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Dec. 8, 2006 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
35:23
547 Art Part 2

Art. Why not?

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Good evening, everybody.
I hope you're doing well.
Steph, December the 7th, 2006.
It is 17.11.
And I know this is going to be beyond shocking for everyone here, but this is going to be a relatively suck-suck-suck-suck-suck-suck-suck-suck-suck-suck-suck-suck-suck-suck-sink-dink-punk-tust.
Because this morning, I love Audacity, great program, love the price, but unfortunately it's quite possible to erase a recording without any warning or any sort of confirmation dialogues.
And the way that you do that is you simply close a track and it erases it all without asking you for confirmation.
If you try and exit the application, it will ask you if you want to delete everything or save it, but not if you get rid of a track and there doesn't seem to be a way to undo it.
Other than that, great program.
But the point of all of this, as I keep telling you about how short the podcast is going to be and stretch it out with an introduction, is that I blew away my podcast this morning, so you're going to get the boiled-down version in a very short time frame because I just dropped a colleague off at the airport so we can head back to England.
So let's get started on the podcast.
This is Art Part 2.
What I talked about this morning was...
Yeah, I've had...
Yeah, two cappuccinos, I think.
But what I talked about this morning in the long-lost, or I guess now totally lost, podcast was that art is a selective recreation of reality, of course, as Ayn Rand would put it as well, according to the value judgments of the artist.
And I sort of gave a bunch of stuff here and there, but...
What I sort of wanted to talk about was the difference between art and propaganda, and that is, I think, a pretty important distinction to understand.
Now, all art is propaganda, but that doesn't mean that that's bad, right?
I mean, propaganda is the instilling of a worldview that is selected and focused from just the general experience that people have every day, right?
I mean, There is no movie that is like two hours of watching somebody sleep because that is just every day, right?
So you have to sort of pick out and select stuff that's important in life to show in a movie.
And I'll give you sort of an example of that in a minute or two.
But all art is a sort of selective recreation and it is an attempt to make an emotional argument that bypasses the evidence of the senses, right?
To create art is to create an emotional argument for a particular kind of morality, or a particular kind of worldview, let's say.
I would say morality is implicit, but it's not for certain.
So, for example, of course, if you take a situation, this isn't the example, but here's just a minor example.
If you take a situation wherein there are young men at war, That's your sort of topic.
Well, obviously, being at war is one of the things that you want to talk about.
Conflict and violence is key.
And, of course, that is dramatic stuff.
So that's obviously why it's a common topic for art.
But you can either show these people as sort of square-jawed, noble, defenders of freedom who come to each other's aides and we don't leave anyone behind and all that kind of stuff and show the enemy as sort of faceless, evil, just dastardly, whatever, whatever, all the bad people in the world.
Or you can show it completely the reverse, right?
You can humanize the enemy and you can demonize the soldiers or just, you know, they're all sort of callous sociopaths and so on.
And so it's not just the topic but the content of how it is.
And if you say, if you have every single soldier be this sort of square-jawed hero, then you're saying that this is what soldiers are, right?
It's an emotional argument about the nature of being a soldier.
It's not a rational argument because a rational argument would be a rather boring piece of art, right?
It would just be a bunch of syllogisms proving something.
Or one of my articles. So that would be another example of that.
But here's another example of how art carries within it an implicit message.
So let's say that I write a short story, and in that short story, I talk about a guy getting picked up by a car to go to work.
And every time he goes past a crossing guard, the crossing guard seems to look at him with scorn or with a sneer or with some sort of...
And his face turns white and his hands shake and so on.
Then that would be...
Then this sort of... I went on and on about every morning, you know, he dreads the drive-by and the sneer and so on, and he begins to obsess about it and so on.
That would be a story wherein I would be saying, yeah, there's lots of important stuff in the world, but the most important thing to talk about is one guy and his dysfunctional, paranoid, panic-attack relationship with somebody he doesn't even know and this sort of stuff, right?
So that would be... The implicit message behind that would be that everything else is less important, but we should focus on this.
Now, imagine if I wrote this short story and this occurred, this sort of emotional experience of feeling really panicked by somebody disapproving of you who you don't even know, that this occurred.
And then at the end of the story, it turns out that the guy gets out of his car to, you know, after you have this guy go to work a couple of times, at the end of the story, the guy comes out of his car.
And he's greeted by waving crowds and balloons, and it turns out he's like the President of the United States, right?
So if you don't know that he's the President of the United States, it just seems like a story about a guy who's kind of claustrophobic and a little obsessed and so on.
But there's no particularly larger message.
But if you then have a piece of, like at the end of this story, it turns out that he's the President of the United States, then you're saying something about the desperate need for approval and the fear of disapproval that goes along with the power, and suddenly it becomes a morality tale, right?
Let's just say that you have the President of the United States who has a panic attack because somebody frowns at him.
Well, maybe he's just tired. I mean, of course he's crazy and all that, but let's just say on the average sort of understanding.
Maybe he's just tired.
Maybe he ate some bad fish, right?
You wouldn't necessarily say that this would be indicative of a deep psychological problem, but in art, that is the case, right?
Because you're picking this moment rather than...
and you're emphasizing this rather than everything else.
So if you can sort of understand the way that that story translates into our moral understanding of the world or our understanding of the humanity or inhumanity of the subjects that are portrayed...
I think you can sort of understand this as the way that art selectively recreates in order to make an emotional argument for a value judgment.
Now, artists are generally bad, bad, bad philosophers, in the same way that philosophers are usually bad artists, right?
I mean, also Spracht Zarathustra is evidence enough of that, but...
The reason that artists really get off on making these emotional arguments is because, you know, they're sort of intellectually retarded, right?
They're very good at manipulating emotions and so on, and they're sophists in the worst kind of pageantry-based kind of way and patriotic-based kind of way, but they really don't have any particular luck with syllogisms or reasoned arguments, so they have to make stories with emotional impact so that they can communicate a particular kind of worldview or a particular kind of moral story.
So you used to have, as we all sort of know, this sort of horrendous backstory of black actors in Hollywood is sort of along the lines that, you know, they were these sort of, you know, grinning, idiotic, half-drooling, oh, gee, boss kind of stuff, idiots, right?
And that was the only roles that they could get.
And, you know, then they became, well, you have to be a drug dealer, or you have to be a pimp, or you have to be a thief, or you have to be, you know, then it's all that kind of stuff, right?
And so you have all of this, and all of these are arguments, right?
I mean, if every single time you have a thief, you cast a black man, then clearly you're making a case that is quite significant, right?
Colorblind casting may not work perfectly, but it really shouldn't matter overall, right?
I mean, Howard Rock could be a black guy.
What the hell would it really matter? But this, when you are putting particular people in particular kinds of roles, right?
Like, you know, the way that you always see Orientals on TV. They're in the morgue.
They're always doctors or scientists or always in a white lab coat.
They never get to kiss the girl and all that kind of nonsense, right?
Well, this, of course, is kind of stereotyping and it's a kind of emotional argument about the nature of...
And, of course, it's a little bit based on the fact that there's a certain amount of reticence for public displays of affection within the Oriental cultures, or at least many of them, but, you know, it's always a big shock and loss when the guy got to kiss his wife or something, right?
So when you get this kind of artistic portrayal, it is an attempt to make an emotional argument, right?
So when slavery or segregation was big, then you had to make an emotional argument as to how retarded black people were, and of course they could never manage their own affairs.
How could that even be conceivable?
And that's why we have to be their masters, right?
That's sort of how this argument works.
If you portrayed, like if in a slave-owning society, and this was sort of the genius behind Uncle Tom's Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe, I think it was.
If you portray the blacks as sort of people with feelings and with some nobility and so on, then it's an implicit statement that says slavery is wrong.
You can sort of say slavery is wrong.
By syllogistically arguing it, the moral philosophy aspect of it, you can say that slavery is wrong by portraying the slave owners as evil guys and the slaves as good guys.
That's another way of approaching it.
A little bit of a less, much more dishonest way of doing it.
What was it Lincoln said to Beecher Stowe?
Here's the little lady who started the big war.
Of course, it had nothing to do with that, but it's a good story nonetheless.
And of course you can approve of slavery either through tortured, usually Christian reasoning, or you can approve of slavery by portraying kindly, wise, benevolent, gentle slave owners and retarded, prone to violence and chaos and disruption slaves and the wise corrections and so on.
This is just so absolutely common.
Once you see this in art, it's omnipresent.
It's omnipresent. It's always a moral argument.
It's always, always, always a moral argument.
But it's always a moral argument from effect.
Art is about showing, not saying.
And so it's always the argument from effect in art.
So this is why you get the ticking bomb and the guy who has to torture because of the ticking bomb and so on.
It's always the argument from effect.
Because if you could actually think through things, you wouldn't be an artist, you'd be a philosopher.
So that's sort of another important aspect of art.
It's a constant emotional argument from a fact, right?
The consequences of doing this, that, or the other are good, bad, or indifferent.
Now, I'm going to give you sort of one last example because I said this was going to be a succinct podcast and I'm going to keep my word.
Yes, I will. Well, I'd like to sort of invite those of you who either have children or were children and not include those others who were born from the forehead of Zeus to But let's talk about children's entertainment.
Children's entertainment. Now, imagine these sort of two scenarios, right?
So if I wanted to sort of do a children's book or a children's story, I could either do, you know, cliche or anti-cliche, and then just sort of understand the emotional arguments that I would be putting forward.
So in story A, there is a beautiful glade in a wood.
It's full of cute and furry and wonderful and friendly and happy woodland animals, sort of like the over-the-hedge crew.
And the happy dancing, laughing, little cute babies and so on, right?
And then there's some evil fat cat, cigar-smoking, chomping, industrialist guy who comes along and, you know, steps on a rabbit and kills it and then...
You know, demands that his shoes be replaced because something icky and natural got on them and slams the blueprints down and kills another animal and then, you know, demands that it get taken away and maybe fried up for his dinner and lays out the plans and, you know, chomping and spitting.
He's like, we're going to raise this whole goddamn place.
Layer the whole goddamn thing in concrete.
I think the whole world should be paved to make my job a whole lot easier.
And goes into this big harangue about how he wants to build a factory, a big smoky belching factory and so on.
And, you know, all of the woodland animals are terrified and the children are, you know, who know these animals and who play with them vow to do something and they go to fight and this and that, right?
And then they go to the government and they do this and they do that and they get the mayor involved and the mayor then passes an order.
All the animals are saved, right?
All of this kind of stuff, right?
This is, I mean, just about every children's show on the planet, right, that has anything to do with this kind of stuff.
Now, that's sort of one aspect of it, right?
Now, imagine if you had the same sort of setup, right?
But that would be one moral, right?
That, you know, evil capitalists want to destroy beautiful nature and they're only restrained by the wise and benevolent government and the brave and courageous children and all the happy animals and so on.
Now, imagine that this was the case, that...
You know, there's a house, there's a street with some animals, sorry, with some kids, and then there's this dark wood.
And this dark wood is full of, you know, horrible, menacing animals that keep coming out and killing dogs and killing animals, these wolves and so on, and they're evil, and they're slavering, and they're drooling, and they're mean, and they're this and that, right?
Like in Ice Age, I think there were some panthers like this or something.
But, you know, oh, the hyenas in The Lion King.
Yes, I am, in fact, 40.
Shocking, I know. So there's evil creatures and the woods are dark and children get lost in them and they find the bones of children in the woods and it's evil Mirkwood and Sauron's Demons and that sort of stuff.
And then some capitalist comes along and he wants to build a toy factory.
But the government won't let him because the government is making money from selling protection services against the woods, right?
So the government doesn't want the woods to be gotten rid of and for a toy factory to go in because they're making money selling protection services and this has to be exposed and this and that and the other.
I mean, you could get the whole sort of idea behind the story, right?
I mean, these things are a dime a dozen.
Of course, the moral there is very many.
The capitalist is your friend, you want the toys, and so on.
These two pieces of propaganda, neither one is an argument for or against.
I think the second one is much more accurate to reality.
The more accurate to reality is, the less it is like pure propaganda, but it's still a selective recreation based on focusing on certain things.
I think that there was some movie with Eddie Murphy where he was trying to open a kindergarten and the evil Angelica Houston competitor.
Let's just say I had some kids over for a while and I watched some of these.
But hey, I do my research.
I try to do my research, you know, to bring more fine quality in-car programming to you, the listener.
Mwah! There was no tongue in that, so don't panic.
Well, there was, but just for me.
Anyway, we don't have to get into all of that right now.
So she went to the government to shut down Eddie Murphy's, and then the government guy turned out to be friendly and nice and wonderful and kind and all this kind of stuff and all this kind of nonsense, right?
That's a little bit more like what it's like, you know.
That one business will use the government to shut down another business by claiming infringement upon standards, this kind of stuff, right?
But in this case, of course, the government turned out to be friendly and blah, blah, blah.
So the question is, you know, why?
Why is it that, and to me it's kind of funny, right, when you think about it, like corporations regularly indoctrinate children about corporations, right?
That's a bit of a paradox when you think about it, right?
So, you know, let's sort of look at the motivations of what might be going on here, and I think that will tell us something about parents, children, corporations, and art, and all, in five minutes.
No, six, traffic's slow, it's going to be a little longer.
So, the question is sort of, we'll just take the standard thing, right?
Saturday morning cartoons, right?
There's some cartoons, kids get some epilepsy, they want some sugar, and so on.
Well, why is it that corporations like Disney and all these, they produce these morning cartoons, why, oh why, oh why, would they end up wanting to dis-corporations to kids, right?
What would that make any sense, right?
I mean, wouldn't kids get the paradox, you know, corporations are evil, but...
The corporations are the ones giving me the cartoons, and they also make all the toys that I want, so what the hell?
It doesn't make any sense. Well, what I would argue is something like the following.
Sorry I had to take a call.
I'm so popular. That's why I have mostly podcast friends.
Anyway, so I can't remember what I was talking about, but I do remember the general gist or thrust or tendency or synonym.
So let's dig into the question of why corporations are so negative and down against corporations and why they do this.
So... I would submit, as a perfectly proven, finalized, absolutely, positively, lootly, syllogistically, locked up, airtight statement, mad theory, that parents have a very ambivalent relationship to corporations.
And I'll tell you why I think that might be the case.
And then you can tell me if I'm right, or you don't have to talk to me at all.
So, this is a typical scenario that I sort of see.
And certainly this was the case for me when I was a kid, right?
You sort of get up in the morning. And your mom and your dad, they have things to do.
They've got to clean the house. They've got to go shopping.
They've got to do X, Y, and Z. Or they just want to lie in or relax or whatever.
And so you get your wonderful Saturday morning with the cartoons, right?
And so basically the television becomes your babysitter.
Now, parents have, I think, a pretty ambivalent attitude towards this.
They really do like that the TV is available and free, and that they can plop their kids down in front of the TV. And if you're a latchkey kid, then this is the case for you from the age of, like for me, from the age of like, I don't know, 10 onwards, that you watch TV when you get home.
I mean, that's sort of what you do. I was a WKRP man myself.
But if you're a parent, it's really great to have this built-in babysitter in the house, right?
But... At the same time, there's a bit of ambivalence about it.
It's free babysitting. Actually, you do pay for it as a parent.
There's no such thing as free.
And you pay for it because your kids want stuff, right?
So you end up arguing and fighting with them about what kind of cereal to eat and whether they need these toys and so on, right?
So it's not really such a free babysitting service as many people think it is.
You might as well just spend time with your kids and not end up fighting with them.
Because this way, you don't get to spend the time with your kids because you're doing stuff and they're just jammed in front of the TV and getting commercials, right, in a way that they don't when they're Reading a book, say.
So you don't get to spend time with them when they're doing that, and then you also don't get to spend quality time with them later because they want stuff that you don't want to give them, like sugary cereals and endless toys and so on.
So I think that what parents want is they want free commercials, sorry, they want free TV, they're willing to accept the commercials, but they do have...
A certain problem, which is that they also need ammunition against the television and the commercials that are in the television.
So, they need for their children to understand advertising, right?
Again, it's not proven. This is just a thought map, let's just say.
I'm painting a picture. See if you want to step into it.
But the parents want to have an argument against why they should buy everything for the kids that the kids want because they spend too much time in front of television.
And kids do spend an enormous amount of time in front of television.
Don't kid yourself. So, basically, the parents want to have the corporations portrayed as bad and selfish because...
They want to be able to say to the kids, well, sure, that breakfast cereal looks good, but remember, it's a corporation that's selling it to you, and they're, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, right?
Now, there's a balance, right?
I mean, they can't say that the corporations are stone evil because that wouldn't be something the corporations will do.
But in order to appeal to both the children and the parents, right, because the corporations who are selling children's programming or even making children's movies, I mean, they have two constituents to please, right?
And there's two kinds, right?
So movies don't tend to be quite so bad this way because with movies, the parents are actually there with the children for the most part.
But TV is different, right?
With TV, you have sort of two simultaneous problems as an advertiser, right?
So the first is that you have to appeal to the kids with bright colors and cheerful characters and so on.
And you have to advertise to them.
But you also have to get the parents...
To be willing to put their kids down in front of the TV, right?
So the babysitting has to be not so free that you don't get anything back from it as an advertiser.
So you have commercials you want to entice needs in the kids.
But it also can't be so disruptive to the kids that the parents won't have the kids sit in front.
So it's a balance that you have to play as an advertiser.
And I think that the way that they play that, consciously or not, I don't know.
I haven't seen these sort of secret memos, but...
The way that they play that is they pile lots and lots of ads on the kids, and then at the same time, there's an anti-corporate message, which is more for the parents, right?
So they feel like...
And it's probably 51% that you want to buy the stuff and 49% that you fear the corporations.
And so the fearing of the corporations is for the parents, so that they have some ammo against the kids, and also because of the parents' general prejudices, and maybe they feel that it's educational in some manner, right?
It doesn't make any sense to the kids.
How would corporations be bad?
Corporations make toys, they make TVs, they make video games, they make all the fun and cool things and tickle me Elmo's and all these fun things in the world.
So how is it that corporations...
Could be evil. That's not something that would make much sense to a kid.
So it can't be aimed at the kids, right?
It has to be aimed at the parents, that message, right?
And, of course, you know, the government likes...
The government will always approve those messages, right?
The government won't particularly approve a...
Or they would certainly come down like a ton of bricks on somebody who came up with, like, good capitalist, evil government programming.
I mean, you just wouldn't make it very far.
There's a lot of implicit censorship in FCC regulations, transponder leases, and so on.
So there's that pressure as well, but it's not just that.
It's also because if parents didn't like that message, like it was just some absolutely offensive, then they wouldn't put their kids in front of it.
So my guess is that corporations want to sell to the kids, but they also want to sell an anti-corporate message To the parents, so the parents can say, well, yes, but there's a corporation, and remember, they're just advertising to you, and blah, blah, blah.
Some stuff is still going to get through, which makes it economically productive for the corporations, but they do have to give something to the other side.
They do, otherwise the parents will just find it nothing but difficult.
And of course, then the parents would feel like it's bad babysitting, right?
That they're not getting good information.
Like if the TV was all evil government, good corporations, then they'd say, well, I don't feel comfortable sitting my kid down in front of the TV set because it feels like the kid's getting exposed to nothing but propaganda, right?
So as long as it's corporations delivering an anti-corporate message, then maybe, I don't know, it feels like you're, I don't know, deep in bed with Che Guevara or something, but...
I think that that's one of the reasons why, and it's obviously finely calibrated, and it has to appeal, or it has to at least assuage the guilt of parents for plopping their kids down in front of a TV. So the parents also have this ambivalent relationship with the corporations, right?
So they like the corporations for providing the free programming on television or paying for the programming so that they have some place to dump their kids.
It doesn't cost them anything. But at the same time, they feel guilty about it, right?
Because they kind of know that as parents, they shouldn't be dumping their kids in front of the TV for 30 hours a week or whatever, right?
So the parents themselves have this ambivalent relationship to corporations.
And corporations are smart enough to know that if parents have an ambivalent relationship towards them, and they're pumping nothing but pro-corporate messages into the kids, that's going to arouse the hostility of the parents.
The parents are going to pull... Anyway, there's lots of complicated stuff in here, but the free market does an amazing job of co-opting enemies, right?
The free market is, sadly, there's a bit of an amoral profit-making core that's heavily influenced by state regulation here, but it's like corporations will absolutely diss the free market if that's what people want, if that makes them more comfortable with plopping their kids down on this sort of TV as the babysitter kind of situation.
So it's a complicated challenge and if you started to get a lot of really pro Like, you need a protagonist and an antagonist, right?
Children's stories are very basic that way.
You need a good guy and you need a bad guy.
And the bad guys are corporations.
And, of course, well, we don't have to get into all of that.
But, I mean, I think I've given a couple of reasons as to why that might be theoretically, how that could work sort of theoretically.
And so you need a bad guy.
And, of course, the good guys are the state and the bad guys are the corporations.
And that, again, is something that people feel more comfortable with.
And the interesting thing as well is the degree to which children are taught about advertising, right?
And I'm sort of extrapolating from a couple of cases here, so I apologize if you guys haven't heard this before.
But, you know, media literacy and so on, understanding advertising is considered to be a pretty important thing for kids.
And you get this in school even when you're young now, too.
But I remember... Oh gosh, about 10 years ago I was going out with a woman and we went over to a friend of hers for dinner.
And it's just amazing, you know, and the traffic is moving really slow.
My lane is ending, right? So I'm trying to merge.
The traffic is moving really slow.
Everybody, like, people lose their politeness, right?
I'm not going to let you in because I want to get home one car faster.
And it's like, but that's why there's a traffic jam because people...
Anyway, it's just the logic of the species sometimes.
So I met this couple at dinner, and this kid was about four, and the father, who was a bit and this kid was about four, and the father, who was a bit of a granola head, sort of leaned over to me and gave me a long explanation about how important it was for him to teach his son about, educate about advertising,
The corporations are only in it because they want your money, and they're only in it to please their own interests, and they're just there to exploit you, and so on.
That was their big tale, and they went into a great degree, a great deal of explanation about This kind of stuff, right?
And I said, well, that seems to me very interesting.
Have you also talked to them about the government, right?
Have you talked to them about how they're going to be spending 14 years in public school and they're going to learn about how wonderful the government is, or do you think it's just corporations that do this?
And I said, at least with the corporations, they get some toys or things that they want, right?
I'm just curious, right? I mean, there's nothing wrong with talking to people, talking to kids about other people's motivations, but, you know, you want to do it consistently, and you want to do it with what's going to be a greater threat from them, right?
Corporations just trying to sell them stuff.
Government's going to take half their money for their whole life and, you know, tell them nothing but good things about the government in schools that they get thrown in jail for not attending, right?
So I said, you know, I get no problem with the influence.
Then he didn't want to talk to me anymore, of course, but...
But this is something that is quite chilling to children, right?
I mean, this is part of the whole guilt and ambivalence that parents have about the free babysitting services provided by corporations through television.
But this is...
Don't underestimate how chilling this is for kids.
You know, when you as a parent say to your children that self-interest is bad, I mean, that's really terrifying for children.
It really is a terrifying thing for children.
And not because children are selfish or anything like that.
That's not what I'm talking about. The reason that telling children that self-interest is bad and that you should not do things for your own pleasure, but you should do them for the pleasure of others and so on, is it totally screws up a kid's sense of stability.
Of security. Of the mother and the father-child bond.
It totally screws up the child's sense of security.
This is one of the reasons why altruism is so popular among those who want power.
Altruism is popular among those who want power because It totally destabilizes the bond that children have with their parents, which makes the children insecure and easier to control when they get older.
All of the good stuff that goes on with altruism.
And what I mean by that...
Is that when you are a child and your parents say self-interest is bad, right?
Taking, you know, exploiting others and self-interest and...
Actually, forget the word exploitation right after the...
It's going to muddy things up too much.
I apologize. Forget that.
Just say, you know, selfishness is bad.
Selfishness is really bad. Well, then the kids have sort of a basic question, which is, why the hell am I here?
Right? Right?
If self-interest is bad, if selfishness is bad, then my parents, why did they have me?
Did they have me because they take pleasure in my existence?
Because they want me to be and to exist and they wanted to take pleasure in my existence?
Because that would be selfish, right?
Right? I mean, it's selfish to have a kid because you want to have a kid, not to serve society or whatever, right?
I mean, to provide cannon fodder for the next war or to, you know, well, hey, the government needs taxpayers.
I might as well breed some and do my service to society, right?
I mean, that's the fundamental thing that screws kids up is this constant talk of altruism.
And it's, you know, unconsciously, it's what it's designed to do, of course.
But it says to kids, nobody wants you.
You don't bring any pleasure to your parents.
Because if you bring pleasure to your parents and that's why they had you, then selfishness is good.
But if selfishness is bad and so on, then...
Then your parents don't want you, right?
And this is sort of what goes on for children.
And, you know, don't underestimate this.
This is a very powerful thing that occurs for children when they're told that selfishness is bad.
Then they really do sort of have a question, well, why am I here?
And, of course, a lot of parents who talk about selfishness being bad have this sort of roll-your-eyes socialistic crap in their heads, or more than in their heads.
Where what they do is, you know, oh, you're a burden to me, and as my mother would say to me, I would be sitting in front of the TV or blocking her view from something, and she'd say, you're a pain, but you're not a windowpane.
In other words, I can't see through you, so you get the enormously wonderful humor in all of that, but...
A lot of parents do have this, oh, you kids, it's such a trial, and, you know, oh, God, you know, it's basically the kids are like a curse, right?
And that also comes from, you know, if you genuinely take delight in your children, then it's kind of tough to say to children that selfishness is bad, right?
Because if you take delight in your children, then your children are secure in their value to you, right?
This is true of anyone, right?
I mean, that's why you never roll your eye at your lover, right?
Because your lover has to be secure in his or her value to you, right?
You have to want to be with your lover because they're just such wonderful people that, you know, you take such enormous and selfish pleasure out of their very existence that that's all you want in the whole world is to spend time with them and there's nothing selfless about it at all.
It's all pure, delicious, wonderful selfishness.
Then your lover is secure, right?
Whereas if you kind of roll your eyes and, oh, God, you're such a trial, or, oh, you're so difficult.
Well, clearly, and if you say selfishness, that all comes out of selfishness is bad.
Then you are really breaking the parent-child bond, right?
The children have to feel that their parents take delight in them because they don't offer.
I mean, kids can't offer much else until the age of, you know, say, five when they can start lawnmowing.
But kids don't offer.
Yeah, they're a lot of work, right?
They drain a lot of resources, and they don't offer much to the mix, right, until they get much older.
And so why is it that the parents...
What's the parent's motivation?
Well, it has to be because the parents just love having the kids around, right?
And so you can't talk about selflessness with kids without totally destroying their security and making them feel horrible about the resource drain that they kind of inflict on the family, right?
And certainly, I mean, I'm fairly sensitive to this because my mother would talk about this quite a bit and sometimes ad nauseum about how difficult we kids were and how much better her life could be in other words and so on.
Of course, she was very much against selfishness.
And so, you know, it was sort of a curse for her, right?
It's like, oh, I had two kids and now I'm stuck with you so I've got to do right by you, but, you know, don't get the wrong idea that I'm doing this for fun, right?
This is just a damn duty for me.
This is just what happened. And...
So this kind of ambivalence that parents have is very much played out when they talk about the selfishness of corporations.
It's like, well, yeah, of course corporations want something from you, but they'll give something for you in return, right?
They want your money or your parents' money, but they'll give you great toys in return.
So it's a reciprocal, mutually beneficial relationship, right?
They want your money more than you want your money, and you want their toys more than they want to keep their toys.
That's a mutually beneficial relationship.
But parents can't really talk about that without talking about the mutually beneficial relationship that occurs implicitly between parent and child.
So... Where, you know, the child gets a roof over his head and gets food and gets care and shelter, medical attention, all that kind of stuff.
And what does the parent get?
Well, nothing more or less than the joy of having a child in the house that you're raising.
So the selflessness that goes on where people get really angry at corporations for being selfish has a lot to do with this ambivalence that parents have about their own children and the fact that children who don't have a very strong bond, at least until they hit puberty, are that much easier to control.
And then there's a time of not being so easy to control them, and then for the rest of their lives they're usually a hell of a lot easier to control because they have lacked that sort of essential bond.
Anyway, I hope this has been a helpful look at certain aspects of art.
Do let me know what you think of this series.
I have many more ideas, but I don't want to bore anyone if it's not going to be.
This should be mutually beneficial for us as well.
So I hope that this has been enjoyable for you.
I look forward to your donations. Thank you so much for listening.
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