The Cycle of Civilization!

Stefan Molyneux

Stefan Molyneux reflects on the dynamics between men and women within the frameworks of meritocracy and inequality, drawing connections to historical civilizations. He discusss the evolution of societal structures and the psychological motivations that shape our interactions, particularly how the elimination of scarcity fosters a competitive meritocracy that can exacerbate inequality. Stefan explores the contrasting perspectives of men and women regarding success and competition, highlighting the inherent differences in their responses to disparities and their roles as nurturers. Through personal anecdotes, he examines the importance of accountability and the societal implications of our inability to reconcile mistakes. Ultimately, Stefan critiques the cultural trend of seeking forgiveness without true contrition, advocating for a more nuanced understanding of moral responsibility in our communities.  The livestream Stefan mentions is My Experience with CHRISTIANS! Twitter/X Space, you can find it here: https://fdrpodcasts.com/6108/my-experience-with-christians-twitterx-space  SUBSCRIBE TO ME ON X! https://x.com/StefanMolyneux  Follow me on Youtube! https://www.youtube.com/@freedomain1  GET MY NEW BOOK 'PEACEFUL PARENTING', THE INTERACTIVE PEACEFUL PARENTING AI, AND THE FULL AUDIOBOOK! https://peacefulparenting.com/  Join the PREMIUM philosophy community on the web for free!  Subscribers get 12 HOURS on the "Truth About the French Revolution," multiple interactive multi-lingual philosophy AIs trained on thousands of hours of my material - as well as AIs for Real-Time Relationships, Bitcoin, Peaceful Parenting, and Call-In Shows!  You also receive private livestreams, HUNDREDS of exclusive premium shows, early release podcasts, the 22 Part History of Philosophers series and much more!  See you soon! https://freedomain.locals.com/support/promo/UPB2025

Transcript

00:00Hey, everybody, Stefan Molyneux from Freedom Aid. Hope you're doing well. So, this is just

00:04a sort of couple of thoughty thoughts after the live stream today, my experience with

00:10Christians. And I kind of wanted to talk about this sort of cycle that civilizations tend

00:18to get stuck into. It's something that Roman talked about in my novel, The Future, about,

00:26you know, can civilizations survive their own success? And I think it kind of goes something

00:34like this. So, when you get a lot of wealth in society, scarcity is lifted away. Now,

00:41when scarcity is lifted away, then meritocracy, well, you could say that scarcity is only

00:50taken away when meritocracy reigns. When meritocracy reigns, there is significant inequality,

00:56of outcome. When there is significant inequality of outcome, men cheer and women cry. So, when

01:07there is significant inequality of outcomes such as, you know, Bob is the best hunter, well,

01:13that means we get more food, yay. Bob is the best warrior, that means I'm more likely to

01:18survive a battle if I stick by Bob, yay, you know, all of this sort of stuff. So, when inequality

01:26allows for scarce resources to be handed to those with the best ability to multiply them,

01:34inequality allows for resources to get to the best place. The person who's best at farming

01:43gets the most land. So, the inequality ends up becoming greater and greater. Now, it's true that

01:52the poorest person alive today is better off than the richest person, I mean, in the West, right? The

01:57poorest person alive today, or the person with the least income, is better off than the richest person

02:01throughout almost all of human history. But the inequality is painful. And then what happens is,

02:10men tend to cheer excellence, but women tend to cry at excellence, and we can, sorry, at inequality,

02:19right? So, men cheer on excellence, but women cry at inequality. And again, there's nothing negative

02:27towards women and nothing really positive towards men. It's just the evolutionary pressures. Men strive to

02:33excel, and men like those who are really great at stuff. We admire, we look up to, I mean, there may be

02:42some jealousy and all of that, but nonetheless, we tend to admire those who are really excellent,

02:49because it benefits us all. But because women are evolved to take care of little kids, inequality,

02:57or the poor, starving a child, that makes women upset, because they feel that they have failed

03:08to equally distribute the resources that will keep that child alive. So, a woman, of course,

03:16generally has a soft spot for the youngest kid, and that's evolutionarily developed, because the

03:22youngest kid is the one least able to get resources in any kind of meritocracy, and therefore,

03:26the mom has to forcefully intervene to get the kid resources. So, like, 10 years ago, when the

03:33Turkish boy was drowned on the beach, men were like, well, that was stupid to take your kid on a boat

03:43like that. Men blamed the Turkish father. However, women looked at that and felt awful and horrible,

03:52because they felt they had failed to watch a child, and that child drowned on their what, right? They

03:59were supposed to take care, they were down with the kids at the beach, and their kid drowned. That's

04:06how they sort of experienced it, that kind of horror, like, this must never be allowed to happen again,

04:10this is the worst nightmare, blah, blah, blah. Now, you could say, ah, well, but wouldn't men also be

04:15horrified if their child drowned. Well, of course, they would, for sure, but men don't view all children

04:21as their children. Men are, you know, self and other, our tribe, their tribe, and women are less so that

04:28way, because women were generally kept around the circle of protection, they were kept inwardly looking

04:33at their own people. And if there was another tribe that took over, well, they'd just have to, I mean,

04:41maybe even literally just suck it up and find a way to adapt to the new tribe. So, men look and say,

04:49that's a foreign tribe, that's a foreign kid, it's not my kid. Whereas all the women that were around

04:56kids, and all the kids that were around women, saw those kids as their own offspring, as genetically

05:02proximate, and therefore showing a female, a hungry child, programs her to get resources by whatever

05:09means necessary, bullying, yelling, pleading, crying, get that child resources, because women

05:16evolved in such a context that all the children around them were related, were genetically related

05:23to them. And so, when they see a kid, and this is so programmed that, you know, even when, when,

05:31what was it, Sally Struthers used to have these commercials for starving kids in Africa, and,

05:36you know, the kids with the bloated bellies because of the hunger and so on. And even when

05:41it's sort of clear that they're not genetically close to you, say, in the West, that the programming

05:46is still, is still the same. There's a hungry child, get that child resources by whatever means

05:53necessary. You don't worry about the cost, the kid has to eat. I mean, if you've ever been around

06:00a woman who's a really great hostess, and my wife is a fantastic hostess, I mean, the tables have to

06:06groan with food, right? So, as you get more resources as a result of meritocracy, there's

06:12more inequality. As there is more inequality, women's instincts are to close that inequality

06:19by taking resources of the powerful and giving them to the weak, because that's what women do.

06:25They take resources from their husbands and give them to their weakest children. They are

06:30conveyor belts of forceful egalitarianism. And, of course, as I've mentioned before, if the older kids

06:36are, you know, grabbing at and snatching the food from the youngest kids, well, then that's what the

06:45mother has to forcefully intervene to redistribute these things. So, egalitarianism is programmed into

06:53women. And, of course, for women, for mothers, they see the youngest and the most helpless.

06:59It's not their fault. So, my friend, when I was younger, who later died, he and I went dirt biking

07:10around in the winter, and in part because we had no money. And he had these big, giant hockey gloves

07:17that kept his hands beautifully toasty warm. I had no gloves. And my hands were like,

07:23my fingers were like icicles. I could barely close them around the handlebars. It was so cold.

07:29And I would ask him, can I warm my hands up in your gloves? And he said, well, why didn't you bring

07:36your gloves? I mean, gosh, it's almost, well, it's like well over 40 years and close to 50 years ago.

07:46So, it no longer bothers me, as you can imagine. But it's fascinating that this is sort of the male

07:52perspective. That if you screwed up, it's your fault. That's the male perspective. If you threw the spear

08:03and missed the deer, you should have practiced more, you idiot, and you're not going to throw the spear

08:12again, until you can prove that you've practiced. If you failed to study for the test, you failed,

08:20too bad, so sad, etc., etc. Men need a meritocracy, so that we can figure out who gets the spear,

08:29the land, the sword, the shield, whatever, the armor, whatever. So, in a meritocracy, we need it

08:35so that we can give the most resources to the most skilled. But women feel acutely uncomfortable

08:40with meritocracy because they are dealing with children. And let's say you have a three-year-old

08:47and a nine-year-old, a three, a six, and a nine-year-old. The nine-year-old is going to be

08:52able to get all the food you put out, all of it. He's going to snatch it away, and the three-year-old

08:57is going to cry. And the crying is a signal for the mother that the nine-year-old is taking all the

09:05food, and she better go and get food from the nine-year-old and give it to the three-year-old,

09:09or the three-year-old is going to be sick, starving, hungry, dying, whatever, right? Going to be harmful,

09:15if that makes sense. So, that's the problem. Men hunger for meritocracy. Women dislike meritocracy

09:25because, for men, a meritocracy is win-win, other than sort of your ego or whatever it is, right?

09:34But if you look at a band like Queen, I mean, three out of the four were competent singers.

09:41Well, one of the four was a fantastic singer, Freddie Mercury, but the drummer, Roger Taylor,

09:48had this dog whistle voice, Freddie called it, a very high voice, and he had a kind of bluesy,

09:53rocky voice, and Brian May had a sort of soft, warm tenor, but Freddie Mercury had this sort of

10:00wildly powerful and rock and roll voice with an amazing falsetto. So, John Deacon couldn't sing.

10:08So, would they be successful if John Deacon was the front man? No, he was a bass player,

10:13so he was kind of shy, and he couldn't sing. So, John Deacon wins by not singing. So, it's win-win

10:22for everyone in the band The Police. Andy Summers, the guitarist, was a wretched songwriter.

10:31He wrote the song Mother, which is a giant ass pimple on the glorious album Synchronicity.

10:37Everybody, that song was so bad, and so discordant and atonal, that song was so bad that everyone I

10:46knew immediately got, bought Synchronicity and bought a tape deck and recorded the album onto

10:55the tape deck while skipping that song. It was so, and it probably had a lot to do with

10:58why they broke up, is that that song was just wretched. Sting actually buried the audio tape

11:05for Behind My Camel, and they ended up rescuing it and putting it out, and it actually is pretty

11:09good. Now, Stuart Copeland, the drummer, was also a pretty terrible songwriter.

11:16I don't want to be rich. I want to be rich. I don't want to work in a ditch. I mean, he's terrible.

11:21He had a solo project called Clark Kent with the song, so just ass, just absolute ass.

11:26Miss Gredenko is a pretty good song. I actually really, really like, I was actually just listening

11:31it today. The song, um, I don't touch my clothes ten times before I take you on a date. I get the

11:38heebie-jeebies, my panic makes me late. Does everyone stare this way at you? Does everyone

11:46stare? Does everyone stare? From Riquetta de Blanc. Pretty good song. But he was not a very good

11:51songwriter. But Sting was a great songwriter, so the reason that they were all successful

11:56was that they let Sting's songs dominate the records, because Sting writes very good songs

12:02and the other two don't. It's a win-win. And Sting, also, a really good lyricist. Really

12:09good, let me just listen to, um, Under the docks I sail over the reefs of moonshine. Why

12:16should I cry for you? Lovely, lovely song. I think it's about the death of his father. So,

12:21that's meritocracy. Win-win. Everybody wins if the best hunter gets the spear. Now, for

12:29women, though, meritocracy, let's look at the meritocracy of prettiness, or charm, or good

12:35humor, or just general levels of attractiveness. So, prettiness is to attractiveness as IQ is

12:41to G. So, for women, a meritocracy means the other woman gets the great guy and you don't.

12:46The other woman gets the tall, dark, and handsome fellow, and you get the short, bald, and pudgy

12:50fellow. Twin-lose. Now, you could say, of course, well, the tribe, overall, blah, blah, blah,

12:56but that's intergenerational. That's not immediate, right? So, when you get a free market, you get

13:01the meritocracy. The meritocracy allows men to, allows society to allocate resources in a sort

13:07of free market way to the most competent, which guarantees an increase in general wealth,

13:12and everybody wins. Even those who lose, win, right? Just as John Deacon loses out to Freddie Mercury

13:20as the lead singer, and the band Queen wins. Not just a great singer, but a great front man,

13:26and all that kind of stuff as well. So, men like meritocracy, men hunger for meritocracy, men admire

13:32excellence. And women are anxious or negative around meritocracy because they generally lose

13:41for their lifetimes the quality man to the more attractive woman, and they have to enforce

13:47anti-meritocracy, and they have to say, I have to violently intervene to get resources to those who

13:54are the least competent through no fault of their own, right? I mean, the three-year-old is not least

14:00competent. It's not less competent than the nine-year-old. He just happens to be born later.

14:07I mean, the sort of the eternal cry of the younger sibling is like, well, you're stronger,

14:11faster, taller, you get to stay up later, you get more pocket money, you hit puberty sooner,

14:16and you win games and so on. And the fact that a lot of elder siblings get as smug and feel superior

14:25for a mere accident of birth, I mean, it really is pretty pathetic, right? It really is.

14:31Pretty pathetic. It's like a man preening himself on being taller and stronger than women as a whole.

14:39It's like, that's just an accident of birth, bro. Certainly the height, you could say work out or

14:44whatever, right? But even if men and women work out the same, men will be much stronger.

14:49So, the reason I'm sort of going over this stuff, a little bit new, some of it you may have heard

14:55before, but the reason I'm going over all of this is because the purpose of conscience

15:01is to avoid the charge of hypocrisy. You can, like, for somebody who is verbally very aggressive

15:11and then when somebody pushes back against them, they sort of cry or they get upset or huffy or

15:17whatever it is. Oh, you can dish it out, but you can't take it. And one of the reasons why we want

15:22to avoid being hypocrites is it means that our high status is very tremulous. Our high status,

15:31right? So, if you're verbally aggressive and then somebody makes fun of you and you

15:36you sort of lie, you get upset and you get mad, you get huffy and you storm out and so on,

15:44then your status goes from higher to lower very quickly. In the same way that if you're very

15:49physically aggressive, you kind of go up and you throw chest at someone and then, you know,

15:54they smack you across the face and then you curl into a ball and cry. You go from higher status to

15:59lower status immediately. So, you don't want to leave your flank open by hypocrisy.

16:05A man who rails against infidelity in another man's girlfriend who then turns out to be cheating

16:13himself goes from a moralist to a hypocrite, incredibly low status, very quickly. It is an

16:19exposure. It is a weakness by which you can be attacked if you are a hypocrite. It's just one

16:25of the many reasons why we have a conscience to avoid that flank attack of hypocrisy. So, when people

16:32do wrong, it is humiliating to have to apologize. I remember in a business meeting, I was just kind

16:41of on autopilot doing my sales pitch and I promoted the services of a competitor, right? So, we had a

16:50relationship with ABC Company. I was with XYZ Company and I talked about ABC Company. If using

16:56our software gave a 40% reduction in a service, if you used our software, which was not also matched

17:02by the XYZ Company and it did not cross my mind. I was kind of on autopilot. I was tired, whatever,

17:09right? And then the guy railed me out after the meeting and said, we don't come out to these meetings

17:16so that you can promote our competitors' products. And he was really mad. He called the CEO and,

17:22you know, he was right. He was right. I was careless, I was thoughtless, and I was on autopilot.

17:30But it was humiliating and I was mad. And of course, you know, because I was being yelled at or I was

17:34being chewed out. And I love that. I mean, it's not a great movie in Glorious Bastards, but when Brad Pitt's

17:40character is like, I've been chewed out before, it just takes it, you know, just the way it is, not a big deal.

17:46But it was unpleasant. And I, of course, felt humiliated. And therefore, I wished to find a

17:52way in which I was actually in the right. And this other person, gosh, I still remember his name.

17:58This other person was unreasonable, right? So when you're in the wrong, when you've done something

18:02wrong, I remember when I was getting a million and a half dollars worth of raises from my employees,

18:07I made a mistake. And I made a mistake in my calculations. And they ended up being $10,000.

18:16Off. I needed $10,000 more to make to fulfill the promises I'd make to my employees. And I said,

18:23and now you say $10,000 out of $1.5 million, not a huge amount. But 1.501. Anyway, it's a lot of

18:30money. So what is that? It's not much 10%. 1%. Sorry, 1%. So 1% calculation on a million dollars. I mean,

18:39that's not massive, but it's also $10,000, which is a lot of money. So I went to the board and I said,

18:45I messed up. Here's how I messed up. I really need this $10,000. I did make my promises to my

18:50employees. And if this is an issue, please take it out of my salary. And I will give it to the

18:57employees because I did make that commitment. And fortunately, they said, it's fine. No big deal.

19:03And because I'd already made the case about how much we were going to lose if we didn't raise

19:07people's pay. But I was embarrassed at having made that kind of mistake. And of course, if you've

19:14been operating at any level in the business world or just about any job, everybody makes mistakes,

19:19right? Everybody has these errors and these issues. So it's humiliating to have to apologize. It's

19:26humiliating to be in the wrong. And when you apologize, if you are around healthy people,

19:34then they appreciate the apology and they respect you more for it. If you're around dysfunctional

19:39people, they will grind your gears. They will bust your balls. They will break your balls. They will

19:46hold it over you forever and ever. Amen, because you now have power over them, which is why it's so hard

19:51for so many people to apologize. You know, I've always made a point of if I've done something

19:58that's embarrassed or done something that's been annoying or negative towards my daughter,

20:01that I'll apologize. And one of the reasons I do that is, A, is the right thing to do? And B,

20:05I want her to see that you can apologize and be fine. And then when she is in the wrong,

20:12she generally apologizes and it's no big deal. And I say, thanks, we have a hug. And I don't think of

20:20it any further. So, it's humiliating. So, those who are around dysfunctional people don't want to

20:28apologize. So, then, of course, what happens is if you wrong someone, then they are annoyed and

20:36hurt and upset. Or if you do something negative or harmful or bad to someone, they're hurt, they're

20:41upset. And then you should apologize. You should earn their forgiveness. However, if you have power

20:50over someone, what you do is you don't earn forgiveness, but you demand it anyway. So, what you

20:57do is you gaslight and you postpone and you delay the conversation until a week or two later. And then

21:03you say, what, are you still bothered by that? God, let it go. It was like two weeks ago. God,

21:08it'd be ridiculous, right? You humiliate them for still being stuck on this issue. You've got to let

21:13it go. You've got to move on, forgive and forget. Put it in the past, put it behind us, move on.

21:18Like, you just humiliate people for daring to bring it up, right? That's one way that you

21:25get them to no longer request or require an apology. The second thing, of course, is you wait

21:31until, or again, you delay these conversations until it has become so in the past that you have

21:40plausible deniability. Oh, that didn't happen. It didn't happen in the way that you think it did.

21:43I have a different memory of the events. Sort of Justin Trudeau's famous statement, I'm sure,

21:47from his lawyer. I have a different memory of the events, not you were lying or you were wrong.

21:52And so there's a huge market for getting the benefits of an apology without actually having

21:57to go through the humiliating process of apologizing. And because churches are the major machinery by

22:05which apologies are affected, then churches have become an epicenter for the rewards of forgiveness

22:15without the pain of contrition, right? And I think that's one of the reasons why it has become this.

22:25And of course, the more that you can get people to demand forgiveness without contrition,

22:30then the less negative impact bad behavior has. And therefore, the more bad behavior there is,

22:37and therefore, the greater demand for apologies without contrition, and therefore, the worse the

22:42behavior, and therefore, the greater the demand. And I think that's kind of the vortex of the whirlpool

22:46that we're stuck in now. Hope that helps. Freedomand.com. Thanks a mil. I will talk to you soon. Bye.

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