't trick yourself into thinking that just because you do some analysis on the hearsay that you've actually got real Authority real authority comes from direct experience this also means that any authority that you give to a human being is false and fake Authority even if this human being is a really nice stand-up honest guy and he's really funny and charming and he's actually telling you accurate and true things that's still a fake Authority and that authority sometimes it's him who appropriates this Authority but a lot of times it's you who gives him that authority because your mind is designed to follow sometimes it leads but a lot of times it's designed to follow even leaders are also great followers so just because you have a leadership position does not make you immune there's still probably somebody else out there that you're idolizing who you turn into a false prophet because you want to give them this this fake Authority it's like a constant battle in your mind you have to stay vigilant throughout your entire life to this thing it never really goes away you have to stay vigilant and what I see is people just are not vigilant and they want to relinquish their vigilance and they just want to sit whatever I'll just kind of coast through life and they end up coasting through life and getting themself stuck into a lot of philosophical mental masturbation just a real quagmire of conceptual and also what this does is this creates dogma this creates firm entrenched beliefs which close your mind down so that your mind is not open enough now to explore other areas of life that you haven't considered before and you might think that well this is not too impactful to my result into my development into my success in life but let me tell you that this is incredibly impactful and in fact one of the missions of actualized org that I'm gonna be promoting more and more as I shoot more videos is really open mindedness and like getting away from the Dogma because dogma and closed mindedness is one of the most dangerous things and one of the things that really cripples your personal development the most it's really dangerous on a personal level it's also dangerous on a social level on a social level it could cause real disasters the other thing interesting thing that I've been really experiencing the last years I've been getting more followers and my youtube channels been growing you know that's been kind of cool I've never thought of myself as having some celebrity status or anything but actually now like if I go out sometimes people will meet me and will recognize me like hey you you're that guy I know you from somewhere that's always funny to me I just goes like oh like I can't believe that someone would recognize me but I've had people like recognize me at the gym and stuff it's funny you know it's fun it's cool but the one thing that I'm really recognized in studying how people develop followings how people build YouTube channels and how people build websites and how people build you know political followings and stuff which you start to discover is that authority is very easy to manufacture it's really easy to manufacture and what's shocking is that people don't understand just how easy it is to manufacture this stuff it's really really easy and the reason that is is because your mind is very quick to jump to assumptions about people who you perceive out in the public but you don't actually know so for example it's funny because I'll watch people watching my videos and then below in the comments they'll leave some sort of comment where they say something like it's hard to come up with a specific example but like the gist of their comment will be something along the lines of oleo you know he's got this part of his life handled he's got it all handled like for example I have this videos that's called how to stop caring what people think about you it's a really one of my most popular videos people love that video and in the comments so people will write oh you know I shouldn't be thanking Leo because he doesn't care what other people think of it and this is like so ridiculous I can't believe that people would assume just because I shoot a video called how to stop thinking what other people think of you and I talk about it you know I I bring up some good points there I understand the topic but that doesn't mean that I literally don't care what people think about me that would be a very difficult state for me to achieve I mean I'm always chipping away at it but a lot of the stuff that I talk to you guys about I'm not perfect with that yeah I mean you understand that right I'm not perfect at it at all so if you watch the meditation video of mine I tell you to sit up straight and I tell you to meditate for 20 minutes and I tell you to clear your mind of ideas and and thoughts and stuff what you tend to do is you tend of sue Oh Leo Leo does that perfectly and when I tell you to stop caring about what people think about you you'll be like Oh Leo does that perfectly and when I tell you that you should that you should go and exercise or eat healthy or something else like that you're gonna say oh he's telling me because he's got it nailed he's got it locked down and you know at some of this stuff I'm pretty good at some of these things I've really worked hard and I developed some really good habits but I'm fallible like everybody else and not always do I have this stuff locked down and it's funny because when I see people assuming this stuff about me I start to see all the sudden my mind it's like oh my god that's how it happens that's how the false prophet thing works that's why it spreads it's like a virus that spreads through society because what happens is that someone can be very genuine and honest and come up here and tell you just very precisely all the stuff without fabricating anything but what you're gonna do what your mind is gonna do because you don't really know the person you're making unconscious assumptions about this person all the time and then when you meet that person face to face maybe you have dinner with him like in a more private intimate setting get to really know him you'd be like oh damn you're totally different than what I thought you were like because see you're watching me through a little screen right here what I'm standing on our camera that's like almost like wearing a certain mask that I wear I try to be authentic here but still like it's not the authentic meaning because of course I'm playing up a little bit to my audience and of course I know you have certain expectations for me and so I have certain expectations for myself this is also kind of like a business of mine so there's like a lot of stuff that goes in here that doesn't allow for like a totally genuine communication and also you're looking at me in a very narrow context it's the window it's very little window right you don't see me with my family you don't see me with my with my girlfriend you don't see me doing meditation you don't see me doing a lot of this stuff and when I'm doing those things you know I'm on a different headspace I'm in a different mood I'm I'm behaving differently all of us do that you can see this in yourself when you're at work you behave in a different way you have a certain mask that you put on when you're at work when you're with your family you have another mask that you put on there when you're with your girlfriend or boyfriend then you have a certain mask you put on there and so if I just observed you only at work I wouldn't really get the full picture of you I would have to observe you in all these different areas to really get a good sense of who you are as a human being and so this is how the false prophet thing happens is because when you don't have direct access to the person which usually you don't write you don't really know for example what Barack Obama is like you've never met him you've only seen short snippets of him on TV in a very very contrived setting you don't really know what George Bush was like you don't really know what a sama bin Laden was like you don't really know what Hitler was like you don't really know what Jesus was like or what the Buddha was like or what even Tony Robbins is like I mean just cuz you you might say well I've been a Tony Robbins event I seen him in person well yeah maybe you've seen him in person but you've seen him on stage in a huge commercial setting with thousands of people watching him that's not necessarily the real Tony Robbins have you seen Tony Robbins when he's sitting with his wife or with his kids yeah I imagine that would be very different Tony Robbins you know maybe he's very authentic I believe he probably is quite authentic and then he's probably got similarities between how he interacts with his wife and his kids and how he interacts with people but you know who knows you don't know you just assume this you assume this stuff but like there's no evidence to back it up and what more interestingly is that the person you're assuming it about doesn't even want you to assume it about them so for example when people assume about me that I don't care what other people think about me I don't even want that because this is like a bird that now I have to bear feels kind of heavy because it's like oh damn like what if ever what if someone ever saw me caring about what someone thinks about me I would look like a hypocrite even though I never went out there and said that I literally don't care what people think about me it's just like an assumption that someone put upon me you know that's fine that's kind of the burden of being a public figure and having people know you so you know I'm not complaining about that I'm just saying that be careful because it's you who's doing it it's you who's doing it you're falling in love with the personality so the bottom line is that number one no one is truly authoritative no human being is authoritative number two is that no human being is special number three is that no human being is better than you number four is that no human being is unbiased every human being is biased every human being grows up in a culture in an environment and within groupthink so even if the human being that's communicating to you believes very honestly wholeheartedly believes that everything they're telling you is true and accurate this does not mean that they're immune from infecting you with their groupthink and there are cultural influences and their traditions and all that stuff is all still there in some people less than others but it's all still there so the biases are there there's commercial biases there's social biases they're political biases there's personal biases there's a there's traditions and cultures and religions there's so many biases that are being communicated to you by each people that you watch and that you admire so be really careful about that and lastly is that no one is a genius I hear this one thrown around like oh this person is untouchable he's just a genius like pure brilliance as though you couldn't arrive at that situation that place yourself so you have to see yourself as just as capable as these other people I want you to believe for example that if you dedicate yourself hard enough and you work hard enough that you can develop yourself to a really high level within personal development you know whatever you think of me I don't think of myself is like super personally developed or whatever but like some people will say leo are you are you self actualized to me this is funny like self actualization is a process that continues for your whole life there's no end point that you reach but if you think that oh well Leo is pretty self actualized and I would never be able to live up to him like that's a really dangerous assumption you should think that oh he's just a normal guy who's just shooting videos sharing some information with me some of his information is good some it's not so good let me take the good stuff let me try it out myself field test it apply it in my life and I can become like him or I can become a little different than him but whatever is you know I can I can advance and develop and go even higher that's they got to think you got to really flatten the whole hierarchy thing there's no hierarchy in life nobody is above you there's no like a magical Pope who's infallible this is a really dangerous and silly idea and the really bad news here is that you're listening to all this and it's making perfect sense to you everything I'm telling you this makes perfect sense but you're still going to get lost you're still gonna fall prey to this why because I notice myself falling prey to it too even though I know of this stuff it's not enough to just know it and to agree with it you have to stay vigilant all the time and really watch out for this cult of personality thing you got a real watch out for it so in summary stay vigilant alright this is Leo I'm signing off go ahead post your comments down below I love to hear what you think click the like button if you like this video help it spread around share it on Facebook share with a friends so that more people get to watch these videos and I can release more free content for you and speaking of more 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