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May 29, 2006 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
36:06
255 Marrying the Muse

Making an honest woman out of philosophy

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Good morning, everybody.
Hope you're doing well. It's Steph. 8.39 on the 29th of May, 2006.
Hope you're having...
Oh, how envious I am.
I hope you're having a great Memorial Day weekend and enjoying yourself, catching some sun, catching some rays, reading some books, listening to some podcasts, and enjoying the company of good friends.
I wish, of course, all the best of that for you.
But this morning I wanted to talk about why, to continue from yesterday, why that may be just a little tricky should you happen to have inherited one of the Socratic demons that scatter the world and draw those of us who...
Inherited in pursuit of truth, almost against reason.
Against the kind of reason that makes socially acceptable life to be the norm.
It is something that people don't understand too much about we philosophers, is that we didn't Eeny, meeny, miny, moe, pick and choose from all of the attributes of human consciousness and say, as we floated in the ether above our mother's wombs, say, you know what would be really, really great?
You know what? I just couldn't live without.
Do you know what would make each day a tasty treat?
Would be to have a relentless desire for truth that can't be controlled.
To never be satisfied with platitudes, to never be satisfied with With the easy answers to never be satisfied with lies.
That would be really, really great.
And, not only, if you wouldn't mind, oh Mr.
Maker, if you could see your way clear, not only to making sure that I am never satisfied with lies, but put me in a world which is composed of almost nothing but lies.
Now that, that would be really, really special.
That would be very, very exciting.
And nobody would choose that.
I would choose that now Knowing what's on the other side of it.
Knowing how happy life can be when you have finally gotten the corrupt people out of your life and the people who are left in your life are like shiny, wonderful, squeaky hymns to integrity and happiness.
Then, yes, every day is a blessing.
Every moment is a pleasure.
And it's hard to believe just...
How much pleasure I'm capable of these days.
I mean, it really is remarkable.
I kind of thought when I was younger that you kind of had this dum-de-dum middling kind of life, sort of life happiness, and then you had these extremes, right?
So my middle was like, I don't know, a happiness of like three.
And then sometimes I'd go up to 7, 8, 9, 10, and other times I'd go to minus 7, 8, 9, 10, and then I'd sort of return to 3.
Holy, I'm telling you.
I mean, these days I seem to be stuck at 8, which is really great.
But this was not exactly obvious to me during the 20 years of struggle to get here, so it...
It's not something that anybody would choose of their own accord.
It really, and Socrates mentioned this at times as well, it's an affliction.
It's a disease. It's like compulsive hand-washing, so sometimes it feels that way.
You can't be satisfied with what everybody else is satisfied with, and not only what everyone else is satisfied with, what everyone else loves.
You just can't be satisfied with it, and you can't turn off the not being satisfied.
So I find that that is something that people don't understand.
They think it's just a willful choice, like you're just being, I don't know, difficult, like you just sort of woke up one morning and said, I think that I'm going to be a philosopher.
I think that I'm going to get into philosophy.
I think that I'm going to take up a pursuit that everybody thinks, as one poster put it today, everybody thinks you're a circus freak or a circus sideshow for pursuing.
Which is going to make it very difficult for me to meet a lover and have a great relationship with that...
Sorry, it's the only way you can have a great relationship.
But it is going to make it difficult to play the game and meet the man or woman and go out with them.
That's going to be really difficult.
Holy! Is it ever going to make higher education difficult?
Wow! I can tell you that from grueling personal experience.
So, it's going to make higher education difficult.
It's going to mean that I'm constantly at odds with the world.
It's going to mean that the world chafes at me and that I chaf much more at the world even than the world chafes at me.
I'm going to have large sections of professions closed to me because of their involvement in state corruption.
And that's just sort of my particular opinion when I was growing up.
I'm not saying that there are evil state professions now.
I would say that somebody could be a good doctor in a socialist system or whatever, but when I was younger, it definitely had a strong influence on my choice of professions.
That's one of the reasons I was drawn to sort of the cowboy frontier of the IT world.
Because anything heavily regulated would just make me die in my seat.
And there are no regulations to speak of in the content of the software business.
So it's going to do that.
Oh, and it's going to make me morally questionable to everyone that I come across.
It's going to put me in endlessly awkward situations at dinner parties and social events when people start spewing the most specious nonsense about, do I correct them?
Do I get into it?
Do I not? So I would say that people should have a little bit more sympathy for us.
Which they never will.
They should have a little bit more sympathy for us who are afflicted with this burning yearning for truth than necessarily coming down on us like a ton of bricks and saying that we should just change who we are and that we're just choosing a difficult path that is annoying to people.
As if we didn't know.
Really? Really?
You've been doing this for 20 years?
I've never noticed that people get annoyed when you start talking about the truth or their families or criteria for falsehood or their religious beliefs or their belief in supporting the troops or their belief in patriotism.
I've never noticed that, really.
I've always found people to be wildly curious and open to these conversations.
It's almost like they never went to public school for 14 years.
Anyway, so I just sort of wanted to point out that it's important to just recognize that this is your nature.
I mean, this is your nature and you should enjoy it.
And you should not focus too much on trying to bring what your particular desire for truth is to other people.
Because you're asking them to be different.
If they were like you, you wouldn't even think about bringing them the truth because they'd be bringing you some truth as well.
Now, I know that the next inevitable question that comes up is sort of, okay, so if we're a tiny minority of hardy souls who can handle these altitudes, then what does that mean for society?
Well... That's debatable, of course.
There's no way to predict the future.
But I'll tell you this, that society is not an abstract thing.
Society is just the people around you.
Don't worry about society and the state.
And I've talked about this before. I'll keep it brief.
But society is the people around you.
And what you want is to gain the greatest joy out of the application of your talents in a rational and productive manner.
And the only way that you can do that is not beat your head against the indifference of dunderheads and the patriotism of fools and the indifference of the clever and the skepticism of the nihilists.
You don't want to be taking your greatest joy, which is the pursuit of truth, and turning it into an endless frustration by beating your head against a wall.
So, when it comes to who knows what's going to happen to the planet as a whole, I mean, I wouldn't even deign to predict it, but...
What I can say is that if you bring rational truth into your life, then you can get rid of the people who kind of hate you in their hearts for who you are.
And don't think that I'm putting this statement out without understanding how strong it is.
And I would actually put it stronger if I could.
There are many people in your life who loathe you and fear you for who you are because you pursue the truth.
And Ayn Rand was right about what the human race does to those who bring it benefits.
Right? The myth of Prometheus and the myth of Atlas.
Icarus, Christ, Socrates, all of these stories, and you could sort of go on for pages, Galileo, Copernicus, all of these people, Kepler, all of these people who bring mankind benefits are tortured.
And the atlas shrugged, in my view, is perfectly valid in that sense.
It's certainly been my experience that when I bring truth to people, for the most part, not for everyone, but for the most part, they get angry and they get upset.
Like I've Just taking away their candy for no reason, the candy of fantasy.
And they view it as an attack upon their false self, of course, which it is, but...
They don't have any connection particularly left with the energy that I call the truth self, like the empirical energy.
And so they just view it as an assault.
And so they react as if you're shaking a spear in their face.
And there's a hatred and fear in that, just as you and I would hate and fear somebody shaking a spear in our face.
So you've just got to get the people out of your life who hate you.
I mean, that seems to me a fairly basic assumption of mental health and human happiness, that you don't want to be around people who hate you for who you are.
And approve of you in a conditional manner and in a sort of, okay, we'll tolerate you.
As long as you don't go off onto that crazy philosophy stuff, we'll tolerate you.
You know, just shut up, sip your beer, and let's talk about sports.
Well, we'll put up with you.
Well, that just seems to me a humiliating submission for the sake of what?
For the sake of what? For the sake of convention.
For the sake of the myth of family.
For the sake of, oh, we're a social animal and I've got to get along with people and I've got to, you know, you've got to get along to go along and you've got to, well, forget it.
Forget it. If there are people around you who hate you for who you are, who fear you for who you are, and who you are is simply curious and humble in the face of this goddess we all serve called philosophy, then I'm just not sure why you'd want them in your life.
I mean, fundamentally, why would you want people around you who hate you?
Why? So, I'm going to take a metaphor for a stroll this morning and see how far we can take it before it squeals, turns on us, and starts shaking its spear in our face and says, Stop violating me!
I can't be stretched that far!
Well, the metaphor that we're going to use is one that I was thinking of working into the topic yesterday, but I felt at 51 minutes, it might just be enough of a topic stretching to test your patience at that length.
So I thought I'll split it into this topic this morning, and you can let me know if you think that the metaphor works or doesn't.
Ah, nothing like a sip-o-jabba.
Well, the metaphor is this.
Philosophy, by many thinkers, has been called a woman.
Now, it's been called a woman in the sense that philosophers are known, or sort of thought to be monks.
Ascetic, and long-bearded, and guru, mountaintop sitting, and sort of this Nietzschean solitude, and All of those sort of myths that go along with philosophy are socially awkward and dazed.
There's actually a very funny view of Socrates in Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey when they start talking about, I think, that Kansas song, Dust in the Wind.
It's very funny. But there is that sort of crazy thousand-yard stare.
And we're full of very strange and rambling intensity.
And so there's this sort of myth.
And then philosophy is considered to be a woman that we desire but can't have.
And all this sort of stuff.
So I've never found that to be particularly compelling.
So I'm going to take a much more offensive run at the metaphor.
And you can let me know what you think.
Now, in the way that I would like to talk about your love of philosophy, I'm going to position it in the following way.
Let's just talk about the antebellum South, right?
I don't know, like 18th century in the South, in the time of slavery.
Now, we, you and I, my brother and sister, are creamy, dewy-cheeked Southern Bells who are surrounded by, of course, corrupt slave owners and statists of every hue and mercantilists and...
I mean, I'm not talking about the South.
I mean, this could be true of anywhere.
But in the South, you had this particular additional spice of slavery going on.
And so you are some...
you and I are...
let's just talk about you. You're a dewy-eyed, velvet-cheeked, gleaming-eyed southern belle of, I don't know, 19 or so.
And you're living in the south, and you're in this...
you're in this...
Sort of cotton-picking slavery system.
And you find yourself drawn against your will to a handsome black slave who, when you sort of sit and talk with him by the by, off and on, He is very intelligent.
He's curious. He's got a basic kind of integrity, the kind that's very hard to achieve by sort of thinking about it and willing through it, but somebody just born with a basic kind of integrity.
He has sorrow for his situation, and he doesn't have sort of this mealy-mouthed Christian forgiveness, this passive-aggressive Christian forgiveness for his masters, but he talks about his desire to be free.
He recognizes the fact that he's A slave and that it's immoral.
But he is going to read books and try and figure out how he can be as free as possible under the circumstances that he lives in, knowing that he can't sort of snap his fingers and change the whole world, and that being a slave and...
Working in the fields and being able to, I don't know, borrow books at night is freer than being in gallows or being thrown in jail.
And so he is trying to maximize his freedom in his circumstances.
He's perfectly aware.
Of the moral evil of his situation.
But he's curious about your thoughts.
And he's got a great laugh.
And a good sense of humor.
And you feel around this fine young man a real joy.
A real joy. A joy that is feathery, delicate, deep, powerful.
And the kind of joy that you've never felt before.
You've sort of plotted through your life with the sort of minor giggly joys of...
When you are presented to society in your coming out party or whatever they call it, some sort of thing, cotillion thing where all the young virgins are presented to society for pickings.
You've had sort of the balls and the giggles and the cute guys and all that, and you've got a bunch of friends, but you've never felt this kind of deep, delicate, feathery, powerful joy that comes from talking about things that are actually important.
Not who you're going to let inseminate you, but what is truth.
I mean, those are things that are important.
Not who's the cutest and funniest boy in the class, but what is virtue, and those are...
Those are questions that bring a great deal of joy.
And for some reason you've managed, as this young southern belle, you've managed to stagger your way through a very corrupt social situation.
And you have managed to retain enough integrity, enough natural integrity, to actually begin to fall in love with this fine young slave who has curiosity.
He asks you what you think, who asks you what you believe, who asks you why you believe what you believe, and this, that, or the other.
So what goes on is that you begin to want to spend more and more time with this slave.
And There's a sort of problem with that, which is that if anybody finds out that you're in love with a slave, then they're probably going to try and kill the slave.
So, that wouldn't be very good.
Now, if people find out that you're in love with a slave and you've been spending time alone with a slave, as a young, white, vulnerable, dewy-eyed daughter of the antebellum, then they're going to charge him with rape, they're going to then they're going to charge him with rape, they're going to throw him in jail, and they're going to throw him in jail so that he won't get lynched,
So that's sort of his choice, is to be dragged through the fields behind horses and dragged along stony roads, to be beaten with clubs, to be strung up and choked to death in a noose.
And that would happen to the man that you love.
Or they put him through a long trial with no evidence and a foregone conclusion.
And what comes out of that is that he then goes to jail for...
Or gets hung. I don't know what the heck the punishment was.
But it was, you know, it was pretty bad, let's say.
So this is what would happen to your lover if you...
And I'm not saying that this is a physical love yet.
We don't have to... It doesn't matter.
I mean, if it is or it isn't, it doesn't matter.
What matters is the emotional and spiritual content of the relationship.
Physical or not, who cares?
But there's a passionate romantic love And the slave loves you back, and this, that, and the other.
So, this is the situation that I would submit that is pretty much the case for the love of philosophy, right?
The black man is philosophy, let's say.
The love of philosophy that we have in the corrupt situation that we live in, where people hate and fear and have power over people.
Philosophy. The one's love of philosophy, as I was sort of talking about in 254, I think it was yesterday's.
So we have this subterranean affair with philosophy, but what that metaphor of philosophy as a woman always misses is the hatred of the social community for philosophy.
So, what are we to do in this situation?
Well, as I talked about yesterday, what I think a lot of people who listen to this particular philosophical outlet have been doing is they've been sort of sitting down with their family and they've sort of been saying, Papa, but he's a good man!
Not man me, man philosophy, right?
So they've been sitting down and they've been sort of with trembling lips and fluttering parasols.
They have been trying to broach the topic of the fact that there's a really good slave in our midst that they should respect.
That they should...
Obviously, free.
I mean, that's where the conversation heads.
As soon as you try and start humanizing slaves, then the next topic would be, oh, you're just an N-word lover and, you know, you don't understand.
They're dangerous. They have to be chained down.
They have to be controlled.
We have to control them.
It's a burden for us, but the alternatives are far worse.
As soon as we set these slaves free, there's going to be civil war.
This metaphor can work on a number of different levels, right?
You start talking to status or minicus.
This is always a, oh boy, as soon as we stop putting these people under the whip, then they're just going to start attacking each other and raping our women and, I don't know, raping our livestock and eating our women.
I don't know. And this is the fear, of course, that is held over.
And so what happens is the controls clamp down further and further, and the slaves get more and more angry, and then there are slave revolts because of the clamping down of brutality and control, and then the slaves become violent, and then you say, ah, you see?
You see? This is why we have to be slave owners, because look how goddamn violent these blacks are.
Isn't it just awful? And, of course, this is exactly the position with the state, right?
I mean, this is why This idea that there's going to be this power vacuum and there's going to be warlords.
I mean, this is all nonsense. And if it comes around in areas like Somalia, it's because of maybe, say, 10,000 years of brutal state rule that produces this kind of violence.
But we can sort of get into that another time.
But what you're basically doing is sitting down and saying, Papa, I am in love with this slave and I want to marry him.
I mean, really, people.
This is what those in your life are experiencing when you sit down and say, I really like philosophy.
I love philosophy. I love discussing ideas.
I love figuring out the truth.
I love it for myself, and I also love it for the way in which it advances human knowledge in an area which, sadly, human beings are desperately deficient in these days.
So when you say, I love philosophy, you are in an even more volatile situation than if you're this southern belle saying, I love your slave and I want to marry him.
Well, of course, there's going to be an explosion First of all, there's going to be this paternalistic chuckling.
You don't know your own mind, you sweet young thing.
It's so cute. You don't know your own heart.
I understand it.
He's an attractive fellow, but you have to understand.
Obviously, it's not something that could ever happen, but I certainly understand how your head could be turned in this manner.
Pat your head. There's going to be all that kind of stuff.
There's going to be a little bit of curiosity.
But if you persist, if you say, no, Father, I really love this man, I am going to marry him, and what you say is not something that means anything to me unless it's something like, tell me more about your love, I want to understand what you're so passionate about with this guy,
and unless you're genuinely and openly curious about why I want to marry and will marry this man, unless you are going to talk to me as an intelligent equal who has a passion that, although it may seem incomprehensible to you, It's perfectly valid and from which you yourself might also learn a thing or two about honor and integrity and truth.
Well, if you're not willing to approach me from that standpoint, then we really have nothing to discuss because I'm telling you, Father, I am going to marry this young man and I'm going to find a way to do it.
There's nothing that you can do to stop me.
And that's the basis of the interaction.
That's the fact of the matter. That's all that's going to happen.
You can discuss it with me and you can involve yourself in our lives if you want.
I'm more than happy to share my passion with you.
But there is no possibility that you are going to talk me out of the greatest joy of my life.
In fact, I would consider it an act of extreme familial hostility for you to attempt to talk me out of this greatest joy of my life, or to put it down in some condescending manner, or to be snarky about it, or to be cynical about it, or to or to be snarky about it, or to be cynical about it, or to I would consider that an extreme hostility and immaturity on your part, so we won't even discuss it in those terms.
But if you do want to talk about how much I love this man and how wonderful he makes me feel and what a great life we're going to have together, then I'm more than happy to talk about it with you.
But I am going to marry him, and you will not be able to stop me.
And I would consider it something that would cause me to never speak to you again for the rest of your life if you did try and stop me or if you attacked me.
This man in any way.
Well, then you're not going to get the ha ha ha chuckle chuckle, isn't she had a pretty little head turned by this strapping black man?
Well, you're going to get an explosion of rage.
And there will be an attack on the man you love.
So, this is a situation that I think it's important for you to understand that you're in when it comes to your love of philosophy.
I love philosophy.
You don't love free domain radio.
You certainly don't love me, of course.
I mean, that's silly, but you love philosophy.
This is an outlet that gets you thinking, which is great.
I mean, if you love figure skating and you come across a coach that for some time is very helpful in getting you to be a better figure skater, I don't know why we're using such feminine metaphors today, who knows?
But you will appreciate that coach, but nobody would say that you wake up in the morning in order to love your coach.
No, you love figure skating and you appreciate the fact that the coach can help you for a time to become a better figure skater, but it's all driven by your love of figure skating.
That's sort of what, like your love of philosophy, it's what's driving you.
So, in the situation of being the Southern Belle in love with the noble slave, you will not be able to live in that society with your love openly.
You will not be able to live in that society and be openly and peacefully married To your slave, as Nabokov said, there are two plots that Americans will never stomach.
One is a happy relationship between a black and a white, and the other is an atheist who lives to a ripe old age.
Never happens. But you simply can't live there.
You can't live there. You can't change the minds of slave owners.
You can't change the minds of people who've been corrupted for many, many years to make them virtuous and happy.
And open and curious and accepting of your approaches.
You can't do it. And even if you could do it with one person in your family, maybe you've got a sympathetic brother.
Well, that brother's going to fold when it comes to inheriting the plantation or the estate or whatever.
I mean, that guy's going to fold.
He's going to sort of from time to time say, yeah, no, I know what you mean, sis.
I mean, it's a shame that the world is the way it is and I understand, but what can I do?
You know, I mean, I support you, but I mean, there's nothing I can do.
I mean, it's just, you know... Or they'll say, yes, I'll support you.
And then when the threat of being written out of the will comes along, then they're going to be like, well, you know, what's the point?
You can't have this marriage anyway, so why am I throwing myself into the fire for something you can't even have?
So even if you have that one sympathetic brother or cousin or whatever, it's not going to make any difference in terms of your ability to openly live with your passion and the man you love and have a marriage that is going to be accepted and is going to work out in that circumstance, in that environment.
And there's no place you can go very easily in that society and find...
People who are going to say, yeah, what's the matter?
Who cares about black or white?
It doesn't matter. I mean, if you love the man and he's virtuous and kind and generous and honorable and loves you, go for it.
All these bigots, why do they matter?
There are people like that in this society, but they're a tiny minority and they're very hard to find.
At least we have the internet now.
But there's no way that you will be able to get married openly in that environment.
And I would submit that a love of philosophy is more dangerous to society than a love of a black man by a white southern belle.
And you could reverse it, of course, but I just thought I'd make it as dramatic as possible.
And the reason that I made it a man was that a woman wouldn't be charged with rape and lynched, at least not quite as brutally.
So it had to be that way.
You can't live openly with your love of philosophy within your existing social environment.
You will have to change it.
So, of course, the solution to this problem, the solution to the problem of what do you do if you're this woman in love with this man, well, to me, it seems quite simple.
You elope.
You elope. That's what you do.
You ride the Underground Railroad by night and get to Canada, where you can live in relative to the South, relative peace.
There's still lots of bigotry, but there's no slavery.
You may be able to live together and pretend that he's your servant, but you won't be lynched for living with a black man in a In a house the way that you would in the South.
So you have a possibility of a kind of life that you can get by on.
But if you stay in the South, it's a Romeo and Juliet situation.
I mean, disaster abounds.
There is simply no way that you're going to be able to have any kind of life.
It's going to be...
I mean, disaster is going to be inevitable.
The moment that you start talking about it, you set everything in motion, right?
Certainly in the South, I mean, sex with slaves was so commonplace it was ridiculous.
Even our good friend Jefferson squired a few that way.
But there's some possibility that you will be able to get by for a while with people looking the other way, with it sort of being the town secret that nobody talks about to your face and...
There's going to be some possibility, as long as you keep it to yourself, that you will be able to get by for a time, in a way, and the disaster is going to be more hazy and more distant.
However, excuse me, I've been talking so constantly, I haven't had time to have my coffee.
However, the moment that you openly start talking about your love for this man, then events are going to be set in motion that are going to be unstoppable, inevitable, and imminent.
So this is sort of, once you start talking about your love of philosophy with people, Then you are going to be facing a catalytic event within your social circle.
You are going to be...
Now you're out.
You've been outed.
Your affair, your love for the truth, is now out.
And that means that doom is going to happen very quickly.
It means that all of the impressive and incredible...
Social energies that are devoted to keeping the truth at bay, which is why everybody in the world is so confused, although the truth is so obvious and so simple.
Two plus two is four. The senses are real.
Rationality works. We all have the same moral natures.
I mean, these things are not complicated, not brain surgery.
It's just common sense, right?
It's just so uncommon. So there's an enormous amount of social energy that is put into keeping the truth at bay.
And that's used to normalize and justify corruption and brutality, particularly of children, but furthermore of citizens in a political situation.
We've talked about that a few times before.
But all of the social energies that are put in place, all of the moral hysteria, all of the witch-hunting hysteria that is instantly brought to bear on anybody who's interested or loves philosophy, all of that energy is unleashed.
And human beings are very good at this.
I mean, we'll talk about this another time.
Human beings are very good At attacking non-conformists.
I mean, it is a basic part of the tribal natures that we have.
We have both rational and tribal natures, and the entire purpose of the state is to provoke and fuel our tribal nature.
And so putting people down, cutting into their trust and their loves and their desire for the truth, all of this sort of stuff, human beings are incredibly good.
At attacking those who don't obey.
And they are absolutely the best at attacking people who don't obey from a moral standpoint.
So if you get a mohawk, people will sort of be a little aghast, but they'll get over it.
But if you start talking about ethics from a rational standpoint, then people will attack you in a way that There's no other attack that can match the subtle, emotional, manipulative, and occasionally violent ferocity of that attack.
So you can't live with philosophy in your family circle.
I mean, again, keep me posted if there's an exception.
I think that's fantastic. There would have to be a whole lot of exceptions for it to become the rule, but I would pretty much guarantee that that's going to be the case with you.
And this is, of course, why I say you have the conversations with the people with the knowledge that if you can't change your love of philosophy, all you can do is repress it.
Like you can't, if you love playing piano and a great pianist, you cannot play the piano, but you can't get rid of your desire to play the piano.
So you can empty yourself out for the sake of other people's expectations and you can pretend that philosophy isn't as important to you to get along with people, but it's going to just make you miserable because it's your nature, there's nothing you can do about it except repress it and destroy it.
And so you simply are going to have to get rid of the people in your life who hate you for who you are, as we sort of talked about beforehand.
And that means changing your social circle to only include those who will respect your love for philosophy.
So I hope this has been helpful.
I thank you so much for your time and listening.
I got two donations yesterday.
Thank you so much to those who sent some money in.
I look forward to your donation, 50 cents a podcast, freedomainradio.com.
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