- 3 months ago
Philosopher Stefan Molyneux answers questions from X! He examines privilege and its moral implications, discussing attributes like beauty and intelligence. Stefan reflects on the responsibilities associated with exceptional talents and critiques conventional definitions of privilege. He provides insights on personal grievances and the importance of boundaries in relationships. Stefan also addresses the need for individual reasoning in democratic systems and critiques Stoicism for its acceptance of hardship, advocating for active resistance to injustice. Concluding with a call for introspection, Stefan emphasizes the importance of personal responsibilities within one’s community.
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LearningTranscript
00:00:00Alright, this is questions from the fine listeners at X. With due respect to the bloody raging
00:00:08sorrows of the past few days, we must continue on with our good work in the world. So, philosophical
00:00:14questions. Somebody writes, the morality of unearned privilege. Whether beauty, high IQ,
00:00:23or natural athleticism, etc., largely unearned gifts, are they to be enjoyed fully, to the benefit
00:00:30of the holder, or should they use them in some way to help the less fortunate? Modesty, charity,
00:00:34protection. For one, two, three. Beauty, modesty, high IQ, charity, natural athleticism, protection.
00:00:43One, two, three. It's a great, big and good question, and I really do appreciate you asking it.
00:00:50But, I mean, I always knew I was kind of different from those around me, but it didn't really flower
00:00:57until I remember very clearly, I think I was maybe 19 years old, so still almost half a decade away
00:01:06from brain maturity, and I started writing a book about the First World War. It's called The Jealous
00:01:14War. It's never been published. It's about how war is possessive and jealous of life, and a soldier
00:01:22who has an affair with war, so to speak, rather than his fiancée. And the language, and the imagery,
00:01:30and the vividness, and the smell, I could smell it, I could feel the mud, I could listen to the bullets,
00:01:35it all just kind of erupted in my brain. When I was writing it, it just blew me away. It just,
00:01:42it just happened. And now, gosh, many, many decades later, and 40 years later, I'm still
00:01:50writing. And I have just finished, or I'm going through the second edits of my novel called
00:01:57Dissolution, and these are by far the most real characters that I've ever created, and I know them
00:02:02in some ways better than I know others in my life, or myself, because I can go into their
00:02:07inner thoughts directly. So, if you have an analogy creating mind, which I certainly have,
00:02:16I'm really, really good at coming up with analogies. Oh, that's so funny. I'm hiking,
00:02:22and there's a spider on my hat. It was hanging from a thread, which is like, no, I'm kidding. So,
00:02:29I have an analogy brain. I can create analogies effortlessly, instantaneously, and to great
00:02:33effect. I have a good artistic brain. I have a good philosophical brain. I have a good programming
00:02:42brain. I have a good business brain, and a good sense of humor. And so, there's a lot that has
00:02:47sort of come together, both in the theoretical and the practical, in my mind. And I did not earn
00:02:53that. I mean, I wrote my first short story when I was six years old, and wrote poems and plays in
00:03:02my teens, and then novels in my 20s. And I wrote like 30 plays. I've written like, I don't know,
00:03:08seven or eight novels, and 10 books of non-fiction, and, you know, hundreds of articles. And anyway,
00:03:15so, I mean, I've written a lot, communicated a lot, debated a lot. And it's not that I have developed
00:03:23these skills in and of themselves. It's not like, well, gee, Pavarotti was a good singer because he
00:03:32sang a lot. It's like, no, no, Pavarotti sung a lot because he was a great singer. And that's what we
00:03:39need to be looking at. I have done philosophy and art and business and programming because my mind
00:03:45is really good at those things. And programming was a great training in logic. So, people say,
00:03:51ah, Steph, but you don't have a PhD in philosophy. It's like, yeah, but I have 20 years. I was 20 years
00:03:57experience in programming. And boy, that's going to teach you some logic in a way, especially when
00:04:02the stakes are very high, like your programming works or you, you're the business that you founded,
00:04:09goes out of business, which is a, well, a sort of negative experience, especially when you've
00:04:15signed a whole bunch of pieces of paper saying that you're going to be on the hook for a huge
00:04:19amount of money if the business doth go out of business. So, it's a kind of a big deal. High
00:04:25stakes. High stakes. So, I have done these things because they work in my mind and they work
00:04:34in the world. So, I did not earn my brain. To me, it is like inheriting a lot of money.
00:04:46And my ancestors chose to marry smart women. So, I chose to marry a very intelligent woman
00:04:52because, you know, got to hang under those smart genes. And my ancestors survived and reproduced.
00:04:59Therefore, it is important for me to reproduce. And if you inherit a lot of money, what should
00:05:07you do with it? Well, you didn't earn it yourself. You just inherited it. Now, it is not a violation
00:05:15of personhood, UPB, property rights to hoard and spend all that money yourself. You can do that.
00:05:26You can absolutely do that. And no one should initiate the use of force to prevent you from
00:05:31doing that. So, this is where we sort of live in society with regards to the difference between
00:05:41UPB and virtues. To me, ethics is what you shouldn't do, right? Don't rape, steal, assault,
00:05:49murder. That's what you shouldn't do. And virtue is what you should do. Be honest, have moral courage,
00:05:59be benevolent, kind, generous, and exacting. Virtue is benevolence to the virtuous, encouragement to the
00:06:09intermediate, and opposition to evil. It's the triage, right?
00:06:15So, the morality of unearned privilege. So, if you inherit, let's say, very high intelligence,
00:06:25and there's things, of course, that you can do to budge your intelligence and wisdom is far more
00:06:31important to happiness than mere intelligence. So, that's important as well. But if you inherit
00:06:42high intelligence, you are in possession of a collective good. And I don't mean, of course,
00:06:50that everyone directly owns your brain, but your brain is not your own production. And if you
00:06:56paint a painting, you write a poem, that is your own production. Your brain is not your own production.
00:07:03Your brain is the result of four billion years of evolution.
00:07:07And another thing that you have with regards to your intelligence is that your ancestors resisted
00:07:17lust. Because it wasn't always like the most intelligent woman was the sexiest woman,
00:07:22but they resisted lust and went for intelligent women. And you should do that too. Now, again,
00:07:30intelligent women can be sexy. I get all of that, but there's overlapping circles,
00:07:35but they're not wildly overlapping. So, you are in possession of a collective good. In other words,
00:07:42it's like being tall, right? I mean, you didn't earn it yourself. Being your height is the reflection of
00:07:48choices made for, I mean, countless hundreds of thousands of years. And so, you are in possession
00:07:57of a collective good. Now, of course, nobody should initiate the use of force against you
00:08:03for hoarding money that you happened to inherit. You can't spend it all on yourself. And you understand
00:08:12that's kind of a corrective mechanism in society. So, if you are a horribly selfish person,
00:08:20and you only care about your own pleasures, then you will dissolve your family's income.
00:08:27And your family's income will, in general, as you know, then transfer to other people
00:08:35who are unlikely to be that selfish. Severely selfish. And you blow all your money, expensive
00:08:42vacations, you buy yachts, I don't know, whatever, you blow your money. Well, then the people who run
00:08:49the hotels, the people who run the airlines, the people who deliver your food, the people who
00:08:54make the yacht, are statistically, of course, much less likely to be as selfish as you are.
00:09:02So, you are shifting or transferring the money to people who are less selfish than you are.
00:09:08And money tends to accrue to people who are less selfish. Again, I'm talking in a free market,
00:09:14I get, and I understand that there's tons of exceptions and central banking, and I get all
00:09:22of that, but I'm talking sort of in a free market. So, selfish people have a few children, right?
00:09:29So then, what happens to the money of people who are very selfish? Well, they tend not to have
00:09:35children, they tend to blow it all, which transfers the money to people who are hardworking,
00:09:40who provide value, who have children for the most part. So, money tends to accrue to people
00:09:48in the middle curve of selflessness, of benevolence. You know, people who are hyper-manevolent,
00:09:55like pathological altruism, well, they're going to lose a lot of their money just giving it away to,
00:10:00you know, often sketchy charities and so on. People who are too selfish lose their money because they
00:10:07just focus on their own pleasures and so on. People in the middle tend to hang on to it. As is so often
00:10:13the case, the Aristotelian mean is rewarded. What a beautiful day, by the way. Oh, I hope you're
00:10:20out enjoying nature. Sorry for the slight panting, but I just had a salmon rap. So, unearned privilege,
00:10:29I mean, I don't really like calling it privilege. Privilege is something that is usually imposed in
00:10:37some sort of social structure, you know, by men or by the government or whatever it is. It's an award
00:10:45or something that is put forward in some kind of social structure. Being tall is not really a
00:10:50privilege in the same way that, say, inheriting an aristocratic title is a privilege. It's sort of a
00:10:58different, different situation. It's different, different system as a whole. So, it is an
00:11:06attribute or a characteristic. And how should you apply it? Well, I happen to have a particular
00:11:14brilliance for reasoning and analogies and communication. And, you know, I get the stuff
00:11:22that I'm not good at and stuff that I suck at and so on. But, I mean, honestly, I'm close to a
00:11:27billion views and downloads. It's not, you know, false modesty would just be a... I don't like it
00:11:33because false modesty is cucking to the resentment of the mob. And so, yeah, these are the things that
00:11:42I'm very, very good at. And tons of things that I am, but these are the things I am good at.
00:11:47So, for me, if I have a particular brilliance with regards to reasoning, debating, and communicating,
00:11:55particularly in the realm of analogies, then do I have an obligation to help my fellow man? Well,
00:12:04yes, both selflessly and selfishly. Selflessly, it's because, look, if I have, let's say, blood
00:12:15that cures people of an illness. And it's like a tiny micro-drop or whatever it is, right? So,
00:12:26if I have blood that cures people of an illness, do I have to donate blood? I do not. I don't.
00:12:36So, that's the extreme selfish position. I'm not going to donate any blood. Now, the over generous
00:12:43position would be, I'm going to donate all my blood. It's a goose that lays the golden egg
00:12:49stuff, right? That would be unwise. I'd save more people in the short run, but fewer people in the
00:12:55long run, which is the issue with charity, right? It's that you want to help people in the long run
00:13:00in a sustainable fashion rather than save people in the short run. Saving people in the short run
00:13:08tends to reinforce bad behavior or negative behavior. You know, this is the old, oh,
00:13:13when we got, had a baby outside of wedlock, let's just give her $100,000 a year for the next
00:13:1820 years. That's a bad, a bad decision. However, providing her no charity and support is also
00:13:26a bad decision. So, you want to, somewhere in the middle, right? So, enough support to help,
00:13:31but not enough support to incentivize others to do the same thing. It's a very tricky balance.
00:13:38So, I do want to help people, but given the nature of how people perceive others,
00:13:45you know, there's this, I mean, so many people, I've sort of seen the, I've sort of seen the
00:13:51number of people who are like, well, Ayn Rand took pensions in her old age, therefore,
00:13:57I can dismiss her entire philosophical oeuvre. Well, no, I mean, she made a case that she's just
00:14:04getting money back into a system she was forced to pay into, blah, blah, blah. And, I mean,
00:14:09yeah, people, I mean, it's so funny, you know, when, when you know the truth about your own life
00:14:14and you see what people say about you, it's wild just how susceptible people are to nonsense, like,
00:14:20Steph, I stopped following in you when you harangued a listener for donating a dollar. It's like,
00:14:25nope, didn't do that. Never did that. Never did that. So, I expressed a mild preference to not
00:14:33get small donations because they made me feel bad, right? If somebody's donating $2, right,
00:14:39I feel bad. Well, first of all, it's work. I've got to sort of track it and report it and so on.
00:14:42So, it's not helpful to me particularly. And if somebody only has $2, the last thing that I'd want
00:14:49is for them to donate it to me. My God, save that for bus fare so you can go for a job interview
00:14:53and get some money. My God, don't give me. If you're, if $2 is all you can afford, and, uh,
00:15:00you know, this is back when $2 meant a lot. But, no, honestly, if $2 is all you can afford,
00:15:05please, dear Lord above, do not send it to me or anyone else use it to buy food or a bus fare again
00:15:12or something. Get some resumes printed off. Do what you can. So, it just made me, um, did not,
00:15:18did not, did not feel good. And I was expressing a preference, of course, that people
00:15:21not, uh, send me, uh, $2, right? So, and this, of course, comes because I have a lot of experience
00:15:29with tipping culture as a waiter. So, anyway, I mean, so many people just make up, make up stuff.
00:15:34One f***ing dollar, right? Oh, no, I expressed a preference. Anyway, so, are they to be enjoyed
00:15:43fully to the benefit of the holder? Okay. So, I have a particular and peculiar talent
00:15:49for reasoning, speaking, analogies, debating, whatever you want to call it. And I have
00:15:55a rather wild bathyscape level insight into human nature and motivations and the unconscious.
00:16:04Some of that, of course, is to do with the work that I've done before on the unconscious. And,
00:16:09of course, some of it is, uh, just a, a wild talent. I have these core shafts that go down
00:16:15to the roots of the unconscious that tell me about myself and inform me even more about
00:16:21others, as is generally the case. So, is it possible for me to enjoy reason without sharing
00:16:29it? Well, no. Especially if I want to have kids, because I want, you know, I want my daughter
00:16:33to grow up in a world that is rational and reasonable. And if she, if I hoard all the reason
00:16:42to myself, then she grows up in a world that is less rational, which means more conflict
00:16:45prone, more aggressive, more violent. Uh, so it does not bring me happiness. Now, on the
00:16:50other hand, if I were to totally self-immolate on the altar of reason, to push rationality
00:16:57on society to the point where the blowback got me murdered or, or maimed or something like
00:17:02that, then unfortunately, or, or let's just say that I worked so hard that I became, I don't
00:17:09know, stressed, depressed, negative, or whatever it was, right?
00:17:12Well, then unfortunately, it would be the case that people wouldn't listen to my arguments
00:17:17because they'd say, look how stressed and messed and depressed this guy is. Doesn't
00:17:22seem happy. He's kind of pale, either underweight or overweight. So, I mean, it certainly is true
00:17:30that I'll do some philosophy while I'm exercising. I actually used to do shows at a gym, believe
00:17:36it or not, back in the day. But, uh, the time that I'm spending exercising, I am not spending
00:17:42doing philosophy directly, usually. However, if I was, you know, thin without any strength
00:17:52or fat or whatever, however I would be without, it's hard to know, right? If however I would be
00:17:57without exercising, because if I'm injured or whatever and I can't exercise for a while,
00:18:02my appetite collapses, right? And oh, I'm also kind of lashed to exercising now because
00:18:09I'm getting to the age where it's very, very hard to build new muscle. So, I simply have to
00:18:15maintain what I have. J.K. Simmons accepted. God knows what that monster truck did. So, part of
00:18:23selling philosophy, so to speak, is being healthy, happy, robust, in love, you know. When I take my
00:18:31wife out for dinner, I'm not doing philosophy over dinner. I mean, we might be chatting ideas or
00:18:37whatever, right? But I'm not doing sort of philosophical shows over dinner. But it's important
00:18:42both for me and for philosophy to show or to at least report on a happy marriage to a good woman.
00:18:50If I was, uh, single or at a bad marriage or something like that, that would be negative
00:18:55for philosophy. So, I'm sort of trying to make the case that you want the Aristotelian mean
00:19:01in these kinds of things. Is it possible to be happy if you inherit a bunch of money?
00:19:09Sorry, this crash is in the undergrowth here. I just want to stay alert so I can continue to do
00:19:15maximum philosophy. I'm kind of in a lonely spot here. Oh, well, let's be all right.
00:19:22Excellent. Good. Lift to reason another day. Now, look over my shoulder. Good, good. All right.
00:19:30So, it looks to be, in the mean is where you're happiest. Is it happy if you inherit
00:19:35ten million dollars or hundred million dollars or whatever, you blow it all on yourself.
00:19:39Is it possible to be happy? Well, I don't think so. I mean, there'll be some dopamine floods
00:19:45when you buy stuff, but not having kids, just eating a bunch of stuff, buying a bunch of stuff,
00:19:54is kind of living the life of an animal, right? Except human beings can't live the lives of
00:19:59animals because we reason. So, and of course, unconsciously, you know that you are taking
00:20:05pride and value in things that you have not earned. And of course, I wrestled with this
00:20:11quite a bit in some of my favorite writing as a fiction author is the first half of Just Poor,
00:20:22the first third in particular, where the girl who's born brilliant is railing against the man
00:20:30who is born privileged, Lloyd Lawrence and Mary O'Donnell. So, I don't think it's a long-term
00:20:37happiness to blow all the money you've inherited. And I don't think it's a long-term happiness
00:20:44to simply say, like, if I have a really good brain for communication, to use that for lying to women,
00:20:52seducing women, and so on, or to go into politics for the sake of personal aggrandizement and things
00:21:00like that, if that was the case, then I would not be happy. Because I would be bending something
00:21:09that was collectively owned to something for only my own personal pleasure. And my brain is a
00:21:15collective phenomenon. I did not create my brain. I am responsible for the use I put my brain to,
00:21:22but I did not create my brain. The creation of my brain is the result of an infinity of decisions
00:21:29over an untrackable amount of eons. And by an infinity of decisions, I mean, like, you know,
00:21:41my ancestors spoke the truth, but not so much that they got killed, but enough that they could progress
00:21:48society. And an impatience for social advancement is often a form of suicide, right? And I've certainly
00:21:56danced at the edge of that volcano for many, many years. And I'm pretty proud about the way that I've
00:22:03navigated it, because I'm still here doing what I'm doing. I'm doing a lot. So, do you have an
00:22:08obligation to society if you are in possession of a particular talent or ability? Well, let's take
00:22:19a singer, for example. Let's say that somebody is a beautiful singer, and they have a beautiful voice,
00:22:26beautiful pitch, and not just that, but phrasing and emotional content. Like, ever since I listened
00:22:31to Billy Joel talk about Frank Sinatra's impeccable phrasing, I listened to Frank Sinatra in a deeper
00:22:36kind of way. So, if you are a great singer, and you sing the ancient songs of your people around a
00:22:46fire at night in a way that gives people peace and unity and courage, or let's say you're in a battle
00:22:56and you start singing a war song which rallies your companions to be braver and more effective
00:23:05soldiers and so on. Well, is that a bad thing? No, that's a good thing. That's a good thing.
00:23:12You can give a comfort, strength, depth, richness, meaning, and a maintenance of your culture by
00:23:20singing. Because this is back when singing was evolved in many ways to maintain a culture. Music
00:23:27is now used by, you know, fairly corrupt execs in the music industry to destroy culture. But originally,
00:23:33it was designed to allow people to maintain culture, because we remember things better when sung. I
00:23:40mean, try to memorize the lyrics to Like a Rolling Stone without the song. It's tough. But, or Hotel
00:23:47California or something, if they were just written poems. But you can remember them better if they're
00:23:51sung. So, is a singer, a person who's born with a great singing voice and a great emotional
00:23:58connection to songs. Is he, does he have to sing for his tribe? Nope. Nobody can cut his head off for
00:24:05not singing, right? Morally, right? Now, is it better for him if he sings for his tribe? Yeah. Yes, it is.
00:24:13He gets status. His tribe is more unified. They'll fight to protect him. And if he sings a war song in a
00:24:22crucial moment of battle, thus rallying his troops, then, I mean, Hank's Hank, right? Henry V, with his very
00:24:29famous wee happy few, uh, speech. That's a guy with serious eloquence, serious thrilling oratorical abilities.
00:24:36And, uh, he uses it to win a battle. Now, if a singer does nothing but sing, he's gonna hurt his
00:24:44voice. You know, Paul Young, Paul Young, the very famous singer from the 80s, did a beautiful cover of
00:24:51Wherever I Lay My Hat. And, uh, I think the only song of his that he wrote was Broken Man. It's actually
00:24:56really good. I didn't like it at the beginning, but it grew on me enormously. And, uh, he sung, uh, so hard
00:25:03that he couldn't sing for like a year, and I think his voice is fairly wrecked now. So, you'd want to
00:25:07be somewhere in the middle. Don't not sing. It's not good for you. Plus, you take pleasure in singing.
00:25:12I take pleasure in philosophy. So, you should do things for the benefit of those around you, given
00:25:19that your skills, talents, abilities are inherited from those before you. You should use them to the
00:25:24benefit of those around you. But that is subject to the Aristotelian mean. Too little, and you're selfish
00:25:31and won't be happy, and your society will deteriorate, uh, too much, and you're killed or
00:25:36hurt, or you can't sing, or, and then you, uh, have a life that nobody envies. Like, we live in a world
00:25:41where you have to have a life that people, at least to some degree, envy in order for them to listen to
00:25:48the virtues and values that you proselytize. And so, if I have a life where I'm sacrificing health and
00:25:54well-being for philosophy, I look sickly or fat or stressed or whatever it is, then, well, people will
00:26:00look at me and say, well, I don't want that, so why would I listen to a guy? Because you have to sell
00:26:05some version of happiness in order to get people to listen to your philosophy, especially if the
00:26:09equation reason equals virtue equals happiness is something you're proposing. So, if I'm unhappy,
00:26:15which is too much philosophy, then that's not good. It's like exercise. Exercise too little,
00:26:21you're weak and frail. Exercise too much, you're injured and frail. All right. So, that makes sense.
00:26:29Next question. I'm sure we can do the next one a little faster, but that was a very important
00:26:34one. Next question. How do you know if you're being abused versus receiving righteous anger for
00:26:40past wrongs to that person? That's a great question. So, abuse is when you put another person down
00:26:52without a cause that is objective, right? So, some drunk driver runs over your dog, you're yelling at
00:27:01the drunk driver and calling him an idiot, stupid, irresponsible, dangerous, but that's an objective
00:27:08wrong. Guy drove drunk, ran over your dog. So, that is an objective wrong. That's not abuse.
00:27:15However, if you don't give to someone who's homeless, maybe they stink of alcohol or whatever
00:27:24it is, or they're drugged out, and you don't give to that person because you're concerned they're going
00:27:29to spend the money on drinker drugs, and then they abuse you as being a selfish a-hole or whatever,
00:27:34that's right. Random swearing, non-swearing. Get used to it. It depends on how I feel.
00:27:38So, it is not an objective wrong to not give money to somebody who reeks of alcohol. That's not an objective
00:27:47wrong. If you have, let's say, an aunt who never does anything for you, you know, she doesn't visit you,
00:27:56she doesn't visit your kids, she doesn't remember their birthdays and so on, and then she has a big ask,
00:28:04right, for whatever. She's got some, I don't know, let's say she's got a pit bull, and you've got a
00:28:10bunch of young kids, and she's got a pit bull, and she says, I'm going away for a month. I'd really
00:28:17appreciate it if you would take care of my pit bull. That's a big ask, right? And she hasn't deposited
00:28:23in the bank of goodwill because she doesn't even remember your kids' birthdays or do anything about
00:28:28them or that. So, that's a big ask, right? And if you say, no, I'm sorry, I'm not going to do that.
00:28:36It's a lot of work. It's kind of risky for my kids, and I don't really want to. And then she's like,
00:28:41oh, you're selfish, this, that, and the other. Well, that's abusive because she is calling you
00:28:47selfish when she is, in fact, has been the selfish one. Not helping with your kids or even acknowledging
00:28:54their birthdays or whatever it is, right? So, she's been selfish, but instead she's calling you
00:28:58selfish, right? So, that's bad and wrong and hypocritical. And so, when people have not been
00:29:08kind to you but demand kindness from you and then call you terrible names if you refuse acts of kindness
00:29:15which they have not earned through reciprocity, well, that's bad, right? If someone sends you 500 bucks
00:29:22on your promise to send them an iPad, as is my standard example, then if you don't send them
00:29:29the iPad, they call you up and they say, dude, you're being a thieving, fraudulent doofus by taking
00:29:37the 500 bucks but not sending me the iPad, that's not abuse because they have a just claim which you're
00:29:42not fulfilling, right? So, that's that. Now, if, on the other hand, somebody you don't even know
00:29:50just emails you and says, uh, give me 500 bucks, you a-hole, right? Well, that's abuse because they
00:29:59don't have a claim. They don't have an objective claim. So, if you have admitted wrong, like if you
00:30:07go to your girlfriend and you say, I cheated on you, and then she says, well, you're an untrustworthy
00:30:12son of a gun, that's not abuse because you've done an objective wrong and she's talking about
00:30:18her feelings. And also, you agree, right? Now, you don't have to agree because people can then
00:30:22just deny they've never done any wrong, then everything looks unjust. But if you've cheated
00:30:27on your girlfriend and you agree that cheating is bad, then if she calls you an untrustworthy
00:30:32cheater, you are agreeing with her. So, it's not abuse if you agree, but it's not necessary that you
00:30:38agree in order for that to be valid. Because, again, you can just disagree, just choose to disagree.
00:30:46I have now walked onto a dirt road and I do not have my phone and I do not know where
00:30:54the heck I am. And so, it was the question. Because if I take this road, when you're explorey
00:30:59hiking, like you don't know where you're going, it's almost, if I take this road, it could
00:31:02leave me somewhere useful or it could leave me further astray and then maybe I can't even
00:31:06find this. All right, I think I just head back the way I came. Yes, let's do that. Let's
00:31:11do that. All right. So, hopefully that makes sense. Oh, and also, there is an expiration
00:31:19date. Sorry, I'll just add to that last one after saying it'll be short. There is a rational
00:31:24expiration date to being roundly or harshly criticized for wrong that you've done. So,
00:31:33there was a horrible, horrible Ally McBeal. Was it Ally McBeal or something like that? Ally McBeal
00:31:39or some law show or whatever it was. Courtney Thorne Smith was like this great-haired actress
00:31:44from the 90s. And she said to her husband, you're more interesting when you're cheating.
00:31:49Ugh, just vile. Oh, just vile. Just the amount of crap that gets pushed in these shows. Anyway,
00:31:56Lucy Liu was the dragon lady back then. She was very funny. Although, crazed now. But anyway,
00:32:02that's the price of fame is you've got to be insane. So, if you cheat on your girlfriend,
00:32:07let's say you just kiss another girl. Like, let's not go full belly slaps. So,
00:32:15huh, lots of undergrowth crashing, but I'm not in an area where there could be hunters.
00:32:20So, I'm fairly likely to survive. All right. But yeah, lots of crashing in the woods today.
00:32:27Hopefully, this won't be found audio in a year. Anyway, let's find out. So, if you kiss another
00:32:35girl, you confess your girlfriend or she finds out and you apologize and you try to get to the root
00:32:39of it and you figure out what's wrong with the relationship, and let's say you guys decide to
00:32:42continue, then when you are forgiven, it means that the subject does not keep coming up. You can't
00:32:51hold it in abeyance. You can't use it to win arguments down the road, right? That's, you know,
00:32:56you apologize, you make restitution, you make amends. And then once the other person has accepted the
00:33:01apology, then the subject has to be closed. Unless, again, there's some recurrence. All right.
00:33:08How should a society determine its values if the mechanism of, quote, democracy is distorted by
00:33:13deliberate misinformation and the voters lack even the basic tools of reason slash congruence? Well,
00:33:18every political system you build to protect yourself will inevitably end up staffed by
00:33:24those who hate you and will destroy you using these same mechanisms, right? So, let's say that
00:33:31you want borders. Well, you build a government that's supposed to protect you from the borders,
00:33:35but sooner or later, that government will be inhabited by your enemies and will not only open
00:33:41your borders, but will jail anyone who tries to protect the borders, right? So, this is why I'm a
00:33:47voluntarist, an arco-capitalist, whatever you want to call it, but a consistent applier of the
00:33:54non-aggression principle. And so, value should be determined voluntarily through reason and
00:34:03evidence. In other words, value should not be imposed upon children through forced government,
00:34:08quote, education, right? And the reason why propaganda is so prevalent is because propaganda
00:34:18leads people to accept political rule. And through political rule, you know, countless trillions of
00:34:25dollars around the world get created and transferred. So, propaganda, you know, propaganda does not
00:34:33show up where power, political power does not exist, or at least very little of it shows up.
00:34:40In other words, I mean, I'm sure there's some Pakistani politician trying to win some election
00:34:43at the moment, but he's not advertising in Alaska, because the people in Alaska can't determine
00:34:50whether he wins or loses his political campaign, right? So, he keeps, the politician in Pakistan keeps his
00:34:58propaganda to the people who vote for him. So, power is, uh, is, is summons propaganda. And if there's
00:35:08no centralized oligarchical political power, then propaganda is not as valuable, and lies and
00:35:15distortion will not really occur. All right. Uh, what is the most important single book about philosophy
00:35:20for non-philosophers to read, to understand as much as one book can teach about the subject? Um,
00:35:26well, philosophy has a history of asking questions and having, asking great questions and having
00:35:36terrible answers. And if you sort of look at Socrates, he asked great questions and dismantled
00:35:43people's false thoughts, but did not provide any particular answers. Or the answers of Plato were
00:35:49terrible. Or, you know, the, the criticisms and objections that Friedrich Nietzsche had
00:35:56were powerful and insightful and, and so on. But the answers were all, uh, scattered and
00:36:02aphoristic and, you know, it's deepities, right? Right? Whoever fights monsters needs to be sure
00:36:09that they do not turn into a monster. I mean, it sounds kind of deep. What does it mean? In any sort
00:36:14of practical sense? I don't know. If you gaze into the abyss, the abyss also gazes into you. I mean,
00:36:20it sounds kind of cool. Sounds interesting. Uh, dorm room, 3 a.m. Blunt session, deep. And what
00:36:25does it mean? What does it mean in practical terms? Uh, well, nothing. I mean, philosophy has been
00:36:31poking holes at sophistry for 3,000 years. Until universally preferable behavior, there was no
00:36:39proof of virtue. So 3,000 years of nipping at the heels of other people without providing any answers,
00:36:45philosophy is just nihilistic nagging for the most part. And all the answers are just terrible. You
00:36:52know, like, uh, the answer, what was it from Hegel that, uh, well, you know, the, the world spirit
00:36:58sometimes chooses a particular nation to dominate all other nations. It's like, well, that's a terrible
00:37:02answer, my friend. That is just absolutely appalling. So I'm a big fan, of course, of my own work. So I'll put
00:37:10that forward. Essential philosophy at essentialphilosophy.com is a great book to take on,
00:37:17you know, it takes on three big issues, right? It takes on simulation theory. It takes on free
00:37:22will versus determinism. And it takes on rational ethics. And that's some pretty good stuff. I have
00:37:28an 18 part introduction to philosophy series I recorded in 2006, almost 20 years ago, which you
00:37:33should check out as well. So I think those are good. Maybe I should write an introduction to philosophy
00:37:37as a whole. All right. Is there an Aristotelian mean for premarital sex? Uh, too much is a bad
00:37:43thing, but someone with no dating experience getting married at 18 seems absurd too. Uh, why? Why does
00:37:48it seem absurd? Someone with no dating experience? So you've conflated two things, premarital sex and
00:37:53dating experience. Uh, so, uh, for women in particular, don't blame me. It's just biology. For women in
00:38:00particular, being a virgin on your marriage day is, um, is best in terms of the longevity and stability
00:38:09of the marriage, right? So women who, uh, have more and more sexual partners are more and more likely
00:38:16to get divorced. So, uh, I don't know why being a virgin on your wedding night at the age of 18 is a bad
00:38:23thing. I don't know, but it seems absurd. I do understand being a virgin at 35, if you're a woman or a man,
00:38:28uh, something's, uh, something's wrong with you. Uh, I don't mean, almost certainly, right? Uh,
00:38:33something's, something's deeply wrong with you and people who remain virgins into their, you know,
00:38:40mid, like twenties, thirties, almost certainly, uh, pornography addicts and probably have burned
00:38:45out their receptors to the point where it's going to take a lot of abstinence from pornography to get
00:38:50any kind of normal sexual response to an actual human being. So, all right. Hi Steph. I've really
00:38:56enjoyed listening to your content for years now and think in many ways that Bratarianism is the
00:39:00only way forward. One thing I struggle with understanding is how we employ forces against
00:39:04bad actors in such a society. What if I'm poor and cannot afford security? Well, if you're poor
00:39:12and cannot afford security, let me, let me ask you this. So let's say that you're poor,
00:39:18you're the only poor person in a reasonably wealthy neighborhood. Let's say you inherited your
00:39:23house, but you're unemployed for whatever reason, right? You just don't have any money and you didn't
00:39:27have any insurance for being unemployed or whatever it is. So you don't have much money. Well, do you
00:39:33think that it is beneficial or harmful if you're completely unprotected in a free society? So let's
00:39:41say that everyone who has paid for protection gets a sticker in the window or a sign in the yard and you
00:39:47don't. Well, will your neighbors feel safer or less safe if you're the only house without the yard sign
00:39:57or the sticker that says I'm protected? Well, no, because they know that criminals are going to be
00:40:01driving around looking for places without those signs and so it will invite criminals into the
00:40:08neighborhood and it will endanger them, right? Because the criminals will be there, they might be a home
00:40:14invasion and then maybe there's a hostage situation or a standoff or, you know, maybe there's just, you
00:40:21know, bad people with guns roaming around the neighborhood and maybe they'll be driving home,
00:40:26see the person get shot. It could be any number of them. Maybe you have, there's a shooting battle,
00:40:32bullets flying all over the place. Let me just take an extreme example, right? So if people who
00:40:38can afford security will, part of that security is extending security protection to those who can't
00:40:46afford it. So there would be charity in those situations. However, of course, human nature being
00:40:52what it is, which is neither positive or negative, it just is nature. Human nature being what it is,
00:40:58there will be, I mean, less so when peacefully parented, but there will of course be a bunch of
00:41:03super skeevy people in society who's like, oh, so if I'm poor, other people will pay for me. So I guess
00:41:08I don't have to work. Yeah, well, that's a real concern. So I don't have any particular answer as
00:41:16to how that's solved, except to say that it will be solved in an optimum fashion. In the same way that
00:41:22prices are solved in an optimum fashion. The distribution of resources based upon, so the transfer of
00:41:28resources or the aggregation of resources based upon price signals is optimal. There's no better
00:41:34solution. So society will extend its charity and protection to people to minimize exploitation, right?
00:41:47And now that, I don't know what the answer to that is, because that's something that people need to work
00:41:51out in a free market. And we're talking about a society, at least probably, I say 50, but probably
00:41:56closer to 100 years from now, best case scenario. So people will extend protection to those who
00:42:07can't afford it, but not to the point where people will not pay for protection in order to get it for
00:42:13free. Now, how that's worked out? No idea. Doesn't matter, but it will be worked out. All right.
00:42:18Any suggestions on how to deprogram people who've swallowed a load of propaganda? So, okay, you
00:42:25understand, sorry, I'm going to be completely annoying. Well, maybe I've been annoying the
00:42:31whole time, but I'm going to be even more annoying just now, which is, it is not propaganda primarily
00:42:37that keeps people believing propaganda. So the problem is that people hold on to false beliefs
00:42:46because they are embedded in relationships that require those false beliefs. So if God help you,
00:42:54you send off your daughter to university and she becomes a quasi-Marxist, bluehead,
00:43:00hysteric feminist, then she's going to have a whole bunch of friends who all believe the same
00:43:05thing. And they're all going to cling to each other and be desperate to retain these beliefs.
00:43:11And they are going to drive away anyone who questions or opposes these beliefs. Most people,
00:43:19almost everyone, they're not embedded in propaganda. They are embedded in social relationships.
00:43:27And if they question or oppose these belief systems, they are ditched and removed from their
00:43:34social circle. Because the social circle is about shared delusions and the identity, the sense of
00:43:41identity and virtue and efficacy and all of that is all based on shared delusions. And if you question
00:43:48or oppose those shared delusions, you must be ejected from the group because you threaten the entire
00:43:55identity of those people. So the way that I approach people who've swallowed a lot of propaganda
00:44:04is I evaluate how deeply embedded in false relationships they are. So let's say there's a guy,
00:44:13and I've met people like this, there's a guy who's married to some super lefty woman.
00:44:19Well, he's cucked because he should be the leader in the ideological areas of the marriage as a whole.
00:44:27There could be exceptions and women have their own areas of leadership, which are very important.
00:44:32But men are generally better at this sort of debating, abstractly, principled reasoning thing.
00:44:37You know, that meme of the woman who says, how is it possible that my husband understands
00:44:41cryptocurrency and Bitcoin and the Federal Reserve and inflation and the economy and politics but doesn't
00:44:46know when I'm upset? Right? So men should be, should have ideological leadership in the family.
00:44:57And again, there are tons of areas where women have leadership in the family, which are very important
00:45:02and in fact, in the short run, more important than what the men are doing. But again, in general,
00:45:07men should have that. So what I do, if I'm thinking of talking to someone about facts,
00:45:14reason and evidence is I look at their relationships. So if the man is more, let's say, free market,
00:45:23free speech, conservative, whatever it is, right? If he's more that way, but his wife is super liberal,
00:45:29I know that he doesn't have her respect. And that he's cucked in these areas. And if he tries to
00:45:37assert, you know, it's really tough to assert your authority when you've trained people for decades
00:45:42in subjugating you. So you need to be assertive early on in the dating process. And if the woman,
00:45:51say, and I'm going to only really talk about this from the male perspective, but if the woman
00:45:55believes things that aren't true, then early on in the dating relationship, you need to set her
00:46:01straight, you know, kindly, gently, positively, and so on. And if she accepts not the authority of you
00:46:07as a man, but the authority of reason and evidence, if she accepts that, good, then that's great. And
00:46:13you can move forward. And then she can teach you some very important truths about relationships and
00:46:19health and having a beautiful environment and all things that are very important, and certainly more
00:46:25important in many ways, in the short run in your life. So if he has abandoned any sort of leadership
00:46:31or authority, as a man, I don't bother. Because if he's going to try and exercise some authority
00:46:37with a woman who's chosen him for his weakness, then the relationship is unlikely to survive.
00:46:45And I mean, although American Beauty was a corrupt film in many ways,
00:46:48the portrayal of the man attempting to stand up against an abusive and belittling wife was really,
00:46:57really quite powerful. And that doesn't tend to work out very well. So I look at the environment.
00:47:05So if there's someone who's a leftist, and they're surrounded entirely by leftist people,
00:47:10their leftist boyfriend or girlfriend, and all their friends are leftists, and so on,
00:47:14then are they going to have the robustness to cross that desert, which we all have to cross to of
00:47:19isolation until we find our people? Well, unlikely. So to me, it's just a cost benefit. And I don't
00:47:25view people, I don't view people as having beliefs, I view people as conforming. Because conformity was
00:47:32how people reproduce throughout almost all of human history. The odds or chance of being able to think
00:47:37critically and originally was almost zero throughout almost all of human history for almost everyone.
00:47:43So we have evolved, not to think or to reason or to believe, but to comply. And people's genes rebel
00:47:51against independent thought and unpopularity, because unpopularity meant the end of your genetic
00:47:56lineage. I'm not blaming people in the past for that. That's just the way things were.
00:48:01We can't survive on our own. We need a group to survive. And in return for the protection of the
00:48:08group, we give up our independent thought and integrity. But again, it's an Aristotelian
00:48:14mean. People who were overly compliant, tribes that were overly compliant, that forced over
00:48:18compliance, lost to tribes with more individuality. Right? The Chinese to the Europeans, the indigenous
00:48:23North Americans to the Europeans, and so on, right? And Europeans had more critical thinking,
00:48:28more individuality, and that allowed them to progress and technological advancements and so on,
00:48:33to the point where the even more conformist tribes tended to fall apart. Too much opposition to
00:48:40social norms gets you ostracized or killed or, God forbid, sent to Australia. Just kidding. Love
00:48:46the Aussies. So that's the choice that you have to try and balance in society. So most people don't
00:48:54have thoughts, ideas, personalities, really. They don't have critical thinking. All they do is sniff and
00:49:01navigate for what is approved of, copy-paste what is approved of, and at least it used to be the
00:49:06case. It used to be the case that conformity bred reproduction. See? Get it? Bred reproduction. It's
00:49:12very subtle. Now, of course, conformity to leftist stuff, which is generally antinatalist. Conformity
00:49:18breeds sterility. I mean, leftists have far fewer kids than people on the right. So, all right. Can you do
00:49:27an episode on a bunch of variations on the trolley problem, lol? I genuinely think you could make it
00:49:34interesting. Yeah, the trolley problem. So, it's all, you know, there's a trolley going down
00:49:40the tracks. There's this personal group on the left side. There's this personal group on the right
00:49:46side. Do you throw the switch and have the trolley wipe out the group on the left or the group on the
00:49:51right or whatever it is, right? So, the trolley problem, right? Now, the trolley problem is allowed
00:49:55because it's anti-philosophical, right? Anti-philosophical. So, it's going to a nutritionist
00:50:02and saying, well, you have a guy on the left who's dying of a heart attack and you have a guy on the
00:50:11right who's dying of an aneurysm. What would you feed them, right? You understand that that's not a
00:50:20question that makes any sense for a nutritionist because we're already in a situation of emergency
00:50:26and nutrition is about long-term prevention, not short-term cure. And philosophy is about long-term
00:50:36prevention, not short-term cure. Wisdom is about the prevention of problems and not
00:50:44solution to an immediate crisis. So, wisdom has you not flirt with the woman at the office.
00:50:51You know, it's a little bit different once you're already having sex with her. Then the Rubicon has
00:50:56been crossed and philosophy has failed to prevent or you have failed to prevent, using philosophy or
00:51:00wisdom, failed to prevent the emergency from coming to pass. So, a trolley thundering along its tracks
00:51:07and you've got to throw a switch, one person to the other. That is not a philosophical problem
00:51:12because philosophy is about preventing these situations. It's like, what philosophical position
00:51:19should you hold when you're facing the wall and about to be shot by a totalitarian communist death
00:51:28squad? Right? Well, it doesn't matter. It's too late. What diet should you adopt to solve the problem
00:51:38of currently having a heart attack? Well, it doesn't matter what you eat. You've got to get to
00:51:44the emergency room. You've got to call an ambulance, right? So, going to a nutritionist with a problem
00:51:51that nutrition cannot solve is just a way of discrediting nutrition. Because the nutritionist,
00:51:58one says, well, what should the person eat who's having an aneurysm? You say, well, I don't know.
00:52:04I mean, I can't, right? That's not my wheelhouse. It's a way of discrediting nutrition. Now, if you
00:52:11were to say to a nutritionist, what should someone eat to prevent potentially getting diabetes,
00:52:19right? I don't know what they would say, but I assume it would be normal stuff. But they would
00:52:24have something to say. They would have something to say, oh, yeah, what you should do to reduce your
00:52:30chances of getting diabetes is X, Y, and Z, right? They can answer that question with confidence,
00:52:36right? Now, philosophy can say, how should society best organize itself so that you don't end up with
00:52:46the trolley problem? That's good. What should you eat to avoid becoming morbidly obese or dangerously
00:52:52underweight or whatever, right? Well, nutritionists would be able to tell you that. Now, if you are
00:52:57dangerously obese, your odds of having a heart attack go up considerably. But that's because
00:53:03you didn't listen to the nutritionist. So then sending a poll to nutritionists saying,
00:53:07what should someone eat when they're currently experiencing a heart attack? The nutritionists,
00:53:10it's a trick. It's just a way of making nutrition look retarded. Well, nutrition can't help you.
00:53:15Well, what good is nutrition then? Right? So if somebody asked me a trolley problem,
00:53:18I would be... No, that's not a philosophical problem. A philosophical problem is how do you
00:53:26prevent extreme emergency situations? Like the Sophie's Choice, right? She's got to choose between
00:53:31one kid or the other in the death camp, right? Well, that's no longer a philosophical problem
00:53:37or question. That's a heart attack. And, you know, if you can shoot your way out of the Nazi death camp and
00:53:45get your kids to safety, do that, right? It's a self-defense, coercive issue. It's not a
00:53:50philosophical... The philosophical question is how do we prevent people ending up in totalitarian
00:53:55death camps? Okay, that's a philosophical question. How do we prevent people from having
00:53:59heart attacks? You know, what foods should you eat to minimize your chances of getting a heart attack?
00:54:05Well, I'm sure that there are good answers to that in the nutritional field once you're having
00:54:08a heart attack. Anyway, so it's not... The trolley problem is anti-philosophy, which is why it's
00:54:15promoted. It's promoted to make... Sorry, I almost tripped there. It's promoted... Sorry,
00:54:19didn't mean to start on you. It's promoted to have people not be able to come up with a good answer
00:54:24and say, oh my God, philosophy is useless. It can't give you any good answers, right? In the same way
00:54:29that saying to a nutritionist... See, there's my analogy brain, right? Saying to a nutritionist,
00:54:33what should someone eat when they're having an aneurysm to fix themselves? So it doesn't... You can't...
00:54:38Oh, see, nutrition doesn't do any good. It's useless, right? Okay. Where does one draw the line
00:54:43between dysfunctional and realistic understanding of their exceptionality? I don't understand that
00:54:48one. Okay. If power corrupts everyone and we have power over our children, aren't we inevitably
00:54:52condemned to abuse this power? Well, power is different when it is political. Because in political
00:55:03power, like one of the definitions of political power is immunity from consequences. Rises like
00:55:10the 1986 Vaccine Injury Act, right? Which means that vaccine manufacturers cannot be sued for problems
00:55:17with their product. So that's political power. That would never exist in a free market. Or with
00:55:22COVID, right? The COVID vaccine, the manufacturers insisted it was perfectly safe and effective and
00:55:28also insisted that they could never be sued for any problem. I don't mean to laugh because it's like a
00:55:33grim, grim subject. But I mean, that was just your basic IQ test that sadly most people failed.
00:55:40If it's perfectly safe, then why would you need immunity from liability? So that's political power,
00:55:51right? So political power is when you escape the consequences of your actions and you face no
00:55:57negative consequences for bad decisions, right? So the government, you know, they had a program called
00:56:03Strip Saddam Hussein of his weapons of mass destruction. You know, we know where they are.
00:56:10They're north, east, south, west, in the sky, under the ground, by the misty mountains and deep in the
00:56:15mines of Moria, they said. Was that Rensfeld? I may be misquoting. But there was a program. He's
00:56:22definitely got weapons of mass destruction. He's about to use them on America. We wouldn't want the
00:56:26smoking gun to be in the form of a mushroom cloud. And so that's what was put into place.
00:56:34Thousands of Americans killed and wounded. Half a million Iraqis slaughtered. And there were no
00:56:41weapons of mass destruction. So who faced any negative consequences for that? So power is the
00:56:47power to escape negative consequences. It is the power to force other people to do your bidding
00:56:53and the power to escape any negative consequences. So, given that, let's compare political power,
00:57:03which is the power to force others to give you resources and obey your will. Do parents have
00:57:09that power? Not with regards to others. Not with regards to others. Not with regards to strangers.
00:57:17Parents don't get the magical ability to charge everyone 2% of the value of their house
00:57:21and throw them in jail if they don't pay it, right? And have that power. Parents, you know,
00:57:26when you become a dad or a mom, you don't get the power to initiate military action and escape any
00:57:34negative consequences for lying an entire region into war, right? So power, political power,
00:57:43which is the ability to initiate the use of force and escape consequences across a wide geographical
00:57:48area, that's not what parents have. So in a free society, parents would not have the right to
00:57:55initiate the use of force against their children because we only get a free society when we finally
00:57:59accept the non-aggression principle and we only accept the non-aggression principle when people
00:58:05who are parents stop initiating the use of force against their children, right? So parents will not
00:58:13have the power to initiate force against their children. That would be strongly discouraged in a free
00:58:17society. And I've got a whole book called The Future, which you can read for more about that.
00:58:21Freedomain.com slash books. I mean, my wife has great power over me and over my happiness. When
00:58:26she smiles, my room and heart lights up. If she scowls and frowns, I am not happy. I need to find out
00:58:34what the issue is, hopefully fix it. And so if she were to wake up tomorrow and say, I've read what the
00:58:43media says, you're a bad guy, I'm leaving you, then I would be very unhappy. And so she has a great deal
00:58:49of power over my happiness. But it's not political power. All relationships involve entwining yourself
00:58:57in other people's lives and being vulnerable to their ups and downs. And surrendering at least some
00:59:01part of your self-evaluation to the evaluation of others. So even if I think I'm doing the right
00:59:08thing, if my wife or my friends or my daughter think I'm doing the wrong thing, then they can
00:59:13make the case. And they should make the case. And of course, they have made the case. That's why I'm
00:59:16back on X. Because my daughter made the case. So people have power over you. But that's not
00:59:26institutional, political, coercive power. And of course, parents who mistreat their children
00:59:32do not automatically escape the consequences. I mean, this is sort of the fight that I had with the
00:59:38world about 20 years ago. I was reading this article. In the UK, one in five families is going
00:59:43through parental alienation or estrangement. And of course, back in the day, when I first put this up
00:59:49as an argument, the world lost its collective mind and called me an evil manipulative cult leader and
00:59:54so on for saying that people didn't have to stay in abusive relationships. Now it's commonplace,
00:59:59it's understood. And of course, as usual, nobody comes back to say, oops, sorry about that. Yeah,
01:00:03you're right. That's all right. So, I mean, it sucks to be first as a whole. That's why I don't
01:00:08really want to do it as much anymore. So, so parents don't get to escape the consequences
01:00:14of abusive parenting because adult children or children as they age don't have to spend time
01:00:20with their parents. Right? And, you know, when you leave home, I mean, I was flying solo in terms
01:00:27of paying bills and not having parents around from the age of 15 onwards. And I assume my father knew
01:00:36and did nothing. It's just the way. Anyway, he's dead now. What does it matter? So parents don't get
01:00:42to escape the consequences of bad parenting and power is the ability to escape consequences of
01:00:48bad decisions. But parents don't get to escape consequences of bad parenting. I mean, it doesn't
01:00:52mean that the negative consequences will automatically be inflicted upon them because adult victims of child
01:00:57abuse can, of course, always continue to see their parents, but they can't force or compel their
01:01:02children to stay in their lives. Right? And I would assume even sort of mid to late teen onwards,
01:01:08you can't lock your kids in the basement. Right? They've got to go out to school. They've got to
01:01:13go out with friends or whatever it is. Right? So it's true that parents have some power and authority
01:01:21over their children. Children bond with their parents, listen to them. We teach them language,
01:01:23language values, and so on. That's all very true. But it's not the same as political power because
01:01:29certainly in the future, it's not based upon the initiation of the use of force. Right? My daughter
01:01:33is not my daughter because I forced someone or stole the kid or something like that. So that's
01:01:39important to differentiate. Not all power is the same. It's like saying, well, you say that power
01:01:48corrupts, but the electricity company delivers power. Right? Now, power is not all the same.
01:01:54All right. So let's see here. Let's get to another good one. What are your thoughts on stoicism?
01:02:06So stoicism, and I'm obviously bastardizing it to some degree, so I'll, you know, because I'm not
01:02:11doing a full deep dive on it. But stoicism as a whole is just putting up with negative things.
01:02:21It's recognizing that there are negative things and we should not rail against that which we cannot
01:02:27change. Now, when it comes to most of human history, there was really not much that could be
01:02:36changed. I mean, if you were born a slave or you were born a serf or, I mean, even if you were born
01:02:42an aristocrat or whatever, there really wasn't much that you could change. The ancient Roman times,
01:02:47which is where stoicism really gained its popularity, I mean, there really wasn't much that you could
01:02:51change in your life. Right? And in England, the social classes, I mean, certainly for most of
01:02:59British history, the social classes were, the social classes were pretty inviolate. Yeah,
01:03:05you've got an iconic accent. You're staying at the bottom. You've got the posh accent. You stay at
01:03:08the top. Don't you know what? So this is sort of the Eliza do little thing, right? So stoicism,
01:03:18which is you can't change your circumstances. If you were born a Russian serf or an English serf or
01:03:23whatever it is, you, that was your life. I mean, you really couldn't escape it or get away. And this
01:03:28is why so many people were desperate to get to the new world, right? Because you could at least
01:03:31escape the iron stratosphere, thermocline layers of social classes and economic classes and so on.
01:03:38I mean, you could, you could be the brilliant son of a poor family and maybe you could go and become
01:03:44a priest or something like that. But you, you really had to, you had very little capacity to change
01:03:51your circumstances throughout almost all of human history. I mean, you're born to some
01:03:58godforsaken Aztec civilization and you don't really have much of a, much of a choice, right?
01:04:04In things. So stoicism in terms of accept what you cannot change made a lot more sense to me
01:04:13when you couldn't change much. However, now, I mean, almost more than at any other time in human
01:04:23history. Now, the world is your oyster. Now, you can change and do almost whatever you want.
01:04:33I mean, I don't want to make it about me, but, you know, I went from dirt poor, welfare,
01:04:40trash planet to, um, you know, something, uh, a smidge more refined and, uh, less trashy, right?
01:04:47So you can do a lot. And the internet has changed that to an almost infinitely greater degree in terms
01:04:56of what you can change and what you can do. So I don't think that stoicism is nearly as valuable
01:05:05as it used to be. And my concern is that when you are unhappy, right, about something and stoicism says,
01:05:13well, the best thing you can do is to accept your unhappiness, to, to stop fighting it, to,
01:05:23to learn to work with and, and not try to fundamentally oppose and change that which makes
01:05:29you unhappy. Again, you're born a slave into ancient Greece or ancient Rome or in the Middle
01:05:34East or whatever. You're going to be born a slave. You're going to live a slave. You're going to die a
01:05:38slave. There's very little that you can do. So you might as well accept it, right? Which is to some
01:05:42degree what happened with Christianity, right? So this is the to be or not to be speech, right?
01:05:49To take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them. Whether it is nobler in their
01:05:55mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune or to take arms against a sea of troubles
01:06:00and by opposing end them, right? To be or not to be, that is the question. Whether it is nobler
01:06:06in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, just to suffer, do we accept
01:06:11bad things or do we fight them? Well, in the modern world, we have a near infinity of
01:06:24opportunities to escape bad situations. In the past, in general, you're born into a screwed
01:06:32up clan as most clans were. You're born into a screwed up clan. Do you have any opportunity
01:06:37to escape it? Nope, you don't. No, you really don't. So now you can go anywhere, do anything.
01:06:48You can go from country to country. You can go from profession to profession. Particularly,
01:06:52there's so much economic opportunity in the world these days that is unlicensed. You don't
01:06:57need to jump through a bunch of bureaucratic hoops in order to do a job. I mean, you can't
01:07:06be a doctor without being licensed, but you can write a program that runs healthcare without
01:07:09being a, quote, licensed programmer, right? So, all of that, to me, makes stoicism of much
01:07:18less value. Stoicism in terms of, I can find ways to be at peace with and endure terrible
01:07:27negative things. Now, there's some things, like you just get some illness out of nowhere,
01:07:32then yeah, then you're going to have to deal with that, and you're going to have to find
01:07:36ways to endure that. You know, like, I mean, I got tinnitus as a result of the radiation
01:07:43treatments in my left ear, and it's been 11 years or whatever it is, right? 10 years.
01:07:49And I mean, I just deal with it. I don't pay much attention to it. I, you know, put music
01:07:55on or something like that, and it's fine. It's not a big deal. And so, I have to be stoic
01:08:01about that. I haven't found any particularly reliable way. It's only in one ear. It's not
01:08:06a big deal. And I haven't found any particular way to prevent or stop that. I've tried a bunch
01:08:14of different things. And so, am I stoic about that? Well, yeah, it's not a huge issue in
01:08:19my life. It's fine. It's no biggie. And I, again, 99% of the day, I don't even pay it
01:08:26any attention. Oh, I can hear it now. So, is that stoic? Sure, yeah. So, there are times
01:08:31where stoicism makes sense, like it is getting completely enraged and frustrated. However,
01:08:36if there is a way to change it that's, you know, reasonably safe and proven, then I would
01:08:42work to change it. But I haven't found anything reliable, and I've talked to a bunch of specialists
01:08:47and so on, right? So, stoicism for things like aging, where you can't do, you know,
01:08:54I mean, there's things you can do about aging, but there's things you can't do about aging,
01:08:57right? So, I, you know, I think I'm pretty good at aging, but I'm still not the same as
01:09:02when I was 20, right? No matter how much exercise or how many supplements or stretching or whatever
01:09:07it is. Like, I'm still pushing 60. I'm almost 60, and I'm not 20, right? That's just not
01:09:12a thing. So, yeah, I mean, the wisdom to accept the things you cannot change, the courage to
01:09:19change you, sorry, the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to
01:09:24change the things I can change, and the wisdom to know the difference, sure. Stoicism leans
01:09:29to me to more, too much towards accept difficulty. So, if you have, you know, brutal parents or
01:09:35whatever, well, you just have to stoically accept it and ride out the wave, and there's a certain
01:09:38grim-jawed nobility in just accepting things, and I think that's largely bullshit. I think
01:09:44that you should not accept corrupt and immoral things and people in your life. I think that
01:09:50you should not accept graciously the inevitable decays of aging, but you should rage, rage against
01:09:56the dying of the light and fight, fight to retain your strength and mobility and all that
01:10:01kind of good stuff. And so, stoicism, I think, leans a little bit too far towards accepting
01:10:08things. Like, if you're drafted into the army and you can't escape and you've got
01:10:11to go fight, you know, then there's very little that you can do other than work to try and
01:10:15survive and accept your circumstances. If you're unjustly thrown in prison, there's
01:10:18no way to escape, then yes, stow it. But the whole point is to prevent those kinds of
01:10:23things, and you do that by fighting like hell as much as possible against the evils of
01:10:29the world as a whole, but do not accept them. So, yes, circumstances, amoral things, things
01:10:34beyond your control, sure, accept those, that makes sense. But I'm concerned that it develops
01:10:40too much, the muscularity of endurance and not the muscularity of fighting against corruption
01:10:48and immorality and escaping those things and escaping circumstances that you had nothing
01:10:52to do with being embedded in.
01:10:54Freedomain.com slash donate to help out the show. I would really, really appreciate that.
01:10:58Help out philosophy at Freedomain.com slash donate. Thanks for all these great questions.
01:11:03I will see you. Well, I don't know when this is going on, but I'll see you. Remember, Wednesday
01:11:09night, 7pm, Friday night, 7pm, Sundays, 11am, are the regularly scheduled live streams. Lots
01:11:14of love, my friends. Take care. Bye.
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