The True Roots of POLITICAL POWER! Listener Questions

Stefan Molyneux

Philosopher Stefan Molyneux digs into the true roots of political power and why intellectuals rarely challenge it the way they challenge religion. He answers a listener on credentials and institutions, and argues the state depends on beliefs rather than existing on its own.  Questions:  "how can sceptic rationalism contend with the intellectual cowardice and ideological capture that has plagued the evolution of its most prominent & ardent thought leaders from the early 2000 to 2020's era - figures such as sam harris , richard dawkins , christopher hitchens and jordan peterson  "without a spiritual dimension, can sceptiscism ever evolve beyond its opposition to theism & apply consistent equivalent scrutiny to the rising secular dogmas of their own cultural milieu?"  "Is the state an emergent property?"  0:00:00 Why Skeptics Fail to Question Political Power 0:01:49 Credentials, Credibility, and Political Control 0:06:49 How Power Silences Its Critics 0:10:00 Why Elites Protect the Rules That Empower Them 0:11:20 Religion and Politics: Faith Behind the Authority 0:15:01 Ostracism and Punishment as Tools of Control 0:18:42 Speaking Outside the Credentialed System 0:20:03 What Makes a Property Emergent? 0:25:30 Emergence, Belief, and the External World 0:27:52 If Everyone Stopped Believing in the State 0:31:22 Why Beliefs Aren’t Emergent Properties 0:33:43 Forests, Ponds, and Changes in Reality 0:37:19 Emergence, Life, and What Can’t Be Divided 0:39:17 What Remains When Humans Disappear? 0:41:15 Conceptual Labels Versus Emergent Properties  My 10v1 debate in Vegas is coming up on November 16! Check out Digital Social Hour on YouTube for the livestream links: https://youtube.com/@DigitalSocialHour.  Support philosophy! https://freedomain.com/donate/  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. Question from a fine listener on X. How can skeptical rationalism contend but the

00:07intellectual cowardice and ideological capture that has plagued the evolution of its most

00:11prominent and ardent thought leaders from the early 2000 to 2010s era? Figures such as Sam

00:15Harris, Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Jordan Peterson. Without a spiritual dimension,

00:19can skepticism ever evolve beyond its opposition to theism and apply consistent equivalent scrutiny

00:24to the rising secular documents of their own cultural milieu. Right, right. Well, it's the

00:33question of the volcano god. And it is, of course, quite tragic. All of these thinkers I have pursued

00:42with some great enthusiasm over the years. The four horsemen, along with Dennett, perhaps.

00:49Right. So, if you disbelieve that the volcano erupts because of the anger of the volcano god,

00:58right, let's say that you no longer believe in the volcano god. Well, then what? What does that mean?

01:05Well, I think in general what it means is you now have a void of knowledge. You have ejected

01:13a false belief, but you have merely opened up the possibility of a true belief. You have not, in fact,

01:22made a view a true belief. So, that's quite important. That is quite important.

01:30Now, one of the ways that political power maintains itself, and it's a very interesting way that it does

01:37maintain itself. But one of the ways in which political power maintains itself is it teaches

01:43people how not to think, or it teaches them not to think. And then there's a question, which is,

01:51okay, so if I can't think, how do I know what is true? And what happens then is, since people

02:00can't

02:00know what is true, they rely upon appearance. And in general, they rely upon credentials, right? So,

02:10Sam Harris, PhD, I think, in neuroscience. I think his mother ran the Golden Girls TV show or something

02:17like that. So, Bro has never had to worry about money or income for his whole life. And Richard

02:24Dawkins, of course, is a professor of biology and so on. And Jordan Peterson, of course, doesn't he have

02:31a doctorate from Yale in psychology or something like that? He's a Yale professor. So, you have

02:37credentials. Now, the credentials are a government business. Credentials are a government business.

02:46And as a government business, as a government monopoly, people who are credentialed have a

02:54fundamental inability to criticize the foundations of political power. And that's one of the ways

03:02in which political power maintains itself. Because if the only people who are credible are people

03:12licensed and given the stamp of approval of by the government, then the government has a great

03:20incentive to teach people how to not think, to punish and inflict negative consequences on people who

03:29think and reason and question and so on. And then, in order for people to believe someone, those people

03:36have to be impressive to begin with. Okay? So, they have to be impressive. So, the question isn't,

03:46does Jordan Peterson make good arguments, or Sam Harris, or Dawkins, or anything like that, or Christopher

03:51Hitchens, do they make good arguments? Sure. Sure. But there's sort of two questions. One is, why are you

03:58listening to them in the first place? Now, I don't know the history of Christopher Hitchens, and so on. But,

04:06and, you know, he's a very good public speaker, and he's a good writer, and so on. I don't know

04:12his

04:12particular educational history, but the question is, why are we listening to people in the first

04:18place? So, when I first heard of Jordan Peterson, I was like, oh, he's a professor at the University

04:24of Toronto, which was my alma mater, and so on. So, you know, I'm like, okay, I listened to him,

04:31and I remember what him, he had a lecture recorded where somebody was talking about a friend of his

04:37who wrote, and Jordan Peterson was like, any good? Any good? So, why are you listening to them in the

04:43first place? And you are given credibility, or credibility is infused into these people because

04:51of credentials. Now, again, Christopher Hitchens, I don't know, but he was, wasn't he the editor of

04:56Vanity Fair and so on, and I assume he got that through connections or education or something like

05:01that. I'm not saying he couldn't have done it through pure meritocracy, but it's pretty tricky

05:06to work the pure meritocracy shtick, unless you have something else going for you that's not just

05:11the pure meritocracy. We haven't lived in a meritocracy for generations, since the 1960s, really.

05:16So, it's very tough for people who gain their credibility through state power to fundamentally

05:25criticize state power. And to me, there's a sort of a powerful and famous exchange between Noam Chomsky

05:33and a journalist. And I'm obviously synthesizing it to a degree, but Noam Chomsky says that you're a

05:41propagandist. And the guy says, no, no, no, no, I sincerely believe what I'm saying. And Noam

05:47Chomsky says, I don't doubt that you sincerely believe what you're saying, but if you didn't

05:52sincerely believe it, you wouldn't be sitting across from me. It's not that people get trained

05:57into propaganda, the people who speak the propaganda. It's not that they get trained

06:03into the propaganda. It is that if you are selected for your ability to spout propaganda

06:12in order to advance within the power structure. You are selected for your ability to spout propaganda

06:19in order to advance in the power structure. It's not so much that everyone who rises to

06:26the top of the communist party learns how to spout communism. It's that the better you

06:32spout communism, well, it's not only is it easier to rise in the communist structure, but

06:39it's the only chance you have. Like, you wouldn't get a free market capitalist rising in the communist

06:45power structure and then eventually have him change his mind, right? And I know this from

06:50my own experiences in the arts world and in academia, that if you happen to hold beliefs

06:55that other people oppose who have power over you, they will cut you down at the knees. They will

07:06katana your ass into a thousand tiny fruit ninja slices of nothing. And they are ruthless about this.

07:14And they do this with no hesitation. They do this with no remorse, no compunction, no conscience,

07:24no regret at all. Because a power structure views everyone who could even potentially interfere with

07:34that power structure as evil and worthy of destruction. And it's ape-like, right? It's very ape-ish.

07:44We ape-ish. To ape is to imitate, right? So we ape the apes, Peter Gabriel style. And so if

07:51you're

07:52the alpha, you view anyone who threatens your power as an enemy to be won over or destroyed. And the

08:00alpha

08:01is the alpha because he has no compunction about undermining, propagandizing, or causing harm

08:09to others. And I was talking about this in the show today. Just how the alpha, when challenged by a

08:16beta, will run to the females and ensure that he has female affection and support in order to combat

08:26the beta. Because if he fights the beta directly, then it might not work out for him so well.

08:36But if he reestablishes support among the females, which also then, by the by, reestablishes his control

08:45over the females and the reproductive opportunities they would give to the males, then he is ruthlessly

08:53and violently cutting off any potential rebellion early on. And in the book that I mentioned earlier

09:01called Chimpanzee Politics, when there is a final showdown between one of the more dominant chimps and

09:09one of the less dominant chimps, there is a killing, right? Not only does he kill the weaker or the

09:17lower status chimpanzee, the alpha, but he also rips off the beta's testicles. And so the monkey who is

09:27the strongest or the ape who is the strongest is not going to mess with strength being the arbiter

09:34of disputes. I mean, if you can imagine the strongest ape suddenly invents a game called

09:43who's best at doing current wheels, right? Let's say he's not particularly graceful or coordinated that

09:48way. He's not going to switch the rules of the game that give him dominance. In fact, he is only

09:56dominant because of the rules of the game. And this is why the agnostic or atheist intellectuals cannot

10:08see that the government does not exist. Because the government is how they get and maintain their

10:18power. Again, there's exceptions, but on the whole. So you will not overturn the game that you're best

10:30at and gives you dominance and power. The guy who's the best hip-hop dancer is going to want a

10:37dance-off

10:38for dominance. He's not going to want bench pressing or an arm wrestle or juggling, right? The juggler

10:45wants juggling to be how conflicts are resolved. The bench presser wants bench pressing, right? The

10:52comedian wants jokes and burns. And in the modern world, eloquence and the pretense of virtue are how

11:01conflicts are generally resolved in the political arena and so on. So the people who were first and

11:08foremost among atheists cannot take the principles they apply to God and apply those same principles

11:17to political power. Religion is based on faith and political power is based on faith. Faith is the

11:29belief in belief in things that go against reason and evidence. Now, in religion, the love masks the

11:38aggression, right? So you love God, but sinners go to hell or are excluded from heaven or are excluded

11:47socially. And in fact, the religious person's contempt is often more reserved for

11:58the man or woman who is better than they are without religion than somebody who opposes them in terms of

12:04religion because it renders the religious purpose unnecessary. The religious figures have often had

12:13more hostility to scientists than they do for competing religions. And so in religion, there is

12:21the pretense of love, but there is the reality of virtually bottomless aggression. And the aggression has

12:32to be covered up. And so there is the love bombing, you know, ex-religious figure Zeus. Zeus loves you.

12:40Zeus loves you. Zeus cares about you. Zeus wants nothing but the best for you. Well, of course, that is

12:45the

12:45belief that the government cares about you. The government is hugely interested in protecting you

12:53and making your life better and educating your children and keeping you healthy, right? So Jesus

13:01loves you. Zeus loves you. God loves you. And the politician and the state and the bureaucrats, they just

13:08love you. They just love you. Now, in religion, of course, the imaginary love is a cover for the very

13:16real aggression. And the aggression takes, in general, at least in the West, two forms. Number one is

13:24ostracism and number two is punishment. Now, the person who believes in God will punish you for

13:34disbelieving by ostracism first, and then let God take over the punishment and put you in hell. Now,

13:41I understand not every denomination believes in hell in that kind of same way. But even if we just say

13:49that after death, you don't get to go to heaven and thus participate in the bliss of the eternal

13:54beholding of God's grace and power and mercy and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, it's still a punishment,

14:00right? And the punishment is not torture, as in the Catholic sense, as in the lake of fire,

14:06but it's ostracism, right? So if you anger your friend as a kid or a young man, you anger your

14:16friend, and then he doesn't invite you to his wonderful go-kart and bouncy castle, spectacular

14:26birthday party, then you are hurt, you are tormented, you are ostracized. And so even if

14:34he doesn't beat the living crap out of you, which of course, I hope he doesn't, but even if he

14:37doesn't,

14:38if he just ostracizes you and doesn't, let's say there's going to be some amazing parties, a pool

14:43party, and all the cheerleaders are going to be there, and you are not allowed to come, you are

14:47excluded from that. It's like, well, he's not punishing you, but it kind of is, right? By removing

14:51from you a great positive, which is the cheerleader, bikini, Hawaiian tropical oil pool party or

14:58something like that. And so in religion, you are punished through ostracism, and if that doesn't

15:07bring you back into the fold, then the punishment is turned over to God, who's going to torment you

15:14with a bad conscience, or is going to torment you with guilt, and so on, and then either exclude you

15:20from the giant party in the sky after you die, or he's going to punish you by putting you in

15:26hell,

15:27which, you know, both are tormenting, right? The separation from loved ones and so on.

15:31And so personal ostracism and then punishment by the abstract entity, well, that is the way that

15:39politics works, that we can see this on the left, right? That they punished the Trump people,

15:47the MAGA people, they punished them with ostracism, right? And then what they wanted to do,

15:55and by getting them deplatformed and fired and so on, they're punishing through ostracism.

15:59And then what happens is they punish through direct appeal to political power, right? The introduction

16:07of very restrictive, destructive laws and the weaponization that happens of the, quote,

16:12justice departments under particular political leaders, a little bit more so on the left than

16:18on the right. And so ostracism followed by direct punishment, that is the modus operandi in both

16:28religion and in politics. And the love is there to cover up the aggression. Now, ostracism is not the

16:38same as aggression, right? I totally understand that, which is why you always have to have the

16:43backup, right? Always have to have the backup situation, which is going to jail or, you know,

16:50some sort of direct punishment rather than just having ostracism be how you get things done,

16:56right? So the people who are in power need to have, I mean, obviously, they need to have intellectuals

17:05that are licensed and approved by the state so that the people who are raised in the government

17:10education system that steadfastly opposes any shreds or scraps of thinking on the part of

17:16children or young people. They have to have a license. They have to have a stamp of approval

17:22so that they have credibility. And as long as the government is primarily responsible for

17:30providing the licenses that give intellectuals credibility, the degrees and so on, the doctorates,

17:37the putting doctor in front of professor or whatever it is, right? Then they can't really speak

17:43out against the government in the same way that a priest will not preach atheism because it is the

17:52church who has put the stamp of approval on this person is now father so-and-so, he is the

18:01church leader. He's giving the sermons and so on. So he is approved by the church. He's given the

18:11title. He's given the ecclesiastical label that gives him credibility. And this is sort of one of

18:18the shocking things about someone like Martin Luther, which was that he was a monk and then spoke out

18:26against church. Now, of course, he just wanted a different church and so on. And as a monk, he said

18:30he was continually shocked and surprised at how he'd ended up starting off as a monk and ended up

18:38married and with children, right? Which was not exactly how monk's life was supposed to go.

18:44So the governing authority cannot be criticized by the people who gain their credibility through its

18:53licensure. Unless you suddenly jump outside the system, which I suppose to some degree I did in

18:59that I have not claimed that I'm right because of my, you know, decent-ish education or my graduate

19:05degree or anything like that. I am making raw arguments from first principles and trying to teach

19:13people how to think so they can evaluate my arguments, right? It's like trying to debate with

19:21someone or argue with someone while teaching them the language you speak. It really is quite a

19:27challenge from that standpoint. So that's an important thing to remember. How is it that they

19:35could possibly speak? How could Richard Dawkins, let's say, not to pick him out, we like Dickie D in his

19:40own way. But how is it that, say, Richard Dawkins could fundamentally speak out against the power of the

19:50state when Richard Dawkins gains the bulk of his credibility from the power of the state, right? All right,

20:01hopefully that helps with the question. And the next question is, is the government or the state

20:09an emergent property? Is the government or the state an emergent property? Absolutely great

20:17question. So for me, an emergent property is something that exists in addition to every part

20:29of its component. Something that exists as every part that is greater than the sum of its parts. So for

20:37instance, of course, none of your atoms are alive. However, your cells are alive, right? So no individual

20:45atom is alive, but your cells are alive and you are alive. So that would be an example of an

20:54emergent

20:55property. No individual atom, or I suppose you could say no neuron, is able to think. No little part of

21:05your car is able to drive, right? The steering wheel cannot drive. The wheel on its own cannot drive.

21:11But you put them all together and you get something else entirely, of course, which is a car that can

21:18drive. So an emergent property is something that is not possessed by each of its individual components,

21:25but which only comes into existence through the arrangement, configuration, or aggregation

21:31of those components. So another example on the other side would be something like a forest.

21:41Now, a forest is a mere descriptor. The forest does not create something new out of nothing. Like,

21:50there's no property that emerges from a forest when it gets big enough. Now, this is not to say that,

21:55you know, the Amazon has, you know, big giant effects on weather patterns and rain and all this

22:03kind of stuff. So I get all of that. But the forest is not a new organism that arises out

22:12of each

22:13individual tree. And one of the ways that you know that is a forest is, you ready for a fun

22:21word?

22:22Fungible. Fungible. Fungible is when you can divide something and it does not lose its properties. So

22:30for instance, gold is fungible. You can have it in a bar, you can have it in a flake or

22:34a ring

22:35or a coin or something like that. And it retains as a whole its value. A diamond, if you cut

22:44it in

22:44half, it loses. Like a diamond that is worth $10,000, if you cut it in half, it's not necessarily

22:49true

22:50that each half is worth $5,000, right? Because you'd have to have it cut properly and reshaped

22:57and all. You just saw it in half some way. Then it's just half an expensive diamond, not two fully

23:03valuable diamonds. Or a human being, if you cut a human being in half, then you lose the property

23:14called Life. I went to go and see a pretty goofy movie called Other Mommy. And in it, there's a

23:19scene with a child that's bisected, right? Just sort of bisected by air. And I mean, they're just

23:27throwing every kind of horror trope, goofy nonsense at everything. But an emergent property tends to not

23:35be fungible. So if you slash a human being in two, you no longer have a human being, you have

23:44a dead

23:44body, right? If you katana the human body in two. However, if you carve a road through a forest,

23:53the forest does not die. The forest is not a unity, right? If you cut a tree horizontally near the

24:02base,

24:03you cut the tree down, the tree is now dead, right? And the tree has an emergent property called

24:09treeness or life and so on, which obviously can survive some trimming, right? You can get your

24:14hair cut, you can get your nails cut, and you can still, you can lose a fingertip, Dave Allen style,

24:17and you still are alive and so on. But the emergent properties tend to be not fungible.

24:28So if you get into a cab, and the cab takes you halfway to your journey, and then let's say

24:35the

24:35cab runs out of gas or something like that, the cabbie can't continue as a medical emergency or

24:40something like that, right? Then what has happened is you are still halfway to your journey. Your journey

24:47is fungible. So if the car runs out of gas, well, it's inconvenient, but you're still halfway towards

24:54your journey as a whole. I suppose it would be slightly different in the air. Again, Peter Gabriel

25:01style on the air. And that is because, well, it's one thing to run out of gas at ground level.

25:09It's

25:09another thing to run out of gas 30,000 feet into the air, right? It's a sort of different matter.

25:14So you could say that a car journey is fungible, and an airplane journey is not quite so fungible.

25:20It's more risky. I suppose you could survive it, but it would be more risky, depending on how

25:24good the pilot is at gliding. Sorry, a little bit of a tangent, but it seemed like an interesting

25:28path to follow. So an emergent property is that which none of the individual components possess

25:38and which cannot be changed or divided without destruction. The brain has the emergent property

25:50called thought. However, if you saw a brain in half horizontally, let's say, well, you no longer

25:56have the property called thought or life or coherence or anything like that. So if we look at something

26:03like the state, is the state an emergent property? In other words, does an individual change as the result

26:13of people believing in the state? Now, please understand, the fact that someone's behavior

26:20changes because of a belief does not mean that that belief is true. I mean, to take a gruesome

26:27example, let's say that Lindsay Clancy did hear voices telling her or a voice telling her to kill her

26:33child. That does not mean that there was a voice telling her to kill her child. If you believe in

26:39ghosts and you feel huge amounts of stress and tension in exploring an abandoned house in the

26:48woods at midnight, then your heart rate will be up. You know, a huge amount will change. Your hands

26:55will be sweaty and you will be releasing cortisol and adrenaline and all kinds of fight or flight

27:03mechanisms. Over and above someone who doesn't believe in ghosts, who would just be like, well,

27:08this is a creepy old house. I hope there's not a guy hiding here. But of course, the art of

27:11there

27:11being a guy hiding there is not going to be, is not going to be true. When I walked up

27:17north and

27:18there was a beast snuffling around my tent when I was on my own in the middle of nowhere, I,

27:23you know,

27:24was pretty tense, was pretty stressed. And I never did find out what the creature was, but it certainly

27:30wasn't a dangerous man eating bear because I was not eaten and not threatened in any way. So just

27:41because somebody changes their behavior based upon a belief does not mean that the belief is true.

27:46Otherwise, everyone who goes to church would be proving the existence of a God. So the question is,

27:54let's say that from one moment to the next, let's just say everybody listened to reason and understood

28:05the voluntarist or stateless society arguments and woke up tomorrow no longer believing in the

28:12government. And we'll just freeze time right there. We'll just freeze time right there. What would

28:20change? What would change? There's a belief system called statism. And then there is not a belief

28:26system called statism. Now, there's no question that the contents of people's mind would change,

28:33right? No question of that. The neural configurations, the belief systems, the understandings, the truth,

28:38the dedication to reason and evidence, objectivity, UPB, all of that would change for sure.

28:43But if all you did or all you were able to do was see the 30 seconds of people waking

28:50up from the

28:52outside, what would be different? Now, if you look at something like some horrible axe murderer saw

28:59someone in half, let's just get really gross here, right? Some horrible axe murderer saw someone in

29:04half over the middle of the night, then of course, they wouldn't wake up at all, right? You wouldn't see

29:09that at all. What you would see is a horrible, bloody mess in the bed, right? You'd see a dead

29:16person

29:18bisected accidentally, half asleep upon my knee. So you would see that. But you wouldn't see the

29:24person waking up. So that is one reason that you know that the state is an emergent property in that

29:33from the outside. From the outside in, people would be or look the same. And the only thing that would

29:41change is their belief system. So let's say that someone has a dream overnight where some bald-headed,

29:50stubble-chinned, blue-eyed philosopher reasons with them over the course of the night and they no longer

29:56believe in God. Has anything outside of their head, outside of their head, has anything in the universe

30:04changed as the result of that person no longer believing in God? No, not at all. Now, we could

30:12argue that, oh, well, when they, I don't mean to use the funny voice of like, it's automatically false,

30:19but, oh, well, when they woke up and they believed in God, they had a peace, but now they wake

30:23up and

30:24their stress, so maybe their heart rate changes and so on. So, okay, that's, that's perfectly fair

30:28and fine and I understand that. But again, we've said that a change in an internal state does not

30:34prove or disprove an external fact. So let's go even further back. Let's forget about them waking up,

30:43right? So let's say you observe someone sleeping and over the course of sleeping, they have a dream

30:50that has them go from atheist to religious or religious to atheist. Could be either way. Maybe

30:55their vision comes to them in a dream and tells them things they don't believe that they could

30:58know in any other way and therefore they become religious and so on, right? So let's, let's just

31:02say, let's say, and you watch that person sleep. Now, you might see some eye flutters from REM,

31:07you might see some tension, you might be able to measure some, oh, the body is going through some

31:11kind of stress, but you wouldn't really know what's going on, but the life would still continue

31:15and nothing in the external world would change, right? Nothing in the external world would change.

31:22So the beliefs in the mind are not an emergent property because when the mind changes, nothing

31:33outside the mind and the body changes in the moment of changing. Now, of course, the person is no longer,

31:40if they go from religious to atheist, they're going to stop going to church. They, or if they go to

31:44church, they'll do it simply for conformity, they don't believe anymore, or if they go from atheist

31:48to religious, they will start going to church and praying and so on, right? But nothing fundamental

31:54and material changes in the universe when someone changes his mind. However, it's different if there's

32:06a forest and no forest. So a belief or no belief, a belief in God or no belief in God

32:13does not change

32:14the external universe. And again, I'm fully aware that you could say, ah, yes, but it does change

32:21the external universe because he's no longer going to church. There's one less person in church. There's

32:24less money and funding going to the church. He changes what he says to his kids. His kids no

32:28longer go to church. So I get all of that. There are definitely those sorts of things, but nothing

32:32immediate. When he wakes up, if he goes to bed, a religious man, and he wakes up as an atheist,

32:39nothing foundational has changed in the external world or even in his own body. Now his mind, yes,

32:45I get that. So let's say though, that out back of your house, you have a forest and you wake

32:54up in the

32:54morning and there's no forest. See the difference between belief and things in the world. You change

33:01your mind, nothing changes in the external world in the short run. But if you wake up and you're

33:09used to looking out to a couple of acres of forest, you wake up and there's no forest. Maybe there's

33:14just stumps, maybe whatever. Maybe you slept for a long time and it got paved over. I don't know

33:19what, right? But if there's no forest, then that is a change in the external world. So if everyone

33:28wakes up in the morning tomorrow and doesn't believe in God or doesn't believe in the moral

33:32validity of political power or something like that, what has changed in the external world? Nothing.

33:37I mean, it will have effects, of course, right? But what's changed in the external world? Nothing.

33:41The only thing that's changed is the mind. But how do you get rid of a forest without getting rid

33:47of

33:47the trees? You can get rid of a belief in God in your mind. You can say, I no longer

33:55believe in

33:55God. You can let go of a belief in God in your mind and nothing changes in the universe. But

34:03how do

34:04you get rid of a forest without removing the trees? You can't. If your wife wakes up, opens the bedroom,

34:15let's say your bedroom faces the forest. And your wife wakes up and says, oh my God, the forest is

34:23gone. Where's the forest? What happened? How long have we slept? Or maybe you go on vacation for a

34:30month. You come back and the forest, like there's no forest. Oh my God, where's the forest? Or you come

34:35back and your house is gone. Let's just say it got like torn down and paved over and whatever, right?

34:41Somebody made a mistake in clearing the intergalactic highway. Say, oh my gosh, the forest is gone.

34:49Now, if you hear your wife cry out, oh my God, the forest is gone. And you wake up and

34:54you look out

34:55and there's no forest there, like there are no trees there, no undergrowth or whatever, right? You'd be

34:59like, oh my gosh, what happened? Something has happened out there in the world. However, if you hear your

35:06wife say, oh my God, the forest is gone and you jump out of bed and you look out the

35:12back window

35:13and all the trees you saw the day before are still there, you would say, well, what do you mean

35:19the

35:19forest is gone? Like it's right there. And she said, no, no, no. In my mind, I've reclassified it as

35:27a

35:27copse, C-O-P-S-E. That's a small stand of trees. Well, if the forest hasn't gone, she might

35:33have

35:33just reclassified it in her mind, but nothing has changed in the external world. To take another

35:39example, very briefly, let's say you have a pond in your backyard and you wake up because your wife

35:47is saying, oh my God, the pond is gone. And you look out and there's no pond there anymore. Somebody

35:51just came and filled it in and put some artificial grass there or something like that, right? Oh my God,

35:56the pond is gone. Something's changed in the external world. However, if the pond looks exactly

36:00the same as it did yesterday, maybe a little drier, maybe a tiny bit smaller, and she says,

36:06no, I've reclassified it as a puddle. The pond is gone. I'm calling it a puddle because

36:10the water level is a little lower. I mean, you see the difference, right? It's one thing to say

36:16the concept of God is no longer valid in my mind. I do not believe in God. I do not

36:22believe in the

36:23existence of God. Nothing has changed in the external world. However, if you say,

36:28I no longer believe there's a forest in my backyard, it's because something has changed in

36:35the external world. Have you ever had those dreams where you lose something of great value?

36:43Your child goes missing in your dream or you lose something of great value,

36:48something else of great value, obviously. And then you wake up and it's like, oh, thank goodness,

36:53right? If you have a dream that your child dies and you wake up and you're, oh my gosh,

36:57you go check on your child and she's sleeping peacefully, big smile on her face or having a

37:00happy dream or something. And you're like, oh my gosh, I'm so relieved. What a terrible dream or

37:07something like that, right? Well, that is a very real phenomenon. You have a belief in your dream

37:14that your child has died. You wake up and your child is fine. That is a very big change.

37:19So, an emergent property is something that is greater than the sum of its parts. And if it changes,

37:29it's because something in the external world has changed. So, if you wake up with no faith in God,

37:37nothing has changed in the external world. If you wake up, let's say, you face a church,

37:42right? If you wake up with no belief in God, you may say, I'm not going inside that church again.

37:49But in the moment of you waking up, nothing in the external world has changed. However,

37:53if you wake up and the church is gone, it's knocked down or just raised or whatever,

38:00the church is gone, then that's different. That's an external change. That which changes,

38:07I won't say only in the mind because the purpose of changing the mind, of course,

38:11is to change behavior. But that which behaves, that which changes only in the mind versus that

38:18which requires changes in reality in order to change the mind, right? If your wife says there's

38:23no forest, but you see a forest, you may think she's dreaming or sleepwalking or hallucinating or

38:28something like that because the forest is still there and you still have to call it a forest.

38:33emergent properties are non-fungible. You can't cut a human being in half and retain the property

38:42called life. Life is the emergent property. You can't cut the brain in half and retain, I mean,

38:48maybe that vertical stem, right? But not horizontally. You can't cut the brain in half and retain either

38:54the brain's life or the brain's capacity to think. You can't sever the spine and still be able to move

39:00your legs, right? Or below wherever the spine severing is occurring. Whereas you can cut down

39:07a couple of trees in the forest and it's still a forest. You can cut a road right through the

39:13middle

39:13of the forest and it's still a forest. It's just a forest with a path through it.

39:17An emergent property also is something that if all human beings were to vanish, would also vanish.

39:31Now, if you're looking at a forest to say, oh, what a lovely forest. And let's say that you get

39:35struck

39:35by lightning and you die and there's no forest in your mind anymore, just blue sparks of dyingness,

39:42because the forest still exists. The forest still exists. However, your life is ended, your thoughts are

39:50ended, the electrical biochemical activity in your mind and body have ended. If all human beings vanished

39:56from the world tomorrow or died, forests would still be there. I mean, they wouldn't be called forests,

40:02but the individual trees would still be there. Just they wouldn't be called trees, right? I guess animals might

40:07have some idea of what they are because wolves don't try to eat trees. If all

40:12life in the universe ended tomorrow, there would still be the universe. It would just be without

40:19life. So, an emergent property is something which is greater than the sum of its parts. It is something

40:28that is not fungible. In general, an emergent property is life and thought for human beings,

40:38but life is the most foundational emergent property. You could say, well, when a star becomes

40:45big enough, it starts becoming a permanent nuclear bomb in the sky or whatever. And when nature

40:52collapses a star or gravity collapses a star enough, it becomes a black hole and so on.

40:56But these are increases. This is a larger forest, right? So, once a planet becomes big enough,

41:03certain things can't escape its gravity well or its orbit and so on. If the earth was smaller,

41:08then the moon would not have stuck around because there wouldn't be enough of a gravity well. But

41:13these are differences of degree and not of kind. So, emergent properties are very distinct from

41:20conceptual labels. Conceptual labels describe that which is. Emergent properties are when the whole is

41:27greater than the sum of its parts. Calling something a forest does not change any individual tree.

41:33However, if you say someone is alive versus someone is dead, you are describing an objective

41:39emergent property called life, energy, breathing, blood flow, heartbeats, brainwaves, and so on.

41:45So, is the state an emergent property? No. No. If everybody woke up tomorrow no longer believing in

41:51the moral validity of political power, nothing would change in the external world. I mean, because of that

41:56belief, things would change over time, but nothing would change in the external world.

42:03So, I hope that helps. I'd love to hear more of your thoughts about this. If you find these replies

42:07or responses helpful, freedomain.com slash donate. I really, really, really would appreciate

42:13your very kind support. And don't forget, call.freedomain.com to set up a call-in show and

42:19shop.freedomain.com to get your tasty merch and freedomain.com slash books for your free books.

42:26Lots of love, my friends. Take care. Bye-bye.

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