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June 20, 2006 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
35:29
289 Why We Hurt The Ones We Love (Part 1)

Nice to the grocer, mean to the spouse - why it happens...

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Good morning, everybody.
Hope you're doing well. It's Steph.
It is 8.36 on the 20th of June, 2006.
Hope you're doing most excellently.
Of course, I cleverly came home last night and then completely ignored the fact that I had trouble recording from my computer yesterday.
So we're going to do one more on the Zen Micro.
Sorry, on the Zen Vision M. And then hopefully we'll get back to the I hope you're doing very well.
The Freewell debate has been revived most excellently on the board, so if you would like to continue with that, I think it's one of the most crucial questions in philosophy.
And I am enjoying the debate on the board.
I didn't so much enjoy the one on Sunday, of course, although I thought Niels did fine.
But if you are interested in that topic, And it's well worth exploring.
There's some excellent arguments for the determinist viewpoint on the boards.
You can just have a look for free will or determinism, and it will be quite fascinating.
Well, the question has been floating on the boards for a little while, and I've been meaning to get to it, which is...
Why, oh why, do we hurt the ones we love?
And it is a fascinating question.
I do remember thinking of this very much as a child, this question of...
Why, oh why, oh why, do people treat their spouses and their children and their cousins and their brothers and their sisters so badly?
And yet, when the doorbell rings, they're sweet as sugar.
Or when the phone rings, they're sweet as sugar.
And that, I mean, we've talked about this before in terms of the question of people being in control of their behavior.
And that if, you know, if your mom, when you were a kid, if your mom was yelling at you or screeching at you or, you know, being kind of mean, and then the phone rings and it's someone she wants to talk to and she's like, hi!
How you doing? Then you know that it's not some sort of biochemical mental derangement that is causing her to act in a hostile or horrible manner.
It is simply that she, you know, doesn't have the incentive to treat her children well.
And... So she just treats them badly.
And this, of course, ties into something that's quite important as well, which is why do we treat ourselves?
In a more fundamental way, why do we treat ourselves badly?
Drink and smoke and don't exercise and all that kind of stuff.
Why do we treat the person that we have the only relationship that we can survive with?
Why do we treat ourselves badly?
And I think even more importantly than drinking and smoking, And I've been an occasional drinker and smoker in the past, so I don't consider that to be too, too bad.
But I think that where I really, if I look back in my life, where I really treated myself the most poorly was in the romantic relationships that I had when I was younger, which weren't, I mean, they weren't ever like, you know, slugfests or anything like that, but they were kind of mean, a little cold at times, kind of manipulative, and fun too.
I mean, I sort of want to cover all bases.
But fundamentally, compared to what I have now, it's not even the same planet.
So, we do treat ourselves badly, we treat other people badly, and yet we're certainly capable of our best behavior scenario, right?
So, there's always this problem that immature people have, which is, they say, Well, he was so nice when we were dating, and then when we got married, he wasn't so nice anymore.
Like they've never experienced that in their life, where they've ever seen anyone change once they settle into a relationship and become less of who they sort of project themselves to be at the beginning.
And the interesting thing about that is that by projecting themselves in a way that's more attractive in the beginning, I think what they're really saying is, yeah, I know what the right thing to do is, or what the good thing to do is, or what the attractive thing to do is, but once we get married, I'm not really down with that.
I'm up with that as sort of an icing on the cake, but when you bite through the icing, it's not quite the same substance that you're looking for.
So, that's important because it means that they can't claim that they never knew what the right thing to do was, right?
Don't do it anymore, right?
So if you buy flowers for your girlfriend while you're dating, and then you don't buy as many flowers for your wife, I mean, that's the kind of stuff that women talk about without realizing that women may have something to do with whether flowers get brought to them or not, but that's for another time.
Of course, the same is true in reverse for men.
But the real question for me about what happens to personal relationships and why we end up Shitting in our own nest, so to speak.
Why we end up crapping out the relationships that are actually the ones that we need the most, right?
I mean, it's fascinating because it seems so counterintuitive.
Like, surely you would, you know, kiss your wife and yell at the grocer.
If you wanted to live a happy life, then what you would do is you would kiss your wife and be sweet and loving to her And if you had a bad temper, you would take it out on the street cleaners or the newspaper man or, I don't know, whoever, right?
Because you're pretty vulnerable while you're sleeping, so you've got to get along well with your wife.
Now, my sort of theory is, and I sort of try and tie everything back in together, because I like to think that philosophy is not for politics anymore.
or for the government or for religion alone but is in fact for human beings and so should be reflected pretty consistently in just about every sphere of human activity where ethics are involved in an ethical theory of course.
Now what I have worked with in terms of political theory is that an absence of rational and objective problem-solving Procedures, like the scientific method or rational philosophy or something like that, an absence of that means that debates can never really be productively resolved.
And furthermore, that a state is relatively nice when it's small and requires the goodwill of the people to flourish or to survive, I guess you could say.
So, for instance, in the founding of the American Republic in the late 18th century, the federal government, in fact most governments, were funded by excise taxes, sort of import duties.
And so one of the things that limited the power of the government relative to the people was that import duties, to some degree, are optional, right?
If there's an import duty on soap, then you can switch to some other way of cleaning yourself.
If there's an import duty on tea, you can switch to coffee.
If it's on both, you can switch to some other drink, green tea, hot lemon.
And if it's on everything that you can drink, then you just either give up those things or try and make them yourself, or if all of that's impossible, you just have a little chat with your friendly neighborhood smuggler Who will get you these things very cheaply?
Of course, the quality is questionable because they're not a legitimate business, but you can get them for sure, right?
So, this is the case up here in Canada that they keep raising taxes on cigarettes because they're so concerned about our health, of course.
And all that happens is you get these guys wandering around Toronto with these hockey bags full of smuggled cigarettes and it further corrupts The native Canadian population who then use their reserves and their cross-border privileges to smuggle cigarettes and sell them at a profit.
So, all it does is it just swells the criminal element and reduces the number of transactions that can be covered by legal contract and reduces the quality of all the stuff that happens with the drug trade, although at least these people do get to smuggle sealed cigarettes in name-brand packages.
They're not making that up themselves.
They're not getting a bag of cigarettes in a plastic bag or a pile of cigarettes in a plastic bag with no logo on them.
It's just like, yeah, I made them in my basement.
Sure, they're good. I know what I'm doing.
I'm totally down with tobacco, dude.
Smoke. You'll be fine. So, it's one of the reasons I've never been that interested in drugs is you can't verify the quality, right?
I mean, that's fairly important.
I know that lots of people get by without any problems, but...
Still, it's not a risk that I would feel like taking.
As I said before, the upside doesn't seem to be too positive for me, at least, although I'm sure some people enjoy it.
I know some people enjoy it, and I certainly enjoy some music and art that's produced by people who've taken drugs, so more power to you, I guess I would say, but it's not for me.
Now, since I've talked about how if you don't have a rational standard for resolving disputes, Then what happens is the inevitable and natural disputes that arise out of different personalities and having to live together and this and that, all of that stuff that occurs in marriages in particular, and of course when you have children, even more so in particular.
And there's problems enough between two adults who don't have a standard of value for, sort of, the same standards of values for resolving disputes.
But once you start to become a parent, Then those things really, you know, shoot up through the roof as far as conflicts go.
Because not only are you going to have a great deal of difficulty in disciplining your children without a rational standard of value, so you're basically going to just have to start bullshitting and faking it, which is, again, what The God of Atheists is about.
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I think it's a life-changing book.
The reviews have been excellent.
I think that you'll really find it compelling.
And I think it's a good example of this philosophy in action.
And I think it's pretty funny, too.
But that's just me.
You can let me know if you like.
So, you're going to have to start faking it as a parent because you don't actually have any authority that's based on facts.
You don't have any authority that's based on rational analysis.
And I don't mean that you're a philosopher.
You don't have to be a mechanic to drive a car.
Right? So, if philosophers had done their job properly, then the general principles would be out there and just be sort of known, right?
I mean, the way that, you know, basic, well, you know, if price goes up, there's a shortage.
You don't have to be an economist to know that kind of stuff.
And so, and you don't have to anymore, you don't have to be a lung doctor to know that smoking ain't the best thing in the world for you.
And so, I think that...
If philosophers have done their job, the basic principles of conflict resolution would be out in the world, and the world would be that much of a happier place.
But the conflicts that occur in marriage prior to children are fairly significant when you don't have a rational standard for resolving disputes.
After kids, it's just, it's nuts, because you have trouble disciplining your child because you don't know what the heck is the difference between right and wrong and truth and falsehood, so you have to rely on Bromides and bullying, right?
The two B's. And cliches and cuffing, which is the ways to do it, right?
And propaganda and pounding is one way of doing it.
And so, that's sort of what inevitably happens.
But what happens is, psychologically, you look at your spouse, who is disciplining the children, Usually in some semi-reactive way to your own thing, right?
Because where one person is irrationally extreme, oftentimes the psychology of the other person, for a variety of reasons, will become sort of the opposite.
Which is where it's important not to be seen as a real extremist in the sort of cause of freedom.
And by that, we can sort of get into what that means.
But what that means is a lack of humility, a lack of curiosity, a lack of common humanity, a lack of respect and recognition, at least initially, That we're all after the same thing, and we're all looking for a better, more peaceful world, and, you know, here are my solutions, and I know that they're...
And also not seeming to be conscious of the unusual nature of what it is that you're proposing.
You know, people sort of walk up and blandly state, yeah, well, taxation is violent, so we should get rid of the government.
You know, without any sort of recognition that they're sort of saying to people the akin of, well, we should set fire to our houses and go live in the caves.
You know, and not thinking there's anything unusual about that, rather than saying, you know, I gotta tell you, it's the weirdest thing in the world, but I really think, I really think, and I've been fighting this knowledge for a while, I really think that setting fire to our houses and living in the caves is the best thing to do, and let me tell you why, because it's a weird idea.
I'm completely aware of it.
I mean, it's lunatic, but it's interesting, and let me tell you, maybe you can help free me from this bizarre idea.
That's an approach that I've taken at times, and it seems to be quite, quite, seems to be a little bit more inviting, right?
Come and help me with my problem.
It's sort of like the, um, A very ridiculous equivalent of that old con where you say, hey, my car's broken down, can you help me fix it?
And then you roll the guy. So it's a little bit like that, but hopefully a little bit more beneficial.
But you're going to look at your partner, your husband or your wife, raising your children, and you're going to clearly see all of their hypocrisies.
The false self is exquisitely tuned Towards seeing hypocrisies in other people.
And exquisitely blind to the hypocrisies that it itself is composed of.
I mean, that's just inevitable.
Because hypocrisy exists in the personality.
It's got to find a home somewhere.
Right? So, I mean, you can see this kind of stuff pretty continually in life.
So, I mean, the guy Francois on the...
On the debates, which he's been on and off in the debates a couple of times, and sometimes he's a little more reasonable, and sometimes he's not.
Well, this Francois guy, he is a pretty insulting guy to debate with.
Like, he'll just say it's really simple, he'll raise his voice, he'll intimate that you're kind of stupid, and he'll also impugn in emails all sorts of personal motives as to, you know, you, like he said, he tells me, you know that what I'm saying is true, and you know you're just making an ass of yourself, and so on. And this is all It's perfectly natural to particular kinds of personalities, right?
Or particular kinds of defenses that you are going to be very insulting towards someone, and then when they get angry with you, you are then going to claim that they have insulted you, right?
So, Francois, you have to apologize for calling me immoral.
It's all perfectly natural to these kinds of defenses.
It would be shocking if it didn't occur, I guess you would say.
Because this is something by the by, because this is sort of a pleasure-based world for me, I'm not being paid a fortune to do this.
I work hard to protect the pleasure in my life and I owe no duty to man nor woman.
And so I have unfortunately had to ban François from the boards and I have told him that he's not welcome to participate in future discussions because I have absolutely no obligation to debate with people that I find it unpleasant to debate with.
And that has nothing to do...
I know there's going to be people out there who say, oh well, he was beating you and that's why you're banning him and that's fine.
You can believe that if you want.
I have absolutely no problem, in fact, find it quite delicious to be corrected.
And so I have no problem with that at all.
I just don't find it pleasant to deal with volatile, difficult, and occasionally abusive people.
And so, since I talk about this with the family of origin, with the foo, with your family, since I say that if they're corrupt, you have to get them out of your life, I'm not sure how it would be wholly consistent to say that about your family and then keep someone like that in a debate with myself.
So, I just find it kind of funny that people get snarly with me.
I mean, they know that I've gotten rid of my mother and my father and my brother for the same reasons, but maybe they think they'll be immune.
I don't know. But it's just the way that certain offenses think.
So, when you're looking at your partner and you're seeing them raise the children in a sort of, you know...
In a sort of angry and cuffy kind of way, a self-righteous and hypocritical kind of way, the sort of do as I say, not as I do kind of way, then you're going to lose all respect for them because it's a lot easier to lose respect for another human being for bad behavior that you embody than to question your own behavior and change, right? I mean, so feeling contempt towards others is a lot easier than realizing that Where you feel contempt towards others.
You may, you may have issues of your own that you need to deal with.
Because contempt is kind of a draining emotion, and it doesn't make you very happy.
It may make you feel kind of superior for a very short amount of time, but it's not really going to make you feel very happy in the long run.
And wherever you're feeling contempt, right, you're not feeling love and joy, for sure.
So it's a feeling to be cautious about, to use sparingly, I guess you could say.
And so, What happens then, of course, is that there's no way to resolve these disputes, and so the conflicts escalate and worsen.
It's exactly the same thing in a family as it is in politics, or in philosophy, or in religion.
Wherever you have no objective third-party reality-based rational metric for resolving disputes between truth and falsehood, things will always, well, one of two things will happen.
Either the debate will end, or Like, oh, we'll just agree to disagree kind of thing.
Or it will degenerate into some sort of attack or some sort of, what's someone called about Sunday?
A slugfest or something like that.
Or it would just degenerate into something unpleasant.
Because people will end up having to substitute angry will for proof because there is no proof in the world that they're debating in, right?
So people would just get insulting or Withdraw from the conversation or, you know, there's just no way to resolve these disputes.
So, the longer that you know someone without an objective way to determine the right course of action, the worse your relationship is going to get.
I mean, it's just inevitable.
It is the case with governments, right?
Governments always swell in power and brutality until they overwhelm society.
And relationships Without this third-party metric for determining truth and falsehood, without rationality, relationships become worse and worse until one of two things happen.
Either both people retreat into a kind of hurt, stagnant and claustrophobic and paralyzed isolation, like, okay, we're just not going there.
We're just not going to deal with these issues.
And so any kind of depth and vitality in life gets carved out and sapped away, and people end up in these Horrible, dead, repetitive, empty relationships as husband and wife.
And this, of course, transfers to the children.
And what they end up doing is they end up crushing the souls of the children because the children are naturally curious, but they've got this kind of exhausted truce going on between them, the husband and the wife, knowing that anytime they talk about anything that's got any depth or value or importance, they're just going to end up screaming at each other Or something bad, whether it's screaming or not, I don't know.
It could be British, where they just get snippy and silent.
But bad things are going to occur.
And of course, bad things occurring is not the end of the world, because if you have progress, that's great.
But if bad things occur without progress, it's not like these people are going to invent philosophy all on their lonesome.
I mean, I don't know anyone who ever has.
I certainly didn't.
But these people are...
They're going to end up having to withdraw.
They've got this strange silence.
Their relationship becomes filled with landmine after landmine after landmine after no fly zone after no trespassing zone.
And they end up kind of just standing on one little small square of space called let's talk about the weather and let's discuss the news and let's not ever talk about anything where this fundamental chasm that can't be bridged which is full of emotional violence or emotional withdrawal or pain of some kind.
We just never reveal those.
And, of course, what happens is they end up having to really control the children.
Right? So, you know, don't upset your mother.
Don't upset your father.
You know, this is...
The children want to explore, right?
The children don't know that there's all this crap that's gone on between the parents where they end up with this armed truce about things.
They don't know any of that. They just want to explore.
They're curious. They're happy. They just want to know what's going on in the world.
Children love to learn. They love to explore.
And they love to... Be told what's true and false, and they love to ask questions.
So, basically, children get born, you know, when they hit the sort of age of reason, where, you know, certainly you get one around six or seven, you get another one around 13 or 14, where they start to get really smart, and they start to get really, really sensitive to the hypocrisy of their parents.
And so the children have to be heavily controlled in this situation, because they're wandering all over the landmines that are going to reawaken the latent conflicts between the parents, which can never be resolved.
So, of course, the children's curiosity has to be restrained.
And, of course, the parents can't say, look, that's a great question, but I've got to tell you, every time I go there, I end up fighting with your mother, so we can't talk about it.
And for God's sake, don't talk about it with your mother.
You're right to ask.
It's perfectly valid. I wish we had an answer, but we could never make it work.
So don't ask about ethics or God or government or relationships or love or...
Don't ask about any of those things because, man, oh man, we completely have failed in that regard within our marriage to keep those topics going because we fundamentally just don't see eye to eye on this.
We have no idea how to resolve it.
So we'll just end up screaming at each other.
You'll get scared and so sorry, but we can't do it.
Our parents don't say that because they can't be honest.
If they could be honest, they wouldn't be in that situation.
At least most parents, I don't know.
Still willing to withdraw. It's a reserve, and once I get proof, I'll be happy to review it.
To reserve the parents who've managed to invent philosophy and put it into practice and have resolved the oldest dilemma in the world and interpersonal negotiation in a positive win-win way.
Perfectly happy. I haven't seen evidence.
Theoretically possible. I hope to become one.
But you have that issue.
So, parents, because they're bullying their children based on the arguments for morality, which they don't have any clue about, they say, those are bad questions.
Only bad people ask those questions.
They don't say, well, I can't handle those questions, and every time I get involved in debates with people about that, things get ugly.
I get ugly, too.
They don't say that.
They say, those are bad questions.
Look, you're upsetting your mother with your questions.
Stop asking those questions.
Right? I mean, obviously they intimate that it's mean or cruel of you to ask those questions.
That's absolutely inevitable.
They give you cliched things, you know, your government is good, soldiers are heroes, God exists.
And then, if you start asking that, they just get angry, right?
Like, it's only a bad, evil person.
I mean, this is just, it's so inevitable.
This is... In the absence of any kind of rational philosophy or understanding, this just is what happens.
I mean, this is, to me, where determinism shows up, right?
I mean, in the absence of knowledge, people act in self-destructive ways because it's profitable to those in power, blah, blah, blah.
So that's sort of one aspect, that we're going to end up treating those people badly in our life because we have no way of resolving our disputes with them.
Now, the second one, which I'll talk about a little bit more this afternoon, is that power corrupts.
In the absence of knowledge, in the absence of philosophy, in the absence of rationality, power corrupts.
So, a witch doctor is corrupt because there's no rationality, there's no rational way to prove or disprove the theories at the moment you suggest it.
They get kind of angry because it's like, I spent my whole life shaking my ass in a grass skirt with this ridiculous face paint on, and now you're questioning the value of what I've been doing.
I've never had to go out into the fields and actually work.
I've just been going into my little hut saying, yeah, I'm meditating on the health of the tribe, and I sort of sit around and eat grapes.
And you're now saying to me that actually if I can't prove what I do is valuable, I actually have to go out into the fields and get some real work done.
You've got to be kidding me.
That's not what I'm about.
So they'll say that whoever questions them is evil, right?
It's the same thing with priests, right?
I mean, priests don't want to be out there working in the fields, right?
I mean, in the Middle Ages, that's not a lot of fun, right?
They'd rather be home studying the works of God and praying for the community and meditating and getting nice chunks of food.
They don't really want to do the whole working for a living thing.
They want to raise the barriers to entry for being a priest, celibacy, which they don't actually practice, and stuff like that.
Anyway, we can talk about that at another time.
But you sort of have this sort of inevitably.
But power corrupts, right?
So a witch doctor is corrupt because they have power without rationality.
They have authority without rationality.
It's innately corrupt. So that kind of power corrupts.
If you go to a doctor, Who's strict in researching the causes and results of ailments and who is strict in doing double-blind tests on the efficacy of the cures that he or she is proposing and you do all of that kind of stuff.
Well, when that doctor says, well, you should take the valyrium root to cure or to help with your insomnia, then maybe that doctor doesn't really seem to have that much, you know, corrupt power, right?
Because they're not telling you what to do You know, just for their own self-interest, without any rational proof, without any scientific evidence.
They're not just bullying you. They're not just saying, do it because I do it and you're evil.
They do it because I say it and you're evil if you don't, right?
Which is the fundamental methodology that 99% of families and 100% of governments deal with in terms of getting people to do what they think is right.
Do what I say and you're evil if you question it or disobey, right?
It's just how corrupt people talk.
It's not even something that they even think about, really.
In the absence of knowledge or rational opposition, that's just sort of inevitable.
But a doctor does not have corrupt power over you if he says, here's all the studies, here's what I think you should take, here's the proof, here's the statements from people who've been cured, the testimonials and so on, and so here's what I think you should do.
Well, that's not corrupt.
If Bill Gates, I mean, whatever you think of the man's early business practices, which we've also talked about before, Bill Gates is not forcing you to buy his software.
He is saving you time from learning another software package, and he's saving you time from translating other types of packages if you're sort of not on the Office platform.
He's not forcing you to buy the software.
And if you think he is, you can at least look at the Linux community, right?
The Linux community It has influence over you based on rational value that they're trying to provide in the form of the operating system and so on, but they're not forcing you to do anything, right?
So if you choose to do what they say, right?
So if you go on some tech board and you say, oh, my Linux system is doing X, Y, and Z, or do you have device drivers for my old Rio 600, 32 megabytes, is one board member posted.
I still use my Rio 500.
My wife uses it in her car to listen to my podcasts.
So if you need drivers for those things, And somebody says, here's how you can get them, and here's how you can install them, or here's how you can write them if you want, then that, you know, is that person, do they have corrupt authority over you?
Are they saying, you know, do what I say, or you're evil if you question me, or don't obey?
No, of course not. They're just saying you should do this, right?
And they give you suggestions, and someone posts underneath and says, yeah, it works beautifully, whatever.
And so you do what they say, because they have a legitimate authority, right, which they've earned through Proof and through testimonials and so on.
So that's power that's healthy, right?
The power to influence someone, the power to have influence over someone, that's power.
I mean, to whatever tiny degree that I possess it in these podcasts, I try and use it for the force of good, because otherwise the X-Men will get me.
But what I put out there is stuff that says, good heavens, don't do what I say and you're evil if you don't.
But I sort of try and say that the purpose of life is happiness, and you need to organize your thinking, not because there's anything fundamentally wrong with you as a human being, but just because you were just taught so badly, right?
I mean, you were taught the exact opposite of everything that is true, so that you're easier to control, and that's why you should, you know, give yourself a heroic pat on the back and stand tall and square-jawed in the mirror, because unlearning the mechanisms of power within yourself so that you can actually be free is a fantastic thing.
This issue of power corrupting, authority which is not based on rationality and objectivity, is corrupt.
That power corrupts.
Bill Gates' power does not corrupt.
Bill Gates hasn't turned into Howard Hughes, so to speak.
Dennis Miller says he may be one Cheshire Cat shy of being a Bond villain, but he's not corrupt in that way.
Political power, on the other hand, corrupts completely because it is power that is not based in any way, shape, or form on rationality or persuasion or legitimate and voluntarily chosen authority.
So that always corrupts.
A parental power should be the greatest benevolent authority that you encounter in your life.
And should set the stage for all other kinds of benevolent authority that you wish to submit yourself to, just as I do.
I mean, because the ultimate benevolent authority, well, I guess you could say authority but not benevolent, is reality, right?
That's what we all have to submit ourselves to.
If I pray for God to take away my thirst, I'm going to die of dehydration, right?
So, the first authority we have to submit ourselves to is rationality.
Empiricism, sense evidence, and rationality, right?
I mean, well, we could choose not to, but then you don't have to worry about debating with someone like that for more than a day or two.
So... We need to submit ourselves to authority, but the authority has to be positive and beneficial and voluntarily chosen and hopefully for our own self-interest and so on.
But when you get hypocritical power using false arguments and morality to bully and cudgel and manipulate you into submission, then that power corrupts.
And we have that power as parents over our children.
And we, to some degree, have it over our spouse.
Because it's hard to leave us, right?
It's not exactly a monopoly, but it's pretty mercantilist, right?
The marriage contract is pretty mercantilist.
And it's an exclusive contract that's perpetual for life, right?
So if you had to go to a grocery store, and you always had to shop there for the rest of your life, and you could never go to any other grocery store, and in fact, if you went to another grocery store, the grocer could take half your income, throw you out of your house, and so on.
Well, obviously, in the absence of rational ethics, That grocer is going to start to overcharge you and to treat you badly, and you're going to have a pretty miserable time of it because monopolies that are enforced at the point of a gun are corrupt and will cause people to act badly,
right? So, from that standpoint, the reason that we treat people badly that we're close to is that we have a monopoly over them, right?
I mean, parents have a monopoly over their children.
You don't get to sort of say, I'm going to switch parents, right?
I'm not happy with this set. I'm going to go to like Ronco.com and order me a new set.
That's not really an option.
And so that's why parental power in particular is corrupting in the absence of rational ethics because it is a monopoly and of course it is based on false arguments for morality And it's often emotionally or physically abusive and can be sexually abusive quite too often.
I mean, any time is too often, but it's quite shocking how often sexual abuse occurs.
And the same thing is true, of course, is true of organized religion.
The same thing is true, of course, is the state.
But primarily, of course, where this stuff occurs and is problematic is in the family.
Now, that's sort of the one side of the equation.
The power corrupts. And the other things that we've talked about in this podcast are the reasons why we treat badly those that we're close to.
But on the other side of things, there is the sort of the victim of the equation, which as a child is always the victim, but as an adult is another question.
That kind of person, or the person who's the victim who then becomes an adult, has quite a say in the matter, which is often obscured, and we'll talk about that a little bit more this afternoon.
I would very much like it if you would come by and donate.
I've had 30 bucks in the last three or four days.
Not exactly my quota, and I know that the numbers of listeners are going up quite considerably.
We've had 35,000 shows downloaded in the first, I guess, 18 days of the month.
That's quite a lot of shows.
I'm not expecting 50 cents from each of those, although a tasty 15K wouldn't go down amiss and would actually allow me to go and buy It's time at a radio station, so to actually start doing interviews and call-ins, which I think would be quite interesting and I would love to do.
So if you'd like to throw some money my way, I would really appreciate that.
I think I can do a lot for the cause of freedom, and I'm sure that if you're listening to podcasts along this line, you're very interested in the cause of freedom.
So that would be something that wouldn't be too expensive that you could actually do, which might be doing a lot more to further the cause of freedom than other things that you might spend your money on.
So I would certainly appreciate that.
I think you'd be doing the right thing. So thanks so much for listening.
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