All Episodes
Previous Next
Oct. 10, 2006 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
48:11
455 Philosophy Is Laughter
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
The question that is still floating around the free domain radio boards, which is, when, oh when, shall we be free?
And when, oh when, shall we go off and march off and find ourselves a good old patch of Libertopia and set up shop as a perfectly free society?
And yes, it is a question that has been posed throughout freedom circles, lo, these many, many moons.
And it is a question which we in the freedom circles do get just a tad tired of because it is absolutely impossible to answer and fundamentally unimportant.
There we go. That's the end of the podcast.
I think that people have a tough time with this because they get impatient and they want to just make things happen and have all these good things go down and all this, that and the other.
I understand all of that.
I really do. I understand this urge to go and make everything happen and make all these beautiful flowers of freedom burst forth and break into song.
How many years will it take until blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
But let me tell you my opinion for what it's worth about how this is all going to go down.
You are not going to change the world through impatience.
You are not going to change the world through argument.
You are not going to change the world through logic.
You are not going to change the world through eloquence.
You are not even going to change the world through song, my brothers.
You are going to change the world through love.
And I know it's hippy-dippy as all get out.
Maybe the Beatles are right, though.
But you are only going to change the world through love.
Because really, why else would you want to change the world?
To be right?
Who cares about that?
To win?
To be free?
Well, those things are all nice.
And freedom is a great thing, and don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it's not.
But the only way that you are going to change the world is through love.
And that is as old a proposition as philosophy is.
And what do I mean by love?
Well, love of virtue, love of the truth, love of beauty, love of honesty, love of integrity.
You're only going to change the world through love.
You're only going to grow paradise through love.
And I'm British, so it's not easy for me to say that.
But it's true.
When you passionately and joyfully embrace virtue in your heart, in your soul, in the very sinew of your spirit, Then that creates an enormous uplift of energy in the world.
And you've got to find some values that you love that bring you joy.
Because if you can't find those values that you love that bring you joy, then the sort of central question becomes, what are you in it for?
What are you trying to achieve?
What really are you doing in the world of philosophy if you're not motivated by joy and by love and by passion and by excitement and by the thrill of discovery and the thrill of communication and the thrill of debate?
Love is an absolutely irresistible force in its fundamentals.
And I know that you need to know everything about the history of the Fed.
And I know that you need to know about how the early Quakers and the early settlers of the United States almost starved to death because it was a...
It was a socialist or communist society, and I know that you need to know all about the history of capitalism and how the robber barons weren't really the robber barons and how welfare traps people and how the defense spending is self-interested and how war is really the transfer of property.
I know that you need to know all of these things, and I appreciate that you need to know all of these things.
But fundamentally, when it gets right down to it, You've still got to love the truth.
You've still got to love and be joyful with regards to virtue.
I mean, I don't mean to get all the baby all symposium on your intellectual heinies, but you really do need to love virtue because once you love virtue, once virtue awakens in you the same kind of joy that Sex does or a great meal.
Even that. It's more than that.
It's better than that. But when virtue arouses in you the same joy and the same passion and the same excitement and the same thrill that at least equals the kind of thrill that at least equals bare and basic sensual pleasures, then you're really cooking with gas when it comes to changing the world.
See, you can't aim at changing the world.
You can only aim at yourself.
You can only aim at inner liberation and social and interpersonal liberation, as I've perhaps mentioned once or twice before.
You can't aim at the world with the truth.
You can only aim at yourself.
Now, the effect of that in the world will be enormously powerful, I think.
But fundamentally, you can only aim at yourself with the truth.
And that possibility of aiming at truth, of aiming to love the truth,
and to some degree or another, and to some degree or another, to love the truth and to damn the consequences, to embrace the joy of what is really beautiful about philosophy, which is not political freedom and is not winning arguments and is not, but is the joy of like virtue surfing or whatever you want to call it.
You know, libertopia, as I've talked about, is where you can live.
It's where your address can be like one libertopia.
You can be employee zero in the libertopian bureaucracy of freedom.
You can have all of that.
But you have to love virtue first.
Now, once you love, or if you get round to loving virtue, and truth and honesty and integrity and all those kinds of good things, if you finally get round to loving virtue, The pursuit of knowledge and loving philosophy and loving all the beauty that is truth.
Then there's a kind of light around you, right?
There's a kind of energy around you.
There's a kind of certitude around you.
And I've always sort of talked about how we need to evoke desire in people through our own happiness.
Not through our knowledge of economic, legal, historical, political arcana.
But we need...
We don't need to.
You can do whatever you want. I suggest that the way to really get to a state of freedom that is joyful and effective.
People are always asking effective.
And that's to just focus on how beautiful virtue really is.
How absolutely stunningly gorgeous.
You know, like a silk tapestry of ethereal flame across the sky, the way that some sunsets go.
It's nothing compared to the beauty of a virtuous soul.
To the integrity and good humor and strength and power of a virtuous soul.
I mean, that's the light of a thousand suns.
And that is how the world gets changed, is through love of virtue.
And if you have love of virtue, as Hamlet says, I could be bounded in a nutshell and think myself king of infinite spaces.
Ah, but that I have bad dreams, he says.
But You focus less on how can I achieve a reduction in my income tax rate when you simmer in the blissful jacuzzi of virtue.
I'm sorry, there's metaphors.
I don't know what's happening lately.
It's probably because I'm not disciplining my metaphors with fiction or poetry, but this is why all this stuff is coming out sort of sideways.
But hey, it's still enjoyable for me anyway.
But that approach, that sort of basic fact of loving virtue and change evolving from a love of virtue, that's something that I dare say a number of libertarians may not be entirely perfectly copacetic with.
It's a possibility, right?
I think that a lot of libertarians are kind of twitchy.
You know, more twitchy than the general population, who knows?
But I will say that a lot of libertarians seem to be a little bit impatient, a little bit fussy, a little bit...
Come on, guys, let's just get freedom!
And I think that they're sort of missing the basic positive...
idea that they could be pursuing, I think, with a great deal of value.
And that value, I think, in my opinion, has a lot to do with Really focusing on this love of virtue.
Really focusing on the beauty of virtue.
You don't want to leave a shred of your happiness in the control of other people.
And you don't want to leave a shred of your happiness in the control of variables that you can't control.
And when we get political freedom and when taxes go down and when this...
I mean, who knows? Who knows, to a small degree, who cares?
That's not up to us.
That's not up to us.
And I am not going to surrender a single shred of my joy in living to forces outside of my control and bad people who are doing bad things.
I don't want to have any part of that.
I don't want that to be any part.
Of what goes on for me as a human being with regards to virtue and with regards to my own happiness.
Yeah, there are lots of bad people in the world.
There are lots of lying, cheating, scumbag politicians and criminals and corporate welfare thugs and the police and the military and wars and famine and disease.
I understand all of that.
And given that I have almost no control over all of that, then it seems sort of crazy.
For me, at least, to imagine or to think that I can somehow rationally subject the joy in my life to all of these factors which I have no control over.
And all of that is going to, I think, involve Refusing to surrender my own joy to effects on other people that I have no control.
When you're in a debate with someone, you have no control whatsoever about whether they listen to reason or don't.
Whether they listen to reason or not is completely and totally outside of your control.
You can do nothing to affect that.
And so I really wouldn't try, if I were you, to have a strong effect on somebody's soul that way and place your happiness on whether or not they comply with With your desires.
It's like wanting somebody you barely know to fall in love with you and placing your entire soul's happiness on that.
I don't see how that would make a whole lot of sense or be a very rational approach to life.
I mean, who do you have control over?
You have control over yourself.
And even your control over yourself is hampered because your conscious mind, of course, is part of an ecosystem in general that you only have some degree of control over.
So even that stuff, even your own self and your own soul, You only have a certain amount of control over.
And that's you, let alone anybody else.
So when do we convince people?
When does the world turn to our favor?
When do we get freedom finally?
When does people's minds start to change?
Well, no control.
No control. And it's a form of aggression against virtue, in my opinion.
It's a form of aggression against virtue to say to people, these ideas only have value when we become free.
These ideas only mean something when everyone or a majority of people become free.
And there was a post on the board today And it was a gentleman who was saying, Steph, come on, what are you talking about?
First you say that a free society would be able to defend itself against another society.
And then you say, dear Steph, that a society...
That is founded, called Libertopia, would simply be attacked by some foreign statist government.
So which is it? Can a free society protect itself against a foreign government, or can it not protect itself against a foreign government?
And, damn it, let's just get this thing moving.
Enough debate. Enough talk.
Let's get this damn thing moving.
Well... This sort of impatience is...
I mean, it doesn't bother me that, that much, because I'm still sitting in the virtue bliss jacuzzi of truth.
But I certainly will say that it does sort of miss the point of what it is that I'm trying to say.
And there's a kind... For me, at least.
It could be right. It could be not right.
There's a kind of willful missing the point here.
With regards to understanding the process of freedom.
So, to sort of put a metaphor in place to help understand why this stuff I think is an aggression against virtue and freedom, I'll say that...
If you and I are slaves and we're sort of thinking through the whole ethics of slavery, the whole ethics of self-ownership and property rights and virtue and universality, we have to do a hell of a lot of work to take the moral belief out of or take the moral energy out of the ideal of slavery or the idea of slavery, the morally justified idea of human ownership.
And so we have to really do a lot of work philosophically.
And of course, there's going to be a lot of people there who say, damn it, let's just run away.
To hell with talking.
Damn it, let's just run away.
And I understand that impulse.
I really do. But of course, if we don't win the argument from morality with regards to slavery, and then we all run away, well, all that's going to happen is we're going to get captured.
And then we're going to get beaten, and then we're going to get hobbled, and our Achilles tendons are going to be cut so that we could just hobble around, and we're going to be injured, we're going to be wounded, and we're going to be bitter, and we're going to be angry, and the whole process of abolitionism, of moving the moral debate of slavery forward, is, in my view, going to take rather a bit of a blow.
So just running away, I don't really view as the answer.
So we have to really focus on the argument for morality.
be.
And so that's where we are right now.
That's why if we try and found a libertopian society right now, we're just going to get hobbled, as I talked about in a recent podcast.
Now, in a free society...
Or in a generally free world where the argument for morality is generally accepted.
Now, of course, there are still people who, I'm sure, are sitting around in the world today thinking that slavery is about the best thing ever.
And so you're never going to win.
There are always going to be statists.
There are always going to be people who think that the government's the best thing ever.
And boy, it would just be fantastic if we could just get more and more and more of it.
So you're never going to win the whole argument or debate as far as libertopia goes or anarcho-capitalism, freedom, integrity, virtue, whatever you want to call it.
You're never going to win that argument permanently.
But there's going to be a fulcrum at some point where it becomes the generally accepted fact that the government is an agency of violence and is unjust.
And once people see the success of a free society, then of course they'll be doing a whole lot better from that standpoint.
They'll really get that these values work and mean something in the real world and work a whole lot better than sticking guns in people's faces.
And once that occurs, then there will be a fairly rapid, shockingly rapid to most people, movement towards freedom.
Once the argument for morality goes out of the circles of the state, Then there's no place for the state to go.
It's going to fold very, very quickly.
In the same way that for many, many years before the reintroduction of state schooling, the separation of church and state was just a given.
I mean, it just was that way.
That was right. And the way that slavery is just right.
And nobody sort of says, let's go back to beating children in school and let's go back to not giving women any property rights or the rights of contract.
So there is a progress, and the progress occurs extraordinarily rapidly, like within the span of 10 or 20 years.
At the outside, this is when this sort of stuff takes off.
When a successful argument for morality is brought into place, it's like a massive current, and everyone just swings into line with it.
Because people just conform to the prevailing social norms, and they conform to ethics.
It's inevitable. Ethics is the greatest lever on the planet.
And there's no other lever that holds any interest for me.
Like, let's go to New Hampshire and vote Libertarian.
It's not a big enough lever for me.
I kind of want to free everyone, right?
So I've got to go for the biggest lever, which is the argument for morality and the base ethics, which justifies the use of violence in the modern world.
So once we end up with a more free society, and we've won the argument for morality in the most general sense, and there's almost nobody who can argue against the moral proposition that we're putting forward, well, then you have free societies.
And yes, there'll be varying degrees, and there'll still always be statism, and maybe there'll be wars, or maybe there'll be the space aliens from Luxembourg that come down or something.
So all of these things can still occur.
And in that kind of world, a free society can defend itself with DROs and nukes or whatever, because the majority of people in the world are going to be in line with the argument for morality that is consistent and logical.
And so the brute force of public opinion, which is always the first thing that is required for a war to be prosecuted, is for public opinion to be behind the war.
I mean, once it gets going, that's a different matter, but...
So, yeah, I mean, when we've won the argument for morality, a free society can defend itself, for sure.
But right now, how on earth would a free society get a hold of nuclear weapons?
Or whatever it would require to protect itself?
We'd be sitting ducks.
If you work the argument from morality, you don't have to run away as slaves because the shackles will fall off of their own accord based on the argument that you're making.
So you can run away from your shackles and they'll follow you and usually get worse.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I mean, this is true psychologically as well as politically and philosophically.
You can run away from your shackles.
And greater chains will await you at your destination.
There's a poem by Philip Larkin.
I can't remember who wrote it.
It goes something like this.
Rail against your ma and pa, do anything you please.
Fight them on every corner until you catch the same disease.
Something like that.
And it's striking, right?
You fight, fight, fight. But you're then enslaved to fighting.
You're then enslaved to running.
You're then enslaved to fleeing.
And I prefer to stand and fight.
I prefer to stand and fight.
Not run. Not go to Iceland and form a free market commune community.
And pray that the warriors of the world do not stomp on our little ant hill of freedom and huddle and hide.
I do not wish that.
Why should I run?
Why should I flee?
Why should I hide? Why should I leave?
Why should you?
And the other thing I think that's important is some compassion for the less able.
Thank you.
To take the slave metaphor again, I think some compassion for the less able is sort of important.
I mean, frankly, most libertarians are able-bodied males.
And the one thing that I do get a little bit impatient about with libertarians is, you know, if we're the young strapping bucks who are the slaves who want to run off, well, that's fine for us even if we run off and get away.
That's fine for us.
But, you know, what about the children?
They can't come with us.
What about a pregnant woman?
The pregnant women? They can't come with us.
They can't run away and join the Underground Railroad.
What about our old and beloved grandparents?
We leave them all behind?
We go simply for freedom ourselves and leave the helpless behind?
I mean, that doesn't seem quite right to me.
I mean, maybe you feel differently.
It doesn't seem quite right to me that the able-bodied libertarian men should flee and form Libertopia somewhere and leave the rest of the world worse enslaved than when they were there.
And we don't have a duty if you want to go.
I mean, it's just an idea.
Certainly, I'm not an altruist that way, but it seems that if we're If we have the capacity to argue against the false moralities that keep us all enslaved, in terms of family and church and state and nation and race perhaps as well,
if we have the insight, the intellect and the communicative abilities to rail against these false moralities, Then I'm not sure that I understand how it's a very good thing to flee and leave those who have no chance to free themselves stuck under the boot and stuck under the heels of the slave owners.
There's so many people who can't free themselves.
Right? I mean, that's why, in my view, we need to be these beacons of joy.
These beacons of joy with regards to virtue, with regards to honesty, value, ethics, beacons of joy, visible from space, beacons of joy, and occasionally a snorrily kind of rage.
But hey, let's just talk about the joy for the moment.
Because that's really where freedom is going to come from.
If we could unite the kind of joyful charisma that certain kind...
Let me look at Martin Luther King.
Magnificent public speaker.
Even people like Dr.
Phil or Michael Moore.
Great public speakers. If we could combine that kind of energy and excitement and communicating ability...
With a little old thing we like to call the truth, a crazy little thing called truth, then, my God, wouldn't that be the most powerful thing in the world?
Somebody wrote on the board on the weekend, and it was a beautiful statement, with regards to the conversation that's going on at Freedom Main Radio, They wrote that, it was a quote from Star Trek, I think, the Genesis project, I feel as young as when the world was new, or something like that, and there was quite an enormous uplift of joy in this man's post, and I thought that was about the most beautiful thing that I've read since I started doing this, I guess, about 10 or 11 months ago.
And that's the kind of joy that's going to make people sit up and take notice.
And you can't do it manipulatively.
You cannot aim at, ah, I'm going to create joy and that is going to make people want to be libertarians.
I'm going to appear joyful, right?
That's about as possible as trying to look cool to attract a girl or to attract a boy.
That's never going to work in a million years.
And so forget about the world.
Forget about the world.
Stop reading your newspaper.
Only read my blog.
Stop reading your newspaper.
Forget about the world.
Stop reading economics. Stop reading politics.
Do some meditation.
Learn to live in joy with yourself.
Forget about libertopia.
Forget about changing the world.
Be with joy in yourself with virtue.
I'm not sure if that's even a sentence, but I think you know where I'm coming from.
Be joyful in virtue.
Be joyful in virtue.
It's supposed to be about happiness, people.
It's not supposed to be about, damn it, I just can't convince my brother that public schools are a bad idea.
That's not what virtue is supposed to be about.
That's not what philosophy is supposed to be about.
Philosophy is supposed to be about joy.
And so I think that it might be incumbent upon us to feel a little bit of that joy.
I mean, doesn't that sound like a good idea?
To sort of actually feel joy from virtue?
Isn't that sort of what philosophy and virtue is all about?
I mean, as Aristotle said, happiness is the one thing that we don't pursue in order to achieve something else.
It's the one thing that is an end in and of itself.
You don't say, I'm happy in order to, right?
Everything else is in order to.
But happiness is the one thing that is complete in and of itself.
It is not a doorway of Or a journey towards anything else.
Happiness and joy is the sort of root basis of the pursuit of philosophy.
Philosophy is the means and happiness or joy is the end.
Right? And you can have all of that without...
Changing the world.
You can have all of that without libertopia, as I've talked about.
And so why not grab yourself a big low-hanging joy cantaloupe and take a bite?
And forget about the war on drugs.
And forget about the people in prison.
You focusing on them is not making them free.
Quite the opposite. It's making you peevish.
Forget about politics and economics.
I'm not forever or whatever, right?
But just for a while.
Just try it. And the whole point of pursuing all of this knowledge and this truth is to experience joy.
Delight! Pleasure in existence.
Pleasure in breathing.
Pleasure in sitting. And fundamentally, philosophy is laughter.
Fundamentally, logic is joy.
Fundamentally, virtue is giddiness.
It's true. It's true.
I mean, I think somebody was going to do a remix of my maniacal laughter.
When I was doing, I think it was the one about Christians and evolution.
But philosophy is laughter.
And I just, I don't quite see how you can get to laughter when you're like, the world is not free.
I don't want to talk about ideas anymore.
I just want to get something done.
I just don't see how that is really going to make you burst into song and love every atom and fiber of your life.
It's supposed to be making you happy, people.
It's supposed to be making you happy.
It's supposed to be making you philosophy.
It's supposed to make you more happy than money, more happy than sex.
It is intertwined with love, as I talked about.
But philosophy, it's supposed to be about the joy.
It's not a duty to change the world.
It's not a duty to found a free society.
It's not a duty to change anybody's mind.
It's not a duty at all.
Philosophy is merely joy.
And once you have joy, then going to Iceland to found Libertopia, it seems a little deranged.
I mean, maybe it's the right thing to do.
Maybe I'm just selfish in my joy, but it just seems like, really?
I'm in a warm bath, and I'm reading a great book, and I've got beautiful music on, and You think for virtue's sake I have to go and roll around in the snow and cover myself with pine cones and bugs?
That's where my philosophy is supposed to lead me?
I don't think so.
I don't think so at all.
And when you have this kind of joy, it's like a...
You know, it's like a bulletproof.
It doesn't mean nothing's ever going to bother you.
I mean, I'd be the last one to say that, and Zen detachment is not what I'm talking about.
But freedom from false obligations refers as much to false obligations in the realm of philosophy or morality as it does to the family, as it does to the state, as it does to your school, as it does to your friends, as it does to your husband or your wife or whoever.
Except maybe your children in certain circumstances.
Read fine print for details.
But when I talk about no unchosen obligations, do whatever the fuck you want.
No unchosen obligations.
And people know me enough to know that that doesn't need steal and rape and kill.
No unchosen obligations is perhaps for most libertarians something that needs to be most focused on the realm of philosophy and changing the world.
But that's the fundamental realm of no unchosen obligations.
I didn't make the world.
I didn't make it a bad place.
I didn't invent Islam and statism and the military and the military-industrial complex and the welfare state and the war on drugs and the prison system and Syria.
I didn't invent AIDS. I didn't invent foreign aid.
I didn't invent all these things.
It's not my doing.
So why would I have any obligation to end them?
Why would I have any obligation to change the world?
I mean, of all of the unchosen obligations, what a crazy, deranged one that would be to have.
I have to go and argue about freedom, and I have to go and argue and get people to understand that the 19th century was progress, and Dickens was wrong, and the Industrial Revolution was good.
No, you don't.
You really, really don't have to do any of those things.
What a terrible life that would be.
I have to be a droning, one station, one speaker, crackly beach radio repetition of libertarian principles.
I mean, who ends up happier from that?
The only people who end up happier from that are the statists because you've just discredited yourself enormously.
I mean, what a nightmare existence that would be.
This would be the evil libertarian gypsy curse, you know?
You must wander the lands and speak only of philosophy and values and freedom, and you must oppose anyone who crosses your path who is not a purist, and you must blah blah blah blah blah.
This shall be your curse.
You shall be the wandering philosopher, never able to sit, never able to feel content, feeling rising tides of blood pressure in a Klingon pounding forehead vein whenever thou dost watch the news, or whenever thou dost talk with people, or whenever thou dost read a paper, or watch a movie, or have any interaction with anybody outside a very small circle.
Verily thy blood pressure shall become as the lava underneath a volcano, and...
Thy heart shall palpitate.
I mean, what a horrible curse that would be.
What a nightmare existence that would be.
And it's sort of funny, really, when you think about it.
It doesn't focus on unchosen obligations.
Oh, you know, taxation is wrong because taxation is an unchosen obligation and this, that, and the other.
Well, you know, call me crazy.
Call me confused.
Hey, call me a cab. But...
I can't really see how really having to spout libertarian ideals and fuss and fight and feel irritated at the world and get angry at people who don't change their minds.
I mean, I know I do all of those things, and I understand.
I'm not saying you can be, you know, but fundamentally, you know, I mean, get it out and get moving.
Get it out and move on. Deal with the feelings and move on, right?
I mean, you're not supposed to get stuck there, right?
I sure get angry.
Of course I get angry. I get angry at the world.
I get angry at people. And I express that anger and I move on.
I just stay in this chronic, choleric state of...
.........
So, I mean, that's sort of what I'm saying, that you really don't owe anybody anything.
I mean, you don't owe libertarianism anything.
You don't owe freedom anything.
You don't owe virtue or philosophy anything.
It's, you know, freedom is personal.
Freedom is personal. Yes, I do happen to think that if you get yourself stewing in this shimmering, joyful, blissful, full mirage of absolute happiness that comes from virtue...
Great! You know, then I think you will be a beacon to other people, and I think that that's the most thing that you can do, is to love virtue, love yourself, love your life.
That's going to change the world.
Right? We already have Michael Savage.
We already have Sean Hannity.
We already have that asshole O'Reilly yelling at things about freedom.
I mean, we already have those idiots, right?
And they're doing, frankly, fuck all to free the world.
Quite the opposite. Right? Nobody looks at Bill O'Reilly and says, ooh, I gotta get me some of that joy.
I gotta get me some of that love and bliss.
Ooh, how lovely, how wonderful.
Let me get a ticket on the Rage Express off a cliff.
I mean, that's not really your job.
Unless it happens to give you joy.
It gives me joy. But, no.
No. Values and philosophy and virtue are incredibly important if we never find libertopia.
If the world slides into dictatorship for 10,000 years, then truth and philosophy and the beauty of that pursuit, of these pursuits, they're perfectly they're perfectly worthwhile.
They're perfectly worthwhile.
And I would say that if you're focused on this issue to the extent that you're not living a joyful life, then you're kind of missing the point of philosophy, which is not to turn you into a broken record libertarian tape recorder out there trying to convert the masses and getting frustrated and choleric and irritable with the world.
That's not the point of virtue philosophy.
The point is joy.
The point is joy. That's why I say you can only change the world through love, love of virtue, love of yourself, love of your life.
If you aim at liberty, you miss completely.
If you aim at the truth and live with joy, then who cares what the tax rate is?
I'd rather be free. I care what the tax rate is like I'd rather there be no taxes.
I don't have any control over that, but I do have control over feeling joy.
And the last thing I'll say, just before we sort of wind this up, is that, to me, it's also kind of funny that, you know, libertarianism, at least in sort of the way that I view it, it's very much around empiricism, right?
Look at what works, be logical.
I mean, you know, being right doesn't work.
Logic doesn't work. I mean, logic alone doesn't work.
We've had, you know, 300 goddamn years of libertarianism, if you count classical liberalism and early Humean skepticism.
I mean, we've had 300 years of this and we're going in totally the wrong direction.
I mean, obviously logic doesn't work.
Obviously logic alone doesn't work.
I mean, people, get your head out of your asses and look at the facts.
Logic doesn't work.
Doesn't work. Absolutely, totally doesn't work.
I mean, are we going to be more right than Mises?
Of course not. Am I going to write a better defense of liberty than Murray Rothbats?
Good God, no! I mean, that stuff's already done, and it's done nothing!
Other than keep a kind of fire alive, which is definitely worthwhile, but as far as changing the world goes, being right doesn't matter.
Being historically accurate and knowing everything under the sun, moon, and stars doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter.
It doesn't work. I think what works is joy, and I... The beautiful thing about joy is it doesn't matter if it works.
Because it works for me.
And it will also work for you.
Right? So when you're joyful in your life, it doesn't matter whether you change people's minds or not.
If philosophy has given you bliss, It doesn't matter what the tax rate is.
It doesn't matter what your aunt said at the Thanksgiving dinner.
None of it matters.
There's freedom fundamentally only, only, only in joy.
Because joy clarifies.
Joy organizes.
Joy creates a hierarchy within you.
I don't care, fundamentally, how many people are dead in Afghanistan.
I'd rather there were no people dead in Afghanistan.
I would rather that there were no Canadian soldiers out there.
But I'm not going to let that interfere in my basic joy of existence.
Why would I give up joy for something I can't do anything about Other than I do believe that being joyful will have an effect.
Don't know how, don't know where, don't know when, but it doesn't matter either because I'm happy.
And that's what I mean when I say you can only change the world through love and you can only do it if you don't fundamentally care about changing the world because you can't want to change the world and love your life.
You can't sort of found your life on discontent and wanting to change things.
I mean, you can. I mean, certainly lots of people do.
But you don't change the world and you don't get to be happy either.
Right? Given that logic and being right and learning and history and reading and statistics and arguments and excellence and none of that's going to change the world, given that that's a fact, you know, why not just kind of be happy?
And see what comes out of that.
Because philosophy is laughter.
Philosophy is bliss. And I just want to see more people be happy.
▲
Export Selection