- 14 hours ago
Stefan Molyneux looks at how mysticism, philosophy, and communication overlap, in response to a listener's question about higher powers, emphasizing the use of reason and precise definitions to cut through vagueness in talks about belief. The discussion covers ideas like consciousness, love, and attachment, with him arguing that genuine moral love goes beyond basic instincts. He points out the problems vague terms create in society and pushes for common definitions to improve how people communicate. On dreams, Molyneux sees them as straightforward experiences from life, not as sources of mystical insight. He wraps up by noting the role of clear thinking and rational talk in dealing with complicated aspects of life, and encourages people to express their thoughts with care.
Emails:
Hello Stefan,
Following your most recent, as of today, FDR podcast.(6292). I wanted to hopefully offer you some perspective that may or may not be helpful. As before, I understand that your time is valuable. I do think though that my perspective, linked to IQ and seeing things very differently to you, might be of aid.
The reason I have added this onto an existing email is just for familiarity because I will mildly use this backdrop for additional thoughts. I did talk to you briefly on podcast 6147. But I wanted to offer you my thought process here because it might offer you some insight into your value in a way you had not considered.
Firstly, what I believe is important background as to my perspective on this entire mysticism thing. I do believe in the existence of something higher and more powerful and that has communicated with us. Certainly, a little through the bible. But mostly not through the bible. There is channeling, including the human design chart, to back this up. So I do believe the new age at its core has some good concepts. BUT, I also believe that there is a huge, and incredibly powerful toxic element of the new age. There is a mix of non complete understandings and such. For this reason, I do think that your perspective and that of many who have similar perspectives is valuable. In that keeping things to objective rea...
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Emails:
Hello Stefan,
Following your most recent, as of today, FDR podcast.(6292). I wanted to hopefully offer you some perspective that may or may not be helpful. As before, I understand that your time is valuable. I do think though that my perspective, linked to IQ and seeing things very differently to you, might be of aid.
The reason I have added this onto an existing email is just for familiarity because I will mildly use this backdrop for additional thoughts. I did talk to you briefly on podcast 6147. But I wanted to offer you my thought process here because it might offer you some insight into your value in a way you had not considered.
Firstly, what I believe is important background as to my perspective on this entire mysticism thing. I do believe in the existence of something higher and more powerful and that has communicated with us. Certainly, a little through the bible. But mostly not through the bible. There is channeling, including the human design chart, to back this up. So I do believe the new age at its core has some good concepts. BUT, I also believe that there is a huge, and incredibly powerful toxic element of the new age. There is a mix of non complete understandings and such. For this reason, I do think that your perspective and that of many who have similar perspectives is valuable. In that keeping things to objective rea...
GET FREEDOMAIN MERCH! https://shop.freedomain.com/
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/UPB202
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00:00Hello, everybody. Hope you're doing well. Time for a wee brisk morning, Constitutional.
00:00:06And we are responding to some emails. You can always email me, host, H-O-S-T, at freedomand.com.
00:00:14freedomand.com slash donate. To help out the show would be mostly, most humbly, humbly
00:00:20appreciated. freedomand.com slash donate. Don't forget to get your merch shop at freedomand.com.
00:00:24freedomand.com slash call to book a call in show. And freedomand.com slash books for the books.
00:00:30All right. Hello, Stefan. Following your recent, your most recent as of today, after your podcast,
00:00:356292. I wanted to hopefully offer you some perspective that may or may not be helpful.
00:00:40As before, I understand that your time is valuable. I do think, though, that my perspective linked to
00:00:45IQ and seeing things very differently to you might be of aid. It's interesting. You know, I,
00:00:51like everyone, first impressions count for everything. Some perspective that may or may
00:00:57not be helpful. You know, perspective is fine. I have no problem with perspective.
00:01:01What I'm actually looking for, though, is reason and evidence, right? If I put forward a mathematical
00:01:07equation, you can say, I think I found a flaw in your mathematical equation, or I think I found a
00:01:12more elegant and shorter proof and so on. That's great. But if somebody were to say to me, if I
00:01:16put
00:01:17forward a mathematical equation and somebody were to say to me, I think I have a different perspective
00:01:21on it, that's a little confusing. I'm not, as far as philosophy goes, I'm not really sure what
00:01:27perspective means in this. I understand that your time is valuable. Well, I'm not sure what that means
00:01:34either, because I'm a philosopher. I love, love, love philosophy, right? This is the director of A Few
00:01:44Good Men. Was it Rob Reiner? Anyway, I was working with Jack Nicholson, and they were rehearsing
00:01:50the speech at the end, you know, the You Can't Handle the Truth speech. And Jack Nicholson,
00:01:56they were filming everyone else's, and you don't expect the actor to put, who's not on camera,
00:02:00to put their full juice into it. But he did the full juice every time. Rob Reiner was like, bro,
00:02:05save something, leave something in the can, leave something ready for the actual performance. He's like,
00:02:09but Jack Nicholson basically just said, like, I just love acting. I'm going to do it. I'm just
00:02:13going to do it, full tilt every time. And that's for me, I love philosophy. So, if you say,
00:02:21Steph, I don't mean to bother you with philosophical questions, because I know your time is valuable,
00:02:25that's what I do. It's not a bother to be tasked with philosophical questions. That's actually a big
00:02:32plus. So, all right. So, seeing things very different to you might be of aid. Again, if
00:02:41I say, I love sunsets, and you say, I don't like sunsets, because it feels like the end of the
00:02:47day,
00:02:47I prefer sunrises, oh, that's fine. I mean, you're a morning person, I'm a night person for me.
00:02:54As the sun sets, my imagination rises. So, these are just different perspectives. It's not good or bad
00:03:00right or wrong. So, seeing things very differently from me is fine. Again, if I put forward a
00:03:05mathematical equation, and you say, I see things very differently from you, I'm not sure what that
00:03:09means. I'm looking for reason and evidence. All right. He says, the reason I've added this onto
00:03:14an existing email is just for familiarity, because I will mildly use this backdrop for additional
00:03:19thought. I did talk to you briefly on podcast 6147, but I wanted to offer you my thought process
00:03:24here, because it might offer you some insight into your value in a way that you had not considered.
00:03:31Um, look, I'm aware that sometimes it takes me a short amount of time to get to the point,
00:03:37and this is a good reminder for all of us to get to the point. All right. He said,
00:03:41firstly, what I believe is important background as to my perspective on this entire mysticism thing.
00:03:45I do believe in the existence of something higher and more powerful, and that has communicated with
00:03:50us, certainly a little through the Bible, but mostly not through the Bible. Okay. So,
00:03:57the existence of something higher and more powerful. So, I know it's sophistry, and I
00:04:03appreciate, look, I appreciate the email. I really do. I'm happy that when people email me, I'm happy to
00:04:07look at these thoughts, and I'm certainly thrilled that people want my feedback. So, this is nothing
00:04:13negative to this. So, let's look at this sentence. So, the fragment of the sentence. I do believe in the
00:04:20existence of something higher and more powerful. Okay. I accept that the I do believe. What does that
00:04:28mean? Does that mean faith? Does that mean belief against reason and evidence, which is anti-philosophical?
00:04:35Philosophy is reason and evidence. So, I do believe. I do believe in the existence of something higher and
00:04:43more powerful. Okay. So, if someone has listened to me, if someone has listened to all reasonable
00:04:52philosophers who have ever lived, right? If someone has listened to any kind of philosophy, right, and
00:05:03they want to propose an argument, what's the first thing that needs to be done? What is the first thing?
00:05:12We all know this, right? What is the first thing that needs to be done? Define your terms. So, if
00:05:19somebody puts a whole bunch of sophisticated, complicated, rich, deep, but certainly debatable
00:05:28words into a sentence without defining any of them, I know I'm in the presence of sophistry, and
00:05:34sophistry is manipulation, right? And I'm not saying this is conscious, and again, I appreciate the
00:05:39conversation, blah, blah, blah, but let's look at what's really going on here, right? I do believe
00:05:45in the existence of something higher and more powerful. Now, that's sophistry, and again, I'm not
00:05:50saying it's conscious, that's manipulation, because would I ever say I do not believe in the existence
00:05:59of anything higher and more powerful than me? Because if I say, well, no, there's nothing higher
00:06:07or more powerful than me, then that's obviously a statement of a vaingloriousness, right? Of a
00:06:14vanity, of narcissism, megalomania, well, I, there's nothing more higher or more powerful, there's nothing
00:06:21higher or more powerful than me, right? So, the existence of something higher and more powerful,
00:06:26okay? What does belief mean? Do you have reason and evidence, or is it just faith? What do you mean
00:06:33by existence? What do you mean by existence? And how, like, there's things that we know exist because
00:06:39they accord to reason and evidence. I'm currently walking on the ground, I accept that I exist,
00:06:45my legs exist, the ground exists, gravity exists, the wind exists, I exist because I've got evidence
00:06:49for them, right? They accord with reason and evidence. So, if you're going to say, I do believe
00:06:55in the existence of something. Now, what is that thing? Higher and more powerful, that's sophistry.
00:07:01Of course, there are things higher and more powerful than me, infinite numbers of things,
00:07:05really. There is, the stars are higher than me, Mount Everest is higher than me, gravity is more
00:07:11powerful than me, time is more powerful than me, nuclear radiation is more powerful than me,
00:07:17a T-130 from Fallout is more powerful than me, right? A forklift is more powerful than me.
00:07:24So, what does this mean? Higher and more powerful. So, it's important to note what is not
00:07:34defined. I do believe, don't know what that means. Existence, don't know what that means.
00:07:39Something, very vague word, suboptimal. Higher and more powerful, don't know what that means,
00:07:45and that has communicated with us, don't know how you're talking about communication. He says,
00:07:50certainly a little through the Bible, but mostly not through the Bible. It's certainly a little
00:07:54through the Bible, but mostly not through the Bible. So, I would, I mean, I'm in absolute
00:08:03adjective vague land. Now, I get that we're talking about mysticism, but if mysticism is to be more than
00:08:10subjective, passionate opinion, it needs to have some definitions. And this person says, well,
00:08:16this creator, this God, I mean, certainly this creator, this God has communicated a little
00:08:26through the Bible, but mostly not through the Bible. That's wild. What a statement. What an absolutely
00:08:34wild statement. What does this mean? What mean? What mean? I mean, if this person has a methodology
00:08:46of truly knowing what communication from God in the Bible is valid, and what communication
00:08:56through God in the Bible is not valid, that is a truly wild statement. Because it means that this
00:09:05person has an objective methodology for determining what in the Bible is accurate and what in the Bible
00:09:13is not accurate. Because let's say that this creator or this something that this person believes in
00:09:21has communicated accurately in 10% of the Bible and then 90% is outside the Bible, this means that
00:09:27this person has a way of differentiating what is accurate and handed to mankind by God in the Bible
00:09:35and what is not accurately conveyed by God in the Bible. What an absolutely wild statement. It means that
00:09:45this person is more accurate in the Bible. Everyone in the Bible thought that God was communicating
00:09:48to him. But this person says, no, no, I know what is accurate in the Bible, what is not accurate
00:09:55in
00:09:55the Bible, and I can also accurately know what is communicated by God outside the Bible and what
00:10:00is accurate or inaccurate in that. I mean, what an amazing statement. And no definitions, no methodology
00:10:09whatsoever. So it's really, really important to have empathy for the person that you're writing to,
00:10:16the person that you're communicating with, right? You really, really have to have empathy.
00:10:20I always try to think as best I can, what is on the receiving end of my, like what it's
00:10:27like to be
00:10:28on the receiving end of my communication. And I've, you know, I've, I've become a bit more gentle and a
00:10:33bit softer over the years, as can be sort of imagined is sort of you mellow out a little bit
00:10:37as time goes
00:10:37forward, hopefully not in a cucky passive way. But what is it like to be on the receiving end of
00:10:43this
00:10:43communication? Because there's no definition and there are absolutely staggering claims that this
00:10:51person knows God's mind so well and knows the Bible so well that he can accurately differentiate
00:10:58what is valid and invalid in the Bible and what is communicated by God outside the biblical context.
00:11:05Now, this is a knowledge claim that is truly staggering because, as I said, people in the Bible
00:11:10believe that God is talking to them and he says, no, no, no, I know when God is talking to
00:11:13people
00:11:13even if they believe he is, I know when he's not, and so on. That's a wild statement of epistemology,
00:11:20right? This sort of study of the nature of knowledge. And there's been no definitions.
00:11:25And why would I accept any of these statements as true or valid or anything other than a truly
00:11:35narcissistic and chaotic rambling? I'm sorry to be blunt, but this is what it is. He goes on to say,
00:11:40there is channeling, including the human design chart, to back this up. So, the challenge with
00:11:49that is he's speaking to a rational philosopher, perhaps the most rational and empirically minded
00:11:56philosopher that, at least, the world as a whole has had much interaction with. And so, he knows my
00:12:04standard of proof. He's talked to me before. He's listened to my shows before. And he's completely
00:12:08ignoring them and just going on. An adjective laid, an adjective heavy ramble fest. And he says,
00:12:15there is channeling, including the human design chart, to back this up. I have no idea what that
00:12:19means. And when somebody is talking to me, and I have no idea what they mean, and it's not just
00:12:25some message out of the blue, but somebody who I've talked to before, who's listened to the show
00:12:29before, it means that they don't know, that I don't know what they're talking about, which means
00:12:35they cannot put themselves in my shoes. They cannot speak to me according to the clear and obvious
00:12:43standards of proof and accuracy that I have put out for over 20 years into the world. It means that
00:12:49they lack empathy for me, and they really do enjoy watching the clickety-clack of their own typing.
00:12:56It's got, it's nothing to do with me. This is somebody just blurping, because they're not sitting
00:13:01there saying, well, Steph, well, what is Steph's standards of proof? What is Steph's standards of
00:13:05rationality? How should I best communicate with Steph to get my ideas across in an effective way?
00:13:09They're just like, no, no, no. There's a human design chart to back this up. He goes on to say,
00:13:14so I do believe the new age at its core has some good concepts, but I also believe that there
00:13:19is a
00:13:19huge and incredibly powerful toxic element of the new age. There is a mix of non-complete understanding
00:13:25and such. For this reason, see, now, that's not a reason. Some good concepts. What is a good concept?
00:13:32I have no idea. Huge and incredibly powerful toxic element of the new age. That's just an argument,
00:13:38like an ad hominem. There's just toxic elements. What does that mean? There is a mix of non-complete
00:13:43understanding and such. For this reason, I do think that your perspective, and that many who have
00:13:48similar perspectives, is valuable. Well, thank you. In that, keeping things to objective reality.
00:13:54To change said toxicity, there is more to this understanding, but I think that explains the
00:13:59core of my thoughts. No, it doesn't explain anything. So, there are good elements in mysticism,
00:14:05there are bad elements in mysticism, and empiricists can be helpful in keeping the bad
00:14:10elements of mysticism at bay. No idea what any of that means in practical terms. There was a saying
00:14:17when I was a kid, what does that have to do with the price of tea in China? In other
00:14:22words,
00:14:22how does this translate to something? In reality, right? In reality.
00:14:28People that are truly inclined to the spiritual stuff, I look at, will find it. But people that
00:14:34don't really commit and use the bare minimum of it to justify, but people that don't really commit
00:14:39and use the bare minimum of it to justify madness, it is good that it is challenged. It is similar
00:14:45in
00:14:45ways, if you imagine a society that has innovators and Socrates following philosophers. The innovators
00:14:51want to do innovating, and the Socrates people want nothing to exist, or be real, or whatever.
00:14:58Even though philosophy as a discipline is extremely useful and powerful, some of those innovators might
00:15:04be best served in discussing it as the ravings of lunatics and just getting on with innovating.
00:15:10So I want to describe the dream I had that stopped me from talking further about mysticism.
00:15:14I fully acknowledge none of this makes sense since I have no following. What? I don't know
00:15:18what that means. You can make sense if you have no following. But it still might offer an interesting
00:15:24perspective. It is, of course, not likely that if I offered a genuine challenge to your view
00:15:29on that, that evildoers would pick it up and run with it. But apparently the dreams thought it was
00:15:35a suitable fear to highlight, so I went with it. And I, you know, this to me is very heartbreaking.
00:15:40Honestly, it's very sad to me. This is waves of sadness in the soul of my being. Because this is
00:15:48a
00:15:48human being, and again, I'm sorry to be blunt, but it is important. Bro, if you're listening to this,
00:15:54if you ever do listen to this, you don't know how to connect with people. You use a lot of
00:15:59language
00:15:59that is extremely opaque, that is very baffling, and that gives no evidence or clear passage
00:16:12to thoughts that we can share in. And honestly, it's selfish, and it's intrusive. And I say this
00:16:18because I want you to be able to connect with people in the world, in life. I really, really want
00:16:23you to be able to connect with people, which means if you want to connect with people, you really,
00:16:27really have to, you must speak in terms that they can clearly understand. Otherwise, people just nod,
00:16:34they hear a whole bunch of syllables, and then they move on. Because there's no one to connect with.
00:16:39Language is how we connect with people, and we can only connect with people in shared definitions.
00:16:44Please, please understand this. You can only connect with people when you share definitions. If you think
00:16:51of something as simple as, I went to the store. If you say, in English, I went to the store,
00:16:57to someone
00:16:58who doesn't speak English, they won't know what you're saying. You can't share your thoughts with
00:17:02someone because they don't understand, right, what you're saying because they don't understand the
00:17:06definitions of words in English or how they sound, right? If you've ever watched a foreign movie,
00:17:12you usually have a choice, at least with more recent foreign movies. You can have really bad voice
00:17:17actors, or you can have the original actors and read the subtitles. If I remember going to see the
00:17:24movie Highlander many, many years ago, I bought a month-long pass on Air Canada to travel anywhere
00:17:32in Quebec and Ontario and flew around. This is when I had a month off from my job up north,
00:17:37and I went with a friend, and we flew around. We went to Ottawa, we went to Quebec City, we
00:17:43went to
00:17:43Montreal, and I'd say Thunder Bay, and we just tootled around and had a month of travel, which
00:17:49was really great fun. And I can't exactly remember why, but we ended up watching the movie Highlander
00:17:54in French, and of course, there were no subtitles, and there was no technology for that back in the
00:17:59day in movies and theaters. And I had some vague idea what was going on, but not, not really, right?
00:18:06I went there for the Queen soundtrack as well. So, you can only share your thoughts with people who
00:18:12share your definitions. If you can imagine teaching a child in a truly cruel, if not downright sadistic
00:18:20manner, if you can imagine teaching a child the wrong words for everything, that child would be
00:18:26completely isolated because nobody would be able to understand what was going on. There's a famous
00:18:31story, at least within my family from when I was a kid, that I spent about a year with my
00:18:36own language,
00:18:37and it was only my brother who could translate my language. I would say,
00:18:42and my brother would say, oh, he wants an, Steph wants an egg, right? And so, I had my own
00:18:47language
00:18:47that only my brother could understand, and he had to translate, and this went on for about a year,
00:18:53if I remember. Not that I remember directly, rightly. I remember vaguely,
00:18:59but children go through this. I can't remember the name of it, but they go through a phase of kind
00:19:04of made-up words for things. My wife, somewhere in our drawer, has a list of my daughter's made-up
00:19:09words for things. Bidi Bo was spider, and so on. And she, my daughter's name, of course,
00:19:15is Isabella, and she referred to herself as Ibiya, Ibiya, for a while. I think that's how,
00:19:21I think my wife has my daughter's number on Ibiya. That's how it shows up. So, you can only
00:19:28connect with people when you share definitions. If you don't define your terms with people,
00:19:34you cannot connect with them. All you're doing is making a bunch of bleating sounds
00:19:37that they may vaguely like, they may vaguely not like, but you can't connect. People without
00:19:43definitions are fog banks, and you can't hug or connect with a fog bank. So, be precise,
00:19:51in your definitions, because that's the only way that you can overcome isolation. And you may
00:19:56have arguments about the definitions, and this, that, and the other, but you absolutely need to
00:20:01have shared definitions if you are to connect with other human beings at all. We are social animals,
00:20:09and social translates to shared definitions. I'll give you an example. I'm sure you get it,
00:20:18but just to be extra clear. So, if you have the word fair, fairness, what is fair? F-A-I
00:20:27-R.
00:20:28If you have the word fair, and that to you means equality of opportunity, equal treatment under the
00:20:35law, that's fair. And somebody else has the word fair, which is equality of outcome, that it's fair
00:20:43that everyone ends up with about the same income, then that's the difference between freedom and
00:20:47tyranny, between capitalism and totalitarianism. And one of the ways that society is fragmented
00:20:54is people shatter shared definitions. Shared definitions is culture. Culture is when you share
00:21:01the definitions of things. And one of the ways that society is fragmented and destroyed,
00:21:08I mean, people can't even decide what the words male and female mean anymore. And this is sort of
00:21:16the relentless. People who want to promote totalitarianism always work to shatter definitions.
00:21:22And so, if you want to connect with people, if you want to love and be loved,
00:21:26you must share definitions. My wife and I have very similar definitions of the word love.
00:21:34And if you don't share the definition of the word love with someone you claim to love,
00:21:40right, let's say that for you, love means, you know, tender-hearted, emotionally connected support,
00:21:46or whatever it is. And then to the other person, love means yelling at you and challenging you to
00:21:51become your very best self, then, you know, she's going to view you as goopy and you're going to
00:21:57view her as abusive. You don't share the same definitions. And so, define your terms means,
00:22:03can we connect as people? Can we share in the same reality? Because we communicate our thoughts
00:22:10and feelings through words. And if we don't share definitions with other people that they agree with,
00:22:17then we can't connect with them. We are isolated. And when we are isolated, we then don't have to
00:22:25work to share definitions. We can just say stuff. But people don't understand us, because I don't
00:22:31understand what this guy's talking about. It doesn't mean anything to me, because he hasn't
00:22:36gone through the process of making sure that we agree on definitions. And if you can't agree on
00:22:43definitions, you can't be close to anyone, you are tragically fundamentally isolated. So, when people
00:22:49say, I want to define my terms, they're saying, I want a meeting of the minds, I want a shared
00:22:53mental
00:22:53space that we can both inhabit and communicate back and forth with each other. If people just go on,
00:22:59you know, highly complex and highly contentious and debatable terms like existence, without defining
00:23:05anything, or proof, without defining anything, I know that they have no habit of connecting with
00:23:12others. And they have not gone through the rigorous process of other people caring enough
00:23:21about them to ask them to define their terms. If somebody says, I don't know what you're talking
00:23:27about, what they're saying is, I cannot catch the ball that you think you're throwing. We can't play
00:23:33catch and throw. If you're only miming throwing a ball, or you're throwing a log, or you're kicking a stone,
00:23:42a stone that clatters along the ground, like we need to have the same definitions. And people who
00:23:49just ramble and say stuff with no consideration for whether the other person understands them,
00:23:55which is because we've talked before, this guy's listened to my show a lot, he knows I need
00:24:00definitions. Not because I'm a bully, but because we can't connect in any other way than shared
00:24:05definitions. It means that this person has not gone through the process of people caring about enough
00:24:11to say, I don't know what you're talking about. Which means he's either surrounded by people who
00:24:17don't care about him, or he's completely isolated. And this is why his social connection and communication
00:24:22skills are so bad. And I say this because obviously you have the capacity to improve and actually
00:24:27connect with people. He says, my argument on mysticism would be as follows. This is not something I'm
00:24:33committed to or care about, but it is what I was thinking. It is now the story in something else
00:24:39I want
00:24:39to express. Firstly, your original statement is that mysticism is the gateway to mental illness.
00:24:44Yep. Absolutely guaranteed. Firstly, of course, I wrote to you on the definition of mysticism,
00:24:49which I would use my own after having defined it due to the problems with yours that I highlighted.
00:24:54I would further refine that now by defining a primary and secondary faith. But anyway, per your
00:25:00argument, I would say if mysticism is a gateway to mental illness, then that would assume it would not
00:25:05be, it would not in general be used to solve mental illness. I would further refine the use of
00:25:10symbolic things to reach understandings, such as tarot cards, by asking, why do we dream? Why does
00:25:15our subconscious communicate in such a way? I would answer this by saying, what is the alternative?
00:25:20The alternative being that without the subtlety and indirectness, the subconscious would communicate
00:25:24more like a dictator. Even giving the information without veil would have this effect. So again,
00:25:30I can sort of work really hard to try and puzzle out what this guy is saying, but I don't
00:25:36want to
00:25:37impose my guesses at his meanings on his meanings. But because he refuses to define his terms, even
00:25:43though he knows that that's an absolute requirement of any kind of philosophical conversation, I have
00:25:48to guess what he means. Now, it is, this is why I say it's kind of selfish. Why should I
00:25:55have to guess what
00:25:55you mean? Why can't you write in a clear fashion, so that I know what you mean? Because you're putting
00:26:02out a bunch of words that's vague, because vague meaning I could sort of guess at in there. But why
00:26:10should I do the work to try and figure out what you're talking about? It's selfish. It's like there
00:26:17was an old Samford and Son show, I think it was in the 70s or something like that. And the
00:26:24son was
00:26:26moving a big heavy cylinder or propane tank or something like that. And his father was holding
00:26:32a little spatula or something like that. And the son gave his father, who was kind of lazy,
00:26:38an exasperated look, like, why am I doing all the heavy lifting and you're just carrying some stupid
00:26:43spatula? And that's what it's like having these conversations without definitions. Why do I have
00:26:48to do all the heavy lifting of trying to puzzle what it is that you're talking about? And why don't
00:26:53you know that you're completely obscure? It's selfish. You're just saying stuff. And the funny
00:27:00thing is, he says at the beginning, I know your time is valuable. Okay. So, if my time is valuable,
00:27:05define your terms. If you accept that my time is valuable, then you need to define your terms
00:27:11so that I don't have to waste time trying to puzzle out what it is that you're trying to say.
00:27:15Even, so he goes on to say, even giving the information without veil would have this effect,
00:27:19since once we know the right thing to do, we have more responsibility and consequences than before
00:27:25we know that. So, now he's saying, after making these claims, that he knows what is and is not valid
00:27:31in the Bible. And now he's saying that mysticism has something to do with dreams. Mysticism has nothing
00:27:38to do with dreams. Dreams are an empirical function of consciousness. Now, they're only empirical to
00:27:45the person who is experiencing the dream. I had a dream about an elephant last night.
00:27:51I can't prove it to you, but, I mean, I know that I had a dream about an elephant last
00:27:56night.
00:27:58So, dreams are empirical to the individual. Now, if he's trying to tell me,
00:28:04Steph, you know, there can be some value in dreams, then he's probably missed the dozens and dozens of
00:28:11times over the last 20 years where I have worked very hard in, I might add, a very skilled fashion
00:28:20to unpack people's dreams. I mean, you just have to go to fdrpodcast.com, do a search for dream,
00:28:26and you will find dozens and dozens of dream analyses. I've talked about the power of the
00:28:31unconscious. I've talked about the power of dreams. So, if he's telling me, Steph, mysticism has value
00:28:38because dreams have value, then he's putting dreams into the realm of mysticism, which they're not.
00:28:46They are empirical experiences to the individual. Everybody knows that when you go to sleep,
00:28:54at some point over the course of the night, you are going to have some vivid dreams.
00:29:00I clearly, if I view mysticism as a gateway to mental illness, which it is, and then he says dreams
00:29:09are a form of mysticism, then it wouldn't make any sense that I would do all these dream analyses
00:29:14without telling people that dreams, being mysticism, are a gateway to mental illness. In fact,
00:29:18I view dreams as being a gateway to mental health, one of them, anyway. So, none of this makes any
00:29:23sense. He says, so what does this sound like? This sounds like schizophrenia. I would then talk about
00:29:28how a possible theory for it is that if the problem gets too serious, if the subconscious mind
00:29:33is screaming too loudly, it busts through the conscious-subconscious barrier too loudly, and that's
00:29:37where this comes from. This is roughly what I think happened with my schizophrenic break.
00:29:42Some of my ideas come indirectly from the psychologist Eleanor Greenberg, who talks about
00:29:46how dreams help low-level schizophrenics. And again, my great sympathy for your schizophrenia,
00:29:52and one of the ways that I believe you could try and alleviate some of the effects of schizophrenia,
00:30:00would be to insist upon shared definitions in conversations. He goes on to say, this would then
00:30:07correlate schizophrenia and that kind of non-objective symbolic understandings, more than with
00:30:13the symptom of other problems than with it being the cause. I would also define mainstream faith-based
00:30:20Christianity as mysticism, as per my earlier example. Now, of course, if I say, like, let's just run
00:30:29through this as a whole. And, you know, again, great sympathy for the schizophrenia, but I do believe
00:30:35that philosophy has something to say about mental illness. I'm not saying schizophrenia in particular,
00:30:41maybe it's got an organic basis or whatever, but if you're saying, Steph, you're wrong that mysticism
00:30:47is a gateway to mental illness, and you are a mystic with a mental illness, that's not a solid
00:30:53argument, right? All right. So it talks about Ukraine. He says, so now I get to the point.
00:31:00Like I said, and strongly believe, it is unlikely evildoers would take such a reasoning as this and
00:31:06run with it to dent your power. But the dreams still responded like this was the case. The dream I
00:31:11had,
00:31:11I do not like to tell others my dreams I prefer to interpret, but I'm making an exception here.
00:31:17I was about to make a few YouTube videos on this, but I had a dream with Pearl Davis being
00:31:21aggressively tortured. She has mentioned a few times over the years how she has been sued and
00:31:25things. It was a pretty shocking dream. It felt kind of real, but what I think it could mean is
00:31:31that your platform and output in this kind of social war was significantly impacting people like
00:31:35Pearl by pushing back on intensely female and active toxicity we are currently witnessing,
00:31:41taking us back to the point on mysticism and the Socrates philosopher's analogy.
00:31:45I realize you might not interpret it the same way. Like you might believe that all individuals
00:31:49in our dreams are parts of ourselves along a family systems therapy line, but I also just
00:31:53wanted to provide that feedback in case it does provide some perspective or help in some way.
00:31:57Best wishes, Joe. And listen, man, again, I appreciate the email and I'm certainly sorry for the stuff
00:32:02that you're suffering. If I were in your shoes, what I would do is I would work very hard
00:32:09to rigorously define my terms so that you can meet people in actual reality. It's a tough thing to
00:32:16do. Propaganda aims to divide people and divide cultures and societies by redefining words so that
00:32:24the younger generation and the older generation cannot communicate. And that means that the elder
00:32:30generation has no wisdom to pass to the younger generation because everything has been redefined.
00:32:35This is part of Newspeak in 1984, right? The destruction of words, the redefinition of words,
00:32:42the destruction of the ability to communicate and connect through shared concepts. So, if you look
00:32:49at the word capitalism, which simply means property rights and free trade, the non-initiation of the use
00:32:56of force for voluntary and peaceful transactions. If you look at something like capitalism, that's what it
00:33:03means. But the communists, of course, have redefined capitalism to mean whatever I don't like about my
00:33:10life is the fault of capitalism. It's capitalism's fault that I have to produce in order to consume.
00:33:17It's not the fault of nature or reality or biology. It is the fault of capitalism. Capitalism then becomes
00:33:23an evil scapegoat for anything you don't like about your life. Anything negative that happens
00:33:29is the fault of capitalism. It's the fault of capitalism and so on, right? So, if society as a
00:33:34whole, in a state of a free market, finds young women in particular a little bit less economically
00:33:40valuable on average than young men in particular, for reasons of testosterone, of energy, of focus,
00:33:48of hormonal stability, and the fact that if society values young men, which it has to be forced to do,
00:33:54if society values young men and young women economically the same, and in fact, young women
00:33:59have now been pushed to the forefront of economic value through a variety of government programs and
00:34:04quotas and requirements, then you kill the birth rate. Because when young women are at this most
00:34:11fertile, they're doing five foot four in an attitude and sneaky links and, right, they're doing all of
00:34:18this chanting nonsense in social media and not being very economically productive and not producing
00:34:25children. So, getting women into the workforce is an act of asymmetric warfare. It's fifth-generation
00:34:31or maybe even sixth-generation warfare, which is to lower the birth rate through bribing women
00:34:36with forced paychecks, right? So, in a free market, if women are economically less valued, especially when
00:34:44they're young, because young women, when they can't make a lot of money, generally tend to get married
00:34:51and have children as the biggest source of their stability. But if the government artificially raises
00:34:55their value through force and threats, then young women will go into the workforce. But in a state of
00:35:03freedom, people are less likely to hire young women who are going to have a series of babies and be
00:35:08unavailable to work, as opposed to young men, right? When a woman has a baby and is a good mother,
00:35:13her economic productivity goes way down in the marketplace, in sort of the job environment,
00:35:21whereas when a young man has a wife and children, his productivity goes through the roof.
00:35:28Two big jumps in male income, number one, when he gets married, number two, when he becomes a father.
00:35:33And fatherhood is a way of taming some of the wild excesses of masculinity, because when men become
00:35:37fathers, their testosterone drops, and they're less likely to be kind of psychoaggressive criminals
00:35:42or other destructive mindsets. So, if in order for the culture and civilization to survive,
00:35:50women have to have children, and the fact that women have children makes them economically less
00:35:54valuable when they're young, that is a biological fact. But of course, what happens is people say,
00:35:59no, no, that's capitalism. Capitalism undervalues women. Capitalism is sexist, you know, that kind of
00:36:06stuff, right? So, and this is why there's a, what is it, Millennial Woes on X has a sort of
00:36:13famous tweet
00:36:13where he says, it's remarkable how much the left pretends not to understand things, thus making
00:36:19discourse impossible. And they just, yeah, they just pretend not to understand things. And so,
00:36:26you can have conversations with people who use words entirely differently.
00:36:30The fragmentation or balkanization of society is to do with different definitions.
00:36:35So, if I were in your shoes, what I would do is, you know, grip my teeth, sit down,
00:36:40and work out from first principles, everything I know and believe, define it, and then share those
00:36:46definitions with others, right? So, the word controlling, right, in male-female discourse,
00:36:53if the man doesn't want his girlfriend to go to the club and twerk in the laps of other men,
00:37:01and then he's controlling. He's like, no, he has some standards, he has some preferences,
00:37:05and so on, right? Whereas if the woman doesn't want to have her boyfriend to have any close
00:37:12ex-girlfriends as friends, right, that's not controlling, no. Anyway, so, you know, Joe,
00:37:17a huge sympathies, I really, really care about you connecting with people, and the way to do that
00:37:23is to be disciplined, put yourself in the other person's shoes, and make sure that you
00:37:26share definitions so that you can get close to people and be less isolated. All right.
00:37:31So, somebody says, somebody else wrote and says, it has been some years since I listened to your last
00:37:36podcast, Why Animals Can't Love. At that point, I quit molling you. It has occurred and reoccurred to me
00:37:43that you continue to make consciousness or choice the mandatory when it comes to capacity to love.
00:37:50Love. Okay. Yes. Yes. Again, we are looking at definitions. Does love mean to be attached?
00:37:59Nope. Nope. Ducklings, we've raised some ducks in the Molyneux family, of course, so ducklings
00:38:08will follow me. And it's super cute, you know, you're walking along the lawn, and there's this
00:38:12little line of ducklings behind you, scrambling over the grass to follow you. That is an attachment.
00:38:17Do they love me? Nope. Nope. Nope. And so, that kind of attachment, that is biologically driven,
00:38:27hormonal, oxytocin, whatever is going on in the little ducklings' little pea-sized brains,
00:38:32they just programmed to follow the largest thing that they see when they come out of the egg. And,
00:38:40in fact, I remember as a kid seeing an experiment where they got ducklings to follow a large orange
00:38:45balloon. Do they love the large orange balloon? No, it's just programming. It's just programming.
00:38:51If you've been around ducks or swans or other kind of fowls, they sit on their eggs, and they
00:39:00will gently turn over their eggs, and it looks very affectionate, and it looks very loving.
00:39:05And they will sit there and be dehydrated, and they'll only go to get water once or twice a day,
00:39:11and they appear to be very devoted. And, of course, we project all of this love and affection and
00:39:16caring, but it's not. It's just biological programming. Not to say it isn't cute. It's cute.
00:39:22But we wouldn't want to say that the adults have a moral, virtue-based love of their offspring. It's
00:39:33like, no, it's just their genes have programmed them to take care of their own offspring, because any
00:39:38genes that didn't program them to take care of their offspring died off. So, of course, animals,
00:39:44birds have an instinct to stand up and turn over their eggs to make sure that they get,
00:39:50I guess, equal sunlight or equal warmth or something like that, right? And they have the urge to sit
00:39:56on their eggs to protect them from predators, to keep them warm, and so on, right? Okay. But that's
00:40:02not love. That's just biological evolutionary programming. So, in terms of love, what I talk
00:40:08about it in terms of human love is our involuntary response to virtue if we're virtuous. If I say,
00:40:15I love cheesecake, well, what's the old, there's an old joke. I love cheesecake. Well, why don't you
00:40:20marry it then, right? So, we get that that's kind of a joke, right? When I say, I love cheesecake.
00:40:25I'm
00:40:25not evaluating the moral qualities of cheesecake and referring it to that evil carrot cake,
00:40:30because, of course, it is carrot cake that is the most virtuous dessert. So, when I say animals don't
00:40:36have the capacity to love, I'm saying that animals do not have the capacity to process the moral
00:40:45qualities of a caregiver outside of their own experience. So, if you think of a serial killer
00:40:53who's nice to his dog, well, if you think of a serial killer who's nice to his dog, his dog
00:41:01will
00:41:01have no problem with the owner being a serial killer. The dog might even playfully help the
00:41:06serial killer dig holes, right? Like, the ghoul in Fallout is not a particularly good person,
00:41:12even refers to himself as a bad person, but he's got this dog called Dogmeat that's quite loyal.
00:41:17Hitler liked dogs, dogs had no problem with Hitler, blah, blah, blah, right? So, dogs don't have the
00:41:23capacity to evaluate somebody's moral character outside of their own direct experience. Of course,
00:41:28if a man is cruel to his dog, we would call him a bad person, and I would, for sure,
00:41:32it's a bad person,
00:41:32be cruel to animals. If a man is cruel to his dog, then the dog will not like the man,
00:41:39but that's only because the dog is experiencing something negative, right? And so, dogs do not have the
00:41:46capacity to evaluate positive or negative qualities outside of their own direct experience.
00:41:53So, if you're talking about chemically bonded, automatic, instinctual, genetically evolved
00:41:59attachment, that's not love. And babies cannot love you, because babies cannot evaluate your moral
00:42:07character outside of their direct experience of you. I mean, if you're nice to your children,
00:42:14children, but you cheat everyone in business, at some point, when your children get older,
00:42:19they will understand that you cheat everyone in business, and they will lose respect for you,
00:42:22even though you're nice to them. If you have high integrity at work, but a mean to your children,
00:42:30right, they will evaluate you immediately based upon your negative, their negative exposure to your
00:42:35bad behavior, your hostile or abusive behavior. They won't care that you have high integrity at work.
00:42:40And children, teenagers in particular, are famously keen at figuring out, it's like an instinct,
00:42:47the moral hypocrisies of their parents, and they do this in part to distance themselves
00:42:50from parental authority so that they can become masters in their own lives and their own homes over
00:42:55time. So, babies cannot process your moral character outside of their direct experiences of you.
00:43:04If you are a serial killer, but you are playful and peppy with your baby, right, it's this terrifying
00:43:10scene in Terry Gilliam's movie Brazil. I think Michael Palin plays a torturer who's nice to his
00:43:15children. And of course, we've seen that if we've had abusive parents, we can see them being super nice
00:43:21to us in public, and then mean to us in private. And that's because they're managing other people's
00:43:26perceptions and further isolating us because other people says, oh, you know, your parents, your mom and
00:43:30dad are great, right? It means that you're cut off from support, right? So, babies cannot evaluate
00:43:38your moral character. They are chemically, biochemically bonded. It doesn't mean that
00:43:42they're not super cute. It doesn't mean that you, I mean, you love your babies from an attachment
00:43:48standpoint. You morally love them and admire them as they grow into adults who make good decisions and
00:43:53are moral and have strength and character and integrity and so on, right? So, that is the process.
00:44:01And people don't like it, I understand, because people want to believe that they're loved by their
00:44:07pets because they can't be loved by adults. And this writer, the person who wrote me this message,
00:44:14is in that category. Again, I'm going to be blunt. So, why would you rage quit me because you disagree
00:44:20with an argument? I quit mauling you. So, you're volatile. You're volatile. You're emotionally
00:44:26reactive. You're aggressive. You're hostile. So, people can't love you because I disagree with you.
00:44:32I disagree with you. I have good reasons for disagreeing with you. Of course, right? But
00:44:37because I disagree with you, you get very aggressive and rage quit and get, you know, pretty nasty,
00:44:43right? So, you can't be loved by adults because a moral woman would not want to be around that kind
00:44:50of behavior. So, you have to make a substitute with animals. But because you have to substitute
00:44:53with animals, you are taken out of the equation of adult love. Like, we all know this, the woman
00:45:00who's alone and weird, and she's got a lot of cats, right? There's a cat lady, the older cat lady.
00:45:06Okay. Well, why is that such a common stereotype? Well, because she believes that the cats love her.
00:45:14She gets her dopamine and sense of affection from cats. But because she loves her cats,
00:45:19she never reforms her behavior so she can actually be loved morally by an adult human being,
00:45:23right? Anyway, so he goes on to say, you continue to make consciousness or choice the mandatory when
00:45:30it comes to capacity to love. And again, he has, I've defined, I've defined my term of love. Love is
00:45:35our involuntary response of virtue for virtuous. Positive response, obviously, right? So, I've defined
00:45:41love. Has he defined love? Nope. It's just emotional reaction. He says, this thinking backs exactly into a
00:45:47contradiction. We know that infants have neither consciousness nor choice, yet any parent knows
00:45:51the infant loves. Toddlers are compelled to love, but they love nonetheless. Teenagers, etc. Not only
00:45:59compelled to love, but can be. Of course, Molyneux would say, but that's not real love. But some of it
00:46:05is. The child still wants to love the parent even when virtue, lack, seeks to negate. Some part of that
00:46:12child still does love. So, wants to love. So, I mean, what is this? Is this an argument? Any parent
00:46:20knows the infant loves. No. The infant is positively bonded to the parent for reasons of survival.
00:46:30Doesn't make it super cute. Doesn't make it a wonderful and beautiful. It doesn't make it not a
00:46:35wonderful and beautiful experience. It is. It is. You know, your child looking up for you, smiling,
00:46:40because, but they smile because you act in a positive manner towards them. So, in a sense,
00:46:46they're sensing your immediate virtues with regards to them. So, if you are, you know, positive
00:46:54and friendly and play with your child and smile and take delight in the child's presence and feed
00:46:59them and clean them and you're a good parent, then your child reacts in a positive way towards you.
00:47:04Is the child evaluating your virtues? No. The child is instinctively responding to treatment that makes
00:47:13the child happy. The baby, in particular, right? Now, I remember as a toddler being very frustrated
00:47:20with family members who acted in mean, callous, violent, or brutal, or neglectful ways. I was
00:47:27experiencing negative emotions as a result of bad behavior, but I was not morally evaluating that bad
00:47:34behavior. Because if the characteristic is shared by animals, it cannot be human love. We need a
00:47:43different word for the ducklings and mature adult moral love and respect. We need a different,
00:47:52well, you can't use the same word for both because it's not the same circumstance or situation.
00:47:55I did not earn the ducklings' attachment to me through my moral excellence. They didn't admire me
00:48:01ethically and therefore chose to follow me. They are chemically bonded. We just need a different
00:48:07word. Can't use the same word for both things at all. And so, love is moral love. It's an admiration
00:48:15for virtue, consistency, integrity. So, any parent knows the infant loves. Well, does the infant judge?
00:48:26No. The infant only judges, and this is an instinctual process, the infant only judges
00:48:32positive or negative experiences with the person. Now, of course, some of those positive experiences
00:48:38may flow from virtue, but an evil man can be nice to a baby and the baby will love the
00:48:45evil man.
00:48:46An evil man may be perfectly nice to his own dog and the dog will have great affection for, say,
00:48:53affection rather than love. In the previous instance, great affection for the evil man. Can't judge outside
00:48:57of his own experience. Of course, Molyneux would say, but that's not real love. Now, that's sophistry,
00:49:04right? That's not sophistry. Sorry, that is sophistry because he's not giving my definition. So,
00:49:11making it saying, I'm saying, oh, he's saying that I'm just moving the goalposts, right? I'm just moving
00:49:17the goalposts. Of course, children love, oh, that's not real love, right? That's a straw man that I'm
00:49:22moving the goalposts, right? No, I have a very clear definition. Love is our involuntary response
00:49:26to virtue if we're not virtuous. And if somebody wants to engage with me in the realm of love
00:49:30and doesn't even say how my definition is invalid, then they are not negotiating in good faith. If I
00:49:37put out clear definitions and a person doesn't engage in my clear definitions, then sophistry is
00:49:44what is occurring. All right. I always believed that your false philosophy on animals and love
00:49:49conditions backed directly into the right, even obligation to abort children. What the heck does
00:49:57that mean? False philosophy on animals and love conditions. Yeah. So, again, if you want to,
00:50:02if you want to disprove me on love, no problem. Just work with my definition and show how it is
00:50:09wrong. Now, certainly, if you're talking about love, you have to be talking about human love,
00:50:17right? Because to love, to honor, to obey, mutual respect and virtues. Nobody expects a woman to
00:50:23love a man who beats her, right? She may be attached. She may be terrified to leave. She may
00:50:28whatever. But nobody expects the woman to love a man who beats her, even though she may be biochemically
00:50:33bonded or attached to him if she's had children or they've been together for a long time.
00:50:39So, false philosophy on animals and love conditions back directly into the right,
00:50:43even obligation to abort children. So, this is another bit of sophistry. Technically,
00:50:48you abort fetuses because children is all the way up to 17, in which case it would be murder,
00:50:52but whatever, right? Or 18. The thread line of your, quote, philosophy justifies abortion. Since
00:50:57the infant has no choice or consciousness, he is more animal, less human. The right still seems
00:51:04elementary. Okay. So, I think, I think that's what, I think I understand what he's saying.
00:51:08So, I'm saying that a child has an attachment at the level of an animal. We can kill animals,
00:51:17therefore we can kill children. A child has the bonding capacity of an animal, a pup, maybe even a
00:51:28duckling. So, a baby bonds to parents based upon instinct and genetics, and therefore, since we can kill
00:51:38animals, we can kill children. And that's, you know, that's an interesting argument. That's an
00:51:43interesting argument. And this is similar to an argument I had many years ago that just popped
00:51:47into my mind recently around mental deficiencies, cognitive deficiencies, what used to be called
00:51:53mongoloid or retarded or something like that. He said, well, we eat animals that aren't conscious.
00:51:59Why can't we eat people who are cognitively deficient to the point of being animals? And my argument was
00:52:05that they're still human and they have the capacity to be cured. You can't cure a dog of
00:52:12darkness and turn it into a person, but you could potentially sort of flowers for alginal style cure
00:52:17a person who has cognitive deficiencies and they're still in the category of a human. So,
00:52:24the argument would be, I think the syllogistical form would be, we can kill all animals even though they
00:52:34bond only biochemically. Babies bond biochemically, therefore, babies are animals, therefore, we can
00:52:40kill them. I think that's the argument. Now, the challenge, of course, is that babies are going to
00:52:47grow into people with a moral sense. So, saying, well, we can't have social contracts or moral
00:52:55contracts with creatures that have no morality or cannot process morality. Babies cannot process
00:53:02morality, therefore, we are in a state of nature with babies. But, of course, we revile against
00:53:06killing babies and children, even though babies and children can't morally process things very well
00:53:11at an abstract level. But they're going to grow into that, right? They're going to grow into that.
00:53:18Somebody who's asleep is not processing things at a moral level. Somebody who's unconscious is not
00:53:23processing things at a moral level. Does that mean we can kill them? No, because they're going to wake up
00:53:27and then they're going to be able to consciously process moral arguments and reasoning. So, if
00:53:33somebody is in a state of non-rationality but will grow into a state of rationality, either actual or
00:53:38potential, then we cannot harm them because just because somebody is not exercising a right in the
00:53:46moment does not mean that that right ceases, right? If you remember, there was a couple when there
00:53:51was some riot and a bunch of hoodlums came into their private community and they were out front
00:53:57with guns trying to protect their property. So, they were in the active process of protecting their
00:54:02property. If I leave my bike out front of my house and somebody takes it and I see them and
00:54:11I grab the
00:54:11bike and try and pull it back, I'm in the active process of protecting my property. So, I'm actively
00:54:16protecting my property rights. If I just leave my bike out front of my house and somebody takes it,
00:54:21they're still done wrong even though I'm not actively exercising that right of protection of
00:54:27property. They've still stolen from me. So, somebody doesn't have to be actively in the process
00:54:33of protecting a right or exercising a right in order to be covered by that right. A woman who is
00:54:43threatened with violence, but the violence is not actually enacted. So, somebody says, whispers to
00:54:48her, give me a purse or I'll stab you or choke you. She hands over that purse. She's not actively
00:54:55in
00:54:55the process of violently defending herself, but she's still being stolen from. If the guy says,
00:55:01I'm going to strangle you and the woman says, no, and then he tries to strangle her and then she
00:55:05stabs him or kills him or fights back or gouges his eyes out, then she's actively in the process of
00:55:10protecting her property rather than just handing it over based on a threat. But in both situations,
00:55:15evil was done to her, right? So, you don't have to be actively engaged in an aggressive protection
00:55:22of your rights in order to be covered and protected by those rights, right? If I'm taking a shower with
00:55:27my bike on the front lawn and somebody takes my bike from the front lawn, I'm not actively engaged
00:55:32in the protection. I could go to the police after, blah, blah, blah, but that person has still done wrong.
00:55:36So, there are passive rights. This is UPP, right? There are passive rights that you're protected
00:55:40by even when not violently enforcing them. And so, potential rights are the same as rights.
00:55:47You have the potential to use force to defend your property, but you're stolen from even if you don't,
00:55:52even if you hand something over based on threat or fraud, or even if somebody takes your bike without
00:55:57your knowledge because you're showering, you're not actively engaged in protecting your rights,
00:56:02but you're still covered by those rights. Potential rights are the same as rights.
00:56:07You can't kill someone who's asleep because they have no cognitive function that allows them to
00:56:11negotiate and process moral principles because they're going to wake up. And so, they do not
00:56:18currently, somebody who's asleep or unconscious does not currently have the ability to process
00:56:24moral principles or arguments, but they're still covered by morality because they're going to wake up
00:56:29and have that ability. Just because you're not exercising an ability at the time does not mean
00:56:33you're not covered by a protection of that ability, free will, protection from violence and theft and so
00:56:39on. If an accountant is stealing from Sting, say, which actually happened, if an accountant is
00:56:45stealing with Sting but Sting doesn't figure it out for some years, the wrong was done when he stole
00:56:50from Sting, not when Sting figured it out. So, Sting is covered by the principle called it's wrong to
00:56:55steal from Sting even when Sting has no idea he's being stolen from.
00:56:59Cruelty to animals is wrong, but less wrong than cruelty to children.
00:57:03You can't kill babies because babies are growing into rational moral consciousness. They don't
00:57:08possess it as infants any more than somebody who's unconscious possesses it in the time of being
00:57:14unconscious, but they're going to grow into it and therefore they are covered by that potentiality.
00:57:19You can't kill a guy who's unconscious because he's not a moral actor because he's going to wake up
00:57:24and grow into being a moral and recover the state of being a moral actor. He is not now but
00:57:29will soon
00:57:30be a moral actor. Babies are not now but will soon be moral actors. So, the idea that babies bond
00:57:38like
00:57:39animals do, therefore babies are in the category of animals, therefore you can treat babies like animals
00:57:45is incorrect. Because it is the same as saying somebody who's unconscious, sleeping or they got
00:57:53a bang on the head or something, somebody who's unconscious is not able to reason, therefore
00:57:57they're like an animal, therefore you can cook and eat them. Right? I mean, we understand that that's
00:58:02just not. We understand instinctively that's not morally valid and that's because even though
00:58:07they're not able to exercise the right in present, in the same way that if I'm showering and you're stealing
00:58:11my bike, I'm not able to exercise self-protection or protection of my property in the moment,
00:58:16doesn't mean that I'm not covered by that right or my bike is not covered by property rights.
00:58:21If you knock someone out and then say, while they're unconscious, if you don't say anything
00:58:27to me in the next five seconds, you're giving me permission to stab you and you're filming it all
00:58:31and then the person is unconscious for five seconds and then you stab that person and you say,
00:58:35look, the guy didn't, he agreed that I could stab him because he didn't say don't stab me in the
00:58:40five seconds and you say, well, he was unconscious, he had no capacity to tell you that, therefore
00:58:43it's not a valid contract. Right? So you are covered by potentiality because it's UPB. UPB doesn't mean
00:58:50it's universal morality. It doesn't mean when you're in the immediate process of exercising that
00:58:56right. It means you're covered by protection from aggression and property violations, no rape,
00:59:03theft, assault and murder. You're covered by those even when you're asleep, even when you're
00:59:07unconscious, even when you're a baby, because you don't have to be in the process of being able to
00:59:12actually violent, defend those rights in the moment in order to be covered by those rights.
00:59:16You just have to be in the category of humanity, which is able to process moral contracts. The fact
00:59:21that you're disabled by sleep or infancy in the moment doesn't mean that you're not a human being
00:59:26with that capacity. Or even if you have some sort of mental health challenge, some sort of cognitive
00:59:31deficiency that could be cured, you're still in the category of humanity. And to just put this out to
00:59:36people as a whole, like you need to get when your argument is absurd and not blame me, but rather
00:59:40work it out yourself. So if you think I'm a huge protector of infants, toddlers and children. So if
00:59:47you think that because I'm saying babies only bond hormonally or chemically, and according to their
00:59:53own experience of the caregiver, but not through moral judgment, that they're just like animals and
00:59:59therefore can be killed at will. So there's something wrong with that argument, right? There's something
01:00:04wrong with killing children at will. And if you think that my argument leads to killing children
01:00:08at will, though I'm a great protector of children, you can assume that I've just made some wild
01:00:13contradiction that has been completely unnoticed for 45 years. Or you can say, huh, I wonder how
01:00:18Steph would respond to this rather than jumping the gun and saying, well, Steph, you're advocating for
01:00:22the killing of children by saying that animals can't love. That's absurd. Just on the face of it. And
01:00:29absurdity is it doesn't mean necessarily that I'm right and you're wrong. But just just do a little
01:00:35bit of work because otherwise you're just being triggered. And I know what's going on. What's going
01:00:39on is you lack adult love. And you are getting your love dopamine fix from the programmed loyalty of
01:00:46animals. And I'm taking that away from you as saying it's not equivalent to adult moral love,
01:00:51which it's not. But you're mad at me because you're a kind of, you're a, you're an addict
01:00:56of animal affection. And I mean that very, very seriously. And I'm very, very blunt. And you can
01:01:01tell me if I'm wrong. This is what I believe to be completely true based upon a lot, a lot,
01:01:07a lot
01:01:07of experience and the reasoning that I put forward. That you are addicted to the dopamine of believing
01:01:15that your animals love you when they are merely attached to you biochemically because they're
01:01:20programmed to be social animals. Children do this all the time, right? They think that animals love
01:01:25them. I remember when I was a kid, I was six. I went to visit friends of my father's in
01:01:30Africa
01:01:31and there were dogs there that loved having their hair combed the wrong way. Maybe they had fleas or
01:01:36something in hindsight. I don't know. So every time you'd pick up a hairbrush, which back then I did,
01:01:39you pick up a hairbrush, they'd come and run and jump on you because they'd think that you're about to
01:01:43brush their coat backwards, which they loved. You know, my dog is so happy that I'm home.
01:01:48My dog is thumping his tail, he's jumping up, and it makes you feel good. And I'm not saying that's
01:01:52wrong. There's nothing wrong with that foundationally. It's nice to have the animals
01:01:55have a positive response to you. There's nothing wrong with that. When we raised ducks, the ducklings
01:02:01were very bonded to me when they were very young. And then when they got older, and especially the
01:02:06males, they'd become territorial and they would hiss at and try and bite me. Had I changed? No, but
01:02:12they had gone from viewing me as a source of survival to viewing me as a threat to their
01:02:17reproduction, because they're trained to hiss at and bite anything that's larger than them that's in
01:02:21the vicinity, especially want something that they grew up with, because they're just programmed to
01:02:26drive away males that might reproduce, because male ducks reproduce with three to four females.
01:02:30So he's just keeping his hair. So I get that you come home, and it's real nice that your pets
01:02:37are
01:02:37happy to see you. And that is nice. I'm not disagreeing with you. That's a nice experience.
01:02:43But it's not adult love. They can't judge you. They can't evaluate you morally. And because you're
01:02:47emotionally volatile in the way that if somebody's about to take a hit of heroin, and you smack it out
01:02:53of their hand and flush it down the toilet, they're going to get angry at you because you're taking away
01:02:56their drug. So what I'm saying is that it's nice that your animals like your company. That's great.
01:03:03It's not the same as a woman looking at you with the shining eyes of true moral respect and admiration
01:03:10or viewing her in the same way. So what I'm doing is I'm downgrading your drug and saying it's not
01:03:16adult mature moral love, which it ain't. That we know for sure. Now you lashing back and saying,
01:03:23well, Seth, this means you want to kill children. That is you being angry as an addict that I'm taking
01:03:28away or downgrading the dopamine that you perceive of as love. It's not love. Your dogs,
01:03:33your cats, whatever, they're just bonded to you through biochemicals and a positive experience.
01:03:40And it's nice that you treat your pets well. We should all treat our pets well. Absolutely. It's
01:03:43nice. And it's fine that you enjoy the company of your pets. And it's fine that you like that they
01:03:52have a positive response to you. That's all very nice. But it's no substitute for adult love. And
01:03:56that's why you're lashing out because I'm pointing that out, that it represents a deficiency. And you
01:04:01getting your, quote, love from animals rather than mature moral adult love is sad. It is sad. And it is
01:04:09a real loss. A woman who doesn't have a family, doesn't have a husband, doesn't have children,
01:04:15grandchildren, who instead pets a bunch of cats is sad. We know that it's sad. Oh, and this guy
01:04:22finishes up his coup de grace, his death blow against me. He said, that's always deeply concerned
01:04:29me, that something is off-center in your work, mean-spirited, resentful, death-loving,
01:04:35a hint of Crowley, even though 98% of your takes are good. Ah, make an atheist like yourself proud.
01:04:43Your constant promise that you'd go down as a philosopher great today and or in 400 years
01:04:47from now shows no evidence. Isn't that concerning? See? Deeply concerned, off-center,
01:04:55mean-spirited, resentful, death-loving. A hint of Crowley, who's a Satanist, even though 98% of
01:05:01your takes are good. So this person is lashing out. Obviously, this is, it's nasty, like it's a nasty
01:05:09set of statements to make to someone. I don't take it personally because this is just a, it's a guy
01:05:14who's addicted to animal affection, and I'm taking that away by pointing out that it's not the same
01:05:20as adult moral respect and so on, right? So, so this is how this person deals with someone who
01:05:28disagrees with him, lashes out and, and tries to do emotional abuse and emotional wounding and sort
01:05:35of get inside my head and turn me against myself and, and all of this sort of stuff. And this
01:05:39is why he
01:05:40has to rely on animal affection, because no reasonable or moral human being would put up
01:05:45with any of this kind of mean-spirited, vindictive bullshit for more than about 30 seconds. So,
01:05:51yeah, you should, you should definitely stick with your animals, because people are too good for you.
01:05:55FreeDomain.com slash donate. Thank you so much for your support, my friends. Love you all to death.
01:06:00I really appreciate these messages. Take care. I'll talk to you soon. Bye.
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