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Jan. 5, 2006 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
39:02
44 Knowledge and Moral Responsibility
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Good evening, my brothers and sisters.
It's Stefan Molyneux.
It is 9.17 p.m.
on Thursday, January the 5th, 2006.
Thanks again for listening.
I did a podcast today on unions, and I was going to give it a rest tonight, but I got a series of emails wherein people are expressing to me their disturbance at the idea that Christianity is a form of child abuse or religious instruction in general is a form of child abuse and of course it's only one of many forms of child abuse but it's a pretty significant one in my view because it's the one that's invisible in society and that's the one you want to focus on right?
And of course people are disturbed by this and I so much I so much understand that I can't even tell you my heart aches for the moral choices that face people who have to look this question in the face.
My heart bleeds for you out there who are listening and mulling this over because it is The discovery of a new moral principle or the discovery of the application of an existing moral principle to a new and unthought of area is not the easiest thing in the world.
And so I fully understand that people are disturbed, although they basically tell me that they're disturbed by the abstract principle or that they have trouble with the abstract principle.
I'm not sure that I believe them.
I think that, based on my own experience of exploring these moral questions, that what is really going on is people have Christians in their lives and they're looking to find a way to get themselves out of the problem of having to confront those Christians.
And I understand it and it's not a pleasant thought to look upon people who you may have looked on in the past as sort of benevolent and uninformed and kind of pig-headed but sort of well-meaning and look at them and say well maybe they're actually abusing their children.
and those around them with their falsehoods, it's not a pretty thought.
And so I would like to sort of suggest to those of you out there who are disturbed by this idea that the disturbance that you're feeling is not so much in the realm of abstract moral philosophy as it is sort of pretty specifically in the realm of how do you deal socially with people if you accept the fact that what they're doing is morally wrong, and they have no idea, and most of society has no idea and everyone supports them, what are you going to do?
Are you going to confront them at the dinner table?
Are you going to confront them at the community center?
Are you going to confront them at school and call them child abusers?
I mean these are all significant questions if you accept a particular moral proposition Then, what do you have to do about it in order to have a life that you can live with integrity?
I mean, it is a very important and very tricky question.
And if it's true, what we have been discussing, and that Christianity is a form of child abuse, religious instruction is a form of child abuse, Then, you know, we are sort of on the frontier of discovering a new moral in society, a new ethical reality.
I mean, we're not inventing it.
We are simply discovering it.
And, you know, we're not the first to cross this frontier.
This frontier has been crossed by many minds before us.
So, for instance, For many years, slavery was considered to be moral.
For many years, infanticide was considered to be perfectly acceptable.
For many years, there was really no such thing as property rights.
For many years, women could be treated as chattel.
There are many, many moral frontiers that get crossed in the development or progress of society, that if we are the next And if we are the next explorers to cross a new one, it's not the first time, and I'm sure it won't be the last.
Now, in the realm of children, these ethics are particularly hard to find.
Sorry, they're not hard to find.
These ethical progresses are very hard to find.
And the question of what to do about it when you cross over into this sort of new land where you maybe have a new moral understanding about
uh... the effects of certain teachings on the vulnerable the most vulnerable of course in society role with the children what you do about it we'll get to in a little bit but just to help contextualize the discussion a little bit so that you don't feel perhaps uh... so alone uh... we can talk a little bit about uh... sigmund freud uh... sigmund freud is you know obviously i would say uh... uh... a psycho doctor in vienna in the late uh... nineteenth century who
Began to try and find ways of treating what was then called hysteria and it was called hysteria because it was considered to be a female affliction based on hormones in the womb and He began to try and teach treat this hysteria which formerly had been treated with like crazy treatments like Cold water treatments and so on.
And he began to develop what he considered or what he called a sort of talking cure, which is where he would try and find the source of what was common, right?
The symptom that was common, but hidden in women who were afflicted with severe forms of hysteria.
I mean, women whose eyes were perfectly healthy, but who could not see.
Women whose neurological systems were perfectly healthy, but you could stick a pin in their arm and they would feel nothing.
And so he was dealing with some pretty significant forms of dissociation and numbness and sort of mental cognitive problems.
And he was trying to find a root cause of all of these.
And to cut a long story short, what he found as he began to question his female patients, and then later found, I think it was later, with his male patients as well, well, what he found with his female patients up front was that without exception, all of the women who suffered from hysteria had suffered, I think, what he called then premature sexual experiences,
which today we would call sexual molestation, sexual exploitation which today we would call sexual molestation, sexual exploitation of children, and that was the symptom that he found that was in common.
Now this, of course, he found particularly shocking.
I mean, he was dealing with upper middle class Women whose parents were preachers, were pillars of the community, were good, solid, upright citizens, and they were telling him tales of the most wretched kinds of sexual exploitation and molestation that occurred to them when they were children.
That their fathers, or in some cases their mothers, uncles and grandparents and so on, that there was this sort of hellacious underworld of sexual predation of children that was going on all around him.
And, of course, Freud had a very difficult time accepting any of this.
I mean, it really is an enormously difficult thing to swallow, the idea that a great evil is going on in your midst.
And there seems to be no ripple in society at all, right?
I mean, when there is a great evil, we expect, you know, thunderclouds and lightning and rains of frogs and All of that.
But when society appears to be cruising along with barely a shudder or a ripple, it's very hard to understand exactly where this evil could lie and how it could be so invisible to everybody.
So Freud, to his great credit, began to publish this and began to speak about it.
And he ran into the most unbelievable resistance and hostility.
Professionally, he was threatened, I believe, with lawsuits.
He was threatened with stripping of his license.
He faced the most incredible hostility from everyone around him as he began to speak out about these ideas.
And, you know, it's hard to fault the man.
I mean, there's lots to fault him for and, you know, this would be one on the list.
And I, for one, can't in my heart condemn him because It is very hard to stand up in the face of a moral evil when everybody is castigating you for saying what is the case.
It's very hard to stand up and throw away your whole career, your livelihood, your professional standing, your reputation.
And so what he did was he backed down.
In the face of this incredible hostility to what he was saying, He decided, or maybe decided isn't the right word, he chose to back down from his theories.
And he said, okay, well, these women are all complaining of sexual abuse by their father, but what if it's not real?
What if it's not true?
What if they didn't actually have sexual molestation from their father, didn't experience that?
Maybe what happened was they fantasized about sexual relations with their father and maybe maybe the sons who've been sexually molested by their mothers have fantasized about this sexual relationship and because it happened when they were very young it's confused in their minds they don't know if it's real they don't know if it's not and
So this is where the theory, the Electra Complex, the Eatable Complex, and a lot of the basis of Freudian theories came along.
And so he said basically that what children report as sexual experiences is a fantasy.
It's a wish fulfillment.
It is a dream of theirs.
So it's not that the daughter, when she was five, was sexually molested by the father, but that she fantasized about it because, you know, the whole Electra and Freudian complex is pretty Sophisticated stuff, I mean intellectually if not factually, so we don't have to get into it now, but basically Freud stumbled across a great moral evil right in the heart of a society that was completely invisible to everyone around him.
And he faltered, and he faltered in a terrible way, and he faltered in a way that Caused enormous harm, you know, for the next 60 or 70 years worth of psychological development for children.
I mean, the only thing that can be said is he saw and then he chose not to see, whereas nobody else saw at all.
So, I mean, that's sort of a minor kudos there.
I mean, there are two things, of course, that Freud could have looked at to help give him the strength and the courage to push on.
One is that when the women told him that they had been sexually abused when they were children, their symptoms alleviated.
And then, when he told them, no, you only fantasized it, it's not real, it's just your wish fulfillment, in other words, He completely reversed the ethics of the situation.
So instead of the father actually committing a crime against the child, the child was accused of imagining a crime that she wanted to commit against the father.
And what happened was, in his practice, the women and the men that he was talking to, their symptoms recurred.
So when they told him That they were abused and he believed them, their symptoms got better, right?
It's the whole idea behind psychoanalysis or psychotherapy.
But then when he went back to them and said, no, you're wrong.
This is a complex.
You just want to have sex with your father.
He didn't actually molest you.
Then their symptoms got worse again, right?
Because falsehood is bad for the brain.
And so it's not unprecedented for a human being to stumble out of the general thicket of moral confusion and moral posturing that is society and to discover or to see a new moral truth that is very disturbing to everyone.
When Freud understood the prevalence of sexual predation of the young in his society, It's almost unbearable because you can't help but think that maybe that's the purpose of society.
Like when you see the amount of sexual abuse that goes on in the Catholic Church, it's hard not to think that it's sort of a club pedophilia with funny hats.
It's hard to think that it's not the purpose of it.
Because that's all it seems to do and that's what it defends the most.
So the first thing that Freud could have understood about what he was seeing and what he was theorizing was that, first of all, the symptoms recurred when he told these people that they were lying.
And second of all, the resistance that he met was indicative of something very important.
And that's the part that I want to sort of share with you the most about what it is that I'm talking about with religious education as a form of child abuse.
The reason that people are disturbed by this is because they know deep in their hearts that they are going to meet an enormous amount of hostility and resistance when they bring this up.
The reason that they're disturbed about it is because they know that it's true.
And the reason that they know that it's true is exactly because they're going to see all of this hostility and resentment and anger and rejection and contempt and rage.
They're going to see all of that if they ever bring this question up within the people around them who don't share it.
Right?
I mean, if you come to me and you say to me that the coffee that I'm drinking is actually decaf, I'm not going to be angry.
I'll just, oh, I poured the wrong coffee.
Right?
I mean, I don't have any innate hostility to you telling me something that is just basically true.
There's nothing in human nature that causes or forces people to get angry at the truth.
So when people do get angry at a truth, that is very significant.
It doesn't mean that everything that people get angry at is true.
But it does mean that when people do get angry at something that is logical and empirical and verified, that that is very important and is an indication that you're on the right So let's look at another moral truth that sort of emerged within human society about 200 years ago or so.
A little more.
Slavery.
Slavery, the ownership of another human being as property, was considered perfectly moral and just.
Just as the rape of women, as the spoils of war, was considered perfectly moral and just throughout all of human history.
Up until sort of the late 18th century, slavery began to Be called into question.
So, you know, the question is, what do you do if you're the man or the woman and you wake up one fine morning and you sort of stumble out of bed and you say to yourself, you know what?
Slavery is immoral.
Slavery is just plain evil.
Well, what are you going to do?
Are you going to then get into your carriage and drive over to everyone you know who's a slave and call them evil?
I don't really know what that would do other than get you a lot of hostility for no particular gain.
But it is a perfectly valid way to test the truth of a moral theory.
If you walk up to me tomorrow and you say to me, Steph, you don't own your iPod.
It's immoral to own an iPod, because an iPod is alive.
All I'd have to do is say to you, okay, well, prove to me an iPod is alive and then prove to me that it's sentient and prove to me whatever, right?
I'd be baffled and curious at your suggestion that an iPod could be alive.
I mean, it just would be bizarre to me.
It would be like saying that my chair is a member of my family and has the right to sit at the table with everyone else.
But I wouldn't be angry at you.
I'd be baffled.
I'd be confused.
I'd be skeptical.
But I'd be kind of curious.
And as you began to sort of prove to me that, you know, my iPod or my chair was in fact alive and was sentient, I just hadn't been listening to the right wavelengths, my mind would be blown and I would thank you for rescuing me from a grievous error.
And I know that not everyone is as curious about the truth as I am, but I still think for the most part people are pretty grateful when you tell them something that's important that they have no idea about beforehand.
That's the important criteria.
If somebody has no idea that something is wrong, if you explain to them that it is, they're not hostile because they're operating from a position of ignorance.
Now when you bring a moral idea up, though, and people are immediately hostile, immediately hostile, that is a very, very important clue.
So I'll give you an example and then I'll talk about how I think it fits into religious conversations or conversations with religious people.
So you go up to a slave owner And you say to that slave owner, slavery is wrong.
Slavery is a moral evil.
And he says to you, oh, that's not the case at all.
Don't be silly.
And he'll say, and I can prove it to you.
And you say, OK, well, how is that?
And he says, look, I've known these slaves my whole life.
I have known them for, lo, these fifty years.
They are perfectly happy here.
They are perfectly comfortable here.
They have never expressed the slightest desire to be anywhere else.
They can't read.
They can't write.
They can't do any of these things.
They have no savings.
They have no property.
They don't understand anything about business.
They're like little children.
Or, you know, highly skilled farm implements, or animals.
So slavery is not wrong because they're incapable of doing anything else.
It would be cruel to turn them out into the big city where they would just be exploited.
I treat them well and I take care of them.
If they need a dentist, I get them a dentist.
If they need a doctor, I get them a doctor.
If their children are cold, I give them a blanket.
If their women are pregnant, I make sure that they're taken care of.
So it's not a moral evil any more than it's a moral evil to own cattle.
And so that would sort of be his argument.
So he's saying that it is a moral good for him to own slaves because the alternative would be that they would do much worse.
So that's, you know, that's a moral argument.
This guy's not saying, this guy's not saying, yes, I know it's a moral evil, but damn it, I need that cotton picked, and I paid good money for these people, and I've got a whip, and I've got a gun, and I've got three men who will beat them up and shoot them in the leg if they try and get away.
I know it's a moral evil, but I want it anyway.
People never say that.
People will always justify their actions and their choices based on some universal moral goal, which is exactly why I'm always making the case for the argument for morality.
Now, so this guy is saying that they choose, that his slaves choose to stay with him, and that they are happy to stay with him, and they want to stay with him.
And so then you have a simple Suggestion to make to him.
All you do is you say, Mr. Slave Owner, your premise is that your slaves are happy to be here.
Yes.
Very well.
Then you don't need to keep them as slaves.
You don't need to Register them as slaves.
You can register them as free men.
You don't need to have a whip.
You don't need to have a gun.
You don't need to have any three guys who are gonna haul them down or shoot them in the leg if they try to escape.
You can set them free!
Because you're saying that they're here by choice.
And therefore they don't need to be thought of as slaves because slavery is not a moral evil.
Because they're here by choice.
So then you say, okay, well, then you can set them free, and you've saved money.
You've saved time.
Because you don't have to have all of these chains, and you don't have to have these whips, and you don't have to have this slave catchers, and you don't have to have the police, and the militia, and all the people who hunt them down, because they want to be here.
And he's going to get very irritated.
And then he's going to change his argument, right?
He's going to say, well, they're too stupid to know what's good for them.
They'd run off and they'd die in a swamp or, you know, whatever he would come up with, right?
But he's going to present at first the major moral argument.
And then when you puncture that, or you sort of call them on it and say, okay, well, if they really love being here and it's not slavery, then you don't need to treat them as slaves and you can let them go free because they'll stay here voluntarily as free people.
Now that example is instructive, I think, when it comes to thinking about Christianity or religious instruction.
When a Christian talks to you, or if you talk to a Christian and you ask them why do they believe what they believe, they say that I believe it because it's true.
Right?
So I say to Christians, okay, well, so truth then is your highest value.
Truth is what you value.
Right?
So if people told you to believe things that were false, you wouldn't believe them unless it was a proof, or unless you felt it, because truth is your highest value.
Because you don't talk to a Christian and they say, oh, you know, I don't really believe any of it, but, you know, I got these friends, I got this family, you know, I sort of brought my kids up this way.
You know, I mean, I'm not exactly proud of it, but, you know, I'm a sort of go-along kind of guy.
I like to sort of get along with people.
I don't like to provoke anybody.
I was just taught all this stuff, and it just seemed easier to go along with it.
I mean, Christians don't say that.
They'll turn at you with that big, smug, self-righteous grin, and they'll say, well, no, I believe because the Lord is God, and it's true, and it's the highest value, and it's the greatest thing, and it's the most moral thing, and it's wonderful, and this and that.
So a Christian is then saying to you, truth is my highest value.
Right?
Just like the slave owner is saying to you, I mean, if he's a certain kind of slave owner, I'm not saying this would be true of all of them, the slave owner would be saying to you that, you know, these slaves, they want to be here.
I want to take, I'm taking care of them.
They wouldn't be able to make it without me.
And so, When you talk to a Christian, he's saying truth is the highest value.
Truth is what it's all about.
It's not social conformity.
It's not blind prejudice.
It's not just what I was raised with.
It's not just what gets me along in the world.
It's not just that I don't like fighting with people.
It's not like I just like singing.
You just find out that or they tell you that truth is the highest value and that's what they're all about.
And so when you start asking questions of a Christian, what you are beginning to do to him psychologically is to expose or reveal his hypocrisy.
That's why you get the anger.
That's why you get the irritation.
That's why you get this condescension and this patronizing tone.
Because the problem is not that the Christian believes what he believes.
The problem is that the Christian lies to himself and lies to others about why he believes what he believes.
Like, I don't like to wear pants.
Okay, this may be not exactly where you thought this argument was going, but it's true.
I really don't.
So, you know, now we have a house, and I live in this house with my gorgeous bride, and she has some social sensibilities that I, as a wolf boy, jungle child, was never exposed to when I was growing up.
So, you know, when I'm going downstairs, let's say that I go into bed, and I'm sort of in my skivvies, and I come downstairs, I'm going downstairs, my wife will say, put a robe on.
Put some pants on.
And I do.
Because, you know, downstairs maybe the neighbors can see, you know, if there's a guy set up with an infrared telescope 14 miles away at a certain angle, and the leaves are, and the wind is, whatever, it's possible that he might catch a glimpse of Bear Philosopher Thigh.
But I'll put it on because I don't want my wife to be uncomfortable, and how tough is it for me to put on a robe, right?
So, but if somebody is downstairs and they say to me, uh, Steph, why do you have that robe on?
I'll say because my wife wants me to wear it.
Because that's a fact.
Is it rational?
I don't know.
It doesn't really matter.
But I'm going to be honest about why I believe what I believe.
Now if I... if I wear a suit To a job interview, I say, and somebody says, well, why are you wearing a suit to a job interview?
I say, well, because that's what's expected, and if you don't do it, people are going to have unnecessary questions about your ability to judge appropriate social behavior.
I don't wear the robe and come downstairs, and if you ask me, explain to you by saying that the robe is a sign of respect to the invisible elves that rule the household.
That wearing a robe when you're going downstairs is the highest moral value.
That it is the very soul and definition of goodness.
And when I wear a suit to a job interview, I don't say, well, I'm showing respect for the highest virtue in the land.
I'm conforming to the greatest invisible good in the universe.
I just say, no, this is our custom.
This is what we do.
And I'm already fighting enough things in my life that I don't need to fight things like a suit.
You know, when I do a speech, I face the audience.
I don't curl it to a ball under the podium and whisper it to myself.
But I don't claim that that's some big moral virtue.
It's just practical.
It just makes sense.
It's what they expect.
And I have pants on when I do the speech, too.
Because my wife likes that too.
So, you know, the issue is not that you believe things that aren't objective and perfectly rational and this and that.
The issue is, are you honest to yourself about why you believe it?
You know, when I have kids, I fully expect them, after a certain age, for me that would be 16, my wife a little younger, To wear pants when they leave the house.
Even if it's summer.
Even if they chafe a little.
Even if it would be gloriously free to waddle out into the sunshine with your twigs and berries hanging wherever.
I mean, that would be fantastic.
But, you know, it's sort of frowned on, even if it wasn't illegal.
I can understand that it might be disturbing to some.
But I'm not going to say to my son that, you know, son of mine, you have to put pants on because...
It shows respect for the highest virtue in the land.
I'm just going to say, look, this is our custom.
We're not the African nudist colony tribe.
This is sort of how we do things here.
And if my kid's going for a job interview, I'll say, put a suit on.
And he'll say, well, is that rational and objective and true?
Because he's going to be my son.
And I'm going to say, well, no.
But you put a suit on, because that's what's expected.
And you don't want to sort of not put a suit on, because then people are going to make lots of judgments about you, like you don't even know how to process basic social functionality.
Which is going to have an indication on, like, they're not going to look at you as some creative free spirit.
They're just going to look upon you as someone who doesn't know how to act appropriately and that's not how you're going to get the job that you want, right?
That you can then fund acting inappropriately like I'm doing now.
So, you know, that's the major issue.
The reason that Christianity is abusive is not because it's false.
But the reason that Christianity is abusive is that children are lied about the nature of that falsehood.
They're told that they must believe because it is virtuous when the truth is that the parents are saying you should believe because it's socially comfortable to do so.
You should believe because we're going to be uncomfortable if you don't.
You should believe because we were told that's what you should do.
You should believe because it's going to help you get ahead in life.
You should believe because otherwise you're going to meet some crazy overly pierced agnostic chick with tattoos and black eyebrows and black lipstick and a little coffin for a person we won't know what to say to her.
There's lots of reasons why people are taught religious values.
None of them have to do with the truth.
None of them have to do with virtue.
And it's that lie that they do that is the problem.
And that's what you will never be able to communicate to Christians or to any religious person.
So the question is, what do you do with the fact that there's a great evil occurring within society which is that the minds of children are being warped and harmed by false religious instructions false moralizing self-righteous religious instruction that it's enormously destructive And it's occurring everywhere and nobody notices.
Just like nobody noticed slavery, nobody noticed child abuse, nobody noticed sexual abuse, and for a good chunk of human history, nobody even looked twice at rape.
What do you do?
I don't have a simple answer.
I'll tell you what works for me, and if it works for you, I hope that it helps.
Because I'm not going to tell you what you should do, because everybody's level of integrity is to some degree subjective.
I don't say that I live this John Galtian existence of perfect integrity with all of my beliefs all the time.
First of all, I think that would be impossible, because I can't hold all of my beliefs in my head at the same time.
But, you know, not three and a half years ago, I thought war was a good thing.
Not two years ago, I thought there was a role for the state.
Not six months ago, I didn't really have a strong opinion about whether Christianity was... I mean, I knew it was bad for children, but whether it was actually abusive and so on, I was... I didn't have a strong opinion.
It's only when I really began to explore the idea.
And I don't know what I'm going to figure out a year from now.
So integrity is kind of a rolling target is what I'm saying.
And I don't believe there's any objective or outside way that you can say that this is integrity and this is not because knowledge is constantly growing.
And there are certainly times when I don't act with integrity and I believe that that's productive for me.
I had a boss who was completely crazy.
I didn't quit my job because I needed the money.
I wanted the money.
Lunch with my mother for years, though I never liked her.
I knew I never liked her.
I knew I didn't like her.
But I did it because I was afraid of my brother's disapproval, or I was afraid of social disapproval, or, you know, I thought, oh, this is what a good son does.
Aren't I a good son?
So I don't always act with perfect integrity in my life.
If somebody tells me that they went to church on Christmas Eve, I don't tell them that they're abusive.
It is a difficult problem when you see a great moral even in the world that nobody else sees, and which you will be condemned and rejected for identifying.
You know, it has felled many great minds in the past, and it will probably fell many great minds in the future.
So I don't have a simple answer.
But I will tell you this.
You can't snap your fingers and save the world, right?
When a new moral sun rises over the world, everything looks black.
The whole world looks like it's in darkness.
And there's a period, for me at least, of like just feeling like you're kind of crazy, right?
Like you're just making up moral horrors that don't exist for whatever reason you have.
But then, you know, you keep plugging away at it and reasoning it out and talking to people and checking with your experience and checking with empirical facts.
And, you know, eventually you sort of have to come to the conclusion, right?
You can't doubt your sanity forever.
So, what do you do?
Well, I'll tell you what I do.
I engage in conversations where there's a possibility.
I engage in conversations with people who can have those conversations, or who will have those conversations, is a better way of putting it.
So, when I was working at my current job, I had a student who Enjoyed talking about religion and he was Christian and in conversation with myself About it started off about capitalism and then it moved on to theology And, you know, what happened?
Well, you know, I blew his mind.
He dropped out of school and I don't know where the heck he went after that.
Although I sympathize with his turmoil, it is by far the healthiest thing to try and wake up, right?
Because enough human beings have wasted their lives in this sort of nightmare of religion and mysticism and socialism and collectivism and all of the isms that So, befog and stagnate and destroy and corrode the human mind that anybody you can get out from under that noxious cloud is a life well saved.
So, I will talk about religion with people who want to have the conversation.
I do not go to churches and scream at them that they're irrational child abusers from the pulpit, because I wouldn't enjoy that.
I want to help the world as best as I can and as much as I can because I think I've been granted a few iotas of truth that maybe some other people don't have.
I do want to help the world.
I do want to push back some of the evil that I see in the world, and I see some great good as well, but in the areas where there is a great evil that is invisible to people, such as the topic at hand, I do want to help.
But I also want to enjoy my life.
I am not here to be some cartoon superhero warrior of light that is going to do nothing but spend his days racing around chasing down people who are doing bad things and trying to stop them.
I don't fly over with food to places where there's starvation going on.
I don't fly out to areas where the tsunamis have hit.
I don't fly down to New Orleans because I have a life to live and I want to be happy.
It makes me happy to tell the truth.
It makes me happy to debate the truth with people and I enjoy it.
It makes me happy, very happy, to do these podcasts and I enjoy these very much.
But I am not here to save every evil decision in the world.
To oppose and save every evil decision in the world.
That would be grandiosity.
That would be megalomania and obviously impossible.
And so to take on the impossible is irrational.
So as far as if you can face up to this sort of moral truth that we've been discussing over the last couple of weeks I absolutely applaud you and I welcome you into this small but widening circle of light of people who've understood something more about morality than has been understood previously and something more about integrity and the truth than has been understood previously and we are the people who move the species forward
You know, I mean, so, everybody hates us, and, you know, nobody wants to spend any time with us, and, you know, all of that phase that goes through your life, all of those horrible ripples that go through your life when you start speaking about the truth, you know, so what?
You know, there's tons of people, there's six billion people on the world who conform and who nod and who agree with everybody else and who live as second-handers and never think for themselves.
You know, does it really end the whole world if there's not six billion and one, or six billion and two, or six billion and three?
I don't think so.
I think the world can survive a few questions.
I think the world can survive a little skepticism.
I think the world can survive a little rationality.
And that's where we stand.
We few, we lonely, far-seeing, high-walking few.
And it's a great place to be.
It is a wonderful place to be.
I wouldn't want to trade this clarity for anything in the world.
No amount of money, no amount of social acceptance, no amount of fame, no amount of anything could replace the joy of this kind of clarity.
Because it gives me Creativity, it gives me joy, and most importantly, it gives me a beautiful marriage.
And that's what counts most.
So, I hope this has helped clarify some things for you.
And, of course, if you have any other questions or suggestions or comments or criticisms, as always, please let me know.
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