The Science of VIRTUE! Listener Question

Stefan Molyneux

Philosopher Stefan Molyneux examines the philosophical implications of postmodernism, particularly its rejection of objective truth and the resulting moral relativism. He discusses the concept of "hallucination" in artificial intelligence as a metaphor for balancing creativity and utility. By critiquing the decline of rational thought, Stefan highlights its impact on contemporary societal debates, especially regarding race and gender. He warns that without universal moral principles and rational discourse, society risks falling into chaos, emphasizing the need for a return to objective standards.  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

00:00All right. Great questions from X. What are some of the important epistemological and other

00:05lessons we learned from the successes and failures of the postmodern age?

00:10So, the question of hallucination, I guess, has been looming fairly strongly in philosophical

00:16discourse, obviously coming out of the issues with AIs, right? So, AIs, if you make them

00:25not hallucinate at all, then they're not creative at all. If you make them hallucinate too much,

00:29then they become less useful. So, it's kind of an Aristotelian mean. So, postmodernism is

00:37that there's no such thing as objective truth. There is only vengeful morality. That's

00:45postmodernism. There's no such thing as objective truth. There is only absolute and vengeful morality,

00:53morality as a tool of punishment. Superstition is related to making morals absolute and unquestionable

01:05while making reality subjective and open to endless interpretation. There's no such thing

01:12as objective reality. There is only punitive morality. So, if you have some real primitive

01:17tribe, they don't believe in objective reality, they use peyote, everything's the dream of the

01:23catfish or whatever nonsense you've got going on. But if you disobey the witch doctor or the

01:29tribal leader, then you are put to death, right? So, that's an important thing to understand that

01:36postmodernism is a return to primitivism. It is where there is no possibility of truly understanding

01:46objective reality. There is only the infliction of punitive morality. So, the typical example which

01:54would make the most sense for most people is there's no such thing as truth, but racists must

02:00be deplatformed. There's no such thing as reality, but sexists must be destroyed. And it has to do,

02:09of course, that once you let go of objective morality, then you let go of rationality and

02:16universality and the desire for reciprocity, the need for reciprocity. In other words, it's sort of

02:24the turnabout is fair play kind of a question. What's good for the goose is good for the gander and so

02:30on, right? So, this is the typical thing where racism is bad, white privilege is real.

02:35Racism is bad, white fragility is real. Like, so, this is just madly contradictory, right? Madly

02:43contradictory. I mean, it is literally saying that racism is the worst thing and it is then used to

02:49justify horribly racist statements, right? So, the postmodern goal is to eliminate the need for

03:00rational consistency with regards to ethical statements because there's no such thing as

03:06objective truth, objective reason. And what that means is that you can say any old absolute grab

03:13bag of Marxist race or class baiting or gender baiting claptrap and you cannot be brought up short

03:20because of inconsistency. Postmodernism is absolutely essential for propaganda. Because

03:29propaganda, how do we oppose propaganda? We oppose propaganda through consistent morality, the

03:35requirement that moral statements go through some sort of process of being evaluated in the

03:41Socratic sense, right? Justice, truth, virtue, integrity, that these all be subjected to the

03:49Socratic method in order to root out inconsistencies and contradictions and to make sure that we arrive

03:53at a universal standard of virtue. Well, that's all denied. If you want to use punitive, tribalistic,

04:02anti-rational morality to reward your friends and punish your enemies, you must remove morality

04:07from the realm of reason and evidence. Once you have removed morality from the realm of reason and

04:14evidence, then you can use it as a weapon because then you are no longer brought up short by, you

04:21know, accusations of hypocrisy, like I'm doing this on X, right? So, on X, if somebody talks about

04:27white supremacy, white patriarchy, white fragility, whatever it is, right? Then, you know, the simple

04:34question is, show me which other race or ethnicity you have criticized for being supremacist or

04:42fragile or nationalistic or anything like that. And if it's only white people that you have attacked

04:49or accused of any of this, then you're just a bigot, right? You're just a racist because you only

04:54criticize white people for characteristics that are, you know, you can argue, yeah, they're negative,

05:01right? I think racial supremacy is a horrible idea and evil because it requires government force and

05:09it requires that one race violently rule over another. It's horrendous. But white people generally

05:16aren't arguing for that, at least haven't for a long time. But there are certainly other races who

05:20believe that they are the best and they are the supreme and they are the greatest and whatever it

05:24is, right? So, if you are only criticizing white people for that, then you're just a racist, right?

05:28So, to have a requirement of rational consistency in your ethics means that propaganda can't work,

05:40right? And so, in order to have propaganda win, you have to uncouple and separate morality from

05:48rationality. And you have to denigrate rationality in order to create a one-sided vengeful pseudo-morality

05:57that is used to reward your friends and punish your enemies. So, basically, in the way this works

06:04in the West is that if you have any criticisms of any group that votes for the left, right? Women,

06:13often visible minorities, gays, and so on, and Muslims. So, if you have any criticism of any group

06:23that votes for the left, well, then you have these negative labels attached. You're sexist,

06:29Islamophobic, homophobic, racist, whatever, right? And then you're just attacked and punished to make

06:35sure that nobody criticizes the people who vote for the left. And then that means that the people

06:40who vote for the left can be assured of being shielded from any criticism. And then if you do

06:47criticize the left, then you will have one of these negative labels attached to you and, you know,

06:54you will try to destroy your income and your, well, sometimes your freedom, sometimes your life,

07:00right? So, post-modernism is the act of shifting absolutism from empiricism, science, reason,

07:10and evidence and philosophy towards vengeful pseudo-morality used to, again, punish enemies

07:18and reward friends. That's, that's the, that's the program. So, the way that you do this is you say

07:26reality is subjective. Reality is subjective. And then, through that process, you charge up

07:35emotional energy. Because, I mean, emotions are subjective to a large degree, right? I'm not

07:41talking physical pain, but, you know, it's not quite, there is nothing good or bad, but thinking

07:45makes it so, like, as Hamlet says. But if you say reality is subjective, then nobody can oppose your

07:52feelings by saying that's not true, because you feel it. And because you feel it, it becomes true,

08:01and there's nothing to compare your feelings to with regards to objective, empirical, rational

08:08reality, right? There's nothing that you can compare your feelings to and find your feelings to be

08:13invalid. So, what this has done is this has diminished, or if not in many places erased, eradicated,

08:25our capacity to think in terms of reason and evidence, rationality and objectivity.

08:33And it has cast us into a solipsistic sea of self-regard, where the only thing that matters

08:39is our feelings, and we have no capacity or even responsibility to compare our feelings to anything

08:45empirical or rational, right? So, I mean, the typical example would be racism is bad, okay? Racism is bad.

08:53Well, what is racism? That's having a negative view of another race. Okay, well, doesn't white

08:59fragility, white patriarchy, white nationalism, white supremacy, if you're only applying it to whites,

09:05then isn't that, by definition, racist? Well, no, but you see, that would be to say that you have to

09:14take rational standards and apply them to your beliefs. But you can't weaponize moral beliefs

09:20beliefs that are subject to the demands and strictures of the Socratic method and of reason

09:25and evidence. You can't weaponize them. And if you can't weaponize morality, then you lose a

09:32foundational tool of dominance, attack, subjugation, and again, sorry to repeat myself so often,

09:38punishing your enemies and rewarding your friends. Now, if you look at sort of the transition from the

09:441950s to the 1960s, the 1950s was still running on the momentum of earlier rationality, but,

09:53and this is partly a psyop and partly just the cynicism that came out of the First and Second

09:56World Wars, but if you look at things in America, you saw, along with the dissolution of reason and

10:05evidence, right, the dialing up of the hallucinations, right? Hallucinations become real. Obviously,

10:10an AI cannot itself detect the difference between what is real and what is a hallucination, otherwise

10:16it wouldn't do it, right? Because you'd say, don't do hallucinations. But when reality becomes

10:23subjective, or is perceived or is processed as subjective, then instincts, feelings, emotions,

10:33hormones sometimes become all-powerful. They are no longer restrained by rationality. Now, when thoughts,

10:45feelings, instincts, emotions, and hormones are no longer restrained by rationality, then you get an

10:52explosion of creativity. I've talked about this with regards to my own novels. Don't want to make this

10:57about me, but it's if you sort of followed this conversation. This is the tension that I have

11:03in my own novels, which is the characters want to do their own thing, but I want them to pursue or

11:12illustrate some sort of moral purpose. They need to serve the moral purpose of the story. And I'm

11:20certainly willing, of course, to change things. As I mentioned in a call-in show, sorry if this is

11:27spoilers, if you haven't read Dissolution yet, but when I have a redemption arc that I'm hoping for

11:34with a particular character, it's not really a spoiler, I won't mention which character,

11:39but I have a redemption arc in that I hope a character is going to end up well, and then that

11:43character just does not end up well. I'm certainly willing to have that happen, but I can't have an evil

11:52character not have problems, and I can't have a good character lose. That's like Apple, like in movies

12:00you're allowed to show them people using Apple products as long as they're not the bad guys.

12:04So if I were to be purely creative, then I would take my hand off the rudder, so to speak,

12:12and I would let, you know, hey man, sometimes the evil guys flourish in this world, and sometimes the

12:19good guys die like dogs, like that poem I wrote when I was a teenager. Two men in the wood, one bad,

12:24one good, are both eaten by wolves. Wolves don't taste virtue or vice in any particular way. So the

12:32more creative you are, the less rational your story is, and you started to see lots of really creative

12:38stuff, and this is particularly true in the realm of music, where you saw really creative stuff

12:46coming out. It also happened in the realm of a theater, and I remember my professor, I remember

12:53his name, Dr. Barry Olshin at Glendon College of York University back, Lordy, 30 plus years ago. Dr.

13:04Barry Olshin was handing out these, because he knew I was interested in theater and so on,

13:12because I was always cast as the lead in these plays, but he was handing out these books,

13:20and one of the books that he handed out was a sort of naked theater experiment that was going on.

13:27In hindsight, it could be argued that that was not the most appropriate thing. I remember he

13:33referred to my writing as Stefan-esque, and he said, it's going to be tough to come up with a

13:38name for your style of writing, Stefan-esque, and I remember also we were supposed to have read

13:43Billy Budd, which I found really brutal to get through, and I hadn't finished it, but we're

13:47supposed to have this discussion. Nobody had anything to say, and he's like, has anyone here

13:52actually read? How many people here have actually finished the story? And I think only about 20% of

13:57people put their hands up, and he just got up and left the room, and rightly so. Like, no,

14:02no complaints about that. But in terms of the creativity that was going on with the collapse

14:11of reason and evidence, as a standard, you get a lot of creativity, and then you get a lot of chaos.

14:20So you get this massive, like, Vesuvius-like eruption of creativity, because rational restraints

14:26have been removed. And of course, if you look at creativity entirely bound in and controlled by

14:33rational restraints, you would look at something like The Fountainhead, or in particular, Atlas

14:38Shrugged. Or if you look at the first sort of 60 pages of Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky,

14:45you'll see, of course, that it is very creative. It's dreams and visions and fantasies and memories

14:50of a child on the horse and blah, blah, blah. But it is pretty, pretty chaotic, because he was

14:55dictating the book at that point. For me, a more tightly controlled book, like Almost, which is a

15:01traditional story, was there was a lot of creativity, a fair amount of creativity in it. I particularly

15:08enjoyed and found quite vivid the scene called The Battle of the Gardens. But some creativity,

15:14but very much constrained into the arc of a traditional story, The God of Atheists, which

15:21are much more chaotic lists and sort of postmodernist stuff. And the present is a sort of standard

15:28book. And the future was more creative, because of course, I had a lot of options, given that I was

15:35writing about a completely fictional world of the future. So you'll get a lot of creativity.

15:41creativity. And it's like taking drugs, you'll get a lot of creativity, but it comes at the expense

15:48of sustainability of that creativity. And that is a sort of foundational challenge that you let go of

15:57reason and evidence like you do every night, and your dreams are very creative. But if you stayed in

16:01the dreams, you'd go mad, right? And this is why a lot of people who use drugs end up with a lot of

16:10creativity, but it tends to be unsustainable. And you kind of look at Freddie Mercury's songwriting.

16:17I don't think Brian May did drugs, but I think Freddie Mercury was quite into drugs, I think

16:22cocaine in particular, a lot of creativity. But you know, you go from it's a long fall from

16:27Bohemian Rhapsody, and somebody to love to Delilah, right? There's a pretty love song to his cats.

16:34It's a pretty, pretty long fall from grace, as far as all of that stuff goes.

16:40So, what happened was, there was a wild amount of creativity in the dark and early middle ages,

16:48and you can see this from some of the art and so on, and very sort of florid creativity. Of course,

16:54most of it has been lost. Then the age of reason comes along, and you start to get real perspective

17:00in art. And you have to be anatomically correct, right? You can't just paint stuff, right? You're

17:08sort of famous, if a finger is lifted, then one muscle shows up in the forearm, and you can see

17:13Michelangelo has actually carved that kind of stuff into his carvings. And you've got painters who

17:22dissected cadavers in order to figure out and find out how the human body worked so that they could be

17:32more accurate in what they painted. So, Angers and Caravaggio and so on. And then you sort of

17:36contrast all of that. And it had something to do with the rise of photography, but it wasn't just that.

17:41The dedication to empirical and universal objectivity and rationality, that carries over from a previous

17:50generation, because that's how people are raised. But their creativity can come very quickly in the

17:54next generation. There's a leapfrog. So, the creativity erupts from the people who let go of

18:01reason and evidence, and then through that creativity, they dissolve other people's focus on reason and

18:07evidence. Art was supposed to mean something. And then, of course, the postmodern artists,

18:14all the way from the nonsense data from the 1920s through the anti-rationalists of the 30s,

18:20and then the non-representational artists of the 40s, and then, of course, the crazy stuff that came

18:28out of Andy Warhol, where, you know, a soup can is a worthy subject of a painting. And that guy was a

18:36real creep, by the way. Like, it's just an absolute creep. So, and then, after there's too much chaos

18:43and madness in art, people have to, the pendulum kind of swings, and the sort of auto-correction of

18:49the collective unconscious begins to try and return more to sort of reason and evidence, like it's

18:53gone too far, right? So, from an epistemological standpoint, sort of study of the nature of knowledge,

19:00the goal of weaponizing morality requires detaching the human mind from reason and evidence,

19:06which does kick up a huge amount of creativity, and then the creativity then spreads itself through

19:14art. The sort of dissolution from reason and evidence spreads itself through art, and then

19:20reality dissolves in the mind of the general consciousness because everything has become

19:26subjective. And a lot of this has to do with masculine and feminine perspectives.

19:31The fact that so many objective rational men got wiped out in Europe in the First and Second World

19:36Wars had a lot to do with how subversive and anti-real, anti-rational art began to flourish and

19:48spread. The sort of common sense builders and maintainers of the empire and the scientists and the

19:55rationalists and so on, they all got wiped out. And as they got wiped out, then the subjectivists and

20:05the relativists, who tended to survive wars, because they tend to focus more on subjective feelings,

20:12such as fear and cowardice, rather than objective obligations like duty and responsibility and, you know,

20:20fighting for king and country and all that kind of stuff. So, those people get wiped out.

20:24I mean, wars are a fantastic way for the subversives to wipe out the objective people because the

20:33objective people take their sort of responsibilities and their culture and their country and their king

20:37and their duties and their obligations very seriously. And so, it's a great way for physically

20:43weak subversives to wipe out the stronger alphas is to engage them in a war, knowing that the physically

20:49weak are less likely to be sent to the front to fight and are more likely to work in propaganda

20:54and supply chain management and all that other sort of stuff where a stronger mind and a weaker body

21:00are more important. So, war is not a war against a foreign enemy. War is a war against the strong,

21:08superior physically and mentally objective in your society. The war is against the strong,

21:17not against the enemy. The enemy is a proxy by which the local weaklings destroy the strong.

21:24And, of course, we see this happen repeatedly over the course of history and certainly over the

21:29course of the 20th century. The war that was waged against objective reason and the competent and the

21:34dutiful and the rational was endless. Hundreds and hundreds of millions of the more responsible

21:41are destroyed. Because the more responsible acts from a sense of honor and universal ethics and the

21:50stiff uplip of the British, right? The idea that it's okay to have feelings, it's not too bad to have

21:56feelings, but you must master your feelings and you cannot run your life according to your feelings

22:04and you have to subjugate or sublimate your feelings to rational objectives and so on, right? The border

22:10between sort of reason and emotion. And it is the most dutiful and the most objective who get fed into the

22:17furnace of war by the weaker and more subjective. And the weaker and more subjective, you know,

22:23almost all wars start on lies, right? And so the truthful and the honorable are not very good at

22:30lying, bad at lying. They don't want to lie. It's dishonorable and wrong and it's a sort of element

22:35of weakness. And so it is the weak who start the wars, the weak and the liars and the subjective

22:41who start the wars and then they feed into the furnace of war, the strong, the rational and the

22:47objective. So because if you're strong and rational and objective, like I still have trouble with this

22:53as a whole, like I realize I'm putting myself into some pretty elevated company here, but I remember

23:01and I still have trouble with this, with the sort of basic reality of saying to someone,

23:06uh, but it's false, right? This is the, uh, the, the fine hoax, right? The fine people hoax and all

23:12of the other hoaxes that sort of coalescent. And, uh, they, they float around, uh, Trump. And of

23:18course we're talking about the, the, the Gulf war, uh, the, the, uh, second Gulf war, the invasion of

23:24Iraq in 2003, that people like, it's not true. And, and it's so weird to me that people can just not

23:32care if things are true or not. Honestly, I find this like, it's like a foreign species to me. It

23:38is completely unfathomable to me to not care whether something is true or not. Like, like the,

23:45the fine people hoax, right? Oh, Trump called the Nazis fine people, blah, blah, blah. That's not

23:50true. And people don't care and they don't care. And that's because they're told to hate someone

23:56and their hatred is moral. And the only thing that matters is that the moral is good. You're

24:02taught to hate someone. Hatred of Trump is the good. And you don't need to check with anything

24:06real because the only thing that matters is the quote virtue of your legitimized and socially

24:12approved hatred. That's the only thing that matters. Facts don't matter. Only feelings which

24:18are malleable and easily programmed, right? You can't program facts, right? You can't, there's no

24:23propaganda that says two and two make five. I mean, there's torture, I guess, in the O'Brien scene

24:27with Winston Smith at the end of 1984, but that's an attack upon rational consciousness, right? That

24:36the truth and facts and empirical reality are what the party says it is. If the party says two and two

24:45make five and four simultaneously, you must believe it. And that is the 19th century consciousness

24:53struggling against 20th century totalitarianism. And of course, it's a humiliation ritual to force

24:58someone to lie, to force people to say things. I mean, endless examples of this throughout the

25:06modern world that you're just forced to say things that are just blatantly not true. But if you don't

25:11say them, then you'll get fucked up, right? People will just fuck you up in some horrible manner,

25:18get you fired, life destroyed, you know, your wife will leave you, whatever, right?

25:23People will just fuck you up, attack you and harm you and you might be thrown in jail, right?

25:28And so the humiliation ritual, that is how the weak overpower the strong is they disconnect morality

25:33from rational examination. You cannot rationally examine reality and therefore you cannot rationally

25:40examine morals. If reality is beyond reason, how dare you bring reason to my morals? And therefore you

25:50get full and free play to do whatever you want with morals and you don't at all have to worry about

25:59being rationally examined for inconsistencies and anti-logic, right? I mean, bigotry and hiring is

26:06really bad, so we're not going to hire whites. It's like, that's like, it's so obvious, but they don't

26:12care because just it's become about power. You turn, by disconnecting the human mind from objective

26:19reality, you turn morality into a tool of power because it no longer has to be consistent. It no

26:26longer has to be objective. It can no longer be questioned according to rational standards.

26:30To turn morality into a tool of power, which is, you know, I mean, in more extremist religions,

26:38if you don't repeat the catechisms, if you don't affirm, right, then you're a heretic and

26:44you have to be burnt at the stake or punished or something like that. So all of that is really

26:55powerful in society, right? And one of the things that made morality more objective was people focusing

27:01on objective reality, right? So with the sort of scientific revolution starting from Francis Bacon

27:09onwards in the early 16th century, then you have all of this focus to sort of subjugate the human mind

27:20and the human impulses to reason and evidence and objectivity and science, right? So in superstition

27:27or in extreme religiosity, any conflict between the idea and reality, you must rule in favor of the

27:39concept, right? So there is a God. Where do we find him in reality? Well, we can't find him in reality

27:45and God is a self-contradictory entity, all-powerful, all-knowing. We've gone over that a million times

27:52before. But so since the idea exists in the mind but cannot be validated in reality, then it is the

28:00mind that wins. It is the idea in the mind that wins against the rules of reason in reality and reason

28:06and empiricism, right? So starting in the 16th century, this came out of the productivity gains

28:16of the quattrocento, as they call it, the 14th century. The productivity gains bringing science

28:22to bear on matters of agriculture produced such staggering gains in crop productivity that the

28:30science of agriculture was so powerful that it gave credence to the scientific method. The scientific

28:38method came out of the unbelievable, like 10, 15, 20 times, times, not percent, times gains in

28:46productivity from the agricultural revolution. And so when you have that kind of immense productivity

28:53gain, you have to say, okay, well, the methodology that produced this is really great and the

28:57methodology that produced this was empirical testing and the scientific method in an instinctual

29:02way pursued by people who had a kind of green thumb and some theory, of course, and all of that

29:06and advances in sort of chemistry, manure, agricultural sciences, winter crops, turnips, blah, blah,

29:12crop rotation, all that kind of stuff. So from the immense productivity gains of the 14th century in

29:20agriculture, which didn't always, of course, occur in the same place at the same time, sorry,

29:27that's kind of obvious to say, but then people were like, wow, science is really cool. Like I'm

29:31literally alive because of science. My children are living because of science. So let's see if we can

29:36codify what the farmers are doing. And that's where a lot of the scientific method came out of,

29:39or at least one of the reasons why it's spread, is that once you have a proof, like, holy crap,

29:44we have 10 times the food production that we used to have by following reason and evidence.

29:50So let's try and codify reason and evidence and see what other good things it can bring us. And

29:54that's where the scientific method comes from. And once people saw the immense productivity gains of

29:59the scientific method, and then of the free market and so on, then the scientific method and the free

30:08market are both based upon universality. One is the universality of empiricism, and that in any

30:16conflict between ideas and tangible reality, tangible reality wins. So the subjugation of the mind to

30:25universal principles produced massive productivity gains and advancements in the scientific realm.

30:31You know, they figured out the heliocentric, sun-centered model of the solar system, and

30:36just, I mean, so many, the scientific explosion that came out of the Baconian method is almost without

30:43end. Well, certainly, so far. And once universalism in the scientific sense was recognized as so incredibly

30:51valuable and productive, then universalism in a moral sense became important, and universalism in a moral

30:58sense eliminates slavery. Because slavery is having two moral categories, those who own themselves, and those

31:03who own others. And you cannot own yourself and be owned by others at the same time. It's like saying, you and I

31:09both own this car. At the same time, you and I can both drive this car in different directions at the same

31:14time. You and I, because if I own the car, I can drive the car in the direction that I like and want. If I don't own the

31:20car, I can't even get into it legally, right? Unless somebody gives me permission. But to say a man owns

31:26himself and is also owned by others means that he can self-direct his action at the same time as

31:30somebody else can direct his action. Which is, again, like saying that you and I can both own the

31:34same car and drive in different directions at the same time. So, empirical and rational impossibility,

31:39self-contradiction. And so, when we accepted the universal principles of matter and energy, this gave

31:46us massive productivity improvements in agriculture, led to the scientific method. The scientific method

31:51led to the value of universality. The value of universality leads to universal human rights,

31:58the end of slavery. And that leads to the universal goal of property rights and the non-aggression

32:05principle, which was the foundation of the modern free market. All of which was very cool and is a

32:13beautiful, beautiful thing. But then, of course, those who are good at universality flourish and those

32:18who are bad at universality don't flourish. I mean, they do flourish, but only as a shadow cast by

32:24those who are good at universality. So, the objective, which is largely the male flourish and

32:29the subjective, which is largely the female or matriarchal societies, do worse. And then you get

32:35a counter-attack. And the counter-attack is, we're going to break down rational standards, which is going

32:40to unleash creativity, which is going to have everyone humming anti-rational songs and everyone enjoying

32:46anti-rational art. And we're going to have naked people on stage to turn everyone on.

32:52And that way, we will spread anti-rationality that way. And then we're going to gain control of the

32:57government. And then we're going to only fund anti-rational art. And, you know, we need to

33:02launder a lot of money through art. So, we're going to buy a bunch of crap and have it valued and give

33:07it to charity and make our tax receipts that way. And so, there's a counter-attack.

33:12And that counter-attack usually takes down the civilization as a whole, a civilization based on

33:17reason, universality, and a meritocracy, right? A meritocracy is when people win according to

33:23objective rules. The objective rules, like, take something as simple as the objective rule of a

33:28hundred-meter race, right? So, everyone starts at the same place, they run as fast as they can,

33:33and it's objective. Who crosses the finish line first, right? So, that's a meritocracy.

33:38But a meritocracy doesn't benefit losers. Losers want subjectivity and manipulation.

33:45Losers want to whine and complain and say, well, I never got a chance to train, so I should be able

33:48to start 10 meters further ahead than the other guy, and so on, right? And you can, like, see these

33:53memes, like the white guy who has the clear path, and then the black woman who's got to jump over

33:57barbed wire, and the swinging axes, and all this kind of stuff. It's not fair, right? So, the society,

34:04as the West is really founded upon a meritocracy, cannot, the people who are bad, right? Like,

34:09if you're born poor and you become wealthy, then you tend to be conservative. If you're born wealthy

34:14and end up poor, you tend to be a socialist or communist, at the regression to the mean stuff.

34:20And so, the counterattack that comes out of society's losers, and those who lose when there's

34:26a meritocracy, they then want to put their thumb on the scale and change things, right? If the person

34:32who wins the 100-meter race gets $10,000, then people who are going to, they know they're going

34:39to lose the game, means they want to change the rules, and they want to make things subjective.

34:44And when morality became closer to being objective, then it passed from the tools of the sophists,

34:53the propagandists, and the manipulators, it passed out of their hands to the philosophers. And this is why

34:59people hate UPB so much, is that UPB takes away your ability to manipulate morality to gain resources

35:05by making morality absolute in its whims, to make morality absolute, and it doesn't matter. In fact,

35:12it's a feature, not a bug, when morality is anti-rational, because you can will it to benefit

35:19friends and punish enemies, and you're not restrained by any requirement for reversal,

35:24universality, or what's good for the goose is good for the gander. Or you're not, your moral rage,

35:31your moral destructiveness, your moral mob mentality is not subject to any restrictions

35:36of the requirements for rationality. But then society starts to lose its mind, and it then gets

35:42overtaken. The more superstitious societies, the more subjectivist and relativistic societies get taken

35:47over by the more rational and objective societies. So, yeah, that's my sort of sprint through

35:54postmodernism. In a nutshell, for more on this, you could look at my novel from 20 plus years ago

35:59called The God of Atheists, where I talk quite a bit about postmodernism, and I think bring it to

36:07life in a pretty funny and engaging fashion. You can get that at freedomain.com slash books. So, again,

36:12if you find these kinds of conversations, these kinds of insights helpful and useful, and I guarantee

36:17you, you can't get them anywhere else, certainly not in as compact a formula, I really, really would

36:22appreciate your support at freedomain.com slash donate. All right, lots of love, my friends. I will talk to

36:31you soon. Bye.

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