All Episodes
Previous Next
May 11, 2006 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
37:15
233 Honor
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Good afternoon. Hope you're doing well.
It's Steph. It is...
It is 10 to 6 on May the 11th, 2006.
Heading home, actually heading to the gym, then going home.
So, what's new with you?
Well, I can't really tell, because I'm in my car, and you're not actually in my car, so email me and tell me what's new.
And I guess a quick shout-out...
A sort of virtual hug to one of the board members who discovered something about his family, which he's not revealed, which is not important, because he seems to have crossed over into the realm of families are not good, and not because the family structure is innately not good,
but because there is such a high degree of corruption and ignorance in the world at the moment, Without trying to compare it to any historical situations, it's, I think, pretty high and heading in the wrong direction, which is what we are attempting to turn back through this conversation.
But, unfortunately, there are no good families because goodness is not something that occurs organically in the presence of the large number of lies that we are fed, either unconsciously or unconsciously, That's up to you and your evaluation of your particular situation relative to the kinds of emotions and feelings of justice and analysis of choice that we were talking about this morning.
But your family was not good.
Your family did not help you.
Your family, unconsciously or consciously or however you want to put it, did their best to cripple you.
And it's not something that I enjoy saying.
It's not something that I look forward to.
It's not a conclusion that I came to lightly or with pleasure.
I think that the family is the most wonderful thing in the world.
It can be potentially the most wonderful thing in the world.
But right now, it is pretty much the worst thing in the world because it is the source of all of the corruption in the world.
The family is the source of all the corruption that exists in the world.
So don't worry about the state yet.
Focus on your own family.
Learn the truth. Be yourself.
Talk about ethics. Talk about rationality.
Talk about the joys that make you tick and see what happens and see if people are open to questioning and open to curiosity and open to conversations that are important to you and not just the ones that are important to them.
And you will see all too quickly, I'm afraid, That your family is a hollow shell poised to reject you should you show any aspect of your true self to them.
It is an endless cavalry of spears leaned against any thundering horses of authenticity that may be heading their way.
Family is anti-matter, as far as I can tell, or as far as I've seen.
And so I would be very careful when looking at your family from a situation of, or from the standpoint of, We're good to go.
I can tell you that they weren't good.
And there aren't any good families out there.
It's not that human beings aren't innately good.
They are. We are. We all are, I believe.
But the unfortunate thing is that everybody is lied to so solidly and so consistently and has been through most of human history ever since the rise of leadership and ever since the rise of a hierarchical tribal culture, which was probably three steps after the amoeba.
We have a long and hard battle ahead of us to get people to see the basic truth about the world and about reality.
And unfortunately, families stand in the way in their current configuration, in their current psychological, emotional, and moral configurations.
They stand in the way.
And the solution, of course, is not to abandon the family, not to eliminate the family, which would be a biological impossibility, even if it were desirable, which it's not.
But we few who can see the truth, we need to stand...
In the truth, we need to be honorable, to be brave, to be courageous, to stand for the truth and not worry so much about the ABCs, the accidental biological cages from which we are rattling to spring.
A big hug out to the guy who's dealing with this at the moment.
I know, I know, I know what a difficult, unpleasant and disorienting and oddly liberating experience it is to go through to pierce the moral veil of the family and to see the corruption that's within.
And I sympathize and I'm thrilled at the same time.
So I'm sorry that you have to experience this in this way, but I'm glad that you are experiencing it because it is true.
Now, that having been said, let us move on to honor.
To honor. The second of the four-part wordplay that we're doing, based on suggestions from a listener.
There was a comment on the board that somebody mentioned that they liked the way that I used the word justice, honor, integrity, and I think contempt was one as well.
And they felt that the words themselves were good, but that they were generally misused throughout society.
And I believe that is the case.
I mean, the basic argument for morality that is corrupt is to use all of the words associated with morality and to corrupt and twist them to suit the purposes of those who desire power and resources and the right to use force or claim the right to use force against their fellow human beings.
And I do believe that I take a slightly different approach to things like honor and integrity and justice than most people do.
See, when most people say those words, what they mean is slavery to violence.
That's what they mean.
I'm listening to the audiobook of, oh, do I dare say it?
I dare say it.
Yes, we've come this far.
You might as well know that I did recently do the Noam Chomsky book, Failed States, which was very good.
But then, my friends, I decided to take a dip into popular culture.
And I'm listening to Angels and Demons by Dan Brown.
And it is an irritatingly inconsistent book because he talks quite a bit about how many scientists the Church has killed over the years.
And then at the same time, he infuses all of these Catholic rituals with all of the holy sacrament of this and that and the other and the timeless ceremony, the wordless benevolence.
I mean, he really is a hack.
But he's very good with plot, and he keeps it moving, and you can learn a couple of things about science and history.
Not too many things.
I mean, Lord knows the Da Vinci Code is based on the most errant nonsense, the most ridiculous historical frauds that you're ever likely to see.
Although it was entertaining, I find that this idea that Jesus was alive and the Holy Grail is his bloodline, you know, it's just, yeah, yeah, okay, right, yeah.
Because we can really tell what happened 2,000 years ago in an undocumented area when there's an enormous amount of political, economic, and social pressure to have the dice fall one way.
Oh, absolutely, we could tell what was going on.
I just think that's funny. Anyway, so I'm listening to this, and so he's got these Swiss guards who guard Vatican City, and I would lay my life down for this city.
I would lay my life down to defend the papacy, blah, blah, blah.
And when the Pope dies, the second in command places his fingers on the carteroid artery and breaks the seal and says the Pope's name three times, and by law, there can be no autopsy.
And then they have this conclave, which is where they vote in the new sort of head tyrant or the new chief mafioso.
And he does say at one point there's $48 billion stuffed into the coffers in Vatican City, which I think is pretty funny, right?
I mean, for a religion that is supposed to be sort of anti-materialistic.
They don't seem to have problems with certain types of matter, the shiny and lucrative kind.
Anyway, I just think that...
And so this guard idea, this is sort of where you see honor and integrity, and there was some absolutely wretched film that I saw parts of with Cuba Gooding Jr., and he's a diver or something.
He's trying to become a diver, and he's got this scene in the courtroom where he's got to walk in the diving suit, and it really is one of the worst films you're ever likely to see.
But he sort of talks about the word honor in terms of the military.
And of course, the military has completely blood-stained honor.
They have poured about a thousand gallons of blood into a little Ziploc container to charge this word up with all of its emotional content.
But honor in the military sense simply means slavery to violence.
It means slavery to power.
And of course, that is not honor.
That is not honor at all.
That is the furthest thing from honor that you could conceivably imagine.
Is the desire and willingness and virtue, perceived virtue, of shooting down in the mud any poor hapless sap that your leader points at.
To be a hired gun, a killer, a murderer, a slaughterer of the innocent from the skies.
To imagine that this has anything to do with honor is a perversion, is a perversion of any kind of word.
There's a word called lovemaking, and you may as well, in regards to the military and its use of the word honor, you may as well conflate the word lovemaking with the rape of children, and it would have as much to do with the original word as the word honor has to the military.
It is the absolute honor Opposite of honor to shoot whoever leaders point at for their own political, financial, and economic gain.
It is wretched, absolutely disgusting, abhorrent, murderous, slaughterous, base, traitorous, morally vicious, ugly, sinful, evil, wretched, contemptuous.
And every bad word that you can throw at it, it is the greatest human evil that is the cancer on the world, is the military.
And of course the military, because it is so evil, is consistently using all of the terms of virtue.
That is an absolute given.
The more that somebody claims to be virtuous, in general, the worse you know that they actually are.
The more that somebody claims to serve the country, the more they are willing to put their fellow countrymen at risk and to shoot them for not paying their taxes, The more that somebody claims to be serving the common good, you know that they're going to screw people, rifle over the corpses, sell the eyeballs, and pocket the change.
So be very, very, very suspicious whenever you hear anything about rhetoric to do with a cause.
it is absolutely and inevitably the absolute opposite of what is actually occurring.
So if you want to know who is the greatest evil, who has committed the greatest crimes in society, all that you need to do is look at who is trumpeting their virtue the greatest.
And you have immediate, it's an absolutely fail-safe radar device.
If you want to find evil, look for those who are proclaiming to be the most good.
They protest too much because their hearts are filthy.
And I'm afraid that because there's so many people who talk ethics these days, who talk up the false arguments for morality, we simply know that we're continuing to decay as a society until we reach bottom and we start to climb up again.
And it's a shame that human society has to do this.
Every single couple of generations or every single couple of hundred years, we have to do the same goddamn thing, which is hit bottom and start to climb that way back up.
And as we climb that way back up, we go, hey, you know, the state's not really that bad.
It's kind of small right now.
It's kind of contained. Let's just keep it going as the whole damn cycle starts again.
Anyway, so let's get to the word honor, at least in the way that I mean it and that I use it.
Well, in order for there to be a virtue, there must be a difficulty, in my sort of humble opinion.
I don't consider it a great virtue for somebody to tell the truth if somebody says to them, and they're a math teacher, and some kid says, what's 2 plus 2?
Is it equal to 4? And the guy says, yeah.
Well, he's telling the truth.
Is it really a great virtue?
Well, you know, it's more of a virtue than if you were lying to the kid.
But it's not really a great virtue.
It's not the end of the world.
It's not bad. But it's really, of course, where we have difficulties that we need ethics.
So, what do I mean by honor?
As I mentioned on the show, on Sunday, we have a situation wherein human beings are naturally, naturally, naturally, naturally drawn from a biological standpoint.
We are naturally drawn to obey those in power.
It is absolutely inescapable within our natures.
And the only people who don't feel this are sociopaths.
So, if you don't feel this...
For God's sake, get yourself to a mental health professional.
So, if you don't feel any tug to obey those in power, or you never felt this in your life, if you don't feel the desire in your soul to conform to those in power or to the general prevailing social currents, Then I'm afraid you're not telling the truth to begin with, because this is how everybody feels.
And of course, yes, you get those who rail against the powers that be and fight them and fight them and get mad at them and get depressed and angry and so on.
But of course, the first thing that they need to fight is their own desire to conform and to fight against their conformity and so on.
Freedom is not reacting to authority in a negative manner.
That is not freedom.
It is not, not, not freedom, right?
Freedom is neither running towards nor running away from the lion.
Freedom is not having any lions in the room, not having any guns in the room.
And the degree to which you can do that is the degree to which you can kick out your corrupt family and friends from your life and live a life of honor and integrity.
So every human being in the world, and I'll stand by this to my dying day, every human being in the world has a natural desire to obey authority and to go along with the tribe and to sort of line yourself, line your personality up like salmon in a strong current.
This is sort of inescapable within human nature.
And how do we know this? Well, because it's a primary tool of survival.
To agree with the group is a primary tool of survival.
Remember, we're not designed to be moral.
We're not designed to be good.
We're not designed to be independent.
We're not designed to think for ourselves.
We're designed to survive.
That is the purpose of ourselves, right?
I am a methodology by which my left finger can make another left finger.
I'm just a means to an end for that thing.
So, we are designed to survive.
Now, in a situation where there's an enormous amount of tribal power floating around, if you fight against that tribal power, you're going to die.
Unless you're sort of very cunning and slow and wait and hang in there and maneuver and wait until the guy is sleeping and pull him a bath or something.
But that's pretty rare.
What is going to happen if you are a child and you go up against your parents in a sort of state of nature is they'll just throw you out and try again.
If you challenge, as sort of somebody who's going into puberty, if you challenge the primary warrior and say we should do things differently, well, he's just going to kill you.
So we absolutely have a strong degree of natural conformity within our nature.
It is a primary, fundamental, powerful, almost metaphysical tool of survival for us as a species.
And this sort of fountainhead fantasy where you're just sort of born as this Floating and disparate social atom that has no pull or ties to authority or compliance or convenience or getting along, who never has to fight inwardly and never has to swallow deeply before opening their mouth and speaking things which are not socially popular.
This is a sociopathic fantasy.
And I understand that it's good drama, and I appreciate that it's good drama, but John Galt and Howard Rock are complete and utter fantasies.
And if you don't believe that, then look at the woman who created these characters and see where her life ended up, and see what happened to her movement.
Because without the empathy to understand that we are naturally compliant, and all of the sort of cape swirling superhero bravado to the contrary is complete bullshit.
Sorry to say it, but it really is.
We all want to comply.
We all want to go along with the prevailing social order.
We all want to get by by appealing and obeying and bowing and scraping to those in power.
It's just innate to our nature.
And this is sort of what you have to understand about human nature, because human nature is designed for the survival of the species.
It's designed for the survival of the individual cells within our body.
In fact, the individual DNA within our body, it's designed to help them replicate, which means it's got to at least get us to puberty and to a sexual relationship, right?
And it's not going to do that. If it throws our natures against the prevailing social currents at all times, because there's a basic power disparity between adults and children, so children have to comply.
I'm so sorry to tell you if you feel that there's some possibility of sawing free of this compliance problem, but there isn't.
You want to comply. You absolutely, totally and completely want to comply with everyone around you, especially those who are in power and who have authority.
You can't fight it. You shouldn't fight it.
It's absolutely impossible to fight it.
You might as well try and reverse the aging process just by thinking about it.
It's never going to happen. This is something you need to accept about yourself.
It is not shameful.
It is not shameful any more than having two eyeballs is shameful because it's part of your nature.
And if you really do still doubt this, then help me understand why there are six billion people in the world, all of which uniformly and consistently bow and scrape to every local authority in the world.
If you can tell me that this is not somehow part of human nature, then you are going to have a significant challenge explaining the world as it is, where the vast majority of people kowtow and bow under to those who are inferior to them in numbers and usually in strength and often in intelligence.
Our DNA is designed to replicate and the easiest way to do it is to get along, to go along, to get a hold of some woman and to replicate like crazy.
And then just to sort of see what happens.
There's no profit to the DNA for us standing up and for us being...
You know, these sort of rigid, iron-willed, objectivist fantasy camp leaders.
No, I mean, how does that benefit the DNA? All you're going to do is get killed.
Or you're going to get abandoned, thrown away.
You're going to get rejected by every female in the group.
It's completely inevitable.
So, having made that case, and I could go on, but I think I may have gotten the point across here.
Having made that case, what is honor?
Well, honor is...
Standing up for the truth despite our tendency towards obedience and slavery.
And because we have such a great tendency towards obedience, slavery, not ruffling the feathers, not poking any sticks in the social eyeballs, so to speak, because we do have an enormous and powerful tendency to go along, and you see even those who rebel against the social order rebel in completely predictable manners, or the skinheads, or the shaven-headed people, or tattoos, or, you know, I'm a rebel, so I'm going to have a mohawk like everyone else, kind of thing.
But... The fact that we have such a great and engraved desire and need and hunger for acceptance and conformity within ourselves, within our very spirits, within our souls and our very essences, to stand up for the truth despite that incredible undertow and bone-crushing gravity of our desire for social conformity.
Now that is honor!
That brings honor.
That kind of integrity is really hard.
And that's why it is such a virtue.
As I said earlier on, the greater the challenge, the greater the virtue.
The greater the enemies, the greater the triumph.
And our desire for conformity is so strong.
That standing up and speaking truth to power, as it's sometimes called, as getting up and saying at a comfortable and chatty dinner table, I don't agree with this war in Iraq that you guys are saying might be a good idea.
Well, that's really hard.
It's really, really, really hard.
It's hard to sit down with your parents and say, you know, I don't really feel that I have much of a sort of visibility in this family.
I don't really feel like anyone's curious about my ideas or the way that I think or what makes me tick.
I feel like I'm just kind of hanging around for everyone else's convenience because if I'm not around, people will ask questions or, you know, whatever it is that's going on between yourself and your family, whatever mess is going on between you and the ABC. It is...
Very hard to stand up for the truth because we are not designed to do that.
We are designed to comply and conform and keep our mouths shut, to sit down, to smile and nod, to have a couple of drinks, to get along, to go along, and to bed whoever is empty enough to respect that.
Now, we have a desire for the truth.
We have a desire for freedom.
But we're terrified of freedom as a species.
We're terrified of freedom.
Because freedom generally gets you killed.
Try going over to China and be free.
Hell, try doing it in America or Canada.
Try being free by saying, you know, I'm not really going to pay my taxes.
That's a form of enslavement.
I'm not going to do it. You're going to get killed.
I mean, we want to be free.
Because... In its essence, freedom is the greatest benefit for our DNA. Freedom is what gives us the wealth to afford penicillin, to keep our kids alive, to do this, that, or the other.
So, deep down, we know and we want to be free.
But there's this pretty high wall of state power and religious power and parental power to get over to be free.
And it's a pretty daunting wall.
In fact, sometimes it just looks like a cliff.
And so it's terrifying, it's terrifying to speak the truth in a way that is noble, in a way that is honorable.
I don't mean to just sort of throw your plate against the wall and say, the Iraq war sucks!
Because people are going to go, okay, well I guess only insane people think that, right?
In a way that is calm, in a way that is direct, In a way that is certain, in a way that is confident, in a way that may be liberating to others if they have even a shred of humanity left in them that wants to be free.
To speak the truth softly.
To speak the truth directly.
To speak the truth with empathy and with curiosity.
To the unknown enslavement of everyone around us.
That is really hard.
That's really hard.
And of course, as Ayn Rand points out, and as many others have pointed out, of course, all of mythology is replete, is stuffed to the gills.
With images of people who speak the truth and get killed, of people who bring benefits to the majority and get killed.
Socrates, Jesus Christ, a lot of the ancient gods did this, Prometheus, Atlas, all these sorts of mythological figures.
They bring enormous benefits, and Socrates is not exactly mythological, but we don't really know the truth either because it went through Plato's rather chatty and abstract head.
But those who speak the truth to mankind get killed.
I mean, there's a reason that these myths are so common, and there's a reason that nobody does it.
We're not innately cowardly.
We just don't want to get killed.
And we especially don't want to get killed if it's not going to change anything.
That's kind of important as well.
And if somebody says to me that obedience is not innate to human nature, then they do have to explain how everybody goes to war.
There's an old cartoon, there was a saying in the 60s, what if they threw a war and nobody came?
I mean, that's just sort of the idea.
I saw in the New Yorker many years later, I guess many years ago now, A cartoon of a bunch of generals before a map, and one of them is saying to the other one, the leader is saying to his sub-generals,"'On the other hand, gentlemen, what if we gave a war and everyone came?' Which I think is absolutely true.
It's exactly what happens.
This is what happens in human history.
People throw wars and everybody goes.
You get like.0001% of the population who don't go.
You sort of take to the woods. There was a guy who avoided Vietnam by coming to live in the woods in Canada who died about a year ago.
And he just said, look, I didn't want to kill anyone, so I came to live in the woods.
The guy who actually went to live in the woods, and he lived there for 40 years.
Well, that's pretty impressive in my view.
I'm not saying that I would do it.
I would definitely not go to war.
I would go to jail first.
And in the extremity, they would actually just have to shoot me.
Because I would not lift my gun and point at another human being and pull the trigger unless it was in direct self-defense.
And that's not what war is.
So... We absolutely want and slavishly and desperately need to obey and conform to those in power.
It's an innate biological urge.
There's nothing we can do about it.
There's nothing we can do about it.
We can talk ourselves in or out or up or down.
We can do twists and yoga and aromatherapy and we can take electroshock therapy and we can hang upside down for three hours and we can exercise till we're blue in the face and we can go to therapy and we can take medication and we can do whatever we want.
We will never, ever, ever get rid of that desire to comply and to conform.
Yet, we can still act in opposition to that desire, which is one of the hardest things to do.
It feels like when I started doing it, I felt more frightened of that than of anything else ever in my entire existence.
And I'm talking like I thought a bear was attacking me once in the woods.
I had a gun pointed at me from a native Indian in the woods.
I've skydived.
I've hiked through the wilds in Africa.
I have, I don't know, I've gold-panned and I've...
I've been lost in the wilderness with no food.
I have had lots of, you know, exciting things happen to me in my life, not to mention the fact that I was regularly thrashed and screamed at as a child.
I have never experienced in anything, anything remotely as terrifying as speaking the truth against social convention.
And so honor, honor is speaking the truth despite an unbelievable desire to do otherwise, to lie, to be quiet, to conform, to obey, to keep your mouth shut.
To put forth a mild or a wild objection which cannot be taken seriously.
To be persistent in the face of falsehood, in the opposition of falsehood.
To be kind in the opposition of falsehood.
All of that is the most difficult, unpleasant, and frightening thing in the world, in my experience.
Maybe you experience it differently, but I'd be very surprised if you genuinely do it.
The first couple of times I did it, I swear to God, I just burst into tears.
It is so scary and so difficult.
And so honor is speaking the truth despite the undertow of human nature which demands that we conform and go along and get along.
And this is why it's so rare.
It's why it's so rare in life to find people who are able to do it, who are willing to do it, who can do it.
Well, I think everybody can if you sort of pay them a million dollars or whatever, but who are willing to do it, let's say.
It's really tough.
I mean, some people have emailed me and they're even frightened on my behalf of what it is that I'm saying, of what it is that we're talking about here.
Yeah, it's scary. It's scary, scary, scary.
And I would recommend, like, if you feel like you have this bravado as like, well, I'm tough, I'm the Steve McQueen of the philosophy set, I would look at that again.
I really would look at that a little bit more frankly, look at yourself a little bit more vulnerably in the mirror, because there is a part of us that wants to be tough and wants to be Howard Rock and wants to be above it all and wants to have no undertow of conformity within our entire perfect, grandi, and objectivist natures or anything.
But that is a desire for sociopathy, right?
That's a desire for a complete lack of empathy, for a complete lack of empathy with our own natures, which is that it's a hell of a lot easier.
It's easier, easier, easier to obey and to sit down, to shut up and to nod and smile or make mild or wild oppositions to whatever is being said.
It's easy, easy, easy, easy to go along.
And it's really mind-numbingly, terrifyingly, shatteringly frightening to oppose falsehood.
And this is why everybody does it.
Who wants to invest all the time, energy, and labor into combating falsehood when throughout history falsehood is the norm.
Falsehood is even more than the norm.
Falsehood is it.
Falsehood is gravity. Falsehood is the ecosystem that everybody lives in whose reach is nearly infinite.
So it's not...
You're taking on a huge heap of challenges and messes and difficulties and bed-wetting, terrifying moments.
For what?
You're basically taking a swing at the sky with a sword.
And you may enjoy the little ripple of air, but you cut nothing and no blood falls and nothing that is false falls from the sky.
And so why would you do it?
Well, because we have a desire for truth and freedom within our natures.
Because deep down within our natures we know that conformity is not going to get to us as many resources or is not going to be as successful for the species as independent thought.
Even though in the immediate personal sense, and especially when we're children, conformity is the only path to survival.
I mean, this is entirely and perfectly and well and truly and deeply and wondrously known by every single power structure in the universe.
The only people who are blind to it are we who say that we are rational and understand.
This is why we're not rational and don't understand the world.
Because everybody else focuses on the children and we argue with 40 or 50 or 60 year olds.
Or those who are way past their formative thoughts.
This is why I try and talk as much to younger people as possible.
And somebody's put a podcast suggestion together, which is Freedom Aid Radio for the kiddies.
And I think that would be a great deal of fun.
And I will think about it, but it would be a rather challenging approach.
It'll have to be a lot more metaphorical, and I need a little time to work on it.
But they all hook into the children.
They're all like vampires hovering over the cribs.
Because they know that when you're a child, you have to conform.
You have no choice. You have no choice whatsoever.
Children are conformity machines.
That's all that children do, is conform.
And... That's what's left over as adults, right?
This is what is left over for us as adults, is 15, 20, 25, 30, 35 or more years of sheer blind, stupid conformity.
Sheer blind, stupid, abject, cowardly, empty, crappy, nonsensical obedience to our parents, of all people, and to teachers long dead, maybe.
But that's why it's so hard for us to have an effect.
It's why it's so hard for people to think for themselves.
Because we're obedience machines.
Human beings are obedience machines.
It's what we do.
It's like the heart pushes the blood out, pulls in obedience, mixes it, pushes the blood out, pulls in obedience, mixes it, pushes the blood out.
It is deeper than our DNA to obey.
And honor is resisting that impulse.
More than an impulse.
It's resisting that commandment, that demand, that absolute, that undertow, that gravity, that...
A stone falling from the Tower of Pisa falls as surely as our souls are drawn towards compliance.
In a state of nature? No, of course not.
Not in a state of nature at all.
In a state of nature, we are free, independent, and rational, and so on, but we're not in a state of nature.
We are in a state of enslavement because our families are false.
And we grow up in a state of enslavement And we stay in that state of enslavement for the rest of our natural lives.
And I stay there as well.
I'm still frightened to speak the truth to power.
I'm still frightened in social situations.
It's hard. Because if it wasn't hard, if it wasn't the hardest thing in the world, then I've got to tell you, us rational philosophers must be complete morons.
We must be completely retarded.
Because if speaking the truth is not the hardest thing in the world, then why, oh why, oh why, didn't we win a couple of millennia ago?
Because that's not what human nature adapts itself to in a state of coercion.
If we're born free and we're raised free, everybody's happy.
We all get along and everyone's doing great.
But we're not born free.
We're born enslaved into a family situation, a prison of falsehood.
And so we don't get the chance that the latent, obedient side of our nature, which I talked about in a previous podcast, absolutely rears up, dominates the entire personality.
We spend the rest of our lives fighting it away, like trying to blow fog away from your face as it keeps thickening.
So that's my general approach to the word honor.
The honor is overcoming our own innate tendencies toward obedience in a state of coercion and speaking the truth despite our own fears.
I think that is deeply honorable and it is the platform upon which the world raises itself from barbarism to civilization.
And so it's important that we keep putting our feet forward from that standpoint.
Thank you so much for listening. Please come by and donate a little bit of money.
It's been a little bit of load this week.
I would really appreciate any additional cash that you can throw my way.
And feel free to sign up to thefeedburner.com email updates as well.
▲
Export Selection