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Jan. 27, 2006 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
35:31
71 Culture: How to enslave a human soul

The carrot that comes after the stick

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Good morning, everybody.
Hope you're doing well.
It is Steph.
It is 8.38 in the morning on January the 27th, 2006.
Thank you for the kind words about the podcast of two days ago.
I actually did do one yesterday, but it's on Homosexuality, marriage, and abortion.
The reason that I didn't post it was that I wanted my wife to have a quick go over it before I start talking about the rational disposal of the woman's womb.
I thought maybe it would be nice if a female of the estrogenical persuasion were to have a look at it and let me know if I was talking out of My mouth or some other orifice.
So I will post that soon.
And this is in response to a question from a young libertarian.
Always my favorite people in the world, of course, the young who are facing the future with minds far less cluttered by, you know, the sort of rational compromises necessary to survive in this sort of asylum we call the modern world.
So I always do my best to answer their questions as quickly as possible.
And my friend Francois sent me a funny email this morning.
I guess he liked the podcast that I did two days ago on how to control a human soul.
And so he mocked up a picture of Einstein at a blackboard, renouncing communism.
And I thought that was very funny.
I would forgive Einstein for quite a lot, actually.
I would have forgiven Einstein for a lot of the sort of terrible errors that he made.
The science behind the creation of the atomic bomb, the recommendation to FDR that the atomic bomb be created, the socialism, the silly talk about God.
I mean, I would have forgiven Einstein for quite a lot if he had just not named his theory, the theory of relativity.
That was the thing that actually, of all the things, kind of bugs me the most.
Because it allows idiots who are not too well-read or interested in pursuing matters to any kind of depth, it allows those people to say, well, Einstein said that everything was relative, and they, of course, apply this to morality, and it was, of course, nothing to do with the truth.
Einstein's theory is more absolutist than Newtonian physics, because Einstein's theory says that the speed of light is a pure constant.
And so, whereas in Newtonian physics, of course, everything was considered to be fixed in position, you know, and you could sort of measure movement relative to a fixed standard.
And I think, pre-Einstein, it was called the ether.
It was some sort of ethereal substance that everything was supposed to move within, and that's how you measured speed and so on.
And then Einstein said, Well, if there's no... I don't know if he said, if there's no ether, but he said if the speed of light is constant, if there's no ether, then you can measure everything in terms of movement relative to each other, and that's the only fixed point that you have.
So, I mean, I don't see how that has anything to do with moral relativity whatsoever, but I wish it had been called something other than... If it had been called the theory of absolutism, then I would have been much more happy, because you'd have to waste less time explaining physics At least to my limited knowledge of physics, to those who don't, who just grab a label and think they have a philosophy.
So I was talking, of course, about how to control a human soul two days ago.
I'd like to sort of finish that one off, and it might take both the drive in and the drive back to work.
I worked from home yesterday, so I had no commute, and of course, formerly, where I was not particularly enthralled with my commute, I now can while away the time spinning logical theories, which is a much better way of Spending time than listening to audiobooks on economics and philosophy.
So I wanted to talk about culture this morning because culture is a very important aspect of social control and something which it's important to get a handle on, I think, if you want to understand why the philosophies of irrationalism, if you want to understand why the philosophies of irrationalism, mysticism, collectivism, and all of the ugly isms that so dominate the modern world and the world in history, in the historical world, of course, why are in the historical
And like all really good systems of exploitation, there is a stick and there is a carrot.
And the stick, of course, is that, as we talked about a couple of days ago, that parental love, quote love, of course, is entirely withdrawn if you don't believe in these invisible ghosts and goblins and made-up apples and, you know, is entirely withdrawn if you don't believe in these invisible ghosts and goblins and made-up apples and, you know, all And And this, of course, relates back to something I did about six or seven weeks ago on sports.
If you don't believe any of these things then you are socially ostracized, you are punished in ways that almost no child that I can conceive of, no child could survive that level of ostracism because the terror of abandonment for children is just biologically hardwired into our nervous systems and we can't really do anything about it.
Or, you know, I guess the only way that you avoid the fear of abandonment as a child is you become sociopathic in nature or, you know, you sort of switch off your empathy valve, I guess.
And then you become sort of a criminal because you've given up so much trying to listen to or care for other people's opinions because they're so harsh and horrible that you end up caring nothing for anybody's opinions.
And so you become a criminal, at which point, of course, the existing power structures don't have any No problem with you because they can just toss you in jail.
They don't worry too much about those people.
But everybody else, we collapse and we crawl and we obey.
I put myself thoroughly in this camp.
I went to boarding school.
I went to boarding school, I was in Cub Scouts, I was never an altar boy fortunately, but I went to church and I didn't take my pipsqueak little stand at the age of six when I was shipped off to school.
And that was simply because you can't.
I mean, you can't.
It's absolutely impossible to take any kind of moral stand against your parents when you're a child.
You simply don't have any power.
There's no greater power imbalance in nature, in any kind of human relation than that between a parent and a child.
And of course, as we know, power tends to corrupt.
So, you know, you obey, and you give up your identity, and you give up yourself, and you give up your reason, and you give up your integrity, in order for, you know, survival, right?
I mean, in order for mere survival.
And don't get me wrong, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with the family, and I certainly would not approve of anything like, you know, collective raising of children.
But, you know, these are simply the facts of nature that we're working with.
The facts of nature and of social control that we're working with.
You know, it's not an accident that everybody's crazy.
It's not an accident that everybody's irrational.
And it's not an accident that everybody faces any discussion of any real truth with, you know, panic, hostility and fear.
Except for we few, we happy few who are in the midst of this conversation.
So, You know, that's sort of the stick, as I've talked about.
Now, the carrot is twofold.
The one is that, you know, once you're told that if you don't eat the invisible apple you are bad, and if you do see and eat and go along with everyone, then you're good.
That is sort of the one stick.
That's sort of the immediate stick.
But how do they sort of make that stick stick, so to speak?
Well, what they have to do is they have to convince you that The invisible entities that you are supposed to believe in and worship and so on, that they give you stature, right?
So, I mean, whenever you have a lie, you want to go to the opposite extreme, right?
I mean, the big lie is always believed a lot more than the little lie.
And that's, of course, not anything to do with my originality.
I think that's Orwell, or perhaps it was even before him.
But people will believe a big lie that is the complete opposite rather than a small lie that is anywhere close to the truth.
So the big lie, in terms of culture, is that obedience to petty people wielding invisible absolutes is stature, is self-esteem, is identity.
When, of course, obedience to irrational people is the complete opposite of identity and stature and self-esteem.
I mean, at the very best you're going to end up with a slow rot of neuroses.
Your personal relationships are going to be completely impossible and destructive because you have no self, no capacity to negotiate based on rationality and objective Objective truth.
You have no self-esteem because you've given up your mind.
You have no integrity because obedience is obviously slavery to whim.
And you can't have integrity when you're following the whims of somebody else as if they were absolutes.
So the idea behind culture is the exact opposite of the truth.
Once they have gotten you so frightened of personal destruction that they
that you have uh... been willing to stop sort of miming this invisible apple eating contest then the next thing they have to do is to substitute something within your sort of shattered psyche to substitute something that is going to uh... shore up and foster your false self and that's twofold one is that your desire for virtue which if you have a lot of it they really wanna make sure they uh... uh... keep a handle on and keep controlled and destroyed your desire for virtue and also
Once you grow older, you're going to get the suspicion, right?
So the desire for virtue is how you get it as a kid, right?
You know, he sees you when you're sleeping, he sees when you're awake.
This is not, you know, particularly good for children, of course, because it's such slavery to whim, right?
And, of course, deep down we all know that we're obeying the priest or our parents or, you know, whoever, simply because they have power and are willing to use it to our enormous detriment.
So we have to make sure that, sorry, they have to make sure that as we get older this power relationship remains obscured to us.
So what they have to do is, it's not enough to destroy the true self.
If you want power over someone, it's not enough to destroy the true self.
And the appeal to virtue, which is the argument that's made to children, right?
All arguments essentially rest on the argument for morality.
But the appeal to virtue that's made for a child, to a child, to obey these invisible absolutes, is still an appeal to the true self, right?
So this is the short-term thing.
This is how you begin to turn the ship around.
of the true self and turn it into a false, mealy-mouthed, neurotic, obedient self, a false self.
So the first thing you do is you say, well, everybody's a visible apple, you've got to eat it if you're good, and if you can't see it, you're a bad boy, blah, blah, blah.
But you're still appealing to virtue there.
You're still appealing to the true self, right?
Because we're all born with a natural and true self, which is healthy and wonderful and great.
And, you know, this corruption of the process that occurs starts with an appeal to that true self, because there is no false self yet in the human psyche when this process begins.
And so you have to appeal to the true self to get the kid to give up the senses and give up integrity and give up rationality, and then you have to start constructing a false self, right?
Now, the manifestation of this false self The title for this podcast, I think, is going to be something like Culture.
There's a reason why it's both a name for social beliefs and, you know, a growth of bacteria, because it's a very similar kind of phenomenon.
So the true self is corrupted by its desire for virtue into obedience to insanity or mental corruption.
And then, you know, the sad little prize that is given to the shattered self is the erection of this false self, which we call culture.
Now, the reason that I talk about culture in this manner is that culture is the exact opposite of what is real and what is true.
Always.
Always, always, always, always, always, always.
Did I mention always?
I think I did.
There's no such thing as culture that says gravity exists.
Gravity exists is not a part of culture.
The sky is blue is not a part of culture.
I mean, that's a part of fact.
You could say it's a part of science, but there's no culture which says our sky is blue.
There's no culture which says, you know, we have two eyes and two hands.
There's no culture which has anything to do with facts.
Culture is, by definition, a self-aggrandizing falsehood that is inflicted on children as a, quote, reward or a substitute for the destruction of their true self.
through mysticism or collectivism.
So, you know, the one thing that you can be certain of with culture is that it's a lie.
I mean, there's just no question about that.
I mean, to sort of give some examples, right?
I mean, I'm sure you can figure all this stuff out for yourself pretty quickly, but I'll just indulge myself in a couple of examples, right?
You know, every culture thinks that they're the best, right?
The Turks are the best, the Armenians are the best, the Uzbekistanis are the best, the Norsemen were the best.
I mean, every culture thinks that they're the best, and of course they're not.
That much is pretty obvious, right?
But once you can get somebody to place their identity in a collective falsehood, like, we're the best, Then, you know, you've kind of got them for life, right?
There's no way back to your true self when your false self is completely erected on falsehoods and lies.
And that those lies are then the sad substitute for your original self-esteem has now become this collective frenzy of, you know, wide-eyed and passionate obedience to the power structures in place.
So, I mean, this is pretty obvious with many cultures.
I know a little bit more about the Greek culture.
Just through my wife and her family.
But, of course, in the Greek culture it's kind of funny, right?
They say, you know, we gave the world logic, logos, and democracy and so on.
And the hilarious thing about that is that, of course, Socrates would be utterly appalled at the idea that people 2,000 years after his death, or 2,500 years after his death, would be using him as, you know, a prop for their self-esteem, right?
I mean, Socrates had no respect for culture at all.
And so the idea that Socrates is used as a prop for culture is hilarious.
You know, it's very similar to the fact that I sort of found, and this is going to sound a little vain, so I apologize in advance, but when I was taking a class on Aristotle in university, I wrote A paper, voluntarily, I just sort of sat down and wrote it to sort of work the ideas out, because I was around 22 at the time.
I wrote a paper to critique his theory of identity.
And I handed it in to my teacher, a professor, who, you know, sat down and was, you know, relatively pleasant, gave it a critique and so on, and sort of looked at me weirdly and said, well, where did you... what's your background?
I said, oh, I just came here from theatre school.
And she sort of gave me a second take and so on, and then just, you know, there were a couple more comments, and then she just sort of turned me loose, right?
And I just thought that was kind of funny.
You know, here's somebody who studies Aristotle and, you know, obviously has a high respect for logic.
And yet, you know, when somebody who is intelligent and interested in logic and creative shows up in her class, she takes almost no interest.
You know, this is similar to another professor of intellectual history I had who was a big fan of Socrates, but whenever I would ask him questions, got kind of hostile.
You know, it's kind of funny, right?
Like, I mean, to me, it's a comedy.
And it's a horrible comedy, of course, because it's all based on violence at the root, right?
The funding in Canada, 90% of it comes from the government for universities.
But it's just kind of funny that these people wear this...
robe of admiration for independent thought, and then when faced with it themselves, you know, become hostile and frightened and angry and, you know, threatened to basically threaten to mark you down and stuff like that.
And so I just find that stuff kind of funny.
Like, I mean, in that class, for instance, in the intellectual history class, you know, the professor read one of my papers out to a class of about 200 people because he thought it was so good.
And, And, you know, I did extra essays for him.
He wanted to get Luther's ideas across in a sort of powerful way, so I played Luther for a class reading from John Osborne's play about Luther, acting it out, and, you know, got everybody all riled up with my preaching style.
And, you know, what did the guy give me?
Like a 78.
I aced the final exam, of course.
I mean, although the final exam was ridiculous.
It was like, explain the theories of justice from The Greeks to the present.
I mean, it was all stuff which was such a wide net that you could, you know, mark anybody any way you wanted, right?
I mean, if you're trying to explain the theory of justice from the ancient Greeks to the present, you know, you've got like an hour to hand write an answer.
You're always going to miss something, and that's what people got marked down from, right?
So, I mean, this was just, you know, one of the petty intellectual bullies that show up so often in university and in high school.
Not so much in primary school because you're still so obedient that they can be a lot more pleasant.
But I just sort of find it's funny that these people claim to have such a love for independent thinkers, and then the moment they come across one, they go medieval on his brain.
So, alright, we'll classify that as a tangent, but I think we'll keep it, because there's nothing like a few scraps of personal history to humanize the abstract discussion, isn't there?
So culture, of course, is the substitute for your sort of broken self, and culture is, by definition, anything which is not true.
Which is described as a self-aggrandizing virtue, or a pompous self-esteem substitute.
And, I mean, you really do see this in just about every culture you examine.
And, of course, if you examine your own culture, you know, you will get, you know, all of these falsehoods will be, you know, pretty clear to you that everything that you believe is a lie.
So, I mean, of course, for instance, I mean, growing up in the British culture, there's this, you know, this lust for war.
And, you know, there's this hatred of, you know, at least when I was growing up, it grew into a sort of hatred of colonialism and so on.
You know, and none of it is based on anything that is true, right?
I mean, the sort of we defended the world from freedom is pretty hilarious, right?
I mean, that England ended up fighting socialism, fighting national socialism in order to win for themselves, Domestic socialism is funny, right?
I mean, in a terrible kind of way.
And the idea that, you know, we freed the world when tens of millions of people in Eastern Europe were sort of flushed down the sewer of Soviet power.
Is also, you know, sad.
I can't find that one funny, right?
Because, I mean, socialism just, you know, robs you blind.
It doesn't throw you into a gulag or kill you, so that has a certain level of grim humor to it, but there's nothing funny about the Soviet Empire, you know, which was just a slaughterhouse.
And of course, you know, the myth of the good leader, right?
I mean, this is like, well, Chamberlain was weak, you see, and he was an appeaser.
But then we got Churchill, who was great and strong and saved everybody.
You know, which of course is also funny, because we don't have to get into Churchill in great degree, but I mean, I learned a lot about Churchill because he was a character in one of my novels, so I had to read just about every book on the guy.
And, you know, this is not a mentally healthy individual, and not somebody who had a shred of rationality, and certainly not somebody responsible for winning the war, right?
I mean, the war was won by two factors.
It was won by the free market in America, and it was won by the crazy idea of Hitler to pull a Napoleon and invade Russia in the winter, you know, as if, you know, this was possible.
So, I mean, and of course, the Battle of Britain is a complete falsehood, right?
I mean, we were so overwhelmed, we were better fighters than they were, and we, you know, whatever, right?
The British were valiantly defending their island against overwhelming odds.
I mean, it's not true.
It's nonsense.
And it's, you know, it's well documented now that it was nonsense, that the forces were about equal.
That the casualties were about equal, right?
I mean, there's no such thing as personal valor or having better hand-eye coordination between countries.
When you're in the sky fighting for your death, you know, I'm pretty much sure everybody wants to come out alive and everybody wants to kill the other person as quickly as possible.
So, you know, the idea that the British were sort of more valiant and the noble race and that the French were weak and the Germans were crazy and homicidal and, you know, I mean, it's just such nonsense.
I mean, the French weren't weak.
I mean, what happened with the French?
Well, of course, they just had, 20 years before, a war fought on their country that went on for 4 years and killed 10 million people, you know, of which 2 or 3 or 4 were French.
It devastated their entire country.
Also, they just made a mistake about where the Germans were coming from.
So, in a sense, who was worse?
In terms of rational calculation, were the British worse for fighting when they didn't really have to?
Because Hitler was going to destroy his army anyway, and getting the, you know, the crap bombed out of them, or were the French worse, in a sense, you could just, let's just say even that they just did surrender, so they just surrendered, and the Germans occupied them for a couple of years, and then they were free, because the Germans self-destructed.
I mean, Who sort of had the better course?
Well, I tell you, all the people who were bombed into atoms in England during the Blitz probably would have rather been French people and be called cowards but alive.
So, I mean, you can look at any of these sorts of falsehoods and, you know, as soon as you start looking at the facts they all fall apart.
So the falsehoods are the exact opposite of the truth.
So, I mean, one last example is that Sorry, culture is the exact opposite of the truth.
So, one other example would be, you know, in Canada here, we consider ourselves a kind society.
You know, we have welfare, and we have a social safety net, and, you know, we take care of the old, and the sick, and the poor, and we have universal health care, because it's a fundamental Canadian value.
I mean, this is a lie on just about every level you can take it from, and of course it's a huge and ugly lie.
As all big lies are.
So, for instance, you know, to look at this sort of thing logically, you would say, okay, well, if it's a fundamental Canadian value, then I don't need to be taxed for it, right?
This is sort of one of the contradictions that you'll always find at the heart of things like culture.
You know, these are our fundamental values, but we're gonna force you to obey them.
It's like, well, if they're my fundamental values, then I don't need to be forced to obey them, right?
If we really are better, then we don't need to be told that we're better, because we just are.
Like, I bet you Tom Hanks doesn't come to your party waving his Oscars and shouting all night that he's such a fantastic actor, because he just is a great actor.
So he doesn't have to wave it in everybody's face.
And if health care, you know, if sort of providing free health care for everybody who needed it was a fundamental Canadian value, we wouldn't need any taxation or legislative coercion in order to have it.
It would just be there.
You know, it's like saying, my wife, she loves me so much that in order to keep her with me, I have to lock her in the basement and shackle her to the wall.
Well, if she loves you...
Set her free!
Right?
And if we loved socialized medicine, then we would do it if we were not compelled to.
Therefore, it can't be a value.
The fact that it's coerced means the exact opposite of a value.
It's something that we fear and hate.
So, sort of, that's at one level.
And at another level, of course, it is just false that, you know, universal health care makes people healthier.
Right?
I mean, what it will do is it will make money off The cure, not the prevention, and therefore you're going to have problems with diabetes and obesity and all of the sort of slow growth, entirely preventable illnesses that occur because people don't take proper care of themselves.
So people generally will get less healthy, or if they do sort of get sort of longer lives, which does seem to be the case, then it's got nothing to do with the health care system.
And I think that's statistically true, that the sort of growth and longevity has nothing to do with the health care system, but more to do with sort of private pharmaceutical companies and you know better food and and so on sanitation treatment methods and so on so you know this is sort of lies about Canada being a kind and compassionate society you know we are far more coerced than just about any other any other society you know to call
An army brave when it is either bribed or coerced into being an army is also, you know, a sad, sad fiction.
I mean, you know, if you're sort of herded, if you're drafted, right, and you're herded out, into a desert or a jungle and you're given a gun and you said kill or be killed you really can't call anybody brave for that.
I mean I have a lot of compassion for somebody who's in that situation because that's the worst thing that the government can do to you is to force you to become a murderer.
It's even worse than killing you.
But, you know, you can't call that person brave because it's kill or be killed.
You know, if somebody is bribed, right, like the US Army is not meeting its recruitment goals, gosh, what a shocker, and therefore it's having to increase the amount of money it's paying people to become soldiers.
Well, so if somebody's bribed, they're not brave.
So the idea that the soldiers are brave and so on, I mean, all of this is the complete opposite of truth.
The fact that you associate someone like a Marine with honor is the exact opposite of truth.
Honor is not killing people when somebody points out to you that they really should be killed and you should do it for that person.
It would be honorable to not be a paid killer or a hired killer.
But of course, honor and integrity and the team and all this and that, right?
I mean, everything you look at in terms of culture is the exact opposite of the truth.
Because, of course, if it were the truth, it would just be a fact, or it would be science, or it would be logical.
So, you know, it's not culture that helps me plan my route to work, right?
It's a map and facts and, fortunately, private roads.
So, it's not culture that makes my marriage great.
In fact, it's a rejection of culture that makes my marriage great, because we can actually be with each other as free and independent, logical and joyful entities, rather than just helping sadly prop up each other's social fictions and wondering why we're discontented and bicker and are unhappy.
Because living a lie is fundamentally horrible.
It's fundamentally a shameful existence to be a slave to the rapacious and exploitive illusions of other people.
And so the amount of human happiness that is flushed down the toilet because of these sorts of, you know, gruesomely inflicted social fictions, you know, really can't be measured.
But, I mean, it is a living hell.
I mean, if you pile up all the souls who've been destroyed throughout history for the sake of obedience to fools, then, I mean, you really do have a big heap of hell in your mind's eye.
And something which, you know, I certainly can't look at without flinching mentally because it is just such an enormous amount of suffering that is going on.
Even in the absence of war and things like that, you know, you really can't be happy if you believe things that are false.
That's just the way we are constructed, and it doesn't matter whether you explore them or don't explore them, right?
It doesn't matter if you don't have any clue that, you know, eating a lot of fat will make you fat.
You know, the moment you start eating fat, your body goes, oh, okay, well, I guess we're storing up for the winter, and away it goes, putting on the subcutaneous layers on you.
Same thing is true, of course, of philosophy, right?
It doesn't matter whether you know or don't know that something is true or false.
Your conscience and your reality processing, which is autonomous and beyond your control, will nonetheless process it and produce either happiness or unhappiness, depending on the truth or falsehood of what you're living.
We really don't have any choice about that.
All we can do is try and study the science of truth as much as possible and live to the greatest degree of integrity we can, you know, with the balance of happiness, right?
I mean, it's nice to go to be happy, but you, you know, I don't eat, you know, three egg whites a day and spend four hours at the gym.
So, I mean, I'll enjoy a piece of chocolate and, you know, I don't, I'm not perfectly rational all the time, of course, because, you know, the goal of life is not rationality, but happiness, right?
Rationality is the means to an end.
And, you know, perfection is, is what?
To look for heaven is to live in hell.
So, you know, it's important, I think, to understand that, you know, culture, right?
There's a famous line, I can't remember which Nazi general said it, but, you know, whenever I hear the word culture, I pop off the safety on my revolver.
And, you know, the reason why that's a famous line is because it is true.
Right?
That, you know, as Mao said, all political power grows out of the barrel of the gun.
Perfectly true.
And culture is taking off the safety of the revolver is a perfect line because, you know, when you get people to believe false things, then they're open to manipulation.
They have no self.
They have no integrity.
Morality is the exact opposite of the truth, right?
So morality, instead of being adherence to truth and universal humanity, becomes obedience to the brutal whims of the power structure in place, right?
The exact opposite of morality.
To obey a bully is the exact opposite of being good, right?
So you, in fact, it's worse than just being irrational yourself, right?
Because if you can get everyone to obey... like, personal irrationality doesn't form an army, right?
Personal irrationality doesn't form a police force or, you know, a prison system, right?
Irrationality to... obedience to irrational culture, irrational whims of the rulers do form things like, you know, concentration camps and so on.
So, it's far worse.
It's the most immoral thing to obey the irrationality of another, because if you believe that and other people believe it, then you get the collective brutality.
uh... which is you know the hallmark of most of human history and you know the causes of the greatest suffering and evil in the world so culture is is the unlocking or the and and uh... it's the loosening of the uh... the safety on the gun right i mean because you once you get people to obey a rational absolutes then you you are read they are ready to use violence you have uncocked the safety of of the gun right of this sort of massive and infernal gun of collective obedience.
So, you know, that statement is very true, and people laugh at it like, oh, he's just a crazy Nazi, and of course he was.
But, you know, that statement resonates, and very few people sort of say, why?
Why does it resonate?
Why does it seem sort of funny, and why does it make me sort of nervous?
Because it's true.
And, of course, everyone thinks it's an uncultured statement, like he's saying, if I see ballet, then I, you know, I want to shoot them.
That's not what he's saying at all.
And I bet you if he was around today you would ask him and he would tell you exactly what he meant.
Because that's the arts, right?
Ballet is the arts, right?
Culture is the public funding of ballet, right?
So that's the complete opposite, right?
To paint is to be a painter, right?
To be a member of the cultural industry is to get public subsidies, right?
So culture, again, is always based on violence, always based on falsehood.
It's always the exact opposite of what is truth.
And so this is why I said two days ago, and sort of stand by now and probably forevermore, unless somebody can come up with a good explanation that's different, that culture is the scar tissue that grows over the wound of the soul murder, or the slaughtered that culture is the scar tissue that grows over the wound of the soul murder, or the slaughtered self that The culture is the scar tissue that grows over that.
So, you know, they appeal to your true self because you want to be a good boy or a good girl, and then when you begin to have all of this self-doubt and face this incredible fear that your own mental processes are incompetent or you really can't make it in reality, That everyone around you is sort of horrible and murderous and wants to just enslave you.
Then, you know, there's this catastrophe of the sort of fall or the death of the true self or the murder of the true self is sort of saved and hardened into a false self through the application of grandiose fantasies about culture, right?
So then, you know, everybody, you sort of go from this is a visible apple and you're a bad boy or girl if you don't see it and if you pretend, like if you see it and do eat it, then you're a good girl.
Then, you sort of get hardened into, only we, only we, only our group can have this invisible apple, and every other group can't, and that, they're bad, and we're good, because this invisible apple only belongs to us, it is not even a common humanity, a common sort of It's not part of humanity's common richness.
It is only our group that has this invisible apple and we're the best and so on.
And so this sort of brutalized self that is just shocked and appalled by this process of being forced to believe in irrational absolutes then is reconstellated under the guise of culture as a false self that is open to obedience and brutality and is now fully primed to be a soldier of evil in the world.
And this doesn't mean, of course, that everybody becomes a soldier, but it means that if demanded of, they scarcely anybody can refuse.
And if they do refuse, like Eugene Debs in the 20s in America, it's because they're committed to some other crazy absolute and are trying to wrestle power for the existing power structures in order to have it themselves because he was a socialist who was jailed for his opposition to World War I.
So that's sort of my take on culture.
I think there may be a little bit more about it this afternoon, but that's sort of my approach to it.
It is really just scar tissue, and it is a sad thing, and something which we need to recognize and start to shrug off as part of a mental apparatus, because, you know, there's no joy without authenticity.
There's no joy without the true self, and without accurate and joyful apprehension of reality.
And culture is the exact opposite of all of that, and all it produces is compliance, obedience, misery, and aggression.
So I hope that you have enjoyed this, and I will talk to you soon.
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