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Aug. 24, 2006 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
11:55
382 Loving the 'Sheeple' - A Follow Up Article

A short, more formal article

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Good afternoon, everybody.
Hope you're doing well. It's 1pm on August 23rd, 2006.
I'm, in fact, off this week.
Sorry, August 24th, 2006.
Jeez, even when I'm sitting in front of a computer, I can't get the date right.
But I'm not working at my job this week.
I don't start until next week, so I'm getting a chance to I pretend to be self-employed as a libertarian, which probably won't happen for just a little while, longer, probably another couple of years.
But I wanted to sort of point out this is the kind of stuff that I get up to.
I do a whole bunch of podcasts.
I did one podcast yesterday along with two videos on epistemology.
So this is the kind of stuff that I get to work on when I'm not working full-time.
And what I've also got is an article called Respecting the Sheeple, Learning to Love Non-Libertarians All Over Again.
It's a little bit of a follow-up to a conversation that I had yesterday, or over the last couple of days, wherein somebody was saying that people who vote are initiating the use of force.
And I just can't quite see that.
I'm just really having trouble trying to see that one.
I do agree that people who are voting are asking for things that other people who use violence will have to provide for them, like the politicians, I guess more importantly the police and the military, who will shoot you for not paying your taxes.
But I don't see how putting a ballot in a box is a violent action, because there are some things which are violent in and of themselves, like shooting someone is violent no matter what you call it, and shooting somebody who's not initiating aggression against you is an assault or murder or whatever.
and that's sort of innately violent.
There's no way to change that into something good or bad.
But simply writing a checkbox and putting something in a ballot, I think, is not a violent action, because you could do it in a company, you could do it for Secret Santa, if you do that kind of stuff at work.
So I just don't see how that's innately a violent act, and could be missing something, certainly happy to debate it, but that's sort of where I'm coming from from there.
Now, also this is based on an argument that you can find from Murray Rothbard, where he says somebody who says, you should have a riot to a crowd, and then goes home, is not morally responsible for the resulting, if there is a resulting sort of pillaging and storming through the community and smashing windows and so on, because everybody's responsible for their own actions.
So similarly, putting a chat box next to a candidate...
Does not make you morally responsible for the resulting violence.
So, anyway, this is just a debate that we'll have.
So I wrote an article here, which I'll read, and I sort of got out of the habit of reading my articles, partly because I haven't written too many lately, working on the videos instead, but also because I had a bunch of articles which I never got around to reading, and they seem sort of a little bit out of sync now, so I'll try and stay with it for this one.
So this is called Respecting the Sheeple, Learning to Love Non-Libertarians All Over Again.
One of the greatest challenges in the libertarian movement is reaching out to non-libertarians.
Some people within the libertarian movement, due to frustration no doubt, have developed a rather scornful attitude towards non-libertarians.
I believe that this is the greatest inhibitor to our eventual success as a movement, and I would like to make the case here for benevolence and respect towards non-libertarians.
As an intellectual movement, we will only succeed if we change the mind of others, and so discovering the most effective methods of communication is essential.
And before asking how we should change other people's minds, it is well worth asking, what changed my mind?
I believe that the answer to this question will not only breed more effective communication, but will also foster a growing benevolence towards non-libertarians.
In my own case, libertarianism was a, quote, instant high for me, and was almost totally accidental.
A friend of mine listened to the rock band Rush, whose drummer was a fan of Ayn Rand.
He passed me a copy of The Fountainhead, and I fell in love with the ideas within about two pages.
Almost all libertarians that I've ever talked to have had a similar kind of instant epiphany, wherein they felt that a new world was opening up for them, and they were able to start really using their minds for the first time in their lives.
When you really take the time to sit down and ruminate on this process, it is most instructive.
Most of us became libertarians because we loved the ideas when we first encountered them.
Our passion for the ideas led us to develop the logic of the position.
The passion, the pleasure, the excitement, all of these emotional experiences came first.
The elucidation and rational verification came later.
It seems impossible that within reading a few pages of Fountainhead, I was able to rationally grasp and process objectivist or rationalist philosophy.
What Ayn Rand called a sense of life spoke to me from the pages of her novel.
A deep aspect of my personality responded to the passionate individualism of her characters and language.
As I learned more and more about objectivism and libertarianism, I confirmed all of my initial impressions, but I was driven to study philosophy because of my pleasure in the process.
I became more rational, not as a result of logical arguments, but rather because I enjoyed studying logical arguments.
This is a crucial distinction and something that is essential for libertarians to understand.
There are certain souls in the world that are naturally drawn to liberty and all that is required is that these souls be exposed to rational ideas and everything follows from there.
There are also certain souls in the world that are naturally hostile to liberty and no amount of exposure or argument will ever change them.
What should most concern us as libertarians are those in the middle, those who are neither naturally drawn to nor naturally averse to ideas of liberty.
It is these people that we must reach if we are to succeed as a movement.
Once we understand that it was our passionate and pleasurable initial reaction to logical arguments that drew us down the road of philosophy, we can also begin to appreciate that such a reaction is very uncommon.
I did not voluntarily choose to find philosophy so pleasurable.
It was a complete surprise to me, actually.
Thus, I cannot really say that my lifelong study of philosophy is the result of listening to rational arguments, but rather from following my own pleasure.
I believe that the study of philosophy has granted me a certain virtue and wisdom which I would not have possessed otherwise, but I did not possess those attributes at the beginning of my journey.
If a love of philosophy is to some degree innate, then it cannot be a source of personal pride.
If I am prone to weight gain, but work hard to maintain a healthy weight, I can take pride in that accomplishment.
If, however, I am naturally thin, then maintaining a healthy weight cannot logically be a source of pride.
Most libertarians are naturally philosophical in the same way that Mozart was naturally musical, and so for it to be a source of pride and superiority is fundamentally irrational.
Now, Mozart would probably have been just about the worst piano teacher in the world, since what came so naturally, easily, and pleasurably for him comes very hard for other people.
If Mozart wanted To be a good piano teacher, he would have to understand and recognize that his own natural talents and capacities were not shared by the general population, and that he would have to approach things slowly and respectfully in order to transfer his knowledge effectively.
If Mozart kept calling his students stupid for failing to grasp musical concepts and write symphonies at the age of seven, they would probably not find the experience very pleasurable and would probably not end up learning a whole lot about music.
The emotional approach of many libertarians to non-libertarians are similar.
Concepts that come easily to libertarians are very hard for non-libertarians to grasp.
This does mean that non-libertarians are stupid, corrupt, evil, stubborn, or any of the other lovely epithets often bestowed upon them by libertarians.
If you are trying to transfer knowledge to someone and they reject that knowledge, that is always and forever your responsibility.
Either you chose someone incapable of understanding what you're trying to tell them, or they were capable of understanding it, but you have failed to communicate it effectively.
Blaming the listener is irrational.
It is also important to understand how libertarianism looks to non-libertarians.
It remains a sort of fringe belief, of which there are far too many in this irrational world.
When the average citizen considers libertarianism, he or she will look to the experts just as most of us do when surveying unfamiliar fields.
What will he see? Well, when he flips on CNN he sees no libertarians on panel discussions.
When he opens his newspaper he sees almost no libertarian editorials.
When he looks at universities he sees almost no libertarian professors.
When he reviews expert literature he finds very few libertarian positions.
When he looks at the thoughts of many of the most intelligent members of the human race, such as Einstein, Russell, Mill, Keynes, and so on, he finds that socialism, or statism, is advocated in many forms.
When he thinks back on his own state education, he recalls no libertarian positions but endless streams of pro-state, quote, facts.
Can we rationally condemn him for his skepticism?
Because he equates capitalism with child slavery and the Great Depression, we appear to him like a doctor arguing against antibiotics and for a return to leeching.
Furthermore, and this is a very important fact, most individuals will face significant social and probably professional repercussions for accepting libertarian positions.
Conversations with their families, friends and colleagues will probably become quite uncomfortable.
If they have children, they may have to, quote, deprogram them, and reversals in parental moral instructions can be very difficult, both for the parent and child, or, heaven forbid, the teenager.
And what if the person you are trying to enlighten is a public school teacher or a professor?
If he accepts your position, he will have to realize that the vast majority of his career has been spent communicating falsehoods, and thus also punishing the rare student who spoke the truth.
This would be quite a bitter pill for any educator to swallow.
Furthermore, even if they switch their positions, we cannot tell them.
Then we will triumph, and the power of the state will be curtailed.
We really are asking for quite a lot—ostracism, endless social and professional conflicts, a reversal of all prior ethical beliefs, and for what?
Some possible victory in the distant future?
From a cost-benefit standpoint, it's a pretty tough case to make— People are responsible for their beliefs, of course, and I'm not saying no one is accountable.
But I think that we need to approach non-libertarians by sharing enthusiasm, not radiating superiority.
We all spend good portions of our lives, whether we are teachers or not, communicating about moral and philosophical issues.
Asking people to reverse their positions in these areas is asking them to accept that they have hitherto lived their lives communicating falsely about the most essential issues in the world.
This is not to say that we should not try, or that because we have natural abilities in the realm of philosophy, that philosophy is subjective or requires these natural abilities, but it is very important for us to retain our humility in the face of our talents and not damn those who struggle with what comes so easily to us.
Contempt or hostility towards those lacking abilities in particular areas is not a mark of confidence or superiority, but rather insecurity and vanity, and will not save the world.
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