Most people are genuinely not worth knowing and you are likely one of them.
3 weeks ago, I woke up one morning to an unlikely message from my good friend Daragh.
We had gone driving round the Irish coastline that previous Sunday night. We spent 2 hours talking about profound, philosophical ideas.
He had also seen that my Profound Ideas newsletter had been doing quite well, so we talked about it. To be dead honest I didn’t think anything else would continue on from that conversation.
But then I heard the voice message he sent me.
If you happen to be Irish, or at least knowledgeable of Irish accents, I’d like you to read this in an eccentric Monaghan accent. The voice message I received - I’m paraphrasing here - went like so:
“So Craig! I was having a think about our conversation the other night, and I had heard something on the radio that I think might have suited our conversation quite well the other night. Your man on the radio was asking the question, how do you become someone worth knowing, and I thought it was quite profound as you would say, my philosopher friend!”
I aptly responded:
“Daragh,
I am turning that into a fucking newsletter!”
Because it immediately made me realize most people are not worth knowing.
Some of them never will be.
Most people are not actually themselves.
And this should terrify you.
Here’s why.
The mass programming of basic humans
You cannot become someone worth knowing until you recognize how thoroughly you’ve been programmed by others.
When you talk to most people, you are rarely talking to a real person.
You’re talking to a collection of borrowed thoughts, inherited beliefs, and unconscious programming, that has buried that person’s soul 6 feet beneath them.
They are not truly aware of themselves.
Most people are so unconscious, so completely unaware of who they are and should be, that they’d might as well be dead.
Completely soulless.
Not only is society sub-optimal for developing your individuality, society is actively programming you to be basic.
It starts in childhood.
You dogmatically adopted your parents’ unconsciously biased worldviews as a child and never questioned them.
Nothing inherently wrong with this, but the goal of becoming fully you is to become fully you, not your parents.
Then, you enter an education system is based on the Prussian-style education system, designed to make people obedient conformists. Funnily enough, the education system discourages the very thing it claims to promote: interest, curiosity, discovery, and individuality. You’re told what to think by a standardized curriculum based for their interests and not your own.
This presents a problem.
If you don’t have your own niche list of interests, you have nothing to interest people into getting to know you.
Most people will go through life not knowing what their real interests are.
They don’t have “their thing.” Their jiu jitsu class on a Monday-Wednesday-Friday night schedule. That one niche topic they can’t shut the fuck up annoying their girlfriend about. A skill for developing their mind, body, soul, and purpose.
Because most people have never been taught how to think about these things.
This is where the problem starts getting serious.
Most people can’t think because they don’t ask questions. They adopt beliefs and worldviews from people online, or from their parents, and they don’t question shit - they conform. They agree without challenge. They act on feeling and not critical thinking.
And when they do ask themselves questions, which is all that thinking is, they use other people’s words to answer those questions.
Therefore, when you’re talking to them, you’re actually talking to someone else inside their own head.
Not everyone is like this, but most people are, and that’s still most people who aren’t conscious of this.
Hence, they are unconscious of what’s going on. They are not aware that they are not truly themselves.
The people being educated, the people doing the educating, the people educating the educators on what to educate, the people online giving out about the people in charge of the people educating the educators on what to educate.
A lot of unconscious happenings, happening.
Then, the problem gets amplified when you introduce the screens - the algorithms.
Now this is happening on a grand scale.
Social media algorithms program your desires by showing you perfect stories which influencers have carefully crafted in order to sell you something. Corporate messaging manufactures your desires through smart marketing designed to trigger your limbic system before your conscious mind can evaluate - hear enough of your pain points and you’ll pay them. And now AI is making thoughtless people think even less.
Not much conscious awareness going on here, and therefore not many original perspectives to offer to the world.
The reason why this is so terrifying is that you have nothing of unique value to say or offer to the world; your own distinct perspective that would make you worth listening to in the first place.
If you are anything but yourself, who are you?
You have nothing profound about how you think, connect ideas, and solve problems.
You don’t have a distinct understanding of the world that’s unique to you.
You don’t have an authentic perspective that people care to hear.
Hence, you are not worth knowing, because where is the value in being like everyone else?
You can easily be replaced when it is called for. Your job. Your friends. Your relationship.
This is how most people go through life.
This should fucking terrify you.
You are fucking boring
Society unconsciously programs you to be anything but yourself.
Yeah, not great.
My Mam always used to tell me when I was younger that “if everyone was perfect and the same, life would be boring.”
I actually think it presents a very profound idea:
The reason why most people aren’t worth knowing is because they are not aware of what’s needed to become known.
Leverage what interests you towards becoming different.
Most people are not individuals. They are iterations of the same unconscious programming running inside different bodies of flesh.
They don’t have original, authentic perspectives, and live by other people’s unconscious beliefs and values.
They don’t know how to think profoundly, how to ask questions, how to connect ideas, how to create their own solutions to problems, and become muppets who regurgitate memorable one-liners to sound “smart.”
They don’t have anything to obsess over - hobbies, passions, interests, or weird niche books or topics they can’t shut the fuck up about - and you wonder why they blend in with the wall at parties and social gatherings.
They don’t have any goals, and feel satisfied being dictated by the unconscious goals that society feeds them, because they haven’t consciously thought about the path in which these goals are leading them - it’s likely not a destination they really want.
Becoming someone worth knowing is ultimately an awareness problem.
What you must realize is that you cannot become someone worth knowing until you’ve recognized how thoroughly you’ve been programmed by people who are not worth knowing.
The problem isn’t that you lack authenticity, but that you don’t know what’s actually yours versus what’s been programmed into you by:
People who don’t have interests that consume every free minute of their life
People who don’t think profoundly, make intuitive connections, and create solutions - profound thinkers
People who go to work, go home, and numb their brains with Netflix until they wake up the next day to go again
People without an authentic perspective that other’s desperately seek out when a group debate is happening
Awareness is the greatest competitive advantage of the 21st century.
It’s ultimately how you escape competing with others who are just trying to “fit in,” just by being you.
But you need to be aware of all this in order to transcend it.
If you can understand how to do this, you will become who you could and should be.
A profound individual.
Follow these steps and you will become unrecognizable in 90 days.
How to become someone one worth knowing
Most people think becoming interesting starts with getting people to like you, but I think it means liking being you first, which will naturally attract the right people.
(1) Develop dual consciousness
You can’t be you when you don’t know what you is versus your programming.
This is what I want you to do right now.
Take out a pen and paper, or just use your notes app. Spend 20-30 minutes thinking about this.
Question yourself based on Ken Wilber’s four quadrants of knowledge and experience.
You are doing this to create as complete a perspective on this problem as possible.
We’ll be dealing with the square in the top right:
Ask yourself these questions:
Individual interior (upper left) - inner world
What are my core values and what is most important to me?
What activities made hours feel like minutes when I was a child?
What are my fears in life?
What are my self-limiting beliefs?
What does my intuition say when I silence my mind?
Individual Exterior (Upper Right) - behaviour
What am I naturally good at?
What are my best and worst skills?
What does my behaviour say about my real interests?
What were some of my favorite physical or intellectual pursuits as a child?
What type of life will my current lifestyle lead me towards?
Collective Interior (Lower Left) - culture & society
What do my parents or social groups expect of me in terms of their idea of success?
How do my friends influence my goals, values, and behaviour?
How does social media influence my thoughts, values, and behaviour?
What shared values do I have?
What do I find meaningful in life?
Collective Exterior (Lower Right) - systems, structures, & institutions
What are the current opportunities for work in the world today?
How does the education system or the internet influence my life trajectory?
What technological advancements or social trends are forging new opportunities?
What systemic barriers or advantages do I face?
If you never attempt at understanding a perspective, problem, or human being from each of these four quadrants, you do not have a complete perspective.
This integral map is about understanding - becoming more aware.
Most people live in single consciousness, meaning they are their programming.
They are not aware of the programming themselves.
Your goal is to develop dual consciousness, which means you can observe your own programming from above while choosing your own authentic responses.
Awareness leads to control.
(2) Listen to your own soul’s signals
Most people would rather try to conform and fit in, than make the sacrifice of following their own authentic interests and quirks.
Now that you’ve become more aware of who you are, ask yourself this:
What do I want?
Genuinely ask yourself this question. No hiding or positive thinking either. Be dead honest about what you want.
If you don’t know, pay attention to:
What topics make you lose track of time?
What weird niches fascinate you that others find boring?
What perspectives emerge naturally from your own life experiences?
Your soul does not speak through your achievements or your status.
It’s very essence lies in your interests.
Not the interest you have chosen, but the interests which have chosen you.
The person obsessed with niche philosophical ideas, or with Linkin Park’s Hybrid Theory - perfect album btw - is infinitely more interesting than the person trying to like what everyone else likes.
Listen to your soul’s signal and ignore society’s noise.
(3) How to build a perspective the right way
Think independently and creating your own authentic perspective is something that most people get wrong.
They hold ideas borrowed from “experts” they’ve seen on TikTok and hold them as gospel.
Your goal is to synthesize knowledge into a lightly held, strong perspective.
Nothing is certain - this will separate you from most thinkers in the best of ways.
What should be certain, if you want to be a profound thinker, is your stance on always keeping your mind open and aware of new information.
Your perspective is an offer, not law.
So, offer perspectives. Don’t impose laws
Stay curious and open to evolution.
Your perspective is valuable because it’s yours, not because it’s right.
Strong perspectives held lightly create exhilarating, real-talk conversations. Weak perspectives held tightly create boring arguments and are a waste of life.
This is what separates memorable people from forgettable ones.
You are not worth knowing if you recycle other people’s thoughts, avoid authentic interests, and blend into every crowd.
You become worth knowing if you develop your own perspectives, follow genuine fascinations, and offer something uniquely your own to every conversation.
The choice is literally yours to take.
There’s a lot more to you than you think, but it’s your responsibility to turn that potential into something profound.
If you want to become someone worth knowing as quick as humanely possible, you can check out my paid newsletter posts that help you to become a profound thinker:
I’ve received a lot of positive feedback on my recent paid-post, my self-education guide.
Self-Education Guide: Learn ANYTHING Faster than Everyone (30mins a day with 3 profound principles)
If you’re not learning, you are dying.
Thank you for the kind messages, I’m glad the guide has helped so many of you!
Lot’s more profound ideas to come.
Please leave suggestions for newsletter topics down below.
Thank you for reading.
You’re an absolute legend.
- Craig :)
Looking for more profound ideas?
How to Become an Expert in Anything FAST (and think like a genius)
The video version of this newsletter:
i love this so much. the part about learning to like yourself first was something that i think loads of people (myself included) most certainly need to work on and this was beautifully written. i do think to an extent though, and only to an extent, it’s sort of beautiful that we become an amalgamation of everyone that we’ve loved.
Your beginning rumble did not prepare me for the eruption of such profound insights, incoming explosions of mined Mind Fields of borrowed thinking masquerading as intelligence truly owned by the self. This was such a call of duty to re-examine how we choose to explore rather than expunge the only identity we have as an individual or a parrot. Great advice for moderns as air b&b thinkers, renting short term ideas without owning deeply held perspectives.