There is No Such Thing as TRUTH! Listener Questions

Name: There is No Such Thing as TRUTH! Listener Questions
Uploaded: 2026-08-10T18:23:52+00:00
Duration: 43 min 13 s
Channel: Stefan Molyneux

00:00Hey everybody, Stephen Molyneux from Freedom A, and hope you're doing well.

00:03A question from, these are questions from listeners on X,

00:06why do humans hate natural selection? It is clearly the most obvious structure of the designer.

00:16So in the Christian worldview, all human beings are created by God, and therefore the soul is

00:26common to all human beings, and therefore any differences in group outcomes, like sex or

00:32ethnicity or other things, all differences in group outcomes must be the result of bigotry.

00:37This is where Christianity and the hard left share the same perspective. Now, of course,

00:42we're all human beings, we should all be equal under the law, nobody should have special privileges

00:46or disadvantages or anything like that. But in general, in egalitarian ideals,

00:56everybody should end up about the same, because, you know, we're all made in the image of God,

00:59and everybody's kind of about the same. And of course, in the left, one of the weapons of the

01:05left is to say, any and all differences in group outcomes must, must, must be the result of bigotry.

01:13Like if women make different choices than men, and of course, you can only get equality in income

01:18for women if we give up actually having children, because someone's got to take care of the children,

01:22and it's mostly women who do that. I worked in a daycare, I kind of saw that firsthand. So for

01:29Christians, the idea of differences in group outcomes is offensive, because we're all made in the image

01:35of God, and therefore we all have souls, and therefore we should all end up at roughly about

01:39the same place. And for hard leftists, they say, well, all differences in group outcomes must be

01:48the result of racism, sexism, bigotry, some sort of phobia, hostility, hatred, and so on.

01:55And therefore, people don't like evolution and natural selection for Christians, of course, because

02:02it bypasses God creating and shaping the species. And for leftists, the idea that let's just say men

02:09and women have evolved to have different preferences, different skills. Again, on average, you don't judge

02:15individuals by group averages. But the idea that, like if you've ever been around truly, truly, truly

02:25remarkable people, I mean, the geniuses, the, I mean, this was even the case of coding. Like I was a

02:33manager in the software field, I was chief technical officer and director of technology, and then became

02:38chief marketing officer because I was good at the chitty chat, as well as the tech. But when you have

02:44an average programmer, and then you have a really good programmer, like the really good programmer

02:51isn't like 50% more effective and efficient. A really good programmer can be 10 to 20 times more

02:58efficient. And in some ways, there's no scale. Like there's no scale that makes sense. Because it's not

03:05like an average programmer completes a task in eight hours, but a really great programmer can do it in an

03:10hour. So it's like eight times faster. The really great programmer will solve problems you don't even

03:17know exist, will get so deep into code and work all weekend, and create things that the regular

03:28programmer simply can't create. Like if you've been around really, really talented, and brilliant and

03:34motivated people, they operate on a completely different level. The brains feel almost completely

03:40different. And again, I know everyone's a person, everyone's equal under the law, I get all of that.

03:44But the only way we progress in society is taking the shackles off the most talented and letting them

03:50do their amazing thing, their amazing things. And it is offensive to people. And look, I kind of

03:57understand that. I remember reading a novel many years ago about a guy, he went to a concert, and there

04:02was, you know, the singer was up on stage doing his thing. And, you know, he's there, like everyone

04:07in the audience wanted to be that singer, wanted to be that guy out there, you know, commanding the

04:11crowd, leaping around, singing away, and having people cheer and clap and body surf and all.

04:17Everybody wants to be that guy. I mean, it's hard to look at something like, you know, the famous Live

04:23Aid

04:23with Queen, you know, Freddie Mercury doing his Benito Mussolini with the crowd. It's kind of hard not to say,

04:29well, that'd be kind of cool. And wouldn't that be fun? And wouldn't that be an exciting way

04:33to spend your life? So there is, you know, and you kind of get up and you plot along and

04:38you

04:39go to your job and you think about, you know, these rock stars and so on, they're partying and

04:43sitting on yachts, bikinis and all of that. So there is a certain resentment that people have

04:50towards those who are truly skilled. Now, the fact that the truly skilled people live some pretty grim

04:55lives fairly often, you know, they don't find a lot of love. They're kind of lonely. They're very

05:01isolated from the general patterns of humanity and so on. There's downsides. I get all of that. But,

05:06you know, it looks kind of cool. So the fact that evolution has a real scattershot and abilities

05:14are wildly distributed among various people. I mean, some people are great at, you know,

05:22some men are just great talking to and picking up women and other men are very shy. And soon as

05:27some

05:28people, what did they say? Was it Chris Helmsworth or something like that? It's like, he's very funny.

05:32He can sing. I think someone said that about Viggo Mortensen, the guy who played Aragon, like he can

05:38ride horses. He can teach you how to fish. He can sing. He can play instruments. He can just do

05:42anything, do anything and everything. It's amazing. It's amazing. And some people are just now, of course,

05:47in the Christian world, they say, you know, God gave you a lot of gifts. And it's like,

05:52but if God gives some people a lot of gifts, isn't that playing favorites? Isn't that kind of

05:59not everyone being made in the image of God? Because God obviously has tons of gifts,

06:03all of the gifts. So people don't like natural selection. It really messes with the left and it

06:10really messes with religion and the hammer, like you hammer down the nail that sticks up,

06:20the tall poppies get cut down. The idea that if you, you know, it's a great line from the original

06:25Superman. Well, one of the original Supermans, the one with Christopher Reeve, where he runs home

06:30super quickly and beats the people who are driving. And his son says, kind of showing off a little there,

06:36aren't you, son? And he says, is a bird showing off when it flies? The resentment of the average

06:43towards the extraordinary is really something. It's just the whole, you tax the rich even more,

06:50like the rich pay the vast majority of taxes anyway, but it's never enough, right? Resentment,

06:55resentment. We all want to be at the top of the pyramid. Most of us don't have the talent to

07:00get

07:00there. And even if we had the talent, we may not have that single-minded dedication it takes to get

07:07to the top. You know, Queen was one of the, like, it's Queen, Rolling Stones, Beatles, you know, like

07:12ACDC, like the top bands. I mean, I don't know the history of the other bands that much, but I

07:16know

07:16that 10 years into their career, and, you know, the Queen guys had options, like Freddie Mercury

07:23was studying graphics design, could have made his living doing that. The bassist, John Deacon, was

07:28studying to be an electrical engineer. That's a pretty solid career. And Brian May, the guitarist,

07:35he was, like, an astrophysicist working on his doctrine. He then later finished it. And I think

07:42the drummer, I don't even know why I know this. I'm not proud that I do, but I do. The

07:47drummer,

07:48Roger Taylor, was studying to be a dentist. So they all had these options. And, you know, 10 years into

07:53their career, you know, Freddie Mercury was living in an apartment with mold on the walls,

07:58like some dingy little apartment with mold on the walls. They were endlessly schlepping themselves

08:03to gigs, and they were broke. And this is where the song Death on Two Legs comes from,

08:08is the ferocity about every one of the music industry just basically gets ripped off. It's

08:13horrendous what happens. So, you know, how many people are willing to sit in there for 10 years

08:19when they have other options and just really pursue it and keep doing it and ferociously keep

08:25writing and keep recording and touring? Like, Queen never made any money on their tours. They just

08:31really enjoyed touring and really loved going out there. And how many people are willing to give up

08:35that kind of stable life? You know, so, yeah, people don't like the extraordinary. And I understand

08:41that. I mean, I think we've all, I mean, come on, if you're honest, everyone's gone through that

08:45resentment of, why him and not me? Why him and not me? I wanted this girl and this other guy

08:51got the

08:51girl. Why him and not me? Why him and not me? And so natural selection, there's a wide variety of

08:59talents and abilities in the world. Some of these are group averages. Of course, some of these are

09:04just individual. And, you know, it's like Marvin Gaye, a fantastic singer, right? Wouldn't you?

09:10But, you know, his life ended in a horrific way, as did Freddie Mercury's, of course. So

09:16people dislike, and we should be taught this, right? We should be taught to embrace the people

09:21who are fantastic at what they do. You should embrace and enjoy and appreciate the people who

09:29are fantastic at what they do. We wouldn't have art, culture, movies, music, novels, like plays.

09:37We wouldn't just, we wouldn't have these. We wouldn't have these things without the extraordinary.

09:43And we can all be envious of the extraordinary, for sure, for sure. And like I went to see a

09:49musical, two musicals not too long ago. And the people who can just like open their mouths, command

09:59an audience, sing with passion, with character. Like there was this woman, one of the plays was,

10:06Guys and Dolls, which I've never seen before. It's set in like the late 40s. And it's very sort of

10:11gumshoe. Look here, mate. Not mate, sorry. That's British. See, that's why I'm not on stage doing that

10:18stuff. And, you know, they can just open their mouths. They can sing beautifully. They can do

10:24characters. They can dance, sing, dance, and act, right? The triple threat. And they're just, you know,

10:30they put a lot of work into it. They're very talented. They seem to be having a great time up

10:32there. And, you know, the audience outnumbers like 20 to 1. And, you know, how many people

10:37wouldn't like to be up there singing away and dancing? And it would be fun. But it's not my

10:42thing. But people do it. So, yeah, just enjoy. Enjoy that people are fantastic. And, you know,

10:49work to expand your own talents where possible. But we should teach that the extraordinary should

10:55be celebrated. And also, it's natural to feel some exclusion and resentment. Exclusion and resentment.

11:03That's going to be, that's natural. All right. Treating the institution of marriage as a sort of clown

11:08car with way too many, no longer strictly related to the idea, underlying concepts crammed in. Wow,

11:20that's quite a sentence. How would you strip it down to its bare minimum? So, I can do this one

11:27very

11:27briefly. The institution of marriage, why did it evolve? The institution of marriage evolved

11:36to create a secure pair bond so that children have a great environment to grow up in. Because

11:48children learn to love, not just by being loved, by watching their parents love each other.

11:53And they learn how to negotiate by watching their parents negotiate. They learn how to have fun as

11:57an adult with their own partner by watching their parents have fun together as partners and enjoy

12:01each other's company and so on. So, marriage is when you get together and you say, we're together

12:07forever and we're going to have our kids. We're going to be together, we're going to have our kids.

12:11And it's a public declaration that if we drift apart, the family gets us back together.

12:17Like the family, the community, everyone's going to say, get back together, you've got to work it

12:21out. Like if you go on a couple of dates and it doesn't, you know, you don't vibe, you don't

12:25click,

12:25there's no particular good conversation. There could be mismatches in a variety of values or

12:29intelligence levels because people sort relentlessly by intelligence. Like couples are close in

12:34intelligence, one of the most replicated findings. If you're smart, you cannot be with somebody of

12:40average or below average intelligence for a lifetime because marriage is just a lengthy conversation

12:44and you can't spend your entire time listening to somebody drone on about the Kardashians and not

12:49lose your mind. So, so if you, you go out for a little while, there's no marriage in the public

12:55declaration. Then if you break up, people are like, okay, well, fair call. Sorry, it didn't work out

12:59and so on. But once you declare that you're going to marry together forever, the community, if you start

13:05to drift apart or if you say I want out, they sit down, help you work it out and keep

13:08you together.

13:09So it's a public declaration of saying, this is my commitment and the community, the family,

13:16the extended family, they need to hold me to my commitment. That's what marriage is.

13:24All right. Next, oh, listened to your Sunday morning chat. You stated most people are not virtuous,

13:34they're vapid and essentially non-thinking individualistically. I'm a believer in anarchism

13:41and agree with you. Most people are this way, but wouldn't this make anarchy not likely? I'm starting

13:47to think most people want to be slaves. Well, you wouldn't want to study a bunch of animals in a

13:56zoo

13:57and think that you've learned anything about the nature of animals, right? I am not centered. Oh,

14:05how appalling. So if you study people in prison, then you wouldn't learn much about human nature.

14:12You would simply learn about human nature in a prison, right? So studying people in the slave planet,

14:22in the prison planet, that's an Alex Jones thing, it doesn't teach you much about human nature.

14:29I mean, if all you studied were slaves in sort of ancient Greece or Rome or the Antebellum South

14:35or whatever, if all you studied were slaves and you pretended that there weren't any other

14:38kinds of people, that the only people you had access to for some reason were slaves, you'd say,

14:42oh, geez, human beings seem to be kind of demotivated. They seem to be kind of resentful and angry.

14:46They shirk. They, you know, they're, quote, lazy because slaves are demotivated because they're

14:50ordered around, right? So you wouldn't know much about human nature. You would only know human nature

14:58in the institution of slavery. In the same way, if all you studied were arranged marriages, you would

15:05say, gee, that doesn't seem to be a lot of wooing or romance or playfulness or affection or

15:12charisma in the dating market and so on. And the women seem kind of depressed and the men seem kind

15:18of resentful. So you wouldn't know the nature of dating in a free society. All you would know is

15:26how people behave when they're encased, enslaved, encaged, forced, subjugated, and ruled over.

15:36So when I say most people are amoral at best, I mean, that's just a fact, like at the moment,

15:44right?

15:44So, I mean, the Milgram experiments, the prison experiments, and so on, 80% of people just do

15:53what they're told. And 80% of people, this is why it wasn't too shocking that 80% of people

15:58lined up

15:58to take a vaccine because, like, they'll just do what they're told. And I don't know what that's

16:06like. I can't stand, I don't mind being doing, I don't mind doing what I'm told if I respect the

16:14authority. If my dentist says, oh, you need to floss the back more, it's like, okay, I'll floss the back

16:17more. But I don't know, I can't really imagine what it's like to not just be amoral, but to lie

16:25to

16:25yourself about it, right? Because the most important thing in life is not to lie to yourself, not to lie

16:29to

16:31yourself. To thine own self be true, and then it shall follow as night follows day, thou canst not

16:35be false to any man. So you have to be honest with yourself, you have to have an accurate assessment

16:40of yourself, you have to be honest with your own capacity for evil and weakness and pettiness and

16:45vengefulness and all of the, you know, scrappy but sometimes negative impulses that we have.

16:51As I said in my show last night, the people I'm always the most alarmed of are the people who

16:55never

16:55imagined that they could be the bad guys, because then what they do is they project all of their

16:59potential for badness on other people, right? This is the left saying that, you know, all the people

17:03on the right are Nazis and so on, or women who, they've studied this, men have more sympathy and

17:10empathy for their political opponents than women have for their political allies. And so the people

17:16who've never looked in the mirror and said, am I, am I, could I be a bad guy? I could

17:21be a bad guy.

17:22I mean, I've certainly thought of that and I still check myself on that. So yeah, you have to,

17:29really be honest with yourself and most people don't. And the consequence of being amoral or

17:34immoral, of just being, having the slave mentality, is that you have to lie to yourself and pretend that

17:39you're not a slave. You have to lie to yourself and say, no, I'm a good guy. No, I'm, I'm

17:43not just

17:43doing what I'm told. I'm doing the right people. I'm protecting granny from the Wuhan, planet sneeze,

17:50and so on. And so just did that lying to yourself. And then once people can get you to lie

17:54to yourself,

17:54I mean, you're lost to virtue because all you do is you say, not, I'm a good person. You simply

18:06readjust your fearful, obedient impulses to be the good, right? So rather than saying, well,

18:14there are standards of virtue and value that I should pursue that are going to cause friction

18:18and tension and stress and problems in my life and others, what you do is you simply obey and then

18:25you redefine obedience as virtue, right? It's not like, well, I'm, I'm just doing what I'm told.

18:32You say, well, I'm doing the right thing. And the right thing always happens to coincide with

18:36what you're told. So virtue comes with friction. Like you can't diet without being uncomfortable. And if

18:42people just eat whatever they want and call it a good diet, then they'll never change their diet. So

18:46the key thing is, and I don't know what makes people want to lie to themselves. I don't,

18:51other than, I mean, I guess it's easier, right? It's easier. It's easier to just obey authority and

18:56call yourself virtuous than it is to actually be virtuous. Sure. I don't know. Maybe people are

19:01just lazy or maybe they're just kind of broken earlier, whatever it is. So you don't want to look

19:05at humanity at the moment and say, that's human nature. No, that's human nature in,

19:16a situation where children are abandoned, neglected, spanked, circumcised, brutalized,

19:25propagandized, threatened, and just horrible things happen to them all the way through the

19:32end of college, like almost a quarter century straight, being dumped in daycares, being yelled

19:38at, being called names, being neglected, and being ignored, and then being put in terrible

19:44schools where they're told that they have the original sin of skin color, especially if they're

19:48white, and the original sin of testicles if they're male. And, you know, you're just constant

19:53assault on a self-esteem, happiness, virtue, independent thought. And they are punished for

19:59thinking for themselves, and they are rewarded for nodding along with the woke teacher with the

20:06shaved side of the head and all of that. So, and then they go to university, it just continues.

20:12So, we don't know what people are like in a state of freedom. I mean, if you have been around

20:20well-raised kids, particularly homeschooled kids, I mean, they're very different from the other kids,

20:24right? They're very, the other kids are generally hedonists, and they get involved in sex too early,

20:29they have a lot of, they do a lot of drinking, they do a lot, they do some drugs, they

20:33just kind of

20:34amoral pleasure seekers, because they haven't been taught any virtues and values. But, you know,

20:38the kids who are raised well, they're very different, they're very different. So, people

20:43respond to incentives, and we are significantly shaped by our environment. So, like, if you were

20:49to look and say, well, we, we can't have a free market, like you look at a slave economy, right?

20:58And

20:58say, well, we can't have a free market, because workers are just too unmotivated, they just, they

21:02wouldn't do anything. It's like, but once you have a free market, over time, the workers become

21:07more motivated, right? Because they get more reward, and they can move up, and they get paid

21:13depending on how hard they work. So, don't mistake the sort of hang dog, slope-shouldered, stare at

21:18the sidewalk, shuffle prison gate of the current, of current humanity, and say, well, that's how people

21:26would be in a free society. So, of course, you know, the dominoes, we raise children peacefully,

21:32we raise children rationally, we raise children reasonably, peacefulparenting.com. And then,

21:37what we do is we end up with people who are self-sufficient, confident, and don't need to

21:43be bullied in order to do the right thing, right? We teach morals in the same way we teach a

21:47language,

21:48and we teach the children that they're worthy of respect by not using aggression or violence against

21:53them, calling them names, neglecting them. You know, we love our children. And then they grow up

21:58confident and healthy, and the number of criminals will decrease, the number of power-hungry power

22:03mongers will decrease, the number of people who will just automatically submit to the power of the

22:07state because they submitted to the power and violence of their parents will diminish. That's how

22:12we do it. So, I completely understand where you're coming from. I really sympathize where you're

22:16coming from. But life after freedom reshapes humanity to the point where, I mean, they will

22:25look back upon how we live with absolute horror in the same way that we look back on how slaves

22:31lived with absolute horror. So, all right. Is there any validity to the concept of a just war? What are

22:37the requirements? So, a just war would be a geographical military action to prevent reasonably imminent

22:53invasion. So, it's the same principle with self-defense. So, there's a number of standards

23:00that have to be passed morally or philosophically, and I'm not talking legally, I'm not a lawyer,

23:04but morally and philosophically, there's a number of standards that would have to be passed in order

23:10for free will, sorry, in order for self-defense to be valid, right? So, generally, you have to be in

23:19a

23:19situation that you did not necessarily immediately provoke where you have a reasonable belief that

23:27you're about to suffer imminent grievous bodily harm or death, right? So, you know, somebody flicks your

23:34earlobe, you don't get to blow them away because that's not grievous bodily harm. And so, you have to

23:39be in a situation where you reasonably expect, right? You can't say, well, he looked at me funny and he

23:47had

23:47a bulge in his pocket, so I figured he was about to shoot me, right? So, you have to be

23:50in a situation

23:51where you have a reasonable belief of imminent bodily harm or death, and then you can use force

23:56in self-defense, and you can use a force so that you disable the threat. That doesn't necessarily mean

24:04killing someone, although it might, but you use force to disable the threat, right? So, if somebody has

24:11their arm back and they're about to hit you, then you can hit them first, right? And then once you've

24:16hit

24:17them, if you've knocked them out, you don't get to shoot them because you've disabled the threat,

24:19right? So, the same principle would work in a geographical region, like a place, I'd say a

24:26country, although this would be in a stateless society going forward. So, if you have a reasonable

24:31belief that a foreign power is about to inflict some sort of attack upon you, then you would have

24:40the right to disable that attack. In general, I would advocate targeting the leaders, and I write

24:49about this in my book, The Future, I would advocate targeting the leaders more than the population

24:56as a whole, and so that would be a just war, right? That you have a reasonable belief that an

25:04attack is

25:04close, and prior to that, you would try and reduce the threat through diplomacy. But once, you know, once

25:19of the people who are there are not there by choice, it's not like the people in Ukraine or Russia,

25:23they're all being grabbed off the streets and thrown into war or they're shot. So,

25:27there are more victims, but you would aim for the leaders, and you would aim to disable

25:31the leaders. So, all right.

25:36I wonder how right was Kaczynski, the Unabomber? How likely that with advances in tech society,

25:41we'll still be free, all the cameras, AI, social engineering, and such stuff.

25:45Well, there is, it's a huge problem, and I'll just touch on this briefly. I've talked about it

25:51before. One of the reasons why totalitarianism failed in the past was the amount of labor that

25:58it took to monitor and control and punish people was prodigious, right? You had to read people's

26:03letters. You had to, you know, keep track of their history, though these big files that were

26:07tough to transfer. With AI scanning of social media posts, you can automate the monitoring

26:14of people, and you can also automate their punishments, right? And so, one of the big labor

26:20components of controlling people has been diminished. Now, of course, AI and cameras and all of this in a

26:27free society would virtually eliminate crime. I mean, basically, the only crime that still happens is the

26:32crime that the government wants to have happen. Because, I mean, if you've ever watched these

26:37true crime documentaries, it's like, well, he pinged off this cell tower, and then these five

26:41cameras caught the car in the neighborhood. And then we checked his social media history, and

26:46it turns out that there was a Word file that he planned this that he deleted, but there was still

26:51a shadow file in the temp directory. Like, they can get you on just about anything now, because

26:56everything's monitored, retorted, and people, you know, carry these monitoring devices of cell

27:00phones around with them and all. So, they can get you, pretty much. And so, the only crime that really

27:06exists is crime that people want to exist. Or, of course, like the horrific quarter million essays

27:13of children in England, that's because people were afraid of being called racist for all of that, which

27:19is wild. Like, racist becomes worse than, well, it's like racist, but with a P in the middle.

27:24Uh, it's just wild. So, uh, it is a problem. That's just one of the reasons I'm still in the

27:32fight for freedom. And, um, but you can't put the toothpaste back in the tube. We hopefully can move

27:38towards using the communications technology to spread ideas of freedom and liberty, rather than,

27:44you know, if it gets handed over to the bad guys, as it's drifting that way, then you will be,

27:49um,

27:50there's a reason why, uh, anti-free speech laws are being enacted, because then people can scan and

27:55find bad things and so on, right? So, all right. Secular reasons not to cheat on your wife slash

28:01husband. So, the marital relationship, people think it's a line between the husband and the wife.

28:09And I'm just talking about procreative relationships, which is really the point of marriage. So, I mean,

28:14the point of marriage is the protection of children. Uh, that's what marriage is. Uh, other people

28:19can get married. Like, the point of a road is for cars to drive on doesn't mean you can't

28:23use a bicycle on them as well. But if you look at marriage is an inverted pyramid for the children,

28:31right? The children are the base. And it's the stability of the parents that provides

28:36the security for the children. So, the reason why, for secular reasons, you wouldn't cheat on your

28:44wife and husband is it harms your children. You say, ah, but what if we don't have children? It's like,

28:48okay. So, you make a vow and you make a promise. And who you are to other people is mostly

28:58your

28:59commitments. Like, who you are to other people is mostly your commitments. Like, if you say to your

29:04friend, I'm going to meet you at seven o'clock, we're going to go and see a movie, then if

29:08you keep

29:08not showing up, he's not going to be your friend for very long, right? So, who you show up for

29:13and

29:13your relationships? Relationships are based upon commitments. And so, if you make the most solemn

29:21vow in your life, which is the vow to be faithful, to be monogamous and so on with your wife

29:28or your

29:28husband, that means who you are. We are our commitments. I mean, you're still listening and

29:36watching after I've been doing this for more than 20 years because I have a good commitment towards

29:39truth. I try to provide value with just about everything I say. And you assume or trust that

29:45I'm going to do that. And hopefully, I am continuing to do that. So, I am my commitments.

29:51My commitments to virtue, my commitment to integrity, to honor, to courage, to monogamy, to, you know,

29:59my commitment to my child, my commitment to my audience. I am my commitments. If you shred your

30:04commitments, you dissolve your identity, you dissolve your personality, you just become a

30:10pleasure seeker. And then, you put yourself, try not to put yourself into situations where you have

30:18to lie. And of course, if you cheat, you are cheating on integrity, you're cheating on truth,

30:23you're cheating on honor. And it's also really terrible to have sex with your wife while cheating

30:31with another woman or sex with her husband while cheating with another man because it is a form of

30:37assault in that if she knew the truth, she wouldn't have sex with you. And so, it's, in a sense,

30:44taking it. I'm not talking legally. I'm not talking, but morally, if you lie to someone. And of course,

30:48you could spread diseases and so on, right? And so, it's just bad for you. You set yourself against

30:54yourself. You end up having to lie and manipulate, which is going to shred your self-respect. And

31:02when people find out about it in a sane, rational society, you'd be ostracized and so on. So,

31:09the temporary pleasure does not add up to the long-term decay in self-respect, in virtue, honor.

31:17I mean, you just can't have respect for yourself if you're lying to people you claim to love,

31:21having sex with a woman who'd never have sex with you if she knew the truth. And you are covering

31:28everything up. It just makes you into a furtive, surreptitious lowlife. And that's just going to be

31:36bad for your self-esteem all around. None of that involves God. So, hopefully, that makes sense.

31:41I would love to hear your thoughts on fear. I did that before. The truth about Charlie Kirk.

31:47Charlie Kirk was a horribly instructive blood sacrifice that, to me, the real death of Charlie

31:56Kirk came in the general forgiveness of his murderer. The left doesn't forgive. The left

32:04doesn't forgive. And they win. Forgiveness is surrendering the world to the bad guys. Again,

32:12I'm talking about forgiveness for things for which people can't, they can't make restitution. They

32:19can't earn your forgiveness, right? You can't bring Charlie Kirk back to life. So, the fellow who shot

32:24him can't be forgiven because... So, the real death of Charlie Kirk occurred to me. The physical death

32:34occurred, obviously, in that horrible stage. The real death of Charlie Kirk occurred when the

32:41Christians all ran bleating off a cliff to forgive his murderer. And that completely destroyed

32:52the outrage momentum that could have brought about real change.

32:56I'm not saying do everything the left does, but if your enemy's doing something that works,

33:00it need at least to review it. Has the left forgiven me? I didn't even really do anything

33:04wrong. They haven't forgiven me. Did the left forgive Derek Chauvin? Did the left forgive

33:10the Jan Sixers? Did the left forgive... You name it, right? All of the people they've attacked

33:15and deplatformed and so on. I mean, the left hasn't even forgiven Joseph McCarthy, even though

33:20Joseph McCarthy was right. Has the left forgiven Franco? Has the... Like...

33:26The left doesn't forgive. They escalate. And they win. And whether you like it or not,

33:32these are just facts. The people who forgive lose. And the people who don't forgive win.

33:38So, in choosing to forgive, Charlie Kirk's murderer, the conservative right in America is

33:47choosing to lose. And this is why I don't really do much politics anymore, because

33:54if people are addicted to the syrupy, smarmy self-satisfaction of pretending to be good by

34:00forgiving the unforgivable, then they're just going to lose. They're just going to lose.

34:05Left doesn't forgive. Left escalates. And forgiveness is on your knees for the sake of

34:14a reward in the afterlife, which isn't even real. There's nowhere in the Bible where somebody is

34:18forgiven without apologizing and making restitution and so on. So, this modern forgiveness thing,

34:25I just think it's kind of like a psyop. It's like people promote the virtue of forgiveness so that

34:31they can get away with the unforgivable. All right. What is the distinction between UPB and

34:36Habermas and Appel's performative contradiction argument? Okay. So, very briefly, this was in the

34:43late 1980s. A guy named Jürgen Habermas published A Philosophical Discourse of Modernity. And a sort of

34:53French post-structuralist thought was attacked by this. And so, imagine these two formulations,

35:03right? So, we'll call it, we'll say, truth, truth Anglo and truth French, right? Truth Anglo is what is

35:11accurate, factual, right? That's truth. Truth to is whatever I claim truth is. Truth is a social

35:17construction. Truth is subjective and so on. So, you can't do truth French without accepting

35:28truth Anglo, right? So, you can't say, oh, truth is whatever I claim truth is, right? And we can see

35:46this all over the place, right? Truth is whatever I claim truth is. So, truth is a social construction.

35:53Okay. Is the fact that truth is a social construction also a social construction, or is it an absolute?

36:00Is it an absolute?

36:05So, this is performative contradictions, or I've referred to them for decades as self-detonating

36:11arguments. So, here's a way to explain it. A performative contradiction occurs when the act of

36:17making an argument undermines the very norms it claims to uphold, such as asserting universal

36:23validity while denying the possibility of rational agreement. Juergen Habermas argues that postmodern

36:28relativism suffers from this contradiction because it relies on presuppositions of rational

36:32argumentation that it simultaneously denies. The following assertion from Michel Foucault is a

36:38shining illustration of this discrepancy. Quote, truth isn't outside power or lacking in power. Truth

36:43isn't the reward of free spirits, the child of protracted solitude, nor the privilege of those who

36:47have succeeded in liberating themselves. Truth is a thing of this world that is produced only by virtue of

36:53multiple forms of constraint, and it induces regular forms of power. It is produced and transmitted

36:58under the control, under the control, dominant, if not exclusive, of a few great political and economic

37:02apparatuses. University army writing media, right? So, truth isn't outside power or lacking in power. Truth

37:18is produced and transmitted under the control of blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So, all truth is related to power,

37:23all truth is related to propaganda, all truth is control of others, and it's like, okay, so then that's

37:29true for you as well. Michel Foucault, right? So, saying, I have the truth about truth, and the truth

37:35about truth is the truth is subjective, or the truth is a power mechanism, or the truth is a control

37:40mechanism. I have the objective truth that all truth is subjective. I have the objective truth that

37:46all truth is a social construct. I have a truth outside the social construct that all truth

37:52is a social construct. That is just a complete contradiction. That is the rantings of a crazy

37:57person. That's like screaming at someone, you do not exist, you do not exist, and so on, right?

38:08So, truth is not that which is objectively and empirically and universally. There's no such thing.

38:13So, is it true? Is it true that truth is subjective? It's a statement, like, everything is relative,

38:24everything is subjective, okay? Is it a subjective truth that everything is subjective?

38:31Or, if you say, truth is what you believe it is, and I say, truth is not what you believe

38:37it is,

38:38truth is the relationship between ideas in the mind that claim to describe reality and reality itself,

38:43right? So, if I say, this is a wad of paper, that is a true statement, because the concept in

38:50my mind,

38:50the words that I'm using are accurate, that it is a stack of paper, a wad of paper.

38:55So, the performative contradiction is, if you say, all truths are subjective, then the belief that truth

39:03is not subjective should be fine. If I believe that truth is objective, then nobody should disagree

39:10with me if they believe truth is subjective. Because I just have a belief that truth is objective,

39:16and my truth is as valid as your truth, that truth is subjective, because all truths are what you

39:20believe in, right? And so, I hope this makes sense. However, whenever I'm around subjectivists,

39:30relativists, and so on, the postmodernists, and I say, truth is rational and objective,

39:35they're like, no, it's not. Truth is subjective, relative, and power-based. It's like, but if all

39:41truth is subjective, who the living fuck are you to disagree with me when I say the truth is,

39:47truth is subjective to me, right? So, they can't resist. Postmodernism is a way of dissolving virtue,

39:55because we need to have true statements about virtue that we wish to pursue. And so, postmodernism

40:01is a way of dissolving virtue and making people easier to control, right? Because if you have

40:06standards of virtue outside of that which authority says to you, then you're a thorn in the side, a

40:12sand in the Vaseline, a irritant in the oyster of the will of power, right? The will of power wants

40:17to control and subjugate you. If you have standards of virtue and truth and ethics that are higher

40:24than what you're told to do, then you're willing to suffer negative consequences from those in power

40:30because you have a conscience that will make you suffer even worse if you go along with those in

40:35power. So, you have a standard or virtue that interferes with the expansion of political power,

40:39like the trucker convoy. In Canada, the most successful modern resistance movement. So, of course,

40:47people who want to control you want to dissolve your sense of reality, objectivism, empiricism,

40:53virtues, and values. Of course, they don't want you to have standards of truth and virtue higher

40:58than the will and power of authority. So, they will say that there's nothing true, there's nothing

41:04that's real, there's nothing that's valid, right? And so on, right? And so, people, and you can say

41:09this when people say there's no such thing as objective truth, then, or there's no such thing

41:14as objective virtue or objective values, then you can say, oh, then why is racism bad? And they're

41:19short-circuit, right? They're short-circuit. Or why is sexism bad? Or whatever, right? They believe

41:24it's homophobia. Whatever they believe is bad. If they say there's no such thing as truth,

41:30values, objective virtues, and so on, then it's like, well, then why are these things that

41:34you consider bad? Why are they bad? So, if everyone's, like, if someone says preference

41:43for color is subjective, right? I like blue, you like green, somebody else like cyan, or whatever

41:49it is. Ash gray, golden sunset. So, if we're in a conversation, and you say, I like the color green,

41:57and I say, oh, I like the color blue, right? He's not going to say, no, you're wrong. You're wrong.

42:03Because if he says all preferences for color are subjective, then for people having preferences

42:10for color, there should be no disagreement. So, if everyone says all truth is subjective, then I say,

42:16well, my truth is that truth is objective. They should have no problem with that. It's just a

42:20different color that I like. But, but they tell me I'm wrong. Now, the moment someone tells you that

42:26you're wrong, they can't say that truth is subjective, because they're correcting you.

42:31So, that is the performative contradiction, the self-detonating argument on the left. It's

42:36blindingly obvious, and, right, everyone who studies philosophy, even their teens, if somebody says,

42:42nothing is true, say, is that a true statement? Okay, well, then something is true. And how did you come

42:46about the argument that nothing is true, and why haven't you even noticed that it's a manipulation,

42:50and so on? So, so I hope that helps. FreeDomain.com slash donate. Thank you so much for these great,

42:55great questions. Call.FreeDomain.com to set up a call in with me. Summers are open, because people

43:03call less in the summer. So, if you want to do a public or private call, you can do that

43:07at

43:07call.FreeDomain.com. And again, FreeDomain.com slash donate to help out the show.

43:11Lots of love, my friends. Take care. Bye.

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