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Jan. 3, 2006 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
28:49
38 The Death Cult of Narnia

The difference between imagination and fantasy

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Well, good morning, everybody.
I hope you're doing well.
It is Tuesday, January the 3rd, and off to work I go.
What's that old song?
I-O, I-O, so off to work I go.
And so I had a wonderful time with Christina over the vacation and had some very wonderful chats with some good friends of mine who were kind enough to send me some criticisms and some corrections to my thinking.
And I was actually going to leave Christianity alone for a little while, but last night I went to see the Chronicles of Narnia with Christina, and she enjoyed it a little bit more than I did, or because she enjoyed the first half, you know, which is a bit more sort of character-based and not the sort of psychotic death fest that a lot of Christianity or religious teachings or religious stories always turns into this like lunatic death cult worship fest.
And, you know, for reasons that to me are fairly clear but may not be obvious to others just because they haven't wasted all their time thinking about it like I have.
But, you know, for those who don't know the story of the Chronicles of Narnia, here's the two-second synopsis.
Four kids in Blitzkrieg, London, 1940 are sent out of England because there's a bombing and it's all pretty bad.
So they go to this house of this old professor And one of the kids finds a sort of hole or a portal in the back of a closet which leads to this land that is locked in winter and ruled over by an evil queen.
And of course she comes back and you have this standard thing which I swear I have seen in about 8,000 films, which is somebody sees something that's impossible and spends You know, is all upset because other people don't believe that what she's seen, that it's impossible, is actually true.
And, you know, the reason that this scene is played over so many times.
I mean, I was really, my eyeballs were rolling 360 at this point.
Because, you know, Christians or religious people believe in things that just don't make any sense.
And, you know, yet they are absolutely desperate to convince other people that these things are true, despite the fact that they don't make any sense.
So, of course, you can't get a portal to another world through the back of a... through the back of a closet.
And I don't even think it's particularly spectacularly imaginative, as a novelist myself, to portray this.
And so, of course, the youngest girl is, but I did see it, I did see it.
And all the older kids are like, come on, that's enough, right?
I mean, they don't sit down with her and say, okay, well, you know, you have these dreams.
And, you know, how could this be possible?
And, you know, here's why it couldn't work.
However, we understand that you believe it and we just we want to help understand why you believe it and, you know, why you're so passionate.
But no, all they do is they say, oh, come on, don't be silly.
And, you know, I mean, that's I mean, that's not particularly nice either, which is probably one of the reasons why they then all fall into this fantasy world through the cupboard.
And they go into this alternate world where, you know, one of the kids who's a little brother He betrays the others by going with the evil queen because he likes sweets.
He likes sweeties, and the punishment for sweeties is imprisonment in an ice dungeon.
And, you know, the other kids then stay and try and rescue him.
And you have this whole religion, Christ, death cult thing going through the whole movie, right?
I mean, you have... The kids are all referred to as the son of Adam and the son of Eve, and there's been this prophecy that they're going to come and save the world from
You know the ice queen who's the devil and you know they find this army and the army is headed up by this you know big wise sort of flowing haired lion named Aslan and they're going to go to battle against this ice world and Aslan sort of discovers this treachery or this betrayal by the youngest brother.
I don't know if it's a Cain and Abel thing, but what it definitely is, is in the Christian mythology there are two sort of major betrayals.
One is the betrayal of God in the Garden of Eden when the snake convinces Eve and Eve convinces Adam.
to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil and, you know, God doesn't like that, kicks them out, puts a big flaming sword to bar their way back in, curses Adam with labor, and curses Eve with pregnancy and childbirth, I guess, another kind of labor.
And so that's sort of the first major betrayal.
The second is Judas taking the thirty pieces of silver to betray the location of Christ to the local authorities.
And So, you know, the betrayal in the film Chronicles of Narnia provokes Aslan to have a confrontation with the devil, with this Ice Queen, and the law, the deep magic of the land is that if somebody betrays somebody else, then the devil gets to kill them, right?
So, if you want candy and you're separated from your family, then you're gonna get killed.
Now, tell me that is not sort of psychotic death worship and a sort of suicidality that is just astounding.
And the second, sort of, so, so, sorry, then what happens is Aslan says, don't kill the child, or basically, he doesn't say this in front of everybody because You know, they like to keep their transactions off screen, I guess you could say, these kinds of suicide transactions.
So Aslan says to the devil, you know, I know that you have the right to kill this child for betraying his family, but I will take his place, right?
So this, of course, is Christ saying that I will die for the sins of mankind, and through my death I will redeem original sin, and now if Christians follow me, then they will I guess he would say if Jews follow me, because there was no such thing as Christians yet.
But if Jews follow me, then they will get eternal life and go back to God, and that's because I'm willing to sacrifice myself.
So Christ does, and as Len does, he goes to the devil, and in one of these sort of, you know, hellish scenes, he gets stabbed.
And then, you know, there's this massive battle, right?
So that's the death of Christ.
So there's this massive battle where, you know, they just blew eight million CGI bucks a second.
And then they, you know, Aslan comes back to life just as Christ did after three days.
And I'm sort of reminded of this Farside cartoon that I think Gary Larson got a huge amount of flack for where he had Christ sort of cooking an egg and he's like, oh man, I just feel so bad.
It feels like I've been dead for three days.
Anyway, so there's this huge battle and Aslan comes back to life as Christ did because he made this sacrifice.
So the deep magic is that if you make a great sacrifice for somebody else, You know, the sort of stone table upon which you make sacrifices gets broken and you come back to life, right?
So it's all about God's forgiveness through Christ and, you know, all of this sort of stuff.
And, you know, then there's this huge massive death, massive battle with, you know, slaughter, murder, mayhem, and so on.
And then, I mean, that's sort of really all that's important.
The rest of the film is, you know, as silly as the first bit, right?
But, you know, they have these sort of two goes at logic.
One is where the eldest children says to the youngest child, you can't have gone through the back of a cupboard into another world.
And the other is where they bring this to the professor, right?
The sort of old wise head professor who would represent the priest, right?
And the priest says, yes, I have basically implies that he went through the cupboard himself.
Uh, and he's still waiting to go back and it will happen at some point, you know, which is sort of you go back to heaven or the basically psychotic world of life and death after death.
And he also says, well, you know, uh, what's logic got to do with it?
You know, she's your sister.
You have to believe her, you know, just because she had some psychotic vision and lost time, which would indicate a sort of mental illness.
Like if you believe that you've stepped into another world, And you've had tea with a fawn and you've been gone for hours and hours and hours and you come back and it's only been like 30 seconds.
Well then you sort of might want to look into your lithium balance.
You might want to look into your thyroid gland.
You might want to look into your blood sugar.
You might want to look into a number of things that could cause you to have these kinds of fugue states and deranged visions because That would be indicative not of you know, you've actually reached a higher truth But that you may have some sort of mental illness or some sort of physiological and neurological problem It may be the early indications of brain tumor It could be any number of things that would cause these kinds of reactions and
You know, it's well known that damage to particular areas of, I think, of the temporal lobe, but of the brain at some point, perhaps the hypothalamus, the damage to these areas results in religious visions.
I mean, directly, they've sort of been able to sort of reproduce this in the lab.
So, you know, this would be a concerned writer who cared about children and their health would sort of write about this and it would turn out to be something where You don't believe the crazy person.
You get them help, right?
You get them help so that they can become sane again or live or get diagnosed early and have the longest chance to live possible.
You don't just sort of say, well, that's very nice, sweetie.
I'm sure that the fawn was very good and go back to your knitting, right?
I mean, that is ignoring the symptoms of a major illness.
So that's sort of one part that bothered me.
The other thing that bothered me about the film, which I think is particularly true to Christians, is You know, this insane and psychotic feeling of specialness.
You know, this feeling of specialness, I just find so confusing.
You know, these kids who go over into this other world, like, the moment they get over there, there are these talking beavers, which didn't make me think of anything rude.
And these talking beavers says, oh, you're the ones in the prophecy, and you're so special, and you're gonna become the king, and you're here to rule us all, and you're here to lead us all, and so on.
You know, my question, of course, in the movie and generally about religion as a whole is, what makes you so special?
You know, you're not the wisest among them, you're just a bunch of little kids from Finchley.
You don't know anything about anything, and you're not even particularly nice little children.
I mean, the littlest girl is kind of cute, but I mean, the rest of them are just kind of mean.
I mean, the oldest daughter, the oldest girl, has like a heart of stone, and the brothers are constantly fighting, because in England, you know, elder brothers are sort of constitutionally designated as the jerks of the family.
And, you know, the only thing that was unrealistic, I thought, was that the youngest brother yelled at the eldest brother and didn't get punched, because that's how the family dynamics were being set up.
So, what makes these kids so special?
Well, nothing.
Like in the real world, they're shunted away from a dangerous city and sent out to the country where nobody really cares about them.
And so, you know, obviously they're going through feelings of humiliation and I fully understand that and sympathize with that.
But, you know, to then escape into this alternate world where there are kings and noble and heroes and all the warriors in the land kneel down before them, I mean, that is a sort of psychotic overreaction to a feeling of humiliation that indicates, you know, severe abuse early in life.
I mean, if when you are put into a situation which could be considered humiliating, like you're sent away from your family to protect you from bombs and you're put into a household where people don't really seem to like children, Well, you know, frankly, suck it up a little, you know, deal with it.
There are lots of worse things to be humiliated about as children than being sent away from danger to a place that's not entirely friendly but perfectly pleasant.
But, you know, the sort of psychotic overreaction to feelings of shame, which produces these grandiose fantasies, you know, where you can't just sort of say, man, they're kind of not treating me well here.
That's not nice.
I don't like that.
That feels bad.
You have to sort of say, okay, I'm going to create and escape into this alternate world.
Wherein I am a king, and there's, you know, these massive battles of good and evil that hinge entirely upon my decision, and, you know, the greatest warrior leader in the history of Narnia puts me in charge of his army, though I am in fact a fourteen-year-old boy, you know?
It's just lunatic!
And, you know, there is imagination, and I'm a novelist, and I was an actor, and I I understand the power of imagination and imagination is wonderful and a lot of these podcasts, as you probably know, in fact almost all of them except for a few at the beginning, I do on the fly while I'm driving often.
And so, you know, there's a lot of imagination going at work here.
I'm picking sort of 20 threads of where to go next and keeping all these balls in the air as I'm driving.
So I do understand the power of imagination.
But imagination that is not grounded in reality is fantasy.
And fantasy is very different from imagination.
Imagination takes what is and pictures new things which can be achieved.
Fantasy is what takes things which are impossible and makes them real and destroys cause and effect and destroys rationality.
And it's not a healthy aspect of the human mind.
It's a sort of a subspecies of psychosis.
And that is not really where you want to be, right?
So imagination is, I see this girl.
I smiled at her.
She smiled at me.
Wouldn't it be nice if we got together?
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
That's sort of... That is imagination.
And that's wonderful because it helps pave the way for you to get what you want, right?
You picture yourself where you want to be.
You figure out the steps on how to get there.
You take those step by step.
And that's what you achieve, and it's a wonderful thing.
You know, it's an essential part of the human mind, and a very healthy and productive part of the human mind.
But fantasy is, you know, being a grungy, overweight bachelor who thinks, you know, who watches fashion television and says, man, I gotta get me one of those supermodels.
I mean, that is fantasy, and that is quite the opposite of imagination, because it actually paralyzes you.
It means that you're going to look at every other woman and compare them to supermodels, and my wife of course, and you are not going to get what you want.
In fact, it's going to block you from getting what you want.
So, fantasy is a sort of subspecies of psychosis that is the opposite of imagination, and I view this film Much more as fantasy.
Fantasy will always produce conflict.
Fantasy will always produce violence of some kind or another.
Whether it's emotional or physical.
Because in fantasy you have an allegiance to something.
You know generally in psychological terms it can be called entitlement.
Like I'm entitled to other people's respect and their veneration and their worship and whatever.
And what have I done to achieve it?
Nothing!
I just am I deserve it because I am like let's say that you listen to these podcasts and you think you know this guy with the sort of pan-european accent may have some things of value to say I mean that's great you know I mean I'm sort of unimportant in the equation that communication of what's true which I work at to provide to you Is important.
And, you know, if you find no good reasons to disagree with me and empirically you verify what I'm saying, then by all means believe the truth.
I mean, you're not believing me.
I mean, I am absolutely unimportant in the equation, right?
I am a vessel of truth or whatever.
I mean, your relationship to what I'm saying doesn't have anything to do with me.
It has to do with the truth.
Right?
And so, these don't make me smart or special or great or anything like that.
They're just things which I'm good at, which I've spent a lot of time thinking about, that I want to share because I believe that truth is the most important thing in life and I want to help people.
I mean, I don't mean this in any kind of paternalistic way.
I'm sure you're doing great.
But, you know, if there's a little thing that I've discovered that can be of clarification or help to you, I mean, wouldn't it be kind of stingy not to share it?
Wouldn't it be kind of mean?
I mean, let's say that I have some cure for some ailments of mankind.
Well, I care about mankind and I want to help that.
But I would never say that this makes you beholden to me or that you should listen to me or that everything that I say is true.
I mean, that would be crazy and narcissistic and dangerous, right?
I mean, I don't want anybody to have allegiance to me.
I want people to have allegiance to the truth.
And to the methodology that I put forward, right?
I mean, we don't give all praise to Francis Bacon every time a scientific method... the scientific method is used to prove something true.
You know, we may say, hey, it was great that the guy came up with it, but, you know, he's dead and gone and, you know, doesn't really matter.
And that's exactly how I feel about myself.
Not that I'm Francis Bacon, of course, but that it doesn't matter to me, you know, that I come up with these ideas and it shouldn't matter to you.
Just look at the ideas and see if they're valid.
But in this sort of world of Christians, which I'm working on Narnia from, it really is not that way at all.
They feel that simply by being born, the most all-powerful, omniscient creature in the universe is obsessed with every choice that they make, that they are caught up in a sort of infinitely larger-than-life drama of good and evil that is spread across the entire universe.
That the God they worship died for their sins.
That they are born stained and evil and out of grace with God.
And that the God sort of split himself off.
and came down to earth and although didn't know exactly that he was down to earth and died was crucified in writhing agony for their sins and that there's a Virgin Mary who watches over them and there are saints that they can pray to that they really are sort of center stage in this enormous cosmic drama of good and evil and and war and famine and salvation and guilt and you know all of these emotionally charged
And, you know, kind of overreactions to something, kind of emotional states.
And to me, that's pretty important.
It's pretty important to understand that about Christians, that they really do feel special.
They feel right at the heart of everything that is important and everything that is going on.
You know, there is this bumper sticker, Jesus loves me.
Jesus loves me.
Well, what have you done?
You know, this is sort of the question that I have.
What have you done to be so important?
Are you the wisest person in the universe?
Are you the smartest?
Are you the most creative?
Are you the strongest?
Do you have the most intelligent?
No, you don't have any of those things.
You know, you can be, you know, some unintelligent fool in a trailer park and you are still, you know, the center of the universe and everybody's, all the angels are staring at what you do and you're part of this great cosmic drama and, I mean, you haven't done anything to earn any of it.
I mean, what has made you special?
I really do dislike this idea of specialness.
I think it's very dangerous because the world, in fact, does not agree with you, right?
I mean, the world... Let's just say you're some, you know, dumb guy in a trailer park.
You know, you think that you're special because, you know, you're a Christian and, you know, the world hangs on your every decision and all this and that.
And, you know, your children owe you allegiance and respect because that's what the Bible says.
And, you know, what evidence is the world going to give you back?
Well, it doesn't really matter what you say to your kids.
If you're not a good parent and if you're not a good person, they're not going to respect you.
I mean, they might fake it.
But they're really not going to respect you.
So, you know, here it's sort of in one way that your specialness is just not sort of reflected back to you in the actions of the world.
And, you know, you may be the chosen lamb of God, but, you know, if you go to work you still have to get there on time, you still have to push a broom, you still have to do all of the dumb stuff that stupid jobs entail.
And there's no specialness in any of that.
And so the world, just in general, is not going to grant you... I mean people, basically people.
I mean, maybe you think your dog worships you because maybe to every dog their master is God.
I don't know.
But the people in the world Outside of your sort of particular close religious circle, they're not going to give you any of that.
They're not going to give you respect.
They're not going to think you're the king.
They're not going to think you're the best guy in the world.
They're not going to think you're special.
You're just going to be another face in the crowd.
And in fact, if they look at the social markers around you, i.e.
kids you don't respect, your life in a trailer park, a dumb job or welfare, Well, they're not going to respect you.
They're not going to think anything particularly highly of you, and that's going to provoke narcissistic rage, right?
So if I think that I'm special...
And I'm great and I'm gifted and everybody owes me allegiance, although I don't do anything to achieve that.
I don't sort of put out anything that's great or work to become the wisest person or anything like that or, you know, even start a business to create jobs for people.
I mean, even material things like that.
I don't sort of get out of the couch, but I expect everyone to treat me as if I'm special and wonderful and magical and, you know, the center of all things important.
Well, the world... some people are just not going to agree with me.
They're not going to care, and that's going to provoke narcissistic rage, because I've founded my entire sense of identity on this fantasy of specialness, and then when the world doesn't provide it, I'm going to get enraged at the world, right?
So I'm going to... you know, there's no... it's no accident that in the Bible you have both, honor thy mother and thy father, and, you know, spare the rod, spoil the child.
Because those two things come hand in hand.
If you say to children, you have to respect your parents regardless of what they do, then you are immediately creating a situation wherein bad parents will feel that the children are withholding from them that to which they are entitled.
And if you sort of question a Christian who believes that they're in the center, or, you know, any religious person who believes that they're in the center of this grand cosmic drama and Christ died for their sins and they're loved by all the angels in creation and so on, if you If you start questioning that person, then you will provoke the narcissistic rage, because you are basically saying to that person, well, you and I, you know, we're just people.
We're just, you know, sort of bipeds getting along kind of thing, and, you know, there may be such a thing as specialness, and perhaps there is, but, you know, you really do have to work at it, right?
I mean, if Freddie Mercury, the singer for Queen, you know, could have strutted around and did in his life, you know, and in some way say, like, Muhammad Ali's thing, I'm the greatest.
Well, you know, they're sort of pointing out a fact, right?
I mean, a fantastic singer, songwriter, performer, and, you know, Muhammad Ali was, you know, excellent at beating other people up.
So, you know, in some sort of universe, maybe that's the greatest.
I mean, but, you know, these people spent, you know, Freddie Mercury spent like 10 years trying to make it, you know, and of course he was part of the legion of enormously talented people, of which only a portion of them make it.
So, you know, he took all the risks and, you know, he worked hard and he, you know, was a workaholic and put out all this great stuff and so, yeah, you know, he's great, you know, he's special.
I mean, I'm certainly willing to grant that.
But, you know, if you're just some guy and you haven't, you know, put in the work, taken the risks, you know, and had the emotional stamina to put work out there that can be criticized and rejected and, you know, worked at whatever it is that you're going to work at, you know, it takes at least 10 years.
I mean, unless you're a child actor, it takes at least 10 years to become any good at anything.
So if you put that time in and you start to put your work out and people like it, then, you know, maybe there's a sense of specialness that you can enjoy.
But in the real world, you know, if you don't do that, nobody cares about you.
Really.
I mean, Jesus doesn't love you.
I mean, Jesus is probably, if he did exist, he'd be like, you know, get off the couch and go do something with this great gift that I gave you.
Don't just sort of sit around thinking that I love you because you're breathing.
And so this sort of psychotic rage that comes out of these people when you start to interfere with their sense of specialness, then what you're basically saying is, you are as special as what you do, you are as virtuous as what you do, and you are as noble as how you act.
And, you know, if you have just swallowed this fantasy pill that other people have given you, you've probably done it out of a species of thwarted vanity, right?
That I want to be special, I want to be loved, I want to be a king, But I don't want to earn it.
I don't want to work at it.
And therefore, you know, I'm gonna sort of escape into this alternate world where I'm really important.
And if anybody starts to question me, then I'm going to lash out to get them to back off from this fantasy world that I've created for myself.
Wherein I'm special because, you know, they are attacking me, right?
And so this war that is always in these movies, you know, Lord of the Rings and Sword of Shannara and Chronicles of Narnia, there's always these wars, right?
Always these global wars about everything.
And that's entirely consistent with the problems of fantasy.
Fantasy always involves violence.
Because it is a falsehood that you are absolutely committed, like with all the teeth that you have in your head, you are absolutely committed to maintaining this fantasy.
Which is not true, right?
So you are at war against the world.
I mean, that is the sort of problem with religion, right?
That reality does not affirm any of their fantasies, right?
God doesn't come down in a chariot, and the world is full of bad people.
And, you know, logic does not, uh, does deny the existence of your God, and there aren't any miracles, and, you know, so...
There is no corroboration from reality for these religious fantasies and so basically religious people are at war with reality.
I mean they are of course at war with themselves and at war with each other and so on but fundamentally they're at war with reality because if you have a fantasy that's not corroborated you end up hating the reality because It's threatening your entire sense of specialness and all of the unearned benefits, which you're getting by imagining sort of that you have, you know, all these great attributes, which you don't, right?
I mean, the first great attribute that you don't have is a respect for reality.
And you certainly can't be an effective and decent human being if you don't respect basic reality.
I mean, you're going to be basically ineffective and narcissistic your whole life long, you know, or parasitical, right?
I mean, if you're some sort of thundering preacher from the pulpit, then you're just basically spreading this insanity like a virus to other people.
who were then going to get infected with the specialness.
And so, you know, from this movie that I saw last night, I thought it would be interesting to help you understand, at least from my perspective, why it is that religious people are so volatile when they're questioned.
Because you really are attacking this fantasy of specialness that they have.
And, of course, they've been fully inoculated about this, right?
I mean, one of the great things about Christianity, which you can admire as sort of a structure of thought that has survived, is that, you know, they have already built into the mythology, they have already this whole solution to the problem of people saying that you're full of nonsense, right?
Because they say, well, the devil's going to come and tempt you and You have to resist the devil, and the devil is going to tell you that there is no God, and the fool in his heart has said there is no God.
So the moment that you start questioning a Christian, you immediately are put into the role of sort of Satan's minion, and somebody who is trying to undermine their faith, and that the virtue is to stick with the faith regardless of the question.
So, I mean, the Christian theologians have anticipated every move that we can make, and that's one of the reasons why it's so hard to chip away at these people's beliefs.
Well, I have made it to work.
I hope you're having a great day this afternoon.
We're actually going to chat a little bit more about Christianity, so I hope you enjoy that, too.
Thanks a lot.
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