Why I Do What I Do!

Stefan Molyneux

Philosopher Stefan Molyneux explains why he does what he does: love of philosophy, love of humanity and belief in what people can become. He left a good life in software and travel to bring reason to parenting and secular ethics while the internet still let him speak freely.  0:00:00 Philosophy’s Purpose 0:02:14 Why Philosophy Matters 0:06:48 A Life Before Philosophy 0:14:34 The Burden of Responsibility 0:17:53 Stepping Into Philosophy 0:21:30 Parenting and Secular Ethics 0:23:52 Rebuilding Moral Foundations 0:26:42 Willpower and Possibility 0:29:44 Why I Felt Ashamed 0:31:00 Why It Had to Be Me 0:35:36 The Free-Speech Window 0:38:34 Rescuing Philosophy 0:40:07 Love, Hate, and Humanity 0:42:24 Facing Childhood Fear 0:44:12 Philosophy’s Real Goal  JOIN ME IN NASHVILLE SEPTEMBER 12! https://wordwardebate.com/  Use code STEFAN for 10% off!  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/FREEDOMAIN2026

Transcript

00:00All right, sir. Thank you, everybody, for the great questions on X or Twitter.

00:06Here are my responses to these questions I asked on the 13th of August, 2026.

00:12First, Space Tiger asks, I heard you recently say you are working to hopefully

00:18create a stateless society in 500 years. Isn't this similar to the idea of religion,

00:24a faith in a future which motivates your actions in the now?

00:27Why would someone who doesn't believe in a higher power want to involve themselves

00:31with something bigger than themselves, which they are likely to never see?

00:35Well, that's a great question, and I really, really do appreciate it.

00:39Oh, my God, you've changed my mind. I'm going to be a hedonist.

00:42Just kidding. No, it's a great question, and thank you.

00:45Very, very thoughtful and very intelligent.

00:49So, I will tell you, this may sound cheesy, it may not resonate with you,

00:57but I love philosophy. I love, love, love humanity. I love the world and its potential.

01:06It moves me, really, beyond words, beyond tectonic plates, beyond the operations of light,

01:14energy, focus, and brilliance in the universe. I am motivated by the absolutely glorious potential

01:22of our species to reason and be virtuous and be kind. And I view humanity and myself on occasion,

01:32of course, as kind of broken apes, ground down by historical power and prejudice and hatred and

01:40tribalism and so on. And these are all aspects of us emerging from the pre-dawn of history and

01:46evolution and all these kinds of things. But I absolutely love the potential of humanity.

01:54I feel that there's just a number of wires that need to be connected and stay connected. And I love

02:00the fact that we've done absolutely everything except truly try philosophy. And this 3,000-year-old

02:12discipline of which I am a part, well, we've worked out logic, we've worked out the scientific method,

02:20the free market, one of the great boons of mankind, emerged out of the philosophical traditions of the

02:28Enlightenment. And we have limited government and property rights, the end of slavery. In these very

02:34hidden and tectonic ways, philosophy has been moving behind the scenes. It's almost like chess pieces

02:42moved by the wind or the faint tremors of the earth. It's easy to think that in the details of

02:48human

02:48progress—sorry, I'm just very moved by this, so I hope you don't mind a smidge of emotion. I certainly

02:54don't, but I hope you don't either. But the great beauty and power of philosophy has yet to be enacted

03:02and accepted—well, I guess first accepted, then enacted—by humanity. That is the great hope.

03:08That is the great hope. The constant rise and fall and expansion and crash and freedom and slavery

03:16and wealth and poverty and all of these horrible, you know, quarter-millennia cycles of civilizations

03:23and this sort of slow, staggering, bladed, ground-upward, struggling path of humanity can be laid bare,

03:35made clear, smoothed out, and achieved through philosophy. It is to the eternal credit of philosophy

03:43in a way that it is the one thing, the one thing, the one thing that has yet to be

03:51truly tried. The one thing.

03:55We've tried superstition. We've tried religion. We've tried political power. We've tried central banking.

04:03We've tried government schools. We've tried indoctrination. We've tried astrology. We've tried tea leaves.

04:12We've tried hedonism, intuition, instinct, greed, machinations. We've tried everything. We've tried

04:20everything, except the one thing that will actually work. And, of course, it is my goal to spread

04:29philosophy. You see, not as a theory, but as a practice. It is my job to spread philosophy,

04:39not as a theory, but as a practice. If I tell you about the is-ought dichotomy, or I tell

04:47you about

04:47Aristotle's three laws of logic, or I tell you about Kantian ethics, and so on, it's interesting,

04:52and it's probably diverting, and it's probably food for thought, and interesting conversation, and so on.

04:58But if I were to say to you, I mean, let's say I had never spoken in the world, and

05:05somebody had

05:06said to you, live your life philosophically, what would you think? You'd think, I don't know,

05:09some kind of Marcus Aurelius, semi-drugged, absentee landlord, distanced from the thousand

05:16natural sharks that flesh is heir to. You'd think of being kind of detached, and maybe a little bit

05:22amused, and so on. Dust in the wind, man. And so you wouldn't know with specificity how to live your

05:31life philosophically. It has a sort of vague, grizzled, wise, gray-bearded kind of absence and

05:40aloofness from the things of the world. But philosophy is a deep ninja. Philosophy is supposed

05:47to be down there in the world, throwing error aside and gathering truth and virtue to the heart

05:54of all of us. It is supposed to be in the world, not on the mountaintop. It's supposed to be

06:00a personal

06:00trainer, not an abstract guru. It's supposed to tell you to immerse yourself into the things of this

06:05world, rather than absent yourself from the hurly-burly of conflict and virtue. So, why would

06:16I do this? Why would I lash myself to the mast of being able to hear the siren song of

06:23the world

06:24that can be, and then, in a sense, torture myself trying to bring the truth and reason and virtue and

06:31values to the world? That is, though, it hates these things in many ways. People have a love-hate

06:37relationship with philosophy. They love it in the theory. They hate it in the practice. You know,

06:43much like dieting exercise. A lot of people like it in the theory. Don't like it so much in the

06:47practice. I mean, I had a pretty good life. I mean, I would say I have a pretty good life

06:53prior to

06:54philosophy. Like, philosophy's made it bad. I wouldn't argue that. But I've had a pretty good life.

06:57Prior to philosophy, I was married. I had a great career. I had a big social circle and

07:06did sports and traveled. And, you know, I got to travel all over the world, staying in first-class

07:15hotels, traveling first-class, doing work in the software field. I got to go to Hawaii. I was just

07:25telling you a friend of mine about this the other day. Back when Access 2000 was released,

07:30I went to Hawaii for a Microsoft conference and stayed in the Hilton Waikaloa, which has an amazing

07:38snorkel lake full of all the most amazing sea creatures. And I woke up in the morning. I remember,

07:44I think I watched Vanilla Sky. The TV passed out before it ended because it's kind of a sleepy movie.

07:49And I woke up in the morning in Hawaii. And I strode over to the curtains. And I opened the

07:57curtains. And there, in the Azure Cameron Diaz-I depths of the Pacific, there were whales passing by

08:09my view. And I took a deep breath. And I thought, man, this is great. And then I went and

08:16I did some

08:16stuff at the conference. And I spoke to people. And I actually, we got sort of recognition from

08:21Microsoft as the first people to ship a Microsoft 2000 system. And it was, you know, this is a great

08:28life. It's a great life. I remember I went to Morocco for Y2K with one of my oldest friends. And

08:39we

08:39had a great time. And then I spent a night in Toronto. And I flew off to China for business.

08:48And I remember I was supposed to fly with one of our business partners who was going to introduce

08:53me everywhere. They couldn't make it. So I basically just flew to China, not knowing what the heck was

08:57going on, or what I was going to do. And I landed and I sort of managed to, this is

09:02before there was

09:02sort of easy communication, no texting or anything like that. And I figured out which hotel I was

09:09supposed to go to. I went to the hotel, I'd slept a bit on the plane, so I wasn't tired.

09:13And I walked

09:14down to Tiananmen Square. It was freezing cold, I remember that. And I kept having to dart into hotel

09:20lobbies to warm up. And I stood in Tiananmen Square, and I just thought about the incredibly brave souls who

09:27had protested what they protested and taken the dangers that they had taken. And I met wonderful

09:36Chinese people, very warm, very friendly, very nice. And we did great business together. And I

09:42remember negotiating a business contract while my feet were getting massaged under the table. It was

09:47a very wild experience. And they're still sucking the madmen, three martini lunch business sense in

09:54China back then. And I remember going down to the market and haggling with people to buy things. We

10:01didn't speak each other's language, but we used calculators. And they would punch in the numbers

10:05that they wanted to sell for. And I would punch in the numbers I wanted to buy for. And I

10:10loved the

10:11spirit of commerce. I loved the spirit of enthusiasm. And I remember going out to a very remote research

10:18and development facility where the washrooms were just troughs in the ground. I don't know if it's a

10:23concentration camp or something. And I remember these very funny Chinese businessmen that I was

10:31working with. I demanded that I play them ping pong for money. And I said, big nose foreign person

10:36does not want to play. And it was a great deal of fun. And, you know, my life was pretty

10:43fun. It was

10:46pretty great. And, but, oh, oh, you know, I have thought, and sorry, I know this is a long way

10:56to

10:56answer this, but I, you know, had started as a, I cleaned offices and I put the New York Times

11:04together in bookstores from the age of 11 onwards. Later on, of course, the New York Times tried to

11:09take me apart. But I started off from less than nothing, really, and then rose to good prominence.

11:16And I spoke at conferences and I did all sorts of wonderful things in the business world.

11:20I have a pretty great life. And I thought, you know, it's a pretty good reward for not the most

11:26auspicious beginning in life. And I was happy about it. And I was pleased with it. And, you know,

11:32I worked hard to get my employees raises. I raised payroll about a million dollars a year

11:38to, by presenting to the board, how people were underpaid and all of that. So, you know,

11:43I did some good, helped people with their careers, mentored a lot of people, taught them how to

11:48write code and do sales and marketing and things like that, if that's what they were interested in.

11:53And, you know, we opened up an office out in Vancouver. We flew out to Vancouver and had

11:58wonderful meals in giant restaurants overlooking the ocean. And then I flew down to San Francisco and

12:06met with salespeople to instruct them on the latest version of the software. And we all went

12:09out for dinner on these beautiful restaurants overlooking the bay. I mean, honestly, it was a

12:14U.S. grant. I think it was, I remember staying in a hotel for $400 a night because I remember

12:21the

12:21board said to me, you know, you're dealing with the big boys here. You know, we're dealing with

12:24Fortune 100 companies, Fortune 200 companies. You've got to go and look good. So rent a nice

12:29car and, you know, you don't want them picking you up from the Super 8 motel. So, and I remember

12:34like, gosh, the sheets were so clean and everything was so nice and the food was so great. And it

12:40was

12:40like, that was, I don't know, Islamic paradise. It was like, it was great. It was great. I remember,

12:46stop in a sec. I just remember one Sunday morning, I woke up and it was bitterly cold in Toronto.

12:55I

12:55lived downtown and I went out for a little walk and I was like huddled and, you know, the kind

13:00of

13:00cold that gets you into your teeth and lets you know if anything's wrong. And then I came back and

13:05I had to make myself a nice omelet for lunch. And then I got a phone call and it was

13:09the CEO saying,

13:11hey, you got to, you got to jet down to, uh, to Phoenix. Uh, we have a sudden opening and

13:17we'll

13:17be able to present the software in the morning. So, uh, suit up and boot up. And I did that

13:23and I

13:24got my flight and I jumped down to the airport and this is before, uh, 9-11 and so it's

13:31pretty easy

13:31to fly. And I just remember checking into the hotel. It was probably about seven or eight o'clock

13:39at night by the time I got there and I didn't have anything to do until the next morning. So

13:45I went for a nice long workout. I went for a nice long swim. I sat in the hot tub

13:49and I remember

13:50being in the pool, swimming on my back with my goggles, looking up at the water and above the

13:55water were the shaky stars and the wobbly moon and all of that through the eddies and whirls of the

14:01water. And I remember thinking, my God, I woke up this morning, cold in a witch's tit. And here I

14:07am

14:07in a beautiful hotel, swimming at night and getting paid for it and all that kind of stuff. So

14:13that was a pretty, it was a pretty great life. That was a pretty great life. I remember going to

14:17do a presentation in New York and I did the presentation. And then that night I went to go

14:24and see the bare naked ladies as a Canadian band who were playing in New York. And they were a

14:28very

14:29funny and warm band and all of that, a band with banter. Anyway, I don't mean to brag or anything

14:35like that because, you know, I worked hard to get there, but it was a pretty great life. And then

14:40this sort of creeping sense, these sort of silken icy tendrils of responsibility just sort of began

14:46creeping along my spine when I realized that I did have a rather unique and powerful gift for talking

14:55about ideas and reason and virtue and values. And, ah, you know, it's like when you feel a kind of

15:03heavy burden landing upon you, potentially, I mean, one of the things that I sort of think about is,

15:11can anyone else do that? Really? Is there anyone else? Come on, I can't be the only one.

15:18And when that burden kind of creeps up on you, then you want to shrug it off. Because I was

15:26like,

15:26oh man, that's going to be a lot of conflict and combat. And conflict and combat, so to speak,

15:31in the business world is fun and energetic. Like the companies that would compete with me for

15:37contracts and business and so on, you know, we were kind of like sports teams, like we razzed each

15:43other and so on. And they won some, I think I won a few more. But I was like, okay,

15:50so the conflict

15:51in the business world is really not too bad. It's all sort of limited and it's not personal and so

15:55on.

15:56But, you know, if you start to go into philosophy, man, it's really thumbing your nose at the powers

16:01that be and deflating the egos of vain people and proving people wrong who are heavily invested in

16:06being right. And, you know, it gets ugly. Man, you think politics is ugly. Philosophy is just about

16:10the ugliest business there is. Because at least people understand that politics is ugly.

16:17So, when the sort of tendrils of responsibility, I hope you find this interesting. I mean,

16:21I hope you do. But when the tendrils of responsibility sort of spread through my soul,

16:26then I was like, I don't want to, but I don't really want to. Because I knew to some degree

16:32where

16:32it would lead. It's not like I haven't studied quite a bit the history of philosophers, not just the

16:37history of philosophy, but, you know, the fate of philosophers. And I was like, I don't really

16:43want to. You know, I've just sort of come into my own over the last sort of 10 years and

16:48I've got a

16:49pretty great life and I don't really want to get into this ugly, vicious, soul-draining bloodsport of

16:57fencing with ideas in an arena with people who have no honor. Not you, the dear listener,

17:01of course, but sophists and manipulators and gaslighters and so on. So, I don't want to do it.

17:08I didn't want to do it, in a way. And, oh, gosh. You know, that it's kind of a cheesy

17:15thing, maybe,

17:15but, you know, that light sort of comes down, oh, because the light that comes down from the heavens

17:20illuminates one person. It was like, oh, come on, man. Don't make it be me. I don't want to do

17:25that.

17:26I mean, sort of two things sort of stuck in my mind about that. And you understand this isn't

17:31about me. You know, what do you particularly care about my machinations of mind from a quarter

17:38century ago? But it's really about, I think, you and your potential and what you can have to offer

17:43in the world. And sorry, with all of the theory here, I also have to practically charge up my phone

17:51for the show tonight in 44 minutes. So, I was like, okay. So, I thought, I don't know how many

18:00people throughout history have realized they have a particular ability, let's say, in philosophy,

18:06and have veered off into other paths, right? Into other goals, into other ideas, other arguments,

18:12other approaches. How many people have looked at that live wire and said,

18:20nope, I'm not going to, I'm not going to do it. I can't remember. Was it John Stuart Mill or

18:26some

18:26Asian philosopher who had writings on atheism? I read about him in my graduate degree. He had

18:34writings on atheism and there was a particular kind of, I don't know, like anti-skeptic or anti-agnostic

18:43or anti-atheist movement underway. I think it was in England. And he took all of his older writings and

18:47he was in his 80s. And he just, he buried them and he burned them and he got rid of

18:50them. And

18:51I'm like, wow, imagine being able to do that. But how many people have stood on this precipice

19:00and said, I don't want to? Well, of course, I was standing on the precipice.

19:04And I thought, okay, so there's a lot of people probably who've had this opportunity and this

19:09ability and have not put the two together. And, you know, for reasons by the by that I

19:14really, really, really sympathize with. I mean, it's one thing I've got the internet so I can

19:19walk and talk and publish it to thousands or tens of thousands or millions of people over time.

19:24It's a little bit different than trying to get your book past the royal censor and so on, right?

19:33So, how many people looked at that and stepped back and looked away and said,

19:40you know, someone else is going to do it. Like, who will bell the cat? Did you ever

19:45hear that story? You know, like the mice are all like, you know, if we put a bell around the

19:50neck

19:50of the cat, man, we'll be able to hear that cat coming and, you know, we'll be a whole lot

19:54safer

19:55than we are now. Like, that would be fantastic. Wouldn't that be great? And everyone, you know,

20:00kind of agrees, right? But nobody actually wants to go up and bell the cat because it's kind of

20:05dangerous. It's like, well, if we had rational philosophy as the basis for ethics, we could bring

20:10humanity together in a common mindset in the same way that, you know, science and mathematics and

20:17price does. Price brings people together to buy and sell. So, I thought of the number of people who'd

20:24stepped back with, again, completely understandable reasons. And I thought, but, you know, this new

20:31technology, and I just, because I was a rampant technologist and a cutting-edge technologist,

20:36I wrote about podcasting in the 90s, by the by. Was it 90s? No, no, let me be fair. Let

20:43me be fair.

20:44Early 2000s, like half a decade before YouTube. So, I wrote about a guy using a computer and a camera

20:52to speak to the world. Decades, well, I'm sorry, at least half a decade before I started publishing.

20:58So, as a technologist, it was pretty clear to me, and you could almost argue that being the

21:02technologist was a good preparation for this kind of stuff. So, sorry, I don't mean to be

21:14distracted. I'm just thinking of making a little coffee, but I don't want the sound of the coffee

21:18maker to mess up the audio. So, let me try doing that and not be distracted. Let me make a

21:27decision

21:28one way or the other. There we go. All right. So, I thought, all the people who stood on the

21:33edge

21:33and then turned away, and, you know, beneath the, if all the things that have to be, we often have

21:40to

21:40cry. But beneath the weight of gravity, we stumble, then we fly. And it's an old, poor, young song.

21:48What if you just take the leap and see if you can fly? So, that was number one. And number

21:53two

21:55was, I thought, in the history of philosophy, nobody has done parenting and nobody has done

22:01an ironclad, airtight, rational proof of secular ethics. And these were the two things that I most

22:09wanted to bring to the world, right? The philosophy applied to parenting and a rational proof of secular

22:17ethics that could not be evaded or escaped. And that's what I most wanted to do. And a lot of

22:25the

22:25parenting stuff, you know, came out of conversations with my wife. For those of you who don't know,

22:31my wife practiced psychology as a mental health professional for, by, almost 30, almost 30 years,

22:38really. So, she was, you know, in conversations with her. I'd have all of this philosophical stuff,

22:44and, you know, she'd give me this smile of sympathy and understanding. And she'd say,

22:49yes, but it all begins with the family. It all starts with the family. And that kind of,

22:54you know, very much wrenched my position to that way of thinking. And so, I began looking at the

23:04roots of the family and applying philosophical principles to parenting and child raising and

23:08spanking and the non-aggression principle, all that kind of stuff. And I thought, well,

23:14philosophy's had 3,000 years, and it's never taken root, and it's never taken hold, and it's never

23:18really moved the population in the direction of reason. What philosophy has done is it's been just

23:25enough to tear down the churches. It has not been enough to raise better structures. And I wrote about

23:33this in one of my books. I think it was called Against the Gods. Philosophy has torn down the foundations

23:41of religion and collapsed the church, but it has not given people anything alternative and better

23:49to live for and to believe in. So, I thought philosophy, and by that I mean sort of atheistic,

23:59materialistic philosophy, has torn down religion, which basically means it's torn down the conscience,

24:06and the void of personal conscience and ethics has been filled by political power, which is,

24:15of course, very bad, right? That's not good at all. So, I thought, if philosophy is doing more damage

24:21than good, and there's no way to turn back the clock, so to speak, or turn back the tide, then

24:26I'm

24:27going to have to find a way. Oh, how interesting. There's a pigeon here. That is very unusual. I almost

24:33never see pigeons up here. Anyway, so, it is something that philosophy had done a lot of dirty

24:40work, and it's like if you're a surgeon and some evil surgeon has just hacked someone up,

24:47then you kind of need to stitch them back up or they're going to die, right? If that makes sense.

24:51And I saw that a lot of philosophy had taken down religion, which was the foundation of ethics,

24:58particularly Christianity in the West, and had not given us ethics. So, it had taken away ethics

25:06from religion rather than provide us ethics in a secular fashion. So, that is bad. So, some

25:15thoughtless, perhaps, amoral philosophers had torn down ethics, and I knew a way to rebuild them,

25:20and I felt responsibility as a member of this profession, so to speak, to stitch up the wounds

25:28made by other philosophers who delighted more in taking down the impossible than proving ethics.

25:38So, yes, basing ethics on religion is not rational. So, fine, get rid of religion, you get rid of

25:44ethics, then you damn well owe society some secular ethics. But, of course, so many philosophers are paid

25:49by the state that they can't do secular ethics in the way that I do, because I am a volunteer

25:55donation-based life form, freedomain.com, slash donate, if you'd be so kind as to help out the

26:01show. I would deeply and humbly appreciate it. Thank you so much. So, philosophy for 3,000 years,

26:08and, you know, obviously more than 3,000 years, you can find religious iconography, which is a form

26:14of philosophy in a way, going back tens of thousands of years, I think 40,000 years or something like

26:18that,

26:19and so the religious iconography and statues and so on going back tens of thousands of years,

26:26but let's just say, you know, sort of formal written understood philosophy, 3,000 years plus,

26:32and we still don't have an answer. We still don't have an answer as to how to reliably make the

26:38world

26:38better and how to prove secular ethics. And I knew I could do it. I knew I could do it

26:44because the one

26:45thing I will tell you about myself is I have fairly ferocious willpower, like a pit bull,

26:55like I get my teeth into something, I will not let it go until it's done. And I think like

26:59really a lot

27:00of the stuff that I've had to offer hasn't even been any particular brilliance. I mean, I think some

27:04of it has, but it's just, I will not stop until I get it done. This served me very well

27:10in the business

27:10world. When I was given the most insane challenges with regards to technology, I was like, I will find

27:18a way and I will not stop until I get it done. And that was my life. And just willing

27:27my way and

27:28willing my way and willing my way. The world is a war of wills, basically. So I knew I could

27:35do it

27:35because I just knew I could will it. I also knew that I was intelligent enough to get it done.

27:41And

27:41I also knew that it was going to be simpler than we thought. I knew it had to be something

27:44you had

27:44to explain, like ethics had to be something you could explain to a three or four or five-year-old.

27:51And so I didn't want to do it, but I thought, well, it's been 3,000 years. And this was,

27:58this is where willpower comes from. Willpower just comes from perspective, right? And I said to myself,

28:03self, I said to myself, well, it's been thousands and thousands and thousands of years going back to

28:14the untold prehistory of thought that is characterized by either writing that we've

28:21lost or people who had dorm-style jawbone conversations that didn't last the test of

28:27time. But it's been thousands and countless thousands of years that people have been talking

28:31about truth and virtue and right and wrong, you know, metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics.

28:35The big three, and it's been 3,000 years and we don't have an answer. And that also kind of

28:42pissed me off, to be honest with you. Like, how can I be infatuated with a discipline

28:49that has no answers after 3,000 years? No answers that everyone agrees on. No, I mean,

28:57you've got a mathematics. There's tons of stuff that, the opposite angle theorem,

29:01the triangle inequality relation, two and two make four, right? There's no such thing as negative

29:07square roots, right? So a negative times a negative is a positive, right? A negative times a positive,

29:12is a negative. Like, there's things that mathematicians all agree on. What are the

29:16things that philosophers all agree on after 3,000 years? I would argue we had philosophy,

29:23in other words, people wondered why the world was and what the stars were before we had math.

29:28I think philosophy is older. We've got tens of thousands of years, 20, 30, 40, 50,000 years

29:34are more of philosophy. And we've got nothing. We've got nothing of certainty. And that kind of,

29:45honestly, I'd be straight up with you, man, it just kind of pissed me off. Like, how is it possible

29:50that the discipline I love the most, and that I think is the one untried discipline for the

29:56perpetual improvement of mankind? How can it be after tens of thousands of years? There's nothing

30:03that is known for certain. I mean, Christians will all agree on the divinity of Christ, but you can't

30:09get philosophers to agree on anything except perhaps that government-provided licensure and tenure

30:17are kind of cool. I felt ashamed of the discipline. I can't really say it was my profession. I mean,

30:26I was a businessman, right? I was an actor, a writer, playwright, director, businessman.

30:32Not philosopher. I mean, certainly my graduate school thesis was deep in the guts and heart of

30:39philosophy, for sure. But it was not my profession. It's what I loved the most. It's what I would have

30:45most loved to do. But I also saw, of course, that philosophy was being marred by horrible injustice,

30:52particularly against white males. You could see the DEI stuff coming from a mile away, and it's just

30:56wretched and terrible and horrible and unjust and so on, right? So I was ashamed of philosophy,

31:03and I thought, it's been thousands and thousands or tens of thousands of years,

31:10and it hasn't been done. It hasn't been proven. Even those who despise my arguments the most

31:18cannot overturn UPB or the spanking debate or peaceful parenting or things like that.

31:25That's just the reality. So I thought, if it's not me, who's it going to be? It's been tens of

31:33thousands of years. It hasn't been done. If it's not me, who's it going to be? Now, listen, I understand,

31:38and I completely and totally sympathize. You know, there's a line, there's a line, I think it's in

31:45Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, where somebody says, did it ever occur to you that Jesus

31:51might have been the bad guy? And somebody else says, Stephen Daedalus, I think the hero says,

31:57well, the first person that that occurred to was Jesus himself, right? So I completely understand

32:03the skin-crawlingly cringe, listen, I'm British, I know, the skin-crawlingly cringe factor of,

32:11I'm going to say philosophy, and I'm going to turn this discipline around. I get all of that,

32:16and I, if it's any consolation, if you're thinking of it and cringing about it, trust me, it's been

32:23for decades that I've been thinking about it and cringing about it, but I'm an empiricist.

32:28And as an empiricist, it only matters what I can do, not what I think about it.

32:33Does that make sense? It only matters what I can do, not what I think about it.

32:38So, you know, Freddie Mercury, the singer Farouk Bulsara from Zanzibar, when he was very young,

32:47he was like, I'm going to be a star, and people would take photographs of him, and he would only

32:51let them keep the ones that made him look the best, and he's like, I'm going to be a superstar,

32:54and this, that, and the other, right? Now, of course, he could sing gloriously, he could compose

33:02complex music. I mean, Marta the Black Queen of Queen 2 is an astounding piece of music.

33:08And he also was a great performer, and his piano was like a metronome, it was so stable,

33:14incredible, and he had such incredible musical gifts, obviously perfect pitch, but also, even

33:20when he was a student in India, he went to a boarding school in India, he could hear a song

33:27on the radio, and then basically just play it back. And, I mean, that's a remarkable ability.

33:33So, you know, he had it all, he had good looks, he had stage presence, he had a fantastic singing

33:39voice, he played piano beautifully, he composed music. So, if you say, well, geez, what are the

33:44odds that some scrawny kid with buck teeth from Zanzibar is going to become a world rock star,

33:50you'd say, well, the odds are tiny. Of course, right? We understand that. But an empiricist

33:57says, can you do it? Not, what's the evidence or proof that you have done it? And that's belief

34:04in yourself. Belief in yourself should be reasonable, right? I believe that I can be a

34:08great philosopher, I don't believe that I can be a great singer, I don't believe that I could be a

34:11great composer, or pianist, or guitarist, or I could not be a great ballet dancer, or even in my youth,

34:18because I have the flexibility of your average slab of sidewalk. But I would say that it doesn't matter

34:24what I think about what I can do, it only matters whether I can do it. And of course,

34:31the basic reality is, this is an old statement, I think it's from Henry Ford, if you think you can,

34:37or you think you can't, you're right. Now, I don't really agree with the affirmative in that,

34:44you know, I wasn't going to be a hair model, or I wasn't going to be a basketball star, because

34:48I'm

34:48just a shade under six feet, and I'm bald-ish, right? So, you know, if you think you can't,

34:56you're right, that's for sure. If you think you can't, you're right. If you think you can,

35:03then you build the evidence that you could, right? So, obviously, Freddie Mercury sang, and,

35:09you know, I remember even when he was a student, people were like, wow, that's a voice that's going

35:13in places. I remember somebody said that about him. And so, sorry, I know it's kind of goofy to

35:20talk about Freddie Mercury, but it doesn't matter what I think about what I can do, it only matters

35:25whether I can do it, right? And I knew I could do it. I knew I would have to take

35:32a couple of runs at

35:33it, I knew it would need some refinement, but I knew I could do it. And this is why at

35:37the beginning

35:37of UPB, I say, like, I get the improbability that basically some tech entrepreneur has solved the

35:43eternal problem of secular ethics. I get all of that, for sure. I sympathize with that, I think

35:48I understand it, and so I've addressed that, like, it's improbable, and I get your skepticism.

35:52But I was like, okay, so it's been 3,000 years, I know I can do it. I also know

35:56the other thing,

35:56sorry, I said there were two things, the three things. The third thing is that I knew that

36:05the free speech that was coming would not last forever. There's a shock with the powers that be,

36:12because they tend to be older, they tend not to understand the new technology, so there's

36:16kind of a shock when new stuff comes along. And this is, I've mentioned this before on

36:21the show, my mother, when we bought, used to give my mother quite a lot of money, but she

36:28just turned around and gave it to shady lawyers, in my view, to pursue meritless law cases against

36:33doctors who I don't think were responsible for her problems. So I had to stop doing that.

36:39It was very sad, I really, really wanted to help her. But I do remember my mother calling

36:47the CD player that I bought her a gramophone, right, she just couldn't quite adjust to the

36:51new technology. So I knew, with the internet, there was a chance to publish direct to the

36:56population with no filters and no gatekeepers, and that there would be a certain amount of

37:00time with which to get these ideas out before the hammer came down. That you, or I, or anyone,

37:09would have a span of time, and it probably would be not more than one large election cycle,

37:17if, you know, people get involved in politics. So there would be a certain span of time with which

37:24true communication could occur. And it was 2006 to 2016 were the high points of free speech

37:34in the world. I mean, until we have a free society, there'll never be anything again like it. And I'm

37:40enormously pleased and proud that I took that opportunity for those 10 years to speak as much

37:49truth as the world could stand and back down from nothing that I knew to be true and promote things

37:54that I knew that were true and moral and essential. So it was a short window. I didn't see anybody

38:03else

38:03stepping up. I'm not sure if people didn't have the ability or didn't have the confidence or if

38:07they have that, you know, that yammer voice in your head, you know, the yammer voice, which is like,

38:13oh, who are you to do it? Don't be ridiculous. Don't be crazy. Who do you think you are? John

38:16Locke,

38:16who do you think you are? Aristotle, that's ridiculous. Don't be, you know, right.

38:19All that sort of stuff, right? Just the small self, right? The Lilliputians who tie down the

38:25giant with the endless dental floss of insecurities. And you just have to like say, hey, man, I

38:32appreciate the caution, but I'm going to try it anyway. So I felt very much a responsibility

38:40to rescue philosophy from irrelevance. But I knew, of course, that rescuing philosophy from irrelevance

38:48would bring down the ire of the powers that be. How could it not be the case? How could it

38:53in fact

38:54be otherwise? I mean, it's not an accident. The philosophy hasn't gone anywhere. Like it kind

38:58of, it's a, it's crashing by design as the old Pete Townsend song goes. So if not me, who, if

39:07not now,

39:07when? I can look back through the caverns of time, to infinity, to prehistory, to the fog that predates

39:14literacy. And the solution hasn't been made. It hasn't been achieved. Parenting, universal ethics.

39:24And the two are two sides of the same coin. If people are heavily traumatized, they can't reason.

39:29But until we apply reasoning to parenting, we can't raise children who aren't heavily traumatized,

39:34usually in one way or another. So I kind of had to. I kind of had to. And it was

39:44with excitement,

39:45enthusiasm, sorrow, and, you know, some small nervousness, certainly from time to time,

39:51that I took on the task. Now, if I were religious, of course, I would say God was moving through

39:57me,

39:57and it was time for society, and the planets aligned, and I had to go for it, and so on.

40:02But, obviously, that's not my perspective. So why, why do it? Why do it? I mean, there's lots of,

40:11you know, I benefit from the freedoms that thinkers have generated before me, and there's lots of

40:15things I could talk about. But really, it comes down to love and hate. It comes down to love and

40:21hate.

40:22I love the potential of humanity, and I don't love... See, how nice can I put this? Let's see.

40:29How nice can I put this? I love the potential of humanity. I hate the brutal, violent power

40:39that shreds the conscience and capabilities and courage of humanity. I do not love the

40:47manifestation of humanity, but I love the potential of humanity. And I want a world... I've thought about

40:55this from time to time. I want a world. I mean, wouldn't it be nice where you didn't have to

41:00wake

41:00up in the morning and, you know, scan whatever news source you have and say, I wonder what crazy,

41:06terrible, horrible, awful, wretched things has been done by the government or the trade commission or,

41:14you know, whatever it is, right? Some new stupid law, some new stupid injunction, some new stupid tariff.

41:19Wouldn't it be nice to free up so much and so many of humanity from a constant fever scan of

41:29the

41:29latest disasters coming in from the world of politics and the world of coercion and the world

41:34of subjugation and the world of subversion? Wouldn't it be nice? Wouldn't it be nice to not

41:40have to scan your children's homework to look for signs of incipient communism or anti-rationalism

41:46and so on? Yeah. Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished. To be wished. So, I kind of had to.

41:58I kind of had to because once you know you can and you know that you should and you're grateful

42:03for

42:03others who did it before, can you really say no? I mean, of course, yeah, it's free will and it's

42:08not

42:09like it was a train track that I was lashed to, but I could not avoid the most necessary task

42:19without, I think, a kind of bottomless shame and regret. And it's funny because in a way going back

42:27into the conflict of society has returned me to some degree to my childhood, but there was no option

42:32because let's say that I withdrew from a task that was essential and by all appearances only I could

42:43do it. I mean, if there was somebody else who was doing the philosophy of childhood and, you know,

42:48peaceful parenting and UPB and so on, I'd have been like, whew, thank goodness, I'll go back to

42:54traveling and playing Scrabble with my wife and, you know, just lovely, you know, parenting,

42:59lovely things like that. But there was nobody else who was doing it. And there wasn't even anyone

43:05else who was saying this desperately needs to be done. I can't figure it out, though. Like,

43:09it was just a complete absence. And so when I was a wee bairn, when I was a child, I

43:16could not speak

43:17truth to power because the teachers, the priests, my mother, my father, I guess even my elder brother

43:23to some degree, they punched back hard if I spoke truth. And if I had said, no, I'm not going

43:33to

43:33solve the major problems of philosophy and implement reason and evidence in parenting in a practical

43:41sense in the world, I'm not going to do it, then it would have been because I was scared of

43:47the

43:47blowback. I was scared of the attacks. I'm sorry, I don't need more than one word because I think

43:54blowback kind of sums it up. And then it would have joined all the people who turned away from

44:00truly practical and rational ethics to pursue other things. And then, I don't know, do they

44:05just lie to themselves and say, well, I couldn't have happened. Oh, well, it doesn't matter or it

44:11could never have been done or whatever it is, right? But of course, if philosophy cannot come up with

44:15secular ethics, then philosophy has no purpose. Purpose of philosophy is ethics. And it's not

44:24religious ethics, otherwise it would be theology. So the purpose of philosophy is rational objective

44:27ethics. And if philosophy cannot come up with rational objective ethics, then just shut down

44:34the discipline. But I love the discipline. I love philosophy. And therefore, it had to be rescued.

44:39You know, if your beloved child is getting caught in waves and being pulled under, you charge into

44:45the ocean and brave whatever rocks and kelp and stingrays to get your child and pull them to

44:52safety. So philosophy was drowning, was going under, was being replaced by its, you know, hideous evil

44:58twin of ideology, which is just submission of the human mind to bullying under the guise of truth and

45:06virtue. It's a humiliation ritual, not the pursuit of truth. And I couldn't stand. I couldn't stand to

45:13spend the rest of my life from like, gosh, I mean, I'm 59. So, you know, 21 years ago, I

45:20was 38. So

45:22I couldn't stand from, let's say, 38 to 88. That's 50 years, right? And I couldn't stand to spend a

45:30half century back in my childhood, being unable to speak the truth because there are mean people around.

45:37I would have spent 50 years. I would have been out of my childhood for a relatively short period of

45:41time because it wasn't like I was 18 and it was fine. So I was, uh, I would have been

45:46out of my

45:46childhood for a relatively short period of time. And then I would have been swept right back into my

45:50childhood where I would have avoided telling the truth out of fear. And I just, that would be a

45:58terrible life, a shameful life, really a shameful life. And ambition is a flame that you light and

46:05spread or it hisses and dies. I could say, well, you know, I'll, I'll do another 10 years of business

46:11and travel and fun and conferences and, and, uh, and then, yeah, right. But no, that, uh, it doesn't,

46:18doesn't work that way. At least not for me. You strike while the iron is hot. Do it later is

46:23do it

46:23never. So I hope that makes sense. I hope that's of interest to you. And of course, I hope that

46:29that

46:29helps you understand perhaps how valuable and helpful it can be to stop judging yourself and

46:36simply do what you know is possible and build the evidence that you can. And once you know that you

46:42can just make it happen. Freedomain.com slash donate. I love you guys so much. Thank you so,

46:48so much. I'll talk to you soon. Bye.

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