Skip to playerSkip to main contentSkip to footer
Stefan Molyneux
  • 2/23/2024
The episode highlights the importance of introducing new arguments in debates to progress, nurturing critical thinking in children, and engaging with the Freedom Locals community.

Chapters
0:00:00 Introduction to Philosophical Paradoxes
0:06:09 Banning Arguments and the Power of Principles
0:13:42 Debating with New Arguments and Winning on Principles
0:25:52 The Paradox of Government as Tyrant Father and Nurturant Mother
0:36:03 Resolving Paradoxes with Universal Principles and UPB

Long Summary
In this episode, we delved into the concept of navigating debates, analyzing how debates often evolve into predetermined back-and-forth exchanges due to individuals sticking to fixed positions. The winning argument is sometimes labeled as hateful or immoral when it challenges established beliefs. The speaker highlighted the strategy of introducing new arguments to keep opponents on their toes and elevate the discourse to principles-based discussions. By shifting the focus from data to principles, a higher level of debate can be achieved. The discussion then transitioned to the education system, exploring how children's negative experiences in school can lead to questioning the values behind institutional power. The speaker emphasized the importance of challenging prevailing paradigms and promoting universal moral principles like the non-aggression principle to effect positive change. The episode concluded with a call to support the show through donations and engage with the community on the Freedom Local platform.




Transcript
00:00 All right, welcome to Philosophical Paradoxes. This is number four. This comes out of
00:06 Napoleon, who wrote, "Logic will lose you wars, because sometimes the moment demands imaginative
00:15 maneuvers that work because they are irrational." Well, that's a very interesting phrase, a very
00:23 interesting question. Right, so you've seen this meme, people doing these chaotic things, saying,
00:28 "Never let them know your next move," and that's funny and interesting. So, with regards to logic,
00:39 logic in combat, now of course I'm not going to talk about war because I'm a philosopher,
00:45 which means my combat is debate, right? So, with regards to debating, with regards to arguing,
00:54 and I'm sure this is going to be the case in your life as a whole, most people, when they debate,
00:58 they have a fixed set of positions that they go to, which means that it's predictable to figure out
01:03 what it is they're going to say in a debate. It's input-output NPC programming,
01:07 and they have very predictable positions that they're going to. In this way, most debate is
01:16 a series of deterministic statements bouncing back and forth, which only convince people who already
01:23 accept a particular position. The way that the cultural wars work, or the ideas wars work in the
01:33 modern world, and this has really been the case throughout history, but the way that these work is
01:38 the winning argument is always defined as hateful and evil. So, if you can't win an argument,
01:49 then what you do is you say that anyone who has the winning argument, everyone who has the clincher,
01:56 everyone who makes the argument that irrefutably harms your position, or undermines your position,
02:02 or destroys your position, that is defined as hate speech, that is defined as immoral,
02:08 as bigoted, and so on. And that way, you can confidently stride into an argument,
02:15 knowing that all of your arguments are permitted, but the winning argument on the other side
02:21 is not permitted. I mean, I could play against a lot of people, say chess,
02:28 and if I could convince them that moving the queen or castling is immoral and evil and bad
02:39 and wrong and cheating, and if I could convince them that, then I wouldn't really need to work
02:43 that hard to win chess games, because the most powerful piece and a very important defensive move,
02:50 which is where you move the king and the castle, you flip their positions in a defensive position
02:57 on your back line, those two moves, moving the queen and castling, would be inaccessible.
03:02 People wouldn't be able to do it. So, attacking the ethics of a position
03:11 is simply saying you can't answer it. It's not hate speech, it's arguments that people hate,
03:18 because they can't answer them. Whether the arguments can be answered in some form or not
03:22 isn't particularly relevant. What is relevant is that people believe that the arguments cannot
03:29 be answered, and therefore they redefine. I mean, again, sorry, it's so boring, it's so predictable,
03:35 but it's worth mentioning here. So, what they do is they say, well, anybody who holds this position
03:41 is an extremist, is a heretic, is a blasphemer, is immoral, is evil, is bigoted, is hateful,
03:48 is phobic, all of that sort of stuff. It is, of course, a confession of impotence.
03:57 Hatred, in general, is a confession of impotence. And if you are trapped, if you are ground down,
04:08 if you are dependent either on pleasing someone in power or lying, which is usually two sides of
04:17 the same coin, then you will be full of hatred, because you're impotent. I mean, people dependent
04:25 on government power will be hateful towards those who seek to limit government power,
04:29 of course, right? Because government power is how they either survive their own bad decisions
04:35 or gain massive amounts of status and control over others, which is a dopamine-based addiction
04:41 which human beings have, which pretty much all apes have. So, they will hate you. Now,
04:46 can they answer you? Not really, not really. So, what they'll do is they'll say that your arguments
04:53 are motivated by hatred, when in fact it is their hatred of your arguments that is motivated
05:00 by hatred, right? Their whole motivation is hatred, but they, you know, confession through
05:04 projection, the usual suspects. So, with regards to arguments, the winning position
05:12 is not allowed and therefore it's not really a debate, right? The winning position is not allowed,
05:20 the winning argument is not allowed, and therefore it's not really a debate. I mean,
05:24 if you were a good chess player, would you participate in a tournament where anyone who
05:31 castled or moved his queen would have their bank accounts taken away or would be driven out of
05:38 polite society or would have their income and reputation destroyed? Like, that's not chess.
05:42 I'm not a super great chess player, I play okay, but I wouldn't participate in any tournament where
05:51 the winning moves or the essential moves to win resulted in, you know, reputational attacks and
05:58 economic harm. Like, no, we either play chess or we're not playing chess. I don't know what this
06:03 freaky thing is, right? And that's sort of a free speech argument. The arguments, the data,
06:11 the perspectives that are banned are the ones that cannot be answered. And that, I mean,
06:17 that's obvious, right? We understand that. Now, of course, it doesn't mean that every banned
06:21 argument is a good argument. Please understand that. I'm not trying to say that. I'm not trying
06:26 to say that every banned argument is a good argument, because you wouldn't want to make
06:30 it too obvious. So, you would ban some genuinely repulsive and horrible arguments, and then you
06:36 would also ban fact-based, rational, and data-reviewed arguments, right? You'd want to ban
06:45 the horrible people as well as the reasonable people, so that it wouldn't be too obvious.
06:51 So, I'm not trying to say all banned arguments are true, but within the banned arguments,
06:58 there are arguments that are very strong, for which there is no answer, and because there is
07:03 no answer, they must be banned. I think we all understand that. So, for me, with debates,
07:12 we would imagine, or what I do when I'm debating someone, back in the days when I used to debate
07:17 people, what I would do is, of course, review all of their arguments, right? I would spend hours
07:23 and hours and hours reviewing other people's arguments, coming up with kind of arguments,
07:27 making notes, and so on. And then, you know, most times what would happen is they would trot
07:31 out those arguments, and I would be ready with the rebuttals. Now, that's not a good move,
07:37 if you are a debater. I mean, if you're studying somebody else's chess game, and they keep playing
07:43 the same kind of way, then you can find out counter moves, and you can win against them,
07:47 right? You understand that. So, what I would do, and I actually would sit with the community
07:54 sometimes, I would come up with new arguments, either new arguments based on principle,
08:01 or new arguments based on new data, and so on. And that way, people, if they did study my old
08:10 arguments, they would prepare to attack in a place where I wasn't, which is good, right? I mean,
08:17 you always want your enemy to attack you where you are the strongest, right? And run away from where
08:24 you are the weakest, right? So, certainly, new arguments, new perspectives, new approaches,
08:29 these would all be essential in this. So, you'd say, well, he has all these arguments, we assume
08:35 that he put forward his best arguments in the past, so I'm going to study his old arguments,
08:41 and I'm going to find a way to counter those old arguments, and then I'm going to attack them and
08:47 win, and what would happen is I would make new arguments, particularly if I went first, right?
08:53 So, if I come up with new arguments against, say, socialism or something like that,
08:59 then what happens is the person is forced to think on the fly. They can't NPC it.
09:06 To me, the best debates are the ones where people are both engaged in the moment on the fly,
09:13 because that way you can see who's really intelligent, who can really process
09:17 real-time information in the moment, and that's the highest form of intellectual engagement.
09:24 Otherwise, it's just a bunch of NPC talking points flying back and forth across each other.
09:28 So, for me, I've always found it kind of delightful if I make a whole series of arguments
09:32 that I've never made before. Well, first of all, it shows creativity and understanding of principles,
09:37 but if I make a whole range of arguments that I've never made before with new data and new
09:43 supporting syllogisms, then it's interesting to see that thousand-yard stare of the person who says,
09:48 "Oh, now I have to think on the fly," as opposed to, "I have done the research,
09:54 now I have to think," right? "I've done the research, now I have to think." I mean,
09:59 just about anyone who's reasonably competent can win a tennis game if they can slow down time,
10:05 right? And preparation ahead of time is like slowing down time. So, you hear an argument,
10:10 if you could hit a pause button, like in time, if somebody makes an argument, you could hit a
10:15 pause button, and then you could go and do all the research, then you would respond back to that
10:21 person with all the research when you'd hit sort of resume, right? You're taking somebody makes a
10:25 case or a point, you take an hour, you go do the research, then you hit resume, and you look
10:30 fantastically prepared. Well, that's what making the same arguments over and over looks like.
10:34 People have all the time in the world to prepare. And so, what happens is, if you are making new
10:41 arguments, it would be rational to use successful arguments from the past, in a sense, right?
10:47 Certainly less effort, and you have picked, and you've picked, or cherry-picked your best
10:52 arguments. So, that would be rational, to reuse your most efficient and effective arguments.
10:59 But to come up with entirely new arguments changes the tenor of the debate. Because if you make new
11:05 arguments, people who have done the research on your old arguments are stalled, because they are
11:11 prepared for something you're not doing. It's sort of like the difference between improv
11:17 and a pre-written play. If you're doing improv, everybody knows you're doing stuff on the fly,
11:23 and all of that, and it's going to be chaotic and sometimes funny, but there's not going to be any
11:26 particular structure or story art. But if you are doing a play, and then somebody starts improvving
11:33 in the middle of the play, you have it like there's a stall, there's a reboot, there's a
11:37 "what are we doing here?" And this does sometimes happen, of course, if people forget their lines,
11:40 and so on. So, what happens is, if you do the "irrational," according to Napoleon, and you don't
11:48 reuse any effective arguments, right? So, you know, general study each other, "Oh, Napoleon does
11:53 this," and it's like, well, if you're going to come up with new strategies, then people don't
11:58 know your next move. Now, then, in debates, of course, it's a little different than when you
12:02 have all of the giant mechanics of warfare. But what happens then is, you make the new arguments,
12:08 people, if they've done research, they're unprepared for the new arguments, and they don't
12:13 have data, and therefore, they have to argue principle. Now, arguing principle is a much higher
12:19 order debate structure than arguing data. I mean, boy, you know, especially after COVID and some of
12:28 the global warming stuff, and so on, particularly the recent trial, I think that people are starting
12:35 to have some, you know, fairly reasonable and rational skepticism over the data, right? The
12:41 data. So, what happens is, people, if they don't have the data rebuttals, they have to argue
12:47 principles. Arguing principles is a much higher order form, and arguing principles means that the
12:53 most consistent person will always win. I mean, whether he wins in the mind of the audience is
12:58 not particularly relevant, at least in terms of the technical aspects of winning, but the person
13:03 who is arguing principles is going to win. It's going to win logically, if the more consistent
13:10 person. So, getting people out of data and getting them into principles means that you have to keep
13:14 changing your arguments. You change your arguments, then their data is irrelevant, because
13:19 the new arguments that you're making are not dependent on the data that they believe rebuts
13:24 the old arguments who were making the previous arguments, right? Sorry if this is too technical,
13:28 but I mean, to me, I've obviously thought a lot about debates and debating and wrote a whole book
13:33 called The Art of the Argument and so on, right? So, when you switch arguments, then don't have
13:40 the data prepared, which means you're drawing them into the realm. The only thing that they can argue
13:44 is principles. And UPB is the most consistent set of principles, and self-ownership is the most
13:51 consistent principle, and the non-aggression principle, and property rights, and so on. These
13:56 are all universal principles. So, the only way you can get people into the realm of principles
14:01 is to create new arguments so that their data rebuttals to your old arguments aren't valid.
14:05 And then they get this thousand-yard stare because all of their preparation has gone to nothing.
14:09 Now, all of their preparation has gone to nothing. You're switching them from a script to improv.
14:14 You're switching them from a script to improv. It also makes them kind of jumpy, because if they've
14:22 done the work to study your previous debates, they will quickly realize that you're always
14:26 coming up with new arguments before your... like, I'm always coming up with new arguments for my
14:31 positions. I mean, an example of this is when I was debating the two communists, and I did ask for
14:38 permission to swear at the beginning of the debate, and then I said that they're the worst effing
14:43 communists known to man, because I, as a small... I came from the proletariat. I came from the
14:51 lower classes and fought my way to the top of the intellectual sphere, and then giant
14:56 multinational corporations worked hard to take me down, and the communists sided with the giant
15:00 multinational capitalist corporations against the heroic proletariat worker. I mean, which is funny.
15:07 I mean, it's a little dark, of course, but it just shows that they don't have principles. They're
15:13 only interested in power. Since I'm anti-communist, it doesn't matter that I'm a proletariat. Since
15:20 the giant multinational corporations were against the anti-communist, they sided with the giant
15:24 multinational corporations. It just shows that they only want power, not anything to do with
15:29 principles. Any communist worth his salt would side with the proletariat against the giant
15:34 multinational corporations. Of course, right? So it just shows that. And I had not made that
15:39 argument before directly to communists. So yes, absolutely, it would be rational. And you can
15:46 sort of hear people sliding into these arguments that they've made a million times before, and
15:51 they're very sort of comfortable with it. It kind of comes out easily from their tongue and so on.
15:55 And I just don't think that's effective, I think. It's good to go rationally, it conserves energy,
16:01 conserves time to go with arguments that have worked before, but it just keeps you in the
16:06 realm of data because they can just throw data at your position and try, you know,
16:13 data is impossible to rebut in real time, right? Rebutting data is the work of, I mean, gosh,
16:21 it is the work of hundreds, dozens or hundreds of hours to sort of dig into the source,
16:27 figure out the methodology. So rebutting data can't be done in real time, which is why if you
16:32 keep switching arguments, you end up in this wonderful situation where people's data rebuttals
16:37 aren't relevant, and therefore they have to argue on principles. And then you win because you have
16:43 the most consistent principles. Now, so you win on two levels. I said you win technically,
16:47 winning technically and winning with the audience are two different things, right? I mean,
16:51 the movie Rocky is a guy who lost the fight but won the audience, right? Winning both the debate
16:58 and the audience is the best, is the best. Winning the audience but losing the debate technically
17:05 is only important if you're looking at short-term goals. If you're looking at long-term goals,
17:10 like multi-decade or multi-century influence over the world, then winning the debate but
17:18 losing the audience gains you future respect. Winning the audience but losing the debate
17:25 means that you gain influence in the moment, like in now, in the time that you live, but you lose
17:33 influence in the future. Socrates obviously lost the debate about his virtues with Meletus
17:43 in the sort of famous trial and death of Socrates. He lost the audience but won the debate and
17:49 therefore had great influence in the future. Jesus lost his life but won the debate in many ways, and
17:55 Galileo was imprisoned and, according to popular myth, lost the debate but won the future.
18:04 But that tends to come around later in your life if you even live to see it at all, which is,
18:08 I mean, obviously Socrates didn't, neither did Jesus, although given that the acceptance of
18:13 Jesus as immortal means that he did end up seeing it or even knew it was going to happen probably
18:16 gave him some courage and strength on Calvary. I would rather win the debate on technicals and
18:22 lose the audience. I would rather get booed and be right because philosophy is about the long term.
18:28 Philosophy is willing to risk the harm of the present for the virtue of the future.
18:32 Philosophy is the longest, and particularly moral philosophy, which is really the whole point of
18:38 philosophy, philosophy is the longest deferral of gratification scenario known to man. I mean,
18:45 I remember reading about, he was a novelist, a comic novelist, I think from the 50s, and he wrote
18:51 a comic novel, couldn't get it published, and he thought it was great, nobody would touch it,
18:56 and I think he ended up killing himself out of despair, largely out of despair for his literary
19:01 ambitions. And then his novel was found, it ended up being published, and it was a great
19:08 success, and people recognized the brilliance of it and so on, right? I mean, obviously,
19:13 he lost his life or took his life and he won the future. So for me, winning the debate on
19:21 technicals, well, you know you're right, even if you're booed, like you just know that you're right.
19:25 Winning the debate on technicals and winning the audience is the ideal. Now, if you come up with
19:32 new arguments for everything, what happens is the audience generally has not been taught to think in
19:38 terms of principles. Well, not only, and this is going to tie into the next paradox, not only has
19:43 the audience not been taught to think in terms of principles, thinking in terms of principles
19:48 is incredibly painful for the audience, right? That's a very important thing to remember,
19:53 thinking in principles is extraordinarily painful for a variety of reasons we'll talk about in the
20:00 next paradox. So you know that you can't teach the audience of a debate, you can't teach the audience
20:11 principles for two reasons. One, it takes a while to talk through the metaphysics and epistemology
20:19 to ethics of principles, number one. And number two, people, when you start pushing them towards
20:26 principles, they feel like you're pushing them into a volcano. Well, it's probably even slower,
20:31 it's a slower death. You're pushing them into a cave with fire ants and covering them in honey,
20:38 like it's just going to be a long, agonizing, horrible future. So people recoil from thinking
20:45 in terms of principles. And of course, in general, people get mad at the person who tells them the
20:51 truth, not all the people who lied to them before, right? That's to be understand, I mean, we don't
20:56 really need to spend much time on this. People get mad at the person who tells them the truth,
21:00 rather than the people who told them all the lies. So the only way you can win the crowd or the
21:08 audience in terms of the debate is to be funnier, obviously more witty, and to appear more intelligent.
21:18 To appear more intelligent. The only way to appear more intelligent is to not repeat prior arguments,
21:28 because you want to generate in your opponents in order to win out, to win over the mob.
21:35 Obviously, some jokes are important, some good humor, some confidence, some eye contact,
21:41 some smiles, but you don't want to make it too funny, because the only things worth debating
21:47 tend to be very serious. So a couple of jokes, like leaving the jokes a little bit, but don't
21:53 make it too funny, right? So the way that you make the opponents, your opponents, the way that you
22:01 make them appear less intelligent, or reveal the less intelligence that they may have,
22:06 is don't use prior arguments, thereby forcing them to think on the fly, right? And if they
22:13 have done all this prep based upon your prior arguments, you bring new arguments to the table,
22:18 they have to evaluate the new arguments in real time. They can't rely on pre-programmed responses,
22:23 and they can't rely on their notes, and they can't rely on the data they've researched.
22:28 So it gives them the thousand yard stare that makes them look less intelligent.
22:32 And then they'll usually resort to ad hominems, and if you take those with good grace, then you
22:38 look more confident, they look more petty. Or what they do is they respond to points that you've never
22:44 even made, right? I mean, if the script requires you to say "I love you" and the woman says "I love
22:51 you too" and the man instead says "I hate dolphins" and the woman then says "I love you too", then
23:00 clearly the woman is not listening. And she's just doing a pre-programmed NPC response, so to speak,
23:06 and that makes her look out of touch, it makes her look disconnected. And then you can of course say,
23:13 and rightly so, I have, say "well, you know, all of these points I guess are somewhat interesting,
23:19 but this is supposed to be a debate, and in a debate you're supposed to listen to the points
23:22 that I put forward, the arguments I put forward, and rebut them. You know, it feels odd to have
23:26 to explain basic debating procedures to somebody who's not 10 years old, but this is how debates
23:33 work. I make a point and you rebut the point. You make a point, I rebut the point. That's, you know,
23:38 how it works, right? I mean, it's like tennis. I serve the ball, you hit the ball back, you serve
23:43 the ball, I hit the ball back, right? That's what we're supposed to be doing, right? When you hit
23:47 the ball towards me, I'm not supposed to be setting up a chess set. It's kind of weird, right? Why
23:51 would you need to explain that to someone who claims to know how to play tennis, right? They
23:55 don't set up a chess board, you're supposed to hit the ball back, I'm supposed to hit your ball back.
23:59 So either you get a thousand-yard stare and they just sort of mumble and they're outflanked by
24:06 creativity, or of course what they do is they go back to their pre-programmed script,
24:15 right? They go back to their pre-programmed script and now they are not responding to what
24:23 you're saying, and therefore they look detached, disconnected, out of sequence, out of sync. They just
24:28 seem strange, and people get that at an instinctive level. And you, by arguing principles,
24:34 appear more intelligent than they who are not arguing principles but arguing disconnected
24:40 data or disconnected arguments that have nothing to do with what you're saying, because otherwise
24:45 it's like this is supposed to be a debate, not two people taking sequence at giving disconnected
24:50 speeches, right? So I'm supposed to make a point, you're supposed to rebut it, make your own points,
24:54 I rebut them as best I can, but you're giving a speech which has nothing to do with what I said.
24:59 So you should have told me that you don't know what a debate is, right? That would have been
25:04 very helpful, because I mean it's kind of implicit, right? If I say let's go for drinks
25:10 at the local bar and you show up in a scuba suit and you say well this is what drinking is,
25:15 isn't it? It'd be like, well I guess I kind of assumed that when I said let's go for drinks at
25:19 the local bar you'd know what that meant. I mean I guess you don't, and when I say let's have a
25:23 debate you're not supposed to give a separate speech completely disconnected to anything that
25:28 I was saying. So it's just a, I mean it's not sophistry because it's genuine. Of course if
25:34 somebody is really really smart, and there of course are really really smart people on the left,
25:37 if somebody's really really smart then they'll enjoy that, they'll get lively, they'll really
25:44 dig in and so on. But I think I get where Napoleon is coming from, from that standpoint. All right,
25:53 so let's get to Camille Pellier. "Liberalism defines government as tyrant father but demands
25:58 it behave as nurturant mother." "Liberalism defines government as tyrant father but demands
26:04 it behave as nurturant mother." Right, I mean I made this case years ago in my analysis of
26:11 Pink Floyd's album The Wall, which is that hyper-feminism combined with the state is communism,
26:19 hyper-masculinism or hyper-masculism combined with the state is fascism. So
26:25 one of the, I mentioned earlier right, we were going to talk about why people are so frightened
26:32 and why it pains them so much to talk about principles. Well, oh I mean the principles,
26:39 the principles. Once the government takes over the education of the children, it's all lost.
26:45 And this all happened like 150 years ago or more in most of the West. I mean it is obviously,
26:52 it can be a little bit frustrating to end up in these situations where you're trying to deal
26:57 with problems that all started many many many decades ago. Like most of the problems in the
27:05 West were put in place long before I was born and that's not a whole lot of fun. So once the state
27:17 takes over the education of the children, then what happens is children have to end up bonding
27:23 with the state because if the state is revealed as, let's just be as nice as possible, if the
27:30 state is revealed as a morally questionable structure and that's the entity that the parents
27:38 handed their children over to, it's not the bond with the state that is causing the discomfort,
27:45 it's the bond with the parents. It's the bond with the parents. So if you were to hand over
27:52 your child to a really bad, mean, terrible teacher, just a terrible, terrible person, and
27:59 you as a kid would say to your parents, they'd say "well how's your education going?" and you
28:06 say "well this guy's horrible, he screams at me, he's irrational, he marks me down when I'm doing
28:13 well and he marks me up when I'm doing badly, he's like the inverse of the truth and he doesn't let
28:19 children pee to the point where they end up peeing themselves" like if you just say all this terrible
28:23 stuff and your parents say "sounds good, go back" right, it's not the bond with the teacher that's
28:28 fundamentally put into question, it's the bond with the parents because it's the parents who
28:35 are sending you there. This is one of the great unspoken agonies of the modern world or really
28:40 the world of the last 150 years but in particular the modern world. One of the greatest unspoken
28:44 agonies is that children hate school and like assuming that the parents aren't compelled to
28:53 send their children to school because lots of places in the west at least where you can home
28:57 school, lots of places where you can't, so I'll reserve this particular one for the places where
29:01 you can home school. So if the educational system is boring, scary, bullying, irrelevant, pointless,
29:13 you know your kids are just barely staying awake and hate being there, well the parents are sending
29:19 you there right. This is one of the brilliant things about government education is to question
29:28 the morals and value of government education is to question the morals and values of your parents
29:35 who send you to government education. When I say "oh I hate school" well you know we all hate school
29:42 or it'll get better or just work harder or whatever right. It's very demoralizing for families as a
29:50 whole when the children hate school and the parents are like "well deal with it" or "it's fine" or "it's
29:55 good" or "you're the problem" or like whatever nonsense they come up with to avoid the fact that
29:59 their children hate school. If your children hate school, they're bored, they're frustrated, they're
30:03 frightened, they're bullied, whatever. If your children hate school I mean you should listen to
30:08 them right. You should listen to them. If your children hate a particular food and even could
30:16 be considered perhaps allergic to that food then you should listen to them right. I mean if your
30:22 kid keeps getting sick when you feed him peanut butter you should start feeding him peanut butter
30:27 and get him tested for peanut butter allergies. If it turns out that he has a peanut butter allergy
30:31 then that's pretty important whereas if you just say "well suck it up" or "it's not that bad" or
30:37 "it's fine" or "your body's just adjusting" or whatever and you keep feeding him peanut butter
30:40 and he keeps getting sick maybe he gets more sick, at some point the kid's going to say "I'm not
30:44 entirely sure my parents have my best interest at heart" you know. It's a big problem. It's one of
30:52 the biggest problems really. If you say "well you know government education is founded by coercive
31:00 redistribution and so on and there's laws to prevent competition and the teachers can't get
31:06 fired really" and all of that right and it's essentially planned not for the benefits of
31:10 children but in general for the benefit of ideologues and so on right. If you say all of
31:16 this stuff well the children have a sort of fundamental question about how much society
31:24 cares about the children right because education is most children's first introduction to society
31:31 right and of course I mean I remember as I've mentioned before when the teacher was talking
31:39 about the old age pensions and how we'll get our old age pensions I mean the back row of the class
31:45 which was people like myself who were smart and skeptical we just laughed at him like literally
31:50 it was open laughter like of course we're not gonna get this stuff right. So what happens is
31:57 kids go to school they're bored they're frightened they're bullied they're
32:00 programmed they're propagandized and so on and they make their complaints right
32:04 and of course they're not particularly expecting the teachers to listen to their complaints but
32:11 then they go home and they complain to their parents and their parents don't listen their
32:16 parents send them back their parents don't particularly care their parents don't sympathize
32:20 and then right that that's the real foundational challenge right and of course you have to maintain
32:26 your bond with your parents and you have to believe that your parents care about you and so
32:31 if your parents aren't sympathetic with you then you generally will make up a situation which says
32:36 well my parents are displeased with me because I'm being bad so I'll just change my behavior to
32:41 being good so that my parents will be pleased with me and then that doesn't solve things and so you
32:48 just keep making up more and more behaviors that you have to change in order to have your parents
32:54 like you or have sympathy with you or be positive and it's the same thing right I mean if you
32:58 question or rebel against the teachers they humiliate and punish you and then you say well
33:03 okay I'll conform and then the teachers will like me and so on and maybe I'll have a better
33:07 experience at school and I mean you you're punished less usually if you sort of comply and conform
33:13 but you know you know that you've abandoned your integrity your honesty your true self your virtue
33:20 your skepticism your brain your mind you're so you've just surrendered dissolved yourself into
33:24 the general goop of conformity which gives you relief from immediate pain but gives you existential
33:28 crises when you get later on in life which is who am I in right do I have any integrity do I have
33:34 any virtue and so on right so yeah it's really it's really tough it's really tough and of course
33:41 I mean what does institutional power always do always do it's the same it's the same deal always
33:47 which is institutional power says give me power and I'll only use it against your enemies right
33:55 this is what this is what institutional power always does give me power and I'll only use it
34:01 against your enemies give me power and only use it against the bad guys right and that's the deal
34:07 right and of course that's what institutional power is always going to say I'll keep you safe
34:11 from the bad guys give me power and I'll keep you safe from the bad guys it'll only all that power
34:15 but right and then you know what happens and I've been writing about this for like I don't know 18
34:18 years right which is they say based upon your fear and your hatred and your vengeance and right
34:26 you say okay fine take take the power but use it against the bad guys yeah cross your fingers right
34:30 won't tell a lie and then the institution takes the power and then we'll use it a little bit
34:37 against your enemy so you don't demand the power back immediately or want it reduced
34:43 and then of course what happens is the bad guys say oh there's an institution that has a lot of
34:49 power I guess we'll join that institution and then the bad guys join the institution that
34:53 rests at the top and then that power is used against you and your friends it's always the same
34:56 again I got sort of tired of going over this stuff but it's been a while so it's probably worth
35:02 mentioning again and so that's it's always the same deal you give me power and I'll only ever
35:07 use it against your enemies oh that sounds good I'm scared I'm nervous and I can't think of another
35:11 solution right now and I was raised in structural powers and so on so I mean the educational system
35:16 in America in particular was instituted because there were a lot of Catholics coming in and we're
35:21 gonna we're gonna use the power to stay to maintain our protestant values right and well we can all
35:26 see how that played out as a whole it's not not too complicated to figure that one out right now
35:32 that how that played out I don't really need to go over that in any detail I'm sure so yeah defines
35:40 it as a tyrant father but expects us to behave as a nurturant mother right the tyrant father is
35:46 this power will only be used to punish my enemies and benefit my virtues to punish the immoral and
35:54 to benefit the moral but of course power attracts the corrupt and there's no way to prevent that
36:01 from occurring so it is a paradox and the paradoxes all of these paradoxes are resolved with
36:08 UPB and all of the philosophical principles I've been talking about that are universal and of
36:14 course people have been so corrupted by contradiction that the universal appears to be a foreign country
36:20 that is impossible but it's not it's not at all and I hope that you will continue to work to bring
36:26 the non-aggression principle to your friends to your families UPB property rights self-ownership
36:30 free will all of that good juicy moral stuff so freedomain.com/donate to help out the show I'd
36:36 really appreciate it hope you'll drop by freedomain.locals.com to sign up for subscriptions
36:41 you get some fantastic stuff there as well you can ask multi-language questions to staffbot.ai
36:48 there's a great community of people to chat with private live streams for donors only and the
36:53 audiobook of the in-progress work of my new book peaceful parenting thanks a mil everyone
36:58 freedomain.com/donate take care lots of love talk to you soon bye