God, Philosophy and Morality!

Stefan Molyneux

Stefan Molyneux looks at the difficulties in getting kids to understand morality, pointing out how dense philosophical ideas and religious lessons often fall short. He takes aim at old-school punishments that don't really build a true sense of right and wrong, and instead pushes for a straightforward approach that children can pick up on naturally. He stresses the need to focus on empathy, wrapping up with a call to create straightforward ways to teach morals that let kids tap into their own sense of agency.  "On the Nature and Existence of GOD!" is at https://fdrpodcasts.com/6244/on-the-nature-and-existence-of-god  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. Good evening, everybody. Hope you're doing well. This is a follow-up to my conversation

00:06slash debate with the fellow about religion and morals and ethics on the nature and existence of

00:15God, the show is called, which was the 30th of December 2025. And I wanted to follow up,

00:23not to litigate after the trial is done, so to speak, but to talk about the challenges of teaching

00:30children morality. So, of course, when children are no longer babies and are in the toddler phase,

00:38you need to teach them not to hit, not to grab, not to push, not to steal, and so on, and to be,

00:47you know, good children. And the problem, of course, with hyper-complicated explanations of

00:56morality, if you look at something like Kant, if you look at something like Hegel or Nietzsche,

01:04of course, you wouldn't really go too very far for morality, but when you look at a variety of people

01:09and their arguments for morality, then you have a problem, right? And the problem, of course, is that

01:18it's too complicated to teach children. If you were to say to somebody, you can only be moral

01:25when you are fluent in English, Latin, and ancient Greek, right, if that were to be your argument,

01:36then clearly it takes many years to become competent in those three languages, and it would

01:42be, you know, functionally and practically impossible for the child to be, for the person

01:48to be moral. So, with religion, with, again, I'll speak about Christianity, which, of course,

01:56is the religion I'm most familiar with, if you say to kids, well, you can't steal because

02:04that's wrong, and God says thou shalt not steal. You shouldn't lie because thou shalt not bear

02:12false witness. You should not hit. I mean, there's not any sort of specific thing about

02:18that in the Bible, like in the Ten Commandments and so on, but in general, we have a don't hit,

02:25don't whack other kids in the face. If, and do you want to teach them free speech? Sticks and

02:31stones can hurt my bones, but words will never harm me. That was my, when I was growing up

02:37as a kid. And how do you get kids to live by that? Well, you punish and reward them, praise

02:47and punishment, but that's training them like dogs, not like conceptual human beings. You

02:53can say, you know, how would you like it if the other kid did that to you? That's a challenge.

03:03That is sort of primitive empathy. It's, to some degree, along the continuum of the Kantian

03:12categorical imperative, which is, well, if everyone was able to do this, if this was everybody's rule,

03:18then how would you feel about it? If you are setting up the hit others and then they get to

03:26hit you back, you wouldn't like that. But to the violent, that is a poor argument. To the violent,

03:35that's a poor argument because if you're a big kid, like you're the biggest kid in the daycare and

03:41you're, you've got a hair-trigger temper and you enjoy violence or you like it or you get a thrill or

03:47you get a rush, then you're just going to be better at doing violence. It would be like saying to

03:56the best tennis player who really enjoys playing tennis that all the goodies, candies, dates, whatever,

04:07should be distributed according to victory in tennis or according to tennis ability. People

04:12are like, yeah, that's a great rule. I like that rule. I'm willing to make tennis ability a universal

04:18rule. But that's what violence is. There are people who are big and strong. They enjoy violence. They're

04:26good at violence. They get a thrill out of violence. They like violence. And so if you say to them,

04:31well, what if everyone did a violence? They'd be like, yeah, okay, well, I'm fine with that because

04:39I'm going to be better at it. I mean, I think there were only two times when I was ever really

04:44subject to any kind of bullying in a school, one somewhat minor, one somewhat not so minor.

04:52But the kids, I was like 11 or 12 and a friend of mine and I got detained. We were out hiking and

05:02some kids forced us to stay and built them a fire. The kids were like 16 or 17, maybe even 18 because

05:06they were in the last year. One of them was in their last year of high school. So the 18 year old

05:10probably, I mean, you know, easily twice her side, twice her size. And I remember they called my friend

05:17who was crying at one point because he was really, he was really scared. I mean, I was scared too. I

05:22wasn't crying. No biggie, but, and, uh, they called him a sucky fag. And, uh, I said, you know, I was

05:30kind of disgusted and I said, I don't want you to pick on people your own size. They punched me in the

05:33stomach and I doubled over and couldn't breathe. And, uh, I've almost never taken a blow more proudly

05:38in my life. Totally worth it. Totally worth it. But they said, listen, if you go to the cops,

05:44if you tell anyone, maybe we'll go to prison, we'll just come out and we'll kill you. They were

05:49good at violence. They enjoyed violence. I still remember the name of one of them, believe it or

05:56not. I met him many years later. He had no memory of who I was, but by then I was working out as a

06:01much bigger guy, so he didn't give me any particular grief. But, and, and you can see, I mean, this kind

06:07of physiognomy can be real in that you just, you see these sort of blunt hatchet faces, absolutely cold

06:13dead eyes. And you know that these are people who don't have any restraint. They're, they're

06:18predators, right? They don't have any restraint and they do a cost benefit. And they say, well,

06:24we like to bully kids. We enjoy bullying kids. And if the rule is you can do whatever you want,

06:34but you have to threaten to kill children in order to survive and be able to flourish as a bully,

06:43you have to threaten to kill children. You know, we don't fear prison. We'll do whatever. And now,

06:48you know, it was probably a bluff. I mean, who knows, right? It's like almost 50 years ago now.

06:53So who cares, right? But the reality is that if you set up a rule, right? So these guys were like,

07:00if you go to the cops, if you tell us, if you tell anyone what we did, maybe we'll go to prison,

07:07but we'll get out and we'll just hunt you down. We'll just hunt you down. We'll kill you. Now,

07:11if you were to say, wait a minute, how would you like it if everyone bullied children and then

07:17threatened to murder them? If they told, how would you like it if everyone did that? They,

07:23they would say deep down in their sort of primitive reptile brains, right? They would say,

07:27yeah, we're fine with that. Yeah, that's no problem because we know they're not going to do

07:33it back, right? They're not going to do it back. I'm not going to be detaining kids and punching them

07:40and I'm not going to be threatening to kill them if they tell, like, I'm not going to be doing any of

07:45that because I'm not that kind of asshole, right? I'm not that kind of evil person. So act as if the

07:55principle of your action becomes a general rule, yes, the people who are good at violence, who are

08:00willing to threaten the life of an 11 or 12 year old little kid, those people are happy with

08:09their approach being a general rule because they know that they're the best at violence.

08:15They know that almost nobody is going to be detaining kids and threatening to kill them if they tell

08:21and beating them up or I wasn't really beaten up, just I was punched. That was not a big deal. But

08:28they're fine with that level of violence. They're happy with it. They're comfortable with it. And they

08:36also know, as surely as you and I know the sun will rise tomorrow, they know for a simple absolute fact

08:44that other people are very bad at doing violence. In other words, when they saw my friend and I

08:53walking along the path in the deep woods, they knew, obviously, based upon our size, maybe our

09:00body language or whatever, they knew that we were nice kids unprotected, right? We didn't have any big

09:09psycho dads or brothers who were going to go beat them up. They knew whatever, however they knew,

09:15based upon our size. And of course, we were unprotected relative to their size. And of course,

09:21when you're in that kind of situation, and I do remember it very vividly because it was very

09:26instructive. And actually, they gave me a very good moral education that day. I learned more from that

09:32day in the woods about morality than I learned in any other single concentrated day of education. So

09:40these guys gave me a good education about the world, about how helpless the government is in

09:52protecting children. Of course, I was far from the first kid. My friend and I were far from the first

09:58kids that they bullied. And the teachers couldn't do anything. I couldn't. I mean, my mother was

10:04already hanging by a thread mentally, so I couldn't add to her burdens. And they had figured out the

10:10police, right? And they said, okay, so if we threaten to kill people who go to the cops, they won't go to

10:20the cops. So these, for some reason, I think that they weren't the same age. I think one was 17,

10:27one was 18. I can't remember why I know that. But so they had already sorted it out. They'd done

10:32this a whole bunch of times. It had worked every single time. And they were in no danger and had

10:37no fear of any legal structure. You know, we go to prison, we'll get out, but we don't fear prison.

10:43Now, I'm sure they did fear prison. I'm sure they didn't want to go to prison. But they had realized

10:48that violence is fantastic for shifting the cost-benefit calculations of victims. And of course,

10:57when I was in that situation for those couple of hours, when I was in that situation, I, like

11:05everyone, certainly for boys, I looked around and saw, okay, is there a thick branch that I can use to

11:13whack them on the head or whatever, right? And you do that calculation. And you say, okay, so if I grab

11:20the branch, and I do manage to bring it down on his head, well, that's only one of them. I can't signal

11:25my friend, you know, maybe if there was only one, it could have been possible. But if I, let's say,

11:34even if I was somehow to pull something out in a ninja mood, move and disable both of them,

11:40and we could somehow get away, well, then what? Well, now, they really have a grudge against you.

11:48Now, you know, you've, you've cracked them over the head. Now you've won, and you have to go back

11:54to school. What are you going to do? What are you going to do? Even if you were to somehow beat

12:01them. The only way that you could remove them from taking vengeance upon you is old style killing

12:09them, which, of course, like a million miles away from my mind, right? I mean, obviously,

12:13you think about these things in the moment, but a million miles away from my mind, like,

12:16I'm not going to go, what, I'm going to go, I'm an 11 year old kid, I'm going to kill two guys,

12:19right? Because I'm being bullied, or confined, or not confined, but, but I'm just like a minor

12:25kidnapping or confinement. So, you say, okay, so there's a calculus involved in this. And the

12:33calculus is quite simple. What minimizes the harm to myself? Because if I try to fight them, I have

12:42now given them an excuse to be extremely violent against me. If I comply, and this is, you know,

12:48this is nothing new to me, or like, this is a common thing that, that people do, kids do in particular.

12:54What are the costs and benefits? If I comply, and I didn't want to comply to an absurd degree,

13:01which is why I sneered at them and said, why don't you pick on someone your own size?

13:07I mean, so I wasn't full compliance, and I got my, I took my licks, still glad I said it,

13:13well worth it. And that is the calculation. If I try to use violence against them, you know,

13:22like I was building them a fire, they made me build them a fire. And okay, well, if I take a

13:28burning branch, right, whatever, right? But none of it maybe made any sense. And if I escalate,

13:34they will escalate, right? If I resist, they will escalate. And of course, people do this with

13:40abusive, violent parents all the time as well. If I escalate, they will escalate. And who's going

13:47to escalate more? Well, they're better at violence than I am. They're willing to impose a violent,

13:54coercive situation on others, which means they've done it before, which means they have experience,

13:58which means I don't have experience relative to them, because I've never hit anyone in my life.

14:04So they are experienced, and I am not experienced. It sort of reminds me of once there was a guy at the

14:12bowling alley, a Middle Eastern guy. And he was, I was go to the bowling alley, I was like 12 or

14:17whatever. And there was a guy there who was 17 or 18. And he bet me that he could beat my score on

14:24Space Invaders. And he knew some trick, like the 12th spaceship that goes along the top, if you hit

14:30it at a certain time, it gives you extra points. Like he just knew. And so he got my quarter, you know,

14:35and again, a very good education. And I won't go so far as to say, but I thank these people.

14:41I'm not, I'm not Erica Kirk. But I would say that it was a useful education that they provided me both

14:48in terms of how violent people operate, and how helpless society is, to a large degree. And it's

14:57funny, because there was another guy, this is the second time that I was bullied, I am somewhat

15:06bullied, is that there was another guy who unplugged my game, video game while I was playing,

15:13because I was doing really well. And he wanted to play. And I called him a jerk, or I can't remember

15:17what I said, or whatever it is. And then he ran home to his psycho big brother and said that I had

15:21tried to beat him up. And his big brother was going to get me and was sort of chasing me all over the

15:26school for a week until he, I don't know, his IQ 80 brain found something else to focus on,

15:31perhaps a shiny belt buckle or something like that. And I just dodged him. Because again,

15:36I was like 12, and he was like 17 or 18. And a big guy, again, with those psycho cold eyes and

15:41those all. So yeah, you just, I can't fight the guy. He punched me once in the arm, I was going up

15:46the stairs, he was going down, he punched me in the shoulder. And I said, I didn't, I didn't hit

15:50your brother, right? Whatever. As if reason's going to matter, right? But nothing really came

15:55of that. Sorry, that was the guy that I met years later, not the other two guys. I don't know what

15:59happened to them. But hopefully they did get their wish to go to prison. I'm sure they did.

16:04Or they're in charge of the country, one of the two. So people do their calculations. And

16:10if you're willing to use violence, you very quickly understand that other people will mostly

16:16comply. Violence works, and threats of violence work very well. This is how pedophiles operate,

16:21as they say, if you tell anyone, I will kill your family. And you say, well, but they're bluffing,

16:28but if they're not, and then you have the worry of, is it going to happen or not? And who do you tell?

16:34And if you go to the police and say, this guy said he was going to kill me, what happens then?

16:39They don't have any proof. So it's just big, complicated, messy stuff.

16:44So, sorry for that long side show, side quest. But my point is that saying to kids, well,

16:55how would you like it if he did it to you? So if you go to the 18-year-old psychos, and you say,

17:02well, how would you like it if the 11 or 12-year-old bullied you for a couple of hours and punched you

17:10and made you build a fire and then threatened you with death, if you told, how would you like it if

17:18they did it to you? They just laugh at you. Say, yeah, yeah, bring it on. Fine. Yes. No problem.

17:23Yeah, yeah. I can make this a general rule. I can make this a general rule. So the Kantian

17:30categorical imperative, I mean, hasn't worked, right? Understand it. It hasn't worked.

17:35It hasn't worked. Arguably, you know, we have more violence now than in the past if we count

17:44coercive debt enslavement as a form of violence, right? Because the national debts and unfunded

17:49liabilities have never been larger in the history of the planet. And so it's really bad. I mean,

17:56it's really terrible. So the categorical imperative has not worked. Religion has not worked. Well,

18:05why not? Because Christianity says, be nice, because it's what God commands. And the problem is,

18:18of course, if you don't particularly believe in God, then you don't accept the ethics. Or if you do

18:24believe in God, you know, this is sort of the Protestant argument against the corruption of

18:28the Catholic Church in the past, the sort of 14th century, then if you do believe in God and you do

18:37believe in God's commandments, then you can pray for forgiveness. So you can whack someone, you can

18:45apologize, and then they have to forgive you. And if they don't forgive you, they're now the sinners.

18:50And if they don't forgive you, you can run to the priest and you can have your confession and you can

18:53pray for forgiveness and you will be forgiven. So that doesn't work either. And of course,

19:01it is an argument from authority, which works a little bit better on girls than on boys, but boys

19:06tend to resist authority, which we have to do because boys are programmed when we get to our

19:12physical strength to take over from the prior generation. So that doesn't work. Punishment,

19:22well, we know the punishment doesn't work. You can just look at my presentation, The Truth About

19:26Sphanking, to see that punishment does not work. It will give you short-term compliance,

19:30long-term rebellion, blah, blah, blah. And even if, as some kids do, right, they internalize that sore

19:38and eye in the sky of God watching and judging and punishing and blah, blah, blah, and they try to

19:42live good lives and so on. Well, they're unhappy because they're kind of paranoid, always being

19:48watched and judged and so on. And they're unhappy. And that's tough too, because if you're not happy

19:55and you're a moralist, then you are effectively, well, not selling moralists, right? You're a fat guy

20:05trying to sell a diet book. You're a guy with pizza face trying to sell acne control, right?

20:10You're me selling hair regrowth formula. It's not good at all. And this is this sort of super nerdy

20:20kids who were hyper-religious and kind of miserable, you know, the Jesus camp kids and all of that.

20:25Like, it's pretty rough. You can get pretty neurotic feeling that you're always being watched and

20:30judged and always falling short and stained with original sin and never measuring up. And like,

20:35it just whittles you down to nothing and say, okay, well, I'm an unhappy guy. You want to be like

20:41me? That doesn't work very well at all. You need to have some reasonable levels of happiness or at

20:46least resilience in order to, I mean, in a sense sell or be an advocate for morality. So that doesn't

20:54work particularly either. And of course, if aggression is bad, but you are punished for

21:04aggression in an aggressive manner, then you don't believe your punisher, right? If you steal something

21:12and you are spanked or shaken or yelled at or intimidated or put in a naughty corner or grabbed

21:18or whatever, right? If you are punished through aggression, then aggression is good and bad.

21:28Aggression is bad if you do it. Aggression is good if I do it. And again, you can say, ah, yes,

21:32well, but it's a response. I'm just talking about how the child's brain works. I mean, I was a child,

21:36you were a child. We all remember this stuff. I worked in a daycare. I've been a stay-at-home dad.

21:39I've been around tons of kids. So I know how children's brains works, which is you don't have

21:45credibility if you say violence is bad and you enforce that through violence, especially if it's

21:55later after the fact, and especially if it's something like not violence, like theft or lying,

22:01like theft and lying are not violence, right? I mean, they're not moral. One's APA. Telling the

22:07truth is APA. Respect for property rights is UPB. But it's not the same as violence. If you sneak a

22:14cookie, right, you learn your basic engineering by figuring out how to climb up to the top of the

22:20fridge where they keep the cookie jar and you go and steal a cookie and then you're caught,

22:24it's not violence. You haven't beaten anyone up. There's no blood on the floor. Nobody's eyeballs

22:29hanging down their cheek, right? So violence is bad and violence is good. So it doesn't work.

22:37And this is why the problem of human violence has not been solved. And this is why people can't see

22:45that the violence of the state is bad because they're told that violence is bad and violence

22:52is good. Violence on the part of the citizens is bad. Violence on the part of the rulers is good

22:57because violence on the part of you is bad, but violence on the part of your teachers and

23:02parents and so on is good. And I was, of course, punished only once in boarding school when I was

23:12caned because I had climbed a metal fence to get a ball from the sanatorium, which was a little

23:19healthcare, little tiny little hospital for the boys because, you know, 500 boys, 500 girls,

23:25somebody was always unwell. So I climbed to get the soccer ball, came back, somebody knocked me out.

23:32And to the headmaster, I got taken upstairs, I got caned. And I was like, okay, so violence is good.

23:43Honestly, I don't want to sound like it. I don't want to make it out to be too traumatic. It really

23:46wasn't. I wasn't like bleeding and it wasn't like spitting in Singapore or something like that. So I

23:51don't want to over-dramatize it. But, you know, obviously uncomfortable and unpleasant and weird

23:55and just weird. But I'm like, okay, so then violence is good. Violence is good and violence

24:02is necessary. But so I didn't do anything violent by climbing a fence. I didn't hurt anyone. I didn't

24:08hurt myself. I just got the ball. And the reason I did it was because, and when the ball went over,

24:13we had precious little fun in boarding school. And when the ball went over, sometimes it could take

24:18an hour or two to get it back. And we only had an hour until supper time. And I wanted to play

24:23football. I wanted to play soccer. So it took forever to get the balls back. And we didn't have

24:31anything else to do. And, you know, you need to get your fun, man. You need to get your fun when

24:36you're in a negative situation. So violence is good. So, yeah, you can't aggress children into

24:44believing that aggression is bad. It kind of short-circuits them. You can't use the categorical

24:49imperative because the kids good at violence are very happy to have that be a general rule because

24:54they're better at it. And you can't use God because then you can just disbelieve in God and it

24:59is an argument from intimidation and authority and so on, right? And why? Why? Why is this bad? Or

25:09why is this good? Because it's what God commands. That's not an answer. That's not, for kids, that's

25:17not an answer. Because God in his love and his wisdom has ordained these to be the good, blah, blah,

25:22blah. It's still not an answer. It's just somebody with infinite power has decreed that this is the case.

25:29But it's not an argument. It's not an answer. It's a commandment. And a commandment, by definition,

25:36is not an argument. Stop is not an argument. Obey is not an argument. It is the opposite of an

25:44argument. It is the commandeering through threats and bribes of another sovereign conscious for the

25:49sake of obedience. So none of this stuff works. And it doesn't work. And this is why we have

25:55the shitshow of a society that we have. I mean, Jesus never said, give your money to the government.

26:04Let them pretend to take care of the poor. Jesus said, sell what you own, give your money to the

26:09poor and follow me. Private charity, personal charity, thou shalt not steal, blah, blah, blah.

26:14Did it stop the creation of the welfare state? It did not. Has it ended war? It has not. Has it

26:20entered intergenerational debt slavery? It has not. I'm just an empiricist. I mean,

26:24people get mad at me and I just look at, I say, hey, man, you're getting a sunburn. It's like,

26:29you did that to me. It's like, no, I'm just pointing out that you've gone all tomato. And

26:34you probably want to try and sort that out or do something to make that better. And yeah,

26:41it just, it hasn't worked. And I'm pretty practical. I like to think I'm pretty practical. So

26:47if something doesn't work, I probably want to try something different because it's not working.

26:52What we know for sure, I mean, the world is in a dire state. War and debt and enslavement and

26:59violence and predation and like the world is in a bad state. I mean, listen, don't get me wrong.

27:05I'd rather live now than any other time in history, but it's a, it's a bad state. And I say this having

27:10watched it go from a better state into a worse state. So this is after 3000 years of philosophy

27:18and 2000 years of Christianity, and it has not fucking worked. If people have been trying to

27:27solve a problem for 5000 years, and the problem is getting worse, shouldn't we try something

27:34different? Shouldn't we? We've been trying to unlock world peace for thousands of years. We're not even

27:43close to achieving it. All we have is pauses to reload in human history. We don't see an end to

27:49violence. I mean, governments are so addicted to violence, they import it these days. So it really

27:57is remarkable to me, and I understand the impulse, but again, just sort of whatever it's this

28:04bland and Anglo-Saxon empiricism. But in the conversation that I had with the fellow

28:10this morning, when he says, which he has to basically say that Christianity has not solved

28:16the problem of human evil, he says, ah, but human beings are innately corrupt. It's like, okay,

28:20then we should not have massive amounts of political power and blah, blah, blah, right? And the best way to

28:25not have massive amounts of political power is to not have political power, right? To have a free market,

28:30private society. But people look at this, right? And they say, ooh, okay, so Christianity has failed

28:38to achieve morality. Christianity is shrinking. People are leaving the church. And societies in the

28:46West are getting worse and more violent and more indebted and so on. And they say, ooh, you know what's

28:52missing from this? You know what's going to solve this problem that has been failed to be solved for

28:572,000 years? What, 2,025 years, I guess? But you know what will solve this problem? Massive additional

29:04layers of intellectual complications and obfuscations. Ah, that's it. That's it. That's the ticket.

29:11That's, that's, okay, people can't find the map to the buried, people can't find the buried

29:16treasure. I gave them the map, they can't find the buried treasure. I'm just going to make the map a

29:20whole lot more complicated. I'm going to put lots of weird puzzles in there, make it kind of 3D,

29:26use ancient Aramaic. So because people can't find the treasure, I'm not going to make the map simpler

29:31and clearer. I'm going to make the map more complicated. That's the ticket. Well, that's not

29:37a thing that that's going to work. If someone can't understand what you're saying, throwing in

29:46additional buzzwords and complications and saying, well, this is like the theory of relativity,

29:51and this is like epigenetics, and this is like quantum mechanics, and so on. No. If you have failed

29:58to make the world moral, making your morals and your proofs more complicated is not the answer.

30:07People can't assemble the cabinet with the instructions I gave them. So what I'm going to do

30:14is I'm going to make the instructions way more complicated and hard to understand. And I'm going

30:20to introduce a whole bunch of buzzwords. That's what I'm going to do. Well, that's not a sensible

30:25thing to do. If people were having trouble with the interface on my software, I worked to simplify

30:31the interface. I did not work to make it more complicated, because if people aren't understanding

30:38the interface, making it more complicated is doing the opposite of what will work.

30:47So that's the purpose behind UPB. And again, I would invite you to listen to the ABCs of UPB,

30:53which is like, I don't know, 15, 17, 18 years old, or whatever it is. It's a show I did many,

30:58many years ago. Oh, that's a lot of years. Many years ago, which says how you explain UPB

31:05to children. And I have explained it to a number of children. And they get it. They understand it,

31:11it makes sense. And it works. It is what is needed. Because if children can understand it,

31:19we can train children in morality when they're very young. If children can't understand your moral

31:25theories, and you have to resort to aggression, or bribes, then you're training them like dogs,

31:33and they're going to end up with the internalized virtues of dogs, which is to say, none. It needs

31:39to be simple enough that children can understand it, because we expect children to be moral.

31:45Right? So you make a game, and you say, let's, oh, you want this candy bar? Let's both steal it at

31:52the same time. No, I'm stealing it. No, yours, can we both steal it? No. Okay, I want you to steal it

31:58from me. What the? I want you, I want you to want to, I want you to say, Dad, I want you to steal

32:05this candy bar from me. I'm desperate for you to have this candy bar. So, and I say, okay, I'm stealing

32:11the candy bar you want me to take. Is that stealing? Well, no. Why not? Because you want

32:16me to take it, so it's not stealing. It's like saying, I'm giving you a present, and you're

32:21stealing the present, right? So, I mean, these are the basics that you can make a game of it,

32:25you can really get the idea across, and children can easily understand. Now, I guess I, you know,

32:32I understand my daughter's pretty bright and all of that, but, I mean, maybe it takes a couple of

32:37tries. Maybe it takes a week, but they can definitely get it. And that way, instead of

32:43making things more complicated, and demanding children follow rules that are just like quantum

32:48physics, right, then you can actually make rules that children understand and appreciate. And I

32:53would understand and appreciate your support at freedomain.com slash donate. Hope this is helpful.

32:59Thank you so much. Have a lovely, lovely, well, I guess, end of the year 2025. Lots of love. Bye.

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