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Stefan Molyneux
  • 2/22/2024
The lecture discusses paradoxes of loving and hating the world for change, contrasting determinism with free will, and emphasizing ethical standards for personal empowerment and moral integrity.

Chapters

0:00:00 Paradoxes Part 3
0:06:04 The Concept of Triage
0:11:49 Triage in Religion vs. Medicine
0:15:10 Saving the World
0:15:23 Balancing Hate and Love
0:16:45 Defining Free Will
0:17:59 The Importance of Ideal Standards
0:22:18 Self-Justification and Free Will
0:24:29 Ideal Standards and Free Will
0:36:24 Taking Responsibility and Ideal Standards
0:43:26 Abandoning Free Will through Excuses
0:46:04 Restoring Free Will through Ideal Standards

Brief Summary

In this lecture, we explore paradoxes through the eyes of G.K. Chesterton and a modern thinker, discussing the complexity of loving and hating the world simultaneously for driving change. We delve into the redemptive potential of the soul through free will and consciousness, contrasting deterministic views.

Examining triage in medicine and spiritual care, we draw parallels between saving lives swiftly and guiding individuals towards spiritual peace. We analyze the nuances of free will and ethical standards, emphasizing the importance of aligning actions with universal moral norms to uphold personal agency and integrity.

The speaker underscores the significance of embracing ideal standards and exercising free will, illustrating with anecdotes and diverse examples. Emphasizing the transformative power of aligning actions with aspirational benchmarks, the lecture highlights the perpetual quest for moral integrity and empowerment through free will.
Transcript
00:00 All right, we are here and ready for Paradoxes part 3.
00:05 Well, this is from GK Chesterton who was a Christian apologist, philosopher, one of the
00:11 most prolific writers of the 20th century and he wrote "you need to hate the world enough
00:16 to change it but love it enough to consider it worth changing".
00:21 You need to hate the world enough to change it but love it enough to consider it worth
00:24 changing.
00:25 And then the guy who wrote the tweet that I'm sort of grabbing these things from wrote
00:29 "action is the offspring of dark pessimism and frenzied optimism working in tandem".
00:36 Is it now?
00:37 Is it really?
00:38 Let us let us see if we can puzzle this one out.
00:41 See if we can puzzle this one out.
00:43 Now Chesterton of course as a Christian and specifically as a Catholic convert would have
00:48 accepted the soul and the soul of course is the untainted aspect of the personality which
00:57 sin cannot fundamentally destroy.
01:01 Now because there is the soul in the body redemption is always possible because the
01:09 world is a collectivist concept but if you accept that there's a soul in every human
01:16 body within the world then you can make that collectivist statement.
01:22 It is of course predicated on accepting or believing in the existence incorruptibility
01:30 of the soul.
01:32 Now the soul is the seat of free will.
01:34 It is the escape from materialistic determinism to say that there's a ghost in the machine
01:38 that is not subject to the physical laws of the machine.
01:42 There's a ghost in the machine not subject to the physical laws of the machine which
01:45 means the machine has free will.
01:47 Atoms don't have free will but the soul is an immaterial substance that is the essence
01:51 of consciousness has free will in the same way that you and I cannot pass through a wall
01:56 but a ghost can.
01:59 The soul can self-generate action which mere atoms and energy cannot.
02:04 So Chesterton can put forward the idea that the world and everyone within it can be saved.
02:15 The world and everyone in it can be saved because there is no possibility of becoming
02:24 an automaton.
02:26 There's no possibility of becoming an NPC because you always retain within you the seed
02:32 of free will and the opportunity for grace and change called the soul.
02:37 You cannot become a machine because you contain a soul.
02:41 We know that a computer doesn't think, a computer simply compares binaries.
02:47 There's no ghost in the computer that gives it free will.
02:51 Now the question that is really one of the most fundamental questions for an effective
02:56 moral life, moral being not only are you moral yourself but you wish to inspire and evoke
03:03 virtue in others.
03:04 The most fundamental question after you grasp and begin to enact the basic principles of
03:10 virtue - honesty, courage, integrity and so on and judgment.
03:16 The first question that you need to answer after the question, well first question is
03:23 what is truth, what is goodness and then how do I enact it or how do I enact goodness,
03:30 how am I good in the world.
03:32 These are challenging enough questions but very quickly along with these questions or
03:36 subsequent very rapidly to these questions is the question of who can be helped, who
03:44 can be helped.
03:46 My approach is different from Chesterton's because I would not put forward a collective
03:53 concept called the world as something to be saved.
03:57 Again with the concept of the soul absolutely you can and it makes perfect sense but that's
04:03 not my approach.
04:05 I've mentioned this before, I'll touch on it again because it's relevant to this part
04:09 of the conversation, a triage.
04:11 So triage is a basic medical approach to mass injuries.
04:17 There's been a collision between a bus and a train, you got a hundred people in the ER.
04:21 Now some people will die no matter what you do.
04:25 Some people will be all right in the moment or they will survive in the moment if you
04:29 don't deal with them immediately.
04:33 Some guy comes in, he's left his leg, he's bleeding out like there's really nothing you
04:36 can do I would assume so I mean rest in peace you have to let him go, you can't help him.
04:42 Other people, you know they got a broken arm, they'll be fine if you don't treat them in
04:46 the moment.
04:47 There's other people you can save only if you treat them in the moment, they can only
04:51 be saved if you treat them in the moment.
04:54 Some guy whose wound can be stitched up, you can give him some plasma, some blood, you
04:59 can stabilize him.
05:00 So triage and you know I understand of course I you know it's ridiculous to say but there
05:05 it is I'm no medical expert I don't know what I'm talking about these are all just this
05:09 is my amateur ridiculous understanding of the term.
05:15 So in dealing with the body you have to make very swift judgments about he's gone, move
05:23 to the next guy, he's going to be fine for the next hour, he's going to survive the next
05:28 hour or the next five minutes or whatever and you apply your energies to those who will
05:35 die if you don't act now.
05:38 And this is really the way that you save the most lives.
05:42 If you try to save the life because you know it's a zero-sum game whatever time you spend
05:46 on one patient is time you're not spending on another patient.
05:49 So if you try to save the guy who's three minutes from bleeding out from some huge arterial
05:56 blood gusher if you spend all your time on him then the guy you could have saved will
06:02 probably move to a state where he can't be saved.
06:05 He'll lose too much blood, his heart will be too clogged or I don't know what again
06:10 I'm no doctor like whatever it would be right.
06:13 So the concept of triage is the concept that you have to work to save as many lives as
06:18 possible because some people can't be saved, other people don't need to be saved right
06:25 away because they'll live anyway but the people who are going to die very soon unless you
06:31 treat them those are the people that you deal with.
06:34 And it's usually a small subsection right most people in sort of mass casualty event
06:40 most people are not in that category.
06:44 That it's a very narrow category of people who will only survive if you treat them now
06:49 right.
06:50 Again sorry to be repetitive but it's really really important with the case that I'm building.
06:54 People they're not going to survive no matter what you do, people who are fine and stable
07:00 for now and can be treated later and people who will die if you don't treat them now.
07:06 People who will die if you treat them now, people who won't die if you don't treat
07:09 them now but people who will die if you don't treat them now those are the people you spend
07:12 your time and effort on.
07:14 And doing this kind of evaluation is pretty skilled.
07:19 It's usually not something that I don't know a podiatrist or a GP or a psychiatrist
07:23 or whatever that they're usually not in that this is a specific emergency room or combat
07:29 doctor war theater doctor or whatever.
07:33 It's a specific kind of training to identify these people and you literally you have to
07:39 make split second decisions that are going to save or cost lives.
07:43 It's really a wild scenario and of course it was developed in order to save the most
07:51 lives and of course as battlefield medicine in particular has gotten better and better
07:55 more and more soldiers can be saved.
08:00 There's a terrible scene in the movie Lincoln where they're wheeling out the legs that have
08:06 been cut off.
08:07 They're wheeling out the legs that have been cut off from the soldiers.
08:11 There's a wheelbarrow and they're just dumping them in the pile.
08:15 But now the most advanced armies actually have a bit of a disability because like the
08:19 economies because you can save so many soldiers but they're kind of half crippled and need
08:23 a lot of resources and so on.
08:25 So the better your economy the more soldiers you can save but in a sense then the more
08:29 harm that is to your economy because those soldiers require massive amounts of resources
08:36 to rehabilitate themselves or get back up on their feet or foot whatever it is.
08:43 So the reason I'm talking about this is with triage we are talking about material.
08:49 Material flesh, the body.
08:52 We're not talking about the soul.
08:54 Now I assume of course that the triage would be different for a priest.
09:00 The triage would be different for a priest than for a doctor.
09:04 The triage for a priest would be to focus on those who are about to die and whose death
09:14 cannot be prevented.
09:16 So the doctors focusing on those whose death can be prevented but is imminent and the priest
09:21 I assume would be focusing on those whose death cannot be prevented and is imminent.
09:26 I mean nobody's death can be prevented eventually but it's imminent.
09:32 The reason being that the people about to die need to confess, need to get their last
09:40 rights, need to make good with God and hopefully facilitate their entrance to heaven in the
09:45 afterlife.
09:47 So the priest has a different approach.
09:51 Obviously people who are they just got a broken arm they're not going to die from the broken
09:56 arm.
09:57 The priest can deal with them later because they're not about to die.
09:59 The people whose lives can be saved because the doctor is working on them the priest can
10:04 help them later but the people that the doctor is stepping over because they're going to
10:08 die within the next few minutes those are the people that the priest desperately needs
10:12 to get right with God before they go.
10:14 So the triage is different.
10:16 The doctor is trying to save the flesh the priest is trying to save the soul.
10:20 It's a different triage.
10:23 It is impossible to lose the capacity for free will in the Christian context.
10:30 People can always be saved because there's always a good impulse in the bad mind.
10:38 There's always a good soul in the bad conscience.
10:43 The conscience is part of the good soul.
10:44 The conscience is trying to guide the actions back to virtue.
10:50 And of course I was raised as a staunch Christian in the Anglican tradition so I understand
10:57 all of this though of course it's been a while and please accept that my understanding is
11:03 shaky.
11:04 Things may have changed I may be getting stuff wrong but I think the general principle is
11:07 valid.
11:09 From my perspective you cannot save the world because the world is a collectivist concept
11:16 and there are people who have no functional free will.
11:22 Now what does that mean?
11:24 The priest I assume if he knew the moral history of the people who were dying he would go to
11:31 those with the greatest sins first because they are the greatest risk of going to hell
11:37 and the sins that could be saved.
11:38 There are mortal sins and there are venal sins but the sins that can be saved, the people
11:43 who can be saved who have the greatest sins would be snatching back people from the devil
11:48 and turning them to heaven so he would go to those with the most sins that could be
11:53 redeemed especially if you believe in things like limbo and so on then he would go to those
11:59 with the most sins who can be redeemed and by can be redeemed I mean it's not a sin that's
12:04 unforgivable and blasphemy in the Holy Spirit in some denominations would be one of those.
12:12 So the priest is going to go to the most savable most evil person and try and rescue them.
12:22 The priest in many ways focuses on the most immoral even in a non-emergency situation
12:28 the priest is going to focus on the most immoral person and try to get the most immoral person
12:33 to change with the understanding because you cannot eliminate the soul in the mind the
12:39 most evil person always has access to free will and goodness and virtue.
12:44 There's always that possibility.
12:47 So some of the hard work of rebuilding the capacity to free will is not done because
12:55 there is a mystical transformation that can occur in the mind that restores free will
13:02 and the access to virtue.
13:04 So if you had lung cancer and your doctor believes that a certain ritual can summon
13:12 healthy lungs within your body and those healthy lungs will replace your diseased lungs then
13:19 it wouldn't make much sense to operate.
13:21 He would try to work on these rituals to restore your pink lovely youthful healthy marathon
13:30 runner 23 years of age lungs.
13:32 There wouldn't be any point necessarily going through operations and removals and radiation
13:37 therapy and chemotherapy and so on because your doctor would believe that there was a
13:43 ritual that could be performed and if you only believed and changed your mind about
13:47 your cancer then you would get healthy lungs would appear healthy lungs would appear in
13:52 your body and your diseased lungs would be replaced by healthy lungs.
13:57 It would really mess up the question of medicine and by the way it would also mess up the question
14:02 of smoking because if people enjoy smoking and they believe that they can will or have
14:08 faith in healthy lungs and therefore healthy lungs will appear it would change whether
14:13 they would be willing to smoke or not.
14:15 I mean if you really like smoking right and you believe that well if you get lung cancer
14:20 and you simply cross your fingers and toes and believe hard enough you get your pink
14:24 healthy youthful lungs back then that would be kind of a tragedy right and this is one
14:28 of the problems that I think some agnostics and atheists have with religion which is that
14:34 you can do a lot of evil and you can then still get to heaven by repenting at the end.
14:39 Now of course I understand the counter arguments which are well there are some things that
14:44 can't be forgiven and also if you're only repenting you're only pretending to repent
14:49 to get into heaven God won't accept that it has to be genuine repentance but still people
14:54 assume that they can get genuine repentance later in life which may increase the amount
14:58 of evil they're willing to do in the same way that smokers that can will healthy lungs
15:02 into their chest later in life might have a harder time quitting smoking and might be
15:06 more likely to even pick up cigarettes or start smoking in the first place.
15:10 So the triage is different if we assume the existence of the soul which is why I think
15:17 you save the world you have to hate the world enough to want to save it but you have to
15:21 love the world to believe it's worth saving.
15:23 Now in the Christian context the world as a collective concept is because everyone has
15:28 a soul and you have to hate the immorality of the world enough to want to save it enough
15:34 to want to change it but you also have to love the potential of people to be good enough
15:42 to really work hard to change it for the better.
15:47 So if you've ever known a coach who's had a really talented but lazy player it would
15:51 be something like this.
15:53 So some coach has got some kid you know barely shows up to practice kind of lazy and yet
16:00 it's incredibly talented at the sport and the coach you know it's really frustrating
16:04 because he loves the potential but hates the laziness and so in order for the coach to
16:09 really try and get through to that kid and put him on the right path at least as far
16:12 as his talent goes would be to rail against his laziness and he would rail against the
16:17 laziness because of his certain belief in the ability of the kid to win if he works
16:27 reasonably hard.
16:29 To win if you worked reasonably hard.
16:33 So he hates the laziness loves the potential and this compels him to act to resist the
16:40 laziness in the kid and try and foster discipline in order to produce excellence.
16:46 So the triage for religion those religions that believe in the soul and the eternal perfect
16:52 ability of remorse the triage for religion is very different than the triage for medical
17:00 doctors.
17:01 So it fundamentally comes down to the question is of when do people lose free will?
17:09 When do people lose free will?
17:12 Free will is our ability to compare proposed actions to ideal standards.
17:17 Free will is our ability to compare proposed actions to ideal standards.
17:21 When are people unable to exercise that capacity?
17:24 It's only a couple of logical options we don't have to get overly complicated.
17:28 So if free will or since free will is our ability to compare proposed actions to ideal
17:34 standards if you don't have ideal standards you don't have free will.
17:38 If you don't have ideal standards you don't have free will.
17:42 Do you drive somewhere if you have no idea how to get there?
17:46 Right I mean forget GPS this is a slightly older analogy right?
17:51 Somebody says to you I need you to drive to Blute, Indiana you have no GPS no maps would
17:58 you start driving?
17:59 Well no no you wouldn't because you'd just be driving randomly and your odds of getting
18:03 to Blute, Indiana or Butte, Indiana is like virtually nothing I don't even know if that's
18:08 a place but bear with me it doesn't really matter.
18:11 So if you have no ideal standards to compare your proposed actions to then you don't have
18:19 free will.
18:20 So that's important which is why relativism and subjectivism have massive undercurrents
18:26 of determinism to them because if you're say a hedonist then what you do is you say my
18:31 own pleasure is the good but your own pleasure is not an ideal standard because so many pleasures
18:39 are followed by pain, the pleasure of drinking is followed by the hangover, the pleasure
18:42 of drugs is followed by withdrawal, the pleasure of sex is followed by you know unwanted pregnancies,
18:48 stalkers, STDs are just a walk of shame regret at living a life as an animal, the pleasure
18:55 of money is diminished as you make more so it's not an ideal standard.
19:01 And of course it can't be universalized because a lot of what people call pleasure is taken
19:08 at the expense of others at the expense of other people's pleasure.
19:12 If a man wants to get laid and he lies to a woman, has sex, tells her he'll call her
19:16 then goes sir then his pleasure at sexual activity is at the expense of her unhappiness
19:25 at having been used like a Kleenex.
19:28 To some degree your happiness at winning the lottery is at the expense of everyone else's
19:33 happiness because they would have been happy if they win the lottery they're unhappy that
19:37 they didn't win the lottery so your happiness is at their expense.
19:40 So personal pleasure can't be an ideal or universal standard.
19:45 Win-lose negotiations can't be universalized.
19:50 This is why theft can't be universally preferable behavior.
19:53 If one person wins the other person loses through violation of the universal standard.
19:58 That's a thief of course who steals a bike, steals a bike in order to retain his ownership
20:02 over the bike thus he simultaneously disavows and then affirms the validity of property
20:08 rights.
20:09 I want to violate your property rights so that I can steal your bike which I then want
20:13 to keep myself and will be outraged if someone steals it from me so it's all very contradictory.
20:18 It's our ability, free will is our ability to compare our proposed actions to ideal standards.
20:25 Of course if all you do is justify and the self-justification tends to be the biggest
20:33 crippler of free will in the mental universe of mankind which is if you say something that
20:40 really upsets someone and it's objectively sort of rude and nasty and you say well you
20:45 misunderstood well I didn't mean it that way well it was perfectly justified well I'm sorry
20:50 but right then you justify what you did.
20:55 Now when you justify what you did or when you justify what you do you have a moving
21:00 ideal standard called whatever I do is right.
21:04 This is the most common thing in the world whatever I do is right or at least whatever
21:09 I do is not my fault.
21:11 So my mother obviously you know violent and abusive she created a justification in her
21:17 mind that she'd been poisoned by doctors and had Epstein-Barr syndrome and all this other
21:24 kind of chronic fatigue syndrome and therefore she's no more responsible for hitting me say
21:30 than somebody who believes they're drowning, they're flailing out and accidentally hit
21:34 someone trying to rescue them or somebody who hit someone because of an epileptic seizure
21:40 she's not responsible.
21:41 So she wouldn't ever take responsibility for the immoral things that she did and so when
21:50 she had bad feelings about the bad things she did she moved to justify them either I
21:59 was remembering wrong it never happened that way or she was really stressed and that's
22:04 natural or she was poisoned by the doctors and it's not her fault I should be mad at
22:09 the doctors and all of these kinds of things right.
22:12 So then the ideal standards are self-justification.
22:16 This is really really an important thing to look out for.
22:19 The ideal standards then are whatever I do is right and I would just make up whatever
22:23 justifications I need to make up in order to be right.
22:28 There's no ideal standard.
22:29 The ideal standard would be the initiation of the use of force is wrong therefore hitting
22:33 your children is wrong therefore you did significant immorality / evil by hitting your children
22:37 period.
22:38 That's right say well that's really bad and I shouldn't have done that and so on right
22:44 then you have free will.
22:46 But for so many people and you've heard this countless times in the sort of 1500 call-in
22:50 shows give or take that I've done maybe 2000 I don't need to count because some of them
22:55 are multiples and so when people justify their own actions according to a rolling standard
23:01 called I can never do wrong they have no universal objective standard against which to compare
23:08 their own behaviors.
23:10 This is gaslighting, minimizing, counterattacking, self-justification, putting the blame on others
23:16 all of this sort of defenses all of these defenses.
23:20 Comparing proposed actions to ideal standards.
23:23 Well you have to have the ability to generate your own proposed actions which means you
23:29 have to believe that the locus of control in your life is within you right you're not
23:32 just tossed around or pushed around or whatever right.
23:34 I mean we understand that a prisoner in jail is not following his own diet right.
23:41 He's eating whatever the institution feeds him.
23:45 I mean maybe he has some choice he can buy things from the dispensary or something but
23:48 in general right.
23:49 I mean even Danisovich, Ivan Danisovich in Solzhenitsyn's novel was not choosing where
23:55 he slept or what he ate or what work he did this was all imposed upon him upon threat
23:59 of torture and death.
24:01 A conscripted man does not choose to fight.
24:06 Compare proposed actions to ideal standards.
24:08 So you have to believe that actions are proposed and you can evaluate them before doing them
24:12 or not and you also have the belief you have to accept the belief that you have the capacity
24:17 to compare proposed actions to ideal standards and you also have to be in possession of ideal
24:21 standards.
24:23 The ideal standard is not specifically philosophical it could be ten commandments what would Jesus
24:28 do?
24:29 You have to have an ideal standard you have to believe that there's an intervention between
24:35 what you want to do and what you will do then you have free will.
24:39 So if you look at you know chonky cats right the sort of famous set of images on the internet
24:45 of fat cats right so cats you know generally eat whatever you put in front of them as do
24:50 ducks as do goldfish and so on they don't have an ideal standard called a healthy weight
24:57 they don't have the ability to resist eating food if they're hungry so they have no function
25:03 of free will when it comes to their weight.
25:06 They are what you feed them and you know how much exercise if any is required to get the
25:12 food.
25:13 Human beings do we have the free will to lose weight?
25:16 Yes, yes we do.
25:19 You look at you know I'm off sugar and when I went out with my wife for Valentine's Day
25:25 we went to a restaurant that I know for absolute certain with vivid mouth-watering memory has
25:32 an absolutely delicious bowl of bread pudding so good I'm actually salivating now even as
25:38 I think about it and I could have I mean I think it's been three weeks now or something
25:44 like that three and a half weeks I could have said oh I've been so good I deserve a treat
25:49 I could I could have justified but you know I was like you know why you know why reset
25:54 what I'm doing right I mean my amateur understanding of these kinds of things is because I've eaten
26:00 some sugar over the course of my life I have certain bacteria in my gut that are adapted
26:04 to feeding off sugar and if I stop eating sugar those bacteria will complain and make
26:11 me uncomfortable make me irritable make me tense second gut problems and why would I
26:16 want to feed them and make them stronger again so they can begin the battle from scratch
26:19 that's no good that's no good they'll multiply and set me back in time and all that right
26:24 so I have an ideal called no added sugar right I still eat fruit and so I know added sugar
26:33 and I have the capacity nobody's got a gun to my head and making me eat bread pudding
26:38 I have the capacity to say yes or no to bread pudding I have an ideal standard called no
26:43 sugar so I have free will with regards to that if I hold in my mind the ideal standard
26:50 of no sugar and that I'm in control of whether I eat sugar I have free will with regards
26:56 to sugar if if you look at somebody who's diabetic I mean I remember being in a play
27:03 with a woman we were both acting in a play and there was a fridge by the side of the
27:10 stage and she had a candy bar because I think she was diabetic and she needed to eat a candy
27:16 bar if her blood sugar went I'm not an expert but I remember this and I remember her being
27:21 quite outraged that someone had taken her candy bars like this is not a candy bar this
27:24 is medicine for me I need this right and you know we sympathize of course we sympathize
27:29 it's a tough tough condition to deal with and she wasn't fat or anything I think she
27:32 just had the inherited diabetes which is really tough right and great sympathies so for me
27:39 to eat a candy bar would not be great for my health for her to eat a candy bar was essential
27:44 for her health at this point and again sorry if I'm misremembering it or got things wrong
27:49 but I just very much remember that it's quite vivid so she has an ideal standard called
27:56 maintain her blood sugar which requires eating a candy bar I have an ideal standard at the
28:00 moment called not eating additional sugar which means I don't eat the candy bar or at
28:03 least I have the choice not to right proposed actions ideal standards if you don't believe
28:09 you have any control of your proposed actions if you don't have any ideal standards you
28:13 don't have any functional free will that doesn't mean you can never choose anything I get all
28:16 of that right do I want a red or a blue dress you know like you can you can choose those
28:20 things but I'm in terms of morality right well I mean even with that right even with
28:25 the red and blue dress right you have proposed actions which is I can choose one or the other
28:31 and you have an ideal standard called which looks best on me or which is the best price
28:36 or you know what's the best value or whatever it is right so you have an ideal standard
28:39 which looks best on me and it's funny I remember when I play Catan from time to time and when
28:48 I I like to trade occasionally I'll play with bots like if I'm exercising or whatever while
28:54 away the absolute mind-crushing boredom of doing exercise I can't do podcasts because
28:59 I'm clanging weights I can list the audio books but it makes the time fly if I'm finger
29:04 swiping a Catan game while doing my weights yes I'm a little bit of a stimulus junkie
29:10 I know that so I don't have an ideal to not be though so that's just the way it is so
29:15 when I'm doing a bunch of weights normally I like trading but if I'm doing some heavy
29:19 weights I don't want the boss to trade with me or if I'm I can't do anything I'm if I'm
29:24 out of cards and sometimes you know if it's a complicated game there's almost a little
29:28 bit of relief like I don't have any cards I can't do anything I can't trade I can't
29:33 build I can't like maybe I can move a ship but that's about it right so sometimes there's
29:37 a little bit of relief well the choice is the choice is out of my hands because I don't
29:41 have any cards so so when I try to evaluate whether people are worth helping or saving
29:51 and this actually just happened yesterday in the live stream where one of the stream
29:56 watchers said something very mean to someone I care about and I called him out on it and
30:03 he basically just made up a bunch of justifications there was one or two mealy-mouthed apologies
30:08 that well yes but you know and then there was no further apology so this is someone
30:12 who makes up his own justifications and doesn't have the ego strength to say I did wrong but
30:18 we all have the capacity to do wrong I've certainly done wrong in my life I failed to
30:23 meet my own ideal standards of course so having the ego strength to know that you can do wrong
30:29 very weak people in general say they can't handle being wrong and usually it's the result
30:34 of prior verbal abuse and so on I get all of that and I sympathize with that but I don't
30:38 care after a while after a while you just have to grow the hell up and admit you can
30:41 do wrong and you can be a jerk and you can be an a-hole and you can be mean and you can
30:45 be petty and you can be vengeful right you can inflict pain rather than admit pain I
30:49 get I mean we all right but it's vanity right it starts off with trauma as vanity is usually
30:54 the scar tissue of trauma so it starts off as trauma which is that every time I admit
30:58 fault I get further attacked and then it turns into vanity I'm so good I can't do wrong which
31:04 then if something goes wrong you have to find someone to blame and this is the sort of cycle
31:07 of trauma that happens right trauma leads to vanity leads to the abdication of personal
31:12 responsibility and the blaming of others which leads to more trauma which leads to vanity
31:16 right so so I ceased to help and just you can see this on the on the video it was the
31:24 15th of February in the afternoon that I did the video and not to pick on this person right
31:28 but I know I know what to look for if somebody doesn't have ideal standards and says you
31:36 know what I I just lashed out at someone because I perceived to be offended I just lashed out
31:41 at someone that's not right that's really wrong it caused me to suffer a lot I'm wholeheartedly
31:46 sorry for that I have no excuses it was really wrong and I did not at all fulfill my own
31:51 values and my own standards right and the listener didn't do that and because he justified
31:58 his own actions mostly I also knew that there wasn't going to be any kind of apology coming
32:04 in later and so you know right who are the people worth helping right if somebody were
32:11 to send me in a call and show request saying I have no capacity to change anything in my
32:15 life and I don't want to do anything better would I take that call and show request well
32:21 of course not because they're saying they have no capacity or will or desire to change
32:27 their behavior they have no ideal standard I don't want anything to improve and I'm not
32:30 changing anything Steph give me a call and show be like well no people send me call and
32:35 shows because there's something in life that they want to improve and they believe they
32:38 have the power to do it they just need some kind of clarity when basically what I'm doing
32:42 in the call and shows is I'm restoring ideal standards because people already accept that
32:48 they have the capacity to change and they already know that they're not doing their
32:51 best which is you know the case for almost all of us almost all of the time so that's
32:56 fine but what I'm doing and this is the philosophical aspect of the call and shows which is really
33:00 the essence of the call and shows is I'm restoring their free will by restoring ideal standards
33:06 by restoring their ideal standards so that they have the capacity to compare proposed
33:10 actions against an ideal standard which restores their free will if they can't figure out these
33:15 ideal standards don't know how to put them or don't know how to frame them or don't know
33:18 how to achieve them or pursue them then they have no function of free will the motive power
33:22 is missing the engine is revving was not connected to anything or they are spinning tires in
33:28 the mud can't get anywhere there's no traction traction is proposed actions ideal standards
33:35 so do I have optimism that people can improve for of course absolutely completely and totally
33:43 do I believe that's true of everyone I do not do I have an empirical measure of how
33:48 to figure that out I do I do is the person willing to accept ideal standards that they
33:55 can a fall short of and be achieve is the person willing to accept ideal standards that
34:00 they can a fall short of and be achieve now the achievement of an ideal standard doesn't
34:08 mean ideal behavior always and forever right but there's better than and worse than right
34:14 it's better to be if you're I don't know a six foot tall man it's probably better to
34:20 be a hundred and eighty pounds or a hundred and seventy pounds than it is to be four hundred
34:24 pounds right losing weight is better ideal weight who knows right depends if you work
34:31 out depends if you're a runner versus a weightlifter I mean but they're still better or worse than
34:37 so let's take ideal standards proposed actions in the religious sense with the soul well
34:44 the soul through contrition and repentance can achieve the ideal standards can achieve
34:51 the ideal standard of salvation with no transitory actions it is an emotional journey you truly
34:58 repent you're truly sorry and you achieve grace you achieve salvation in a sense if
35:06 you are truly sorry that you smoked you get fresh and healthy lungs back it is obviously
35:12 a form of magical thinking but that's faith right that's that's faith and at least in
35:18 Christianity their ideal universal standards which is wonderful in triage in ER the ideal
35:26 standard is save the most possible lives and there's specific processes that you go through
35:32 to achieve that you have the choice on who you treat you have the choice on treatments
35:37 you apply and the ideal standard is save as many lives as possible because I don't know
35:42 if you remember this way back in the day back to Hippocrates there used to be this oath
35:45 called do no harm in the medical field it really was super cool that doctors had this
35:51 first do no harm thing that was that was great that was really really nice and then government
35:57 took over health care well that's something I've talked about and literally I guess in
36:02 the medical context ad nauseum before but that was that was really cool when that was
36:07 going down that was that was fantastic big plus big plus so proposed actions ideal standards
36:16 the proposed action is repentance action doesn't have to be something external or physical
36:20 it can be internal I have a standard called taking responsibility you know that manifests
36:25 I guess in various different ways but that's my ideal standard is don't blame other people
36:28 for your own choices don't blame other people for your own choices it's also a way of by
36:34 the way this methodology is one way to avoid wasting time trying to change people who can't
36:40 change number one and number two it's a way of avoiding bitterness and hatred towards
36:48 those who've treated you unjustly or immorally because the way that I view it is that people
36:54 who reject self-ownership and ideal standards have no functional free will now you can say
37:01 but do they choose to reject these things doesn't matter I don't care it's irrelevant
37:08 right because you know here this thing where people say but did my mean parents did they
37:13 know was that I'm it doesn't matter because the abandonment of self-ownership and the
37:17 rejection of ideal standards is lying to yourself if you say I'm a victim when you're not you're
37:24 lying to yourself and if you're lying to yourself of course you'll lie to others right people
37:27 who lie to themselves find it ridiculously easy to lie to others in fact if you see someone
37:32 who lies to himself or herself they're guaranteed to lie to you so knowledge that can never
37:38 be attained is never worth pursuing knowledge that can never be attained is never worth
37:45 pursuing in fact really that's the definition of mental illness is to pursue knowledge in
37:51 some ways or to pursue tasks that can never be attained and so the truth of falsehood
37:58 of whether someone is consciously choosing to reject self-ownership or whether they truly
38:05 believe they're a victim because they're already committed to falsehood there's no way to get
38:11 the information there's no way to get the information I mean if you think about it in
38:15 a trial right a witness who's been proven to repeatedly lie is dismissed from the stand
38:21 and everything they say is assumed to be false you don't keep cross-examining witnesses who
38:26 have openly perched themselves and lied brazenly bald-facedly lied in the court right somebody
38:33 who says I was both in this town and in a town on the other side of the country at the
38:38 same time I mean obviously it's a kind of crazy person but you don't keep cross-examining
38:42 that person and you say well there could be some truth in there but you'll never know
38:46 whether it's true or not because when people self-report and are committed to lying they
38:52 can make up whatever they want you have no way of independently verifying what they're
38:56 saying they've already proved themselves to be a liar so why on earth would you continue
39:00 to pursue knowledge when you will never ever gain that knowledge.
39:03 See gaining that knowledge isn't just having facts or having conclusions gaining knowledge
39:07 is having conclusions that you accept as true right so I know that people believe that the
39:13 world is flat I accept that there are people who believe that the world is flat the world
39:22 is not flat so knowing that there are people who believe that the world is flat doesn't
39:28 mean that the world is flat knowing that there are people who make claims about their level
39:31 of self-ownership versus victimhood doesn't mean that I have any objective truth about
39:35 that now if I were to say well as I did for to the guy I debated the flat earth with some
39:41 years ago if I were to say well he doesn't really believe that the earth is flat it's
39:45 just that his social community he kind of has to say that it makes him feel special
39:48 and important but doesn't really believe it deep down that's just making something up
39:52 that's not knowledge that's fantasy that's I don't even know what to call that that's
39:56 nonsense because if you say to the guy do you really believe I mean maybe at some point
40:01 he'll confess oh yeah I know I don't really believe it but blah blah blah blah blah right
40:04 but you know given that he's already lying to himself and falsifying things in the world
40:09 who knows he could just be saying that to get you off his back right so if somebody
40:14 does not believe that they're in control of their own life if somebody does not have universal
40:20 standards ideal standards one of the ideal standards of course is self-ownership because
40:24 you are in charge of your life assuming you're not unjustly incarcerated or whatever he's
40:29 grabbed off the streets and kidnapped right but under situations of unjust and direct
40:33 compulsion I mean if you if you run at someone saying I'm gonna kill you and then they shoot
40:38 you in the leg then you you're responsible for your leg which right because you tried
40:42 to kill someone or threatened to but if you're you know just snagged and unjustly imprisoned
40:46 and so on then you're not in control of your own life I get that but that's not the people
40:52 I'm talking to for the most part no that's not the people I'm talking to period so in
40:59 terms of triage that's what I'm looking for do you accept that you're in control of your
41:04 own life and you've heard this you know the women say I just kind of got pregnant or it
41:09 just happened or my marriage was disintegrating and it's like no no no these are like I've
41:14 said this to a woman the other day who was very miserable after her baby was born like
41:18 no you made you made choices right made choices the woman who was writing about her divorce
41:25 she was saying that my marriage my marriage was falling apart and and I was resenting
41:30 that my husband was paying all the bills and and so on when these are all choices that
41:34 she made so there's there's no free will there because she doesn't believe that she's in
41:39 control of her own life she's just like a leaf on the breeze blowing everywhere you
41:43 don't if a leaf is on the breeze being blown somewhere there's no point yelling at it to
41:47 go left or right or up or down it's just going to land where it lands right and does she
41:50 have ideal standards well no I mean one of the ideal standards that men and women take
41:56 when they get married is a vow to love each other forever or support each other forever
42:00 or be good to be true be be loyal be whatever right that's an ideal standard and that's
42:06 why marriages stay together is people respect their ideal standards to love and honor so
42:11 if you fall out of that you've got to get back into that right most people who die it
42:16 have a slip or two and or three or five or ten and then they have to get back on the
42:20 wagon so to speak and if people aren't willing to accept ideal standards so when people say
42:25 to me there's no such thing as truth there's no such thing as absolutes there's no such
42:28 thing as ideals there's everything's cultural everything's relative everything's subjective
42:33 they're openly stating to me to you to the world to God to the devil I have no free will
42:38 I refuse to accept ideal universal standards by which I could compare proposed actions
42:42 to therefore I have no free will I will do whatever the hell I want and I will justify
42:47 it using some you know I got to be authentic I got to be empowered I got to be I got to
42:52 live my best life I got to live love love I've got a you know I got to be me I got to
42:57 express myself I got a you know like this woman said I was so stressed I had to drink
43:01 I was so stressed that I had to blow off steam I was like that's that's all a choice right
43:06 it's your choice to put yourself in a life that has that level of stress and it's a choice
43:13 to say whether that compels you to quote blow off steam which to her seemed to be drinking
43:17 and smoking and spending like a drunken sailor right excuses excuses are promises of repetition
43:24 and promises of repetition of the abandonment of free will I'm sort of tying all of this
43:28 the BNAP and the self-justification and the lack of free will determinism relativism I'm
43:32 tying it all together in one nice bundle for you so can you save the world no of course
43:37 not because there are so many people who reject self-ownership by blaming others or circumstances
43:43 or who reject ideal standards or both they have no functional free will but maybe the
43:49 free will is buried down in their deep no no that's a magical ritual that believes that
43:58 somewhere under the cancer-ridden lungs or somewhere in the there's a ghost of healthy
44:03 lungs in the cancerous lungs that can replace the cancerous lungs now you can say ah yes
44:09 but I know people who they didn't take self-ownership they did blame others they didn't have ideal
44:14 standards and then they changed yes of course yeah but they have to recognize that their
44:19 life is a problem and that there's a better way right they have to recognize that their
44:23 life is a problem and there isn't a better way so I was talking to this woman yesterday
44:26 and she's had a certain perspective about self-knowledge and self-ownership and so on
44:30 which has been going on she was in her early 30s and I said well you believe these things
44:34 for you know 15 years or whatever has it solved your problem like normally when you believe
44:40 things or you accept things that are true it solves your problem right if you think
44:43 that cracking your knuckles will deal with your toothache well it won't going to the
44:47 dentist will so you know that you have done something correct to solve the problem when
44:51 the problem gets solved I love the potential in people's minds but if they have abandoned
44:59 their own free will by self-justification by playing the victim if they have abandoned
45:05 their own free will I view them as equivalent to robots the sort of the NPC meme right if
45:12 I'm playing a video game and some creature that is programmed to attack me attacks me
45:18 do I consider that morally wrong on the part of the creature no it's programmed to attack
45:22 me and that's the game right because of my way old addiction to space shooter games that
45:29 came out of Star Raiders in 1980 I tried a game called Everspace 2 where these AI oh
45:36 sorry this these computer-controlled spaceships were rolling around and shooting at me do
45:42 I consider them morally wrong no they're NPCs they're programmed they have no free will
45:47 and this is how you avoid the bitterness is how you escape the bitterness they choose
45:52 not to choose and after that they choose not to choose and after that it's not personal
45:59 you know the mob is often programmed to attack free thinkers we understand that that's the
46:04 fact of life the human mob is one of the greatest predators in the world it's just a fact it's
46:11 the way things are ah but they're responsible for it doesn't matter how they got there they
46:18 have no functional responsibility now and therefore they can't be improved so the triage
46:25 is do you accept ownership of your life do you accept self-ownership do you accept ideal
46:29 standards that's those are the people worth helping and when you try to help people who
46:38 don't accept self-ownership don't accept ideal standards then you're wasting your time and
46:44 their time and you're also harming the world by not helping the people who could be helped
46:49 that's your triage so yeah that's a interesting paradox and I really really appreciate your
46:54 support freedom and comm slash donate freedom and comm slash donate love to get your help
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47:14 got a great community thanks everyone so much have yourself a glorious afternoon I'll talk
47:19 to you soon bye