The Truth About HEDONISM!

Stefan Molyneux

Philosopher Stefan Molyneux explores the distinction between philosophical happiness and hedonism, addressing a listener's insightful question. He defines hedonism as the pursuit of immediate pleasures that often lead to long-term costs, contrasting it with happiness rooted in virtue and reason. Using examples from the animal kingdom, he highlights the importance of meaningful relationships in human sexuality for societal cohesion. He discusses the repercussions of hedonistic behaviors and advocate for self-restraint, emphasizing that true, sustainable happiness arises from alignments with reason rather than fleeting desires. Ultimately, Stefan encourages listeners to pursue a fulfilling form of happiness grounded in thoughtful living.  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 question from a listener to Freedomain, freedomain.com slash donate,

00:06shop.freedomain.com to get your swaggy merch. Now, isn't the end goal of philosophy being

00:13happiness the same as hedonism? What a great question. You know, one thing I love about

00:20philosophy is that I've been doing it for 44 years, and the most blindingly obvious and

00:27brilliant questions still emerge from you, the great listeners, a very obvious challenge,

00:34a very obvious problem. I wouldn't say that it ever particularly crossed my mind before,

00:40which, you know, could be because I'm pretty. All right, so it's a great question. So what is

00:49the difference between philosophical happiness and hedonism? So clearly, I'm going to pretend

00:57like I'm explaining this to my daughter. Clearly, honey, clearly, and obviously,

01:02philosophical happiness is the things that I like. Hedonism is all the things that other people

01:10like, unless they happen to be the same things that I like, in which case I will grant them the

01:13nomenclature of philosophical happiness. And then she will headbutt me. And, you know,

01:19who can blame her? Not I. Not I. It's the most grating thing in the family is that we call them

01:24smuggins. Oh, magnificent. Oh, my gosh. So, it's a great question. So, first of all, we have to define

01:32what hedonism is. So, hedonism is the pursuit of animal pleasures, or pursuit of pleasures that cost

01:46far more later on than they provide in the present, which also would be kind of addiction,

01:51right? Addiction is something that you have that has a negative impact on your life that you don't

01:56stop doing, significant negative impact on your life that you don't stop doing, and so on. Now,

02:02the animal pleasures is having sex is pleasurable. And if a man or a woman pursues merely the physical

02:12act of sex with no other considerations, that would be hedonistic. Hedonistic is disrespectful to our

02:20capacities as human beings. So, animals take pleasure in sex. That's why they have sex. And

02:30to merely have the naughty bits rubbing together and the orgasm and so on without any other considerations

02:37to pursue that at the expense of things like love and so on would be hedonistic. You are pursuing animal

02:45pleasures. And that's fine if you're an animal. Animals should pursue animal pleasures because I like

02:50the fact that there are animals in the world and animals should rut with each other till kingdom come

02:56so that we get lots of lovely critters in the world. So, when you are an animal and you're pursuing

03:04animal pleasures, I mean, that's beyond fine. That's healthy, natural, good, nothing wrong with

03:10it. On the other hand, if you're a human being and you're pursuing animal pleasures alone, right,

03:15or at the expense of long-term happiness, then that's not great. There are animals. When I had

03:22fish as a kid, I had a bunch of pets as a kid. We lived in a pretty small apartment, so I couldn't

03:28do dogs or anything. We did take in cats, rescue cats from time to time. But what I did have is,

03:34I had hamsters, and I had mice, and I had a goldfish. And of course, I was warned, like all

03:41kids were, don't overfeed the goldfish because they will just keep eating until they basically

03:47explode. Now, I don't know if that's a myth or not, or just parents who don't want to waste money on

03:52fish food, but don't overfeed your fish. Your fish do not know, like me, they don't know when

04:00they're full. And so, they'll just keep eating, and they will rupture their innards or whatever

04:07it is. I don't know if I'm told all that sort of stuff. So, that is an animal, a fish, I guess,

04:14if this is true, it's an animal that eats until it gets sick. Or animals like rabbits will reproduce

04:23in the absence of predation, right? Rabbits will reproduce until they strip all of the

04:31vegetation from the environment, at which point they starve, right? If you take away the natural

04:36predators, predators are actually serving the rabbits by making sure that they don't eat all

04:43the vegetation and then all starve to death. Predators, by killing some, are keeping rabbits

04:48alive. I had to sort of explain all of this stuff to my daughter when she first saw. She had a beloved

04:54toad. We had chickens, and the chickens tore the beloved toad in two, and she was very upset, which

05:00I can completely understand, but we sort of had to talk about nature and life and all of that.

05:07So, to act in pursuit of pleasure at a physical level is to act in the service of that which is

05:18lower. Now, by lower, I don't mean bad or wrong or negative, but the purpose of sex for rabbits is

05:28mere reproduction. That's the purpose of sex. That's why they don't particularly pair porn, and they're

05:33just, the male will just jackhammer for 30 seconds or 10 seconds or whatever, and then just pass out.

05:39So, the purpose of sex for rabbits is reproduction. What is the purpose of sexuality for human beings?

05:45Well, it is not just reproduction, because human infants cannot survive for many, many, many years

05:55without parental co-investment, right? Because human babies take so ridiculously long to develop. I remember

06:04showing a, my daughter and I saw a video when she was younger of a horse being born, and within, you know,

06:13a day or whatever it is, maybe even a couple hours, it's up and tottering around. I say, yeah, but

06:17humans take a year. We take a year, and that which is slower to develop ends up more complex, and the

06:22human brain takes 20 to 25 years to reach full maturity, and that's a long, long, long, long, long,

06:28long, long time. So, the purpose of sexuality in human beings is the maintenance of pair bonding so

06:38that children can stay alive, and also so that children can be inculcated into the values of the

06:47tribe. Our tribe the best, other tribes bad, that's how it used to be. It's been kind of reversed in the

06:53West lately, but in general, our tribe good, your tribe bad, their tribe bad. And here are the

06:58particular rituals and the way in which we do things. Here's our power structure. Here's the

07:02gods we worship. Here's how we court. So, the purpose of pair bonding, sorry, the purpose of

07:09sexuality for human beings is the maintenance of a lifelong pair bond, because without that pair bond,

07:16women don't want to have children, right? I mean, I'm sure you guys know this. I'll just touch on it

07:21briefly, but when a couple gets married and decides to have children, the way that it evolved, of course,

07:26was that the women, women, the wives, they give up their economic independence. So, now they're

07:33almost entirely dependent upon the man for the provision of resources, because they're now going

07:39to spend the next 20 years having and raising children, and then after that, they start having,

07:42or they start raising grandchildren. So, the woman hands over the monopoly on provision

07:50to the man, and is surrenders to him, and he is the provider. And without that, women don't want

07:58to have kids, because it's too risky, right? So, the way you lower the population, the way you lower

08:03the birth rate is to make women frightened of men. That way, it kills their desire to reproduce.

08:08So, in return for the man being the sole provider, the woman becomes his sole sexual partner. The man

08:18provides a monopoly of resources. He's the monopoly provider of resources to the woman, and the woman

08:25is the monopoly provider of sexuality for the man. I mean, they're both monopoly with each other. They're

08:32with each other. And so, the woman has to trust that the man will provide, and the man has to trust

08:38that the woman will have sex. Because the better that the man is at providing, the easier it is for

08:46him to replace a woman who's not having sex with him with a woman who is having sex with him. Because

08:50if you're a good provider, there are lots of women who want to have you provide for them, right?

08:56Makes sense. The woman gives up her sexual market value when she's young, and it's at its maximum, in order

09:03for monogamy and care and loyalty and provision into her middle age and old age. And the man agrees to give

09:11up his peak sexual market value when he's in his 30s and 40s, when he's got a lot of resources and maturity, but

09:18is still young enough to reasonably have children and help in the child raising. So, the woman gives up her sexual

09:26market value at the peak of it in return for monopoly provision, and the man gives up sexual variety

09:34in return for a reasonable assurance that, you know, outside of medical issues and so on, that the woman

09:41is going to have sex with him. And the woman's temptation to stray is when she's young, and the man's

09:50temptation to stray is when he's older, which is why a lot of marriages crater when the man hits his late

09:5730s, 40s. They call it a midlife crisis. It's not that. I mean, all it is is a man who is now at his

10:03peak sexual market value. If he's in a sexless marriage or a non-affection marriage, then the man

10:10is simply saying, oh, so I'm at my peak hotness, I'm at my peak sexual market value, and my wife is not

10:17having sex with me, so I can go and get another wife. It's not a midlife crisis, it's just sexless

10:22marriage. So, the purpose of sexuality for humans is not just the rushing of the orgasm in the way

10:31that it is for lower animals. It is to create a pair-bonding environment for children to survive

10:38and flourish and for values to be transmitted, right? The R-selected creatures, right, the ones who just

10:47reproduce and reproduce and reproduce and are only limited, not by any self-restraint, but by the hunting

10:53animals, the K-selected, the rabbits, the owls and the wolves and the foxes and so on. So, the rabbits

11:01don't need to teach the baby rabbits anything, right? They get hungry, they eat. They get horny,

11:09they rut, they have sex. But, you know, the wolves need to teach their pups how to hunt, and that's why

11:18there's a lot of play-hunting when wolves are pups, right? There's a lot of play-hunting, play-stalking,

11:25cats will do it, kittens will do it. It's very cute, of course, you know? But it's essential,

11:30right? So, there's a lot of teaching and practice that is needed for hunters. Like, if you're just

11:35eating vegetation, you don't need any training. If you're a hunter, you need training and practice

11:39and all that, right? You don't need to practice creeping up on a couple of blades of grass, right,

11:45or leaves or berries or whatever. Just go and eat them. So, the purpose of sexuality for humans is

11:51pair-bonding and the transmissional values and the maintenance of sexual monogamy in more advanced

11:58cultures for the purpose of best raising children and the transmitting of values. That's what humans

12:06do. Transmission of language, of religion, of morals, good and evil, of in-group preference,

12:13and how to interact, how to... I mean, think of how different it is in Somalia versus Japan,

12:20right? Just in terms of how you negotiate, how you behave, how you act, what's expected,

12:24and so on, right? All of that needs to be transmitted. So, if you are acting as a K-selected

12:34creature, and human beings are the ultimate K-selected creatures, if you are acting as an

12:40R-selected animal, in other words, you just rut, right? You just, you go have sex and you don't

12:46care about the consequences, you don't have any pair-bonding, then you are pursuing the mere

12:52physical pleasures when the physical pleasures are there to serve your family and your lineage

13:00and your offspring and your tribe and your culture and your history and your ancestors,

13:05right? Sexuality for K-selected creatures is particularly powerful and strong, and all this

13:13oxytocin and the love hormones and pair-bonding hormones get released because it's there to ensure

13:19a pair-bond for the positive transmission of values and the pair-bonding over the course of

13:27people's lives all the way through to their great-grandchildren or great-great-grandchildren

13:31or however long they live. And so, for humans, sexuality is like an inheritance that you shouldn't

13:41squander, right? So, we would recognize that if family wealth has been created by people in the

13:48family in the past, like ancestors, who really work hard to provide value in the market, to save their

13:57money, to invest wisely, to restrain their spending, all that kind of stuff, right? Then you end up

14:02inheriting $5 million or $2 million or something like that. And then, if you blow that all on yourself,

14:09that would be hedonistic, because it only exists because other people in the past didn't blow it,

14:15and therefore, for you to blow it is bad. It's wrong. And so, rabbits create what they consume,

14:23in a sense, whereas K-selected creatures save and transmit in the long term. And a hedonism is when you

14:31take that which is designed for long-term value, and you use it for short-term gratification at the

14:38expense of long-term value. So, a woman who sleeps around, as women, women can always sleep around,

14:43right? A woman who sleeps around is taking carnal pleasure in the short term at the direct expense

14:54of pair bonding in the long term, because she is taking sexuality that is designed to unite and have

15:01one flesh, in a sense, to unite and to pair bond and to all of that. She's taking all of that

15:07and she is using it for immediate pleasure. So, she's spending the saved up money of her ancestors

15:16on her own pleasure, that she's not investing it, she's not treating it wisely, she's not showing

15:21any self-restraint. She is taking all the stored up values of her ancestors and she is destroying

15:29her capacity to pair bond by seeking pure pleasure in the moment. So, she's taking K-selected values

15:37and destroying them on the altar of our selected pleasure. So, the analogy would be that a female

15:48wolf simply gets pregnant and then chases away the male wolf and does not teach her cubs how to hunt,

15:56does not take them with her hunting, does not teach and doesn't have a male take them hunting,

15:59so then her children, her offspring, her pups, the wolf pups, are crippled and will not survive

16:05or have a much lower chance of survival and that would be selfish, right? The equivalent would be

16:11a bird that births a bunch of baby birds and then doesn't feed them, so they just starve,

16:20they just starve to death. So, that would be selfish and that would be weeded out of the gene pool

16:27in the way that things used to be weeded out of the gene pool. So, you know, if you sort of think about

16:33the Victorian world, then you think of particularly the middle and upper classes. If there was a young

16:41woman who was hedonistic and slept around and so on, then her reputation would be destroyed

16:49and men might use her for sex, but they wouldn't marry her, right? This is the myth from a street

16:55guy named Desire when dealing with Blanche Dubois. He's like, oh, I'm not going to marry you. I mean,

17:01you've basically been the town whore for years and years and you slept with your students

17:05and now you're making me wait? You're not clean enough to bring into the house with my mother,

17:10right? And that's an oof, for sure. But Blanche Dubois is an example of trauma leading to promiscuity,

17:17leading to madness and having to lie about everything. Hypocrisy. This is the women who

17:24give it out like Halloween candy when they're young and then try to make a man wait

17:27when they get older. It's just not credible. It's not believable. And it's kind of insulting,

17:33right? So, I'm a better guy, so I have to wait for sex and you gave it to worse guys for free.

17:38Well, that's kind of a negative experience for men, right? So, hedonism is when you act

17:46on animal impulses that are designed for higher and better and longer-term values and through the

17:56pursuit of those merely physical animal impulses, you destroy the higher purpose for which those

18:03animal impulses have evolved. So, the pair-bonding hormones that are released with human sexual

18:08activity are designed to have you stay with your partner forever to raise children with and so on.

18:14And if you then take all of those pair-bonding hormones and use it for a wide variety of short-term

18:22sexual partners, then you are taking that which is the foundation of long-term value and you are

18:28mining and milking it for the sake of short-term pleasure while destroying the long-term value.

18:33So, that would be hedonism. Okay. So, I think I've flogged that horse to death three times. Okay.

18:37Sorry. Let's keep moving. Keep moving. Move on. Move on. Was that a bump on the road? Just keep driving.

18:43So, that would be hedonism. Now, happiness is sustainable. Happiness is something that is

18:52sustainable. Happiness is not an addiction because happiness is acting in accordance with reason and

19:01virtue and virtue will produce happiness in a sustainable fashion because reason is not

19:10self-destructive. Hedonism is self-destructive, right? If you take the oxytocin love pair-bonding

19:17hormones and apply them to a wide variety of sexual partners in a relatively short-term frame,

19:22short-time frame, then you destroy your long-term pair-bonding capacity. So, your pursuit of pleasure

19:28has destroyed your long-term value. So, for instance, if you can bench press, I don't know,

19:35350 pounds, right? I guess you feel good. You feel like you've done something. You've conquered

19:41something. Something cool has occurred, right? So, you have bench pressed 350 pounds. Now, if you

19:48haven't built up to that and you just go to the gym and you try to... Let's say you do manage to

19:53bench press 350 pounds, but you tear your shoulder muscles, right? You tear your shoulder to hell,

20:02right? Well, then you can't even scratch your nose, right? So, you did get your 350 pounds,

20:08but you've destroyed your capacity to use your body for, you know, quite a considerable period of

20:14time. So, that would be an example of... That would be hedonism. Hey, look, I benched 350,

20:19but now I can't scratch my nose and I can't go to the gym for months. I don't know how long it takes

20:24to heal that kind of stuff, right? So, hedonism is mining pleasures designed for the long-term

20:33for the very, very short-term, which is like, you know, saving money for retirement, right?

20:39If you blow all your money and you have nothing to retire on, that would be hedonistic, right?

20:43Because you've taken excessive pleasure in the present at the expense of survivability,

20:51in fact, or certainly pleasure in the long run. So, reason is not self-contradictory.

21:00Hedonism is self-contradictory. If you value pleasure, you should also value future pleasure.

21:06Valuing pleasure is a long-term proposition, right? Otherwise, if the only thing we did was value

21:12pleasure in pleasure alone, then we'd have, you know, just go take cocaine or heroin, like, don't,

21:18right? But that would be the argument, right? It just, well, you just pursue that kind of pleasure

21:23because the only thing that matters is pleasure, right? And so, it doesn't matter what happens

21:28down the road, right? It just only matters, and that's our selected, right? I'm hungry now.

21:34It doesn't matter if we run out of food tomorrow. If the rabbits eat all of the vegetation and we all

21:38starve to death, that doesn't matter because I'm hungry now, right? So,

21:42reason, though, is not self-contradictory. Hedonism is because if pleasure is a value and we live for

21:49a long time, then pleasure should be a value for the long term. Pleasure is a value now, like I'm 59,

21:56pleasure is a value now, and pleasure is also a value when I'm 89. And so, you need long-term

22:02planning for your happiness, right? So, there's this, you know, the old joke about

22:05some guy who's on death row, right? And he's going to be executed. He's allowed a last meal.

22:13Does he worry about having too much dessert? No, because he's about to die, right? So, his time

22:18frame is gone, right? There's no time frame. He only has to live for the now because there is no

22:24future. Well, that's, so it would be rational, right, in that sense. But yeah, pleasure is a long-term

22:31value. And so, we should do things that enhance our pleasure in the long run rather than merely

22:38in the short run. So, we should exercise and eat well because it is important to be healthy

22:44a year or 10 or 20 or 30 years from now. Given that we value health in the here and now, we should also

22:51value health in the future and therefore we should exercise and eat well. That's rational.

22:56Rational is saying that pleasure is a value which is lifelong and therefore to steal pleasure from

23:05the future in order to feed excess happiness in the present is irrational. Because if you're saying

23:12pleasure is a value, then pleasure will be a value when you're older as well and you should work to try

23:16and maintain reasonable degrees of pleasure in the future as well. If you enjoy being a healthy weight

23:23now, you will enjoy being a healthy weight when you're older and therefore you should not

23:26overeat, right? So, reason equals virtue. So, virtue is acting in a manner consistent with

23:36universality and reason, which is why greed is a vice and self-restraint is a virtue. Because greed is

23:44anti-rational. Because greed is saying the only pleasure is the now, which is true. I mean,

23:51you only experience pleasure in the present. You might think about pleasure in the future,

23:54but you can only experience pleasure directly in the moment, right? And so, greed, which is saying

24:03only the pleasure of the moment matters, which is not true. If pleasure is a value, then you need to

24:09reasonably prepare for it from a lifelong standpoint. So, when you look at something like moderation,

24:17right? You don't want to eat too little, right? You don't want to eat too much because then you

24:25experience the discomfort of being obese and all of the limitations that come with that and so on,

24:30right? So, you want reasonable, you know, compromises in these areas. So, to have moderation

24:39is a virtue. And if you say, well, sexual pleasure is a benefit and you're married and then you cheat,

24:50well, then you are actually getting less sexual pleasure as a whole because your marriage is going

24:57to be screwed up. Unless you're in a sexless marriage, which is a whole other issue, right?

25:02If you're in a sexless marriage, then you're in a whole other world of pain and problems. But we're

25:07talking about a generally reasonable and successful marriage. If you go and cheat on your wife,

25:14then, you know, maybe you'll have some sex with your mistress. Well, you will. I guess that's what

25:17cheating would be. You'll have some sex with your mistress, but your wife will be very upset with

25:23you, angry. She may divorce you and then you may not have much sex at all. Or even if you stay

25:29together, she's going to be negative about sexuality for, you know, to some degree for the rest of her

25:34marriage with you. And so that's all, all bad. So reason is to moderate the pursuit of pleasure

25:44over the course of your life so that you get, I wouldn't say maximum pleasure because who knows

25:50what that is. There's too many uncertainties in life. I mean, you might forego smoking, but get lung

25:56cancer anyway. I mean, so, but you need to do your reasonable best guesses about best practices to

26:02maintain, you know, health and happiness and so on, right? So happiness is when you take an

26:11Aristotelian mean approach to the pursuit of pleasure and virtue. If you pursue too much virtue,

26:19then you'll get killed or ostracized or something like that. So you want to, you want to push the

26:25envelope without tearing it in two. You want to move the Overton window, not be guillotined by the

26:30thing right next to the Overton window, right? Which is social destruction or sometimes even

26:35physical destruction as, as was found out by Charlie Kirk, uh, five or so, five or six weeks

26:41ago. So it's not hedonism to pursue happiness. Happiness is saying that pleasure is a value

26:48and we should work to maximize pleasure in the long run because that's the best way to get the

26:53most pleasure out of life. And an addiction is when we sacrifice our long-term happiness for the sake of

27:02short-term pleasure, which is unbefitting to us as human beings because we do have the capacity

27:09to pursue maximum pleasure in this life, which is a lot to do with self-restraint and discipline

27:16and, uh, so on, right? So I'm going to be, uh, 60 next year. Yes, yes, yes. I'm going to be 60 next

27:25year. And right now I can do just about everything that I could do when I was 20. I mean, I haven't

27:32done, obviously I haven't done the full test, but I still have the same workout now that I had when I

27:37was 20 and I can still do an hour of racket sports. Um, I can still sprint. Uh, I can still do all of

27:48these cool things that I did when I was younger and I've hoped to be able to keep that going for

27:53the rest of my life. Now that requires that I spend, oh gosh, at least six hours a week working

28:00out. I mean, it's like a part-time job. It is. I mean, it is, right? But I also save time

28:07because I don't have to, I don't get injured really. And I don't, uh, uh, hurt my back or

28:13something like that. So, I mean, it's an investment. Uh, also because I eat relatively in relative

28:20moderation because of that, then I don't have to, um, spend a lot of time, uh, shopping and,

28:29and eating in the, uh, uh, shopping, grocery, cooking, you know, all that. I don't have to

28:34do all of that all the time, right? Because I'm eating relatively, uh, sparsely compared to if I

28:40was overeating. So, I save some time that way and all of that. And, you know, in general, you know,

28:45what do I get to listen to music? I get to think and I enjoy sort of pondering when I'm working out

28:50and these sorts of things. So, so happiness is, uh, is different from hedonism and I hope that I've

28:54explained it in a way that makes sense to you. If it doesn't, of course, please let me know.

28:58Freedomain.com slash donate to help out the show. Appreciate y'all.

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